Countdown to Mecca (20 page)

To say that Ashlock was resentful of his circumstance, was to say the very least. He was a soldier, not a sycophant. His job was to close with and destroy the enemy, either bodily or through the extension of the men and matériel at his command, and he had done exactly that, with distinction, for the past thirty-five years. Now that he realized he was to be permanently passed over—left to ride out his final years of service either accepting minor commands or marching the halls of the Pentagon as a glorified dog robber for generals who had never been on a battlefield—he had decided to go forward with his retirement plans.

The upper echelons of the United States Military, from the president down through the entire General Staff, had forgotten their collective duty. They had grown soft and indecisive in their misguided desire for peace at any cost, satisfied to let the tide of Islam slowly envelope the world. How many Middle Eastern governments would have to fall to Muslim extremists before America's leaders woke up and realized the folly of their
peaceful
ambitions? First the Egyptian government had been overthrown and taken over by Hamas. Then Gaddafi was deposed with the help of American air support, only to see Al Qaeda move in and set up house. And now it looked as though Syria would be the next to fall. Ashlock believed that something bold and decisive had to be done to cauterize the growing malignancy of Islam, and since no one in the upper echelons of any Western government possessed the resolve to take this decisive action, it appeared that he would have to do it for them.

Checking his watch and seeing that it was time to go, he got up from his chair and reluctantly left his air-conditioned trailer where was stationed atop Mt. Keren just five miles over the border from Egypt into Israel. He instantly felt the oven-like desert heat on his face as he gazed out over the Israeli terrain spread out far below him in all directions, reminding him briefly of the view from Masada. For the past year now, he had been the commander of a highly classified American-run radar installation with 120 American technicians and combat personnel under his command. The only foreign troops stationed on Israeli soil, their mission was to maintain a close radar watch on Tehran one thousand miles away to the northeast. The classified X-Band radar they used to perform this mission was so powerful that it could detect a soccer ball kicked into the air from nearly three thousand miles away.

The two portable, school bus–size radar units were painted in desert khaki and discretely positioned behind protective concrete blast barriers on the far northern side of the base where they were monitored constantly by American technicians in bulky radiation suits worn to protect them from the extremely heavy radiation generated by the radar units.

In the event the Iranian government ever made the fateful decision to launch one of their Shahab-3 missiles at Tel Aviv, this radar installation would detect it within seconds of launch, allowing for effective countermeasures to be taken before the missile ever reached Israeli air space. The Israelis' own radar would not pick it up for a full seven minutes, far too late for an intercept. So this significant time difference in detection made the American early warning system an invaluable asset to the security of Tel Aviv, as well as a powerful bargaining tool for the United States to use in curbing the aggressive natures of many hard-line First Strike advocates within the Israeli government.

Ashlock got into his car and drove across the small base to the gate were he was passed through by a pair of American soldiers armed with M4 carbines. He drove down the mountain and headed out into the desert. Within the hour, he pulled up to a large government garage used to house earth moving equipment, eleven miles south of the Negev Nuclear Research Center. He parked near three other civilian vehicles, all of them bearing either diplomatic or government license plates, and went inside.

Standing around a battered contractor's table near a dirty D10N Caterpillar track hoe were six pensive looking men, four Israelis and two Americans. Both of the Americans were CIA agents in their forties. Two of the Israelis were of the same age, both agents with the Israeli Mossad. But the other two Israelis were ten years younger than the rest, both of them nuclear physicists working for the Israeli government. They were also brothers, though this wasn't immediately obvious to look at them with one of them being Orthodox while the other was clearly a Hasidic Jew with the curled sidelocks of hair hanging down in front of his ears. Both of them worked at the Negev nuclear plant where the entire world understood that Israel had probably manufactured close to two hundred nuclear weapons since the plant had first gone on line in the late 1950s. In a basement of the plant, several levels down, the Israelis also ran chemical and bacteriological weapons programs. These were launched in the middle 1960s when there was concern about the widespread destruction the high yield bombs would cause as well as decades of lingering radiation. Nerve agents, blood agents, and choking agents were produced here along with disease agents ranging from anthrax to Ebola. There was a secondary reason for producing these other weapons: in the event of an attack from any of its neighbors, the bomb runs would release these toxins and cause untold devastation in those border nations.

