As the Israeli pilots prepared for combat, none of them knew for certain who was responsible for the assassination of the prime minister or the brutal attack on the Knesset. But they didn’t care anymore. They were going after them all.
The Pinball had been fired. They were free to bounce around now, hitting wherever and whatever target they could find.
The first twenty F-16s had been divided into five flights of four. Some were tasked to fly north toward Damascus or Lebanon, while others were going east toward Amman. Two flights were heading south toward Egypt and the south Jordan border. And these would be only the first of many sorties. Dozens of other jets were already in pre-flight operations. Hundreds of sorties would be flown in the first twenty-four hours. Thousands of sorties in the coming weeks. Israel Defense Forces were massing in defensive positions along their eastern and southern borders. Soon they would move into offensive operations. Special Forces teams, some of the best and most dedicated in the world, had already been deployed deep into Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Iran.
The monstrous wave of activity made one thing clear.
This wasn’t an operation. This was a full-out war.
* * *
Captain Aharon Elnecave felt a tightness in his gut as he walked to his jet. His flight suit was soaked, and he could feel tiny drops of perspiration running down the side of his ribs. It was almost full dark now, and cool, but he continued to sweat.
His F-16 was ready to go. He walked around the aircraft, lovingly touching the jet. The little fighter felt cool, the metal and composite materials smooth to his touch. He did a hurried preflight inspection, concentrating on the weapons tucked under the belly of the jet. Two two-thousand-pound bombs. He stared at them, his throat tight and dry. Looking up, he nodded to the security man. The soldier watched him carefully, the overhead lights casting his eyes in dark shadows under the brim of his helmet. Aharon glanced left and right. Up and down the flight line, the security soldiers were everywhere, all of them dressed in full battle gear. He grunted a hurried greeting to the sergeant, and then turned back to his jet.
Fourteen minutes after walking to his aircraft, the captain had completed the walk around and preflight inspections, strapped himself in, run up the engines, and completed all of his pre-takeoff checks.
He turned to his right, where his flight leader was sitting in another F-16. At 10:56 P.M., the leader nodded and released his brakes, and the jets started to move. Turning east on the taxiway, two other fighters fell in with the flight, taking up the third and fourth positions behind their leader and Aharon. After taxiing onto a position at the end of the runway, the flight leader stopped and the other jets pulled into his side. The munitions crews were ready, six guys in fluorescent yellow vests standing off the right side. The four pilots gave the “clear” signal by placing their hands on the cockpit, always keeping them in view. Confident the pilots couldn’t hurt them by mistakenly moving the flight controls or inadvertently hitting the wrong switch, the munitions crews ran under the jets, where they pulled the arming pins from the weapons, then turned and ran back to the side. While they worked, Captain Elnecave glanced behind him and saw another group of fighter jets lining up behind him on the taxiway.
Once the munitions crews were clear, the flight leader signaled the other pilots and the four jets moved forward again. As the fighters began to accelerate down the runway, the pilots hit their afterburners, and a solid orange-and-yellow flame sprouted at the engines, then shot back fifteen feet. The calm night shattered as the sound echoed through the air, rolling over the airport like a long, thunderous roll.
The little fighters climbed to three hundred feet, then turned west, following in a half-mile trail.
It was a very short flight to their targets, and they had a lot to do. The pilots started their bombing checklist almost as soon as they were in the air.
White House Situation Room, Washington, D.C.
The Presidential Situation Room is a cramped series of offices built underneath the West Wing of the White House. Unlike the Presidential Emergency Operations Center underneath the East Wing, which had been designed for use as a command and control center during a nuclear war, the Situation Room is fairly small. Through the 1980s and 1990s, it had hardly been used. But now it seemed the president used it regularly.
There were several men and three women inside the main conference room. They sat around a large table that was cluttered with empty Coke cans, a coffeepot with plastic cups, scratch pads, and red-bound, top-secret security files. Three digital clocks on the wall showed the local times in Washington, D.C.; Jerusalem; and Riyadh. Behind them, the faux wood panel walls hid various communications gear and television screens. A white curtain at the front of the room had been pulled back, exposing an enormous flat-screen monitor, which was presently showing a real-time relay from an American AWACS command and control aircraft orbiting sixty miles west off the coast of Israel, over the Mediterranean Sea.
Everyone watched the tactical screen as five blue triangles emerged from the Israeli air base at Hatzerim, each triangle representing a flight of four fighters. The flights took off thirty seconds apart, and then headed in different directions, flying north, east, and south.
A Marine four-star general, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stood at the head of the table and to the right of the screen.
“What are they?” the president asked.
“F-16 fighters, sir. Block 60s. Air-to-ground role.”
“So all of them are strikers?”
“Yes, sir, they are. We’ve been in constant contact with the Israeli commanders, and they have assured us that this first wave of attackers will be hitting well-established terrorist targets. After that, they will spread out, but we’ve got no problem with what they are going after right now.”
The group watched in silence as the blue triangles spread across Israel, seeming to saturate the skies. The country was so little, and the fighters moved so fast, it would take only seconds before they would be tossing their bombs.
