The Last Jihad (22 page)

Air Force One and its flying armada now leveled out at 45,000 feet.

They were far above the clouds, far above any visual reference points that would allow anyone inside—anyone without classified information—to figure out where they were going.

The president and his family were in their personal quarters with an Air Force medical team.

The reporters in the traveling pool were in the back of the plane, confined to their seats and prevented from making or taking any phone calls. As journalists, they were eager to know what was going on. But as corralled sheep in a safe and comfortable pen—and assured by Chuck Murray that they weren’t going to get any information for several hours at best—most of them were just as eager to get some sleep. They had no idea what lay ahead. Why not be rested?

Corsetti came back to the senior staff seats and pointed at Bennett, McCoy, and Black.

“You three, get your butts up to the conference room.”

“What’s up?” asked Bennett.

“The president’s getting the NSC back together by videoconference.”

“What about me?” asked Murray.

“Chuck, you get some sleep,” counseled Corsetti.

“I need to be there, Bob,” insisted Murray.

“No, really, Chuck, you need your beauty sleep.”

Corsetti smiled. Murray didn’t.

“What’s going on, Bob?” Murray whispered.

“You don’t want to know.”

Nine stood on the left end, nine stood on the right.

The eighteen young, rugged, clean-shaven, unarmed but elite warriors—Q18 and Q19—wore green fatigues and black berets, and stood ramrod straight, hands at their sides, in the sparse, barren, concrete block barracks behind the Presidential Palace.

Decked out in his full military dress uniform, General Azziz sat in a large, ornate and magnificently painted chair—more of a throne, really—along the far center wall. Beside him stood his four heavily armed personal guards. The moment Azziz stood, all eighteen commandos dropped to their knees and bowed their heads down to the dusty cement floor. Azziz observed the worship, then barked a command in Arabic and the men were again instantly on their feet, ramrod straight.

“O mighty warriors of our Savior and Lord, the King Most High, the Redeemer of our blessed people,” Azziz shouted. “O mighty warriors of the One True Hope of our people, the President and direct descendant of the Great King Nebuchadnezzar who ruled our Land with an iron fist and a heart of gold. O mighty warriors of His Excellency Saddam Hussein.”

“Praise His Excellency,” shouted all the men in perfect unison, including the general’s personal security detail. “Praise His Most Excellent Name.”

“Mighty warriors, you have been chosen by our Redeemer, our Protector, for the most glorious of missions—and you shall not fail His Excellency.”

“We shall never fail His Excellency,” the young commandos shouted. “We shall never fail His Excellency.”

“Mighty warriors, those who have gone before you have failed. They have failed and been destroyed by the filthy, wicked Zionists, the Infidels who desecrate and pollute and poison the Earth and all that belongs within it.”

The men said nothing, but as Azziz glanced to his right, he could see the eyes of his men widen and their hands stiffen.

“Such men swore to me, to Allah, and to His Excellency, that they would never fail. Yet they did. And their payment to the Most High has only yet begun.”

The barracks were silent, but for the booming, echoing voice of the general.

“Such weak, filthy men are dead. My only regret is not to have killed them myself. Now their women shall die. Now their children shall die. Now their parents shall die. Now their cousins and uncles and grandparents shall die, die at the hands of the terrible swift sword of the Executioner—the defender of His Excellency.”

“Praise His Excellency,” all the men shouted in one accord.

“Colonel Shastak,” the general shouted.

“Yes, sir.”

“Present yourself.”

“Yes, sir.”

Colonel Shastak, commander of Q18, rushed forward to the center of the room and bowed low before the general.

“Stand.”

The commander stood, stiff, straight, and proud. The general was calling upon him. The general was showing him the honor of leading new forces into the ultimate battle against the Zionists. He would not fail as those filthy men who had gone before him, the filthy men he had called comrades and friends just twenty-four hours before. He would do his country proud. He would do his beautiful wife and four young daughters proud. And he would not fail.

