Fuse of Armageddon (26 page)

Safady tapped his teeth as he studied Silver. He opened his eyes wide, theatrically. “I almost forgot,” he said in a tone that implied the opposite. “I did promise that if anyone tried to escape, I would execute a child as well.”

Ganne Tal, Gaza Strip • 10:27 GMT


Patterson and Orphan Annie were well to the side of the two trucks when a couple of the Freedom Crusaders opened a crate Saxon had specified for unloading.

Twenty minutes earlier, the unit had driven the trucks away from the scene of the slaughter in Dayr al-Balah. As Saxon had promised, the five minutes of machine-gun fire hadn’t drawn the attention of authorities; it was a common sound in Gaza, and most residents ignored it.

Now, after a slow drive through the chaos of roads crowded with ancient vehicles, the men and the trucks were in a dusty orchard just outside a village that looked as depressing and dreary as the other villages and towns in the area.

Patterson didn’t know what the plan was; none of the other soldiers did either. Saxon was playing this one step at a time.

The soldiers naturally indulged their curiosity as the crate was opened. Patterson saw an odd mixture of drab, olive-colored uniforms and luxurious, extravagantly colored capes.

“Shut the lid,” Saxon barked.

The two soldiers who had just jimmied it open gave him a quizzical look.

“Now!” Saxon was furious.

The soldiers complied.

“What was the number on that box?” Saxon asked.

“Five.”

Saxon pulled a piece of paper from his shirt pocket and consulted it. He shook his head in disgust. “Number seven—that’s the one we want.”

It took a few minutes of grunting and pushing to put the first crate back in place and find the other one. The soldiers in charge remained on top of the flatbed with the crate. Saxon hopped up and supervised the opening of this one. Once he saw the contents, he gave approval for it to be lifted down.

The lid was pulled off completely. Patterson saw small canisters, similar to the smoke and tear gas containers that had been used in the compound. The crate also contained gas masks. Saxon gave an order for the masks to be distributed, then commanded the men to hide them inside their shirts as well as possible.

The process took only minutes.

Saxon motioned for the men to get back onto the farm trucks. Whatever the next step was, Patterson had no doubt it involved another overwhelming advantage for the Freedom Crusaders.

Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip • 10:34 GMT


In front of Safady, Alyiah stood motionless on her crutches. She had a tentative smile on her face. Two men behind Safady pointed machine guns at Silver.

“Up,” Safady said.

Silver glanced at the thin cable that connected the bunk to the release pin of the grenade duct-taped to his back.

“If you think blowing yourself up in the next few seconds will kill me,” Safady said, “you are wrong. I can clear the room before the grenade goes off. But this girl will die with you. She is not as fast on her crutches.”

Silver had not thought of a suicide bombing. He wasn’t that brave. Slowly he stood and inched away from the bed.

Safady nodded at his men. One of them placed the barrel of his machine gun against Alyiah’s temple.

Is she going to be executed because of the failed escape attempt by Klein and Williams?

“When I tell you,” Safady said, “you will state your name and confirm for me that there is a girl here and that I am able to have her killed. Do you understand?”

“Don’t shoot her,” Silver began to plead but was cut short when Safady punched him in the stomach. Silver gagged, swallowed, and stiffly fell back on the mattress, terrified that too much movement would jerk the pin loose from the grenade.

“Stand up,” Safady said calmly. “When I tell you, you will state your name and confirm for me that there is a girl here and that I am able to have her killed. Yes?”

“Yes,” Silver gasped.

Safady punched some buttons on his cell phone and put it on speakerphone.

“Quinn,” a voice answered.

Safady nodded at Silver. “Now.”

“This is Jonathan Silver. I am confirming for Khaled Safady that he has a girl in front of him and is ready to kill her.”

Safady took the phone off speaker and smiled at Silver as if the man were a dog that had performed a good trick.

Then Safady transformed himself into rage.

“Two Americans tried to escape!” he screamed into the phone. “I will kill two people for this. Before we end this call, two people—one American, one child.”

23

CCTI Headquarters, Tel Aviv • 10:36 GMT


Slow down,” Quinn said into the phone.

