Critical Error (2 page)

“In an hour, they would have let us go!” shouted the cameraman, furious at what had just happened.

“We have to warn Israel,” replied Sam, firmly and simply. He grabbed the guard’s gun and checked the magazine.

“How many terrorists?” demanded Sam as he ran to the window.

“There were eleven,” stammered the cameraman. “I suppose there are seven now…”

One better than he had anticipated. Maybe the day was looking up.

The door crashed open and two guards ran in. Their weapons were drawn but not having heard any shots, they had not known what to expect. Sam didn’t hesitate and shot them both as they entered the room.

“Five left,” corrected the cameraman.

With the first shots fired, no more guards would be running blindly into the room.

“Wait here!” commanded Sam as he opened a back door and disappeared.

Sam had no intention of becoming a sitting duck and instead was going on the offensive.

By the time the five guards were in position to launch an assault on the barracks, it was too late. Sam was behind them. As they charged, he simply picked them off. These were men who strapped bombs to themselves and blew up women and children. Sam had no compunction about shooting them in the back, front, head or balls. The only good terrorist, as far as he was concerned, was a dead one.

As he walked back into the barracks it was a very different scene. The journalist rushed across the room and hugged him like a long lost friend. The cameraman tried his best to join in but Sam was in no mood for celebrating. The clock was ticking. “I need a phone, is there one here?”

“The next building is a small office, there’s one in there,” offered his new best pal.

As they rushed to the next building, the journalist explained what had happened. They had been kidnapped in Tehran after inadvertently hearing one of their contacts discussing the plan to attack Israel. They didn’t know what or how the attack would happen, they just knew it was massive and they knew when. September 1st 8.00 a.m.

After what felt like hours, Sam was eventually patched through to the Head of Shin Bet, Israel’s security service. The phone rang and rang. Sam checked his watch, 9.31 a.m. local time, 8.01 a.m. Israeli time.

As the bus drew to a stop, the excitement and trepidation of the small crowd was palpable. Rebecca Cohen’s hand shook as she held on tightly to Joshua. Her body trembled as she fought back the tears. She always knew this day would come. For six years, she had waited for the day that her constant companion, her best friend and confidant would leave her side for the first time. She looked down into the eyes of her son and for the first time, she didn’t see his father looking back. For six years, Joshua had been her savior, her only link to the one man she had ever truly loved. If it were not for Joshua, she would most definitely have given up. His dark eyes glistened with excitement, in just the same way as his father’s had before him. A father whom Joshua would never meet. A father whom he knew about and could be proud of. A man who had died for his country, his people and his beliefs. A man Rebecca had adored and worshipped.

The tears started to flow as the door opened. Rebecca tried desperately hard to hide them. Joshua didn’t like it when Mummy cried. His eyes saddened as he watched the tears run down her cheeks.

“It’s OK Josh, Mummy’s happy. They’re tears of joy,” she lied.

Joshua looked around. It seemed most of the mummies and even a few of the daddies were crying. Even some of his friends were crying. Was there something he didn’t know about? Was there something he should be scared of? No, his mother worshipped him and would never do anything that would upset or harm him. If she wanted him on the bus, it was because it was good for him. He disengaged from his mother’s tightening grip, gave her a final hug, a kiss on the cheek and told her he loved her.

“I love you too, my darling,” replied Rebecca as she watched her son, in his new school uniform, board the bus and run straight to the back to jump onto the backseat. Pressing his face against the window and waving wildly, he shouted ‘I love you!’

As the bus began to pull away, Rebecca’s tears flowed freely. She mouthed ‘I love you too’. The smile on his face exploded into her retina. The initial blast of the explosion took her completely by surprise. The ball of flame engulfed the bus for what seemed like hours before the shockwave hit her. The lasting image of her son waving excitedly as his body was torn to pieces would live with her forever.

“What in the name of God was that?” shouted the Prime Minister, Chaim Goldman, as the bomb-proof room shook on its foundations.

Most of the cabinet had seen active service at some point in their lives and all instantly knew that the force of the explosion had to be massive or extremely close to have been felt so strongly in one of the most secure rooms in the country. Before anyone could respond, a second and a third shockwave hit the room in quick succession. As the doors to the Cabinet Room flew open, cabinet members drew their weapons and aimed. In the doorway, stood the Sergeant-At-Arms of the Knesset and a group of cabinet bodyguards and senior aides.

Quick to respond and before anyone was shot by accident, the Prime Minister screamed “STOP!!!”

Silence fell and order was restored.

The Prime Minister turned to the Sergeant-At-Arms, the man responsible for Knesset security.

“Avi?”

“A number of large explosions have hit the city. The Knesset is secure, Mr Prime Minister. Lockdown procedures were put in place the moment we heard the first explosion.”

With each explosion, the occupants of the ultra secure room had flinched, perfectly safe but feeling the pain of each explosion. This was happening on their watch.

As the news cameras rushed across the country, the scale of the attack unfolded. The TV screens in the Cabinet Office ran the images as phones rang and updates flooded in. Every target was the same. The monstrousness of the attack was overwhelming. Two hundred buses carrying the youngest and most vulnerable members of society had been bombed. Survivors on the buses were few and far between and those who had survived were unlikely to live a normal life. Within the hour, the death-toll was already in the thousands. The overwhelming force of the explosions on each of the buses was staggering. The death-toll of passers-by began to exceed that of the bus passengers. This was a co-ordinated attack on a massive scale, even surpassing that of 9-11.

