The Last Days (4 page)

A few months later, though, Arafat kissed and made up. Instead of having Abu Mazen arrested for allegedly plotting a coup against him, Arafat named him prime minister of the Palestinian Authority. It seemed a bizarre turn of events. In fact, it was a scene straight out of
The Godfather.
“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

But the move spooked radical Islamic leaders. They openly worried Abu Mazen might cave in to U.S. pressure to end the armed struggle against Israel and crack down on the Islamic militant factions. They called Abu Mazen's appointment evidence of a “conspiracy” to destroy the Palestinian “resistance to occupation.” Abdallah Al Shami, a senior Islamic Jihad leader, told the
Gulf News:
“We will continue our resistance to the Zionist enemy with all possible means and we will not be stopped by a Palestinian or a Zionist.” Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, a senior Hamas operative at the time, warned Arafat and Mazen that jihad against the Jews was the “sole solution” to the occupation of Palestine. “Hamas does not believe in political negotiations,” he said, adding that the appointment of a Palestinian prime minister was completely unacceptable because the position would have the singular mission of “stopping the uprising.”

The message was clear: Arafat and Mazen had better watch their backs.

But that was all years ago. Neither the CIA nor ITA had any warning of this, and now the house of cards was collapsing all around them.

Flames shot out of the gutted limo.

Thick black smoke made it hard to see. Mancuso again speed dialed the Op Center in Washington, and went to a secure frequency. Mancuso actually knew Rob Trakowski—not well, but well enough to know he was just doing his job.

Trakowski was a decent guy, and loyal. If extraction teams could be sent from either of the U.S. aircraft carriers steaming across the eastern Mediterranean—either the USS
Ronald Reagan
or the USS
Teddy Roosevelt
—there wasn't any doubt in Mancuso's mind that Trakowski would have dispatched them immediately. Something really was wrong. Weather, politics—it didn't really matter. What mattered was that Mancuso needed to get his team out before it was too late.

“Black Tower, this is Snapshot. You still got that feed from Predator Six?”

“Affirmative—what do you need?”

“Can you get a shot of the Great Mosque down the street?”

“Roger that. What are we looking for?”

“Just tell me what you see.”

“All right, hold on.”

Mancuso reloaded his MP-5. It was only a few moments—but it felt like forever.

“Son of a—”

“What? What is it?” Mancuso pressed.

“Sir, you've a militia of some kind lined up at the back of the mosque. Someone's handing out machine guns, RPGs, ammunition, you name it.”

“Who?”

“A bunch of mullahs—I can't tell for sure. They've got a bucket brigade going—they seem to be bringing up weapons from the basement and handing them out the back door, as fast as they can.”

“How many are we talking about—a few dozen?”

“Actually, sir—it looks like hundreds.”

 

They were only forty yards away and coming fast.

Their faces covered in red kaffiyahs, they poured out of two guard stations in either corner of the compound.
Who were these guys? Whose side were they on? Were they coming to help, or finish them off?

McCoy was pretty sure they were members of Force 17, Arafat's elite bodyguard unit. All these guys knew for sure was that their leadership had been blown away in the last few minutes. Arafat was dead. Abu Mazen was dead. So were half the Cabinet and most of the top legislators. But did any of the Force 17 guys know how or why? Did they know it was one of their own guys? Maybe not. Most had been manning posts inside the legislature or the adjacent buildings when the motorcade had arrived.

Likewise, all the DSS agents knew for sure was that the Secretary of State was dead. Many of their own were dead. Now their entire detail was under fire from multiple directions. Palestinians of some kind were doing the shooting.
What did it all mean? Was this a one-man coup, or a larger conspiracy? Did the armed men rushing at them work for Arafat, or his killers? Should they trust them, or shoot them?

Bennett assumed they were good guys. He was wrong. At thirty yards, they began firing from the hip. Glass was cracking but not shattering above him. Round after round was hitting the limo's doors and windows, but so far, none had broken through.

“McCoy—behind you!”
Bennett yelled, unable to get a clear shot.

McCoy and Mancuso wheeled around and returned fire. They cut down eight or ten men in the first few bursts. Mancuso's assault teams took out a dozen more. They also watched their teams' backs, providing covering fire against threats from the front gate and Omar El Mukhtar Street. Mancuso passed the word that more trouble was on the way.

 

“This is an NBC Special Report. Now from Washington, Brian Williams.”