“What don’t you understand?” Safady screamed. “Now the hostages pay the price!”

“We need to talk about this,” Quinn said. “If you keep them alive, we can negotiate.”

“And maybe I will kill four people instead of two.” Safady’s breathing was ragged.

Slow it down
, Quinn thought.
Get him talking conversationally.

“I want trust between us,” Quinn answered. “I want you to trust me. I want to be able to trust you.”

“Trust? It’s all over CNN. The Mossad has located me. You tell me if this is true or if the media has a bad source. Then I’ll trust you.”

“Let me speak to the Mossad. I don’t have that answer.”

“Did you hear what Silver said? Do you want the girl killed?”

“I will do what I can,” Quinn said. “But I can’t do the impossible. If you want to accomplish your goals, you need to keep that in mind. If you kill the girl over something that I have no control over, how can we negotiate long enough for you to get what you want?”

“If the report on CNN is true,” Safady said, “what does the Mossad have planned? Let’s talk about that. I swear if I see any soldiers, every American and every orphan will die in here with me.”

“All I can do is pass on your request and respond as soon as I hear.” Quinn wrote on a pad.
Let me confirm Mossad knows his location. Telling truth now helps in negotiations later.

“Do not lie to me,” Safady said. “I’m holding a machine gun to the head of a little girl.”

Quinn knew his orders—to reveal nothing about any Mossad or IDF plans. He pushed the pad toward Hamer.

Hamer glanced at it, then shook his head to emphasize the order.
No!

“You don’t need to hurt anyone,” Quinn said to Safady. “If you do, there’s no turning back. It will change everything.”

“So will lying to me. Listen to this.”

Quinn heard a click on the other end. The release of the safety on the machine gun? Then a muted whimper.

“That’s the girl. And here’s someone else.”

A moment’s silence. Then, “This is Jonathan Silver again. I promise he is serious about his threat. Please—” Silver gurgled as if struck.

“There,” Safady said. “I have one American in front of me. And one girl. Tell me you know where we are. If I don’t believe your answer, she dies. If I don’t believe your answer after that, Silver dies.”

Hamer shook his head no again, writing on the pad,
Don’t reveal what Mossad knows.

“Yes,” Quinn said to Safady. “Mossad knows where you are.”

Hamer slammed his fist on the desk.

Quinn stared back at Hamer and spoke calmly into the phone. “If you kill the girl now, then I’ll have no reason to continue telling the truth. Understand?”

“What does Mossad plan next?”

“I can’t answer an open-ended question like that. How can I know from my office in Tel Aviv?”

“You must know what the Israeli government has decided to do next. Is a special-operations team surrounding us?”

“That’s another question I can’t answer. Don’t hold me responsible for what the government might keep secret from me.”

“But you knew we had been located. You didn’t tell me that.”

“There were some who felt I should tell you immediately. Some disagreed. I am not a decision maker, only a go-between.”

“Yet you did make a decision.” Safady’s voice was deadly. “I think you just told me another lie. Lying to me has severe consequences.”

“What do you think was the lie?” But Quinn knew what his mistake had been.

“You made a decision without them. You had a choice between the girl’s death or telling me the truth. The fact that you answered tells me you are not the go-between you try to pretend to be. I think I will kill her now for the lie.”

“Let me read to you what I wrote about you on a pad at the beginning of our conversation.” Now Quinn was improvising, but he didn’t change the calm tone of his voice. “He is willing to use a landline or cell phone to call instead of using Internet video because he already knows you have found him and has no need to try to hide his location from a landline trace or GPS.”

Quinn paused. “I passed that note to the official in charge as our conversation continued. Because of it, I was allowed to tell you that we know of your location.”

Quinn had long ago learned not to hold his breath during tense moments in negotiating. It was a signal to the person on the other end. But it took effort to breathe evenly over the next five seconds of silence.

“You have one half hour to wire $10 million to my account. I have e-mailed the account number to Mossad,” Safady said.

Quinn felt some relief. This wasn’t ideology. Safady wanted money. That meant he was likely to continue negotiations instead of killing people.

