Fuse of Armageddon (33 page)

“Three months ago, the local council, for the first time, arranged for money to help with building repairs to make it modernized, including computer connections and security. I should have suspected something.”

“You’re suggesting it was long planned that this would be the location?”

“Or coincidence,” she said. “What do you think?”

“Convenient, but not coincidence.”

The Mossad either didn’t know about the modernization or had decided not to tell him. Quinn made a mental note of this.

“Either way, you are protected,” he said. “In effect, I too am relying on your reputation to protect me. If the locals know I’m here to negotiate, hurting me hurts you and the children. My only real danger is from Safady, and if he wants to negotiate, he’ll keep me alive too.”

“
Wants
to negotiate?”

“You’ve got a photo of Silver on the cell phone?”

She showed him.

Quinn nodded. “Now I know he wants to negotiate.”

“Versus going out in a blaze of martyrdom glory,” she said.

“Exactly.” Quinn noticed she had not touched the Coke yet. “How much time before he expects you back?”

“Almost immediately.”

“Forgive me then for asking what I need to in this situation. All the hostages are fine?”

“Except for two who tried to escape. They were executed. The rest have learned their lesson.”

“How is morale?”

“You’d be surprised at how high it is. They have faith. It’s become real for them.”

“How many men does Safady have? What kind of weaponry? Where are they stationed?”

“No,” Esther said.

“No?”

“That’s the kind of information you need to consider a rescue operation. I refuse to help you with that. There are children in there; I do not want them to become casualties.”

Quinn knew it would be useless to try to change her mind. Not with a woman strong enough and determined enough to accomplish what she’d done here in the Gaza Strip.

Esther continued. “Somewhere along the way, can you remind the other side that there are children in there? Life has already been harsh enough to them. They didn’t deserve what has put them in there. Nor do they deserve to suffer more now.”

Quinn caught her looking at the plastic bag with ice and the other bottles and decided he finally understood why she wasn’t drinking the cold Coke in her hand. “Not many soft drinks inside the orphanage,” he said.

“It’s like Christmas for them when we have it.”

“You’re saving yours for one of them?”

“A little girl named Alyiah. She’s had a rough day. Safady was going to execute her too as part of the punishment for the escape attempt.” Esther pointed the cell phone at Quinn. “He said he wanted a photo too.”

Quinn stared at the phone and held up his bottle as promised. He heard the simulated click from the cell phone.

Esther pushed herself off the crate. “One more thing.” She handed Quinn a folded piece of newspaper. “Today’s headlines. Jonathan Silver wrote a note on it so that you know the message is today’s. He’s authorizing the release of $20 million into a Palestinian bank account, but he doesn’t want Safady to know about it. Or the media.”

“I don’t understand.”

“A donation to the orphanage,” she said. “Jonathan Silver is no longer convinced that Palestinians are tainted.”

15:58 GMT


Patterson saw the first body about twenty steps from the bottom of the stairs. It threw a shallow black shadow from the flashlight attached to Patterson’s machine-gun barrel. Patterson hesitated, half expecting the man to rise like a zombie in the harsh silence and cool air of the tunnel.

“You know the drill,” Burge said in a voice muffled by the gas mask.

He and Patterson advanced, the other soldiers behind them, and pointed the barrels of their machine guns straight down at the man’s chest.

The man was no older than any of them. Clean-shaven with dark hair. Muscled but not fat. And, as Patterson could tell by the gentle rise and fall of his chest, he was still breathing.

The flashlight showed crisp details of the uniform, buttons gleaming.

Israeli military.

Patterson was baffled. An Israeli soldier? Here in the heart of Gaza?

“Tape,” Burge said.

A soldier behind him squatted and flipped the Israeli soldier over without even a groan from the unconscious man. As their companion duct-taped the Israeli’s wrists and feet together, Patterson bit back his questions, knowing Burge would report anything and everything to Saxon.

They left the Israeli soldier on the ground where he was and advanced farther into the tunnel. Even though he knew they’d dropped canisters with paralyzing gas into the vents to these tunnels, Patterson’s heart was pounding. He knew the target he was presenting by holding a flashlight.

