4

IDF NORTHERN COMMAND HQ, SAFED, ISRAEL

“Get the choppers in the air—now.”

It was 9:29 a.m.

Eleven minutes had gone by since they’d first received the distress call from the convoy, and Major General Yossi Kidron was livid with his staff that 669—the IDF’s elite airborne combat search-and-rescue unit—was not already on the scene. “And get the drones up too.”

“All of them?” asked a tactical officer.

“Yes, all of them—now. Let’s go, people. What are you waiting for? We’ve got men in harm’s way—move!”

As head of Northern Command, Kidron was in charge of securing the Blue Line, Israel’s seventy-eight-kilometer-long border with Lebanon. It was bad enough to have already lost eight of his soldiers before 10 a.m. But he knew the situation could quickly get worse.

Not since the Second Lebanon War back in 2006 had so many Israelis been killed in this sector on a single day, much less in the span of just ten or fifteen minutes. Kidron knew he would soon be facing multiple official inquiries. One would certainly come from the top brass at the Kirya, Israel’s equivalent of the Pentagon. A second would be mounted by the Defense Committee of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. These, however, would be nothing compared to the inevitable U.N. investigation and condemnations of his country at the Security Council in New York.

In the meantime, the piranhas in the media were going to eat him alive. And of course, in the next few hours he was going to have to personally inform eight sets of parents that they’d never see their sons again. It was the worst part of his job, and he dreaded the thought of it.

And yet if two American officials were also captured or killed by Hezbollah . . .

A massive explosion knocked Marcus off his feet.

An instant later came another explosion.

Rocks and branches and dirt rained down on him. Marcus began coughing violently. His ears were ringing. Wiping his eyes, he reached for his weapon and pulled it toward him.

As he fought to regain his bearings, a Hezbollah fighter suddenly entered his peripheral vision. The man was moving right to left, hurling grenades into the bushes close to where Yigal was hiding. His AK-47 blazed as the grenades detonated. Marcus raised his M4, switched to auto, and opened fire. The first burst went wide. The second did not. The man dropped to the ground a couple of yards from the edge of the brush.

Marcus wasn’t sure why Yigal wasn’t returning fire. Was he dead? Wounded? There was no movement in the bushes.

It was quiet for at least a minute, save the roaring of the vehicle fires off to Marcus’s right. No one else was around. Marcus had lost count of the number of tangos he had felled, but seeing no one else coming, he began climbing back to his feet. Just then, however, the downed Hezbollah fighter tried to do the same. The man had dropped his Kalashnikov, which was now several feet away. Racked with pain, he was nevertheless groping toward it. Marcus could see blood gushing from his left leg and down his left arm. But then, without warning, the man changed tactics. Rolling onto his good side, he abandoned his quest for the AK-47. Instead, he drew a sidearm, raised it up, and took aim at Marcus’s head.

Marcus did not hesitate. He unleashed another burst from the M4, riddling the man’s head and chest with bullets. The pistol dropped to the ground and the guy finally ceased moving.

Getting to his feet, Marcus scanned the environment around him. Kailea was still nowhere to be found. Nor was Yigal. The only person he could see was the teenage Hezbollah fighter, who was now white as a sheet and frozen in terror. Marcus moved to his side and secured his hands and feet with flexicuffs, then headed toward the bushes, now ablaze from the grenades that had been lobbed into them.

Looking to the skies, Marcus neither saw nor heard any sign of IDF choppers. Reinforcements were coming. They had to be. But they weren’t there yet, and Marcus knew he and his team were quickly running out of time.

He wiped blood and dirt off the dial of his watch. It was 9:32. They had to get moving, away from the convoy and all this carnage. They needed to retreat. It was not their job to hold off all the Hezbollah fighters that were still coming. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. It was time to head into the mountains and forests of northern Israel and hunker down until the coast was clear. But first he had to find his team.

Marcus resisted the temptation to call out to the Israeli by name. He had been trained better than that. Still, abandoning caution, he finally did call out, though not as loud as he might have.

“Hey, kid, you all right?

There was no reply. Weapon up, Marcus moved closer to the burning bushes and called out again.

“Kid, where are you?”

Still nothing.

Fearing the Israeli had been shot or blown to pieces by the last volley of grenades, Marcus shifted gears. Finding Kailea, he decided, had to be his top priority. They were partners, after all. They were responsible for watching each other’s backs, and in the eighteen months they had worked together, in multiple countries and on multiple continents, they had certainly proven their loyalty to one another. Find her, Marcus told himself. First he had to make sure she was healthy and safe. Then they could search for Yigal together.

Then again, Marcus was increasingly convinced the kid had not survived the Hezbollah onslaught. There would be serious questions to answer back in Washington, not to mention Jerusalem. He shuddered to think of the firestorm that was coming. But that was tomorrow’s trouble. Right now, he had to find Kailea.

Yet just as Marcus turned around, he found himself staring at a hooded fighter pointing a weapon at his face and about to pull the trigger.