Lethal Trajectories (36 page)

“Very well, my brothers,” Mustafa said, ending the meeting on a more conciliatory note. “I thank you for your most thorough work. We are not quite where I would like to be at this time, but we’ve come a long way—considering that two weeks ago we were not even in power. We are moving in the right direction. Soon we will have everything we need to ensure the success of our glorious Jihad. May Allah stand with us!"

M
eir Kahib sorted through another set of disturbing intelligence reports in his office at the Mossad headquarters. The Mossad struck fear into the hearts of Israel’s most hardened enemies. They were ruthless in their collection of intelligence data, and their covert operations and paramilitary activities were effective and deadly. Relentless in their pursuit of targets—be they insurrectionist leaders or scientists working for Israel’s enemies—they were far and away the best underground fighters in the world.

Unlike many in Prime Minister Yakov Nachum’s cabinet, Meir Kahib did not see the threat of a nuclear attack by the Saudis as their greatest danger. He understood men like King Mustafa and knew he would not risk his power or personal safety in a senseless nuclear attack that invited a devastating retaliation. In a sense, the Cold War doctrine of mutual assured destruction still prevailed. Iran and other nuclear powers all knew that a first strike against Israel would surely result in their own destruction, begging the question, why attack in the first place?

Kahib also knew that Israel had the firepower to smash combined attacks by Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO, and other insurrectionist groups. It would be costly, but it was possible.

The greatest threat to Israeli security, he felt, was economic strangulation. Israel was dependent on deepwater natural gas in the Mediterranean to fuel its economy and imports and exports to sustain it. Surrounded by enemies, its Achilles heel was the vulnerability of its ports and other points of entry. In that respect, Israel was most endangered by asymmetric attacks, with the most likely threat being the detonation of a dirty bomb at a prime Israeli target. Israel was also vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse attack that could shut down all of its electronic systems, and thus the entire economy, in nanoseconds.

With regard to the latter, Iran posed a greater threat. Iran had a robust nuclear program, having exploded its first atomic bomb in 2015 despite draconian efforts by the Mossad to take out Iranian scientists and implant destructive viruses in their computer systems. Iran also had an effective delivery system, and he was concerned that Iran would take the Saudi diversion as an opportunity to attack Israel.

Israel had strategic plans in hand for a wide range of nuclear scenarios. Their contingency plans were thorough and deadly. Nonetheless, information recently supplied by Mossad operatives suggested that a dirty-bomb attack by Mustafa-supplied terrorists was the most likely scenario at this time. The idea sent shivers up and down his spine. Israel was a small country, and a handful of well-placed dirty bombs could kill hundreds of thousands and strangle the economy. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but he couldn’t ignore the intelligence he was receiving.

He thought for a moment about the intense efforts Israel had put forth to develop a nuclear capability and facility in the Negev Desert at Dimona. Through sheer grit and determination, Israel had also developed the second-strike capability to obliterate any attacker launching the first strike. Like Samson, they would not go down alone. Everyone knew it.
There will never be another Holocaust,
he reflected grimly, as he had so many times before.

With a heavy heart, he walked over to the safe against the west wall of his office. With sweaty fingers, he keyed in the combination and pulled out a ten-page document that only three human beings had seen in its entirety. The cover page read “Israel’s Nuclear Response to a Nuclear Attack.” He would bring this document to the war cabinet meeting later today and advise the cabinet that the time had come to consider their doomsday options. As he reviewed the document, he could not help but think of the Armageddon Valley near Megiddo, just north of him, and the apocalyptic battle for which it stood.

E
yes bleary, and with a double scotch clenched in both hands, Jack McCarty peered out the window of his 757-200 jet streaking over the Atlantic, bound for Geneva, Switzerland. The unmarked government plane, carrying only Jack, his four-man entourage, CIA bodyguards, and crew, had been airborne for about four hours, having left Andrews Air Force base at 7:00 p.m. with an ETA of 9:00 a.m.

His day had been an endless blur of meetings, and every meeting seemed at least a card short of the complete deck of information he desired. What information he did have didn’t come together in a pattern he could easily understand. Even now, it took a major mental effort to reconstruct the day and to contextually position the two meetings he was about to have in Geneva.

It was, nonetheless, good to be out of the Situation Room after hours spent poring over options and scenarios, punctuated by intelligence updates and intermittent calls from Wang Peng, plus two CIA briefings that shaped his next two days. There had been one other interruption, of course, in the form of the swearing-in of his brother as the new president of the United States.

Thank goodness for the television footage, because he could remember very little of the actual ceremony; he had been too preoccupied with his Geneva meetings to fully absorb the enormity of the moment. Strangely, he remembered the more inconsequential things, like the tears in Maggie’s eyes, the trickles of sweat on President Burkmeister’s face, and the big brown coffee stain on his white shirt, which he had tried (unsuccessfully) to cover with his suit jacket.

He also remembered Clayton’s brief remarks following the ceremony, the most noteworthy being his nomination of Elizabeth Cartright to step up as vice president. The ceremony itself couldn’t have lasted more than twenty minutes—it was only 12:45 when now-former President Burkmeister was whisked off to Walter Reed. Jack was glad to have had the chance to shake Burkmeister’s hand and receive his much-appreciated good wishes.
Clayton was right,
Jack thought,
he was—no, is—a class act.

