The Last Judgment (54 page)

When the squadron arrived at the staging area in the desert outside of the Gaza Strip, the high-speed transport bearing Tex Rhoady and his experimental helicopter had not yet arrived from the States. The sun was setting, and the cover of darkness would give them some slight advantage as they entered a Palestinian city known to be a nest of terrorists.

Two hours later, the transport jet set down on the abandoned strip of highway they were using as a makeshift landing strip.

Within forty minutes the Mosquito had been unloaded, Tex was at the controls, and Caleb Marlowe and Nathan Goldwaithe, supplied with automatic weapons, a variety of grenades, and night-vision glasses, were climbing in.

“I'm going along!” Tiny yelled. “There's no way you can leave me behind.”

Caleb Marlowe shook his head.

“Sorry, Tiny,” he yelled out of the open door of the strange-looking ultralight helicopter. “We've got two more people to pick up. One more man would make us too heavy.”

As the Mosquito took off, Tiny ran briefly alongside the little helicopter, yelling up to Tex, Caleb, and Nathan.

“You guys make sure you get my boy, Will Chambers,” he was yelling. “You bring him back safe!”

Marlowe threw a short salute to Tiny as the Mosquito sprang up into the air and then whisked off into the distance.

76

N
IGHT WAS FALLING IN
R
AFIAH
. Outside, from the minaret a few blocks away—the one with the little green light at its peak, prayers were being droned out from a loudspeaker.

Will Chambers could see out the window of the third-story of the building they were in that the day was slipping away. Neither he nor Gilead had been blindfolded. He took that as a very bad sign.

Apparently the Hamas captors didn't care whether he and Gilead remembered where they had been taken or by whom. The three gunmen had pulled off their hoods and in addition to the driver, they had been joined by another man with an automatic weapon.

The two Americans sat cross-legged in the corner of the squalid, empty apartment that smelled of human waste and heat and dust, their hands tied behind their backs. The gunmen were checking their watches, pacing and looking like they were waiting for someone.

“A sheikh is coming…they're talking about a mufti…they're waiting for him,” Gilead whispered to Will. “The rest…I can't make out.”

One of the gunmen saw Gilead whispering. He strode over to him and with a stick he was carrying, beat the younger man across the face until his nose started bleeding profusely. The other men trained their guns on Will, who was forced to watch helplessly.

At first the attorney thought Gilead had been knocked unconscious. But after a few minutes he groaned—and finally, clumsily, jerked himself up to a sitting position.

“I think they broke my nose.”

“Don't talk,” Will said, barely audible, “unless I tell you.”

Then the terrorist who had been using his cell phone during the trip pulled it out and made another call.

That cell phone was the only solace Will had found in their nightmare drive from Jerusalem to their final destination, the heart of Palestinian terrorism within the Gaza Strip. He could only hope that someone had witnessed their being seized outside the Orient House. If so, he knew the U.S. had the satellite capacity to track cell-phone calls. But only if they had a cell-phone number to track in the first place.

As Will sat in the sweltering, airless heat of the abandoned rooms, the odds of a rescue seemed infinitesimally small.

Then he whispered over to his companion.

“Pray…pray for a plan. I've got to figure this out…”

But for Will, there in the night, in that dismal room in Rafiah, there seemed to be little that could be figured out.

He prayed. For Fiona. That she would be comforted and protected in the aftermath of the news.
Lord, please let her know that my last thoughts were of her. How I want to hold her just once more…
And for young Andrew. He would be without a father…
Oh God, be the Father to him when I am gone…he's so young…

Then they heard a commotion. Voices, coming up the stairs.

In less than a minute, two imams, worship advisors to Hamas, appeared in the room. Then the men stepped to the side and a third man entered the room. As he did, the two imams and the gunmen all bowed low.

Will looked up.

In the middle of the room was Sheikh Mudahmid.

He nodded, smiling grimly, to Will and Gilead, then waved his hand vaguely to the corner of the room. The men hastened
over to the chairs that were there, ran them over to the sheikh, and set them down for him and the two imams.

“The Council of Eid al-Adha is commenced,” the sheikh began when he was seated.

“What's that?” Will whispered to Gilead.

“The judgment of sacrifice…as in the sacrifice of the goat…slitting its throat…”

“Stand up!” one of the imams commanded. Two of the gunmen laid down their arms and produced a long, razor-sharp knife.

As Will and Gilead awkwardly struggled to their feet, Will whispered, “Is the sheikh their highest spiritual leader?”

When they were finally standing, Gilead whispered back.

“No. Sheikh Yassiheim, very old, he's the top—”

“Silence, pigs!” one of the imams yelled.

“Allah commands justice,” Sheikh Mudahmid said calmly. “You, Mr. Chambers—you profess to know what that word means. But today, you will
feel
what it means—you will sense the cold steel of the blade and feel the blood running from you as your life ebbs away.”

Then he turned to Gilead.

“And as for you—you were raised in the truth of Islam…you were taught the truths of the heavenly religion…I do understand that you were poisoned by your mother, who became a ranting Christian, an infidel…and even your father turned to the lies of the Christians when he went to America…but you are without excuse. Allah is not merciful to those who will not acknowledge him. And it shall be even worse for those who slaughter Allah's children as they kneel in worship—”

“You say this is a council,” Will cried out. “You, Sheikh, are a man of great authority. Yet you were given the chance to testify against Gilead before the Palestinian International Tribunal—and they dismissed Gilead from any responsibility for the murder of your people in the Noble Sanctuary—”

“That tribunal?” Mudahmid roared back. “A mockery! Judges from Korea and Belgium deciding justice for the slaughtered souls of Muslims? Even Mustafa acted like a coward.”

