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  Ambassador’s Residence, Tel Aviv

  July 22, 9:08 p.m.

  “Go silent,” McKeon instructed over the radio. “Invaders are monitoring our comm. And Kathie, get Atticus out of the kitchen. You’re spotted.”

  She had decisions to make and not much time to make them. Fire on the invaders and try to stop their advance? Get Parker to safety? But now the kitchen wasn’t much safer than where they were hiding. McKeon looked over her shoulder, back toward where the weapons’ locker in the DSS Security Office was located. She pictured the Heckler & Koch MP5, 9-millimeter submachine gun hanging in the closet. The MP5 could empty a thirty-cartridge clip in three seconds. I sure could use that H&K right now. But there was no time.

  Taking Parker by the arm, McKeon motioned to the opening of the stairwell. “Stay low. Get inside the stairwell, but stay where I can see you.”

  As Parker scrambled to the right, McKeon turned back to the broken window overlooking the garden. Some defenders were engaging the invaders, but they continued to inch their way closer to the patio doors. They had to be stopped.

  McKeon whacked the remaining broken glass with the butt end of her Sig Sauer. The lead invader looked up at the noise. Thrusting her arms against the windowsill, her gun pointed at the lead invader, McKeon pulled back on the trigger, going full automatic, emptying a clip as return fire shredded the metal casing around the window.

  US Embassy, Tel Aviv

  July 22, 9:09 p.m.

  The violence of the grenade’s explosion rattled his knees. But the commander knew something was wrong. The explosion came from his left, where the rest of his men were pinned down, and not from his right, where the door to the vault was located—the door that was the intended target for the grenade launcher.

  He edged open the door a crack, dust and debris filling the corridor and obscuring his vision. No noise carried from the passageway … no guns firing in either direction. On the far side of the hallway, twenty paces to his right, three shadows moved into the billowing dust. The commander shifted his weight toward the opening of the door before a hand on his arm arrested his movement.

  “Commander,” a voice whispered. “There are no longer enough of us.”

  Through the slight opening in the door, the commander felt his optimism escaping.

  “We don’t know how many of them are left,” whispered the voice. “And we no longer have the grenade launcher.”

  The commander was ready to give his life. But not for nothing. They were so close. But there was no way to reach the box. With an impatient swat, he pushed the hand away from his arm, spat on the floor, twisted on the balls of his feet, and led his remaining men in retreat, a burning boil erupting from his stomach and scorching his throat. He hadn’t even seen Mullaney.

  Moving deliberately, his Glock held in two hands up by his right shoulder, his eyes piercing the doorways and shadowed corners down the corridor, Mullaney emerged from the dust cloud into a scene of carnage and nearly gagged on the smell of burning flesh.

  “I don’t understand it,” said Jack, kicking a handgun away from a smoldering, disfigured body that had been blasted up against a wall.

  Where the invaders had taken cover behind fallen slabs of concrete and mutilated walls, an explosion had blown a large cavity in the midst of the debris, gouging out sizable divots from the floor and both walls of the basement corridor. Even though their bodies were mangled and in pieces, it was pretty clear that none of the invaders in this group had escaped the blast.

  Mullaney, his eyes continually sweeping the hallway, inched nearer what was left of the damaged grenade launcher lying in the dust and felt the heat coming from the seared metal.

  “They must have fired the grenade launcher,” said Jack, “otherwise it wouldn’t have been armed and able to explode. But it didn’t go anywhere. How is that possible? They shot it, but it just blew up right here. Doesn’t make any …”

  Mullaney was thinking of an eight-foot angel wearing a silver breastplate when the DSS station chief and a marine sergeant came running up. “Brian,” said the station chief, “we got a call. The residence is also under attack by armed intruders.”

  Mullaney spun and faced the station chief as Jack and his partner continued inching down the corridor and the sergeant covered their backs. “What do we know?”

  “Similar to us … invaders front and back pierced the perimeter through the damage from the earthquake.”

  “Cleveland?”

  “Don’t know, sir. The gun fight was still going on when we lost the connection.”

  Mullaney’s heart sank. “What’s the status here?”

  The station chief gave Mullaney a hollow stare. His eyes were open but there was nothing in them. He was seeing something else. “We’ve been hit really hard … especially our local security contractors.” His voice was leaden. “Eight to ten are down. Don’t know their condition yet. But I do know there will be several DOA. And two marines. So far, none of the embassy staff were harmed.”

  “Attackers?”

  “Two bodies out front, near the hole that was ripped in the corner of the building, another just inside the building, and however many this mess is here. We think we got all of the ones attacking the north side. But I don’t feel as confident on this end. There were at least ten that penetrated the garage.” He looked down at the body parts sprawled throughout the passage. “This doesn’t look like …”

  The sound of small arms fire ricocheted along the walls of the corridor, coming from the parking garage, followed by the heavy hacking thuds of machine guns.

  Without a word the five defenders ran toward the sound of the guns.

  4

  Al-Yamama Palace, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

  July 22, 9:12 p.m.

  He was a deteriorating shell of his former self. Now seventy-six years old, he was stoop shouldered, nearsighted behind wire-rimmed glasses, and still alive only because he kept the best cardiac surgeons in the world on retainer. But behind those wire-rimmed glasses resting on bags of sagging flesh, eyes still burned with fanatical fervor and youthful passion.

  Even when rest eluded his weary body.

  King Abdullah, sixth in a direct line of the Al-Saud family to rule the oil-rich peninsula of Saudi Arabia, had a vision of the future … a future where an Islamic Empire, rooted in the strict Wahhabi sect of Muslim fundamentalism of his fathers, would outreach the global dominance of the seventh century when Islam ruled from central India to the Pyrenes Mountains of Spain. In the quiet of his heart, Abdullah worshiped at the altar of Islamic world supremacy. And the first step, planned on the back of a nuclear weapons arsenal Abdullah was promised from Pakistan, was to impose Saudi rule over the Middle East before the hated Persians of Iran developed their own nuclear weapons.

