“I never knew you had to.”
“Would you like to?”
“Right here? Right now?”
“Before it’s too late, my friend.”
It was almost too late. They were only a few minutes away from the intercept. But to David’s surprise, Torres said yes. He did want to receive Christ, but he didn’t know how.
“I appreciate you saying something to me,” Torres added. “No one has ever made it quite so clear to me.”
“It’s my honor,” David said. “How about if I pray and you follow my lead? It’s not so much about the precise wording as it is about whether you really mean it. But if you do, I’d love to help you accept Christ right now.”
“I would,” said Torres. “Let’s do it.”
“Great — now usually I pray with my eyes shut and on my knees, but under the circumstances I’d say let’s keep our eyes open,” David quipped.
Torres smiled and nodded.
“Okay, then,” David said. “I’ll lead you in a prayer similar to the one I prayed. Let’s go. ‘Dear Father in heaven, please have mercy on me. I am the worst of sinners. I have been resisting you for so long, yet you have not given up on me. Thank you. Please forgive me for the wrong things I have done. I know that the Bible is your Word. I know it alone contains the true words of life. And I know that Jesus Christ is your Son and the only true Messiah. I believe Jesus Christ died on the cross for me. I believe he rose for me. I want to know that I’m going to heaven when I die. I want to know that all my sins are forgiven. Lord Jesus, I love you, and I need you. I promise to follow you forever, so long as you will help me and lead me all the way. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for forgiving my sins and adopting me into your family. Give me the courage to follow you no matter where you lead me and no matter what the cost. I pray in the name of my new Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.”
To David’s great amazement but great joy, Torres prayed right along with him, line by line, phrase by phrase. And Torres didn’t just recite the lines; he prayed with passion, with a deep sense of conviction and hunger for God that both stunned and electrified David. And just in time, too, since Zalinsky was calling on the satphone. The convoy with the warhead was only three kilometers ahead of them.
45
Mossad chief Zvi Dayan began the hastily convened meeting of the War Cabinet via secure video teleconference. He explained the strange phone call to the line that had been set up expressly for Mordecai’s use and the impossibility of someone penetrating the Mossad’s multiple layers of security without, in his view, direct help from Mordecai himself.
“The three key questions in my mind,” Dayan said, “are: One, did Mordecai provide the information to this mystery caller willfully or under duress? Two, is the information that we received regarding the two warheads accurate or not? And three, if the intel is legitimate, what do we do about it?”
The prime minister listened carefully to the brief. “Forget the first question,” he said. “At this point, it’s irrelevant. Zvi, you’re the chief of Israeli intelligence. What’s the answer to the second question? Is there a warhead at Al-Mazzah and one at Dayr az-Zawr, or are we being set up?”
Dayan shook his head. “I really cannot say, Mr. Prime Minister. Events are moving too rapidly. All my primary assets are focused on Iran, not Syria. But are there strange tidbits here and there that suggest something is going on in Syria? Yes. Are there reports of Iranian Revolutionary Guards arriving in Damascus from all points on the globe? Yes. Is it strange that President Mustafa hasn’t already launched a full-scale war with us, and could it be that he’s holding back until some key moment? Yes. Could that mean the Mahdi has chosen to launch the final two Iranian warheads from Syrian territory? It could, but I hate to speculate. I want to give you facts, not opinions. But I simply don’t have enough facts to draw a firm conclusion nor the time to gather those facts.”
Naphtali thanked the Mossad chief and turned to his trusted defense minister to get his assessment.
Levi Shimon took a deep breath and stared at a stack of reports on his desk. After a moment, he looked up and looked straight into the camera, straight into the eyes of the prime minister and his other colleagues on the video teleconference, ranging from the vice prime minister for strategic affairs and the IDF chief of staff to the head of military intelligence and the foreign minister, the head of Israeli internal security, and several others.
“I don’t know the answers to questions one and two,” he conceded. “But at this point, do they really matter? We know Mustafa has made an alliance with Iran and now the Twelfth Imam. We know Mustafa wants to obliterate us. We know Syria has massive stockpiles of chemical weapons. We know they could be minutes away from launching everything they have at us. I say we hit them now, while we still can. We can put as much firepower on the two air bases as you want. But I say it’s time to go and go hard.”
Still barreling up Highway 4, David and Torres now had to slow down significantly as they left a swath of farmland and villages and entered the outskirts of the city of Dayr az-Zawr with its population of about two hundred thousand residents. David played navigator while Torres kept his eyes on the road. Rather than turning north into the city proper and heading toward the Ali Bek Quarter, they bore left, still on Highway 4, through the Maysaloun Quarter.
“The convoy is on Highway 7, approaching the city from the southwest,” Zalinsky said over the speakerphone.
“How far?” Torres asked.
“About half a klick,” Zalinsky said, tracking their every movement via video feeds from two Predators in the heavens above them. “In a moment, they’ll be turning onto Highway 4, heading straight toward you. Now listen, you’ve got to hit them before they make that turn and head for the air base. You need to get to the intersection where Highway 7 and 4 meet before they do,” Zalinsky insisted, the anxiety in his voice palpable. “If they get past that point, you won’t be able to stop them before they enter the base, and believe me, they have seriously ramped up security on that base in the past hour. Tanks, armored personnel carriers, sharpshooters on the roofs. They’ve even got helicopter gunships on the tarmacs warming up.”
“They haven’t put the gunships in the air?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Eva just intercepted a transmission from General Hamdi. He doesn’t want any Syrian jets or choppers in the air, lest it make the Israelis nervous and they decide to launch a first strike. And of course, all civilian aircraft has been grounded since the war began.”
Torres was making the best time he could, but traffic was building. What’s more, he was also afraid of catching the attention of local police. Getting pulled over for speeding — or triggering a high-speed chase — was the last thing they needed. But Zalinsky was furious. Shouting through the satphone, Zalinsky unleashed a withering barrage of obscenities. He ordered them to blow through this city at all costs or miss the convoy, which was just minutes away from its intended destination.
David agreed, and Torres hit the gas again. He wove in and out of traffic, shifting from one lane to another, laying on the horn and flashing his lights as he went. David glanced behind them. Crenshaw was losing ground. He simply couldn’t maneuver the semi through so much traffic, and David saw his plan unraveling before his eyes. He couldn’t see Fox in the van at all because he was bringing up the rear.