It was Monday morning, barely a few minutes after 3:00
A.M.
Washington time—just after ten in the morning Gaza time. Most of America was asleep, but each of the cable news networks were already covering the mushrooming crisis live. Now, one by one, each of the major U.S. broadcast networks began covering the gun battle in Gaza, as well. NBC simulcast its feed from the MSNBC crew on the ground. ABC and CBS had more difficulties. Without a cable news channel of their own, and without any plans to do a live broadcast of the arrival of the Secretary of State, they were caught without exclusive footage. Soon whoever was up at that hour watching ABC began seeing a feed from Al Jazeera, while those watching CBS saw a combination of feeds coming in from Israel's Channel Two, the BBC, and an Abu Dhabi TV crew.

A mob of Palestinian militants were now working their way up the main street, and several side streets, shooting wildly into the air. A wounded CNN cameraman was on the roof. He and his crew broadcast the scene to the world. Their presence caused the U.S. sharpshooters to think twice. Should they wait until they were fired upon directly? Or should they be systematically picking these guys off, one by one, before the rest of the U.S. team was ambushed and outnumbered?

 

Only a handful of U.S. officials had ever heard the name Jake Ziegler.

To most of Washington—and all of the Arab and Islamic world—he didn't exist. As the CIA's station chief in the Gaza Strip, it was Ziegler's job to be invisible. And he was good. In a covert operations center along the Mediterranean coast known as Gaza Station, Ziegler watched the nightmare unfold via satellite feeds from three U.S. networks, as well as from live video images provided by the unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicle—Predator Six—hovering over the crime scene. His mind reeled. The images were horrifying. But what did they mean?

The death of Arafat had the potential of triggering all kinds of scenarios. Few of them were good. The most serious: a Palestinian civil war, as various faction leaders mobilized their forces and tried to seize control of the power vacuum left in Arafat's wake. Ziegler should know. As far back as the spring of 2002, he'd written the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate on what could happen when Yasser Arafat one day passed from the scene. Even now—eight years later—he could still recite from memory key findings from his report.

“Who would be the likely successor to Arafat as head of the Palestinian Authority?”
the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee had wanted to know. Ziegler's answer—factored into his report—was blunt, and grim. “PA and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat has no clear-cut successor,” he wrote, “and any candidate will have neither the power base nor the leadership qualities necessary to wield full authority in the PA.” Ziegler went on to note that, “Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), Arafat's principal deputy and Secretary General of the PLO Executive Committee, and Ahmad Qurei (Abu Ala), Speaker of the PA's Legislative Council, are poised to assume preeminent roles after Arafat. Security chiefs like Mohammad Dahlan (former head of the Gaza Preventative Security Forces, now in charge of all PA Security Forces), Jabril Rajub (the longtime head of the West Bank Preventative Security Forces), and Fatah Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti are likely to play important supporting roles in the succession.” He also pointed out that “according to PA laws, after Arafat's death, Ahmad Qurei, in his role as Speaker of the PA's Legislative Council, would assume the duties of PA president for no more than sixty days, during which time a new president would be elected.”

The problem, Ziegler warned then, was that the prospects for a peaceful transition were slim to none. The worst-case scenario—a full-blown civil war—was also the most likely. At one point in his top-secret report, Ziegler cited a prediction by Israeli academic Ehud Ya'ari, who'd publicly warned that Arafat's eventual departure from the scene would likely result in “the creation of regional coalitions” resembling some kind of “United Palestinian Emirates” but “not necessarily in a peaceful alliance.” Any figurehead that emerged to try to take Arafat's place, Ziegler argued, would need to possess “some of Arafat's credentials and prestige in order to obtain international recognition.” But, he added, there was a strong possibility that there could be “violent infighting among the competing security services vying for supremacy.”

The bottom line: no one in Washington had listened, and now Ziegler's worst fears were coming true.

 

So far, the Americans were holding their own.

Their armor-plated vehicles and the cement barriers nearby were giving them a decent measure of protection. But McCoy knew it wasn't going to be enough. So did Mancuso. They looked at each other quickly. Both knew they needed an exit strategy—fast.

“Jon, can you get me more ammo?”
Mancuso yelled.
“I'm almost out.”

Bennett could hear the fear in Mancuso's voice. It shook what little confidence he had left. Mancuso wasn't panicking. The anxiety in his voice was controlled. It was measured. But it was real. It was palpable. The man was a professional. He was an experienced security agent, trained his whole life to deal with danger. But if—with all that—
he
was still worried, what chance did Bennett have? He could hear Mancuso shouting to him. He knew Mancuso's life depended on what he did in the next few seconds. He wanted to get up. He wanted to help. But he couldn't. He was terrified—afraid to fight, afraid to move, afraid of death and what might be on the other side.

