The Third Target (37 page)

I certainly did. I wanted to ask her out, but I was hesitant to go too quickly. “Well, I’m realizing I hardly know you.”

“That’s true.”

“Where were you born?”

“Up in the Galilee.”

“Where?”

“It’s a little town called Rosh Pinna. It’s up in the hills. It’s adorable. You should come sometime.”

“Sounds fun. Do you still have family there?”

“My parents are there. They run a restaurant
 
—amazing
 
—best food in Israel. And a stunning view, especially at night.”

“Even better. Do you have siblings?”

“I had an older brother.”

“Had?”

“He was in a special forces unit. Killed in Lebanon in ’06.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, what can you do?”

We were quiet for a moment, and then she asked, “How about you?”

“What about me?”

“All I know about you is what Ari told me.”

“Well, you already know about my parents,” I said. “My mom is in Bar Harbor, where I grew up. My dad is gone. But I didn’t know him much anyway. He left the family when I was a kid.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, what can you do?”

“Have you had any contact with your brother since Istanbul? He’s here in Amman, isn’t he?”

“He was, but he left with his family when Abu Khalif threatened to use them against me.”

“So you talked with him?”

“Yeah, we actually had a nice visit. It had been a while.”

“And Laura?”

“Oh, well, let’s not go there.”

“No longer the marrying type?”

“Couldn’t we talk about something else?”

“Like what, sarin gas?”

“That would be less painful.”

“Ouch.”

“Exactly.”

She paused for a moment, then asked, “Did she leave you?”

“No, but she cheated on me. A lot. So I left her.”

“I’m sorry.”

It was quiet again for a bit, and then Yael said, “Let’s pick something happier to talk about.”

“That would be good. Thanks.”

Just then the spokesman for the Royal Court went up to the main podium, tapped on the windscreens for the two microphones. The band stopped playing. Cameras started clicking, and the aide cleared his throat.

“This is the two-minute warning,” he said. “I repeat, the ceremony will begin in two minutes.”

A newfound surge of electricity rippled through the crowd, myself included.

It was time to get this thing done.

I checked my pocket watch
 
—it was 2:28 p.m.

I pulled my digital recorder out of my pocket, double-checked the batteries, put it back, and then grabbed my notepad and scribbled down a few observations and a few questions I wanted to ask President Mansour and Prince Marwan after the ceremony.

Again I scanned the crowd. People were actually leaning forward now in anticipation. I noticed a side door open off to my right
 
—the same door Sa’id and I had come through earlier
 
—and a half-dozen agents from the Shin Bet, the Israeli secret service, and another half-dozen agents from President Taylor’s protective detail entered the courtyard and took up their positions. I saw one of the agents say something into his wrist-mounted radio and watched to see other agents react. One by one, they seemed to stand up a bit straighter. They were on their toes, ready to prevent anything from going wrong. But what really could?

The king was right. This was essentially a hermetically sealed environment. If there was going to be an attack, it might happen in Baghdad, but it wasn’t going to be here. Every person in the courtyard had already been carefully, meticulously screened. The only people who had weapons were Sa’id’s team, responsible for the security of
the palace and its grounds, and the most trusted agents protecting each of the leaders. What’s more, the Jordanian army and police forces were on full alert. Several thousand troops were patrolling the streets of Amman. Security checkpoints were everywhere. The police were stopping cars and trucks and vehicles of all sorts, checking IDs, asking questions, on the lookout for anything suspicious. I told myself to take deep, long breaths and relax.

The words of FDR echoed through my brain:
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

“Yael,” I said after a moment.

“Yes?”

“If you’re free this evening, would you like to have dinner with me? You could ask me more painful questions and I could spend the evening dodging them and trying not to look pathetic.”

“That’s quite an offer.”

“I thought so.”

She looked at me and smiled. “Sure. That would be nice.”

“Eight o’clock?”

“Better make it nine,” she said. “The PM has an early state dinner with the other principals and then flies out around eight. I should be clear by nine.”

“Then it’s a date?”

“It is. Thank you, Mr. Collins.”

“My pleasure, Miss Katzir.”

I started breathing again. But my heart was racing.

It was ridiculous. I think I was actually blushing. The back of my neck felt hot.

I looked away. It was showtime. I needed to focus. But for the first time in a long time, I actually felt happy. It was a strange sensation, almost surreal, in fact, but nice. I needed a little happiness in my life just now.

