God's Lions - The Dark Ruin (59 page)

“Is everyone ready?” he asked, nodding to the executive officer. Because it took two keys to fire a nuclear missile, Moss was now dependent on his second-in-command to help him carry out their mission.

“Yes, sir,” the exec said, producing a key that was hanging from a chain around his neck.

Without hesitating, Moss pulled his own key out from beneath his shirt. Taking deep breaths, the two men lifted separate, flip-up plastic covers and inserted their keys into matching red keyholes located six feet apart.

The sweat was beginning to stain the captain’s shirt. “Targeting ... do we still have acquisition?”

“Aye aye, sir. Signal strength is strong.”

“Turning keys!”

A deck officer repeated the command. “Aye, aye, sir ... turning keys!”

“Fire missiles numbers one, two, three, and four!” Moss shouted.

“Aye, missiles one, two, three, and four away, sir!”

All through the hull, the men could feel the shudder as each missile left its tube and shot to the surface, launching into the air before igniting and streaking skyward toward its target. As soon as they were all away, Moss turned away from his console and looked at his crew. Whatever resulted from their actions, he only hoped that history would judge him and his crew kindly.

As soon as Nava landed the little blue chopper at the base of the hill beneath the ruins of Lev’s old castle, her passengers were out the door and running for the woods. Even though they had pulled off the impossible, they all knew they had just kicked a hornet’s nest, and the hornets were already beginning to spread out across the land under the command of a new female commander who had just been dispatched to the area.

Circling high above the field inside a large command aircraft, Samantha Jennings blew a wisp of dyed red hair from her forehead and stared at a multi-colored display on her computer screen. Like some queen bee watching her hive at work, she studied the electronic situation map as reinforcements poured into the area, filling the roads below her with soldiers in armored vehicles while drones and helicopters crisscrossed the area in search of the prisoners who had just escaped in a tiny blue helicopter.

A fanatical devotee of Acerbi’s new world order, Jennings had risen through the ranks of the officer corps after catching her leader’s eye with a no-nonsense and sometimes brutal approach to her job. Not once had she failed at any task they had given her, and now, thanks to an incompetent commander on the ground, Adrian Acerbi’s forces had just suffered an embarrassing defeat in an unimaginable turn of events.

It was a black mark she knew her boss could not afford to let stand, and under her helmet she bit her lip as she maneuvered her forces from the cat bird’s seat of a large jet aircraft packed with electronic surveillance equipment designed to give her and her crew instant live pictures of events unfolding on the ground and in the airspace around them. Her rising star within Acerbi’s growing army depended on the total destruction of those who had just outsmarted her master’s forces in the field below, and she was going to make sure the outcome pleased him. In short, Commander Samantha Jennings had blood in her eyes.

Twenty miles away, inside the ruins of Lev’s castle, Alon and Gael were briefing their men on the coming battle. If everything had worked according to plan, Acerbi’s forces would have assumed that the attack on the field had come from the north, and they would be showing up any minute now. Looking through his binoculars, Alon could see a column of armored vehicles headed in their direction over a road that led through endless vineyards full of workers picking grapes. There was no doubt that Acerbi’s men had tracked the flight path of the helicopter to the ruins, and just to make sure, Nava had purposely left the little blue chopper parked out in the open so their pursuers would have no trouble locating them.

“What do you think, Moshe?” Alon said, hunkering down behind a three-foot thick wall.

“It’s going to be close. I mean, we’re inviting them to hit us with everything they have. They know we have remotely-controlled mines and stinger missiles that can shoot their choppers out of the sky, so we’ll be hit by smart bombs from high altitude jet fighters, which means that we’ll probably never even hear the attack coming. I imagine they’ll also use a few bunker-busting bombs to destroy the network of tunnels below us, so you’ll be seeing a real fireworks display in the next few minutes.”

Crawling up behind them, Lev and Leo looked out over the valley below. “Some of Gael’s men are in position to make a few diversionary raids against some of Acerbi’s outposts to the north of here. It’s the best we could do, but I’m concerned that it won’t be enough to drain all of the assets he’s pouring into this valley. We weren’t counting on the fact that their response to this situation would be so out of proportion.”

