Page 32 of The Last Days

  not to order punitive strikes into Palestinian nerve centers.

  MacPherson was taking a huge risk, and he knew it. But once committed, he pulled out all the stops. If the United States was going to “own” Palestine for the next few weeks, it was going to stop at nothing to make sure every known and suspected terrorist was taken off the streets.

  “I want Israel blocked from any possible incursion into Palestinian areas, and I want Palestinian terrorists hunted down and rounded up until they’re gone, all of them—no exceptions, no regrets.”

  That was the blunt message he’d delivered to the troops through armed forces radio, and that was the sound bite that led the evening news Wednesday night in the United States and throughout the world. According to the White House, it was a MacPherson original—unscripted and unrehearsed. Or so went the spin from the press office and their surrogates. Either way, it was having its intended effect. International and congressional support was holding, for the moment at least.

  Also as much under the heading of international public relations as operational necessity, U.S. forces were taking special care to secure Christian, Jewish, and Muslim holy sites, and had done so from the opening hours of Operation Palestinian Freedom. Just three hours after Bennett and his team were extracted from Gaza, U.S. Ranger teams fast roped into Bethlehem to surround the Church of the Nativity, the traditional memorial site of Jesus’ birth.

  Israeli intelligence had started picking up reports that suicide bombers were planning to attack the church and destroy it in a lightning-quick raid. Doron ordered those reports sent immediately to the Pentagon and CIA, where officials—to their credit—moved quickly and decisively to avoid a religious and archaeological catastrophe of the first order.

  The president ordered in the Rangers. Within hours, sites like Rachel’s Tomb and Abraham’s Tomb were being secured by U.S. forces, as were two dozen other sites on a list personally drawn up by Prime Minister Doron and faxed to the president. Every few hours, Press Secretary Chuck Murray stepped back to the podium to announce an updated list of holy sites that were now secure in American hands. At Marsha Kirkpatrick’s suggestion— and the president’s approval—Murray also did his first live broadcast interviews with Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi Television, as well as an informal press “gaggle” with reporters from Arab and other Muslim countries.

  It was a full court press, and this White House was working all the angles.

  Nadir Hashemi was glued to CNN.

  Holed up in a $49-a-night motel room by a truck stop in rural Arkansas, just outside of Little Rock, he was taking no chances. Not anymore, at least.

  Less than an hour after he’d crossed the border, the United States went to Threat Level Red, triggering an immediate closure of all borders and the most sweeping security lockdown in U.S. history. But for nearly twenty-four hours, the Viper had been oblivious to any of it.

  He hadn’t been listening to the radio. He’d pulled into rest stops only long enough to fill his tank and empty his bladder, never long enough to watch television or listen to the frantic talk of fellow diners, worrying about what this new war in and for the Holy Land might mean to them. It might have been a fatal mistake. What he didn’t know could kill him, Nadir told himself. He had to be more careful, and that meant tracking the news on the hour.

  The FBI, he quickly learned, was conducting a massive manhunt in the United States, Canada, and Mexico for a Mrs. Ruth Bennett, the sixty-nine-year-old mother of Jonathan Meyers Bennett, the senior White House advisor and chief architect of the administration’s Arab-Israeli peace plan apparently now scuttled by the violence spreading throughout the territories and the introduction of U.S. peacemaking and peacekeeping forces. In light of the nation’s threat level, officials were listing the woman as missing and presumed kidnapped, and the FBI and DHS—Department of Homeland Security— were offering a reward of $5 million for any information leading to the safe retrieval of Mrs. Bennett, and the indictment and conviction of the perpetrators.

  At the same time, a massive federal and international manhunt was under way in search of anyone who could even remotely be a possible suicide bomber, inside or headed for the United States. Palestinians and those of Arab origin were prime suspects, of course, and all sorts of organizations in Washington and Detroit were crying foul and raising red flags about the prospect of mass numbers of civil liberties violations.

