67
Bennett was startled by his cell door suddenly opening.
Two men in black hoods entered. Both were armed. One brandished a black metal poker, glowing red-hot at one end.
Bennett’s eyes widened. His heart raced. He prayed again for courage, but all he could think of was Erin, how much he loved her, how much he missed her, and how bravely she had suffered at the hands of Mohammed Jibril and Yuri Gogolov. She had never broken, never lost faith. Could he do the same?
The man with the poker walked straight to him. His colleague, meanwhile, moved behind Bennett, grabbing his head like a vise and holding it steady.
“Why?” the man with the poker asked.
Bennett said nothing.
“You only transferred $25 million. We want to know why.”
Again, Bennett said nothing. If they had the money, they had the note Trainor had sent along with it. There was nothing more to add.
The man moved the burning instrument closer and closer to Bennett’s face. “You were told to transfer fifty million, not twenty-five,” he growled. “Why did you break the deal?”
Was this the voice he’d been speaking with on the phone? Bennett wondered. He honestly couldn’t tell. And what if it was? What would it matter?
“The instructions were very clear, Mr. Bennett. Fifty million, or you’d get nothing. Save the world, or suffer the consequences. You didn’t keep the deal. Now your wife is dead. Your mother is dead. And you’re next.”
Bennett fought for control. It wasn’t just fear or grief he was battling anymore. It was rage. Still, he refused to let it master him. He refused to succumb to hate. Love your enemy. Love your enemy. He wasn’t sure how. He simply kept saying the words of Jesus again and again. He couldn’t afford to unleash. Not here. Not now. It wasn’t going to change his fate, and any moment he was going to be in the arms of Jesus anyway. And then, before he knew it, he would get to see Erin. He didn’t want them to be ashamed of him. So much of his life had been wasted. So much of what he had thought was important for so long in his life was going to burn away at the great judgment. It had all been worthless. It had all been for naught. But not this moment, Bennett decided. If this was the end — if this was his tEST — he wanted it to count. He wanted to make them proud.
The unmarked Black Hawk flew low and fast over the Pacific.
The pilots maintained strict radio silence. The special forces operators checked and rechecked their weapons. They had no idea what the U.S. was about to do. All they knew was that their orders had come directly from the prime minister himself and time was of the essence.
Their commander, Arik Gilad, a twenty-four-year-old Israeli from a kibbutz not far from Kiryat Shmona, near the Lebanon border, handed out 8 ½-by-11-inch printouts of Jon Bennett’s photo. Each man on his team studied the photo carefully, then went back to studying the layout of the prison complex at Yodok.
There had been no time to practice this extraction. They had no backup. No one would be coming to get them if they were captured, or their bodies if they were killed. They put their chances of success at less than three in ten, but Doron had called them personally. He had spoken to them by secure phone in their makeshift training facility in the southern forests of Japan. He had told them how important this was to him and to the nation of Israel. Bennett had found the Ark. He’d found the Temple treasures. He’d stood with the Jewish state when few others had in the days leading up to the War of Gog and Magog. Bennett was, Doron told them, a “righteous Gentile,” and he needed their help.
None of the men questioned the order. They all knew who Jon Bennett was. Love him or hate him, they knew his life was now in their hands. What they didn’t know was that theirs were in his as well.
“Six minutes,” their commander said in Hebrew.
The men checked their watches. They saw the water skimming no more than fifty feet below them. A moment later, they saw the beach and then the forbidding mountains of South Hamgyong rising up before them. This was it. There was no turning back now.
“You will talk, Mr. Bennett. I guarantee it.”
The poker was now aimed directly at Bennett’s right eye. The heat was unbearable. Bennett shut his eyes, but the second man jabbed something sharp in his back. He demanded Bennett open his eyes again but Bennett refused. He waited for the searing, burning metal to touch his flesh. But something unexpected happened.
Someone yelled, “Stop!”
Bennett froze. Then he heard the shuffling of feet. He could feel the air in front of his face begin to cool slightly. The iron poker was gone, and he cautiously opened his eyes to find both of his tormentors standing beside him, one to the left, the other to the right. But they were no longer focused on him. They were focused on a figure on the other side of the room, near the doorway, standing in the shadows. It was Indira Rajiv.
“What are you doing?” Rajiv yelled at the men.
Bennett couldn’t believe it was really her, yet in the power play that was unfolding, he didn’t dare speak.
“We want our money,” said the one on the left. “All of it.”
“You’ll get what I pay you.”
“You promised to get fifty.”
“No,” Rajiv said. “I promised to try.”
“Then try harder,” the one on the right said.
Rajiv looked at one, then the other, then stared at Bennett. He barely recognized her. Her long, black Indian hair had been cut short and was riddled with gray. Her once smooth, dark skin now seemed pale and weathered. Her fashionable suits had been replaced with jeans and a simple black T-shirt. If it weren’t for her eyes, he might not be sure it was really her, though they blazed with an anger he’d never seen before. It dawned on him that she was the voice who had called him, and now his anger burned too.
“You asked him to cooperate?” she asked.
“Of course,” one of the men said.
“And he refused?”
“That’s right.”
“Fine. Maybe this will help.”
Rajiv suddenly pulled out a sidearm and aimed it at Bennett’s head.
“Last chance, Jonathan,” she said without emotion. “Help these men get their money, or die. Make your choice. I’ll count to three.”
He realized it was Rajiv who had ordered him and Erin to go to Bangkok. It was Rajiv he had refused.
“One…”
Which meant it was Rajiv who had ordered these men to kidnap him, and it was Rajiv who had ordered Erin killed.
“Two…”
Bennett clenched his fists. There was no way he was going to speak to this woman. She had betrayed her country, set the world on fire, and robbed him of the only woman he had ever loved. He felt his eyes blaze.
“Fine, Jonathan,” Rajiv said at last. “Have it your way.”
And then he heard, “Three.”
She pulled the trigger, and the explosion echoed through the prison complex. Then she pulled it again, and everything went black.
68
“It’s time, Mr. President.”
Lee James looked up from the latest draft of his upcoming address and found General Stephens standing beside him, a leather binder in his hands.
“Are those the orders?” he asked the general.
“They are, Mr. President. Are you ready?”
James nodded. “We don’t have another option,” he said, taking the binder and setting it on the desk. “And it’s not really a preemptive strike. They brought the war to us. We have to respond.”
“I believe you are right, Mr. President,” the general replied, handing him a fountain pen.
“Doesn’t make it any easier, though,” James admitted, signing the papers.
“No, sir, I imagine it doesn’t.”
And the deed was done.