“Are you allowing us to present evidence, at least?” Will said, frantically struggling for some way to put off the inevitable.

“No,” Mudahmid scoffed. “We have all the evidence we need.” Then he nodded to the two men with the knives, and they walked toward Will and Gilead.

Will looked over at the approaching men. Then something caught his eye. Outside the window…in the dark…he saw a red laser light, and a flashing glint of metal, perhaps a reflection…and the shape of a large, oblong object suspended silently in the air outside, containing within it the red beams and human shapes. And then it was gone, like some great, flitting insect.

And that is when Angus MacCameron's words were there, burning far brighter in Will's memory than the red of the laser lights and the white glinting reflections.

“Like the apostle Paul before King Agrippa…”

He could almost hear the old Scot asking him, as he would often, “
Do you remember your Bible, son?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And what does it say?”

“That Paul preached to Agrippa…”

“And when he was done preaching, then?”

“Then…then he appealed…to Caesar…”

“Stop!” Will cried out.

The knives were already at their throats. Sheikh Mudahmid leaned forward slightly.

“I appeal to Sheikh Yassiheim—to the highest mufti—the greatest spiritual advisor to this group.”

“You have no right to any appeal,” Mudahmid said, laughing contemptuously.

“No—but my client does. An Arab—and a former Muslim—he has come to know that Jesus, whom you call a prophet, is also Jesus the Savior, the only one who shed the purest blood for our vilest sins. Shouldn't Hassan Gilead Amahn's case be heard before Sheikh Yassiheim, the highest mufti? So that he may explain the
truth of his heart, and that his hands are innocent of the blood of your people?”

“
I
am the highest mufti!” Mudahmid yelled.

But one of the imams whispered something to him. Mudahmid replied loudly, angrily.

The imam then rose and said something in Arabic, waving his arms.

Mudahmid also got up, raising his voice in reply and shaking his finger.

The men with the knives were waiting nervously, their blades poised near the throats of Will and Gilead.

But the delay had worked.

As Sheikh Mudahmid turned to the men to order the execution, he moved away from the window. And did not see the approaching assault.

The window glass smashed, shards flying, as Caleb Marlowe and Nathan Goldwaithe rappelled into the room, firing at the gunmen as they somersaulted in.

Two of the gunmen fell immediately. The third one shot back, clipping Nathan in the arm and knocking him to the floor, from where he still managed to return fire, killing the terrorist.

Caleb was yelling for Will and Gilead to lie down as he fired at the two executioners, who were scrambling for their guns.

As he downed both of them, for just a fleeting instant, Gilead had a shock of recognition…and that is when he knew he had seen him before…that Marlowe had been the bearded man who had shoved him out to safety at the Islamic Center riot. “Thank you, thank you,” Gilead was trying to say yet could not quite get out in all the confusion and shooting.

But Caleb's back was turned to the sheikh, who had stayed back when the two imams had scrambled out of the room. His face contorted with fury, he pulled a revolver out of his robe and fired directly at Caleb Marlowe, hitting him in the back. Then he turned the weapon toward Gilead and fired, sending a bullet into his head.

Gilead blinked, and with a look of confused calm, collapsed to the floor.

Mudahmid then began to fire at Will. As his target tried to scramble away, the sheikh, who was walking toward him while firing, pointed the barrel directly at his chest.

The gun fired, and the bullet struck Will in the upper left quadrant of his chest, a perfect shot to the heart, sending him to the floor with the impact.

Nathan, struggling up from where he lay fired the rest of his clip into the sheikh, who crumpled to the ground as one final terrorist appeared in the doorway.

He tossed a grenade into the middle of the room and ran out.

The grenade landed only a few feet away from Will, who was lying on his side, his eyes still processing the last images…of Gilead laying stone-still…and Caleb, bleeding profusely, rising on his hands and knees turning to Will…just for a millisecond…but long enough to lock eyes with him and send him a last look that went beyond language. And then Caleb Marlowe fell on the grenade as it exploded.

When the smoke cleared a little, Nathan Goldwaithe screamed into his walkie-talkie, “American citizens hit and down—request immediate assistance!”

A group of Israeli-operated Blackhawks, containing IDF forces, already in the air just outside of the Gaza Strip, bolted forward in formation toward Rafiah.

In the darkness, they entered the town, dodging ground fire and sniper fire from rooftops. As the Blackhawks came into sight over the streets, now filled with hordes of people pointing, yelling, and shooting guns, the signal was given to Tex Rhoady, who had been hovering over the building. Now he could speed off and leave the rest to the big choppers.

As Tex whirled out of the area ducking ground-to-air missiles and random gunshots, the Israeli Defense Forces landed in the street and on the roof of the apartment building.

They had come to rescue the living, collect the fallen, and gather the dead.

77

T
HERE WAS A MILD, WARM BREEZE
blowing that day in Jerusalem, and the sky was clear. A group had gathered at a small cemetery on a hill overlooking the Kidron Valley and the Old City of Jerusalem that lay just beyond it. The Temple Mount plateau still rose up in the midst of it all, as it had for thousands of years.

In the past centuries, the sunlight would sparkle off the golden Dome of the Rock, which had dominated the Mount. But since the devastation of the bombings and the international tensions following them, those days were gone.

As the caskets of the dead were lowered down into the two graves, Fiona stood by, weeping. Tiny Heftland was at her side, and next to him, Tex Rhoady. She was holding hands with young Andrew. Nigel Newhouse was there too, trying to make sense of it all. Behind him, Jack Hornby—a man who was rarely at a loss for words—stood wordlessly.