13

All the blood drained from Eitan’s face.

“My nephew?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Yigal?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Levy.

The prime minister’s hands began trembling. For several moments, he said nothing.

“Ruvi—Prime Minister—are you still there?” Levy nearly shouted into the receiver.

“Yes, yes, I’m here,” Eitan replied at last. “I don’t understand how this could have happened.”

“Yigal, as you know, is working for Isuf Kravi,” Levy said.

“I know, but—”

“General Kidron assigned Yigal to be the security liaison for Secretary Whitney’s visit to the border,” the Ramatkal explained. “I spoke with Kidron just before coming on the call with you, Prime Minister. He’s absolutely sickened by what’s happened. As I said before, we had no intel whatsoever that Hezbollah was planning—or even contemplating—such a move.”

There was another long silence as the prime minister tried to process what he was hearing. “Does Hezbollah know who they have?” he finally asked.

“We don’t know, sir,” the Ramatkal replied. “It’s too soon to say. But again, this is why General Kidron took the actions he did. I spoke with him at length. The bottom line is that he didn’t have the luxury of second-guessing himself. The instant he realized what was at stake, he knew that every second was precious. So he activated Hannibal on his own authority. He’s ready to accept the consequences. But he stands by his decision. As do I.”

“I do, too, Ruvi,” added the defense minister. “I’d have done the same in the general’s shoes. And so would you, and you know it.”

The prime minister didn’t reply. So Defense Minister Levy offered the PM the only piece of good news, such as it was. “Thus far, sir, neither Hezbollah nor the Lebanese army has retaliated against our incursion.”

He went on to explain that the IDF’s layered air-defense systems—from its Patriot antimissile batteries to Iron Dome and David’s Sling—were all on high alert. Yet remarkably, not a single rocket or missile had been fired from Lebanese territory at the Jewish state. Nor did there appear to be any indications that Lebanese or Hezbollah rockets or missiles were being prepared for launch.

“That’s a bit odd, isn’t it?” Eitan asked. “If they’re trying to lure us into a war?”

“It is, sir,” Levy conceded. “And there’s something else that’s strange.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, sir, 8200 is picking up chatter from Hezbollah’s communications networks indicating a great deal of internal confusion,” the defense minister replied. Unit 8200 was the IDF’s electronic eavesdropping division of military intelligence, roughly equivalent to the American National Security Agency. “We intercepted a message from a high-ranking Hezbollah general in Beirut to the commander of the Nasser Unit. He said the Sheikh did not authorize the attacks and was demanding to know who did and why.”

“You’re saying the attack was unplanned?”

“I can’t say for certain. But it’s possible.”

“Could that just be spin, to slow down our response?”

“I don’t think so,” said General Golan. “That message is only nine minutes old. Hezbollah knows how aggressively we’re treating the situation. They know our response is anything but slow. My guys say it’s very possible that the Hezbollah high command was blindsided by this. For the moment, that’s the only explanation they can come up with why they’re not launching their missiles at us.”

“You’re saying Sheikh al-Hussaini didn’t know his own men were about to start a war with us? I don’t buy it. More likely the Sheikh is luring us into a public relations trap that could have devastating consequences internationally, making us look like the aggressor and providing hours—days—of coverage by European TV networks that hate us anyway.”

Neither man had an explanation, yet both agreed that the situation was highly volatile and could change without warning. The young Sheikh could order his missile brigades to start firing everything they had at Israeli cities, town, villages, and kibbutzim at any moment, and then Israel would have little choice but to escalate into a full-scale war in southern Lebanon.

Reuven Eitan was now back on his feet and pacing around the room again. What bothered him most—amid a long and growing list of problems—was the sense that his hands were tied. Ultimately it was not Sheikh al-Hussaini who was forcing him to make decisions that could be ruinous for his country, to say nothing of his own political career. It was the mullahs in Tehran.

The Israeli people did not want another war. Nor could they afford one. Not after the recent economic devastation. Before the pandemic, unemployment in Israel had been under 4 percent. During the worst of the crisis, it spiked close to 30 percent. The stock market, which had been roaring, plunged to dangerous lows. Yes, the government had done an impressive job initially locking down the country and containing the plague. Since then, they’d done reasonably well in their efforts to reopen society and reboot the economy. With each passing month, there was more and more evidence that Israel was getting back on its feet. GDP growth was picking up steam. Unemployment was dropping. Eitan’s poll numbers were strong. People saw him as delivering both peace and prosperity.

This could change everything.

Then again, what choice did he have? Two Americans and an Israeli—his own flesh and blood—had been kidnapped from the border. He was still as furious as he was dumbfounded that an IDF general would have the chutzpah to activate the Hannibal Protocol on his own authority. But he could hardly back down. Nothing would be worse than looking weak in the face of such a brazen act of war.

“What are our chances?” he asked as he continued pacing.

“Chances at what, sir?” asked the defense minister.

“Finding these three and getting them back in the next few hours.”

For that, Levy deferred to the Ramatkal. “Sir, I wish I could promise you that we will get them all back alive,” General Golan began. “But I can’t—not in good faith. We’re just using too much ordnance.”

“That’s the point of Hannibal, is it not?” Eitan asked.

“It is, sir,” Golan replied. “That’s the risk inherent in its design. We may be able to stop Hezbollah from moving their hostages north to Beirut, but we are also running a very high risk that we will inadvertently kill one or more of them in the process.”

“Which is why Hannibal is no longer an active doctrine and should never have been ordered in the first place.”

“Yes, sir,” the Ramatkal replied.

“Nevertheless, we’re stuck with it now,” said the PM.

“Not necessarily,” the defense minister interjected. “You can call it all off. Just give the word. It’s your boy out there. The last thing we want is to see any harm come to him, least of all by friendly fire.”

“Just give me a number,” Eitan insisted. “What are the chances we get these three back by—I don’t know—the end of the day if we stick with Hannibal?”

General Golan exhaled. “All things being equal, if we stick with what we’re doing, I’d say we’ve got an 80 percent chance of getting them back by nightfall. Seventy-five, eighty.”

“Then we have no choice, gentlemen,” said the PM. “Stick with it, and send me updates on the hour.”

“Very well, sir,” said Levy.

And then the news took a turn for the worse.