Fuse of Armageddon (34 page)

“We’re partners now?”

“I believe that happened when I agreed to help you with this, then agreed to choose your side over Hamer’s.”

Quinn was waiting long enough for the motorcyclists to get just out of sight. If they’d parked right behind the van, that would have sent one message. As it was, he’d learned something different. He was under surveillance but wasn’t supposed to know it.

“All right then,” he said to Kate. “I’m sorry. I should have discussed this with you before driving away.”

“I’ll believe it when you tell me why you left the location.”

Quinn backed up and turned into the same alley that had led him to this street. “I’ve already established a power position by getting him to concede the photo on the cell phone. Now that I know he wants to negotiate and not kill the hostages, I decided we were safe to move. Keeping mobile is good. It protects us.”

“And this Steve McQueen driving . . . ?”

“I wanted to find out if anyone was watching the van.”

“Two guys on motorbikes. You split them up, and they’re down the street in both directions waiting for us to pass them again. One will probably call the other on a cell phone as soon as they’ve learned which way you’re headed.”

“You
are
good.”

He glanced over at her, and their eyes locked briefly. Each quickly looked away, as if they’d accidentally touched. How come he was bantering with her? Time to change subjects, to focus.

“Also, knowing he wants to negotiate, I wanted to establish the terms a little more solidly. I can’t have Safady thinking he can push me around.”

“Plus, you didn’t like being a sitting duck,” Kate said.

Quinn gave her a sideways look. “So if you knew all this, why ask?”

“I didn’t ask. That would be second-guessing you. I posed a hypothetical situation.”

“Of course,” Quinn said. “Or maybe you wanted to establish the terms here.”

“Now that we got that figured out, care to discuss what’s next?”

“Sure. I want to find a place to buy a couple cases of Cokes.”

16:09 GMT


All the unconscious Israelis had been bound and moved out of the way and all the crates moved into the large room at the end of the tunnels, which was bathed in full light now. Patterson couldn’t see a generator and guessed the electricity came from ground wires.

All told, the room was no more uncomfortable than an army barrack. There were televisions with headsets, some video games, an assortment of books. Given the food and water supplies and the camping toilets, it was obvious that the Israelis had known they would be waiting here for a while.

Waiting for what?
Patterson wondered.

Not an attack, that was certain. If they’d been expecting an attack, the Israelis would have left soldiers in the safe house to guard the trapdoor, just as Saxon had positioned Freedom Crusaders there.

Patterson had also casually inspected the walls of this underground room—concrete blocks. As if it had not been dug out from beneath whatever was above but laid first like a foundation for a basement. The blocks seemed aged and had scattered graffiti in Arabic. The graffiti didn’t seem fresh either and only added to Patterson’s questions about all this. The tunnel had been here awhile.

He was standing beside the wall when Saxon began to speak.

“Men, we’ve had our first casualties. They were your friends and brothers, and I share your grief. Let us take comfort in knowing God will receive them in the spirit that their sacrifice has been made and that they are now in the presence of Jesus, our Savior.”

The three bodies had been moved to the base of the stairway beneath the safe house and, along with the dead Israeli, had been shrouded by blankets.

“There will be a time and place for proper burial,” Saxon continued. “But this is not that time. You have about forty minutes until the next phase of this operation. First, shave and put on your Crusader uniforms. Then cover yourselves with Palestinian clothing. You’ll put the scarves on before you assist the hostages. Under no circumstances will you reveal yourselves as Freedom Crusaders until I give the order to do so. Any questions about procedure here?”

None.

“Good,” he said. “Then the lights in here will be dimmed, and I expect you to find a cot and catch some sleep. It’s going to be a long night, and you need to be rested. There will be no questions until the next briefing.”

At least no verbal questions,
Patterson thought. But Saxon was still giving no explanation of the platoon’s ultimate mission.

What was ahead?

16:12 GMT


“I had no idea,” Kate said. “This is like a third-world country.”

