Leonardo nodded and said, “What if this doesn’t work?”
“We load another one until we figure it out. It can’t be that hard. Those savages in Yemen are blowing up Saudi Arabian oil refineries with these things.”
He pulled his head back inside the cab and bounced along the rock-strewn terrain, then entered the rutted road. He glanced back at Leonardo, got a thumbs-up, and goosed the engine. Leonardo pressed the ignition for the drone and the two-foot wooden propeller began spinning, barely clearing the bed of the pickup in the rack and threatening to chop off Leonardo’s arm. The vehicle gained speed, the air beginning to rush over the wings, providing lift for the aircraft in the back of the truck.
Leonardo grabbed the release rope beneath the rack and waited, squinting his eyes against the dust and avoiding the propeller. He saw Raphael stick his hand out the window and jerked the cord, releasing the drone. It raced off the rack, floating above the cab of the truck, and began climbing higher and higher, the propeller pushing it forward with greater and greater speed. Raphael stopped the truck and soon enough, the drone was lost from sight.
They sat, the engine of the truck ticking. Leonardo said, “The waypoint is like two minutes out. It should be back in four minutes.”
They waited, hoping it would work. At three minutes, Leonardo pointed and said, “There it is.”
The drone came screaming back at them, now at full speed of one hundred and twenty miles an hour, coming lower and lower until it went over the top of the vehicle. They both ducked, watching it slam into the front of the building, right on target, shattering the walls from the impact.
Leonardo said, “Looks like it works. Hope it didn’t kill Tariq.”
Raphael laughed and said, “Let’s get the next one loaded, only this time with the explosive payload. Garrett should be calling soon.”
Driving the up-armored SUV, Garrett heard the Grand Master from the rear say, “Garrett, if you don’t mind, can you pull into a convenience store for a spot of coffee?”
Garrett looked in the rearview mirror and said, “Yes, sir, as soon as one appears, but this road doesn’t look very conducive to finding one.”
Garrett had found out the night before that the grand speech by the Israeli prime minister was going to happen at nine in the morning, which had required them to wake up before the sun had even risen. It was only a little more than an hour’s drive to Megiddo from Tel Aviv, but with the security protocols in place, they would have to arrive at least two hours early.
Garrett had assumed that the various organizations who had traveled here would all convoy together, but that wasn’t the case. The U.S. State Department was coming from the new embassy in Jerusalem, and the other church groups were all staying near the Old City, wanting to get in a bit of biblical tourism while they were here. That left the Knights of Malta entourage on its own, with nothing more than a location and a time to arrive. The Grand Master had been a little miffed at the arrangements, having expected an escort or other official trappings.
Having not done any driving in Israel, and not wanting to be late, Garrett had insisted they be on the road by 0530—much earlier than needed, but if anything happened en route, it gave him plenty of time to flex his mission.
He’d called Raphael before getting on the road, telling him the schedule for the event, then had gone to Michelangelo’s room, banging on the door until he woke up.
Bleary eyed, Garrett saw that he’d been out again last night. He’d said, “The Jerusalem trip? How did that go?”
“Okay. There are eleven gates to get to the Temple Mount, but only one for infidels like us.”
“And the other gates? Will that Palestinian ID card work to get you through them?”
While operating in Syria, they’d come across multiple Palestinian refugees who’d given up their dismal life in the camps of Lebanon, Gaza, or the West Bank and had picked up a gun for the pay from various militias. The men had no passport to travel anywhere in the civilized world, but there wasn’t any immigration control for the militias in Syria. The only thing they owned was identification issued by the Palestinian Authority and Israel. Several of them had crossed Garrett and the Turtles, seeking to harm the Knights’ work in Syria. After they’d died, Garrett had saved the cards. He’d then manipulated one for Michelangelo, the only man they had who could pass as a Palestinian.
“Yes. All I need is proof that I’m a Muslim, and I can use it, but believe it or not, there are multiple different types of Palestinian identification cards. We lucked out. I had to get a certificate to enter, proving I was a Muslim, and the identification worked fine, but only because the man we killed was from Jerusalem. If we’d have used a different one, from someone in the West Bank or Gaza, I would have been questioned about how I was even on Israeli terrain.”
Garrett nodded, once again realizing how many single points of failure there were in this mission. In the past, his motto had been, “Two is one, one is none,” and this near miss was exactly why. He said, “You have the certificate now?”
“Yeah, they all went to the Wailing Wall to shove a note in, and I went to get my certificate. I’m set for tomorrow. I’m going through the Gate of the Tribes inside the Muslim quarter.”
“And the security?”
“It’s tight. I mean really tight. Metal detectors and X-ray machines at every entrance, security guards wandering around. They don’t want any trouble.”
“So how will you do this?”
“The guards are there to prevent a clash from the Muslim people praying and the Jewish and Christian visitors. People like us aren’t allowed to pray. We’re only allowed to visit. In fact, we can’t even get in to the Al Aqsa Mosque or the Dome of the Rock. But the certificate beats that because they’ll think I’m a Muslim.”
“And the metal detectors and X-ray machines? How will you get in the charges?”
“They’re built into soda cans. It looks like a six-pack of soda. Muslims are allowed to bring all sorts of things into the compound, and they have picnics there all the time. I’ve packed my bag to look like a picnic. Six-pack of soda, sandwiches, blanket, chips. It’ll work. I promise. The only thing that will stop me is that sometimes the Israeli security perimeter only lets in men above a certain age. Guys that won’t start throwing rocks. I don’t know the cutoff, but think it’s forty-five years old or so. If that’s the case, I’m done.”
“We can only do what we can do. I have to meet the Grand Master downstairs in a few minutes. We’re heading to Megiddo.”
“What about Raphael and Leonardo?”
“They’re set. They have the weapons. It’s coming soon. You don’t need to do anything unless I call. Get to Jerusalem in the next hour, and keep your Zello app open. I’ll either tell you to attack, or tell you to fly back to Rome to get out of the blast radius of the war. If it’s to attack, do so, then meet me here, back in Tel Aviv. Either way, we’re flying out of here today.”
After that, Garrett had gone down to the lobby, met the Knights’ leadership, and then retrieved their SUV. Finding an armored vehicle for rent had been a chore, but not nearly as hard as it would have been in the United States. It was exorbitantly expensive, but gave the Grand Master the flare he always strived to achieve, since he was missing his Israeli pageantry of an escort.