Thomas Greanias - The Promised War

It's over. Now the game is to go out without compromising Israel.

Deker blinked his swollen eyes open again and saw that he was inside a dark stone chamber-a basement of some kind. A second man with long black hair stood over a small bank of medical equipment.

"Before the sun rises in a couple of hours, a large portion of the Temple Mount will collapse, and it will look like you two here did it on behalf of the Orthodox Jewish fanatics," the Jordanian said. "Palestinian rioters will overrun Jerusalem, raise the Palestinian flag, and Israel won't be able to stop the world from recognizing the capital of the new nation of Palestine."

"That could work," Deker said. "But it won't. Or else you would have already killed me and Elezar."

Like Stern, Deker thought, heaping more guilt upon himself. He remembered how his driver had been jumpy about the mission from the start-for good reason, as it turned out. Then his thoughts turned to Stern's young wife, Jenny, and their eighteen-month-old son, David. He had failed to protect them, like he had failed to protect Rachel. But he would not fail Israel now, he vowed to himself. He could not. It was all he had left to live for and to die for.

"The Tehown," the Jordanian said, using the Hebrew code name for Israel's top-secret fail-safe. "Tell me about this so-called gate of the deep or tunnel of chaos that will save the Jews but kill the Arabs. We need to know what kind of Jewish physics we're dealing with."

Deker now understood what this was about. He was one of only three Israelis besides the prime minister who knew the secret of the Tehown. Not even his superiors in the IDF knew its details, including Elezar, for fear they would use it before its intended time as Israel's last resort.

Elezar began to shout, "I'll kill you myself if you break, Deker! I swear it! I'll kill you myself!"

The Jordanian nodded to the guard next to Elezar, who shoved an electric prod into the IDF veteran's groin and delivered enough blue voltage to knock him out and create a thin wisp of smoke.

"Your superior officer is rather annoying, don't you think?" the Jordanian asked. "He is certainly no friend of yours. Look what he sent out earlier this evening."

The Jordanian held up Deker's BlackBerry so that Deker could read a Twitter alert from the Jerusalem Highway Patrol, complete with his picture.

Deker looked at himself on the small screen. The stone-faced expression made Deker himself wonder if a heart could still be beating inside this man. Only the dark, half-dead eyes revealed the faintest smolder of a passion snuffed out by life a long time ago.

12:43 a.m. Male. 26. 5'11". Brown hair. Gray

eyes. Armed and extremely dangerous. Shoot if

subject resists arrest.

"That last order seemed completely uncalled-for," the Jordanian said in a flat voice, thick with sarcasm. "And these are supposed to be your people."

That Elezar and the Shin Bet never wanted him to succeed in persuading the Waqf to acquiesce to an electronic surveillance net didn't surprise him. If anything, after a botched assassination attempt in Dubai a couple of years back that caught Mossad agents on camera, his superiors preferred to avoid a repeat the next time they had to storm the Temple Mount and kill a few Waqf guards.

Nor was he surprised that the Jordanian attempting to break him now would use Elezar's APB to divide his Israeli captives.

But Deker was indeed surprised by the shoot-to-kill order.

I'll deal with Elezar and the IDF once I escape, he vowed to himself. But first he would have to escape. To do that, he'd have to kill their captors and see just where on earth they had been taken. If they were in the basement of the GID HQ in Amman, he and Elezar were finished. But Deker didn't think so. They were probably still close to Jerusalem, perhaps in some safe house in Jericho or the West Bank.

If so, we still have a chance.

Without warning, the Jordanian struck him on the side of the head. A flash of light exploded before his eyes.

"The Tehown fail-safe, Commander!" he yelled with a maniacal growl. "What is the nature of the fail-safe?"

As the howls echoed in his ears, and the flash of light dissipated, Deker could see a glowing cord extend out from a bank of computer screens. It traveled straight toward his head, just above his eye, where it seemed to bore into his skull.

What the hell? This experiment had gone beyond anything in the GID playbook-or anything else he had ever experienced.

Pure panic now overwhelmed him as he realized with horror that there was a shunt in his head with a thin intravenous line attached, some sort of fiber-optic cable pulsating with a neon purple light.

Deker winced as the Jordanian pressed on a button and suddenly another blast of lightning flashed before Deker's burning eyes. The unbearable pain lingered like a mushroom cloud inside Deker's head. When the overexposure finally lifted, he could see the ghost of its outlines.

Deker struggled to catch his breath. Terror tore his conscience as he sensed whatever human resolve was left in him was beginning to wither. "I'll tell you how to wipe the Zionist state off the map," he said desperately, gasping. "But you won't like it and you won't do it, because you all have your heads up your asses."

"I'm listening," said the Jordanian, for once without the threat of imminent violence in his voice.

"Call their bluff," Deker told him, aware of Elezar beginning to stir in his chains. "Lay down your arms. Ask to be fully recognized citizens of Israel. Israel is already ten percent Arab, the West Bank almost ten percent Jewish. Two states side by side is apartheid. Nothing changes. One state with an Arab majority risks Israel losing its Jewish identity."

"Never!" Elezar shouted, fully awake now and aware of Deker's words. "I'd sooner have two states and keep the foreign dogs in their pounds."

"See," Deker said with a weak smile. "Our heads are up our asses too. So tell me, Hamas or Hezbollah or whoever you are. What do you want? More rockets? I can get them for you. More explosives? Just tell me how you want them delivered. The more you lob rockets, the more you secure the borders of a greater Israel and hurt your own. You are Israel's secret fail-safe."

The Jordanian was not amused. He was about to fire another burst of light when Deker's hand reached out for the rod behind Elezar's knees. In one smooth motion he slid it out from the chains with a yank and struck the Jordanian on the back of his head with all the force he could muster. As his captor, still conscious but dazed, put his hands up to his head, Deker reached down and pulled out the Jordanian's sidearm and turned as the other one fired a shot. Deker used the stunned Jordanian as a shield for the oncoming bullet and returned fire, killing his captor with a bullet between the eyes.

Deker looked up to see Elezar, dangling in his chains with the rod removed.

"Get me out!" shouted Elezar, unimpressed by Deker's latest feat.

Deker unchained Elezar. His superior officer fell to the floor and gasped as his bloody bare soles touched the ground as he rose to his feet.

"Thank you very much, Commander," Elezar said tightly, and punched Deker in the face, sending another flash of light across Deker's skull. "You think this erases what you've done? I warned the PM not to sign off on your crazy scheme to test the Waqf at the Temple Mount. You thought you were testing their defenses. It's clear now that they were testing you-the IDF's weakest link."

Deker had to steady himself for a moment. Elezar's weakened fist didn't land all that hard a blow. But Deker felt as if there were some kind of splinter in his brain and found the sensation unnerving. "Your text alert calling me dangerous didn't help."

"I had to stop you before it was too late," Elezar said. "Instead I find Stern dead at the wheel, and myself captured and tortured."