She’d been silent for minutes as Quinn maneuvered through the streets of Khan Yunis to make sure they’d lost the men tailing them. Now they were parked again, this time in the shade of a three-story building that looked as if it were about to crumble into dust.

“No,” Quinn said, “a third-world country would be an improvement on this.”

In the shimmering heat, everything seemed gray: old, gray blocks for building walls; old, gray, broken pavement; abandoned cars without tires or windshields, gray with dust; and tired, old people, walking with the weight of a gray world on their shoulders.

“What would world reaction be if the United States required people of African descent to carry special ID cards?” Quinn asked. “Or what if recent European arrivals to America were given homes taken away from people of African descent?”

“Obviously we would be condemned as racist,” Kate said, “restricting human freedoms.”

“And what if our reaction to the world was that it was justified for biblical reasons?”

“Unthinkable.”

“Exactly. And yet that’s the situation here. In most third-world countries, there would be more freedom and less injustice to hamper economic and social advancement. The Palestinians, however, are treated as second-class citizens in Israel. In some ways, they’re treated worse than the blacks in South Africa at the height of apartheid, including the need to carry specially colored ID cards to identify them as Palestinians. Almost the way Jews were treated in Nazi Germany.”

“But to compare it to Europeans moving to the United States and taking away homes from African-Americans?”

“First understand this is a racial or ethnic situation. People with Jewish ancestry versus Arabs. That’s how it’s divided. Then consider the numbers. Palestinians today are among the largest displaced peoples in the world. To make room for the Jewish immigrants, over four hundred Palestinian villages have been destroyed. Take the infamous story of Deir Yassin.”

“Deir Yassin?” Kate asked.

“Your reaction confirms one of the points I’d like to make. There are two sides to this story. The problem is that one of the sides of the story is largely untold. To the Palestinians, the Deir Yassin massacre symbolizes the entire issue. You, on the other hand, know nothing about it.”

“Tell me then.”

“Three years after the Nazi Holocaust ended in 1945, the Israeli paramilitary moved into Deir Yassin, a village near Jerusalem, and brutally slaughtered somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred fifty men, women, children, and even babies. The Israelis went so far as to drive some Palestinian men to other villages to tell the story, spreading panic. Entire villages emptied, which was the entire purpose of the massacre. Israeli immigrants took over the homes and villages.”

Kate was shaking her head. “I won’t deny that’s horrible, but you can’t imply it’s on the magnitude of the Holocaust inflicted by the Nazis.”

“Not the magnitude. But one of the justifications for it was the need to give Jews a place to shelter them from another Holocaust. I’d argue the injustice was no different. One race indiscriminately slaughtering another.”

“Surely you aren’t saying the injustices inflicted on Palestine condone how Palestinian terrorists fight the Israelis.”

Quinn smiled sadly. “See how easily this becomes an intellectual debate? My wife and daughter died to a suicide bomber, remember.”

Kate let out a breath. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“There are wrongs on both sides. It’s gone far beyond the point where you can find the Hollywood resolution of who is clearly the bad guy and whom you should cheer for. You ask me if I can justify the terrorism attacks? Hardly. I can give you a list as long as my arm of the outrages that Palestinians have inflicted on peace-loving Jews. I won’t, because you already have a sense of it through media exposure. From a practical stance, I sympathize with Israel. It has no choice but to impose harsh control just to survive the constant terror threats inflicted on its civilian population. Palestinian terrorist attacks can’t be condoned in any manner. Not the least is the long-term futility of it.”

He paused. “You and I weren’t around in the fifties, before the civil rights movement began in the United States, but we’re familiar enough with Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, right? You’ll agree with me that the situation was wrong and needed changing?”

“It’s still not completely fixed,” Kate said.

“So imagine if the militant Black Panther movement had grown to the point where the civil rights battle was fought by terrorist tactics. Would the movement have made the progress it did? Or would it have steeled the majority of Americans to dig in and fight?”

