Fuse of Armageddon (51 page)

Yes,
Cohen thought.
It’s all coming together.

He resumed walking.

From the garbage, when the phone beeped to indicate it had sent out a text message that had been waiting for the phone to get service, Cohen was too far away to hear it.

Temple Mount, Jerusalem • 21:10 GMT


“You’re busted,” Quinn said to Brad Silver. “Simple as that. The Israelis know you’ve left the IDF special ops soldiers behind with the dead Palestinians. They’ve got the walls here surrounded. You can’t get out. And you’ve got ten minutes to surrender. Otherwise it will be a slaughter.”

“No,” Brad said. “It’s another bluff.”

“Hamer,” Quinn said, “mind turning on the lights?”

Hamer didn’t reply, but seconds later, the whistling began. High shrieks that made no sense until the first of the flares lit the sky a couple hundred feet above the Temple Mount. Then dozens, then hundreds—in arcs so painfully bright that it seemed a supernova had exploded directly above them.

Quinn didn’t make the mistake of watching, awestruck. He stepped to Brad, knowing the man’s night vision had fragmented. He jabbed a hypodermic needle into Brad’s leg and pushed the plunger.

“Hey!” Brad staggered slightly.

“That was my life insurance.” Quinn handed Brad the needle. “If I make it out alive, you get the antidote. It was something that the IDF suggested before I came in here.”

“Antidote?”

“Try not to sound stupid,” Quinn said. “Remember, every word between us is monitored and recorded.”

“You’re saying you just injected me with poison?”

“Not poison. A special flesh-eating bacteria. You won’t feel the effects for about an hour. But if you don’t get the antidote in two hours, nothing can stop it. Hands and feet go first, dissolved by gangrene. Works its way up the body. Takes about a week to die. Gruesome, actually. Ready to talk without ordering one of your soldiers to shoot me?”

The flares were just beginning to die, shrouding them in darkness again. Brad was shining the flashlight on his leg, thigh high, where Quinn had jabbed him.

“Fifty-nine minutes and thirty seconds until you run out of time,” Quinn said. He found it encouraging that Silver wasn’t hiding a reaction to pain. The man was essentially a sissy. Quinn had banked on that. “You want to waste it looking for your owie?”

Quinn’s cell phone beeped and lit up. A text message had arrived. He ignored it.

“We’re not surrendering,” Brad said. “What does it matter whether we die here or in jail?”

“For you, it matters. I don’t think you’re going to enjoy the smell of your body rotting.”

“I’ll trade your life for the antidote. That’s it.”

“How about a get-out-of-jail-free card? For all of your soldiers?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Think about it,” Quinn said curtly. His tone for the entire negotiation was going to reflect a power position. From what he guessed about Brad Silver, he’d spent his whole life answering to an authority figure. Quinn was taking that role here. “The Israelis will do just about anything to avoid a full-out firefight on the Temple Mount. In terms of political fallout with the Muslims, the only worse alternative is leaving you here. They want you off quietly and immediately so that the sun rises on the same Temple Mount it set on the night before.”

“And if we fight you to the death,” Brad said, “we still win. Muslim riots across the world.”

“That’s what you want?”

“At the least. Muslims are trying to take over the West, but no one is ready to believe it. If the war makes it into the open, the West will finally wake up. And win. We’ll get this site back, one way or the other.”

”I can hear the music,” Quinn answered. “‘Onward, Christian Soldiers.’”

Hamer’s voice broke through. “The prime minister guarantees no jail, no courts. That’s what he’s willing to give if your soldiers walk out. We’ve got a jet at Ben-Gurion ready to take all of you to an island in the South Pacific.”

“Right,” Brad said sarcastically. “A jet that will explode halfway there.”

“The prime minister will be on board with you as insurance,” Hamer said.

“He’s serious,” Quinn said. “Once you’re off the Temple Mount, you still have considerable leverage.”

“In handcuffs?”

“Don’t be stupid. Your biggest weapon was and is the media. If you or any of your soldiers go public with what happened tonight, it’s still catastrophic for the Israeli government. They’re going to want all of you in isolation until enough time passes that this can be leaked gradually.”

