Fuse of Armageddon (57 page)

So this was death.

Then, suddenly, something else was pounding against his back. The water roiled more, and Safady’s grip released.

The weight fell off Quinn, and he kicked for the surface again, coughing and sputtering, drawing in lungfuls of air, and trying to orient himself.

The splashing nearby was frantic. He saw enough to understand.

It was the girl. She’d abandoned the life jacket to help Quinn. She was clinging with both arms to Safady’s neck. Riding him.

That’s what he’d felt on his back. Her foot.

She’d managed enough of a choke hold on Safady with her arms that he’d been forced to release Quinn. Now Safady was spinning and churning in the water, trying to shake the girl loose. But he had no leverage.

Quinn took in more gasping lungfuls of air and kicked, keeping his head out of the water. He reached down, unbuckled his belt, and pulled it loose. Then he moved toward Safady and the girl. Quinn slipped one end of the belt back through the buckle. It gave him a noose, and when Safady spun around again, Quinn dropped it down over Safady’s head.

“Let go!” he told the girl. “I’ve got him.”

She didn’t listen.

He tried it in Arabic, and she released her grip, reaching for the nearby life jacket.

Now Quinn was able to brace against Safady’s body. He pulled the belt tight against the man’s neck with one hand and pushed off Safady’s body with the other.

Quinn was filled with enough hate and rage to want to decapitate Safady, and the man’s choked groans of agony fueled Quinn’s efforts.

Safady’s kicking became weak flutters, and still Quinn pulled at the noose.

He became aware that the little girl was crying. “No, no, no,” she pleaded.

Her cries alone might not have stopped Quinn, but in that moment of awareness, the night lit up above him. He realized the roar of anger in his ears was more than that.

The chopper. A spotlight settled on them. Quinn saw that a cable with a hook on the end was swinging back and forth as the pilot began to lower it.

Quinn looked back. The girl with her life jacket was in easy reach. He grabbed her and pulled her in. She let go of the life jacket, and Safady grabbed it. Quinn pushed him away.

The end of the cable splashed into the water beside them.

Quinn checked to see if Safady was going to attack again. The man was swimming backward slowly with the life jacket and its flashing beacon. The spotlight showed a jeer on his face. It was a jeer of triumph. A man believing that he would be impossible to find in the darkness of the water once the chopper lifted Quinn and the girl to safety.

Quinn should have felt satisfaction, knowing Safady would die to a bomb. In the same way that Safady had destroyed so many others.

But unless Quinn managed to grab the cable, he and the pilot and the girl would die with Safady when the bomb detonated.

How much time remained?

Temple Mount, Jerusalem • 21:57 GMT


In the thirty seconds after he’d learned that the man who’d saved the shrine from destruction was Jonathan Silver, Hamer had turned the entire focus of everyone around him to saving the man.

Now he was focused on Esther. And the red heifer.

Esther had asked for white strips of cloth and a few bottles of water at the paramedics’ station. She was using the cloth and water to wipe Jonathan Silver’s blood off the heifer’s hide. It didn’t seem right for an innocent creature to carry a man’s blood.

“You’ve got a dangerous animal there,” Hamer said.

“Please listen,” Esther said. “There’s still a girl missing up on the Temple Mount. If you’re not going to help, at least let me go back.”

“I’ve already sent some men. There are other issues here. We’re going to need you to spend time with IDF. Debriefing.”

“I don’t say a word until I know the girl is safe.”

“Fair enough,” he answered. “I understand your concern. The other issue is this heifer.”

She stopped wiping it.

Hamer noticed. “I’m sorry. As long as it’s alive, it’s going to be a security concern for us. I don’t have to explain why.”

Esther noticed something strange about the top of the heifer’s shoulder, where she had been wiping away some of Silver’s blood. She looked at her cloth again. There were two shades of red. One was blood dark. Another shade held more copper.

“I think the children at my orphanage are going to grow very fond of this beautiful animal,” she said. “I would be grateful if you helped arrange transportation for me and the animal back into Gaza when your debriefing is finished.”

“Maybe you don’t understand,” Hamer said. “The heifer is a liability. We’re going to have to destroy it.”

