10:03 A.M. Local Time
Jerusalem
It was a beautiful day for the world to end. Two hours now. It felt like the end of a marathon, the last panting strides to the finish line.
To fulfill one’s destiny. At such moments, it was hard to avoid becoming overconfident, but the Hezbollah commander forced himself to remain focused on the job at hand. And the problem that was now presenting itself.
Almost two hours had passed since he had sent Shirazi’s nephew into the compound to conduct a reconnaissance. Nothing since.
When his cellphone rang, he glanced at the screen, half-expecting to see Harun’s number displayed there. It wasn’t, but another equally recognizable. “Hello.”
“We have been betrayed,” BEHDIN’s voice announced flatly.
“What?”
“Shirazi’s nephew. He told the Americans that the bacteria was already in place.”
Farouk swore, barely able to contain his frustration. He had told the Iranian president that his nephew could not be entrusted…None of that mattered now. All that mattered was containing the problem. “Kill him.”
“He’s already dead. You need to be here-to make sure no other members of the team have been similarly compromised. We may even need to move up the time of the attack.”
“I will make that decision when it is necessary,” Farouk responded, bridling his anger at the sleeper’s attempt to take command of the operation. “The first step is to contact ISRAFIL.”
“Don’t waste the time-they’re no longer taking orders from the top. I warned you of that possibility.”
“Is there anything else I should know about?”
“They have a sniper with a high-powered rifle in the bell tower of the Church of the Redeemer. He will need to be taken out before we commit to any overt hostilities in the haram.”
“I see. Hold tight and keep me informed. Don’t take action until I give you further instructions.”
“That may not be possible,” BEHDIN replied, his voice cold as an arctic wind. “One cannot delay the will of Allah.”
There was an abrupt click as the sleeper hung up, leaving Farouk cursing at a black screen. After a moment, he rose from his seat, tucking the cellphone into his shirt pocket.
A few short steps took him through the door and out onto the balcony of the al-Fakhriyya minaret, looking down upon the silver-colored dome of the Masjid al-Aqsa below him, upon the entire southwestern corner of the Haram al-Sharif. He had anticipated the need to be here…
10:13 A.M.
The Haram al-Sharif
“There’s thirty-five dead zones,” Abdul Ali explained, spreading the chart out on a table. “About half of them are down here, in the area commonly known as Solomon’s Stables. The rest are scattered around the premises of the masjid.”
Harry leaned over the table, studying the chart intently. As might be expected, the work was imprecise, but it gave them a rough sense of the situation. “If you were to initiate an aerosol attack,” he asked the Jordanian, “where would you do it?”
The commando snorted. “If I were to perpetrate such madness, I would set the canisters in the main hall of the masjid, where they could do the maximum damage to those gathering. They have to have had help on the inside to get them inside. Perhaps one of the students from the madrasa who helps with maintenance.”
“So they could still be here?”
“Perhaps.”
Hamid glanced over Harry’s shoulder, his eyes flickered over the floor plans, taking in the large hypostyle hall. “There are only two dead spaces in the main hall, both of them near the mihrab.”
“That is correct,” Ali replied. “It would be very difficult to conceal something in so sacred a place.”
“Then, supposing your plans necessitated concealment, where?”
Ali thought about it for a moment, his hand tracing over the diagrams. “Somewhere in the stables of Solomon. Combining the potential for concealment with the ability to cause mass casualties.”
“There are worshipers down there?” Harry asked in surprise.
The Jordanian nodded. “The Masjid al-Marwani, a large subterranean prayer chamber opened in the last decade. A capacity of some two thousand. Less than the main hall, but it would be far easier to conceal the canisters.”
“Then let’s get this show on the road,” Hamid announced finally, tucking his Glock 19 back in its holster inside the waistband of his pants.
A look of concern on his face, Harry pulled him away from the table. “Sure you’re up to this?”
Hamid shrugged. He had changed shirts with Ali, and combed his dark hair down to hide the gash in his temple.
“Don’t have much choice, do I? Unless you suddenly want to convert,” he tossed in with a crooked grin. “The Mufti was pretty clear on the subject. I’ll take Davood with me.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“It may reveal the truth.” Hamid said, putting up a hand. “Let me play this my way.”
Harry stared into his friend’s face, his gaze searching, penetrating. “All right, but take Abdul Ali with you as well. You’ll need an extra man to secure the canisters. And hurry, we’re running short of time.”
“Aye, aye, skipper,” the Iraqi agent replied, turning away. “I’ll be in comm.”
2:21 A.M. Eastern Time
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
“Sir, I have the President on Line 2.”
David Lay shook his head wearily. “You told him I was asleep, I trust?”
His secretary looked at him, sitting there at his desk, and responded with a shamefaced nod. “He insists.”
“They get in that office,” Lay sighed, “and start imagining themselves some sort of blasted demigod. I suppose there’s no help for it-put him through.”
Reaching for the phone on his desk, the DCIA punched the speaker button and leaned back in his chair. “Good morning, Mr. President. A very early morning, I might add.”
Hancock didn’t respond to the pleasantries. “Lay, I thought I made my orders clear. We cannot afford the fallout of this operation. Pull your people out of Jerusalem!”
“Mr. President,” Lay began, taking a deep breath before continuing, “neither can you afford the consequences of publicly abandoning Israel. When the facts of this become known, as they will if we pull out, the world will know that we stuck a knife in the back of our closest friend in the Middle East.”
“Friend,” Hancock murmured bitterly. “They’ve hardly acted like friends over the past few years.”
Lay didn’t feel that point was worth the argument. “Preserving the balance of power has always been in our best interests, Mr. President. At present, we are committed to this course and there is no pulling out.”
“So you say.”
“Respectfully, Mr. President, this has become an operational decision, and protocol dictates that those have to be handled on the ground.”
“This is your dream, isn’t it, Lay? The same type of sick James Bond fantasies all you spooks seem to share. License to kill, no one with the power to stop you. I tell you this-if this operation goes south and embarrasses my administration, I will have your resignation on my desk before the week is out. Do you understand me?”
“I assure you, Mr. President, that the consequences have not escaped me. My resignation is already signed and sealed.”
“See that it is,” Hancock retorted, hanging up without further warning. Lay sighed and reached for the letter of resignation on his desk, his eyes scanning down the sheet to the blank space at the bottom requiring his signature. It represented everything he had spent a lifetime building up, a career he had sacrificed his family for. He wasn’t ready to give that up.
Not without a fight…
10:29 A.M. Local Time
Masjid al-Aqsa
Jerusalem
The farthest mosque. In all his life, Davood had never thought he would complete this pilgrimage. A prayer uttered in these halls was said to count for a thousand with Allah, praised be His holy name.
But he had no time for prayer, despite the sanctity of the spot. There was a mission to be performed. Padding barefoot across the carpeted floor of the assembly hall, he stole a glance across at his companions, each of them about ten feet away, flanking him. Abdul Ali on his left, Hamid on his right.
Hamid glanced up at the mosaics patterning the arch above him as they made their way down the central aisle. Beautiful work dating from the eleventh century.
Unlit chandeliers hung from the ceiling, most of the light coming from stained-glass windows on either side of the sanctuary. The light of Heaven streaming down upon this most holy of places.
He had to force himself not to look at his watch, not to look like a man with a purpose-at least any other purpose than worship or reverence. Little more than an hour remained to accomplish his mission.
He counted forty, maybe fifty people in the sanctuary as they moved toward the mihrab beneath the dome. It was hard to tell, divided as the hall was into seven aisles by rows of marble pillars. A scant fraction of the five thousand that often packed the masjid, but enough to complicate things.
Endeavoring to look like a common worshiper, Hamid stopped to glance at a copy of the Quran on a pedestal near one of the pillars, his fingers tracing idly over the flowing script. The sacred scriptures were open to the eighth Sura, the sixty-first verse. And if they incline to peace, incline to it also, and put your trust in Allah. Surely He is the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing.
And he passed on…
10:38 A.M.
The bell tower
“LONGBOW to EAGLE SIX, all is clear. Sitrep in five minutes.”
