Page 115 of End of Days

“Tariq.”

Knuckles laughed and said, “As in Tariq the smuggler for Hezbollah? That Tariq?”

The man cowered back, wondering if he had gone from the frying pan into the fire. Knuckles said, “You came from Lebanon to here? In that Land Cruiser? And can get back to Lebanon the same way?”

He slowly nodded. Knuckles bent down and cut the binds on his wrists and ankles, saying, “Well, Tariq, we might just want to hire you for your services.”

Chapter 71

I hung up the phone, turned to Shoshana, and said, “You’ve got to get those people out of the speech. I get it’s important for the government, but they weren’t able to stop the drone.”

“How do they know it’s headed here?”

“They have a rough location. It’s coming somewhere around here.”

She didn’t look convinced. I turned on my sarcastic voice and said, “Now, it could be headed to the city twelve miles away, or it could be going to blow up some hikers in the national forest, but we both know that’s not the plan. It’s cominghereand we have less than thirty minutes to stop it. Get on the phone to your top-secret Mossad contact and get this event canceled.”

She picked up the phone, saying, “I’ll try, but I don’t have contacts with Shin Bet. All I can do is call my contact in the Mossad, and I’m just a contractor. It’s not like I have a direct line to the prime minister.”

I said, “You’d better get something moving, because in twenty minutes there’s going to be a freight train full of explosives and ball bearings hitting this place.”

She dialed, got a beep, and said, “No cell service.”

I pointed to the Inmarsat on the seat and said, “Use the sat phone. Get someone.”

She picked it up and while she dialed, I thought through the problem set, saying, “What about the Iron Dome you guy always brag about? When it crosses into Israeli territory, it’ll get shot down, right?”

“No. That system is made for high-altitude rockets, not UAVs flying close to the earth.”

“But you guys have something to pick up incursions, right? I mean, surely you’ve seen the Houthi success in Saudi Arabia with these things and thought about it here, right?”

“Truthfully, no we don’t. Not an automated system like the Iron Dome. We’re still trying to figure that out, but if it crosses the Golan Heights, there will be an alert, and someone will scramble. If it’s programmed to fly around the Golan, that will be a problem. If they were smart, they’d cross to the south, through Jordanian airspace, then enter through the West Bank. We don’t have nearly the air defense architecture there. It’ll be inside Israel and coming from south to north instead of from a threat country. But we do have alert aircraft.”

I said, “You guys are worse than we are at this shit. You need to get those alert birds in the air.”

She held up a finger and started talking: “Sir, this is Shoshana. Garrett, the guy we talked about at our meeting, is no longer the individual threat. He’s managed to infiltrate some of his people into Syria and has launched a Hezbollah Samad Three drone. I don’t think he ever intended to conduct an overt operation on his own. He’s just terminal guidance for the weapon system. He’s no longer the threat, and Shin Bet can’t protect the prime minister simply by keeping an eye on him. We need to tell them about the danger, and we need to stop the UAV.”

She listened for a second, then said, “How doIknow? I know because I know!”

The phone spat out an argument that even I heard, something about regretting hiring her and how she was causing problems. I saw her face darken, and she said, “Listen to me, you shit, there is a missile headed to Megiddo, and it’s going to evade our systems. When it hits,it’s going to kill members of the Vatican, thirteen different evangelical churches from the United States, the U.S. State Department delegation, and our own prime minister! Get off your ass and find that thing, or we’re going into a war that will wipe out our country.”

Shocked at her vehemence, I almost missed the exit to the Megiddo national monument. I swerved at the last minute, taking the road and looking at her. She listened for a little more and said, “Sir, I apologize. Just find the UAV. It’s small, but a lot bigger than what we usually see. It’ll probably be coming from the West Bank.” The other end said something, and she said, “We’re there now. I’ll get the Shin Bet to evacuate.”

She hung up, then looked at me, saying, “I don’t think I’m going to get hired by them again.”

I said, “What happened?”

“They don’t believe me, but they believe enough to not be the ones holding the bag if they’re wrong. They’re launching alert fighters from multiple bases. They’ll find the drone, but I don’t know if they’ll kill it.”

“Why?”

“Too many layers. Too many people in the chain of command. I mean, if the CIA called an air base in the United States to find a threat, you’d get a response, but you wouldn’t get cooperation. You’d have a bunch of people launching fighters in the air to protect their asses on the ground. The pilots wouldn’t know why they were in the air, but the men on the ground would be protected because they issued the order.”

“Great. Youareas dysfunctional as we are.”

She smiled and said, “We aren’t dysfunctional. You and me. It’s why we’re here, right now.”

And I realized she was right. The dysfunction she was talking about was the reason the Taskforce was created. It was the reason Knucklesand Brett had eliminated the threat in Syria, and the result of that mission was why she’d made the call.

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