I looked up into the cloudy gray sky. A flock of birds flew past
and the breeze picked up. It occurred to me that I hadn’t been given any prepared remarks for any of the leaders, typically standard operating procedure for an event like this, and I suspected this could be accounting for the delay. They were all probably making last-minute tweaks to their remarks. Then again, I would hear them soon enough. Did I really need a sneak preview?

At that moment, however, two Jordanian F-16s caught my eye. They were flying their combat air patrol, keeping any stray aircraft
 
—Jordanian or otherwise
 
—out of this corridor, which was now restricted airspace. Both were quite a ways off in the distance, but what seemed odd was that while they had been flying from left to right across the horizon, heading from south to north, one of them was now turning right and banking toward the palace. Was that normal? It didn’t seem so. Several pairs of fighter jets had been crisscrossing the distant skies for the last half hour or so in the same predictable manner. So why the deviation?

I leaned over to Yael. “What do you make of that, twelve o’clock high?” I whispered, discreetly nodding toward the western sky.

She looked up. “I don’t know,” she replied. “Ask Ali.”

The jet was still several miles away, but there was no question it was headed in our direction. The question was why. I turned and whispered to Sa’id.

“What’s going on with that F-16?” I asked. “He’s broken off from his wingman.”

Sa’id had clearly been scanning the crowd, not the skies, because he didn’t immediately respond. But a moment later, he said something in Arabic over his wrist-mounted radio.

“Stay calm, but come with me, both of you,” he whispered back a few seconds later.

Startled, I had a hard time taking my eyes off the plane, but when I saw him discreetly get up and walk back toward the doorway from which we had come, I followed his lead.

Yael was right behind me. The band was playing again. Just then, I got a text from Allen back in D.C.
This is exciting.

He didn’t know the half of it.

“Where are we going?” I asked Sa’id.

“The command center.”

“What do you think’s going on?”

“I’m not sure,” he conceded. “But I’m not bringing His Majesty out here until I know.”

As he said this, I turned and took one last look at the F-16 before going inside. And at that very moment I saw a flash of light and a contrail.

“He just fired a missile!” Yael said, now motionless.

“Code red! Code red! Everybody down!”
Sa’id yelled at the top of his lungs to his fellow agents and the rest of the crowd.

But he didn’t dive to the floor or take cover in the courtyard. Instead, he grabbed Yael and me and shoved us through the door.
“To the stairwell
 
—move!”
he said.
“Quickly!”

He started running and so did I.

As we came around a corner, we nearly ran into the king and the other world leaders who were coming down the hall toward us.

“Through this door, Your Majesty!” Sa’id yelled, pushing open an emergency door and nearly throwing King Abdullah and the others through it.
“Run, Your Majesty! To the safe room! Go, go, go! There’s no time to waste!”

The king’s instincts were exceptional. His special forces training kicked in instantly. He grabbed Presidents Taylor and Mansour, the closest men to him, and began pulling them down the cement stairwell toward the basement. The rest of us followed hard on their heels, including Prime Minister Lavi and all the various security agents. A moment later we felt the explosion and then heard its roar.

The force of the blast knocked everyone off their feet. Some went
tumbling down the metal stairs. Yael and I were thrown against a concrete wall.

The king was the first back on his feet, and he started shouting commands.
“We can’t stay here! Follow me!”

The security details found their principals and got them moving. In the confusion, Yael and I were shoved to the back. But soon we were racing down two more flights of stairs, trying not to be left behind.

Then a second explosion hit, again knocking us off our feet.

Jordanian soldiers in full combat gear now burst into the stairwell. They grabbed the king and took off. The rest of us scrambled to our feet and hustled to keep up. We raced down one hallway, then another. We were now apparently heading toward a bunker of some kind, something akin to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center located deep underneath the White House.

We passed what appeared to be a command center, not unlike the one I’d seen in Abu Ghraib, though far more modern and sophisticated. Sa’id stopped me there and pulled me inside.

The king and the others didn’t stop. They kept moving and passed into what looked from my angle like an enormous bank vault. The moment they were inside, a massive, three-foot-thick steel door was quickly shut and sealed behind them as Jordanian soldiers brandishing automatic weapons rushed to take up positions in front of the door.

Yael, trailing the leaders and agents, tried to join them, but she was too late. The soldiers wouldn’t let her in. She protested that she was part of Lavi’s team, but they wouldn’t budge. The door was locked.

