by Jack Mars
“Getting physical,” he said. “With someone like you.”
Now she shook the memories away, a ghost of a smile on her face. She had drifted there for a bit. On the TV monitor, Stephen Lief was getting ready to take his oath. It was happening in her old study at the Naval Observatory. She remembered the room and the house well. It was the beautiful, turreted and gabled Queen Anne–style 1850s mansion on the grounds of the Naval Observatory in Washington, DC. For decades, it had been the official residence of the Vice President of the United States.
She used to stand at the big bay window that was visible on the monitor, staring out at the beautiful rolling lawns of the Naval Observatory campus. The afternoon sun would come through that window, playing incredible games with light and shadow. For five years, she had lived in that house as Vice President. She’d loved it there, and would move back in a heartbeat if she could.
In the old days, in the afternoons and evenings, she would go out jogging on the Observatory grounds with her Secret Service men. Those years were a time of optimism, of stirring speeches, of meeting and greeting thousands of hopeful Americans. It seemed like a lifetime ago now.
Susan sighed. Her mind wandered. She remembered the day of the Mount Weather attack, the atrocity that had catapulted her out of her happy life as Vice President and into the raging tumult of the past few years.
She shook her head. No thank you. She would not think about that day.
Through the looking glass, on a small dais, two men and a woman stood. Photographers milled around like gnats, snapping pictures of them.
One of the men on the dais was short and bald. He wore a long robe. He was Clarence Warren, Chief Justice of the United States. The woman’s name was Judy Lief. She wore a bright blue suit. She was smiling ear to ear and holding a Bible open in her hands. Her husband, Stephen, placed his left hand on the Bible. His right hand was raised. Lief was often thought of dour, but even he was smiling a little.
“I, Stephen Douglas Lief,” he said, “do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
“That I will bear true faith…” Judge Warren prompted.
“That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same,” Lief said. “That I take this obligation freely, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office which I am about to enter.”
“So help me God,” Judge Warren said.
“So help me God,” Lief said.
An image appeared in Susan’s mind—a ghost from the recent past. Marybeth Horning, the last person to take that oath. She had been a mentor to Susan in the Senate, and something of a mentor as Vice President. With her thin, small frame and her big glasses, she looked like a mouse, but she roared like a lion.
Then she was shot down and killed because of… what? Her liberal politics, you might say, but that wasn’t true. The people who killed her hadn’t cared about policy differences—all they cared about was power.
Susan hoped the country could move past that now. She watched Stephen on the TV monitor, embracing his family and other well-wishers.
Did she trust this man? She didn’t know.
Would he try to have her killed?
No. She didn’t think so. He had more integrity than that. She had never known him to be underhanded during her time in the Senate. She supposed that was a start—she had a Vice President who wouldn’t try to kill her.
She pictured reporters from the New York Times and the Washington Post asking questions: “What do you like about Stephen Lief as your new Vice President?”
“Well, he’s not going to kill me. I feel pretty good about that.”
Then Kat Lopez was at her side.
“Uh, Susan? Let’s get you over to the microphones so you can congratulate Vice President Lief and give him a few words of encouragement.”
Susan snapped out of her reverie. “Of course. That’s a good idea. He can probably use them.”
CHAPTER THREE
11:16 p.m. Israel Time (4:16 p.m. Eastern Standard Time)
The Blue Line, Israel-Lebanon Border
“Listen not to the liars, to the unbelievers,” the boy of seventeen whispered.
He took a deep breath.
“Strive against them with the utmost effort. Fight against them so that Allah will punish them by your hands and disgrace them and give you victory over them.”
The boy was as battle-hardened as they came. At fifteen, he had left his home and family and joined the Army of God. He had crossed into Syria and spent the past two years fighting street-to-street, face-to-face, and sometimes hand-to-hand, against the apostates of Daesh, what the westerners called ISIS.
The Daesh were unafraid to die—indeed, they welcomed death. Many of them were older Chechens and Iraqis, very hard to kill. The early days of opposing them had been a nightmare, but the boy had survived. In two years, he had fought many battles and killed many men. And he had learned much about war.
Now he stood in the black dark on a hillside in northern Israel. He balanced an anti-tank rocket launcher on his right shoulder. In his younger days, a heavy rocket like this would drill into his shoulder and after a short time, his bones would begin to ache. But he was stronger now. The weight of it no longer made much impression on him.
There was a small stand of trees around him, and very nearby, a group of commandos were on the ground, watching the roadway below them.
“Let those who fight in the way of Allah sell the life of this world for the other,” he said, very low, under his breath. “He who fights in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, he shall receive a vast reward.”
“Abu!” someone whispered fiercely.
“Yes.” His own voice was calm.
“Shut up!”
Abu took a deep breath and let the exhale slowly come out.