A few seconds passed, then Harry’s voice came over the headset. “Copy that, LONGBOW. Sitrep in five.”
Smiling thinly, Thomas turned back to his scope. Communicating a situation report every five minutes was standard protocol, designed to guard against an agent being taken out. Not that it helped the agent much.
Back and forth. The Barrett’s muzzle slowly traversed the courtyard of al-Aqsa, swiveling on the bipod. Back and forth…
Boredom was the sniper’s greatest enemy, one of many reasons protocol called for a spotter. It was affecting him now, as much as he fought against it. Boredom, lack of sleep, the wound still paining his side. He closed his eyes for a moment.
A sound pierced his consciousness, perhaps a footstep, perhaps a murmured whisper. Something that didn’t belong. Someone was coming up the stairs of the tower, he realized a moment later.
Thomas swore under his breath, pulling a silenced Beretta 92 from his holster as he moved swiftly to the side of the tower, away from the stairs. There was no time to hide the rifle and no point in trying. The probst had assured him the exclusive use of the tower…
He dropped to one knee by a corner of the belfry, steadying the Beretta in both hands. Aimed at the stairs.
A head emerged from the stairwell, a black balaclava masking it, then shoulders. Thomas took careful aim, the sights of the Beretta aimed directly at the head of his target.
Whether some sound or simply a premonition of death warned the intruder, Thomas would never know. The head and body shifted upward just as he squeezed the trigger, and the bullet smashed into the target’s shoulder.
Crying out in pain, the intruder reeled forward, clutching his right arm. Thomas crossed the belfry in two quick steps, his left hand slashing forward to deliver an edge-of-the-hand blow to the intruder’s throat.
The man crumpled, grabbing Thomas’ arm as he went and pulling him down, the Beretta slipping from his fingers.
A knife flashed in the intruder’s hand and Thomas seized hold of his wrist, leveraging against the injured shoulder.
At that moment, a bullet burned through the air past his ear, caroming off the chiseled limestone wall. Wrenching the knife free with a final desperate effort, he rolled away from his downed man, swinging round on the new threat.
The second assailant was by the brink of the stairs, moving forward, a semiautomatic pistol in his hands. Pain shooting through his side, Thomas pivoted from his prone position, hooking his right foot behind the attacker’s leg. Caught off-balance, the man staggered back as Thomas’s left heel delivered a vicious kick to his shin. Two steps back, and then there was air beneath his feet.
A scream of fear and surprise tore through the air as the intruder toppled backward into the stairwell, disappearing from sight.
“EAGLE SIX to LONGBOW, do you copy? What is your sitrep?”
Thomas forced himself to ignore the voice in his ear, swinging around as the first assailant rose to his knees, his elbow arcing into the man’s jaw…
10:44 A.M.
The security center
“EAGLE SIX to LONGBOW, I need a sitrep.” Harry closed his eyes, forcing calm. Something had gone wrong. Seven minutes now.
At that moment, his headset crackled, a voice coming on the network. “FULLBACK to EAGLE SIX, we have a package.”
Harry sprang to the surveillance screens, his heart in his throat. There, on one of the screens, he saw the three men kneeling by a doorway, their bodies almost obscuring a stainless steel canister.
“Where are you, FULLBACK?”
“A corridor just off the main hall, to the east of the Mihrab. The canister was tucked beside a bookshelf-it’s shaped like somebody’s oxygen tank. A curtain was draped nearby, shielding it from the cameras. GUNHAND, are you there? We’ve got to disarm this thing.”
“I’m here,” Tex replied, moving to the screens beside Harry. With a couple of keystrokes, he zoomed in the camera, focusing on the canister. “Stand back so I can take a look. There should be an anti-tamper device somewhere-you’ll need to disarm that first.”
“Already done,” Hamid replied. “A five-ounce packet of C-4 on the backside of the canister.”
“Make sure it’s the only one. Then turn the canister over-I’ll need to see the wiring.”
10:46 A.M.
The bell tower
The intruder was laying across two of the rough-hewn steps about twenty feet down, his eyes staring sightlessly upward through the holes in the ski mask. The fall had broken his back. The man possessed no wallet or identification, but Thomas took a cellphone from the pocket of his jacket. A couple steps down, he picked up the dead man’s semiautomatic, a Russian-made 9mm Grach, and shoved it in his waistband, making his way back up to the belfry. He let the man lie where he fell.
“EAGLE SIX to LONGBOW. Come in, LONGBOW.”
“Yeah, EAGLE SIX, I’m here,” Thomas replied breathlessly, kneeling beside the unconscious man on the balcony.
“What’s going on, man? Your sitrep was five minutes ago.”
“I had company,” Thomas retorted. “A pair of tangos who somehow figured out my location.”
“And?”
“One unconscious, one KIA. I’ll see what I can get.”
“Keep me posted. The first package has been located-we’re in the process of disarming it.”
“Don’t let me keep you,” was Thomas’s ironic reply as he turned back to the prone form of his assailant. With a quick motion, he jerked the balaclava from the intruder’s head and a gasp of surprise escaped his lips. The fabric pulled away to reveal the smooth face of a woman…
10:52 A.M.
Masjid al-Aqsa
Despite the slight chill in the October air, Hamid was sweating as he worked over the device, the voice in his ear guiding him on.
“We’re almost done, I think. This looks like a Czech set-up-there should be a black wire to the right-there.”
“Snip it?” Hamid asked, wiping his palms against his jeans. This wasn’t Hollywood-there was no digital panel ticking away the seconds, but he could feel them nonetheless. Sixty-four minutes, give or take a few.
“No,” Tex replied, his voice maddeningly calm. “You’ll need to detach it from the detonator without cutting it.”
“Suggestions?”
“Use the pliers as tweezers. It should come loose.”
Hamid took a deep breath, his fingers trembling as he inched the pliers toward the wire, metal touching against insulated wire, closing around it.
A gentle tug. The black wire came free, falling harmlessly away from the detonator and Hamid could hear a collective sigh of relief escape the men behind him.
One canister down. Three to go…
10:57 A.M.
The bell tower
At the first impact of the water, the young woman moaned, her eyes blinking. Thomas paused for a moment and then emptied most of the rest of his canteen across her face.
She roused, shaking her head and groaning in pain as she leaned against the wall. Her eyes flickered open, idly resting on his face. Then, suddenly, recognition flooded across her countenance and she tried to lunge for him, only to realize her hands and feet were securely bound with zip ties.
The stream of curses that escaped her lips was sufficient to surprise even Thomas, whose command of Arabic could only pick out the most prominent obscenities.
Unperturbed, he listened for a moment, then lifted his hand without warning and backhanded her across the face.
“Listen to me,” he instructed in Arabic, ignoring the glare of defiance on her face. He knelt in front of her, placing the cellphone he had taken from the dead man between them. “This is your partner’s phone. Sorry to say, it survived the fall considerably better than he did.”
She spat in his direction. “You are a lying pig!”
“Possibly. You were supposed to call in and inform al-Farouk of my death, right?” Taking in her look of shock, he pressed his advantage. “Yeah, I know your boss’s name, among other things. I want you to make the call, just like you were supposed to.”
“No.”
“Sure about that?” Thomas took her by the shoulders and pulled her to her feet, forcing her to the edge of the stairwell. She cried out in pain and he pressed down harder on the shoulderblade broken by his 9mm slug. “In that case, I’ll shove you over right here and now-leave you as a warning for the next people he sends after me. You get lucky, your partner’s body might even cushion your fall.”
As if on cue, the phone vibrated in his hand. He glanced at the number, then handed the phone to her, nodding as he did so.
She met his gaze, tears rolling down her cheeks. Their eyes locked and Thomas cleared his throat. “Better start deciding how much you really want to die today.”
Another painful moment of indecision came and went, then she flipped open the phone with a sudden gesture, speaking quickly. “The target has been eliminated…”
“Why are you answering Rashid’s phone?” Farouk asked after listening to her report.
A tinge of sadness colored the young woman’s voice as she responded. “Rashid is dead. As they fought he and the American fell from the belfry onto the stairs below.”