The television monitor suddenly shifted, seeming to jump in its tracks, as the satellite feed from the AWACS burned through some electromagnetic static in space. The picture returned, a little more hazy and gray, but the president continued to study the screen. “Review the target list,” he demanded for the second time.
The Marine general looked down at a sheet of paper and read the targets again. “The training camp at Rafah, General Karak’s home in Khan, Hezbollah facilities along the Lebanon border . . . .”
The target list was long. Twenty aircraft. Forty bombs. Eleven separate targets in all.
The chairman finished reading the list, and then looked up at the president. “Sir, we have maintained regular communications with General Malka, acting director of the Israeli National Security Committee—”
The president lifted his hand impatiently. He wasn’t interested in General Malka; he needed to talk to the new prime minister or the president. He needed to talk to some kind of civilian leadership, not a military man. He turned in his chair, brushing his hands across his face. “Still no word out of Jerusalem?” he asked his secretary of state.
The gray-haired woman leaned forward. “I’m afraid nothing, sir.”
“We don’t know who is in charge there?”
“It seems that General Malka is, sir. At least for the moment, he appears to be in command.”
The president hesitated as he considered the subtle meaning of her words. “In command.” Yes, that was right. Civilians were “in charge.” Military leaders were “in command,” which was only one of the reasons he was nervous. His stomach fluttered again.
“What about Secretary Rabin?” the president questioned.
“No word from him, sir.”
“The senior member of the Cabinet of Ministers—”
“—was presiding over the Knesset,” the secretary of state interrupted. “He hasn’t been seen or heard from since the explosion. The Israeli
press is reporting he is dead.”
The president was desperately searching for someone inside the Israeli government that he could talk to. The last thing he wanted was for this thing to blow out of control. And who knew what the Israelis were planning to do?
“Defense Minister Fuad Ben-Eliezer?” he asked in desperation.
“We do have some information on him,” the secretary of state replied. “Although he hasn’t tried to contact us, we believe he is being evacuated to a secure command center west of Jerusalem. We’ve been told he’s en route, but we don’t know for sure.”
The president fell silent, his shoulders slumping at the thought. He had a pencil in his hand and he rolled it absently, twirling it between his fingers, and then letting it fall into his palm. “And you’re certain,” he demanded, “that you’ve tried every possible means of establishing communication with President Bier?”
“Yes, sir, we have. We have no word of his status, which is clearly bad news. If he had survived the bombing of the Knesset, I think he would have emerged. We would have seen him, he would have made a statement, and we would have heard something by now. The silence indicates—and this is just my opinion, sir—but I think we have to assume he is incapacitated if he survived the bombing at all.”
The president moved his eyes around the table, inviting disagreement. No one said anything. It seemed they agreed.
“Then who’s in charge over there?” he demanded in a gruff voice.
“No one knows, Mr. President. The Israeli people, the military, it seems that none of them know. Try to imagine, if you could, a parallel situation here in the United States. Imagine, Mr. President, that one day you were assassinated, and the vice president as well. Then later that night, during an emergency session of Congress, an enormous bomb goes off, killing most—at least half—of the senators and congressmen inside. Our lines of succession would be in tatters. Who survived? Who was ranking? None of us could say. Yes, we have doomsday operations and contingency plans, but we have never envisioned our chain of command being severed two hundred leaders down the line. We would reach the end of the line of authority in very short order, sir.
“That is the situation Israel finds itself in right now. So it will take a little time for them to figure out who is really in charge.”
The room fell into dreary silence, and the air seemed suddenly stuffy and warm.
“It doesn’t really matter,” a quiet voice then said in almost a whisper.
All eyes turned to look at General Brighton.
He lifted his eyebrows, looking back at all the faces that were staring at him now. “It doesn’t matter who’s in charge,” he said again. “Their response has been pre-determined. Whoever is left will carry out the same orders. It doesn’t matter who it is.”
The president shook his head. “Explain that,” he demanded.
Brighton was sitting two chairs to the right of the president and he placed his elbows on the table, looking down the line of men. “They knew that exactly this might happen, that they might have their chain of command severed at a significant location down the line. Knowing this was a possibility, they put contingency operations in place. The decision of how they’d respond was made a long time ago. The plan of operations is very specific. Who is in charge then, it hardly matters. He will have no choice. The plan is automatic. He’ll almost be an observer, just the same as we.”
The president shook his head and looked away in frustration.
As Brighton watched his leader, he noted the heavy droop of his shoulders. Sitting this close he could feel it, the nearly unbearable weight that crushed the president down. The president’s light hair had turned grayer over the past couple of years, the lines on his face were a little deeper, the flesh under his eyes less healthy and firm. Still, his eyes remained resolute, and his motions were quick and alive.
“A perfect strike,” the president mumbled angrily to himself. “They have effectively taken down the entire government in less than a day.”
No one said anything until the chairman of the Joint Chiefs announced, “The second group of fighters are launching.”
The president turned back to the monitor to see another group of triangles lifting off from Hatzerim. “These are F-15E strike fighters,” the general told him. “They are the second wave. There will be many more.”
