The Last Days (9 page)

McCoy whipped around, trying to see exactly what was happening, then instinctively shielded her eyes from the intensity of the blast and the heat. Bennett fought to keep control. The Jeep veered to the right to avoid a crash, smashing out onto the beach before the driver clawed his way back onto the main road and jammed the accelerator to the floor. Banacci and his team were gone. The Palestinian gunner now had a clear shot at Snapshot. Bennett was out of options.

The Jeep was gaining on them.

Mitchell and Tracker couldn't believe what they were seeing. At these speeds, the slightest mistake by either driver would be fatal. They still had no way to get friendly forces to them. Whoever survived, if any of them did, might still fall into the hands of Islamic extremists, and then all bets were off. They might be executed on the spot. But that would be the most merciful scenario. More likely they'd be held hostage—tortured, brutalized, without mercy and without much hope of the U.S. or Israelis finding them, much less rescuing them.

 

Bennett fought to maintain his composure.

He didn't want McCoy to know how he felt. How could she stay so calm under fire? Sure, she was trained. She did this for a living. But it was more than that. She didn't seem scared. She didn't seem to fear death—not like he did.

Bennett's shirt was soaked with sweat. He struggled to breathe normally. Adrenaline coursed through his veins. Fifty-caliber rounds sliced past their windows. Snapshot was moving now at well over 120 miles an hour. They were heading deeper and deeper into enemy territory, and he was scared.

Terrified, actually—he was terrified of dying. So many people in his life had died violently. It wasn't just now, or in Jerusalem a few weeks back. During the September 11 attacks, twenty-three people he'd known well had perished in the inferno. Several dozen more he knew in passing died as well. All of them were colleagues in one way or another. All of them worked in the financial services industry. Like Bennett, they typically got to work at five-thirty or six o'clock in the morning. Like him, none of them ever missed a day of work. They didn't take sick days. They didn't take personal days or mental health days or vacations. They were driven, like he was. They were obsessive, like he was. The difference was where they worked. Their firms rented space in the World Trade Center. They worked in the towers. He did not.

GSX could have easily afforded space there, and Bennett would have loved to have an office somewhere north of the eightieth or ninetieth floors—the commanding heights, he called them. But at the time they were looking, the Trade Center didn't have any space available that high, and Bennett didn't want to consider anything lower. He eventually found the thirty-eighth floor of a high-rise office building overlooking Central Park. It wasn't as high as he wanted. It didn't have views as spectacular as those of some of the guys he'd gone to business school with. But something in his gut told him to take it. So he did. And now his friends were all dead.

 

Like a bolt of lightning, the message hit the satellite.

It flashed to Gibraltar. From there, it was cross-linked to the angry skies over Gaza and was instantaneously received by the Trojan Spirit II SATCOM system onboard Predator Six. It was decrypted and fed into the hard drive. Unseen at four thousand feet up and five miles out, the electro-optic, infrared Versatron Skyball 18 immediately engaged its spotter lens, then its zoom lens, then ran a cross-check.

A fraction of a second later, Predator Six put the Jeep squarely in its sights, fired a laser at its engine block, locked on, and fed the image and targeting data back to the ground station on Gibraltar, where it was shot back to Langley. All systems were green.

Tracker made his recommendation. Mitchell concurred.

 

The AGM-114-C Hellfire launched clean.

Screaming toward its prey at Mach 2, the six-foot-long, $25,000 missile was nearly as big as the men it targeted. It left no trail. It made no sound. It was essentially invisible to the naked eye. Seventeen seconds later, it slammed unannounced through the front windshield and turned the Jeep into a death trap.

The explosion stunned them all.

The Jeep was gone. A moment later, convinced they faced no other immediate threats—at least for a few moments—Bennett slowed down and pulled the limo over to the side. When they were safely stopped on the shoulder, he turned and stared at the burning remains. He was grateful to be alive, but couldn't speak. It didn't make sense. What had just happened? His enemies had just been consumed by fire—but how? It was a miracle. That's all he could think of, and he didn't believe in miracles.

Galishnikov also stared out the back window. They were safe, that much he knew. But he badly wanted to be back in Jerusalem, at home with his wife and a good bottle of vodka. Sa'id lifted his head. He got up off the floor and sat back on the seat, staring at the fires behind him. He, too, wanted to be home with his wife and four sons. This was more than he'd bargained for. Perhaps he'd made a terrible mistake. Perhaps he'd been wrong to go into business with Galishnikov, or get mixed up in the peace process. He was sure Galishnikov felt that way. He'd always suspected that just under the surface his Russian Jewish friend despised the Palestinians and thought of them all as terrorists, just as he suspected most Israelis did.

But that really wasn't fair. Galishnikov couldn't have been nicer to him and his family and those who worked for Sa'id's company. But didn't all that was happening just prove the Palestinians couldn't be trusted, that they were a bloodthirsty and barbaric people, that they wouldn't be satisfied until they drove the Jews into the sea?

It didn't prove that at all, of course. This wasn't the work of
all
Palestinians. It was the work of a few extremists, hell-bent on destroying any prospects for peace. Sa'id knew that. He knew it all too well. But did Galishnikov? Did Bennett or McCoy? How could they all have come so far and achieved so little? Actually, it was worse than that. Maybe their vision of Arab-Israeli peace and prosperity was naive, even dangerous. It was now clear to Sa'id, they'd be lucky just to make it through the day.

