by Mark Alpert
The boom echoed against the mountain. One of the Rangers flew upward in a fountain of sand.
David froze. It’s a mine, he thought. We’re walking through a minefield.
The soldier’s body landed a few feet away. He was clearly dead. Both his legs and the bottom part of his torso were missing. In shock, David stared at the dark puddle that covered the soldier’s last footprints. But the other Rangers remained calm and carefully moved backward, retracing their steps. Their faces were grim, but they didn’t stop for a moment. Instead, they turned away from the minefield and began scaling the steep eastern wall of the spur.
David followed them, eager to get away from the flat ground now. He clambered to a narrow ledge, then reached for Monique’s hand and pulled her up. Groping for handholds, they scrambled up the slope, kicking stones down the mountain with every step. They kept climbing until they reached a rock shelf at the top of the spur. The Rangers were already lined up along the shelf, kneeling behind a natural parapet of granite slabs. David joined them and peered over the edge.
Although the last remnants of daylight were fading from the sky, he could see the earthen fortifications, which were about sixty feet below them and a hundred yards to the west. Cyrus’s men had dug four foxholes and placed a big machine gun in each one. Narrow trenches ran between the foxholes, forming a rough square. At the center of the square was a wider trench leading to a tunnel entrance that was partially blocked by sandbags. That’s where the X-ray laser is, David guessed. He remembered what Cyrus had told him at Camp Cobra, about the bunker-busting warhead that would burrow into the ground before exploding. So the laser would have to be positioned underground, at the end of that tunnel.
He turned to Sergeant Morrison and pointed at the tunnel entrance. “Over there,” he whispered. “That’s the target. We have to get inside that tunnel and destroy the laser.”
Morrison shook his head. “Shit, you gotta be kidding. They got at least forty men in those trenches. And you’d need a fucking tank to get past those machine guns.”
“Then radio the helicopters. Tell them to concentrate their fire on the tunnel entrance.”
“Look, you’re not getting it. The guns in those foxholes shoot fifty-caliber armor-piercing rounds. They can take out a helicopter at two thousand yards. That’s way past the range of the fucking peashooters in the MI-8s.”
“No, you’re not getting it!” David pointed at the sky, which was filling with stars as it darkened. “Any minute now a B-2 bomber is gonna drop a warhead on that laser. And when that happens, it’s gonna kill everyone. It’s good-bye to the whole fucking universe!”
“Keep your voice down!” Morrison reached for the radio on his belt. “We’re gonna coordinate an attack with the choppers. Just stay low, all right? And hold your fire until I give the order.”
Clutching his radio, Morrison moved toward the other Rangers. Meanwhile, David scuttled over to Monique, who lay on her stomach about twenty feet away, pointing her Desert Eagle through a gap in the granite slabs. She glanced at him, keeping one eye on her gun sights. “Jesus. This doesn’t look good.”
“Don’t worry, we can do it.”
“There’s only eight of us. And four Israelis somewhere on the other side. It’s not enough.”
“We have the helicopters, too. They’re moving into position now.”
Monique didn’t respond. She didn’t believe him, he thought. She’d analyzed their situation and calculated the odds and concluded that they didn’t have a prayer. It was a logical conclusion, a solid scientific prediction backed up by all the facts. But David refused to think that way now. He thought of Michael and Jonah and Baby Lisa, his three perfect children, sitting on opposite sides of the globe. He wasn’t going to let them die. He didn’t know how, but he was going to save them.
After about a minute, the beating of the rotors grew louder. The MI-8s had turned off their running lights and now they thudded in the darkness. David lay on the rock shelf not far from Monique and held his gun with both hands, pointing it at the trenches and foxholes. Off to his right, he heard the Rangers chamber their rounds into their rifles. Then Sergeant Morrison shouted, “Fire!” and David started shooting.
The barrage was deafening. The Desert Eagle kicked in his hands and the rock shelf rumbled underneath him. The Rangers strafed the foxholes and trenches, and the helicopters dove toward the fortifications, their machine guns chugging. But an instant later, David heard an even louder noise, an impossibly fast sequence of booms, like never-ending thunder. The machine guns in the foxholes opened up on the MI-8s, and David saw the tracer rounds lance across the sky. He glimpsed the outlines of the helicopters, banking wildly to get out of the line of fire. Then he looked down at the foxholes again and saw one of the machine guns turn toward their position on the spur.