Quinn didn’t want Brad Silver thinking through the implications. He needed to apply pressure. Quinn turned the cell phone so that its glow showed his watch. “You’ve lost another couple of minutes. How’s the leg feel?”

Brad rubbed his thigh. “They won’t attack the Temple Mount. They’re too afraid of the political fallout. Hamer’s bluffing.”

“Hamer?” Quinn asked into the cell phone.

“I’ve got a direct order from the prime minister to begin the assault at my discretion. We’ve put riot police on the Temple Mount before. We’re not afraid of doing it again.”

“You won’t,” Brad said, growing more confident. “Not when we take refuge in the Dome of the Rock. You fire a single bullet into the walls, and the Muslim riot will destroy this half of Jerusalem and bring every Arab country into war against Israel.”

“Going to camp here until your food and water run out?” Quinn asked. “Watching your body parts rot?”

“Just until the heifer has been sacrificed and the Temple Mount purified. It won’t take long to get that news out to the world. Or much longer for the Temple to be ready for Jesus’ return.”

“You think you can force God to follow your timetable?”

“He’s laid that timetable out in His holy Word. And the time is now. All the signs point to it.”

“You’ve got one problem,” Quinn said. “The heifer is gone. I heard what you were trying to get from this guy. Maybe it’s a sign from God. That and the fact that I’m standing here.”

“We’ll find it. Sooner than later.”

“Not during a full-scale military assault. And not if you’re hiding in the Dome. By the way, IDF has decided it’s not going to worry about casualties. The media has been cleared out of the area. Not a breath of what happens in here will reach the world. All your soldiers will die. Or, if you cooperate, they won’t. Either way, this is ending before midnight.”

Brad kept rubbing his leg.

Quinn had borrowed the hypo from one of the paramedic teams. It had been filled with a saline solution. Quinn had guessed a direct physical threat would intimidate Brad enough to put him on edge. The fact that he couldn’t leave his leg alone told Quinn a lot.

“Make the call, Brad. Get this poor man down from the tree. Save the lives of all your soldiers. Take the pass to freedom offered by the Israelis. And keep your hands and feet from rotting off your body.”

Brad Silver didn’t answer. He fell to his knees and bowed his head in prayer.

Quinn gave him the time and space. Innocuous sounds of the city filled the silence here in the garden. The sounds of people living through just another night, unaware of how close the next few minutes could bring all of them to unthinkable carnage.

Brad opened his eyes.

Quinn spoke softly. “If this really were God’s time, He would have allowed you to be successful.”

Brad stood. “I’ll call in my men.”

Quinn felt the knots in his shoulders dissolve. “You heard that, Hamer?”

“I heard it. Outline how we need to do it.”

Quinn spoke to Brad. “Have your men put down their weapons and line up at the entrance to the western plaza. They will be supplied face scarves and Palestinian garb; then they’ll be marched to a couple of waiting buses. The media is going to see that the Palestinians have been released.”

Quinn would figure out how to deal with what the hostages knew later. All that Hamer needed to control right now were these soldiers. What was absolutely crucial was that the Arab world never learn that these Americans had replaced a Mossad-IDF attempt to control the Temple Mount. Quinn knew what was ahead for Brad Silver and his men—the prison terms they deserved for being criminals of war. The difference was that they would get no visitors. As far as the rest of the world knew, they would be dead men.

“Our men will be ready,” Hamer said. He and Quinn would be inside the wall, supervising the surrender. None of the IDF soldiers would see the Americans before they were disguised as Palestinians.

“Good,” Quinn said to Hamer. “A text message came in from Kate. If I cut you off while I read it, I’ll call you right back.”

“Sure.”

Quinn opened the message and scanned it. He read it again, more slowly. Then he read it twice more.

“Hamer?”

“Still here.”

“Get some paramedics ready at the entrance to the Western Wall tunnels. You’re going to need to handle this alone while I go into the tunnel. Make sure the entrance is open, even if it takes C-4 to clear it.”

Quinn looked at Brad. “You can try something stupid, but nothing’s going to work, understand? Help me out here, and I’ll make sure you get help later.”

“What about the antidote?”

“That’s another reason to make sure this goes smoothly. I can’t stick around.”