He smelled a faint stench mixed with a chemical odor. The flashlight beam showed another body on the ground and, just beyond it at the side of the tunnel, five camping toilets. It looked like the Israeli soldiers had been here for days, not hours. This was confirmed when his flashlight beam showed canned goods and bottled water farther ahead.

After binding this Israeli—also unconscious—they rounded a slight bend, and the tunnel opened and became a wide room. Patterson estimated it was twice the square footage of his mobile home back in Georgia. Army cots had been set on the floor in orderly lines. Patterson flicked his flashlight beam and counted five lines five deep. Twenty-five men, then. Two they had already bound.

The paralyzing gas had caught these men in various stages of repose. Some had been napping. Others had been reading books, which had fallen on their chests or on the floor.

Something about the situation bothered Patterson.

Then it clicked. Without giving any warning to Burge, Patterson reached across and snapped off the man’s flashlight. Then, quickly, his own, putting the room into instant darkness. “Scatter,” he grunted. “Retreat! Now!”

Patterson pushed Burge away and stepped sideways himself, moving from the last position he’d been standing with his flashlight.

In that instant, a flash point seemed to erupt from the black of the room. No explosion, but the
thwoop
of a silenced pistol.

Patterson’s suspicion had been confirmed. Men don’t read in the dark. One of the Israeli soldiers must have found a way to remain conscious and had shut the lights off and waited.

There were a groan and a gurgle behind Patterson, and as he was moving backward, he tripped over one of his own soldiers.

More silenced shots, with bullets caroming over his head.

By then, the rest of the Freedom Crusaders had dashed back into the tunnel away from the open room.

Patterson groped in the darkness, finding a gas mask with his hand, which he used as a reference point. The fallen man groaned.

That drew another shot from the far end of the room. To Patterson, it seemed like an invisible man had pounded him in the left shoulder with a baseball bat. A bullet had slammed into his Kevlar. It spun him back on his heels and he toppled, which probably saved his life. Two more bullets whined past his ear.

With his right hand, he found one of the fallen man’s ankles and gripped and pulled, doing a crab walk backward until he was in the tunnel again.

“Burge,” Patterson said, not caring how loud his voice was. He dropped the soldier’s ankle and gripped his machine gun. “Throw a canister.”

“Already got it,” Burge said.

“How about throwing it now instead of later. If—“

Patterson didn’t finish. There were more flashes in the darkness. The Israeli must have known he’d be trapped and decided that offense was as good a defense as any.

Patterson squeezed off a couple rounds at the flashes. The explosion was too loud for him to know if he’d made a direct hit, but no return fire came.

Patterson set his machine gun down because his left shoulder was so numb he couldn’t use his left hand to turn on the flashlight again. With the barrel on the ground, he reached it with his right hand and hit the switch, illuminating an Israeli on his side, knocked backward from the force of bullets. Two more flashlights came on from behind Patterson, and he scanned the situation.

Burge was down, a round hole near the top of his gas mask and red sprayed across the visor portion. Another Freedom Crusader had toppled over him. Both of them dead from head shots, a vulnerable area not protected by Kevlar.

The first soldier, the one Patterson had dragged from the room, had what looked like a gallon of red paint soaking the ground beneath his leg. He wasn’t breathing any longer. Patterson was no medic but could make the easy conclusion. This bullet had found a major artery.

Three of them dead, then. And an Israeli.

Saxon wasn’t going to like this. They’d had standing orders since the mission began to take any Israelis alive. Apparently Israelis were worth more than Palestinians, Patterson sourly concluded.

One of the remaining Freedom Crusaders moved back toward the room with the cots.

“No,” Patterson said. This Israeli had been smart enough to surprise them. If there were two, one would have stayed back to complete the trap.

Patterson took the canister from Burge’s open and still hand. He pushed the button to prime the explosive cap and threw it into the open room.

“Five minutes,” he said. “Then we go back in.”