“GET DOWN!” Morrison yelled. “GET—”
The armor-piercing rounds smashed into the mountain. Rock chips sprayed from the granite slabs and rained down on the slopes. David and Monique rolled to the left, tumbling behind a large boulder. But the Rangers kept shooting. The whole mountainside was exploding around them but they stayed in their positions and returned fire.
David and Monique moved farther to the left, scrabbling up the slope. They found another boulder to hide behind and David peeked around its edge. In one of the trenches, Cyrus’s men had turned on a searchlight and trained it on the spur. Another searchlight was aimed at the Israeli commandos who were shooting at the fortifications from the other side. And in the center of the camp, near the entrance to the tunnel, David saw a man kneeling on the ground, with a long tube resting on his shoulder. He couldn’t see the man’s face—he was too far away—but he noticed the checkered keffiyeh draped over the man’s shoulders.
Just as David recognized him, a rocket shot out of the tube on the man’s shoulder. Trailing a long tail of fire, it flew straight toward one of the MI-8s, which was just pulling up from its dive. The rocket hit the helicopter’s nose and there was a tremendous explosion. Then David saw nothing but the fireball.
NICODEMUS SHOUTED “HALLELUJAH!” AS THE THERMOBARIC GRENADE exploded. The blast roared against the mountainside and illuminated the sandy ground below, bathing all the True Believers in its holy light. This is the face of God, Nico exulted, the dazzling countenance of the Almighty! He’s gazing down on us now as the gates of heaven start to open. And He’s telling His loyal servants that He is well pleased.
The wreckage of the helicopter dropped like a stone, crashing to the ground about a hundred meters away. Nico threw the empty launcher aside and picked up a loaded one. There was one more MI-8, one more satanic insect to be swatted. Then the path to the Redemption would be clear. He rested the launch tube on his shoulder and pointed it at the sky.
• • •
JUST BEFORE ARYEH ARRIVED AT THE UNIT 8200 HEADQUARTERS, THE DIVIsion received a radio transmission from Turkmenistan. The signal was picked up by one of the IDF’s antennas on Mount Avital in the Golan Heights, and the source was identified as a ship on the Caspian Sea, an old fishing trawler that the Israeli intelligence agencies sometimes used to surreptitiously intercept Iranian communications. Because the boat’s captain reported directly to General Yaron, the transmission was routed to the general’s office. But the captain said he was simply relaying a signal that had originated from a radio tower in the Kopet Dag, a signal sent by someone named Mordecai Shomron.
By the time Aryeh rushed into Yaron’s office, the general was deep in conversation with Shomron, who turned out to be a Sayeret Matkal veteran and a comrade of Olam ben Z’man. Yaron—who’d gained some weight and lost some hair since the last time Aryeh had seen him—sat behind a desk crowded with communications equipment, including a console with a pair of speakers and a gooseneck microphone. Shomron’s voice streamed out of the speakers in a mad rush.
“Do you understand now, General?” the voice said. “This is a threat to the existence of the State of Israel. It’s a threat to the
existence of the whole world, actually, but you can stress the danger to Israel if you think that’s the best way to get the attention of the General Staff.”
Yaron pressed a switch and leaned toward the microphone. His console was apparently connected to the antennas on Mount Avital. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing the IDF can do,” he said. “The Pentagon has broken off communications with us. And even if the lines were open, I doubt we could convince them to halt a nuclear strike against the Iranians.”
“Is there some way to contact the White House directly? Although the people who organized this plot have collaborators in the American government, we don’t believe the president is involved.”
Aryeh’s gut cramped again. He thought of the B-2 bomber getting signals from the Milstar satellites as it cruised toward Iran. And he thought of all the crazy things Olam ben Z’man had said—about warheads and X-ray lasers and memory overloads and universal programs—and began to wonder if they just might be true.
He approached General Yaron’s desk and pointed at the console. “May I respond, sir?”