Suddenly, someone called to Bennett through the gunfire.

“
Jon, I've got it.
”

It was Galishnikov. Desperate to do something to help his friends, the Russian scrambled out from under the car. He jumped into one of the open passenger doors and rummaged around the backseats.

“
Where is it?
” Galishnikov yelled. “
Where's the ammo?
”

“
I'm out,
” Mancuso yelled.

“
I can't find it,
” Galishnikov kept screaming. “
I can't find it.
”

Mancuso ejected his last spent clip, and rushed in behind Galishnikov. He opened a second ammo box concealed under the passenger seats, reloaded, and came out firing.

CRACK. CRACK.

Bennett pressed his face against the wet pavement. He couldn't see where the shots were coming from, but they were close—too close—and he didn't dare move. He looked over at McCoy, terrified that she might have been hit. She wasn't. She was fine, and fighting back. Bennett began to breathe again. Then he heard it again. Two bursts—CRACK, CRACK—CRACK, CRACK. Mancuso wasn't more than two feet from McCoy. Bennett saw Mancuso's head snap back. Then he dropped to the ground. Bennett watched him fall. He watched a pool of blood begin to form around him.

A flash of lightning stung his eyes. Time stood still. Bennett could feel himself slipping into shock, and it all came rushing back. Jerusalem a few weeks before. The “four horsemen of the apocalypse.” The gun battle that left Dietrich Black dead and Bennett bleeding to death on the floor. He could still see the Iraqi terrorist—the black hood, the fire pouring from the muzzle. He could smell the smoke, the gunpowder, the rancid stench of death. He could still feel both rounds—the excruciating pain, like his body had been set on fire—one grazing his right shoulder, the other tearing off a chunk of his left forearm.

But somehow he'd survived. Mancuso was dead. The man had a wife. Four kids. He'd worked for the State Department for sixteen years. He'd been handpicked by the president to protect Bennett and McCoy, and now he was gone. Why? It didn't make sense. What made a husband and father put himself in harm's way for complete strangers? What possessed
any
man to give up his own life to save others?

A shudder rippled through Bennett's drenched body. Waves of guilt washed over him in the rain. He was paralyzed by fear. He couldn't move, couldn't think, and shame began to consume him. He'd give anything to be back in New York, crunching numbers, cutting deals.
What the hell was he doing in Gaza? What the hell made him think he could cut a deal with the Devil?
The stupidity of it all suddenly hit him—a Wall Street strategist in a world where money couldn't help him. It didn't walk, didn't talk, couldn't shoot an AK-47, and neither could he.

The rules here were different. There weren't any rules at all.

Maybe Dr. Mordechai was right, thought Bennett, suddenly oblivious to the gunfire all around him. “The problem with you Americans is that you don't believe in evil,” the former Mossad agent had told Deek Black in the summer of 1990, just before Iraq invaded Kuwait. “You guys at the CIA and the FBI—and definitely the guys at State—don't properly anticipate horrible, catastrophic events because you don't really believe in the presence of evil, the presence of a dark and wicked and nefarious spiritual dimension that drives some men to do the unthinkable.”

Bennett hadn't known what to make of that before. It went against everything he'd been brought up to believe.

“I believe Saddam Hussein is both capable of and prone to acts of unspeakable evil, and you don't,” Mordechai had added. “I'm right, and you're wrong. It's not because I know more than your government. I don't. I know less. But I believe that evil forces make evil men do evil things. That's how I anticipate what can and will happen next in life. That's how I got to be the head of the Mossad, young man. And why I'm good at it. It's going to be one hell of an August, and my country is going to suffer very badly because your country doesn't believe in evil, and mine was born out of the ashes of the Holocaust.”

Bennett looked around him. Bullets whizzed over his head. Fires raged. Explosions were erupting all around him. Mordechai
was
right. He hadn't believed in evil. Not really. Not until this. Now he could feel it in the air. He could smell it, taste it. The radicals had to be stopped. Suicide bombers and the groups and states that funded them—they weren't misguided or misunderstood. They were controlled by evil. Pure evil. And evil couldn't be negotiated with. It could only be hunted down, captured, or destroyed. Like a cancer or ebola. Ignore those possessed by evil and they'd kill you. Fast or slow, it didn't matter. Remove some but not all traces of the virus and it would still kill you. Fast or slow, it was just a matter of time.