At least the king and the others were safe. That was all that mattered for the moment.

“Where is that?” I shouted. “Where did they just go?”

Sa’id was about to explain, but the explosions just kept coming.

I looked at the bank of security monitors inside the command center, and all the blood drained from my face. I could see the flames and the smoke and the burning, screaming, dying children above us.

But as horrific as those images were, they paled in comparison to the image now on the main large flat-screen on the far wall. It was a live shot of the F-16 screaming inbound. Whoever was flying that plane was on a kamikaze mission into the palace. There was no one to stop him, and all I could think of was Abu Khalif and ISIS.

With Yael and Sa’id at my side, I stared at the video monitors.

Unable to move and with nowhere to go, we watched as the pilot of the second Jordanian F-16 swooped in behind his rogue wingman and began firing on it. The lead fighter jet bobbed and weaved, dived and rolled, trying to outmaneuver his colleague. But despite the aerial acrobatics, he was still coming in hard and fast.

Though some of the cameras were obscured by fire and billowing smoke, I could see the people who hadn’t already been incinerated by the air-to-ground missiles screaming and running in all directions. Then we and the four duty officers in the command post erupted in cheers as one of the second F-16’s Sidewinder missiles actually clipped the right wing of the inbound fighter jet.

But it was too little, too late. At the last moment, I instinctively turned away and covered my head as the flaming jet crashed headlong into the Al-Hummar complex, but that didn’t stop me from being thrown off my feet by the tremendous force of the blast several stories overhead. The whole complex shuddered and groaned. And I smelled it. The thick, acrid smoke was seeping even into the climate-controlled environment below the palace. Yael and several of the men began choking.

Sa’id took control and threw several switches, presumably activating an air-purification system because some machinery rumbled to life and began to exchange the air quite rapidly.

The video monitors flickered and then went dark. A moment later, all the lights on our level flickered as well, and before we knew it, all power was lost and we were standing in the bunker in complete darkness.

Then came a series of deafening booms, one after another, as the rest of the jet’s munitions cooked and exploded in the raging fires above. Framed pictures of the king and crown prince fell to the floor and smashed into pieces.

Down the hall, a pipe burst. I heard water gushing out.

When the explosions ended, we still heard people screaming and dying up above us, their chilling shrieks making their way through the heating and air-conditioning ducts.

Soon we heard emergency generators roaring to life, and low-level emergency lighting kicked in. Some of the video monitors flicked back on as well. Not all of them did, but there were enough to give us a terrifying glimpse of what was happening above us.

I turned to check on Yael. She had a large gash on her forehead and was bleeding profusely. I called for a first aid kit, and one of the watch commanders rushed to my side with one. As I bandaged her up, though, Yael gasped. At first I thought I had hurt her somehow. But when I saw her eyes grow wide, I turned to see what she was looking at.

In a scene eerily similar to what I had witnessed at Abu Ghraib, I could now see dump trucks and cement trucks loaded with explosives making speed dashes for the outer gates of the royal compound. I watched as soldiers fired automatic weapons at them, but one by one the trucks were hitting their targets and erupting in massive explosions.

Huge gaps appeared in the perimeter fences, and hundreds of fighters in black hoods and ski masks rushed through to engage in
brutal gun battles with Jordanian soldiers fighting desperately to save themselves and their beloved king.

“Ali, we can’t stay here,” I said, turning to Sa’id. “We need to get these men out of here while we still can.”

“No, we are safe here,” one of the duty officers replied. “We must wait until reinforcements arrive.”

“It could be too late by then,” I argued. “Look, the rebels are pouring in from the north and the east. But there
 
—screen eight
 
—there are three armor-plated Suburbans parked in the south parking lot. That’s just a few hundred yards away. If we can get to them, we can get these men out of this kill zone.”

“These men?” the officer asked, incredulous. “You mean His Majesty?”

“And the presidents and the prime minister
 
—all of them.”

“No, we have a protocol; we stay here until the army arrives,” he insisted.

“You have a protocol for
this
?” I asked, now incredulous myself. “For a catastrophic attack on the palace with the leader of the free world trapped amid an onslaught of ISIS jihadists?”

“I have my orders,” the officer shot back. “We wait for the army.”

“The army is here, and the ISIS forces are still getting through. We have a chance to get the principals out, but only if we move now. If we wait here, we all die.”

