"Shlomo One, this is Shlomo Six — where are you guys?"
It was chaos on the radios. Gunfire, men screaming — he'd never heard it this bad. His men were rattled. The Arab guards and Israeli first responders were putting up a far tougher fight than they'd expected.
"I'm at Mughrabi Gate — we're under heavy fire. We've got two KIA. Repeat, two KIA. Taking sniper fire from one of the minarets. Shlomo Nine and Eleven are badly wounded. Don't think they're going to make it. Shlomo Ten and Twelve are pinned down in a gun battle on the North Portico. "
Ben David's mind reeled. They were on the cusp of victory, the cutting edge of history. They were so close. They couldn't fail now. His people had trained so long and so hard for this operation. They knew the stakes, and he wanted desperately to believe they were uniquely chosen for this moment in history, in Jewish history.
They all knew that in the "last days" the State of Israel would be reborn after two thousand years of desolation and exile, and that Jerusalem would— someday, somehow — once again become the eternal, undivided capital of the Jewish people. They knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Holy One of Israel would supernaturally draw the Jewish people back to the land of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And they knew, too, that the day of Israel's eternal redemption was drawing near.
They knew because he'd taught them day after day, verse after verse. The "Day of the Lord" was almost here. Events were already in motion. The Divine Clock was already ticking. Akiva Ben David could still hear the scratchy, crackling voice of Israeli general Mordechai Gur on his parents' transistor radio in June of 1967, announcing for all the world to hear, "The Temple Mount is in our hands." It was a moment he would never forget, a moment of electrification, a moment of instant identification with five thousand years of Jewish history. It was as though in a split second, something inside of Ben David — something deep inside millions of Jews worldwide— clicked on, a palpable sense that he was part of something larger than himself, something transcendent and real.
Ben David's family was not religious at the time. They were all agnostic, secular Jews. Living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in a world of wealth and sophistication, they barely even thought of themselves as Jews. They were Americans. They were modern, hip, cosmopolitan, not a bunch of knuckle-dragging Neanderthals trying to find the source of fire and the meaning of life. But something happened. Israeli forces were standing on Mount Moriah.
For the first time in thousands of years, Jews were standing where Abra-ham once stood, where he nearly sacrificed his only son, Isaac, until God intervened and provided a ram as a substitute. Moreover, these Jews weren't simply standing at the epicenter of monotheistic faith. They now controlled it forever — the Temple Mount, the site of two great Temples, and a third yet to be built.
Ben David's stomach tightened. A wave of nausea swept over him. But he couldn't stay where he was. He began racing for the mosque. CRACK, CRACK, CRACK.
Bullets smashed into walls and pavement all around him. He was twenty feet from the side door. The stones were slick from the rains. Ben David worried he'd—
Suddenly, two tremendous explosions went off, one to his right, one on his left. The concussion of the blasts — one right after another — knocked him off his feet and sent his machine gun and night-vision goggles flying. He skidded along the ground, drenched to the bone and freezing cold. Then came another shower of gunfire.
Momentarily unable to see or hear, Ben David scrambled forward until he reached the eastern porch of the mosque, desperately trying to get out of the line of fire. Only then did he realize his head and face were raked by shrapnel and shards of glass. He could feel himself shaking, about to slip into shock. He feverishly wiped smoke and blood out of his eyes. That's when he saw a guard charging toward him.
Through the blood gushing from his forehead down across his face, he could see the old man was at least sixty, white hair, white beard. Even through the rains he could see the two pistols the man brandished, one in each hand. They were firing again and again and again as the man raced toward him. He could see the flashes. He could hear the explosions. And then he felt the fiery rounds smash into his chest and arms and face and it was all over. The battle was done. The Temple Mount Battalion had failed.
TWENTY-SIX
It was 11:17 p.m. in D.C., 6:17 a.m. in Israel and the territories.
All the key principals were present and accounted for. Joining from Gaza Station were Jake Ziegler, Erin McCoy, and Bennett.
"OK, let's go, what have we got?" the president began, taking a sip of fresh coffee and anxious to get moving.
"Mr. President," Kirkpatrick began, "over the last few hours, we have seen the crisis in the Middle East take a serious turn for the worse."
She walked the president through an executive summary of each suicide bombing, the fact that no Palestinian group had yet taken credit, and an overall casualty count.
"How many Americans?" the president demanded.
"At last count, we're looking at forty-one Americans dead."
MacPherson couldn't speak.
"All of them were students at Tel Aviv University, Mr. President — part of the Overseas Student Program, some for one semester, some for two."
The room was silent.
"So far, fifty-two Israelis are dead, and three Canadians," Kirkpatrick continued. "Israelis wounded at this point — let's see, it looks like two hundred and thirteen. An American family of six were also wounded at the bus station in Haifa."
It was the first Bennett had heard of the attacks. He hadn't had time to be briefed by McCoy or Ziegler, and he suddenly felt sick to his stomach. A gasp rippled through the NSC team, as well. They were all professionals. They'd all seen civilian carnage before. But the images on the screens were unreal, as were their political implications. The dynamic was changing, rap idly.
"Sir, unfortunately, that's not all. In the last few minutes, an obscure Jewish extremist group—"
"Terrorist group," interjected the CIA Director.
" — terrorist group known as the Temple Mount Battalion launched a series of attacks against the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque, armed with over a hundred pounds of C4 plastic explosives, about thirty or forty grenades, light arms and several thousand rounds of ammunition."
"Oh, my God," said the president. "Please don't tell me they succeeded."
Kirkpatrick dialed up a live video image from a billion-dollar, American-made Keyhole spy satellite orbiting over Jerusalem, cross-linked from the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, Virginia.
"Almost, sir — but not quite."
"How many were there?"
"We're monitoring all Israeli police and Border Patrol radio traffic. Best we can tell so far is that there were somewhere between ten to fifteen terrorists. Most are dead. It seems as though the Israelis have at least two of the attackers in custody, wounded but likely to survive." "Jack, what do you think the Israelis will do?" the president asked. The president considered Jack Mitchell a close friend and a first-rate spy, a man whose judgment he could trust, a rare commodity in a town like Washington.
"I know for a fact Doron is meeting with his Security Cabinet right now," said Jack Mitchell. "My sense is that in the next fifteen or twenty minutes, they're going to come out of there ready to unleash everything they've got against the Palestinians."
"Should they?" asked the president.
"If they don't, they're inviting more Jewish terrorists to take matters into their own hands. I'd recommend, sir, that you call Doron and give him the green light immediately."
The president looked around the room. Mitchell had a good point. But none of them yet knew what Bennett knew.