  But a report a few hours ago on MSNBC quoted an unnamed senior Homeland Security Department source saying officials had reason to believe a small handful of non-Arabs might also have been recruited to carry out the attacks. Speculation seemed to be centering on young to middle-aged American and European women who were currently dating or were married to men of Middle East descent, or had done so within the last three to five years.

  Meanwhile, the airtight security federal officials initially imposed only on Washington for the president’s return from the NATO summit in Madrid

  was now being replicated in major cities throughout the country, particularly those up and down the eastern seaboard. This posed a serious problem.

  Nadir was hoping to pick up his supply of plastic explosives from a sleeper agent in Atlanta, and several firearms from another contact in Savannah. From there, the plan was to try to slip into Washington or New York for New Year’s Eve. But he was still at least a good ten to twelve hours away from Atlanta, and it was almost midnight Thursday, the thirtieth of December. At this point, there was almost no way he could reach his intended target on schedule. With all the roadblocks, checkpoints, and other security measures up across the country, it would be hard enough to connect with his suppliers on time.

  Nadir let out a string of curses in Arabic. The world had gone mad. Palestine was burning. Gaza was on fire. And American infidels were desecrating the land of his mother and her family. He seethed with a rage he’d for so long controlled. He wanted to bolt. He wanted to jump back in the car, pop down more amphetamines and tromp on the accelerator. He could make it to Atlanta in less than a day. He had to. But how?

  It wasn’t a matter of mileage and ground speed. He had to be careful. He had to watch his back and his steps. He couldn’t afford to be caught speeding, or under the influence of narcotics. He couldn’t afford to be caught at all. His father and brothers were counting on him. So was his mother, wherever she was in a Paradise that awaited them all. His rage would find its outlet. The Great Satan would feel his fury.

  Patience, Nadir, he could hear his mother whisper.

  Patience, young man, and you will go far.

  The morning sun was not yet visible on the Mount of Olives, the site chosen for the Israeli and newly appointed Palestinian prime ministers for the beginning of their peace talks.

  Nor would it be that Friday. Storms still blackened the skies, though the forecast called for a break in the wind and rain over the next few days. Not that it mattered to Jon Bennett, his team or the two prime ministers in his care. They weren’t anywhere near the real Mount of Olives. They were now half a world away from Jerusalem, in a labyrinth of caves and secret military bunkers, deep inside a mountain of Jurassic limestone, drilled at great cost by British forces trying to defend Europe from the Nazi’s gathering storm.

  The “Mount of Olives” was a code name handpicked by President MacPherson, and it was a name known to only a few dozen U.S. military and intelligence officers, a handful of senior White House and State De-

  partment officials, and the British prime minister and his top staff. It referred to the secure, undisclosed location of the peace talks about to begin, and every measure was being taken to prevent that location from leaking out. There were, after all, lives at stake, and there were men who would stop at nothing to destroy the lives of those now gathered in this mountain. Thus, of the few people entrusted to know the term “Mount of Olives,” fewer still knew precisely to what it referred. Even Bennett and McCoy didn’t know, not until they’d arrived under the cover of darkness at a place most simply called the Roc
k.

  Towering over the entrance to the Mediterranean, the Rock of Gibraltar was three miles long and fourteen hundred feet high. The ancient world considered it one of the two Pillars of Hercules—the other being the North African Mount Hacho on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar—not to mention the very “ends of the earth.” The tiny peninsula below the Rock was only six and a half square miles in size and home to less than thirty thousand people. But however one measured it physically, Gibraltar was of incalculable strategic value—the choke point between Europe and North Africa, the gateway to the Mediterranean.

  Churchill’s forces survived massive aerial bombardments inside the Rock’s hundred-and-forty caves and underground bunkers. Eisenhower successfully directed the rescue of North Africa from these very same installations. Now the Brits and Americans maintained highly sophisticated electronic intelligence gathering facilities on the Rock, including a state-of-the-art Echelon listening station, linked by secure satellite ground stations and digitally encrypted fiber-optic pipelines run by the National Security Agency.

