“Honey, sweetheart, we have to move,” she shouted. “We have to go now!”
They’d spent most of the last three days in the hotel’s bomb shelter. The war they’d never believed would really happen was happening indeed. The rocket barrage coming from southern Lebanon the first night had been so bad, they’d remained awake for nearly twenty-four hours as they heard one rocket after another hitting the seaside town of Tiberias and felt the ground shaking almost continuously from the impact. Then, to their surprise and relief, there had been a lull for the past several hours. Desperate for some sleep in a real bed, Chris had insisted they go back upstairs to their room on the ninth floor, with its king-size bed and gorgeous panoramic view. The hotel staff had begged them not to do it, but as Lexi was feeling increasingly claustrophobic herself, she had agreed. Now she realized they had both been terribly foolish.
The air-raid sirens were screaming at them to move, and she could hear people racing through the halls and yelling for others to get moving. For the first time she realized she and Chris were not the only ones who had taken advantage of the quiet to try to get a bit of sleep and some fresh air. Lexi grabbed her watch, her Bible, and her purse and dragged Chris from bed. He grabbed his glasses and a bottle of water off the nightstand and followed her out the door. They raced down the darkened hallway, but even before they got to the stairwell, they could hear the explosions, one after another.
And they were getting closer.
Real fear was palpable in the IAF’s battle management center near Tel Aviv, code-named Citron Tree. Too much was happening too fast.
The Israeli Air Force’s premier missile defense command was now tracking inbound rockets and missiles from the north, south, and east, but nothing terrified them more than the possibility of a direct hit on the port city of Haifa and on their country’s nuclear power plant at Dimona. The only system that could stop these particular missiles was the U.S.-funded, Israeli-designed Arrow defense system. But hitting all five missiles simultaneously with 100 percent accuracy and fewer than three minutes to spare was going to push the limits of everything they’d trained for.
The watch commander wiped his brow, knowing there was no margin for error. He and two of his senior deputies were fixated on wall-mounted flat-screen monitors displaying incoming telemetry from all five missiles being tracked by the Green Pine fire-control radar system. High-speed supercomputers updated the precise location and trajectory of the missiles in real time and issued five separate defense plans. The commander scanned the recommendations, approved them, and immediately barked orders that they be followed, locking in the target solutions and setting into motion a sequence of events that would either save or seal the fate of the nation.
Chris and Lexi raced down nine flights of stairs. They were breathless by the time they reached the bomb shelter in the hotel’s basement. But to their horror they found it closed and locked.
Fire-control orders were instantly relayed via secure fiber-optic lines to four different missile batteries. Two were in the north — just south of Haifa — and two were in the south, just north of Beersheva. Within moments, five two-stage hypersonic Arrow missiles exploded out of their casings and streaked into the eastern sky, one after another. Seconds later, a dozen Patriot missiles shot skyward as well, trailing the Arrows to provide a second layer of defense in case any of the first-tier interceptors should fail.
Levi Shimon stared at the monitors on the IDF war room walls. He watched as radar systems tracked the Israeli missiles lifting off and speeding toward their targets. He watched, but he could not breathe. The stakes were too high, the cost of failure simply unimaginable.
Lexi could hear rockets detonating up and down the street above them. There was not another living soul in sight. Breathless and panting, she and Chris pounded on the door, screaming for someone to let them in while she silently pleaded with God for mercy.
They were trapped. They had no place else to go. They couldn’t go outside. They dared not go back upstairs. So they pounded all the harder.
“Quickly, come with me,” Naphtali said, motioning the ambassador to follow him out of the library and down the hall to the prime minister’s secure communications center, not unlike the Situation Room at the White House. “Up there — look — screens one and two.”
The ambassador, flanked by several of the PM’s senior aides, scanned both screens and tried to make sense of what he was seeing. The first monitor showed a digitized computer image of the upward trajectory of the Shahab missiles, lifting off from silos in northwestern Iran and arcing over Syria and Jordan. The second screen showed the downward trajectory of the Shahabs descending toward Haifa and Dimona with terrifying speed, combined with the trajectory of the Arrows and Patriots racing upward to intercept their prey.
“Mr. Ambassador,” Naphtali said, now far more formal than he had been earlier, “let me be crystal clear: if any of those Iranian missiles are carrying nuclear, chemical, or biological warheads, you’ll have the honor of being my guest as I order the Israeli missile force to turn Iran into glass.”
10
Chris kept banging, but Lexi was too exhausted and frightened. She had all but given up hope when the door opened. A hand reached out and grabbed her, pulling her into the shadows with Chris right behind. Someone sat them down in a dark corner of the bomb shelter. It was hot and stuffy inside, and Lexi began to perspire. But she was grateful to the Lord for answering her prayers and grateful, too, that she was not alone. She squeezed her husband’s hand and tried to calm her breathing and not think about the panic surging within her.
Shimon and his commanders watched as the Shahab inbound for Haifa hit its apogee about ninety miles over Damascus. They watched as it began its white-hot descent. They watched as the Arrow sizzled skyward at blinding speed and closed the gap for the kill.
“Thirteen seconds to impact,” said a young military aide to Shimon’s right, a tremor in his voice.
Shimon turned away. He couldn’t look any longer. He’d been present for all the early Arrow tests. Most had gone well. Almost all of the Arrows had hit their targets over the past few days. But now he couldn’t watch.
“Ten seconds.”
He was getting too old for this. And Shimon knew something most of the men in the war room didn’t know. These state-of-the-art antiballistic missiles were far more expensive than the IDF let on. Publicly, it was said the Arrow cost $3 million each. Actually, with all of the R & D costs included, they were coming in at more than $10 million each.
“Eight seconds.”
Even with American assistance, Israel could only afford a limited number. And the Arrows in the air right now, Shimon knew, were the last in their arsenal for the northern command.
“Seven seconds… six… five…”
Prime Minister Naphtali listened to the audio feed from the war room as he and Ambassador Montgomery watched the computer screens. The computers indicated the intercept of the missile inbound for Haifa would happen first, followed in close succession by the intercept of the missiles aiming for Dimona.
“Three… two… one… impact!” said the young aide.
But there was no impact.