Farouk considered that for a moment. “Very well. You have been trained in the use of a rifle. I will be counting on you.”
11:08 A.M.
The Masjid al-Aqsa
“There should be a red wire beneath the black, running in a diagonal from left to right.”
“And there isn’t.” Hamid wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, rocking back on his haunches. The second canister had been secreted in the opposite hall, in a three-foot dead space-same set-up as the first, only five feet from an electric fan pointed toward the assembly hall.
Apparently the intention had been to use the ventilation fans to blow a billowing cloud of bacteria into the crowd of worshipers.
“Okay,” Tex responded. “Then we’re looking for a yellow-coated wire. Have one?”
“Negative, GUNHAND. Any other bright ideas?”
“No,” the Texan replied with a weary sigh. “Hold tight.”
“You’re coming here?”
“No other choice. This sounds like a new one.”
Hamid looked over at the Jordanian bodyguard to see him shaking his head vigorously. “Al-Husayni was very clear. There are to be no unbelievers in the mosque.”
“No dice, GUNHAND, they’re not going to let you in.”
There was a long pause, then Harry came on the network. “We don’t have time to mess with this. Send Abdul back with both canisters. We’ll disarm the second one here. FULLBACK and SWITCHBLADE, continue with your search.”
“Roger that, EAGLE SIX.”
3:16 A.M. Eastern Time
NCS Operations Center
Langley, Virginia
Making coffee was typically not Bernard Kranemeyer’s job. But with the op-center staff running on fumes, he was pitching in with whatever he could. His personal espresso machine was now sitting on the desk of an abandoned workstation and the DCS was sorting diligently through the containers of gourmet coffee he had brought from his office.
That was where he was when Carter found him. “We’ve received a sitrep from Nichols.”
“And?”
“The search is going well-they’ve located two of the four canisters. One of them’s disarmed and they’re working on the other one.”
“Thank God,” Kranemeyer breathed, closing his eyes for a moment. As good as the news was, it came with a chilling reality.
There were less than forty minutes left…
11:19 A.M. Local Time
The Masjid al-Aqsa
It had been days since they had been alone, Hamid mused as he and Davood moved down the stairs to the lower level of al-Aqsa. And the time had not been right.
His face darkened as he thought of the young agent’s treachery. He had sold out his faith for the hope of reward, an unforgivable sin.
At least Hamid had no intention of forgiving it. The Glock seemed to tremble beneath his coat as the pair hustled down the wide limestone steps, entering a vaulted corridor.
“Any ideas on the canister?” Harry asked, watching the surveillance screens. On one, they could see Abdul Ali hurrying back through the main hall of the masjid-on another the forms of Davood and Hamid making their way down a corridor. Worshipers were beginning to flood into the building, in advance of zhurh, the noon prayer.
Tex shook his head. “It sounds like a new design. Won’t know till I’ve had a better look.”
Harry nodded, then motion on one of the screens attracted his eye. The two agents were stopped in a small room, a library, from the look of it. It also looked like they were alone.
He selected the camera on the computer console and zoomed in the camera. Hamid was gesturing angrily at the younger man, who stood with his back to a bookshelf. Something was going on.
“EAGLE SIX to FULLBACK, are we having a problem?”
Without replying, Hamid swung toward the camera, the silenced Glock in his right hand coming into view. A single shot spat from the barrel, smashing into the lens of the camera.
The screen went dark. For a moment, Harry stood there, frozen in shock, then he activated his earpiece once more. “Stand down, FULLBACK. I repeat, stand down! That is an order.”
“Why?” Davood asked, his voice trembling as he stared into the muzzle of Hamid’s pistol.
“You have betrayed our brethren,” Hamid responded, ignoring the voice in his ear. “You have betrayed the holy jihad. And the penalty for such a betrayal is death.”
“I thought you were one of us.” The young agent shook his head.
Hamid spat on the floor, reaching forward to rip the microphone from Davood’s earlobe, crushing it beneath his foot. “Never. I have not forgotten the words of the prophets, as you have. It is not without reason that I am called BEHDIN, a man of pure religion.”
“EAGLE SIX to FULLBACK, I need you to put your gun down.”
“I thought you would have had agents in place to prevent him from turning on you,” Farshid Hossein observed coolly from the corner where he had been watching events unfold.
“Prevent what?” Harry demanded, turning on him in irritation.
The major took in the look on Harry’s face and blanched. “You really didn’t know, did you?”
Harry crossed the room in two strides, anger flashing in his eyes. “I don’t have time for riddles, blast you!”
Hossein never blinked. “The man you call FULLBACK is our sleeper agent. The man who betrayed your team in the foothills of the Alborz.”
“I never would have suspected,” Davood replied, stalling for time.
Hamid glared, circling, the gun still extended in his hand as he talked. “You don’t understand what all this means, do you? You pray at the masjid on Fridays and you dare to call it faith. My whole life has been dedicated to this cause. Ever since my family moved from Isfahan to Basra when I was twelve. I saw the American soldiers shoot their way through my village, and I could not cry. I was forced to live in the country I hated, to establish my cover. I joined that same cursed military at nineteen, because it was the quickest way to achieve my objectives-and Allah forgive me, I killed my fellow believers in the mountains of Afghanistan. All for this time, this moment. This holy mission, to prepare the way of the Expected One.”
Davood shook his head. “The Quran commands that ‘if they incline to peace, incline to it also’. This is not the way of Allah, my brother.”
“I am not your brother!” In that moment, Davood realized he had pushed it too far. He started to turn, to face the older agent.
The first bullet caught him in the side of the jawbone, fragmenting bone and pulverizing tissue…
Harry shook his head. “No, you must be mistaken.”
Yet even as he spoke, his words felt hollow, empty, lacking conviction. Could it be? That they had been wrong all along.
“I’m not,” Hossein replied, utter sincerity in his voice. “I tried to tell your director this, but he refused to listen.”
True enough. And then it all clicked into place-Thomas had been betrayed to the enemy, but Davood hadn’t known his location. Hamid had.
Harry stood there, still frozen in indecision. How long had he and Hamid worked together? How many times had they saved each other’s lives? The blood debt.
The door opened and Abdul Ali appeared, bearing both of the canisters. The Jordanian took a look around at the faces in the security center and asked, “What’s happened?”
Harry ignored him, turning to Tex. “I’m going in.”
“That was not the plan,” Abdul Ali protested, setting the canisters down by the door.
“The plan,” Harry retorted, “has gone out the window. We’ve got a rogue agent in the masjid and two canisters still in play. Tex, I need you to stay here and disarm the second container. Abdul Ali, you’re coming with me.”
“My orders,” the bodyguard replied stoutly, “are to keep you out of the masjid.”
“And my orders are to prevent your people from dying by the thousands.” Harry picked up the UMP-45 and slung it around his neck, buttoning his leather jacket over it. “I’ll leave you to reconcile the two.”
As the Jordanian stood in the door, undecided, Hossein spoke up. “Give me a gun and I’ll join you.”
Harry considered the request for a moment, then motioned to Tex. “Give him your back-up.”
Without a word, Texan pulled a.357 Magnum Ruger LCR from his ankle holster and handed it to the Iranian major, butt-first, along with a pair of speedloaders. Hossein spun the cylinder with a smile of satisfaction, shoving the gun into a trousers pocket.
Ali seemed still to be considering his decision and Harry moved toward the doorway, his face hard as a flint, his hand on his holstered pistol. In the chaos left by Hamid’s betrayal, he saw his mission clear.
For a moment, the two men stood face-to-face, staring into each other’s eyes. Then the Jordanian stepped aside with a sigh. “I have a duty to the Mufti, whom I have sworn before Allah to obey. And I have a duty to my own conscience. I will go with you.”
Ali picked up the two-way at his belt and issued an order in Arabic. “The public is to be denied access to the lower levels of al-Aqsa and the Masjid al-Marwani. Effective immediately.”
Harry’s hand fell away from the butt of his Colt and he nodded, without a trace of a smile.
“Let’s roll then.”
11:26 A.M.
