Damascus Countdown (44 page)

Torres smiled and nodded.

“Okay, then,” David said. “I’ll lead you in a prayer similar to the one I prayed. Let’s go. ‘Dear Father in heaven, please have mercy on me. I am the worst of sinners. I have been resisting you for so long, yet you have not given up on me. Thank you. Please forgive me for the wrong things I have done. I know that the Bible is your Word. I know it alone contains the true words of life. And I know that Jesus Christ is your Son and the only true Messiah. I believe Jesus Christ died on the cross for me. I believe he rose for me. I want to know that I’m going to heaven when I die. I want to know that all my sins are forgiven. Lord Jesus, I love you, and I need you. I promise to follow you forever, so long as you will help me and lead me all the way. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for forgiving my sins and adopting me into your family. Give me the courage to follow you no matter where you lead me and no matter what the cost. I pray in the name of my new Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.”

To David’s great amazement but great joy, Torres prayed right along with him, line by line, phrase by phrase. And Torres didn’t just recite the lines; he prayed with passion, with a deep sense of conviction and hunger for God that both stunned and electrified David. And just in time, too, since Zalinsky was calling on the satphone. The convoy with the warhead was only three kilometers ahead of them.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

Mossad chief Zvi Dayan began the hastily convened meeting of the War Cabinet via secure video teleconference. He explained the strange phone call to the line that had been set up expressly for Mordecai’s use and the impossibility of someone penetrating the Mossad’s multiple layers of security without, in his view, direct help from Mordecai himself.

“The three key questions in my mind,” Dayan said, “are: One, did Mordecai provide the information to this mystery caller willfully or under duress? Two, is the information that we received regarding the two warheads accurate or not? And three, if the intel is legitimate, what do we do about it?”

The prime minister listened carefully to the brief. “Forget the first question,” he said. “At this point, it’s irrelevant. Zvi, you’re the chief of Israeli intelligence. What’s the answer to the second question? Is there a warhead at Al-Mazzah and one at Dayr az-Zawr, or are we being set up?”

Dayan shook his head. “I really cannot say, Mr. Prime Minister. Events are moving too rapidly. All my primary assets are focused on Iran, not Syria. But are there strange tidbits here and there that suggest something is going on in Syria? Yes. Are there reports of Iranian Revolutionary Guards arriving in Damascus from all points on the globe? Yes. Is it strange that President Mustafa hasn’t already launched a full-scale war with us, and could it be that he’s holding back until some key moment? Yes. Could that mean the Mahdi has chosen to launch the final two Iranian warheads from Syrian territory? It could,
but I hate to speculate. I want to give you facts, not opinions. But I simply don’t have enough facts to draw a firm conclusion nor the time to gather those facts.”

Naphtali thanked the Mossad chief and turned to his trusted defense minister to get his assessment.

Levi Shimon took a deep breath and stared at a stack of reports on his desk. After a moment, he looked up and looked straight into the camera, straight into the eyes of the prime minister and his other colleagues on the video teleconference, ranging from the vice prime minister for strategic affairs and the IDF chief of staff to the head of military intelligence and the foreign minister, the head of Israeli internal security, and several others.

“I don’t know the answers to questions one and two,” he conceded. “But at this point, do they really matter? We know Mustafa has made an alliance with Iran and now the Twelfth Imam. We know Mustafa wants to obliterate us. We know Syria has massive stockpiles of chemical weapons. We know they could be minutes away from launching everything they have at us. I say we hit them now, while we still can. We can put as much firepower on the two air bases as you want. But I say it’s time to go and go hard.”

DAYR AZ-ZAWR, SYRIA

Still barreling up Highway 4, David and Torres now had to slow down significantly as they left a swath of farmland and villages and entered the outskirts of the city of Dayr az-Zawr with its population of about two hundred thousand residents. David played navigator while Torres kept his eyes on the road. Rather than turning north into the city proper and heading toward the Ali Bek Quarter, they bore left, still on Highway 4, through the Maysaloun Quarter.

“The convoy is on Highway 7, approaching the city from the southwest,” Zalinsky said over the speakerphone.

“How far?” Torres asked.

“About half a klick,” Zalinsky said, tracking their every movement
via video feeds from two Predators in the heavens above them. “In a moment, they’ll be turning onto Highway 4, heading straight toward you. Now listen, you’ve got to hit them before they make that turn and head for the air base. You need to get to the intersection where Highway 7 and 4 meet before they do,” Zalinsky insisted, the anxiety in his voice palpable. “If they get past that point, you won’t be able to stop them before they enter the base, and believe me, they have seriously ramped up security on that base in the past hour. Tanks, armored personnel carriers, sharpshooters on the roofs. They’ve even got helicopter gunships on the tarmacs warming up.”

“They haven’t put the gunships in the air?”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“Eva just intercepted a transmission from General Hamdi. He doesn’t want any Syrian jets or choppers in the air, lest it make the Israelis nervous and they decide to launch a first strike. And of course, all civilian aircraft has been grounded since the war began.”

Torres was making the best time he could, but traffic was building. What’s more, he was also afraid of catching the attention of local police. Getting pulled over for speeding—or triggering a high-speed chase—was the last thing they needed. But Zalinsky was furious. Shouting through the satphone, Zalinsky unleashed a withering barrage of obscenities. He ordered them to blow through this city at all costs or miss the convoy, which was just minutes away from its intended destination.