“I take it we're all here then,” Ashlock said, “because we've decided to go through with this?”

One of the CIA men, a gruff looking fellow wearing a Yankees cap with gnarled hands and a sunburned face shook his head, jerking his thumb at the Hasid. “Curly here's got cold feet.”

“Watch your mouth!” said the Hasid's older brother. “He has valid points!” The older brother was tall and thin, scholarly looking with a prominent nose and thick black hair. His name was Kolton.

The CIA man chuckled. His name was Chevrier, a former Navy SEAL from the first Gulf War. He glanced at his partner, a thinner man with a hatchet face and dark sandy blond hair. “Hear that, Parks? He's got valid points.”

Parks smirked and shook his head, trying not to laugh. If Chevrier was the muscle in their little CIA team, Parks was definitely the brains.

Kolton took a step around the table, but one of the Mossad men, another military looking man named Laidlaw with a shaved head and goatee, put a hand on his chest to stop him. “You'd better grow a thicker skin, boy, or you're likely to get your neck broken.”

Ashlock stared at Chevrier long enough to make sure the CIA man felt the weight of his gaze then turned to the younger brother who stood looking defiant on the far side of the table. “What's on your mind, Isaiah?”

Isaiah was the smartest man in the room at twenty-nine years of age. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and looked like the classic Jewish nerd. “The target is wrong,” he said simply.

“Wrong how?” Ashlock asked, wondering if he had judged the younger man correctly.

“Destroying Mecca will leave no center to the Muslim faith,” Isaiah said. “The war will never end because they'll have no reason to ever quit. We'll have to kill every last one of them.”

“Ha!” Chevrier said with a sneer. “What's wrong with that? Isn't that the idea?”

“No, it isn't,” Isaiah said, mater-of-factly, pushing his glasses up onto his nose. “The idea is to eliminate the extremist threat to the civilized world, but by destroying Mecca you instantly turn every single one of the peaceful into another warrior extremist. You fill him with hatred and you force him to fight. It's obvious if you take a moment to think about it. It's a total war, a war of complete annihilation.”

“Which is exactly what we want,” Chevrier said.

Isaiah looked around the room at the others. “I can't agree to that,” he said, shaking his head. “It's not a sound strategy. Look at it another way … if you want to control a man, do you murder his entire family? No. You murder one child and leave the rest alive, making sure he knows the lives of others depend on his cooperation. After that, he has no choice but to do as he's told. You can only destroy Mecca one time, gentlemen. After that, there's nothing left to threaten them with. You'll have to kill them all, and I don't think we can count on the Western powers to do that. There will be too much guilt. They'll fight the war halfheartedly—just as they're doing now—and it will drag on forever … just as it has for two thousand years.”

Chevrier grumbled, mumbling something unintelligible under his breath.

Colonel Ashlock stood watching the others, his arms crossed as he waited to see who would speak next. He had already decided what had to happen, but he was counting on one of the Israelis to do the actual dirty work for him.

Laidlaw lit a cigarette, tossing the pack onto the table with a sigh. “Listen, I understand what you're saying, Isaiah, but there are no compromises that work in this situation. None at all. When big guns are available, you don't use peashooters. You of all people know this. Otherwise, why bother to use it? We have to hit their biggest target and kill as many as we can because after the war begins, the West will have to keep it conventional, and that means—”

“Is that what you think?” Isaiah interrupted. “You honestly believe the already dangerously unstable Muslim government of Pakistan will sit on their own nuclear arsenal if Mecca is hit with a weapon of mass destruction? Allow me to remind you … after the remains are finally analyzed, the source of the components used to make the bomb will be traced right back here.”