The bell tower
“I think the bleeding has stopped,” Thomas said, stepping back to assess his work. He had torn his t-shirt into pieces to bandage the young woman’s shoulder. “But the bullet is still in your shoulder. A doctor will have to remove it.”
She shook her head. “Why didn’t you kill me?”
“I don’t know,” Thomas replied with a shrug. “Didn’t seem much point in it, after all was said and done. What about you?”
The woman looked at him strangely, and in that moment he realized that she was quite young-maybe nineteen or twenty. “About me? What do you mean?”
He knelt beside the sniper rifle and looked back to where she sat, her hands tied in front of her. “How come you tried to kill me?”
It seemed like a long time before she responded, and when she did there were tears in her eyes. “I was caught in my boyfriend’s bed.”
“So?” Thomas asked with a shrug.
“The penalty for fornication is death, but the imam said my sin would be forgiven if I gave my life in jihad. I was to carry out a bombing in the Christian Quarter this evening.”
Thomas considered her reply. “That’s a deuce of an atonement. Somehow I don’t see how having sex fits in the balance sheet of blowing yourself up.”
The next moment, his headset crackled. “EAGLE SIX to LONGBOW, be advised this network is compromised.”
Harry’s voice sounded distant, strained. “I am issuing an SOS on Hamid Zakiri.”
Shoot on Sight. “I didn’t get that, EAGLE SIX,” Thomas replied, sure he had heard wrong. It couldn’t be. “Repeat.”
“If you see Hamid, don’t hesitate. Shoot to kill.”
“What’s going on?”
11:28 A.M.
The Masjid al-Aqsa
Chaos. Confusion. Judging by the voices on the radio network, he had caused all of that and more. Hamid pushed it away from his mind and focused, kneeling by the third canister.
He had found it exactly where he had expected, based on the map Farouk had sent. As the other two canisters had been, but that cursed Davood had located them both. This one was well placed, but it wouldn’t do near the damage that the others had been meant to do. Somehow, he had to get it back up to the assembly hall of the masjid, where the worshipers were now gathering.
With a small tug, he separated the wires connecting the canister with the Semtex charge designed to interfere with tampering. The bacteria had been placed in a five-foot-square area of dead space, but it wasn’t safe to move into view of the security cameras. Not yet.
He pulled the TACSAT from his pocket and consulted the screen. Thirty-five seconds…
Hamid had been lying. It had been a set-up. If anything, this canister was simpler to disarm than the first. Almost there. Just one more wire. Tex looked up from his work with the bomb as every screen in the surveillance center went black, then lit up with a blinking error message in Arabic, “SYSTEMS OFF-LINE”.
He went to the control console, urgently typing in a command. At first nothing happened, then the system seemed to freeze. Tex shook his head.
A worm was working its way through the system-and the codes that should have shut down its progress only seemed to open new gateways into the network.
He opened his TACSAT and punched speed-dial as he continued to work on the console. “I think we have a problem, boss.”
Hamid smiled in satisfaction and sprung from his hiding place, covering the canister in his jacket as he moved back toward the stairs…
11:33 A.M.
They found Davood where he had fallen in the library, lying in a pool of blood by a bookcase. His face was horribly disfigured, blood oozing from a bullet hole in his jaw.
As Hossein and Ali stood watch, Harry knelt by the side of his fallen agent, his fingers moving up Davood’s neck, searching for the pulse of life. Remorse filled him as he thought back of their suspicions, of their misdirected anger. He had planned to do this himself-but all that was gone now.
There it was-a faint but still present spark and Davood’s eyes flickered briefly open in response to his touch. “Hold on tight, man,” Harry whispered, clasping the young man’s hand in both of his own. “We’re going to get you out of here.”
Davood groaned, murmuring something out past his broken jaw. “There’s no time…”
“That’s not your concern,” Harry responded with a forced smile. “I’m in command here, remember. And you’re gonna make it out of here, soldier.”
The young agent’s right hand fell away from his torso, disclosing a ragged bullet hole in his abdomen. He’d been gut shot, was losing blood rapidly. Harry could only imagine what the hollowpoint bullet had done internally. “No use. I’m sorry…”
The worst part of it was that he was right. Harry felt a white-hot flash of anger course through his body as he bent over the dying man. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” he whispered fiercely. “Forgive me for ever doubting your loyalty.”
There was no response. When Harry looked up, the young man’s eyes were staring unforgivingly at the ceiling.
Harry folded Davood’s hands together across his chest and gently closed those sightless eyes, his movements slow and reverential. When he rose, a cold, hard mask had formed over his face. There was a time for everything under the sun and there would be a time for grief. It wasn’t now.
Now was the time for vengeance…
Leaving the library, they moved down a long corridor, weapons drawn. Harry took point, the folding stock of the H amp;K pressed tight against his shoulder. With the cameras off-line, they had no way of knowing where Hamid was. It was back to low-tech, old-fashioned methods, and they were running short on time…
The cameras showed the three men moving down the corridor toward him, blocking his exit. There were other ways to his destination, moving through the subterranean levels of the masjid, but the detour would take too much time. Hamid bared his teeth in a grin and scrolled through the frames on his TACSAT’s screen. There was only one way out-through the enemy.
He laid the canister down and covered it with his jacket, leaving his arms free for movement. Shouldering the MP-5SD, he moved to the corner, waiting.
The men on-screen drew yet closer and he noted their position with a careful, practiced eye. Now!
The figure appeared in an alcove near the end of the corridor without warning and Harry had just enough time to recognize Hamid’s face before bullets began coming his way, erupting from the barrel of the double agent’s silenced MP-5.
He threw himself sideways, his palms scraping against the flagstones as he hit the floor, rolling onto his stomach. Another moment and he was behind cover, his submachine gun aimed at the corner, but the hail of fire had stopped as abruptly as it had begun. “Anyone hurt?” Harry demanded, glancing over at his companions.
Ali shook his head in the negative. Hossein was laying a foot away from Harry, examining a gouge in his shoulder. “Ricochet,” he explained, wincing.
The absurdity of it all. To be trading fire with his best friend-it was surreal.
Those bullet gouges in the wall proved otherwise. So had Davood’s dead body. Harry closed his eyes, hatred mixing with sorrow. He knew what had to be done.
“Hamid!” he called out, his voice echoing off the stone. “Lay down your weapons and come out. We need to talk.”
The only response was the echo, bouncing and diminishing with every repetition. “It’s your only hope of leaving here. We can cut a deal, just give us the bacteria.”
“I’ve heard that before, Harry,” came the reply. “Remember, we took the class together-how to deal with a barricaded subject?”
They had, Harry realized with chagrin. He remembered the two of them joking about the class instructor, a rather pretty brunette. She could talk anybody into putting their gun down…
Hamid had taken her to dinner, if memory served. In better days.
He shook his head to drive away the remorse at what he was being forced to do. He couldn’t think about that now. Later. Not now.
A great gulf fixed…
At that moment, Ali’s two-way crackled with static. As he lay there on the stone steps, he responded, speaking rapidly in Arabic.
“My technicians say that the feed is still on-line,” he said finally, glancing over at Harry. “The error messages are apparently themselves erroneous.”
“Then why can’t we access it?” Harry asked softly, never taking his eyes off the iron sights of the UMP-45.
“The video feed has been pirated by someone with a satellite phone.”
“Hamid,” Harry breathed, the pieces clicking in place. “He’s using the system to track us. Isn’t there a way you can shut him out?”
The Jordanian shook his head. “We have only had the cameras in place for five months. We’re still going through the manuals on how to use them, much less figure out how to stop a hacker.”
There was an answer. There had to be. “Just give me the bacteria,” Harry shouted once more down the corridor. Lying in an effort to make Hamid show himself. If only for a moment. Just enough time to snap off a quick burst. “Give me the bacteria and I’ll let you go free. No one need know of the deal we make.”
A harsh laugh echoed off the limestone. “The West has never understood us, Harry, and they will die because of it. But you, you disappoint me. You should understand. My whole life has been given for this moment. I could no more walk away from this mission than you could let me-after I killed Davood.”
He was right. There was no way he could let him go. The answer came to Harry in a sudden burst of clarity and he rose to his knees, making his way down the stairs behind him.
