Something-anything-would have been better than nothing. But she hadn’t heard from him at all in nearly two months. He felt terrible. He had to fix this, and fast.
38
Negev Desert, Israel
Captain Avi Yaron muted his radio and closed his eyes.
“Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha olam,” he prayed, “she hehiyanu v’kiy’manu v’higi’anu la z’man ha ze.”
Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season.
With that, he throttled up his engines, carefully veered his F-15 out of its underground bunker, taxied onto the tarmac, and waited for clearance. Behind him, thirty-seven more F-15s and F-16s fueled up, revved up, and got in line. This was it. The night for which they had been waiting, preparing, and hoping over the past six months.
Yaron looked out at the beehive of activity across Hatzerim Air Force Base, not far from the ancient city of Beersheva, in the heart of the Negev Desert. Most people who knew anything about the place thought of Hatzerim as the home of the Israeli Air Force Museum. Only a handful of people even in Israel knew the IAF had been secretly retrofitting the facilities to house several new air attack wings.
Yaron’s hands were jittery. Were the intel guys right? Was there really a narrow window when neither Russian nor American spy satellites were in position to watch them? How could they really know precisely what time that window opened and shut?
He hated to wait. He was desperate to fly, desperate to engage the enemy, drop his ordnance, and save his people. But life in the Israeli Air Force these days seemed all about waiting. The pilots waited for the green light from the commanders. The commanders waited for the generals. The generals waited for the minister of defense. The defense minister waited for the prime minister. The prime minister waited for the president of the United States.
What if they waited too long? What if Iran got the Bomb and set into motion another holocaust?
The time for waiting was over, Yaron believed. It was time to strike first.
He checked his instruments. Everything was ready, as was he, and as he waited for permission to launch, his thoughts drifted to Yossi, his twin brother. He checked his watch. He could picture Yossi in his F-16 at that very moment, taxiing out to the tarmac at Ramat David Air Base in the north, not far from Har Megiddo, from whose name came the term Armageddon. He wished he could shout a shalom to him, but radio silence was the rule of the day, and it was inviolable.
Just then the ground crew gave him the signal. It was go time.
Yaron didn’t hesitate. He put the pedal to the metal and took his Strike Eagle to forty-eight thousand feet in less than a minute. Behind him, the skies filled with fighter jets, long-range bombers, and fuel tankers. A devastating armada had just been unleashed for the twelve-hundred-kilometer flight, the longest mission in which any of these young pilots, navigators, and weapons systems officers had ever been engaged.
39
Tehran, Iran
The Bell 214 Huey took off just after evening prayers.
As it gained altitude, the Iranian military helicopter gently banked north and headed for the Alborz Mountains, site of the Supreme Leader’s heavily guarded retreat complex on Mount Tochal. At 3,965 meters, Tochal was the second-highest peak in the range and was well away from the smog and the noise and the congestion of the capital and from all the palace intrigues and political machinations that increasingly vied for his attention and sapped his strength.
Haunted by growing fears of an imminent Israeli attack, the graying, bespectacled Hamid Hosseini, now seventy-six, looked out over the twinkling lights of Tehran, a city of eight and a half-million souls. He had never imagined rising to the heights of his master. He had never sought to be the nation’s Supreme Leader. But now a great burden rested on Hosseini’s shoulders. He wished he could sit with his master and pray and seek Allah’s counsel together, as they had done on so many occasions over the years. But it was not to be. There was a time in a man’s life when he no longer had the blessing of his mentor’s attention or wisdom or even his presence, a time when a man had to make fateful decisions on his own, come what may. This was one such moment, and Hosseini steeled himself for what lay ahead.
Upon landing at the retreat site, an aide slipped the Supreme Leader a note, informing him that his guests were waiting for him in the dining room. Hosseini read the note but would not be rushed. Flanked by his security detail, he headed first for his master bedroom, instructed the aide to give him some time alone, then closed the door and sat on the bed.
His mind was flooded with questions. They had all been asked and answered before, some of them dozens of times. But they had to be asked once more. Were they truly ready? How long would it take? Were they certain they would be successful? Could they guarantee complete secrecy? Moreover, if they were discovered before they were ready, could they survive the repercussions?
Hosseini’s top advisors were confident that victory was at hand. He was not. They believed the benefits far outweighed the risks. He feared they were telling him what they thought he wanted to hear, not the truth-at least not the whole truth. They had the luxury of being wrong. He did not. And that, he reasoned, made all the difference.
Hosseini slipped off the bed and onto his knees. He faced the windows, thus facing Mecca, and began to pray.
“O mighty Lord,” he implored, “I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one who will fill this world with justice and peace. Make us worthy to prepare the way for his arrival, and lead us with your righteous hand. We long for the Lord of the Age. We long for the Awaited One. Without him-the Righteously Guided One-there can be no victory. With him, there can be no defeat. Show me your path, O mighty Lord, and use me to prepare the way for the coming of the Mahdi.”
It was his standard prayer, the one he had prayed thousands of times over the years. It was also a secret-one he had carefully kept hidden, even from those closest to him. As a closet “Twelver,” he longed to see the Mahdi come in his lifetime. And now, he sensed, that time was drawing close.
Thirty minutes went by. Then an hour.
Suddenly there was a knock on the door. Hosseini did not answer but continued praying. A few moments later, there was another knock.
Annoyed, the Supreme Leader tried to ignore it and maintain his focus. When it happened a third time, however, he rose, stepped to his dresser, pulled out the top drawer, retrieved his nickel-plated revolver, and opened the bedroom door. He was so enraged he could barely breathe.
“Everyone is waiting for you, Your Excellency,” his young male aide said.
“Did I not ask to be left undisturbed?” Hosseini fumed.
The aide blanched and began to back away. “You did, but I thought…”
“You wicked son of a Jew!” Hosseini shouted. “How dare you disturb me as I enter the holy place!”
With that, Hosseini shot the man in the face.
The sound of the explosion echoed through the retreat facility. Hosseini stared at the dead man as a pool of blood formed on the hardwood floor of the hallway. Then he knelt down and dipped his hands in the blood and began to pray aloud.
“Allahu Akbar. Highly glorified are you, O Allah. The Prophet-peace be upon him-taught us that when we find those who are unfaithful and disobedient infidels, we must ‘kill them wherever you may come upon them,’ that we must ‘seize them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every conceivable place.’ The Prophet-peace be upon him-taught us to ‘strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and be stern against them’ for ‘their final refuge is hell.’ May this sacrifice, therefore, be acceptable in your sight.”