After the swearing-in ceremony, Jack had joined the others in the Situation Room to complete the preparations for his trip. “Have you settled yet on who you’ll be taking with you, Jack?” Clayton had asked, looking harried.

“Well, Peng and I both agreed that a large contingent would be counterproductive to this kind of high-level positioning meeting. The working details should be developed only after we’ve settled on a framework and a few guiding principles. We’re limiting it to five attendees each, including ourselves. Peng and I felt we could handle the energy and environmental aspects of the agenda, but we’ll need expertise in the military, intelligence, economic, and geopolitical arenas.”

After a short discussion on the attendees who would accompany Jack, Clayton looked at CIA Director Mullen and asked, “What’s the latest on the Prince Khalid situation, Tony?”

“Jack’s meeting is set for ten in the morning tomorrow, Geneva time, Mr. President. He will be allowed to take two CIA bodyguards with him. They will rendezvous with Prince Khalid’s security people and be taken to a secret location. We are still fine-tuning the details.”

“That means we’ll be out of touch with Jack for a period of time. Will he be safe?” Clayton asked.

“We believe so, but there’s always an element of risk in a clandestine meeting of this nature,” Mullen answered.

“What do you think, Jack?” Clayton asked, concerned.

“This is an unusual situation, but I believe the risks are worth taking,” Jack replied. “The CIA gave me their dossier on Prince Khalid, and he sounds like a legitimate contact.”

He didn’t remember when Clayton had left the meeting, but he recalled the dash to Andrews Air Force base to catch his plane—glad that he had packed his bags the night before. He’d met his entourage at the base, and they boarded the plane shortly thereafter. He advised them they would meet in the special conference room on the plane thirty minutes after takeoff to prepare for the meeting in Geneva.

As he gazed out the window at the moonlit Atlantic Ocean miles below, he reflected on the improbable alliances formed throughout history to defeat a common enemy. An amateur historian, he wondered what it must have been like for a couple of capitalists like Churchill and Roosevelt to team up with an old Bolshevik like Joseph Stalin to defeat a common enemy, or how difficult it must have been for General Dwight Eisenhower to maintain a workable alliance with prima donnas like George Patton, Bernard Montgomery, and Charles de Gaulle.
Did historical circumstances produce great leaders, or was it great leaders who made extraordinary historical events happen?
Either way, he had to keep touchy personalities and old tapes of China out of it and concentrate on the common enemy. He had advised his four-man cadre of exactly that imperative shortly after taking off.

“Gentlemen,” he had said, “we’re about to be part of an historic meeting that your children will read about in decades to come. You’ve been briefed on our mission, and I won’t dwell on administrative details. Instead, I’ll share a few thoughts on the tone I’d like us to take.

“I want you to approach this meeting with the big picture in mind. We’re there to establish a beachhead, not write an operator’s manual. Don’t get hung up on dogma or details. Our job is to sketch out a blueprint that others can fill in later and to work out a common vision with China. The tone we set—a collaborative and flexible approach regardless of past differences—will be as important as content in setting the future direction of our alliance. Am I totally clear on this?” They had all nodded, and Jack continued.

“Good, now let me share with you some of the things we discussed at the NSC meeting earlier today.” They were sharp guys, and for the next two hours they discussed potential platforms for erecting and activating the new alliance. He had dismissed them with orders to get some sleep, if they could.

As the featureless Atlantic Ocean slid by beneath him, he knew he should follow his own orders and get a little shuteye before touchdown, but his mind refused to obey. He was not uncomfortable meeting with the Chinese—mainly because of his friendship with Wang Peng—but his covert meeting with Prince Khalid was another matter.

He reminded himself that Clayton had assigned him merely to assess the mettle and legitimacy of Prince Khalid and set the hooks for future dialogue and collaboration; it was not his job to decide whether or not the United States would team up with the man. This, at least, was a comfort to him.

As he drifted closer to sleep, he wondered at how his life had changed so dramatically over a short period of time. His preoccupation with climate-change and the world’s energy problems had expanded into a far broader geopolitical context.
I shouldn’t be surprised, really,
he mused.
I’ve been watching these threat multipliers for years, and now they’re about to become part of the perfect storm Clayton described. Heaven help us.

He slid into a nightmarish dream starring himself as a climatologist by the name of James Bond tracking down an Arab version of Dr. No. He woke up, sweating, just as the wheels touched down at Geneva International Airport.
Whew, only a dream,
he thought,
but sometimes reality can be stranger than dreams.

W
ith less than two hours remaining on his night watch in the Situation Room, Lt. Colonel Winthrop Taylor began his routine of assimilating data for the president’s Morning Book. It, along with the President’s Daily Brief from the CIA, would be among the first reports read by the president in the morning. While there was an intelligence overlap in this procedure, Taylor assumed President McCarty would follow the same routine as his predecessor.

He had been instructed to pay particular attention to activities related to the Safe Harbors operation, and his report was shaping up to be a big one.