His brow furrowed in puzzlement, Hamid watched him go on the camera screen. Watched Harry walk about ten yards back and pull the TACSAT from the pocket of his jacket…
3:38 A.M. Eastern Time
NCS Operations Center
Langley, Virginia
“What do you need me to do?” Carol asked, still absorbing the news of Hamid’s betrayal. It seemed like a bad dream. That the Service could have been infiltrated…
“It is possible to remotely deactivate an Agency TACSAT, isn’t it?”
She nodded reflexively. “Yes-yes it is. It’s just a matter of accessing the servers and restricting user-”
“Just do it,” Harry interrupted, his voice flat, eerily emotionless. “As soon as you can. Let me know when it’s accomplished.”
The phone clicked without warning, the connection broken. Carol rose from her workstation, her mind swirling. This had to go to the DCS…
11:41 A.M. Local Time
The Masjid al-Aqsa
Jerusalem
The first inkling he had of danger was when bullets whined past his covert, impacting and glancing off the centuries-old limestone walls. Hamid’s fingers tightened around the grip of his MP-5 as fluorescent bulbs exploded and shattered down the length of the hall, glass tinkling against the stone. In seconds, the corridor was plunged into subterranean darkness.
He smiled grimly. The opening move, yet despite his danger he felt more alive than he had for years.
All deception past, it felt as though a weight had fallen from his shoulders. All those years, the times he had belittled his own faith to maintain his cover. Little deaths of the soul.
Gone now, at long last. Allahu akbar.
Truly, God was great.
A glance at his TACSAT’s luminescent screen confirmed his antagonists were still in their places. As though they were waiting for something.
The canister still lay by his side, nineteen minutes remaining on the invisible clock. He couldn’t wait forever. But neither could they.
A whining beep drew his attention back to his phone, a message scrolling across the screen. DEACTIVATION SEQUENCE INITIATING. 15…14…13…
Hamid swore angrily, tossing the phone away from him. He had worked long enough with Harry-he should have known. Never underestimate the man.
Harry slammed a fresh 25-round magazine of.45 ACP into the mag well of the UMP-45, pulling back the charging handle. Fourteen minutes left.
At that moment, the phone in his pocket vibrated and he flipped it open, expecting to hear Carol’s voice.
“Harry, Zakiri’s TACSAT is off-line,” Kranemeyer announced gruffly. “Carol is working to restore the camera network to administrator control.”
“Tell her thanks,” Harry replied. “Is there anything else?”
“One more thing, Harry. This has been an unprecedented breach of security. Understanding how this was accomplished is of primary importance. If at all possible, we need Hamid Zakiri alive. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Harry replied, gazing ahead into the darkness, understanding all too well. He had seen it all before. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. I have a canister to recover.”
Rising to his feet, he motioned to his companions, his stride steady as he moved down the corridor, the muzzle of his submachine gun sweeping from side to side. On point. In days past, that had been Hamid’s role.
The traitor. Why?
Harry knew the answer, knew and it angered him that he had never seen the signs. Hamid, the genial king of the office NFL pool-Hamid, the guy who had given up his pilgrimage to Mecca to watch the Ravens win the Super Bowl-yeah, that Hamid had been a jihadist. The man he had recruited. Hamid had killed to cover his trail, for Harry knew now exactly how Harun Larijani had died.
There would be no deals at the end of this road, no pay-offs, no trading freedom for information.
The brotherhood had been betrayed, and this road ended in the grave. The oldest law of mankind. Lex talionis. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
He reached the corner and hesitated before going on, nervously checking the sling of his H amp;K once more. Everything was silent, a silence as cold as the grave.
Abdul Ali and Hossein fanned out behind him, pistols drawn, and Harry rounded the corner wide, the cold, suppressed muzzle of the UMP-45 tracking left to right.
Hamid was gone, the discarded TACSAT lying broken half-way across the adjoining corridor the only proof that he had ever been there. Harry motioned for a halt, his ears straining to pick up the slightest sound.
“Where does the corridor go from here?” he asked quietly, glancing back at Ali.
“To the left, on into the Masjid al-Musalla al-Marwani, the prayer hall of the Stables of Solomon,” the Jordanian replied. “To the right, it continues for about five yards, ending in a dead-end and a platform surmounted by displayed copies of the Quran.”
“Take left, I’ll take right,” Harry instructed. “He may be laying an ambush.”
It’s what they both would have done. Back in the day. In better times, odd as that seemed now.
At Harry’s signal, the three men moved out, Hossein and Ali going left, Harry going right into the dead-ended corridor as they rounded the corner. Empty.
The emptiness struck him with the force of a blow, his mind screaming danger as he started to turn. Knowing it was too late even as he did so.
In the narrow limestone corridors, the cough of Hamid’s silenced Glock resounded like thunder, the sound of the slide cycling. One, two shots.
The classic double-tap. Out of the corner of his eye, as if in slow motion, Harry saw Abdul Ali reel backward, blood spraying from a wound in his throat, the pistol falling from his hands.
He turned on heel, hearing the sharp report of the revolver in Hossein’s hands, the ring of steel against stone as Hamid staggered, dropping the canister. The UMP-45 came up to level, Hamid’s face coming into perspective through iron sights.
It was the kill shot. A single press of the trigger would have sent three 230-grain hollowpointed cartridges on their deadly way.
He hesitated. The world seemed to close in, his vision narrowing to a singular focus. His target. Off to his left, Hossein fired another shot, the bullet going wild, the report seeming as distant as a faraway storm. His friend’s face stared back at him through those deathly iron posts, seemingly frozen in time. Disbelief overwhelmed him, the sour taste of bile rising in the back of his throat.
He couldn’t pull the trigger. Moments passed-it could have been hours for all he knew. He saw Hamid, his left arm dangling useless at his side, move backward, toward the sheltering pillars, firing another shot to cover his retreat. Disappearing into the darkness.
Numbly, Harry heard Hossein’s voice, and the mist seemed to clear away. He’d had the shot…
His gaze flickered from Abdul Ali’s lifeless body crumpled on the floor to the canister laying a few feet away. “Disarm the bomb,” he ordered, his throat dry. “I’ll go after him.”
For a moment, Hossein didn’t move and Harry turned on him. “Can you do the job?”
The major’s gaze was unwavering. “Of course. Can you?”
Hesitation. It was the killer. Those moments when you paused when you should have kept moving, when you had the shot and failed to take it. It was those moments that killed. And he knew it. Alone now, moving deeper into the passages beneath al-Aqsa, Harry felt his eyes adjust to the darkness. Whether Hamid would lead him to the fourth canister, he knew not. It was like following a wounded tiger into his lair.
The corridor opened out into a large hall, arched pillars extending off as far as Harry could see. He moved slowly, cautiously, listening every few paces.
Sunlight streamed into the center of the room from a window high in the wall, on the southern wall of al-Aqsa if he remembered correctly.
A bullet smacked into the stone beside his head and Harry ducked low, his eyes searching the semi-darkness. A shape, about fifteen yards off, moving behind the pillars.
He knelt down behind a wooden railing partitioning off the worship space, the muzzle of his UMP-45 resting across the carved wood. Waiting, every sense alert, listening for any movement, any sign of his antagonist.
Patience-it had always been one of Hamid’s virtues. One of the things that had made him so valuable to the team. The team that had been torn apart by his treachery. Harry’s lips compressed into a thin line, forcing himself to remember the sight of Davood’s body. There was only one way this could end.
Movement there in the darkness, movement hesitant and uncertain. Harry saw the outline of a gun in the shadows and fired, the suppressed burst sounding like a trio of handclaps in the darkened hall. Applause for a requiem.
11:48 A.M.
The security center
“One more code,” Carol’s voice instructed. Tex cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder, his fingers poised over the keyboard of the security console.
“Z as in Zulu-Bravo-India-five-three-Hotel. Enter.”
“Roger that.”
“You should now be in control of the feed. I’m in the network as well, synchronizing our facial-recognition software with the cameras. They’re still using Windows Seven-there’s a couple backdoors in that OS. I used to date a programmer from Redmond.”