Actually, he would never have the chance. The general drew his .45 caliber gold-plated side arm—a gift just a year ago from His Excellency—and aimed it at Colonel Shastak’s face, no more than four feet in front of him. The man’s eyes widened—then exploded in a cloud of blood and smoke.

“Mighty warriors, let this be a lesson to each one of you,” said the general, as each man saw their lifeless comrade slump to the ground in a quickly growing pool of his own blood. “Let Colonel Shastak’s death be an inspiration for your life.
You shall not fail. Am I understood?
”

“Mr. President, we’ve got the whole team here,” said the vice president.

Bennett, McCoy, Black, and the official White House photographer sat on one side of the oak table. Corsetti and Iverson sat on the other. The president sat in his wheelchair at the head of the table. Agent Sanchez stood just behind him. But all eyes were on the video screens at the far end of the small airborne conference room.

“Good, let’s begin. Jack, anything new?”

“Afraid so, sir,” replied Mitchell. “Couple things. First, I just took an urgent call from Chaim Modine, Israeli Defense Minister.”

“What’s Chaim got?”

“It’s not good, sir.”

“Let me have it.”

“We were right. The Israelis sent a strike force into Western Iraq a few hours ago. Attacked a Scud B team and captured the missile—well, the warhead, actually. They blew up the rocket itself. Chaim even uplinked some footage.”

“Really?” asked the president, taken aback. “All right. Let’s see it.”

Corsetti dimmed the lights with a remote control on the conference table. What unfolded on Screen Two before him chilled Bennett to his bones, both for its imagery and the incredible technology that made it possible. Eerie green-and-black night-vision thermal photography from the lead Israeli Apache showed the entire strike unfolding, including the brutal death of Ali Kamal, though no one in the U.S., of course, actually knew his name.

“Well, Chaim Modine isn’t in the habit of showing us videotape of his commando missions,” said the president. “What’s he got, Jack, and what’s he want?”

Bennett could see Jack Mitchell shift uncomfortably on the video screen in front of him. It wasn’t like the CIA Director to hold back.

“Sir, they’ve examined the warhead,” Mitchell began carefully.

“Please tell me it’s conventional.”

Mitchell shook his head.

“Chemical?”

Mitchell shook his head again.

“Biological?”

Mitchell shook his head a third time.

The room quietly but collectively gasped. Out of the corner of his eye, Bennett caught a glimpse of Sanchez’s hand moving to her mouth in horror. The president seemed unwilling to speak, as though by not saying the word it would somehow not be true. But it was, and he knew it. They all knew it.

“The Iraqis have developed nuclear warheads,” the president said finally.

“Sir, the Israelis are faxing all the data their team has developed on the warhead. They’re sending photos and Geiger counter readings—anything we need. They’re even willing to let our ambassador and defense attaché see it if we want them too. But we’d have to move fast.”

“Bottom line?” asked the president.

“Fairly sophisticated, actually, and very deadly. The Israeli scientists say it would have worked. Had it hit Tel Aviv—say, Dizengoff Center, downtown…”

“The shopping mall?”

“Yes sir. The Mossad calculates over one million people would have been incinerated in a millisecond. Another two to three million could have died over the next few months.”

“Lord have mercy,” whispered the president.

“The real question is: Are there more?” asked the vice president.

“Honestly, they’ve got no idea,” said Mitchell. “But all of the Mossad analysts and their military intel guys agree: Saddam Hussein wouldn’t play ball with just one nuke. He has more and he’s prepared to use ’em or lose ’em—and not just against Tel Aviv but against Washington and New York if he has the chance. Remember, we’re talking about a guy who has already used weapons of mass destruction. He used chemical weapons to kill about 100,000 of his own people during the 1980s and 1990s. So we’ve got to be ready for him to do anything.”

“So what’s Modine want?” the president asked again.

“It’s not just Modine, sir. The entire Israeli Security Cabinet just voted in emergency session.”

“And?”

“Sir, we’ve got one hour. Either we go nuclear against Baghdad…”

Mitchell paused abruptly.