Just then we were all startled by the vault door opening behind us. Suddenly King Abdullah was coming out of the safe room and directly toward us.

“Ali, we need to go now,” he ordered. “How many men do you have?”

Sa’id stood there for a moment, dumbfounded. Not only was the king standing before him, but Queen Rania, the crown prince, the three other heads of state, and their bodyguards were all waiting in the hallway.

“How many?”
the king pressed, white-hot with urgency.

“At the moment, Your Majesty, there are just four duty officers besides me, plus Mr. Collins and Miss Katzir.”

“Who is she?”

“She’s with me,” Prime Minister Lavi said, stepping forward. “Mossad.”

“Very well,” the king said. “Do you all have weapons training?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” most of them said.

“Good,” he said, stripping off his jacket and tie. Then he addressed the duty officer who had been arguing with me. “Get weapons, flak jackets, and helmets for everyone out of the vault. Move, go!”

The man did as he was ordered, and Sa’id and the other officers went with him.

The king turned to me. “Have you ever used a gun, Mr. Collins?”

“Uh, sure. I grew up in Maine, Your Majesty.”

“Do a lot of hunting and fishing?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ever use an MP5?” he asked.

“Can’t say I have, sir.”

“Piece of cake,” he said as Sa’id and his colleagues rushed back with weapons and protective gear for everyone.

To my astonishment, the king of Jordan gave me a crash course on how to use a submachine gun. Then he strapped on a bulletproof vest and an ammo belt as everyone else, including the Secret Service and Shin Bet agents and of course the agents of the Royal Court who were directly assigned to protect the king, did the same.

Scanning the video monitors, the king quickly assessed the situation and came to the same conclusion I just had. “We’re going to head for those three Suburbans,” he said. “Are the keys inside?” he asked.

“No, sir,” the head of President Taylor’s detail said.

“Where are they?”

“The doors should be unlocked, but the keys will be in the pockets of those dead agents lying on the pavement.”

“What’s the chance they’re using chemical weapons out there?” President Mansour asked. I had been thinking the same thing.

“Don’t worry; they’re not,” the king said.

“How do you know?” President Taylor asked.

“Look at the video monitors,” the king replied. “The rebels don’t have gas masks on. They’re not wearing protective suits. We should be fine.”

“With all due respect, Your Majesty,” Yael interjected, “the rebels who have penetrated the palace compound may not be planning a chemical attack, but their commanders still might be.”

“Miss Katzir is right, Your Majesty,” Sa’id confirmed. “We have backpacks in the vault with chem-bio suits, gas masks, gloves
 
—everything you need. I would advise that each person take one.”

“Fine, go get them,” the king ordered.

Once again Sa’id and his colleagues moved quickly to comply.

“Now, Your Majesty, assuming we get out of the compound alive, where do you suggest we go?” asked the Israeli prime minister, himself a former special forces commando, as he popped a fresh magazine into an MP5.

“The airport,” the king said. “My brother is the head of the air force. I’ll call him on a secure phone in a moment. I’ll tell him to bomb the daylights out of the palace. I’ll also tell him to give us air cover and have the army prepare to meet us at the airport.”

“Good,” President Taylor said. “I’ll order Air Force One to be ready for immediate takeoff when we arrive. I’ll take you all out with me. Once we get out of Jordanian airspace and get a U.S. fighter squadron to provide security for us, you can direct a counterstrike from the communications deck.”

Everyone nodded.

“Very good,” the king said. “There’s just one catch.”

“What’s that?” President Mansour asked.

“There are checkpoints everywhere. Don’t stop.”

“At which ones?”

“Any of them.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because right now, Mr. Collins, we have no idea who’s on our side and who isn’t,” the king replied. “If we stop, we die. Clear enough?”

I nodded. So did everyone else. It was ugly, but it was clear.

“Ali, I need a secure satphone,” the king said.

Sa’id set down his weapons and immediately unlocked a safe in the command post. He pulled out five satphones and gave one to the king. He gave three to the other leaders and kept one for himself. “These were specially built by the Jordanian military for the Royal Court,” he explained. He handed out three-by-five laminated cards with each of the satphone numbers and passcodes on one side and simple instructions in both Arabic and English for using the phones on the other. Meanwhile, the duty officers handed out the backpacks filled with chem-bio equipment, and we suited up.

“Okay,” the king said at last, switching off the safety on his weapon. “Follow me.”