“No, you don’t understand.” Esther poured water on the heifer’s shoulder. She used a fresh white cloth to rub again, then held the cloth up for Hamer to see more copper color. “Look at that small patch of white hair. It’s red everywhere else. Except for the patch. It was covered with dye.”

Hamer touched the area on the shoulder of the heifer. It was only the size of a dime, but without doubt, it was white. “You’re telling me this heifer is a fraud.”

“Yes.” Esther smiled. God had sent the heifer to save Jonathan Silver. Just as God had used Jonathan Silver to save the heifer. “The animal is blemished.”

Over the Mediterranean • 21:57 GMT


Quinn’s first few attempts to grab the cable failed.

It was wet. His hands were wet. And the girl clinging to his chest made it seem like Quinn was swimming in mud.

Finally, his fingers clawed enough of a grip to swing it toward him. But there was no way he had enough strength to hold the wet cable with one hand as the chopper pulled upward.

He was able to pull hard enough, however, to get a few feet of cable dangling below him in the water.

“Hold the cable,” he shouted at the girl in Arabic.

She was afraid and clung harder to him. She didn’t know the urgency.

How much time before the bomb detonated?

“Hold the cable!” he shouted again in Arabic. He needed both hands.

Quinn saw her eyes—wild, terrified. He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. That relaxed her, and she reached gingerly for the cable.

“Both hands!” he shouted. The chopper’s noise added to the difficulty here.

Once she had a secure enough grip, he dropped his left arm away from her, reaching down into the water and fishing for the free end of the cable. He found the hook at the end and brought it back to the surface, making sure his left thigh was in the loop. He slid the hook around the cable in front of his chest. Immediately the loop tightened as his body weight pulled down on it.

It didn’t matter. Now he could hold the cable in front of him with both hands, his arms around the girl, the cable secure around his thigh.

He gave a thumbs-up, trusting that the pilot could see it in the spotlight.

With a jerk, the chopper pulled Quinn from the water. With his entire weight on the cable, the pain on the bottom of his thigh was searing.

But they were in the air, moving.

The chopper gained forward speed, and the cable lost its vertical angle; Quinn and the girl trailed the helicopter as if they were a kite’s tail. Fierce wind whipped at Quinn, and he closed his eyes.

His world was reduced to black, to the roar of the chopper, and to prayer and hope that they would clear the area far enough ahead of the detonation.

One minute? Two? How much longer?

It seemed like an eternity before an unnatural brightness snapped through the darkness of his shut eyes. Seconds later came the horrible thunder far louder than any chopper engine. And then the tremendous buffeting of a surge of air that seemed to tug, then throw the chopper.

Then Quinn realized that they were still safe, that the chopper was still flying, that the girl was still huddled against his chest.

Despite the pain of the cable cutting into his inner thigh, Quinn closed his eyes with a sense of peace. It had been a long, long time since he’d felt trusting little arms around his neck like this.

Epilogue

The catamaran was roped to the end of a wharf. It was a Hobie 16, the double hulls connected by framework and the taut nylon fabric that served as a deck. The sails were still furled. An elderly man began to untie the mooring ropes. He was wearing only shorts, his skin tanned, his build powerful despite his age.

The man glanced up at a tourist couple walking down the wharf toward him. His face registered no apparent alarm. The couple approached. A younger man in khaki pants and a white T-shirt. The woman, attractive in a summer dress, a little younger.

The couple stopped when they reached the tanned older man.

“Rossett,” Quinn said.

“You found me,” Rossett said, still squatting at the ropes.

“Mossad, IDF, and CIA did the work,” Quinn said. “They had a lot of motivation. The money trail that led to Safady kept going. All the way to Jamaica. Brad Silver’s cell phone had a call to a number that led to you. After you were supposed to be dead. His old man was tough enough to live through a half dozen bullets in the back.”

“I heard Silver’s had a conversion of sorts,” Rossett said. “Started a big campaign to help the children of Palestine. I’m just as surprised he sent you my way.”

“He told us how Safady explained a mystery CIA contact helped set up a double cross on the IDF Temple Mount op. After a month of digging around, turns out the mystery is over.”