He was an expert with the anti-tank rocket. He had fired so many of these, and he had become so accurate with them, that he was now a very valuable man. That was something he had learned about war. The longer you lived, the more skills you amassed, and the better you became at fighting. The better you became, the more valuable you were, and ever more likely to remain alive. He had known many who didn’t survive long in combat—a week, ten days. He had met one who died on the first day. If only they could last a month, things would start to become clearer to—
“Abu!” the voice hissed.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Ready? They’re coming.”
“Okay.”
He went about his business, relaxed, almost as if he were just practicing. He hefted the rocket launcher and unfolded the stock. His placed his left hand along the length of the barrel, lightly, lightly, until the target came into view. You didn’t want your grip too firm, too soon. The index finger of his right hand caressed the trigger mechanism. He put the gun sight near his face, but not to his eye. He liked to have his eyes free until the last moment, so he could acquire the entire picture before focusing on the details. His knees bent slightly, his back ever-so-slightly arched.
He could see light from the convoy now, behind the hillside to his right, approaching along the road. The lights reached upward, casting strange shadows. A few seconds later, he could hear the rumble of the engines.
He took another deep breath.
“Steady…” a stern voice said. “Steady.”
“Lord Allah,” Abu said, his words coming quickly now, and louder than before. “Guide my hands and my eyes. Let me bring death to your enemies, in your name and in the name of your most beloved prophet Mohammed, and all the great prophets in all times.”
The first jeep came around the bend. The round headlights were clear now, cutting through the nighttime mist.
The boy Abu instantly became rigid under the weight of the heavy gun. He put his right eye to the sight. The vehicles in the line appeared, large, like he could reach out and touch them. His finger tightened on the trigger. The
breath caught in his throat. He was no longer a boy with a rocket launcher—he and the launcher melded together, becoming one entity, a killing machine.
All around his feet, men moved like snakes, crawling toward the roadway.
“Steady,” the voice said again. “The second car, you understand?”
“Yes.”
In his gun sight, the second jeep was RIGHT THERE. He could see the silhouettes of the people inside it.
“It’s easy,” he whispered. “It’s so easy… Steady…”
Two seconds passed, Abu slowly sweeping the rocket launcher from right to left, following the target, never wavering.
“FIRE!”
* * *
For Avraham Gold, this was the part he hated.
Hate was the wrong word. He feared it. Any second now, coming right up.
He always talked here. He talked too much. He felt that he would blurt anything, just to get past this place. He took a long drag from his cigarette—against the rules to smoke on patrol, but it was the only thing that relaxed him.
“Leave Israel?” he said. “Never! Israel is my home, now and forever. I will travel abroad, certainly, but leave? How could I? We are called by God to live here. This is the Holy Land. This is the land that was promised.”
Avraham was twenty years old, a corporal in the Israeli Defense Forces. His grandparents were Germans who had survived the Holocaust. He believed every word that he said. But it still sounded hollow to his ears, like a corny pro-settler TV commercial.
He was at the wheel of the jeep, driving the third in a line of three. He glanced at the girl sitting next to him. Daria. God, she’s beautiful!
Even with her close-cropped hair, even with her body covered primly in her uniform. It was her smile. It would light up the sky. And her long eyelashes—like a cat.
She had no business being up here, in this… no-man’s-land. Especially with her views. She was a liberal. There shouldn’t be any liberals in the IDF, Avraham had decided. They were useless. And Daria was worse than a liberal. She was…
“I don’t believe in your God,” she said simply. “You know that.”
Now Avraham smiled. “I know, and when you get out of the army, you’re going to—”
She finished the thought for him. “Move to Brooklyn, that’s right. My cousin owns a moving company.”
He almost laughed, despite his nerves. “You’re a skinny girl to carry couches and pianos up and down flights of stairs.”
“I’m stronger than you might—”
Just then, the radio screeched. “Abel Patrol. Come in, Abel Patrol.”
He picked up the receiver. “Abel.”
“Whereabouts?” came the tinny voice.
“Just entering Sector Nine as we speak.”
“Right on time. Okay. Eyes sharp.”
“Yes, sir,” Avraham said. He clicked off the receiver and glanced at Daria.
She shook her head. “If it’s so worrisome, why don’t they do something about it?”
He shrugged. “It’s the military. They’ll fix it just as soon as something terrible happens.”
The problem was right up ahead. The convoy was moving east to west along the narrow ribbon of roadway. To their right was a stand of dense, deep forest—it began fifty meters from the road. The IDF had cleared the land right to the border. Where those woods began was Lebanon.
To their left were three steep, green hills. Not mountains, really, but neither were they rolling hills. They were abrupt, and sheer. The roadway wrapped around and behind the hills, and for just a moment, radio communications were tenuous, and the convoys were vulnerable.
IDF command had been talking about those hills for over a year. It had to be the hills. They couldn’t clear out the forest because it was Lebanese territory—it would cause an international incident. So for a while, they were going to dynamite the hills. Then they were going to build a guard tower atop one of them. Both plans were deemed unsuitable. Dynamiting the hills meant the road would have to be temporarily rerouted away from the border. And a guard tower would be under constant threat of attack.