“What are you talking about?” Hamer asked. “You cannot leave them there to surrender themselves.”

“The alternative is evacuating this half of Jerusalem in the next forty minutes,” Quinn answered. He started running back to the entrance at the Western Wall, speaking into the phone as he ran. ”And, Hamer, make sure you have some bomb squad guys waiting there with the paramedics too.”

48

Temple Mount, Jerusalem • 21:16 GMT


We’re done. Drop your weapons and come in. Over.”

Despite the hollow sound of a cell phone transmission, Jonathan Silver recognized his son’s voice. He opened his eyes to squint at the flashlight beam that Smitty, a Freedom Crusader, had kept on him and Esther since the assignment to guard them after Silver tried to sabotage the operation.

“Repeat,” Smitty said. “Over.”

Against the dazzling brightness, Silver was able to see the outline of the submachine gun pointed at them. The soldier’s vigilance didn’t waver even now. As if Silver and Esther were actually going to attack him.

“I’ve negotiated terms of surrender. Drop your weapons and come in. Over.”

“Need password verification,” Smitty said.

“Armageddon,” Brad’s disembodied voice said through the cell phone. “Get moving. Israeli forces will be here any minute. We’re supposed to be evacuating within a half hour. Over and out.”

“And the prisoners?”

No answer.

“The prisoners,” Smitty repeated. “What are my orders for the prisoners? Over.”

“Bring them in with us. Meet at the Western Wall entrance.”

Smitty shifted the flashlight away from Silver’s eyes. “This is insane,” he said. “I don’t understand.”

“It must be for your own good,” Esther told the soldier softly.

“We need to find Alyiah,” Silver told the soldier.

“Alyiah?”

“A little girl. We’ll bring her to the entrance and meet you there.”

“I thought we would win,” Smitty said. “All this and now nothing?”

Silver took Esther’s hand and helped her stand. He wasn’t surprised when the soldier didn’t protest. He sounded defeated.

Silver took his first step away from Smitty, then turned back to him. “I need your flashlight. We can’t leave the girl behind.”

Western Wall Tunnel • 21:17 GMT


Kate was getting even colder. She knew she couldn’t deny it any longer. She was dying.

The lack of fear surprised her. She guessed maybe that was the shock kicking into a second gear. The loneliness didn’t surprise her though. Her entire life had been a fight against loneliness, building a facade that didn’t permit any hint of the ache it concealed.

Maybe it would have been better if she weren’t a fighter. It would have been so much easier to give up on the battle. Turn to drugs. Alcohol. Aimless pursuit of a different man to hold her each night.

But she couldn’t not fight.

Even now. Why not let go and slip into the eternal darkness?

Instead she’d taken off her belt and tightened it across her upper body to cinch the balled-up sock into place as tight against the wound as possible. She was deliberately breathing slowly, aware that the slower she could keep her heart rate, the less blood it would pump from the open wound.

Still, there was nothing else to do but wait for the inevitable.

She remembered the tightness and pain and resolution in Quinn’s face when he’d described how he wished he could have died trying to save his daughter’s life.

He wasn’t a quitter either, she thought. No easy way out for him. No crutches of alcohol or drugs. Kate had no doubt that he could have found a lineup of women to occupy him, but she was certain he’d turned his back on that, too.

So he’d chosen the lion’s den as a place of escape.

Kate was sad. Not necessarily thinking about herself and that she would die. But thinking about Quinn’s fierceness and his determination to go into the lion’s den, hoping someday he might not make it out.

No, she realized, that wasn’t the root of her sadness as she lay dying in the tunnel. It was that Quinn had loved his little girl so much and that the little girl was gone but the love was still there.

A father’s love.

All right,
she told herself,
don’t deny it.
Especially now.
That was her yearning too: for memories of a father who loved and protected. Not a father who . . .

Kate snapped that thought off like a brittle twig from a rotting trunk. She wasn’t going to die with those memories crawling around her mind like snakes.

Somehow remembering the pain in Quinn’s eyes gave her comfort. That was love. The better it was, the more it hurt when it was taken away. Couldn’t something like that last forever? Didn’t it deserve to remain shining and pure until time ended? Should that be how a daddy always loved his girl?