The screens around him lit up, the system coming on-line once more-revealing the crowd now gathered outside the mosque. Word from Hossein had confirmed the disarming of the third canister, but they still had one to find, and thousands of people flooding into the area around the masjid. “How soon will we have facial-recognition capabilities?” he asked.
“Five minutes, tops. Why?”
“We’ve got a lot of people to scan.”
11:49 A.M.
Masjid al-Marwani
A moan followed the burst of gunfire, then dead silence. After waiting for a minute, then two, Harry rose and vaulted over the railing, landing noiselessly on the carpet below.
He crouched and moved across the open area, hurrying toward the opposite side of the room.
Still nothing. No suppressed gunshots welcomed his approach, no bullets flew out of the shadows. Submachine gun held at the ready, he rounded one of the pillars and nearly tripped, his eyes fixed ahead of him.
He looked down into the face of his friend, pale and drawn in the semi-darkness.
Hamid lay there on the carpet of the masjid, on his back, his fingers groping toward the butt of the Glock which had fallen from his grasp. There was no sign of his MP-5, presumably discarded after the wound to his arm.
Harry’s final burst had stitched him across the abdomen and pelvis, breaking the pelvic bone. He wasn’t running any further.
Without a word, Harry reached out a foot and kicked the Glock away. Hamid watched the gun spin permanently out of reach, a look of defeat on his face.
Harry looked down upon the crippled body of his friend, remorse and sorrow roiling within him, remembering the good times.
How had it happened? Theirs had been a brotherhood of steel, forged in the fires of battle. Shattered in the space of a moment.
“We need to talk,” Harry said finally, forcing the emotion from his voice as he lowered the H amp;K, letting the weapon hang from its sling. “Where’s the fourth canister?”
Hamid coughed, blood flecking his cheek. “It was fated to end like this, Harry. There is no escaping the will of Allah.”
“Fate is what we make of it,” Harry responded coldly, drawing the Colt.45 from its holster on his hip. “That’s not answering the question. Where’s the missing canister?”
“I don’t know and there’s nothing you can do about it now. You were ordered to take me alive, weren’t you? I’m sure the Dark Lord is wondering-how did the ayatollahs penetrate his top strike team, how many missions were compromised because of me?”
“How many?”
A smile played on Hamid’s lips. “Azerbaijan will do for an example. It took the Service almost two years to replace the men they lost that winter.”
Taking in the look of anger and surprise on Harry’s face, he went on, wiping away blood from the corner from his mouth. “That’s the way Davood looked.”
“Shut up.” Harry closed his eyes, unable to escape the images burning themselves into his mind, an indelible brand. His own failure had led to this-this unspeakable betrayal.
The Colt trembled angrily in his outstretched hand, a round in the chamber, hammer back. End this…
“He screamed when I shot him, Harry,” the sleeper continued with a laugh. “It was a good sound-I shot him five times, enjoying myself. Just like I’d wanted to do for so long. He died like an unbelieving pig should, wallowing in a mire of his own blood.”
Harry’s face hardened into a cold, pitiless mask. The time for mercy had passed, all chance of redemption gone in that moment.
“Burn,” he whispered bitterly, his finger tightening around the trigger. Judge and jury were gone, leaving only the last of the offices for him to perform.
Executioner…
The hammer came down, the pistol recoiling into Harry’s hand as the mighty roar of the Colt reverberated through the stone galleries.
Hamid’s head snapped back at the impact of the round, the sneer on his face forever wiped away.
Harry stood there for a moment, the gun still leveled, looking down at the broken body of his friend, the blood staining the carpet. And it all came back, the emotion surging over him in a flood tide.
That it would have ended like this. He leaned against the pillar, his stomach convulsed in dry heaves, trying to vomit. Nothing could wash away the vile taste in his mouth. The blood on his hands.
A voice penetrated his consciousness, echoing in the dark chambers of his mind. He turned to see Hossein standing there about ten feet away.
He took in the major’s face, saw the revolver shoved into his waistband, and in that moment an image washed over him. Sergeant Major Juan Delgado’s headless, mutilated corpse. Floating in the Euphrates.
The Colt came up one more time. He saw the look of shock on Hossein’s face, saw his lips move, heard his voice in protest as if in a dream.
“I thought we had a deal.”
His own voice, a remorseless response. “Your deal was with Langley, not with me.”
And he fired, and fired-Hossein’s body reeling backward under the impact of the bullets, and fired until the Colt’s slide locked back on an empty magazine and he could fire no more…
11:53 A.M.
The security center
“What are your CPU usage levels?”
The TACSAT pressed to his ear, Tex pulled up a screen on the security console. “Sixty-five percent and climbing.”
“That’s not good,” Carol replied, worry in her voice. “If the usage of the recognition software goes over eighty percent, you’re going to start experiencing problems.”
“Such as?”
“The network is built to handle the data load of streaming video, but we just added our software on top of that. You might start experiencing black-outs from certain screens, it might crash the system altogether.”
“Seventy percent now.”
“We can dial back the speed of the search,” she added. “That would reduce the load on the central processing unit.”
“How much longer would that take? We’re at seventy-two percent.”
“Fifteen, twenty minutes.”
The big man shook his head grimly. “We don’t have that kind of time.”
“Are any of Husayni’s people in the room with you?”
“Negative, they’re in the next room over at the moment. Why?”
“Well, if the Mufti’s security service starts having to investigate mainframe glitches, they’re going to realize we piggy-backed onto their system. You can’t hide software like this forever.” Carol cleared her throat. “That is not desirable.”
“Desirability be hanged,” Tex snarled. “We’re going to red-line this thing.”
Images flickered across the screen as the software sped about its business, searching through the assembled crowd. Usage creeping to seventy-six percent.
It was a dangerous gamble, but none of the other choices were viable. The Texan knew that. If there were known terrorists in the crowd, they needed to know it, in the next few minutes if at all possible.
Seventy-nine percent. A screen above Tex’s head to the left flickered and went black, losing its signal. Losing his coverage of the al-Magribah gate, he realized, mentally reviewing the data before him.
Another two screens went black almost simultaneously as the CPU usage topped eighty-one percent, denying him a view of the crowd around the Dome of Yusuf Agha, toward the west near the Islamic Museum.
Two of the Jordanian bodyguards came hurtling through the door. “What’s going on?”
A loud, insistent beep came from the computer, a face morphing onto the screen, pulled from the crowd directly in front of al-Aqsa, near el-Kas, the fountain of ablution. FAYOOD HAMZA AL-FAROUK.
“We’ve got a face,” he announced, bending over the console. “He’s here. The man himself.”
“Get word to LONGBOW,” an unexpected voice ordered. Tex turned to find Harry standing in the doorway, his face drained of all its color, the empty pistol still clasped in his right hand. Not thirty minutes had passed since the two men had parted, but the team leader looked ten years older.
“The radio is secure to use once more,” Harry said, walking across the room to take command. “The traitor is dead.”
11:57 A.M.
The bell tower
“EAGLE SIX to LONGBOW, we have a target.”
Thomas came instantly alert at the sound of Harry’s voice on the radio network. “What’s going on, EAGLE SIX?”
“Fayood Hamza al-Farouk. He’s in the crowd near el-Kas, the fountain. He’s wearing a checkered kheffiyeh and Western clothes. I need you to confirm VISDENT.”
Ignoring the young woman’s glance in his direction, Thomas focused in on the scope, swiveling the Barrett toward the designated spot. The lens picked out the black-and-white pattern of al-Farouk’s kheffiyeh and Thomas rotated the dial of the scope forward two clicks, to the maximum zoom of 14.5x. Focusing on the face of the Hezbollah commander.
“VISDENT confirmed, EAGLE SIX. I have eyes on Fayood Al-Farouk.” Thomas centered the cross-hairs on the terrorist’s face, his index finger to the side, held carefully away from the Barrett’s trigger. “He’s wearing a bulky jacket, his hands in his pockets.”
Thomas’s eyes slid over Farouk’s body, remembering the photos he had been shown. Something had changed. It was more than just the jacket, which was justified by the cool north breeze wafting over the city. There was something different.