No, the best thing to do was run patrols between the hills and the forest night and day and just hope for the best.
“Watch those woods,” Avraham said. “Eyes sharp.”
He realized he had just repeated the exact same words as the commander. What a fool! He glanced at Daria again. Her heavy rifle lay alongside her thin frame. She giggled and shook her head, her face turning red.
In the darkness ahead, a flash of light erupted from their left.
It slammed into the middle jeep, twenty meters in front of them. The car exploded, spun to its left, and rolled. The car burned, the occupants already incinerated.
Avraham stomped on the brakes, but too late. He skidded into the burning vehicle.
Beside him, Daria screamed.
They had attacked from the wrong side—the hill side. There was no cover over there. It was inside Israel.
There was no time to speak, no time to give Daria a command.
Gunfire came from both sides now. Machine gun fire raked his door. DUNK-DUNK-DUNK-DUNK-DUNK. His window shattered, spraying glass in on him. At least one of the bullets had pierced the armor. He was hit. He looked down at his side—there was a darkness, growing and spreading. He was bleeding. He could barely feel it—it seemed like a bee sting.
He grunted. Men were running in the darkness.
Instantly, before he knew it, his gun was in his hand. He aimed out the missing window.
BLAM!
The noise was deafening to his ears.
He had hit one. He had hit one. The man had gone down.
He sighted on another one.
Steady…
Something happened. His whole body bucked wildly in his seat. He had dropped his gun. A shot, something heavy, had gone right through him. It had come from behind him and punched through the dashboard. A gunshot, or a small rocket of some kind. Gingerly, numb with terror, he reached to his chest and touched the area below his throat.
It was… gone.
There was a massive hole in his chest. How was he even still alive?
The answer came instantly: he soon wouldn’t be.
He didn’t even feel it. A sense of warmth spread out through his body. He looked at Daria again. It was too bad. He was going to convince her… of something. Now that would never happen.
She stared at him. Her eyes were round, like saucers. Her mouth was open in a giant O of horror. He felt the urge to comfort her, even now.
“It’s okay,” he wanted to tell her. “It doesn’t hurt.”
But he could not speak.
Men appeared at the window behind her. With their rifle butts, they smashed away the remaining shards of glass. Hands reached in, trying to pull her out the window, but she fought them. She tore at them with her bare hands.
The door opened. Three men now, dragging her, pulling at her.
Then she was gone, and he was alone.
Avraham stared at the vehicle burning in the darkness in front of him. It occurred to him that he had no idea what had happened to the lead vehicle. He supposed it didn’t matter now.
He thought briefly of his parents and his sister. He loved them all, simply and without regret.
He thought of his grandparents, perhaps standing ready to receive him.
He could no longer make out the burning vehicle. It was just bright red, yellow, and orange, flickering against a black background. He watched as the colors became smaller and dimmer, the darkness spreading and growing even darker. The inferno of the exploded car now seemed like the guttering of a spent candle.
He watched until the last of the color went out.
CHAPTER FOUR
4:35 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
Headquarters of the Special Response Team
McLean, Virginia
“Well, I guess the band is officially back together,” Susan Hopkins said.
Luke smiled at t
he thought.
It was the Special Response Team’s first day in their brand new digs. The new headquarters were their old headquarters from years before, but newly renovated. The squat, three-story, glass and concrete building was in the wealthy suburb of McLean, only a few miles from the CIA. It had a helipad with a brand new black Bell 430 hunched on the tarmac like a dragonfly, gleaming white SRT logo on its side.
There were four black agency SUVs parked in the lot. The building had offices on the first and second floor, and a state-of-the-art conference room that was nearly a match for the Situation Room at the White House. It had every technological bell and whistle that Mark Swann’s fevered imagination could conjure. The workout center (complete with cardio equipment, weight machines, and a heavily padded sparring room) and the cafeteria were on the third floor. The soundproof gun range was in the basement.
The new agency had twenty employees, the perfect size to respond to unfolding events fast, light, and with total flexibility. Spun off from the FBI and now organized as a sub-agency of the Secret Service, the arrangement limited Luke’s interactions with the federal bureaucracy. He reported directly to the President of the United States.
The small campus was surrounded by security fencing, topped with razor wire. But right now the gates were thrown wide open. They were having an Open House today. And Luke was happy to be here.
He strode the halls with Susan, eager to show the President of the United States all the things she already knew about. He felt like a five-year-old. He glanced at her from time to time, soaked in her beauty, but did not stare. He stifled the urge to hold hands, which she apparently felt as well, because her hand brushed his hand, his arm, his shoulder, almost constantly.
She needed to save all that touching for later.
Luke turned his attention to the building. The place had come together exactly as he had hoped, and so had the SRT. His people had agreed to join him. This was no small matter—with all the strife they had endured, and Luke’s extended absence, it was a gift that everyone was willing to trust him again.