The chairman held a laser pointer, which he flashed on the screen. “It looks like the first of the sorties are almost on target, sir.” He moved the pointer in a circle over the first group of fighters, continuing, “This group is heading to the Gaza Strip. They are eight or nine miles from their targets. That’s just more than a minute, sir.”
Brighton stood and started pacing as he watched the aircraft attack. Grison moved toward him and stood at his side. But the two men didn’t speak, keeping their eyes on the screen. Brighton coughed anxiously, and then glanced as Grison turned and motioned to him.
“This is it. They’re going to do it,” Grison whispered in his ear. “The Israelis are going to finish this. They’ll clean up in two weeks. Say good-bye to Hezbollah. Say good-bye to them all. They’ll take care of this problem. You know they’ll fight like madmen with their backs to the wall.”
Brighton only nodded. He suddenly felt nauseated.
He moved toward the screen, and then stood in silence. A deep, bitter darkness seemed to wash over him. His gut sank and his skin crawled up the back of his neck. He felt like crying. He felt like screaming in despair. He didn’t know why—it was confusing, utterly out of character for him to feel this way. He felt his knees start to buckle, and he had to take a step back.
The blackness was so powerful it made it hard to breathe. It was as if the very jaws of hell were gaping open to him.
Then he felt the darkest evil enter the room.
Perdition. King of Evil. Prince of the mortal world. He had come to watch his battle, stalking into the room. He had come to claim his victory.
Brighton felt him laughing, and he closed his eyes to pray.
* * *
Lucifer stalked into the room, his great coat casting black shadows across the floor. Dark angels followed in hunching steps, their arms hanging loosely at their sides. They were so bent with hopelessness and anger they only looked half human, their eyes glowing with yellow light.
Lucifer paced toward the general, hatred turning his lips into a frown. “Go ahead and pray!” he sneered in anger. “Beg for mercy from your God. But you know that He can’t help you! It is happening. It is over. And you are the one to blame. You and all of these around you! They share in the coming destruction, too. Your pride. Your vain ambition. Your desire to suffocate the world. Liberty is what you offered. But it is a prize they did not ask for, a prize they did not earn. Freedom is a prize they did not honor. You assumed that they were like you, but now you know that you were wrong!” Lucifer stopped and laughed. Was it a lie or a mere distortion? He didn’t care. He didn’t know. “And now comes the final battle,” he sneered again. “Now comes the final war. First the Jews, then your destruction! But all of you will die.”
Lucifer stopped suddenly, his heavy brow burrowing into a scowl. He seemed to think, his eyes peering into the distance, as if he were looking at something that wasn’t there. His face turned passive. He shook his head.
His expression was different now, as if he had learned a secret, something he hadn’t known before.
He leaned toward the mortal that he hated. “All of you, General Brighton,” he emphasized his words. “All of you, General Brighton!” Lucifer wet his lips and smiled.
FOURTEEN
Jerusalem, Israel
The lone dark spirit looked over the edge of a deep glen on the downhill side of the old wall that had once completely surrounded the great city of Jerusalem. He sat at the top of a rocky lip that jutted over the dell, looking on the steep bank that fell at his feet. The bottom of the dell was bowl-shaped, with jagged rocks jutting out from the parched, barren ground. Thorn bushes a
nd needle grass clung to the gravel on the opposite side. A large rock, three feet high, with a flat top and smooth corners, protruded from the center of the dell.
The spirit knew that the rock had been there for almost four thousand years. He knew that under the clinging grass growing up at its sides were the markings of ancient tools, as well as some faded names and symbols that were impossible to read, barely recognizable now as even being man-made. The rock also showed signs of ancient fires—its sides were blackened and the top smothered in soot that had been baked at such a temperature as to cook it into the stone.
Balaam stared at the stone, remembering, smiling as he thought.
Lucifer had enjoyed many playgrounds through all the dark years, but perhaps none was more special than this one.
The Greeks had called it Gehenna. The Jews had called it the valley of Hinnom. Lucifer had called it Eesh-al-Guturr. All of them meant more or less the same thing: the “valley of fire” or the “valley of death.”
Balaam knew that the ancient Christians and the Jews believed that the afterlife was divided in two. The good went to paradise. The evil went to a place the Greeks called Gehenna, which was named after this dell.
Balaam thought back on the things he had witnessed in this place, the blood, the crying, the shattered lives and broken hearts. This was the place where the idolatrous Jews had sacrificed their children to Moloch, one of the ten thousand imitation gods Lucifer had created out of greed, lust, or fear. Sitting at the rim of the dell, Balaam relived a few of the happiest moments that he had witnessed here, letting the scenes play out in his mind: tiny babies, little children, dark-eyed boys, pretty girls. Why the ancient Jews had been willing to offer their youngest and most beautiful to some powerless god had always escaped him, but the mystery had also added to the excitement of watching them die. He pictured the raised knives, the flowing blood, the songs and the smoke. He pictured the mothers as they watched their own children sacrificed, their eyes painless but opaque, as if they had already cast the very lives from their souls. He pictured the fathers who had participated, along with their priests, holding the arms of their children as the long knives came down.
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