His scope drifted lower, along the torso. Something had changed, something was wrong. A sudden weight gain.
“EAGLE SIX, I think I have our fourth canister…”
11:59 A.M.
The courtyard of the Masjid al-Aqsa
One minute before noon. One minute before the canisters within the masjid were to release their deadly bacteria into the air.
Farouk smiled, his arms at his sides. The bacteria he carried had been divided into three small pressurized canisters, wrapped around his mid-section along with five pounds of Semtex. This was the coup de grace, the final blow.
In the wake of his bombing, the victims would be transported to hospitals and emergency clinics around the city, spreading the plague with them. The Jewish doctors would be among the first to die, along with their patients. And that would only be the start of the epidemic. Only the start of the war…
The fires of jihad would envelop the world and the world would be remade in those refining fires. Remade in the image of Allah, the most glorified, the most high. His prophet, the Twelfth Imam, peace be upon him, ruling over all of mankind.
A beautiful vision. He heard the muezzin begin the call to prayer and spread out his prayer mat, falling to his knees toward Mecca. The mullahs commanded that every prayer be prayed as though it were one’s last, but Al-Farouk smiled as his forehead touched the fringe of the mat. This would be.
Allahu akbar. La illaha illa Allah. Muhammad rasul Allah…
Harry shoved a fresh magazine into the butt of the Colt before stepping out onto the courtyard, racking the slide to chamber a round. It was time to finish this. Tex followed him into the open air of the courtyard as the crowd rose to their feet after the completion of the first ra’akah, the two men separating as they moved in on their target.
Allaahumma salli 'alaa Muhammadin wa 'alaa ali Muhammadin. Kamaa sallaita 'alaa Ibraaheema wa 'alaa ali Ibraaheema. O Allah, bless our Muhammad and the people of Muhammad. As You have blessed Abraham and the people of Abraham.
Emotion had left him back there in the deserted stables of Solomon, along with remorse. Gone was everything except a terrible sense of purpose.
Innaka hameedun Majeed Alaahumma baarik 'ala Muhammadin wa 'alaa ali Muhammadin Kamaa baarakta 'alaa Ibraaheema wa 'alaa ali Ibraaheema Innaka hameedun Majeed. O Allah, be gracious unto Muhammad and the people of Muhammad. As You were gracious unto Abraham and the people of Abraham. Surely You are the Most Praiseworthy, the Most Glorious.
Harry saw the kheffiyeh once more as he moved into the crowd. He and Tex, the only ones upright now among a sea of kneeling men, advancing upon al-Farouk from the side. There was no help for it. Any delay was fatal.
As the second ra’akah finished, Farouk regained his feet. He would trigger the bomb at the end of the salah, as the worshippers recited “Peace be unto you”. A delicious irony. The peace of Allah came only through submission to the sword.
It was then that he saw the face. A face burned into his memory ever since BEHDIN had sent him the classified CIA personnel files, not four days before.
They were coming to stop him, but it would be futile.
The detonator was in his coat pocket, securely compressed in his fist. A dead man’s switch. The moment his fingers released their grip, the bomb would detonate. Nothing could stop the will of Allah. He smiled through the crowd, his eyes locking with the American’s in a look of mutual recognition…
Harry saw the look on Farouk’s face, realized what was about to happen. His pistol was in his hand, but the distance was too far, too many innocents in the way. No clear shot. No way to stop something that had become inevitable.
He raised his hand to his ear, his voice cold as ice.
“EAGLE SIX to LONGBOW, take him out.”
12:03 A.M.
The bell tower
The cross-hairs of the Barrett M98B centered on Farouk’s temple and Thomas took up the slack of the trigger, squeezing methodically. The match trigger broke cleanly at one and a half pounds of pressure and the rifle recoiled back into his shoulder as the shot echoed out over the Old City of Jerusalem. The city of peace…
The.338 Lapua Magnum bullet shot from the Barrett’s muzzle at a speed of 2,750 feet per second, striking its target almost before the sound had reached his ears.
Farouk’s head exploded like a ripe melon, blood and brains spraying over the surrounding worshipers as he went down. He never had a chance to react, no final words, no prayers for mercy. Quite literally, the 300-grain slug was the last thing to enter his mind.
He went down hard, legs flailing in their death throes against the stone of the courtyard. And there he lay, the nerveless fingers of his right hand tangled in the folds of his coat pocket, still pressed firmly against the detonator. The bomb didn’t go off.
The muezzin stopped in mid-prayer, the crowd reacting in frozen horror to sudden death in their midst. In those first few seconds, it must have appeared as though the victim had been struck down by lightning from on high.
Then pandemonium broke loose. Harry elbowed his way through the scattering throng, reaching Farouk’s body moments after his fall. Tex was already there, on his knees beside the fallen terrorist, working through the wires that encircled Farouk’s waist.
Behind them, Husayni’s security personnel began to spread out across the Haram al-Sharif, forming a rough perimeter.
A few yards to the left, el-Kas, the fountain of ablution, continued to gurgle peacefully, its purifying waters splashing and glistening in the sun. A sharp contrast to the pandemonium that surrounded it.
Harry looked around once more, his eyes alert for trouble, then he pulled his jacket open and shoved the.45 back into its holster.
Time to stand down. Reaching up, Harry activated his earpiece radio. “EAGLE SIX to LONGBOW, it’s time for you to leave. Exfil before they lock this city down. Standard E amp;E protocols apply.”
There was a moment’s hesitation, then Thomas’s voice came back through the speaker in Harry’s ear. “What happened to FULLBACK?”
“I killed him,” Harry responded quietly, looking across the courtyard. He disconnected the comm radio without another word, seeing Hamid’s face before his eyes. The way he had looked lying there. He heard Tex’s voice distantly and looked back at the big man. “What?”
“The bomb’s been disarmed.”
Harry ran a hand over his forehead, unable to find the words to express his feelings at that moment. His legs felt suddenly rubbery, weak as the adrenaline left his body.
Unusually, Tex was still talking. “I found this cellphone in his jacket. Doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the bomb, but Langley might want to take a look at it.”
Harry barely heard him. The threat had been neutralized…
12:10 P.M.
Mossad Headquarters
Tel Aviv-Yafo
“We’ve got a situation developing on the Temple Mount,” Shoham’s aide announced, appearing without warning in the doorway of his office.
The general looked up. “What’s going on?”
“A man in the crowd gathered for prayer at al-Aqsa mosque was shot by a sniper. The security forces of the Mufti have cordoned off the area and aren’t letting anyone through. Our personnel have been pushed back toward the Gate of the Chain.”
“The Lions of Jehovah,” Shoham snarled, a grimace contorting his features. “Blast it! Do they have any idea where the sniper is?”
“No, sir.”
“Get Laner on the phone ASAP.”
12:12 P.M.
Haram al-Sharif
Jerusalem
Despite the best efforts of both the Israeli police and Husayni’s men, the situation was far from being under control. Both sides now seemed to be engaged in a Mexican standoff about a hundred yards from the front of al-Aqsa, tensions growing by the minute.
“It seemed to come from somewhere in the Christian quarter,” Gideon responded, struggling to hear the general on the other end of the connection. “My guess would be one of the church towers in the area was used as a sniper hide. I sent Yossi and Chaim over there right after the shot. If he’s smart, he’ll shoot and scoot, but they might find something worthwhile.”
“Right now,” Shoham replied, “I want you to focus on the situation there on the Temple Mount. Get things settled, get Husayni’s bully boys to stand down. We can’t have this spreading to the streets.”
Gideon took another look across the wide plaza and nodded grimly. Easier said than done. “Roger that…”
12:13 P.M.
The bell tower
It was time to go. Thomas left the Barrett laying where it was, the magazine still inserted. There was no way he could make it out of the city carrying it.
He drew his combat knife from its ankle sheath and motioned toward the girl, kneeling beside her and carefully slicing the zip ties that had bound her wrists and ankles.
