“Give it here,” Shoham ordered, composing himself. He had enough to deal with without handling these lunatics. “Lieutenant?”
“Sir, we’re looking at a situation,” Laner began, his voice hushed, tense. “The word on the street is that Jews were responsible for the attacks.”
The general hesitated for a long moment before responding. “Here’s what’s worse. They’re right…”
Taking a final sip of tea, Fayood al-Farouk returned the cup to its saucer and typed the last two commands into his laptop, tapping the ENTER key at the end of the sequence. The next moment, the commands went racing across the cafe’s Wi-Fi into the ether.
With any luck, the Lions of Jehovah wouldn’t even know they had been hacked until after Mossad showed up at their door. An archived copy of the website and the video claiming responsibility had already been sent to Al-Jazeera for dissemination across the house of Islam…
“GUNHAND, you have a policeman at your eight o’clock,” Hamid advised, keeping his voice low as he pushed his way through the crowd, toward Harun. “Recommend that I make the snatch.”
“Taking up overwatch, FULLBACK,” the Texan acknowledged.
The al-Magribah Gate was only a hundred feet away, maybe less. The window of opportunity was closing. Time to move. Hamid’s hand closed around the suppressed .45 Glock in the pocket of his jacket.
He saw Harun glance around once more, the anxious look still in his eyes. Careful, but not careful enough.
He had run out of options. In desperation, he had placed a fourth phone call to the secure line of the Ayatollah Isfahani, but someone else had answered the phone and he’d hung up in panic.
Someone was watching. Someone was always watching. Harun could feel their eyes boring into his back. Farouk would be expecting him back soon enough.
Suddenly, without warning, a hand closed over his arm and the barrel of a gun jabbed into his ribs.
“Don’t do anything foolish,” a voice admonished in perfect Farsi and Harun froze, fighting the impulse to face his stalker…
“FULLBACK to EAGLE SIX,” Hamid’s voice came over Harry’s headset, “Grab successful. I repeat, I have the subject. Proceeding to your location.”
“Good work,” Harry replied, turning to Major Hossein. “I need you to convince him that it’s in his best interests to cooperate with us. You’re sure that he’s not ideologically invested in this?”
“Harun?” Hossein shook his head. “He’s not a jihadist. He doesn’t have the stomach for it. Give me a lever, and he’ll move.”
“Good. One other thing,” Harry added, a shamefaced grin spreading across his countenance, “I don’t speak a word of Farsi, so I’ll be relying on you to communicate with him during the entire interrogation.”
It was a stately building — an Islamic school, or madrasa, dating back to the Mameluke rule of Jerusalem in the 14th century, built only thirty years after the expulsion of the Crusaders from Palestine by al-Malik al-Ashraf al-Khalil.
It had been the second target of the Lions of Jehovah. Gideon and his men deployed through the gathering crowd — listening carefully, observing. Eavesdropping to be blunt.
The bomb had been planted in the empty assembly hall of the madrasa, and the upper floor had caved in upon it. Whoever had chosen the target had known what they were doing. The entire ground floor of the school was considered sacred, an extension of the al-Haram, and the mood of the crowd was growing violent…
“You are with the Americans, yes?” Harun asked, half-turning back to look at his “escort”.
He received no reply from the grim-faced man at his side as they hustled across the courtyard of the Masjid al-Aqsa. After a moment of uncertainty, Harun decided to take his fate in his own hands. “The bacteria is already in place, within the masjid. I am willing to cooperate with your team — tell them what they need to know to find it.”
Harry was watching the pair as they approached the stairs leading down and around to the surveillance center. So far, so good. Tex was still deployed in the courtyard, making sure Harun wasn’t being followed.
They made it to the staircase, then abruptly went out of camera range. And didn’t reappear. “What’s going on?” Harry demanded, glancing at Abdul Ali, the Jordanian.
The bodyguard glanced from the screens to a map in front of him. “There’s a dead spot right there, ten feet in length. They will reemerge on screen H19, near the bottom of the stairs. Almost outside our door.”
Seconds passed, and nothing. Then minutes, and still no sign of Hamid or his prisoner. Impatiently, Harry activated his radio. “EAGLE SIX to FULLBACK, do you copy?”
Dead silence. “I repeat, come in, FULLBACK.”
There was no answer. Something had gone terribly wrong. Harry looked over at Abdul Ali, a determined look coming into his eyes. “Make sure you have a man guarding the major and come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
Harry reached for his jacket and the H &K UMP-45 submachine gun lying beside it. “I’m going to find my friend.”
They found the two of them lying beneath the staircase, just below where the stairs turned at a forty-five degree angle, continuing downward. A drop of six or seven feet.
At first it appeared that both men were unconscious, but as they turned Shirazi’s nephew over, pulling him from on top of Hamid, they found the knife buried deep between his ribs. There had been no accident here.
Harry knelt over his friend, his fingers pressed against Hamid’s neck, feeling for a pulse. “He’s alive,” Harry announced, relief flooding into his voice.
As if hearing the words, Hamid’s eyes fluttered open, a moan escaping his lips. “What happened?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you,” Harry replied, performing a visual assessment of Hamid’s injuries. His shirt was ripped, a long, shallow furrow slicing across his sternum and upper chest. Blood oozed from a nasty gash to his temple, but most of the blood soaking his clothes seemed to have come from his antagonist. “Harun is dead.”
Hamid closed his eyes, murmuring a curse.
“He said he was going to cooperate,” he whispered ruefully. “Said the bacteria was already in place inside the mosque. He turned on me as we were coming down the stairs. Hadn’t had time to check him for weapons — he pulled a knife. That’s about the last thing I remember.”
“Can you stand?”
Chapter Nineteen
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.