Ashlock held up a hand to caution him. “That's not necessarily so. Only the U.S. has the requisite data to trace the source back to Israel, because nobody else even knows for sure you people have weapons of mass destruction, and the U.S. isn't going release that kind of information to the Muslim world … for very obvious reasons.”

The other Mossad man cleared his throat, speaking up for the first time. His name was Frank, and he looked more like a banker than a Mossad agent. “Which site do you propose we hit instead, Isaiah? I ask, because even hitting Medina feels like a half measure to me. You make the Islamists every bit as angry, but you kill maybe half as many. My problem is the mathematics of the thing.”

Isaiah crossed his arms, glancing furtively at his brother before he spoke the words they had agreed on the night before. “I propose we hit the Dome of the Rock.”

“You're insane!” Laidlaw blurted. “Destroy one of our own cities?”

“Think about it!” Isaiah urged. “Isn't it clear to you? Hours before the detonation, Al Qaeda announces to the world they've stolen a weapon of some kind from Israel. People will be afraid, but no one will truly believe it because they're such liars … but then when it actually detonates—Oh, my God! Can you imagine the mutual rage and panic? Both sides will blame the other, and both sides will rush to war in earnest.” He looked at Ashlock in the hopes of finding a supporter. “And
your
country, Colonel, will
have
to come in on Israel's side or risk seeing the world's oil reserves fall into the hands of God knows who. Not to mention the Jewish American community will demand it!”

Ashlock was hard pressed to keep the smile from his face as he stood pretending to think it over. “Well,” he said carefully, “it does rather lessen our concerns over the isotopes, doesn't it?”

Laidlaw drew from the cigarette and stood staring at him. “You're saying you agree with this insanity?”

“Don't look at the colonel!” Chevrier said. “Hitting Jerusalem was Curly's idea over there, but I have to admit I like it. Wars are won by the will of the people. If we hit Mecca, we definitely start a war, but who knows how much motivation the West will have to finish it? On the other hand, if we do hit Jerusalem … well, hey, we piss off every Christian and Jew on the planet … and you know damn well they'll take action then! Hell, we might even find a way to get Iran blamed for the whole damn thing! Nice thinking, Curly. I had you all wrong.” He laughed and bummed a smoke off of Laidlaw.

Kolton stood tapping his chin, preparing to deliver their closing argument. “Some kind of a strike against Israel is probably inevitable, anyhow. This way we control the yield of the explosion.” He looked at Ashlock. “What do you think, Colonel?”

Ashlock nodded. “I think your brother is right … and wrong.”

“How so?” Isaiah said, a shadow creasing his face.

“I'm saying what if we hit both targets?” Ashlock suggested, fascinated that Isaiah had stepped so willingly into the trap he'd been patiently laying over the past few weeks. No way could he have been the one to suggest striking the Dome of the Rock without giving a great deal of offense to his Israeli counterparts. “If we hit Jerusalem and
then
Mecca, both within a couple days of each another, I think we can just about guarantee a full-fledged holy war with very few prisoners taken by either side … a genuine fight to the finish.”

Laidlaw eyed him disdainfully. “Then why not hit New York while we're at it?”

Ashlock eyed him right back. “Because New York's already paid her pound of flesh in this godforsaken war, Mr. Laidlaw … or have you forgotten about that?”

Laidlaw looked away, stubbing the cigarette against the tabletop. “So I guess it's time we took a vote then.”

The vote was unanimous.

 

28

Jerusalem, Israel

It was hot, in every sense of the word.

And, as always, it was a heat unlike that of anywhere else in the world—dry, penetrating, searing.
The heat hangs in the air like needles,
General Thomas Brooks thought.

He imagined that, if he made any sudden movements, it might scratch him.

The sun burned away the sweat beads as they emerged from his pores while he strode away from the helicopter that had taken him south into the desert hills from Tel Aviv. His legs were stiff, the muscles deeply knotted. His neck and shoulder muscles had atrophied into rocks. His eyes, dried out from the plane ride, sat deep in their sockets like hardened raisins.