  Gibraltar remained a source of contention between Britain and Spain as it had for nearly three centuries. The Spanish yielded control to London in the Treaty of Utrecht in July 1713, and had been moaning and complaining about the deal ever since. The dispute was a thorn in the flesh of both sides. But for the past three hundred years it had been largely political, not military in nature, so Gibraltar was now the peaceful, prosperous home to Muslims, Jews, and Christians, the homes and shops and houses of worship, not to mention Pizza Hut and Burger King franchises, increasingly ubiquitous among free and modern people the world over.

  A disputed territory free from terrorism and war? What better place, thought Bennett, to seek a new peace and prosperity for the people of the Book. All they had to do now was keep it a secret.

  Bennett finally got up at 5:00 A.M. local time.

  Another restless, fitful night was over. He’d been up three times since going to bed at midnight, checking his e-mails and scouring the Internet for updates about his mother, the hunt for the suicide bombers on their way to the U.S., and the latest developments in the West Bank and Gaza.

  The news of the reward should have encouraged him. Five million dollars? Maybe he should double it, or match it himself. He had the money. McCoy would give everything she had to have her mother or father back. He should, too.

  He tried not to think about where his mother could be at the moment. He tried not to let himself think about what she could be going through. But it wasn’t easy. He’d seen some horrible things in the past month, and been briefed about even worse. Bennett knew what these people were capable of, and they made Al Capone look like Mother Teresa.

  The thought of his own flesh and blood in the hands of these monsters almost made him sick. But what else could he do? He couldn’t let it paralyze him. Somehow he had to stay focused. His responsibilities would consume his time over the next few days and weeks and demand his full attention. The full resources of the American government were doing everything humanly possible to track her down and bring her home safely. It would do no good to micromanage every move the FBI and the DHS made. He would have to trust them. He had no other choice.

  That, of course, was easier said than done. For the past thirty-six hours— ever since they’d been airlifted out of Alpha Zone by SEAL Team Eight— he’d been a wreck. Unable to sleep. Unable to keep food down. Running a slight fever. Nightmares. Flashbacks. And early signs of dehydration. The chief physician on the Reagan put him on an IV the minute he arrived, and for the next twenty-four hours he was on forced bed rest. So were Sa’id and Galishnikov, it turned out. Bennett was almost relieved to hear it—not because he wanted them to be suffering, only because it made him feel slightly less guilty at not being strong enough to have sailed through Gaza unscathed.

  Physically, McCoy, Tariq, and Nazir had weathered it best. But emotionally, the loss of Ziegler, Maroq, and Hamid was almost too much. Bennett’s team wasn’t on bed rest, per se. But they were being encouraged to rest and read and spend some time with the chaplains onboard. What they all needed was some serious R&R, a chance to get away for a few weeks, maybe longer, and take their time recovering. But such rest was not in the cards. Not for some time to come.

  Bennett looked over at the half-empty bottle of sedatives he’d been pre-

  scribed to bring down his blood pressure and help him get some badly needed rest. They weren’t helping much. But he certainly couldn’t take any more. He had work to do, and time was of the essence.

  He couldn’t believe it was already the last day of the year. In many ways it was the day for which he’d been preparing for nearly an entire decade. He finally got out of bed for the last time and went over to the large desk in the guest suite to which he’d been assigned. The room, the very one used by Eisenhower, had no windows, as it was deep inside the Rock. But it was comfortable enough, with a spacious work area, multiline phone, cable television, broadband Internet connection and a small, round conference table and four maroon leather chairs.

  Sitting down before his notebook computer again, he clicked onto the Internet and scanned the headlines where he found a little good news. Operation Palestinian Freedom was proceeding apace and racking up tangible victories, bit by bit. The Pentagon was now reporting that Bethlehem, Jericho, and their surrounding towns and villages were now securely in U.S. hands. So was the Jordan River valley, a two-mile security perimeter around the outskirts of East Jerusalem, and the main thoroughfare between Jerusalem and Jericho.