“Dig in and fight. Like Israel now.”

“Exactly. Go back to the ’72 Olympics in Munich. Erase that hostage-taking incident and all the terrorist attacks since, and change the Palestinian tactics to peaceful protests and an appeal to the world for help—the Gandhi way. Things would be much different here now. Terrorism against Israel justifies our sympathy for it.”

“Your wife and daughter would still be alive.”

“And the wives and daughters of thousands of families on both sides of the dispute. People get involved in the politics. They forget about the damage it does to children.”

Kate was silent for a few minutes, thinking about it. She shifted. “What was that you said about biblical justification?”

“Yeah,” Quinn said with a sigh. “That too.”

“Explain.”

He rubbed his face briefly. “Let’s compare it again to the United States. What would world opinion be if fundamentalist Christians reverted to using the Bible to justify slavery, as happened a century ago?”

“That’s a rhetorical question, right?”

“Genesis chapter twelve, verse three—the Lord speaking to Abram. ‘I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ Countless Christian fundamentalists use this as a mantra to justify unqualified support for Israel.”

“Hang on,” Kate said. “As devil’s advocate, I have to say that’s a pretty clear directive from God. So if you’re a Christian, how do you not apply it to Israel today?”

“Historically, Christianity has always believed in one people of God based on relationship rather than race. The apostle Paul spelled it out clearly when he declared, ‘You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.’ Even in the Old Testament, God-fearing foreigners were counted among the faithful and were treated as spiritual Israelites.”

“So you’re saying Americans shouldn’t support Israel?”

“Not at all. It’s a democracy and a stable ally in the Middle East. I’m saying both sides of the story need to be understood. But remember the seventy million fundamentalist Christians who give unqualified support for Israel’s ethnic cleansing of this land based on bad theology. And remember the Palestinian children. Any theology that contributes to an entire lost generation of children needs to be examined.”

Quinn gestured through the cracked windshield of the van. “You don’t have to look any farther than this to see the consequences.”

“Or the green land on one side of the border and the brown on the other,” Kate said softly. “I never knew.”

32

Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip • 16:21 GMT


Five minutes,” Safady told Quinn over the cell phone. “That’s how long I’m giving you to come back to me with an answer.”

Quinn hadn’t moved the van too far. It was only minutes from the orphanage in case he needed to get back there quickly. “What’s the question?” he asked.

“No. First you understand that it is a deal breaker. You give me what I want, or I kill the first hostage in five minutes and then one every half hour after that. I will throw their bodies over the wall onto the streets. Do you think that will cause any rioting—to have the bodies of dead Americans where these Palestinians can rip them apart?”

“If you begin to kill—”

“You’ve already taken great pains to explain that I need them alive to negotiate. That means you need to understand the conclusion here. There will be no more negotiating of any kind. You get me what I want. Or the hostages are dead. Afterward, I’ll simply disappear somewhere in Gaza. I’ll be a hero to my people.”

Quinn made a mental note that Safady was still interested in self-preservation not martyrdom. “I understand the seriousness of your request. But I can’t make a promise. You know that.”

“You can get me an answer. Five minutes.”

“What is your request?”

“It’s not a request. A demand.”

“Tell me,” Quinn said.

“Two choppers—big ones. For transport to Jordan.”

Another indication that Safady wasn’t interested in martyrdom. Quinn dared allow himself hope that this might be resolved. There was precedent, too. Israel had done this in other hostage negotiations.

Safady’s request made sense. The Gaza Strip was in essence a large prison, patrolled by Israelis, with a certain amount of freedom inside the borders. Now that Safady’s location was known to the Israelis, he’d need a country with equal sympathy to the Arab cause but much more power and autonomy than Gaza to protect him and his men.

“I can’t get that answer in five minutes,” Quinn said. “No one can. Shifting this to Jordan makes it an international incident. It’s got to be cleared by the highest levels of government. Israel might clear it, but the officials in Jordan will spend hours deliberating the pros and cons.”