The general said, “Go ahead,” and pressed the switch for him.
Aryeh spoke into the microphone. “This is Agent Goldberg of Shin Bet. I’ve been deciphering the communications between Adam Cyrus Bennett and his collaborators. Bennett has infiltrated the Pentagon so thoroughly that I believe it would be difficult to warn the president through the usual military channels.”
The radio was silent for several seconds. “Well, what do you suggest we do?”
Aryeh rubbed the stubble on his chin. For a telecommunications expert, this was an interesting problem. What would be the best way to send a message directly to the president? “What kind of station are you transmitting from?” he asked Shomron.
“It’s a radio tower normally used by the Turkmen Army, I believe. The equipment is old but functional. We were able to circumvent the U.S. Air Force’s jamming devices by generating a spotlight radio beam that focused the signal on the Israeli ship to the west of us.”
Aryeh smiled. “That’s good. I want you to prepare to send another spotlight beam. This one pointing south.” Then he turned to Yaron. “General, could I have access to the satellite communications that your boats in the Arabian Sea intercepted? The signals sent to the B-2 bombers, I mean. I want to try to decipher them.”
Yaron looked at him gravely. Under ordinary circumstances he would’ve categorically denied the request. Aryeh was asking him to divulge the most sensitive communications of Israel’s closest ally, the signals from Global Strike Command that carried nuclear-control orders to America’s bombers. But after a couple of seconds Yaron nodded. Shomron had obviously done a good job of opening the general’s eyes. “We intercepted another Milstar signal sent to the B-2 twenty minutes ago, while it was over southeastern Iran,” Yaron said. “We have a few clandestine antennas inside the country, you see.”
“Yes, I’ll need that, too,” Aryeh said. “Please transmit all the intercepted communications to Olam’s headquarters in Shalhevet. I’ll tell the kippot srugot to fire up the computer.”
• • •
OLAM BEN Z’MAN SAW THE FIREBALL AND SAID A PRAYER FOR LIEUTENANT Halutz. He recited the Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, while struggling to evade the machine-gun fire, yanking the MI-8’s control stick to pull the helicopter skyward. As the .50-caliber rounds slammed into the fuselage and shattered the porthole windows, he muttered the Hebrew words under his breath: Yit’gadal v’yit’kadash sh’mei raba . . .
By the time he finished the prayer, he was out of the line of fire, soaring through the darkness that surrounded the mountain. But the machine-gun rounds must’ve hit the MI-8’s fuel tanks, because the gauges showed they were nearly empty. Olam shook his head. This helicopter was a piece of junk anyway, he thought. And now there was only one thing left to do with it.
With the remaining fuel he throttled up the engines, climbing in a wide arc until he was four hundred meters above the ground. Then he tilted the nose downward and started his dive.
JUST SECONDS AFTER HALUTZ’S MI-8 EXPLODED, A GRENADE HIT THE RANGers. David and Monique were more than a hundred feet away, crouched behind a boulder farther up the mountainside, but the shock wave from the blast nearly knocked them over. The searchlight beams illuminated a cloud of dust above the granite slabs that the Rangers had been hiding behind. Below the cloud, half a dozen bodies lay motionless on the rock shelf. Sergeant Morrison’s corpse sprawled on top of two others. It looked like he’d tried to shield them at the last moment.
David leaned his forehead against the rough face of the boulder. They were done, he thought. They were finished. All the fighting and struggling had been for nothing. And soon the whole world would turn to nothing, devoured by a great expanding hole of nothingness. David tried to picture it, the overload that would freeze the universal computer, halting the trillions of calculations taking place every nanosecond in every minuscule volume of space. Then the long silence would begin. Cyrus had called it the Kingdom of Heaven, and maybe he was right. The new universe would be without time or change, an eternal resting place. A place of peace, certainly. But only because nothing could ever happen.
Then David heard a furious whine of protest. It was the rotor noise from the surviving MI-8, but louder and higher-pitched than before, wailing from above. He peered around the edge of the boulder and looked up, trying to spot the helicopter. Cyrus’s men did the same thing, aiming their searchlights at the noise. The converging beams found the MI-8, which was still hundreds of yards away but coming in fast. All the machines guns in the foxholes quickly turned in that direction and fired at the helicopter, shooting streams of tracer rounds into its bulky fuselage. And then David saw Nicodemus again, kneeling in front of the tunnel entrance with another grenade launcher on his shoulder, its tube pointed at the helicopter’s nose.