 

A cheer went up inside the war room.

Mitchell got back on the line with Kirkpatrick.

“You see that?” he asked.

“Sure did,” said the National Security advisor. “I've been giving the VP a play-by-play. He's on the other line—about to call the president and give him the good news. How soon can you get here from Langley?”

“Twenty minutes?” said Mitchell.

“Make it fifteen.”

McCoy glanced at Bennett.

She knew what he was thinking. After all these years, she could read him like a book. And he knew she could, which made him uncomfortable. So she didn't say anything. He'd talk when he was ready. Until then, it was better to leave him alone with his thoughts. She looked back at the wreckage and silently said a prayer of thanks. They were all still alive, and she knew why. She knew exactly what had happened. She knew what Marsha Kirkpatrick had just authorized, what Jack Mitchell had just ordered, what Danny Tracker had just orchestrated. It wasn't exactly fire from heaven, the kind that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, not that far from where they now were. But it was certainly a miracle. Of that, she had no doubt.

 

Andrews was dead ahead.

MacPherson could see the snow and ice-covered trees of Prince George's County, Maryland, as Air Force One approached the home of the Eighty-ninth Airlift Wing, the Eighty-ninth Security Forces Squadron, and some 24,000 military and civilian personnel who lived and worked on the country's premier air force base.

The call from the VP was certainly good news—but now his thoughts were shifting back to Stuart Iverson's fate.

Bennett and CIA director Jack Mitchell were taking a completely opposite position from Justice and the FBI. What message did it send if people with information that could lead to the arrest and conviction of terrorist cells became convinced they couldn't cut a deal with the U.S. government? Of course Iverson deserved the chair or worse. But this was no longer about one man. It was about the fate of a nation in the fight of its life with a terrorist network about which the CIA obviously knew far too little.

“Andrews control, this is Air Force One, over,” radioed the pilot.

“Go ahead, Air Force One, this is Andrews.”

“Request permission to land, over.”

“Roger that, Air Force One. You're cleared for immediate landing on runway One-Lima. We're at Threatcon Delta. The base is locked down, ready for your arrival.”

“Good to hear, Andrews. Gambit's wings ready when we get there?”

“That's affirmative, sir. Marine One is fired up and ready to roll. Apache security package is also on the tarmac and ready when you are.”

“Thank you, Andrews. ETA, four minutes.”

“Roger that, and welcome home, Air Force One.”

“Thanks, guys—it's good to be back.”

 

At Langley, rivers of information were now pouring in.

It came in from Gaza Station, from the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv and the consulate in East Jerusalem. It came from Cairo Station in Egypt and Beirut Station in Lebanon. Reports were also beginning to flow in from Damascus and Amman and Riyadh, and it was threatening to overwhelm the Agency's ability to sort, process, and analyze it all in a timely, effective manner.

CIA operations officers in the field were pressing their informants hard to give them any scraps of hard data or rumors or whispers—anything at all—that might help explain how this could have happened and what else might be coming. At the same time, NSA and CIA analysts were simultaneously trying to track all kinds of electronic intercepts, as well as Arabic radio and television coverage of the mushrooming crisis.

The problem was that this was a classic case of drinking from a fire hose. They had too much information and it was coming in too fast. The buzz on the Arab street and among foreign embassies and intelligence services and terrorist factions—what the CIA typically called chatter—had become a deafening roar. Theories and threats and counterthreats were being bandied about throughout the region. But what was real? What was true?

 

“Snapshot, this is Prairie Ranch, do you copy?”

Kirkpatrick's voice startled Bennett and McCoy. There'd been no traffic on the Black Tower wireless radio system for the last few minutes, just an eerie silence, a silence that spoke volumes about just how alone in Gaza they really were.

“Prairie Ranch, this is Snapshot—go ahead,” said McCoy.

“You guys OK?”

“We are—just trying to catch our breath. Thanks for the help.”

“Hey, what good is a forty-million-dollar toy if you can't take it out for a spin?”

Bennett jumped into the conversation.

“Now what?” he asked.

“You're wondering why I sent you south?”

“You got it.”

“It's pretty simple, actually—do you know where the Bat Cave is?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Bat Cave,”
Kirkpatrick repeated.
“McCoy knows what I'm talking about.”

“Look, we haven't got a lot of time to chitchat down here.”

“You mean Gaza Station?” McCoy asked.

“Exactly—the guys in the field call it the Bat Cave.”

“I've spoken with JZ,” said McCoy, regaining her bearings. “But no, I don't know where it is.”

“Stay put. I've got a guy coming to get you. Let me check his ETA.”

The line was silent. They were on hold.

McCoy opened the glove compartment and fished out a pair of high-powered night-vision binoculars. She scanned the roads, apartment buildings, and storefronts around them. She could see a VW van about a mile and a half away down the coastal road. It was approaching without headlights or lights of any kind. The night-vision technology picked up the heat signature of the engine and McCoy used the binoculars to zoom in. No license plate. No markings of any kind. But it was coming up fast.

Was it hostile or friendly? They were about to find out.