Alon adjusted his binoculars and stared into the distance. “It looks like they’re sending in an entire division. They must not have anything better to do and all the manpower in the world to do it with.”

Scanning an empty-looking sky, Leo felt a tap on his shoulder. “Here’s your new clothes, Cardinal,” John said, handing Leo a bundle of loose-fitting clothing. “Better change now. I think it’s time we got out of here.”

Ten minutes later, bombs started raining down on the old castle, and when the evening breeze that swept down from the mountains began to clear the smoke, the hill the castle had once occupied and the land surrounding it all the way to the river resembled the powdery cratered surface of the moon.

Surveying the damage from above, Samantha Jennings gave the burly male officer at her side a high five as she radioed the captain in charge of a column of armored vehicles on the road leading to the site. “You can move in now, captain. Can you see anything from your position?”

“Nothing could have survived that, Commander ... even if they were underground.”

“Any sign of their people trying to escape across the river?”

“No ma’am. Just some terrified-looking workers in the fields nearby.”

“OK, tell your men not to approach them. We don’t want the general populace to think we’re here to harm them.” Jennings threw her head back in laughter. “I don’t want to be responsible for alienating some of the best wine makers in the world. I have dinner plans in Paris next week. Send in your search teams and try to identify the ...

Before she could finish her sentence, a red light began flashing on her console. “Hold on a minute, Captain. I’ve got flash traffic from Mr. Acerbi.”

Keying her microphone, the commander tried to conceal the excitement in her voice as she answered the call in her most professional monotone. “Good afternoon, sir. I’ve got good news for you.”

Seated along a row of consoles surrounding her, the other officers watched her expression change as her eyes widened and her face became flushed.

“Yes, sir. Right away, sir!” Leaning back in her seat, Jennings sat frozen as she stared blankly at the red flashing light on the console before it blinked off. “Wow!”

Seated next to her, the burly officer pushed his headset away from his ears and leaned in close. “What is it, Commander? What did Mr. Acerbi just say to you?”

“Tell the pilots up front to turn this bird around and head for a refueling tanker.”

“But we’re still in the middle of an operation, Commander.”

“Not anymore. We’ve just been handed a real mission.” Jennings’ eyes glistened. “We’re at war!”

“War!” The other officers began jabbering all at once. “What happened to being one big happy family under Daddy Acerbi?” one of them asked.

The commander’s brown eyes flashed. “Don’t ever let me hear you refer to him like that again! Do you understand?”

The others shrank from her gaze as she slowly regained her composure. “Apparently not everyone is thrilled with the idea of a one world government. Someone just nuked three of our quantum computers and tried to take out Mr. Acerbi himself, but luckily he had just left his villa by the Caspian Sea. It looks like the attacks came from an unknown sub in the Med, and Mr. Acerbi has decided to invade any country that hasn’t signed on voluntarily.”

“That’s a few big ones,” the officer said. “Do we have enough forces?”

“We do now. The United States and Britain just signed on and joined the world union. That leaves Israel as the strongest holdout.”

“So we’re headed toward the Middle East?”

“Bingo, my friend. All of our European forces are being mobilized to mount an invasion. Recall the forces on the ground in this area and leave two garrisons in place to keep a lid on the rebels in this area until we return in force. Right now we have a war to fight, and it’s going to be a short one.”

* *

Disguised as field workers in the fields below, Leo and the others watched as the armored vehicles and circling aircraft quickly departed the area. Keeping their heads down, they used hoes to turn the earth between undulating rows of grapes that spread across the hillsides into the next valley where more of their people had blended in with the local workforce.

Moving up next to Leo, Lev leaned on his hoe and watched as the roads emptied of soldiers and the steady beat of helicopters faded off into the distance. “What happened?”

“I have no idea,” Leo said, wiping his brow in the midday heat. “Whatever it is, it’s more important to them than we are right now. I think this would be an excellent time to gather up our people and make our way back through the forest to the castle.”