  A sudden chill ran through him. It was strange, in a way. Bennett had never been to Sunday school. He’d never read the Old Testament all the way through, and barely skimmed the New Testament during a college class on comparative religions. Yet somehow, just reading the names of these ancient biblical towns stirred something inside him. These were not just names of modern-day battlegrounds. They were keys to a lost world, metaphysically linked across space and time to the icons of Western civilization, men such as Abraham and Moses, Caleb and Joshua, Jesus and the disciples. These were ancient battlegrounds, where apocalyptic wars were once fought with Persia (now Iran), Babylon (now Iraq), the Assyrians (now modern-day Syria), the Egyptians, and with the Philistines of Gaza on the coastal plains of the Mediterranean. Now such cities were again frontpage news.

  It was surreal, and unsettling, though he couldn’t precisely put his finger on why. It felt at once ominous and inevitable. Babylon was back in the news after three hundred centuries buried under the desert sands. Men were trying to blow up the Temple Mount and rebuild a temple laid waste nearly twenty centuries before. Philistines and Israelites were at war again, forty centuries after David and Goliath.

  Why? What was happening? What did it mean? Bennett didn’t know. All he knew for certain was that something was taking him where he did not mean to go. He was being drawn, against his will, into the epicenter of the

  world’s darkest, cruelest conflict. Men and women were dying all around him. The destruction he’d seen just in the last few days were beyond his deepest fears.

  But it seemed there was nothing he could do to resist or slow his journey. Unseen forces were forcing him further and further away from the safe and familiar. He was being driven out into dark waters, out into the shadow lands. No longer was he in control of his own destiny. He wondered if he ever had been. He was suddenly a branch being swept along by a raging river, a river that carried prophets and priests and poets before him, a river whose increasingly swift currents now threatened to consume him without mercy, without warning.

  THIRTY SIX

  No other part of the world cast the same spell.

  The more Bennett stared at the headlines on his computer, and the more he thought about the past few weeks, the more it seemed the world was hypnotized by the Middle East—obsessed with its oil, intoxicated by its mysteries, seduced by its tales of the supernatural. And so was he.

  Even at the peak of the bipolar world
—the East-West cold war clash between free people and the Evil Empire—the Middle East was the main event. The central battleground. The ‘48 war. The Suez Crisis of ‘56. The Six Day War of ‘67. The war of attrition. The Yom Kippur War of ‘73. The Arab oil embargo. The explosion of OPEC and petrodollars. The civil war in Lebanon in ‘75. The Israeli invasion of ‘82. The atheists armed the Muslims. The Christians armed the Jews. Thousands died. Millions more were maimed and orphaned. There were other skirmishes, other hot zones. But again and again the world’s attention was drawn back to the Middle East, as it was being drawn again. Why?

  McCoy didn’t think the term Middle East quite fit. Nor did Near East Asia. Nor did the Arab world. Not precisely. She called it NAMESTAN— North Africa, the Middle East, and the Stans (Afghanuftzn, Pakistan, and the Muslim former Soviet Central Asian republics such as Kazakhstan, Uzbeki-stan, Tajikistan and the others). But by any name it smelled just as foul.

  Without question, the region comprised the most fought-over real estate in the history of mankind. And it wasn’t just over oil. That might partially explain recent times, but not the long arc of history. The Romans hadn’t conquered the region for oil. Nor had the Ottomans. The Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, and Persians slaughtered each other for control of NAMESTAN for thousands of years before anyone knew of the black gold buried under its sands.

  Why then did all roads lead to it, and to the jewel at its navel, the city of Jerusalem, the City of Peace? What were the mystical sirens that drew the kings and conquerors of history? Why were a few hundred reporters assigned to Beijing, but more than two thousand to Jerusalem? What was the narcotic that transformed rational men in this part of the world into bloodthirsty killers, willing to annihilate women and children and entire towns and villages to possess it? What was drawing him?