31

Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip • 16:05 GMT


Keys,” Quinn said as soon as Kate stepped back into the van.

“Negotiations over? You
are
good.”

He held out his hand. “Not a good time for bad humor.”

She handed him the keys.

Quinn started the engine and shifted it into drive. Traffic was slow. The narrow street was clogged with equally ancient vehicles. Boys on scooters zoomed in and out.

He reached an intersection well past the orphanage, and Kate still hadn’t said anything. He liked that. He’d expected a protest or at the least an immediate question demanding the reason for this.

Quinn was forced to jam on the brakes as a taxi cut in front of him. At the same time, his cell phone rang. He’d wondered how long that would take.

He flipped it open. “Hello.”

“What are you doing?” Safady was almost screeching. “Who said you could leave?”

“I’m looking for a Starbucks,” Quinn answered. “Any helpful directions?”

“You can’t leave. You’re the negotiator.”

“Cell phones have a wider range than face-to-face,” Quinn said. He made an unexpected turn into a narrow alley. “You want to come out and negotiate in person? Then I’ll park where you can see me again.”

Safady’s obscene reply was loud enough to make Quinn wince.

“Listen,” Quinn said, “there are some terms you can dictate and others you can’t. One of the things you can’t dictate is my location. I’ll always pick up within two rings. How much closer do you need me?”

Safady hung up.

Quinn glanced in his rearview mirror and saw two motorcycles turn into the alley. A few hundred yards down, he found another street, where he turned left, stopped almost immediately, and shifted into park.

Kate finally spoke. “I’ve spent a lot of time in patrol cars with male partners. One thing I learned early is that, contrary to popular opinion, guys are sensitive to subtext.”

“So it’s not just women who always listen for subtext and read too much into it?”

“You’d think a guy would understand that no means no. As in ‘No, I don’t want you to buy me a drink’ or ‘No, I’m not interested in giving you my phone number.’ How much extra do you think they choose to read into the word
no
when they keep coming back?”

Quinn glanced at the rearview mirror, waiting for the motorcycles to exit the alley. “There’s a reason you’re giving me a Mars and Venus seminar, right?”

The motorcycles reached the street, and both drivers stopped briefly. Quinn had been looking for that. If the drivers had a destination in mind, they would have immediately turned left or right.

“You offer a guy advice,” Kate said, “and he doesn’t hear that you want to help. What he hears is that you think he’s doing a lousy job and you can do better. So early on, I stopped offering advice until I was asked for it.”

“You’re so much more than a pretty face,” Quinn said, still watching the men on the motorcycles, who turned their heads, then gave a telltale pause as they noticed the van parked just down the street. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll find a way to get along after all.”

“Another thing I learned in the patrol car is that if you ask a guy what he’s doing or why he’s doing it, he’ll think you’re second-guessing him. Which, to a guy, is like questioning his judgment. On the other hand, if you keep your mouth shut, what he reads between the lines instead is that you trust him and therefore respect his judgment.”

“Interesting theory,” Quinn said. Behind them, the motorcyclists leaned their heads together to talk above the sound of the idling engines.

“Let’s try it out in real life,” Kate continued. “Say a woman marshal gets into the van of the prisoner she’s supposed to take back to the U.S. Say it’s in the Gaza Strip, which is not the safest of areas for an American. Say she’s given the guy enough trust that she lets him be the driver. Say the driver takes off without a word of explanation, and say the driver is leaving behind the American hostages that he’s been using as leverage to push around this woman marshal. Would you expect—hypothetically speaking of course—that this woman marshal should start asking questions?”

“Hmmm,” Quinn said. The motorcyclists each turned in a different direction. One up the street, one down the street. Quinn wondered if there was a third in position still down the alley. He’d find out. “I’m guessing your subtext is that you’re trying to ask without asking. If so, I’m insulted that you are second-guessing me.”

“Listen,” she snapped, “I gave my partners the respect they deserved, but they gave me respect in turn. None of them put me in a situation where I’d have to ask. They’d discuss a plan with me, and we’d make a decision together. It’s implied in the term
partner
.”