Less than two hours before, he'd received a startling call from his old friend, Dmitri Galishnikov. Events were unfolding rapidly. Galishnikov wasn't authorized to say much, only that the president and Jonathan Bennett were requesting his immediate assistance for a project of the highest inter-national priority. He'd be gone indefinitely. He could bring nothing with him but clothing and some toiletries. And he could tell no one. For a leg endary, retired chief of the Israeli Mossad, there was no other way to go.
Yuri Gogolov awoke to someone pounding on his door.
With one hand, he reached for his gold-rimmed spectacles sitting on the end table next to him. With the other he clicked off the safety of the semi-automatic pistol he held on his lap. The pounding continued, and it was getting louder.
Gogolov moved quietly through the dark living room, adrenaline pumping into his system. Wearing no shoes, his feet made no sound on the Persian rugs. He was ready for whoever was stupid enough to be trifling with him now. His hand slowly reached out for the dead bolt above the doorknob. "Who is it?" he whispered in Farsi.
"Mr. Gogolov, sir, it is Mahmoud," a voice yelled back. "It is urgent." Gogolov cursed under his breath. It was Jibril's driver, a burly idiot of a man better suited to be a bouncer at a nightclub than a personal bodyguard for the most deadly terrorist on the face of the planet. He unlocked the door, let him in, closed the door behind him and told the man to shut up. "Is this how the mullahs trained you?" Gogolov growled through clenched teeth. "Did they teach you to wake up an entire building of families that have absolutely no idea I'm here — that would sell my location to the Amer icans, or the Israelis or the Russians in a heartbeat if they knew how much I was worth captured, dead or alive? Is that how your father once protected the Ayatollah in Paris? By pounding on the door of his flat in the middle of the night for all the world to hear? You moron. You disgust me. Show me your weapon."
The driver just stood there stammering. He'd been calling on the phone for nearly an hour, but there'd been no answer. Gogolov had apparently turned the phone off for a while to get some badly needed sleep. But the message was urgent. Mohammed Jibril insisted that it be delivered in person. What else was he supposed to do?
Mahmoud Hameed reached into his coat, soaked with the winter rains still plaguing Tehran, and pulled out a pistol. It was fitted with a new silencer, custom built by Al-Nakbah's "friends" in the Iranian Secret Service. He passed it over to his master for inspection. Such inspections were not uncommon. But they were never pleasant. They were often accompanied by Gogolov's increasingly common fits of rage, and with a barrage of questions Mahmoud never knew quite how to answer.
Gogolov, a former Russian Spetznatz commando and senior officer, took the weapon in his hands. He examined it carefully, checked the chamber to see if there was a round in it, and checked the safety to see that it was on. It was. And now it wasn't.
Now it was pointed at Mahmoud Hameed's face. The man's eyes went wide with terror. Two muffled snaps. Two puffs of smoke. A single shot through each eye, and it was over. Hameed's body lurched backward, then crumpled to the floor, his legs still writhing in spasms as the brain's last signals reached their intended destinations.
Gogolov had no use for weak men. He could not build a global terrorist force with such incompetence. He wanted only the best, and he needed to send a message to those already under the command of Mohammed Jibril, and thus under his own. Just as Mahmoud Hameed's blood was seeping out into the carpets around him, so too the story of his death would seep out into the fabric of Al-Nakbah's entire network. It would strike fear into the hearts of every officer, every operative, every informant, every financier. Mistakes would not be tolerated. Even your own weapons could be used against you. Gogolov reached into his pocket, pulled out his cell phone, and turned it back on. He speed-dialed Jibril, and told him he needed a new driver.
Jibril didn't know what to say. He had no time to mourn such a death, let alone clean it up. But it bothered him. It was a waste. They had a war to run. They couldn't be eating their own. They shouldn't always have to move to new safe houses, leaving a trail of blood and questions behind them. But Gogolov couldn't seem to help himself. It wasn't simply that the man needed to kill someone occasionally. That was expected in their business. It was that he wanted to kill. He enjoyed it. He relaxed when it was over, until the pressure built up again and his bloodlust resurfaced without warning.
Jibril tried to shake such thoughts from his mind and refocus. The newest package Gogolov had ordered was wrapped, stamped, and ready for the post office.
"Very well," Gogolov whispered, taking a deep breath and smiling for the first time in days. "Deliver it now."
Bennett and McCoy sat alone in Ziegler's room.
Sipping piping hot Turkish coffee, they fielded a slew of incoming phone calls from Langley and the White House. They monitored satellite news channels, Kol Israel Radio, the BBC, and a variety of regional and interna-tional news sites on the Internet, simultaneously tracking developments on four different continents. Over the course of the last five and half hours, they had watched the carefully scripted drama play itself out. Now they were in a holding pattern. There wasn't much more either of them could do except wait, and hope for the best.
Sir, we've got a problem."
It was 5:33 p.m. local time in Gaza. Ziegler was on a secure call with Langley, DIA, and CENTCOM, finalizing target packages in the West Bank and Gaza, when Tariq stuck his head in the door of the adjacent conference room and summoned him back into the main control room. "Can it wait a few minutes, Tariq?" Ziegler asked his second-in-command. "No, sir. I need you right now."
Ziegler could see a flash of panic in Tariq's eyes. He excused himself from the call, promising to get back with the senior commanders in a few minutes, then stepped back into the control room. What he saw on the first black-and-white security monitor he looked at terrified him. Six men — their faces shrouded by black-and-white checked kafifiyahs — were setting the VW van on fire.
Scanning from one monitor to the next, Ziegler could see at least a hun dred men, possibly more, all covered by kaffiyahs gathering on the narrow streets in front and behind the Hotel Baghdad. Some were throwing rocks at the windows. Some were firing machine guns into the air. One was burn ing an American flag. All of them looked violent and Ziegler couldn't process all the images fast enough.
How could anyone know where they were? Had someone seen them enter the hotel? Hadn't the van been stolen? Hadn't it beer un traceable? Of course, that was all history, water under the bridge. What kind of threat did this mob pose? That was the real question. How secure was Gaza Station? They were about to find out.
BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP.
Lights and buzzers on the internal security panels began going off. Sensors indicated intrusions in the center east quadrant of the hotel foyer.
BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP.
Now sensors in the southwest quadrant began going crazy. The mob was trying to break through the back doors as well.
Suddenly, a powerful explosion hit the northeast corner of the building. Even three stories down, Ziegler and Tariq could feel the impact as everything around them began to shake. The lights flickered. Then came a second massive explosion, and a third.
Ziegler's eyes darted from screen to screen. The unthinkable was happening. The Hotel Baghdad was beginning to teeter. It appeared ready to implode. Again the lights in the main control room began flickering. Ziegler grabbed the headset on the desk in front of him, and flicked on the microphone, activating a direct line to the Global Operations Ceneter at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.