“Do you have any good news for me at all, Levi?”
“I wish I did,” Shimon replied. “And actually I regret to inform you that I just learned two more of our fighter jets have been shot down over Iran.”
Naphtali clenched his fists. He couldn’t bear to hear any more heartbreak, but he asked the question anyway. “And the pilots?”
“Both KIA, Mr. Prime Minister.”
“You’re certain?” Naphtali pressed. “Those are both confirmed?”
“I’m afraid so, sir.”
“What were their names?”
“They were brothers, sir. The first was Captain Avi Yaron. He was a squadron leader and highly decorated. His twin brother, Yossi, was a captain as well. Both first-rate pilots. Avi was shot down over Tabriz. We believe he died instantly. There was no indication of an ejection. Yossi’s jet was hit by triple-A fire over Bushehr. He did eject but was captured and executed immediately.”
“Has the family been notified yet?” the PM asked.
“Not yet, sir. I’m just getting the news now.”
“Get me their parents’ phone number,” said Naphtali. “I will make the call myself.”
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”
“And get me some good news, Levi,” the PM added. “Quickly.”
40
General Jazini pulled Esfahani aside. “Have you heard from my son, Omid?”
“No, sir,” Esfahani said. “Why do you ask?”
“I’ve called him twice,” Jazini said. “He’s not answering his mobile phone. Track him down. I must speak to him at once.”
Esfahani agreed and immediately called Commander Asgari, head of the secret police in Tehran, to send agents to Omid’s apartment and make sure everything was all right.
Not long after skirting Baghdad, they passed through Fallujah and Ramadi and then turned northwest on Highway 12, paralleling the Euphrates River, toward the Syrian border.
As the hours passed during the trek across the desert, David’s thoughts turned again and again to two people — his father and Marseille Harper. It was dawning on him now that it was increasingly certain he would never see either of them again — not in this world, at least — and he began seriously considering taking the risk of calling them before he reached Damascus. He desperately wanted to hear their voices one more time. He wanted to tell each of them that he loved them dearly, that he would give anything to be with them and embrace them. He would not hint to either of them the futility of his mission. He didn’t want his last acts to violate his oath to the CIA and the American people. Nor did he want to give them reason to fear. He would need to sound strong. Indeed, he needed to be strong — for them and for himself.
He was most concerned about his father. The man had just lost his first love, his wife of four decades, and must be struggling emotionally and physically. What’s more, David worried about his father’s spiritual future. He didn’t know Christ as his Savior. Though his father was no longer a practicing Muslim, David wasn’t aware that he had ever heard the gospel before. Certainly, even if his father had heard some Christian teaching or had read some of the Bible, the man had never seriously considered whether Jesus was Savior and Lord. Now that David had made his own decision and was certain that Christ had forgiven him and saved him and that he was going to spend eternity in heaven, he was praying again and again for his father.
There was nothing David could do about his mother now. She was gone, and he couldn’t imagine a scenario in which she had received Christ before slipping into eternity. That fact was a bitter pain he would take to his grave. But he himself hadn’t known Christ personally when he had seen his mother last. He hadn’t known the peril she was in, and in the end he had to leave her fate to a sovereign and loving God. He couldn’t take the burden of her eternal destiny upon himself.
But his father was another matter entirely. Now David knew Jesus Christ was the Truth, and the Truth had set him free. He desperately wanted his father to know Christ as well and to receive Christ as his Messiah and King. David knew he had a solemn obligation to do everything he could to share the Good News of Christ’s love with his father, though at the moment he couldn’t see a way to make that happen.
And then there was Marseille. Just the thought of her made him choke up, and he realized in those moments how deeply and utterly he was in love with her. He had loved her as a boy, as a teenager, and now as a man. He would do anything to get back to her and profess his love to her. Honestly, he had no idea whether she shared that love for him. She certainly cared for him, but there were very few clues as to just how much he meant to her. But he wanted so much to tell her what she meant to him. He wanted to tell her how much he missed her. The simple fact was, he wanted to propose to her. He wasn’t sure if he could bear her rejection if he was wildly misreading her heart. But all he wanted now was to look into her eyes, take her by the hands, bend down on one knee, and ask her to spend her life with him. Maybe she would say yes. Maybe not. But he had to ask. He had to know. He had to try.
It was a pipe dream at this point, and he knew it. But somehow the very prospect of seeing her again and asking her to marry him — however slim, however unlikely, however ridiculous — gave him some inexplicable measure of hope to keep going, keep looking for a way to accomplish his mission and get back home against all odds.
From the IRGC’s war room ten stories underneath the largest airport in Iran’s capital city, President Ahmed Darazi was coordinating all aspects of the ongoing military and media war against the Zionists. He was working the phones with presidents and prime ministers around the world, urging them to issue strong statements condemning Israel for “murdering our five beloved daughters of Islam.” He also urged them to back a United Nations Security Council resolution the Chinese had drafted and were circulating that would censure Israel and call for draconian economic sanctions to be imposed upon the Jewish State until they ended the war and agreed to pay reparations not only to the families of the five schoolgirls but to all the people of Iran who had suffered as a result of Israel’s preemptive strike.
It was all theater, Darazi and his inner circle knew. By day’s end, if everything went according to plan, the vast majority of Jews in Israel would be incinerated in a nuclear holocaust. But the U.N. resolution was the Mahdi’s idea to keep the Israelis off balance and build international sympathy for the Islamic cause.
At precisely 9:30 a.m. local time in Tehran, Darazi finished a half-hour conference call with all of Iran’s ambassadors around the world, instructing them to keep up the pressure against the Jews by holding press conferences in every capital showing video of the burned bodies of the five Iranian schoolgirls and calling for boycotts against Israeli goods and services. Then he was given a briefing by Commander Ibrahim Asgari of VEVAK on the status of the Mahdi and Ayatollah Hosseini. With General Mohsen Jazini now operating out of Damascus as the Mahdi’s chief of staff, Darazi had brought the VEVAK commander into the inner circle to help coordinate intelligence and security matters and serve as a direct liaison to Jazini and his men.
“The Ayatollah is almost there,” Asgari began. “We expect him to arrive in the next ten to fifteen minutes.”
“He’s almost at Al-Mazzah?” Darazi clarified, sifting through a binder of the latest classified cable traffic of reports from various IRGC intelligence officers around the world.