David agreed, and Torres hit the gas again. He wove in and out of traffic, shifting from one lane to another, laying on the horn and flashing his lights as he went. David glanced behind them. Crenshaw was losing ground. He simply couldn’t maneuver the semi through so much traffic, and David saw his plan unraveling before his eyes. He couldn’t see Fox in the van at all because he was bringing up the rear.

Checking his map one more time, he noticed there was a huge stadium or sports complex of some kind coming up on their right. But now he tossed the map aside, rechecked his seat belt, grabbed his MP5, and made sure it was locked and loaded.

“They’re almost at the junction!”
Zalinsky shouted.
“They’re about to turn onto Highway 4. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go! Move it! You’re going to miss them!”

Torres was gaining ground, but it wasn’t enough. So without warning, he turned the wheel hard to the right and swerved the SUV onto the sidewalk. He laid on the horn nonstop and accelerated. Businessmen and couples and young children dove off the sidewalk, ducking into shops and jumping onto the hoods of cars. David was terrified of hitting a civilian, but he had no control at this point and one objective. If they didn’t make it to that intersection, a million innocent civilians were going to be in grave danger.

David could see the stadium coming up fast on their right. Then suddenly he heard the horn of the tractor trailer blasting behind them. He turned and was stunned by what he saw. Crenshaw had crossed the median and was accelerating into oncoming traffic.
Brilliant,
David thought, wishing he’d had the idea himself. By heading into oncoming traffic, Crenshaw was forcing drivers coming toward him—drivers who could see this maniac coming at them—to veer off to the left or the right to avoid a head-on collision. And that’s precisely what they were doing.

Fox, on the other hand, had chosen his own alternate route. He was literally driving on the grassy median between the eastbound and westbound lanes. He was occasionally having to weave in and out of the many trees that had been planted in the median, but to David’s shock, Fox was rapidly gaining ground.

“Zephyr, do you still have Omid’s walkie-talkies with you?” Zalinsky asked.

David turned and focused exclusively on what was ahead.

“Yes, sir, I’ve got one,” David replied. “The other is in the semi.”

“Good. Turn yours on and switch to channel six,” Zalinsky ordered and then relayed the same information to Crenshaw in the 18-wheeler.

“I’m a little busy at the moment, sir,” Crenshaw replied, still forcing his way up the wrong lane.

David turned on his radio and didn’t like what he heard. Sure enough, they’d stirred up a hornet’s nest. Local police in every part of the city were
being alerted to the chaos ensuing along the southern edge of town, and they were being told to converge at the intersection of Highway 7 and Highway 4. The real question, though, was whether they had lost the element of surprise. Did the security forces in the convoy expect an attack, or did they just think a few drunk drivers were tearing up the town?

Sirens could be heard coming from all directions. And then—just as they were racing past the stadium—a pregnant woman pushing a stroller came around a corner. David screamed. So did Torres. Torres slammed on the brakes. He swerved back into the street, but it was too late. Not for the woman or her baby. By the grace of God, they were safe. But Torres plowed straight into a police cruiser that had just entered the intersection.

There were two Syrian officers in the patrol car. Both looked stunned, but they immediately jumped out, guns drawn.

“Get out!”
one shouted at Torres.
“Get out of the car! Now!”

“We are Revolutionary Guards,” Torres replied as calmly as he could. “We are on a mission for Imam al-Mahdi.”

“I don’t care who you are,” the officer shouted back, his pistol aimed at Torres’s head. “Put your hands in the air and get out of the car slowly—don’t make any quick movements.”

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

CIA director Roger Allen now joined Tom Murray and Jack Zalinsky and their team in the Global Operations Center.

“What in the world is Torres doing?” Allen asked as he looked up at one of the large-screen video monitors and saw Marco Torres, the head of their paramilitary unit, carefully exiting his SUV at gunpoint while a second officer pointed his weapon at the head of David Shirazi—aka Zephyr, the linchpin of their Iran strategy—who was now exiting the backseat of the SUV.

Zalinsky cringed. On the other screen he could see the Iranian-Syrian convoy rapidly approaching the intersection, and no American was there to stop them.

DAYR AZ-ZAWR, SYRIA

Suddenly Crenshaw found an opening. The traffic had cleared. He now had a straight shot at their objective. Laying on the horn, he blew past Torres and Shirazi and careened headlong into the intersection just seconds ahead of the convoy, with Fox in the van close on his heels.

Every head turned and every eye was riveted as Crenshaw finally slammed on the brakes and the 18-wheeler’s rear wheels began fishtailing. At that very instant, the driver of the police cruiser leading the convoy hit his brakes as well, but not nearly in time. The police car hit the side of the semi going a hundred kilometers an hour. The force of the impact sliced off the entire roof of the car, instantly decapitating the Revolutionary Guards in the front seat, and then both the car and the semi erupted in flames that shot twenty and thirty feet into the air.

Behind them, the drivers of both ambulances slammed on their brakes as well, but there was no time to stop. They both crashed into the police cruiser and the semi and into each other. A fraction of a second later, Fox careened the van into the side of the rear ambulance at full speed, without ever braking, sending the ambulance rolling a dozen times or more into a rocky, barren field on the other side of the street.