Bennett had spent his whole life avoiding any serious thought of death. Now it was catching up to him. In a sense, God had made a large deposit in Bennett's account, hadn't he? Nine-point-six-million dollars, to be exact. He'd been feverishly stashing away cash for years. But what good would it do him if he died tonight in Gaza?
Bennett stared into the darkness. His heart rate was slowing, but his mind wrestled with unsettling thoughts. In a way, God and the afterlife were kind of like gravity, weren't they? It didn't matter if he believed in gravity or not. Gravity was a fact, a simple physical law, a force of nature. A person could stand on the top of the Empire State Building shouting, "/ don't believe in gravity. I can't see it. I can't taste it. I can't touch it. Gravity be damned." And then jump. But what then? Would his lack of belief in gravity cushion his fall? Of course not. He'd smash on the pavement and die.
Gravity couldn't be seen. But that didn't mean it wasn't true. The truth about gravity could be discovered. And wasn't it smarter to discover gravity before it was too late? Maybe the same was true about God. Maybe it was smarter to find Him before jumping blindly into eternity like a fool without a parachute.
Bennett looked at the clock on Ziegler's VCR. The numbers read 4:53, but that didn't compute — a.m. or p.m.? Bennett's eyes struggled to adjust. It was a.m. Had he really slept so long? What day was it? He squeezed his eyes shut, trying desperately to focus. It was Monday — no, it was Tuesday— December 28. His body wasn't rested. The impending sense of danger was so acute it was almost physically painful. He reconciled himself to the fact that he'd just experienced a nightmare — not reality — but somehow it didn't make the anxiety any less real.
Something told him evil was coming. He couldn't see it. He couldn't prove it. But he had no doubt Gaza Station faced a new threat. But what should he do about it? What exactly was he supposed to say to Ziegler and McCoy when he found them — if he found them? He'd had a little nightmare so they should all abandon ship?
It sounded ridiculous. He was a strategist, not a fortune-teller. His job was to trade in facts, not premonitions. Why then did he feel so certain? He often acted on less than complete information. He often went with his gut instincts. It's what kept him ahead of his competitors. It's what got him so far at GSX. He'd trusted his instincts, advised others to put their faith in them, and made a lot of people, including himself, very rich in the process, That's what finding buried treasure was all about.
But this was different. The decisions he made in the next few hours, the decision the United States made, had enormous consequences. He needed to do more than simply find a way to save his own life and the lives of his friends from the evil that was coming. He needed to find a way to get the peace process back on track and to stop the evil already unleashed. But how?
He'd never prayed before. He felt like a hypocrite for even thinking about it. But maybe McCoy was right. Maybe he'd get an answer. Every fiber of his being doubted it. But what could it really hurt?
"God, if You're there, if You really exist, please help me. Get us out of here alive. I'm scared of dying, scared of what's coming. I admit it. But I'm askng You to please protect Erin, wherever she is. And my mom, she's suffered enough already — amen."
Bennett finished his prayer and waited. He'd done it the best he knew how. The room was dark and quiet. He wiped sweat away from his eyes and neck. He wasn't sure if he should expect an answer — a voice, a light, something.
The longer he waited, the more stupid he felt. He had a job to do. He reached over to the desk, picked up the phone, and dialed Orlando again.
He needed to talk with the president. But first he needed to talk with his mom. No luck. The phone kept ringing. No one was answering. He looked at his watch again, then put the phone down. He called his own voice mail again in New York, at home and the office. He again called his voice mail at the White House. He rechecked the front desk at the Willard Intercon tinental Hotel where he was staying in Washington until he found a place to rent. Lots of messages — colleagues worried for him, Marcus Jackson from the Times trying desperately to track him down. But none were from his mom. How long should he wait before worry turned to action? And what then?
The radio receiver crackled to life.
"Shlomo Six to Shlomo One, do you read me? Shlomo Six to Shlomo One, do you read me, over?"
The Hebrew coming into his tiny earpiece was but a whisper. But even amidst the driving rains and rumbling thunder, the voice was still clear and audible. The ferocity of the storm did seem to be lessening somewhat. They'd been able to get the small prop plane up in the air, after all, and their overpaid pilot hadn't been shot down by the Israeli Air Force. Now he and his team were descending rapidly, almost at the strike point.
All systems were go. They were about to actually do what for years they could only dream about. They were witnessing one miracle after another. This was history in the making, and he was in the driver's seat.
"Shlomo Six, this is Shlomo One, I read you loud and clear. Go ahead."
Akiva Ben David glanced at his wrist. With his gloved left hand, he wiped the rain off his goggles, then off his altimeter. They were passing down through three thousand feet, he told his colleague, who quickly passed the information to his fellow commandos in position not far from the Western Wall. As expected, the cross winds were intense, but all six of them were handling their chutes well. He expected they would all be hitting the Temple Mount — Har Habayit in Hebrew, Haram esh-Sharif in Arabic — any moment.
"Shlomo One, give me a status check — what's your ETA?'
Altogether, there were only twelve of them — six coming in from the air, six more on the ground. It was not a large force, and he would have liked more. But most of his followers were ultra-Orthodox and very few of them had any military training at all. He had more than fifteen thousand dues-paying members worldwide. Some were sabras, native-born Israelis. Others lived in Australia, New Zealand, or in Central or South America. Most lived in the U.S., predominantly from New York, New Jersey, and New England. But very few of them had ever held a gun, much less fired it, or done so on a daring assault on the most holy site in all of monotheism. And jumping out of airplanes at eleven thousand feet in the middle of the night in the middle of a raging electrical storm? As his friends back in Brooklyn might say, Fugghedaboudit.
"We're in position. We think we can get to you in less than six minutes."
"What about the others?" Ben David asked, the tension in his voice rising.
"Everyone's in position. We're ready to move, over."
"Tov. Stand by one."
His team thought he was crazy for moving tonight of all nights. But Ben David was adamant. The civil war in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza was a godsend. It meant the Palestinians' attention was elsewhere. By the time they organized a counterattack, it would be too late. Doron was moving Israeli forces to the borders, sealing them off from the rest of Israel, and Jerusalem in particular. No Palestinian would be able to get to the Temple Mount tonight. Not from the territories.
Besides, the Temple Mount Battalion would have already succeeded. They'd have destroyed the Dome of the Rock and the mosque. With any luck, they'd begin to erect the new Jewish Temple. The raging storm was just more divine icing on the cake. IDF patrols weren't flying. Security per sonnel on the Mount were staying inside, their feet up on their desks, watch ing TV, playing cards, drinking coffee, doing everything possible to stay out of the whipping winds and bone-chilling rains. Ben David and his men wouId have the critical element of surprise, and that should make all the difference.