“No one dies yet,” Safady finally said, confirming Quinn’s hunch. “You have half an hour to find out and report back to me what military operation the Israelis have planned.”

“I’m not sure I will be given that information. Even if I am, I’m not sure it will do you any good.”

“That is for me to decide. Half an hour. Or the first dead American will be thrown onto the streets. Maybe I’ll call CNN and let them film it.”

Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip • 10:38 GMT


“Patterson, you’re worth more to me alive than dead,” Saxon said.

“Glad to hear it, sir,” Patterson said dryly. “Is that because there’s no one else to handle the heifer?”

Saxon had motioned for Patterson to step away from the Freedom Crusaders for a private conversation. The trucks were parked in an alley in a poverty-stricken residential section of Khan Yunis, which to Patterson looked like all the other areas of the city that he’d seen so far. Patterson had a grip on the halter, and Orphan Annie stood placidly beside them. Given that they had just passed an open-air market where butchers were slaughtering chickens on blocks, the presence of a heifer did not make them look out of place. Saxon had informed the soldiers it would be a while before the next phase of the operation.

“Don’t think your duty guarding that heifer is a joke,” Saxon said, moving his face to within inches of Patterson’s. “Understand?”

Patterson didn’t understand. So far, this was a lot of work for a red and black heifer. What could be so important about it? Now was not the time to ask, Patterson wisely decided.

Saxon nodded in satisfaction at Patterson’s silence. “You’re worth more to me alive than dead because this is a unit of twenty highly trained men. I can’t afford to lose even one for this final operation.”

Saxon’s jaw tightened when he stopped speaking. He began again after a pause that indicated he was grappling for the way to proceed with whatever he had decided Patterson needed to be told. “Seems to me that I’m on the verge of losing you anyway.”

“Sir?”

“I’m not stupid, Patterson,” Saxon snapped.

“No, sir.”

“Burge told me you weren’t exactly contributing to our last conflict.”

Patterson bit off his reply. It had been too one-sided to be called a conflict.

“You might wonder why I’d even ask Burge such a thing,” Saxon went on. “But you’re not the committed solider you were when you left our training camp. I can see it. So can the others in our unit.” Saxon stared him down, daring Patterson to disagree.

Patterson stared back. It struck him how odd this was, hearing the American accent come from the face of a man with dyed black hair and beard, dark contact lenses, skin colored with dark bronze tanning lotion—a man in clothing that would allow him to walk the streets of this poverty-stricken Arab village and not attract a second glance. Even odder for Patterson was knowing that he appeared the same to Saxon.

“This mission is so important,” Saxon said, “that there is no way in the world I can let you walk away from it. What little you know about it is already too much. If you did try to walk, as you threatened me a few months ago, I’d have you shot. And there isn’t a man in this unit that wouldn’t do it. They believe in our cause.”

The implication was unspoken but there.
You don’t.

“I’m going to tell you more about what’s ahead just so you understand what’s at stake. There’s an orphanage up the street. See it? An old army barracks, once a school, now set up to hold the kids. I know every wall, every door, and every window. Not because I’ve been in it, but because I’ve studied the floor plan for the last two weeks so that I could walk it blindfolded if I needed to.”

Saxon pointed.

The low, square building overlooked the alley and the squalid, mud-walled houses on the other side.

“Jonathan Silver is in there,” Saxon said.

Patterson blinked.

“I thought that would get your attention.” Saxon’s teeth flashed in his dark beard. The tight smile, however, was gone as quickly as it had appeared. “Yeah. Jonathan Silver. And a busload of American hostages. Held by Muslim terrorists. The Americans were kidnapped yesterday. It’s our job to get them out alive. Does that motivate you?”

Patterson nodded, but he was thinking about the significance of Saxon’s having studied the floor plan of the orphanage for two weeks. That a lot of planning had obviously gone into getting the men into Gaza with weapons. That one of the crates held clothing that made no sense at all, especially in terms of a hostage rescue. And that the Americans had been kidnapped only a day ago. Something bigger was going on. And why was Saxon telling him this and letting him realize it?