On the outskirts of Tel Aviv, in a bunker below the Mossad’s training school, Danny Zamir was surrounded by thick concrete walls inside an oval-shaped conference room. Sitting next to him were some of Israel’s top government officials, including the Prime Minister, the Defense Minister, the IDF Chief of Staff, the head of military intelligence, and a representative from Shin Bet, the name given to Israel’s security service.

“When do you think the attack will come?” the Prime Minister asked.

“We estimate the first wave will be hitting us in two hours,” the Defense Minister mumbled in Hebrew as he absently-minded ran his fingers over the smooth wood surface of the table.

“Wave?” the Prime Minister shot back. “What do you mean ...
wave
? Are we talking about an invasion from the sea?”

“He means the first rockets, Prime Minister,” Zamir shot back.

“But we have the new anti-missile systems ... don’t we?”

“Yes, sir, but they’re useless without computer guidance obtained from GPS satellites.”

“What about our allies?”

“The United States and Great Britain just capitulated in the face of an overwhelming threat to their infrastructures,” Zamir replied. “We’re all alone, and I mean totally alone.”

“So that’s it ... we just stand by our borders and wait for the screaming hordes to surround us?”

Zamir waited for someone else to speak before answering. “According to the rules set out by the new world order, there are no more borders.”

“That’s insane! We’re surrounded by enemies, and as soon as we let down our borders they’ll be rushing in to have their revenge against us just because we exist.”

“Apparently, Acerbi is sending in his European forces to secure the area after the attack begins. He’s put the rest of the Middle East on notice that he doesn’t play favorites, and that any aggression by one former tribe against another tribe will be met with instant and decisive military action against the aggressor.”

“
Tribes
?”

“His term, not mine, Prime Minister,” Zamir said. “That’s the term he uses to describe former countries. To him the world is just one big country inhabited by groups of warring tribes, which actually makes sense if you think about it, except that now with no borders we’re all at the mercy of one Gestapo-like force that’s growing from the former armies of the world in an effort to keep order.”

Everyone’s head turned at the mention of the word
Gestapo
.

For a moment, the Prime Minister sat at his place in the center of the table, mulling over all the various possibilities and scenarios. “So what you’re all saying is that we don’t have a chance in hell of coming out of this and surviving as a nation.”

No one wanted to be the one to verbalize the obvious as they all stared at one another or looked down at the table. The game was up, and every man in the room knew it.

“Anyone?” he asked, waiting for someone to speak. But they all remained silent, each man lost in his own thoughts of home and family as they slowly began to realize that history had never been on their side. Finally, the Prime Minister stood and looked around the room. “OK, I’ll make the call. We’ll surrender to Acerbi’s forces in return for his protection from our enemies.”

Slowly, as if delaying for another minute would somehow change things, the Prime Minister reached for a red phone at his side just as the earth began to rumble all around them.

“Better dial quickly,” Zamir said, gripping the arms of his chair. “I think the first wave is early.” As soon as the rumbling stopped, Zamir sprang for the door and bounded up the concrete stairs as fast as his heavy frame would allow. Pushing the thick steel door open, he stood in the brilliant sunlight and looked to the north, where he could see columns of thick black smoke rising in the distance over Tel Aviv.

Sirens screamed past him and his breathing was heavy as he walked between groups of running soldiers to his waiting helicopter. Catching Gabriella’s attention in the pilot’s seat, he twirled a hand in the air. “Fire it up,” he said, climbing into the back seat. “Head for Team 5’s secret base in the Negev.”

“You got it, sir! Better buckle your seatbelt. There are fighter jets coming in from the east, and I’ll bet there’s a J-star surveillance bird circling overhead.” As the turbines whined to life over their heads, Gabriella turned and glanced into the back seat with a look of determination on her face. “Don’t worry, Boss. I doubt they’ll be too worried about a single Blackhawk helicopter ... and I’ll be hugging the ground!”

Thirty minutes later, the Blackhawk settled to the desert floor in a cloud of blowing dust as Zamir’s son Ben stood in the doorway of a cinder-block building and covered his face against the swirling grit.