Rossett stood. A slight breeze ruffled his hair. “Who’d guess Safady would be a leak? He had a good thing going.”

“You mean because you passed along everything I learned in five years of hunting him?”

“It let me know where he was all the time,” Rossett said. “He was a good weapon, too. You’d identify someone close to him, and to protect himself, he’d make sure they died one way or another. Over the last year, the Freedom Crusaders took care of it.”

“Safady paid you to tip him. Brad Silver did too.”

“Think I did it for the money?”

“I wish I could believe you liked seeing Safady’s circle get smaller,” Quinn said. “To protect the free world and all.”

“You were a bird dog, pointing them out one by one. Didn’t hear you complain when your dirty work was done by others. Gave you the moral high ground. You know, as you protected the free world and all.”

Quinn had no answer to that.

Rossett looked at the woman in the summer dress as he spoke to Quinn. “You brought a date?”

“Kate Penner,” Quinn said. “She’s got extradition papers to take you back to the States. Your retirement options have narrowed.”

She didn’t reach across to shake hands. Just nodded. She stood slightly behind Quinn and kept listening. Behind her, the sharp rise of the Jamaican hills was a lush backdrop of green, framed by the incredible blue of a Caribbean sky.

“Didn’t expect retirement to last long.”

Rossett turned his back on Quinn. “Extradition. Right. Who else is on the island?”

“The Mossad,” Quinn said. “And IDF. Neither trusts the other right now to get any job done.”

Over his shoulder, Rossett glanced at Kate. “You’re naive or an optimist if you believe I’ll make it to the airport alive.”

“I’m good,” she said. “The best choice you have right now.”

Rossett faced Quinn. “You have any idea how deep this goes?”

“Zvi Cohen left a few more tracks than you did,” Quinn answered. “Not many tracks. But enough. Apparently he didn’t expect to be one of the casualties.”

“Apparently not. I got the same impression during my last conversation with him.”

“That would be in the last few seconds before his car blew up.”

Rossett nodded. “Almost as hard to hide cell phone records as a money trail, isn’t it?”

“Why did you do it?” Quinn asked.

“Cohen double-crossed me. And he put you on the block.”

“No,” Quinn said. “All of it. Why? Even now, I believe you have a code of honor. I believe you want to protect the free world and all. I’d like to keep believing that.”

“You mean after I’m gone,” Rossett said.

Quinn let that one hang for a second. “Why?” he asked again.

Rossett squatted and began to untie the ropes, making it look like it was going to be just another day on the waters. “It started at a seafood restaurant. Great place. You should try it. In Yafo. Look over the water and have a toast in my memory.”

Rossett stood, then dropped the rope in his hand. “I’m there with Cohen. Just the two of us. CIA and Mossad. Friends. At first it was just an idea. A what-if. Between the two of us, we had enough connections to pull together the handful of real players in the world that could take the war against terrorism to the next level. If we gave them a way to do it that kept them protected—cell group structure. We started talking about a plan every time we got together. Until it looked good enough that we got serious. Then Cohen and I set up meetings in a way that protected both sides. We both had great British accents we’d use pulling together the links. Took about a year. After that, all Cohen had to do was sell the Mossad and the prime minister on a reason to go to the Temple Mount.”

“Binary chemicals threat.”

“The Mossad had to buy it.” Rossett looked at the horizon, as if it offered freedom. “Don’t need to tell you much more, do I?”

“You and Cohen used everybody. Even came up with a fake red heifer.”

“Just had to understand their motivations to make them the fall guys,” Rossett said. “Misguided evangelicals. A Muslim extremist.”

“What was
your
motivation?” Quinn asked. “That’s why I called in a favor from Hamer. So I could be here to hear it from you.”

“Same one I sold to generals and politicians and money guys who gave intel and connections and funds to make it happen.”

“They gave you a Davy Crockett, too,” Kate said.

“From U.S. inventory. Easier to steal than you think. World’s worried about a nuclear suitcase, forgetting that America’s got a couple thousand Davy Crocketts in storage, no matter what the government tells you has happened to them.”