“Go home,” he whispered, looking into her eyes. Her expression didn’t change, as though she had withdrawn to some place deep within herself. Gone was the uncertainty, the regret he had seen earlier, replaced by a dangerous calm. A sense of purpose.
None of that mattered now. With a sigh, Thomas rose, sheathing the knife and turning his back on her. Four steps toward the stairs and he heard the girl move, heard the lethal scrape of metal against stone.
Beretta already drawn, he turned back to see the rifle cradled in her arms, the long, black barrel swinging toward him as she fumbled with the safety.
She looked up to see the pistol leveled in his hand and froze, fear and surprise washing over her face as she realized she’d been played.
The grim tableau lasted only moments. The Beretta coughed twice, 9mm slugs striking her center-of-mass, hammer blows to the chest knocking her back. Her legs went out from under her and she sprawled onto the balcony, dying.
“Forgive me,” Thomas murmured, holstering the pistol. She had chosen her own course, that was true, but he had laid it out, knowing how she would react, knowing she would carry out her misguided atonement. It felt like a murder. Perhaps the murderers were those who had sent her out in the first place.
He buttoned his jacket, shoving the latex gloves he had worn throughout the operation into a pocket. The only fingerprints on the gun were hers.
It was time to go…
12:25 P.M.
The security center
“I’ve got to go out there,” Harry said, watching the confrontation play out on the screens of the surveillance cameras.
Tex looked at him, a look of intensity on his typically stoic face. “If you turn yourself in to the Israelis, this mission is blown. The Israeli government will imprison you, the Agency will deny your existence. That will be the end, Harry.”
Harry nodded, his mind flickering back to Hamid’s words as he lay dying on the carpet of the masjid. It was fated to end like this, Harry. There is no escaping the will of Allah.
He couldn’t just stand there.
“There’s no way I’m going let him win,” he said finally, moving toward the door. He heard Tex call out to stop him, ignored the voice of his friend. In the end, the mission was the only thing that mattered. All else was illusory, friendship most of all. He had killed a friend this day.
His footsteps took him up the ancient stone stairs from which Hamid and Harun had fallen only a couple hours before. It seemed as though a lifetime had passed in the interim. Come and gone.
At the door to the outside he paused, removing the Colt 1911 from his holster. His thumb hit the release and he heard the sound of the loaded magazine striking the stone floor between his feet. His hands moving quickly over the gun, he racked the slide, ejecting the chambered round.
There was a tinkle of brass against stone and he bent down to retrieve the cartridge, laying it and the gun reverently to the side of the door, covering it with his jacket. The big pistol had saved his life too many times to count but all that was past. It couldn’t save him now.
If the Israelis forced their way into the masjid, in the wake of everything that had gone before, Jerusalem would erupt in violence. And with it the Middle East. All their sacrifice would have been for nothing. All the blood, the tears. Davood…
The noonday sun shone down upon his face as he strode out unarmed into the courtyard on the east of al-Aqsa, a cool north wind rippling through his dark hair.
He felt nothing. Anger. Remorse. Betrayal. They had all come and gone like strangers in the night, leaving him cold, empty. He knew only what he had to do.
12:27 P.M.
The bell tower
There was no identification on either of the bodies, which wasn’t surprising in the least. One had been shot, the other-well, from the position of his body it looked as though he had fallen from the belfry, breaking nearly every bone in his body.
But, they had been players, Sergeant Eiland reflected grimly, which couldn’t be said for the middle-aged Palestinian lying dead in the narthex of the church below, his throat slashed by a knife. The doorkeeper of the sanctuary, apparently, which meant there would be the devil to pay with the Lutheran church.
As such, these had probably deserved everything they had gotten. The question was, who had given it to them?
Yossi looked over to see Chaim kneeling by the body of the woman, his eyes roving over the scoped rifle clasped in her lifeless hands. “It’s a Barrett-recent American make,” the young sniper observed coolly. If the presence of the dead woman bothered him, there was no way to tell it.
With a weary sigh, the sergeant toggled his lip mike. “Lieutenant, I’ve got three Arab KIAs and an American rifle. Any good news on your end?”
12:32 P.M.
The Haram al-Sharif
“Negative,” Gideon replied in frustration. “When we first got here, we could still see the body of the shooting victim, but they took him away in a bag five minutes ago. Not a thing I could do about it. I-”
He broke off abruptly as he looked toward the east of the mosque. A tall man was striding across the open courtyard in his direction, toward the perimeter where the stand-off continued. There was something about him, something familiar.
“I’ll get back to you, Yossi. Do what you can there.”
As he watched, a small group of men emerged from the front doors of al-Aqsa, from underneath the Crusader arch, forming a protective phalanx around a man in a wheelchair.
Tahir al-Din Husayni… the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He had never met the Sunni cleric, but he was unmistakable.
He saw the tall man stop, turn to face the entourage. Gideon’s hand went to his pocket, withdrawing a high-powered monocular and focusing it in on the man’s face. It was as he had suspected…
It was the only way. The die had been cast long ago. What had he told Hamid? Fate is what we make of it. Perhaps.
Harry looked from the wheelchair-bound cleric to his bodyguards and back again. “It’s for the best.”
Husayni looked up at him, their eyes meeting, and once again Harry felt the strange charisma that had given the man such a power over the masses.
“You and I know differently, Mr. Craig,” he replied quietly, putting a heavy, ironic emphasis on the false name he had been given. “This is not the way.”
“And you would suggest?”
“You have sacrificed much this morning in defense of my faith, but Allah does not ask this of you. He asks it of me.”
Without another word, Husayni gripped the wheels of his chair and propelled himself forward, across the stones of the courtyard.
Harry watched him go, then he felt two of Husayni’s bodyguards take him by the arms, steering him back toward the sanctuary of the masjid.
He didn’t resist. There seemed no point…
“I need to know what’s going on here.” The young Jewish officer wore no rank or insignia-not even a uniform, but Husayni knew he was in charge-sensed the air of command about him. He’d always been able to read people.
“And I need to speak with your superiors,” Husayni said gently, looking up into the swarthy face of the young man.
“How are the Americans involved?” the Israeli retorted, ignoring the request. Somehow he knew.
“With all due respect,” Husayni retorted, “this is well above your pay grade. I see you have a satellite phone. Call your superiors and tell them I need to talk to them.”
For a minute, maybe two, the two men regarded each other silently, then the officer reached for the phone on his belt. “I hope you have the answers to this…”
12:40 P.M.
Mossad Headquarters
Tel Aviv-Yafo
Avi ben Shoham sighed, leaning back in his chair. The phone on the desk in front of him was on speaker and he was sure his sigh had been heard. Frankly, he didn’t care. He wasn’t dealing from a position of strength anyway.
“My men tell me they made positive identification of an American agent named Harold Nichols near the al-Aqsa mosque a few minutes ago. What can you tell me of US involvement in this incident?”
“I have made myself clear, general,” Husayni replied firmly. “If you want my cooperation, you will have to content yourself with the information I am willing to give you.”
Shoham bristled at the cleric’s attitude. “What if I tell you we can do without your cooperation?”
“If I were you, I would think long and carefully before I made that assertion. Consider the facts, general. There were two bomb blasts in the Muslim Quarter this morning. The street will believe you are hiding something, whether any evidence points to it or not. A worshiper was slain in front of the third-holiest mosque in Islam, by a sniper with military training. Draw your own conclusions, but do not forget which ones the Arab world will draw: an arrow pointing straight at the heart of Israel. If it were not for me.”
He was right, and Shoham knew it. It didn’t mean he had to like it. “You pride yourself on your abilities.”
“Pride is a grievous sin, general, and Allah forgive me if I am guilty of it. There was a boxer in America-a man who went by the name of Cassius Clay before he found the peace of Islam. He said that it was not bragging if you could do it. And you know I can.”
“Monarchs and dictators are little but titular rulers in the house of Islam,” Husayni continued. “They tremble at the noise of the mob in the street. And the people of the street believe that I speak unto them the truth of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala. The most glorified, the most high. They will follow my words.”
There was a long silence before the Mossad chief replied. “Very well, we’ll do this your way.”
“Salaam alaikum, general.”
Blessing and peace be upon you…