“Or what?” the president asked, his eyes as bloodshot and weary and anxious as Bennett had ever seen them.

“Either we go nuclear, or Israel does.”

Bennett was numb. His mind raced to put the pieces together. The Israelis had just thwarted an imminent nuclear attack from Iraq. Now they were prepared to attack Baghdad with their own nuclear weapons, weapons never before officially acknowledged. But they clearly understood the consequences. They would have very little proof to show the outside world, and very little sympathy as well. They hadn’t actually been attacked. Not yet. They hadn’t actually lost a million people in a millisecond. Not yet.

But if Iraq had more of such terrifying weapons, the Israelis were facing an imminent nuclear holocaust on the order of all of the Nazi horrors combined, if not worse. Some six million Jews had died during World War II inside the Nazi death camps and gas chambers. Now some six million Jews lived in the entire State of Israel. Every single one of them was in grave danger. Thus, the Israelis were now asking the United States of America to launch its own nuclear strike against Saddam Hussein—within the hour.

After all
, thought Bennett,
we have cause. We have standing.

It was our president who has just nearly been killed by Iraqi terrorists.

It was our planes that have just been shot down by Iraqi surface-to-air missiles.

It was our Twin Towers and Pentagon that were once viciously and suddenly attacked.

It was our White House and Capitol Building that had been targeted.

It was the U.S. that has been leading the global coalition to eradicate terror from the face of the earth.

And it is our president who could certainly make the most persuasive case to the world that Iraq was a lethal, existential threat to world peace and prosperity.

We had already told the world Iraq was part of an “axis of evil,” together with Iran and North Korea. But for a host of reasons—some political, some strategic—we’ve never actually taken decisive military action to neutralize that axis.

Would the president really order such a strike? How could he? Then again, how could he not?

The black phone rang only once.

The CIA agents in the basement security office of the Hotel National answered in English. Check your email, came the message, and the line went dead. The email was checked, read, and immediately discarded by the lead agent. The team had clearance to secure the help of Russian special forces, and to move when the moment was right.

The agent quietly passed word to his men: Be ready in fifteen minutes.

This was it.

Prime Minister David Doron sat across from his top military advisors. His Defense Minister had just spoken to the U.S. CIA Director and Defense Secretary and expected word from the president any minute. But he could not wait. He needed to be ready to strike, and do so at a moment’s notice—even before the hour was up—if necessary. Doron turned to Defense Minister Modine and General Uri Ze’ev, the IDF Chief of Staff, and nodded.

Ze’ev now picked up a phone, pressed four numbers, and then slowly read the first nine numbers of the Israeli nuclear launch code, authorizing the immediate fueling of their missiles, but not yet their firing.

“Commence Operation Cosmic Justice—
now
.”

The Secretary of State finally broke the silence.

“Sir, it’s Tucker.”

“Yes, Tuck.”

“Is it possible that the Israelis are bluffing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Sir, they have nuclear weapons themselves. Is it possible they are feeding us bad information to provoke an attack that would neutralize the Iraqi threat forever?”

“Are you kidding?” the president asked, incredulous. “No, no, I don’t think so. Jack? I mean, is that possible?”

“Sir, it’s possible, but highly unlikely. We’ve just confirmed their attack on the Scud site. I’ll have satellite photos for you in the next few minutes. But we know they hit a Scud site. We know they recovered something. And our analysts think Modine is playing it straight. I had four of my best guys listening in on the call and sifting through the data. Given everything else that’s going on in the world right now, it feels real.”

“Burt? What about you?”

Defense Secretary Burt Trainor didn’t hesitate.

“Sir, I was on the call with Jack and his team and I’m afraid I have to agree. My team and I think it’s legit—and serious.”

“Marsha?”

“Well, honestly, sir, I don’t believe the Israelis would play games with us. As for what we do about it…”

“Sir, it’s Tucker again.”

“Hold on a second. Bill, what do you make of it?”