Najjar’s latest messages contained a link and the comment “Mustafa is evil, but make no mistake — the Mahdi is behind this savagery. But God will not be mocked. Judgment on Iran and Syria is coming.”
Intrigued, David clicked on the link as he rounded a corner and headed up Abu Bakr Street. The page that loaded was from the website of the Daily Star, a Beirut-based newspaper. The headline read, “Syrian Girl Found Mutilated.”
The horrifying story began: “A young woman was found beheaded and mutilated, and the crimes were reportedly committed by Syrian security agents. According to reports, the eighteen-year-old woman’s brother was arrested and killed earlier this month. When their mother was brought by security forces to pick up his body, which showed bruises, burns, and gunshots, she found her daughter’s body as well. The family said the girl had been decapitated, her arms cut off, and skin removed. After the burial last weekend, women held a protest…”
David stopped reading.
God will not be mocked. Judgment on Iran and Syria is coming.
David could only hope Najjar was right. Syrian president Gamal Mustafa was arguably the most bloodthirsty tyrant in the Middle East, and that was saying something. David wasn’t entirely sure how close Mustafa and the Mahdi were. It was odd that the Syrians weren’t yet engaged in the war with Israel, but he had little doubt they would be soon. These dictators needed to be toppled. Their people needed to be liberated. But it was going to take an act of God, David realized. For clearly the U.S. government was no longer in the business of regime change.
David’s phone rang. His pulse quickened. Perhaps it was Birjandi or Rashidi. But then, to his surprise, he found himself wishing most that it was Marseille. And yet how could it be? She didn’t know this number, and he knew Langley wouldn’t let an unauthorized call from the States come through to his phone anyway. Unless, perhaps, it was his dad.
David read the caller ID. His heart sank. It wasn’t any of his contacts calling him back with a new lead, or Marseille or his father. It was Zalinsky at Langley. He took a break from his run to catch his breath and answer the call.
“Hey.”
“Hey — are we secure?” his handler asked.
“Absolutely. What have you got?” David wondered if his voice betrayed the level of anxiety he now felt.
“We’ve intercepted a call from the Iranian high command,” Zalinsky began. “It’s not good.”
“What?” David pressed. “What is it?”
Zalinsky paused. He seemed to be steeling himself for the conversation to come. David scanned the street around him. There were few people out and no one who looked suspicious. He looked behind him but saw no one following. Taking a deep breath, he braced himself for whatever was coming next.
“The Israelis missed two of the warheads,” Zalinsky said finally. “They seem to have gotten the rest, but they’ve missed two. How, I don’t know. But they’re out there somewhere, and we don’t know where. And that’s why I’m calling. The president is directing you to find both warheads fast and help us take them out before it’s too late.”
8
“We have a missile launch,” shouted the IDF watch commander. “Missile in the air — no, make that two Shahab-3s — just launched out of Tabriz.”
Five stories beneath the heavily fortified Israel Defense Forces headquarters in Tel Aviv, in a high-tech war room whose walls were lined with large-screen plasma computer screens and TV monitors, Defense Minister Levi Shimon looked up from a sheaf of briefing papers and scanned for the correct images. When he found them — stunning satellite images from the Ofek-9 spy satellite in geosynchronous orbit six hundred kilometers over northern Iran — his stomach tightened.
“Estimated targets?” he demanded.
“Looks like Haifa and Jerusalem, sir, but we’ll know more in a minute.”
Levi Shimon didn’t have a minute.
His country was being pummeled. Hundreds of Hezbollah rockets were being fired out of south Lebanon every hour. Dozens more rockets were being fired by Hamas out of Gaza. Israel’s missile defense systems were cutting down 75 to 80 percent of the incoming, but the sheer volume of rockets made it impossible to stop them all. Most of the inbounds had no targeting systems. But some of the more advanced rockets did. The problem was, the IDF commanders had no way to determine which were which.
Schools were being hit. Apartment buildings and hospitals were being hit as well. Synagogues and shopping centers were being decimated, along with power stations and cell towers. Millions of Israelis had been forced into bomb shelters. All flights into and out of Ben Gurion International Airport had been canceled. Nearly a third of the country was suffering blackouts. No lights. No heat. No TV. No computers. No power whatsoever. More than three-quarters of the country had no mobile phone coverage. Worse, the death toll was spiraling. Over the past three days, nearly five hundred Israeli citizens had been killed. The casualties of the past twenty-four hours had been the worst — triple the rate of days one and two of the war. The number of injured was ten times that. Israeli hospitals were at their breaking point, and there was no end in sight.
But the rockets were the least of Shimon’s worries. They were deadly but not decisive. What Shimon feared most were the advanced ballistic missiles that Iran and Syria possessed, the kinds with highly sophisticated guidance systems and warheads that would be horrifying enough with conventional payloads but could be apocalyptic if they were NBC — nuclear, biological, or chemical. Damascus, oddly, had fired only three missiles so far — and conventional ones at that — in the first hour of the fight on Thursday. After the IDF’s Arrow system had shot all of them down, Syrian missiles had suddenly and inexplicably stopped coming. Iran, however, was firing five or six of their most advanced Shahab-3 missiles every hour. By the grace of God, the IDF was taking out almost all of these, but those that did penetrate Israel’s state-of-the-art missile defense systems were devastating. Fortunately none of them — so far — carried unconventional warheads. None of them were weapons of mass destruction. But they were still causing the most damage, Shimon knew, and wasn’t it only a matter of time until one of them created an extinction-level event?
David hung up the phone with Zalinsky and started walking again, his mind reeling. How could the Israelis have missed two of the warheads? Where were they now? And how in the world was he supposed to track down either of them, much less both? He had no leads and couldn’t get a single one of his contacts to even take his call.
He had hoped for a longer run, but it was time to get back, brief his men, and come up with a plan. Maybe they’d have an idea. He hoped so because at the moment, he had no idea where to start.
As best he could tell, he was about three miles from the safe house. He began jogging back, taking a right down a side street. He spotted a little corner market a few blocks up and decided to sprint. When he reached the bodega, he slowed his pace, then entered the shop and bought a bottle of water and a banana. He wolfed down the fruit and discarded the peel before leaving the store, then chugged half the bottle of water. He pulled out his satellite phone and once again dialed Dr. Birjandi.