I shook my head, looked at Shoshana, and said, “You okay?”
She nodded and said, “He’s going to get away. I can’t let him get away.”
I said, “He’s not going to get away. Sooner or later, he’s leaving that vehicle. And when he does, he’ll be a turtle without a shell.”
Chapter 74
Garrett swerved back onto the road, seeing the car behind him spin out into the ditch. Breathing heavily, he wiped the sweat from his brow and continued on. He was committed now. Highway Four was a one-way road to the end of Israel. He thought about circling back around and driving to Tel Aviv just to hide for a day, but then realized that if Michelangelo actually accomplished his mission, he’d never get out. The entire country would be locked down because of the coming war.
He drove as fast as he could push the heavily armored vehicle and eventually began passing settlements. He looked at his phone, saw he had a strong signal, and initiated the Zello app, saying into the speaker, “Mikey, what’s your status?”
“I’m halfway to Jerusalem. I’ll be inside the Old City in about thirty minutes. What about you?”
“I’m driving back to Tel Aviv. I should be there in an hour.”
“And the Grand Master? Is he with you?”
“No, you idiot. Do you think I’d be calling if he was in my car? He wanted to stay behind to talk to the prime minister. The Israeli security detail will bring him home, but we’re going to be gone by then.”
“Okay. Hey, look, I can’t set these charges off inside by myself. I’m going to have to do it remotely. Is that okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m not a suicide bomber. I’m not going to get blown up doing this. I’m going to emplace them, and then leave, setting them off by cell phone.”
Confused, Garrett said, “I’m fine with that. Why are you asking?”
“Because I can’t guarantee initiation. It’s just a link I thought you should be aware of.”
Garrett thought a moment, then said, “That won’t work. We’ve had several single points of failure on this mission, one that Raph and Leo ran into. One that caught Donatello. I need you to execute.”
“You’re saying you want me to blow myself up?”
“No. I’m saying you need to ensure the explosives go off. I don’t care how you do it, but when you leave the charges, they need to be counting down. I don’t care if it’s a Wile E. Coyote thing, with a burning fuse taped to a black ball, we can’t afford another point of failure.”
He heard nothing but breathing. He said, “You can do that, right?”
“Yes, sir. I can do that. I’m on the way right now. You’re coming back to Tel Aviv?”
Garrett saw the end of the highway, the Rosh Hanikra Grotto lookout ahead of him. He said, “Yes. I’m about forty minutes out. I’ll call when I arrive.”
He parked the SUV in the lot, looked at the ticket counter for the cable cars going down, and thought about his options. Which was to say, he had very few. After the attempted vehicle interdiction, he was sure he was on every intelligence radar on the planet, not the least with one of the most effective on earth—the Mossad—and if he used his credit card to buy a ticket on the cable car, it would register. He might get his reconnaissance, but the police would coalesce on this location.
And he couldn’t execute his plan without a reconnaissance. He wasn’t sure it would even work, and if it was a dead end, he’d need to be able to escape.
He leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and prayed to the God who wanted this to occur, searching for an answer as to what he should do. He saw the dead women he’d killed, taunting him, and he snapped his eyes open. Was God talking to him?
And God spoke.
A child pounded on his door, her mother behind her. He rolled down the window and said, “Yes?”
She heard his accent and said, “You’re an American?”
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
Clearly rehearsed for this eventuality, having seen many American tourists, she said, “I’m like the Girl Scouts here in Israel, and I’m selling cookies. If you buy six boxes, you get a free ticket for the cable car to the Grotto.”
He smiled and said, “I’ll take twelve boxes, and only one ticket.”
I continued up Highway Four, saying, “What are we doing now? We’re chasing a ghost. He could be anywhere in this country.”
Getting antsy in the passenger seat, Shoshana said, “I should have done this with Aaron. He’d find the man.”
Which sort of hurt. I said, “We talked about this before we left. With a split team, we needed an Israeli on each one. It’s why you’re with me and Jennifer is with Aaron. And if you want to push it, I wish Jennifer was with me right now.”
She glared at me and I said, “Hey, I didn’t start this. You did.”
She said, “He’s trying to cross the border. He’s going to Lebanon, where his men would have been if we hadn’t killed them.”
I said, “If he was trying to get out of the country, he’d have traveled to Jordan, or Eilat for crossing into Egypt. Going to Lebanon makes no sense.”
She said, “Lebanon has diplomatic relations with the Knights of Malta. He’s going to use that.”
I said, “So do Egypt and Jordan. For that matter, Israel doesn’t, but there’s a Knights consulate in the West Bank that gives them the same rights as any other diplomat. He could be going to any of them.”
Miffed at my logic, she said, “He’s going to Lebanon. The grid we received was outside of Acre, on the road to the north. If he was going to Jordan, he’d have headed east, and he could have done that when he left Megiddo. Same for the West Bank. Megiddo is right next to it, but it has too many security checkpoints, and if he was trying to cross into Egypt, he’d have gone south, not north.”
I couldn’t really argue with that logic. I said, “So we’ll just chase him down on this road? It ends at the border?”
“Yes, but we need to get Aaron moving. We won’t have time to stop what he has planned.”
“I agree, but where?”
“Jerusalem. They’re going to target Jerusalem.”
Continuing down the road at a high rate of speed, I said, “You know something I don’t?”
“Yes. Well, no, but yes.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“The Ramsad’s killer is trying to start the End of Days. With the miss on Megiddo, he’s got one quiver left in his arrow, and he’s going to use it carefully. He has no more drones or missiles. He has one last man, and Jerusalem is where I’d send him if it were me. To the Temple Mount.”
“Why would Israel care if he hit that place? You already told me that Israel hadn’t taken control of it. An attack there wouldn’t get Israel to do anything. It would just cause everyone to get mad at Iran, both Arabs and Israelis.”
She said, “True, an attack by supposed Iranian militia members wouldn’t cause the fight, but one that was pinned on Israel would.”