At 8 p.m., twelve hours after the initial explosion, the Prime Minister called the meeting to order, not that any order needed to be called. The Cabinet Room was deathly silent, despite its inflated numbers. Deputies and assistants lined the walls as the Cabinet gathered round a large conference table in the center of the room.

“David, can you please give us the update,” asked the Prime Minister, turning to his Defense Minister, David Hirsch.

As the Minister of Defense got to his feet, the cabinet door opened and the President of Israel, Ehud Rabin, entered the room, nodding to the Prime Minister and looking for an empty seat against the wall.

“Please Ehud, sit next to me,” offered the Prime Minister, motioning for an assistant to move a chair next to him. The President nodded his assent and took the seat next to Chaim.

As with many elected presidents who inherit prime ministers of a different political party, the two men had fought publicly for years and had split the allegiance of the Cabinet between them. However, this was a message to the Cabinet, from the two master politicians of Israel, that petty differences were to be set aside. Israel was to be united. The President nodded for David Hirsch to continue.

“This Morning was the first day of term for a new school year. At approximately 7.58 a.m., a primary school bus in Jerusalem exploded, killing everyone on board. By 8.06 a.m., over 200 bombs, all targeting primary school buses, had exploded across the country. Casualty figures are changing by the second but as of five minutes ago, the numbers stood at 4,237 confirmed dead and over 10,000 injured. Over 2,000 of those are critical. Despite the chaos, our infrastructure is holding its own. Hospitals have initiated emergency procedures and field hospitals have been erected. The armed forces are on high alert.”

As the Defense Secretary paused for a moment, the room remained silent. The scale of the attack began to hit home.

After a few seconds, a quiet voice came from the head of the table.

“How?” asked the President.

“We’re not entirely certain yet. The bus depots are highly secure and as such, there is no way the devices were planted before they left for the school run. The bus drivers are all security trained and armed. Suicide bombers would have been repelled and certainly would not have succeeded 200 times within ten minutes.”

“So how?” asked the President in a whisper, the tone of his voice conveying his utter dismay and fury.

“It is unconfirmed but…” David paused as he thought about the horror of what he was about to say and whether it really could be true.

“Yes?” prompted the President regaining some volume.

“There is speculation that the attack was in fact by suicide bombers. Except that the bombers may have been unaware of their actions. Perhaps the term
sacrificial bombers
may be more appropriate.”

David paused. He could see that some understood what he was saying but others were struggling, either because they were slow or more likely, their brains could not comprehend or refused to compute the possibility of what may have happened.

“Two hundred families have completely disappeared,” he added, seeing more of those in the room piece together the evidence. “We believe they may have been planted here to commit this atrocity.” He paused again as even he could not believe the words he was uttering. “Or more accurately, the bombers were raised within our own communities for the sole purpose of being sacrificed today.”

“Are you seriously suggesting the bombers were children?” asked the Prime Minister.

“Yes. It looks like these were children who we believed to be our own but in fact were the sons and daughters of infiltrators, frauds, brought here as supposed Jewish immigrants, destined only to attack us and destroy us from within.”

“So two hundred families posing as Jews have raised their children within our communities to carry out today’s attack using their six-year-olds, packed with explosives, as bombs??!!” asked the President.

“It appears so,” confirmed David, looking as though the weight of the world had collapsed on his shoulders.

With silence descending on the room again, the feint sound of raised voices could be heard through the almost sound-proof Cabinet doors.

Chaim Goldman got up and opened the door to find his Head of Security tussling with an old man. As the Cabinet watched the bizarre scene, the Prime Minister tried to separate the two men.

“Avi, get your hands off me!” shouted the old man.

“I’m sorry, Sir…” replied Avi, with the utmost deference. “But you can’t…”

“Avi, it’s OK,” said the Prime Minister, recognizing the old man. “Ben,” he said acknowledging Ben Meir, a man known to every Israeli and highly respected. He still had great influence in Israel and was the main reason Chaim and Ehud held the offices they currently held.

“What the hell are you doing?” asked the Prime Minister.

“Still showing this old bastard I can take him,” he said pointing towards Avi, thirty years his junior and almost twice his size. “I need to talk to you and this was the quickest way.”

“OK Ben but things are critical right now, we’re just getting our heads around...”

“I understand but I need to see you, Ehud and David immediately. Whatever you’re doing can wait until we’ve spoken.”

“But Ben, we need to respond…”

Ben reached up and took hold of Chaim’s shoulder and looked into his eyes. “I need to speak to you, Ehud and David,
NOW
!” he shouted. Ben Meir was not a man who took ‘no’ for an answer. Before Chaim could respond, Ben looked at the Cabinet and motioned for them to leave.

Despite the fact that Ben Meir had not held office for fifteen years, when he spoke, people listened. Within minutes, he had taken control of events and stood in the Cabinet Office with a Prime Minister, a President and a Defense Minister wondering what the hell had just happened. Ben picked up the phone and barked a number of instructions to whoever was on the other end. The three most powerful men in Israel simply looked on helplessly.

The room remained silent while Ben’s orders were carried out. Ehud and Chaim had tried to talk but on each occasion a simple “hush” from Ben had stopped them dead.

Eventually, the door opened and four men entered the room. The Head of Mossad (the Israeli intelligence service), the Head of The Shabak (more commonly known as Shin Bet, the Internal Security Service) and Israel’s two Chief Rabbis.