David stepped away from the boulder, moving into the open. There was nothing inside him now but pure unholy rage. Before the world ended, he wanted to kill this man. He needed to kill this man. He held the Desert Eagle in front of him and it shook in his hands.
And then he heard Lucille’s voice. He heard it in his mind and heart and stomach. He felt one of her hands on the small of his back and the other on his chest, just below his collarbone. She stood right behind him, bringing her lips close to his ear.
Keep your right arm straight, she said. Wrap your left hand around your right, with the thumbs crossed. Line up the front sight inside the rear sight and the target just above. Then squeeze the trigger nice and slow.
OLAM AIMED FOR THE TUNNEL. THE ROUNDS FROM THE MACHINE GUNS TORE dozens of holes in his MI-8, but they couldn’t stop the helicopter’s descent. When he was a hundred and fifty meters away he saw a man in a checkered keffiyeh in front of the tunnel entrance, holding a grenade launcher on his shoulder. Olam’s heart clenched—this was the one thing that could stop him. But then the man shuddered and dropped the launch tube. He fell sideways and lay on the sand. A dark red splotch spread across his keffiyeh.
Ah, Olam thought, this is the instrument of Keter! The Crown of the Universe has guided David’s hand!
Laughing now, Olam rolled the MI-8 counterclockwise, turning the helicopter on its side so it would fit through the tunnel. He hit the entrance at more than three hundred kilometers per hour, and the rotor sheared cleanly off the fuselage. The helicopter plowed right through the sandbags and careened down the steeply sloping tunnel, hardly slowing at all as it slid toward the bottom. Olam had time to offer just one more prayer, a hymn of praise to the Sephirot that had created the universe.
Keter. Chokhmah. Binah. Chesed. Gevurah. Tiferet. Netzach. Hod. Yesod. Malkuth.
The last thing Olam saw was Adam Cyrus Bennett, standing with his back against a large viewing window. The plump leader of the Qliphoth held out his arms, as if he thought he could stop the ten-ton fuselage from smashing into his X-ray laser. But no one can change the laws of physics. The helicopter rammed into the
glass and exploded, and as Olam died he saw the husks of the Qliphoth split open to let the light of God shine through.
ARYEH CHECKED HIS WATCH FOR THE FORTIETH TIME. BASED ON THE FLIGHT path and speed of the B-2 bomber, General Yaron had estimated that it would arrive at Ashkhaneh at approximately 9 P.M. local time. It was now 7:25 in Israel, which meant that it was 8:55 in Iran. But while Aryeh paced across Yaron’s office, the general sat calmly behind his desk and studied a printout of the message they’d just received from Shalhevet.
Ehud ben Ezra, the young zealot in charge of running Olam’s quantum computer, had inputted the data from the intercepted Milstar communications and sent the results of the calculations back to Yaron. The general grinned as he stared at the printout. He’d become so intrigued by the computer’s capabilities that it seemed as if he’d forgotten all about the stealth bomber. “Fascinating,” he muttered. “This machine changes everything. They’ll have to rewrite all the cryptography textbooks.”
Aryeh clenched his hands. “General, how much longer—”
“This is the private key!” Yaron showed him the printout, which was covered with hundreds of digits. “Thanks to that crazy man Loebner, no public-key encryption system is safe anymore. My specialists are using this key right now to decode all the Emergency Action Messages that Global Strike Command sent to the B-2. And EAMs are considered to be the most secure communications in the world!”
“Yes, but how much longer will it take?”
“Soon, soon. There are several steps, you see. This private key will unlock the first message sent to the bomber, the one the air force used to distribute the other keys. Then we have to use one of those keys to decipher the Emergency Action Message that our antennas inside Iran picked up. And then we have to code a new EAM using all the same keys so that it looks like it came from the proper authorities at Global Strike Command. It has to have exactly the same TRANSEC and COMSEC encryption and—”