  But his aborted first step remained on the docks of the Gwadar port in Pakistan, molten heaps of irradiated metal that less than two days ago were nuclear bombs waiting to be shipped to Riyadh. Now they were useless to him and a curse to the Pakistanis who were left with the treacherous cleanup.

  King Abdullah walked along the dimly lit colonnade that bordered a lavish garden, dappled with subtle, low-level lighting and studded with soothing fountains and man-made waterfalls. He gently massaged his father’s prayer beads in the gnarled fingers of his right hand. But no peace filled his spirit or guided his intentions. His mind was aching for a fight he knew the valves of his weak heart could not endure. But his thoughts had remained the same since they got the word from Pakistan. Someone must pay for this.

  His son and heir, Prince Faisal ibn Farouk Al-Saud, defense minister for the Royal Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, emerged from a side door to the colonnade and strode purposely toward the king.

  “Tell me! What happened?” snarled the king, squeezing the beads in his raised fist.

  “Father … please,” said Faisal, the thick, black-rimmed spectacles jostled against his nose as he reached his father. “Please, calm down. Your heart.”

  The k
ing glared at his son. “Forget my heart,” he seethed. “I gave you the responsibility for ensuring that shipment reached us safely. You! A simple task.”

  Abdullah rocked unsteadily on his feet. Faisal reached for his arm and led the king to a bench under the dusky colonnade. Abdullah drew in a long breath as he settled onto the bench, but his voice had lost none of its strength. “What happened? The Iranians? The Israelis? Who?”

  Prince Faisal sat down beside his father and took his hand. There was genuine concern in his eyes. A good son.

  “Father, ever since we got the call from Islamabad, I’ve been on the phone with our agents throughout the region,” said Faisal, his voice soft, soothing as a night breeze. “There is something we had not anticipated. It appears the Ottoman threat is rising. Kashani cannot be trusted. He may have publicly signed an agreement with al-Qahtani in Iraq that would provide land for the Kurds, but our agent in Turkey says Kashani’s real goal is western Syria—assimilating the ancient land of Assyria back into the Ottoman sphere.”

  King Abdullah’s hold on obscene wealth was precarious. The Al-Saud dynasty was only seven decades old and embattled with external opposition and internal disparities. The often-bloody religious conflict between Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims had been waged for fourteen centuries and continued unabated as the Shia majorities of Iran and Iraq tried to upend the regional economic domination of the Sunni Saudis. Even though over $120 billion a year flowed into the country’s treasury from the black gold under the sand of Saudi Arabia, a pipeline of petrodollars that lavished wealth on his entire royal family tree, nearly a quarter of native Saudis lived below the poverty line of seventeen dollars a day. Saudi Arabia had the world’s third-highest annual military expenditure and was the world’s second largest arms importer, but nearly thirty percent of Saudi young men were unemployed. And most women were banned from economic or political involvement in the nation.

  It was just like the Turks, thought Abdullah, to complicate his life even more with another level of intrigue and conflict.

  King Abdullah was wearily shaking his head, eyes now closed. “We have long known that Kashani could one day be a problem, but never a problem like the Persians.”

  Prince Faisal was strangely silent. Abdullah opened his eyes and looked at his son. “What is it?”

  Turning to engage his father face-to-face, Faisal revealed the information he had just acquired. “Our agent told me of a rumor. As we were speaking on the phone, someone came to him and interrupted our conversation. It was confirmation of that rumor. There is strong evidence that it was Turkish commandos who raided the docks of Gwadar and destroyed our weapons.”

  The old king’s Machiavellian instincts instantly scrolled through multiple scenarios, like flashing images before his brain, trying to discern the purpose and intent behind the rumors reported by his son. “Kashani is not what he seems? That spineless man who appears to live at the end of puppet strings has a plan of his own? Can Kashani truly be the architect of a rising Ottoman threat? But …”

  “Yes,” said Faisal, completing his father’s thought. “But there is Eroglu. A man with unlimited ambition and aspirations. Perhaps a man who pursues unlimited power to accomplish those ambitions?”

  King Abdullah narrowed his eyes as he looked into the face of his future. “Tell me.”

  Faisal leaned closer. “There are whispers. Of a power lurking in the darkness, a power greater than Kashani, greater than Eroglu, a power lusting for the same weapons we seek … weapons that will determine the future of the Middle East.”

  The heart in Abdullah’s chest quavered with an unhealthy beat, paused, then quavered back into sporadic action.

  He held his breath. Waiting … but this was not to be the day.

  Abdullah looked at the concern on his son’s face and could see his hopes for a Wahhabi empire fading. “There are many nuclear weapons already sitting on the soil of the Turks. Under guard, yes, but still close at hand.”

  “Much closer than those we hope to receive from Pakistan,” Faisal said softly.

  Abdullah swore a Saudi oath under his breath. “I should not have listened to the man with the yellow eyes.” His words were softer than the drops falling over the edge of the fountain just behind them. “His passion for empire building was contagious. His idea for how to achieve that empire through the Ishmael Covenant … well, now I believe he may have been more concerned for his own empire than an empire of Islam.”

  The king reached out his hand toward the prince. “Contact Islamabad. Tell the Pakistanis that they must replace those destroyed weapons immediately. It was their security that failed so miserably. Tell them we need delivery now … yesterday! Tell them!”

  US Embassy, Tel Aviv

  July 22, 9:24 p.m.

  By the time the machine guns went silent, when Mullaney and his agents were no longer pinned down inside the garage by the cross fire, the embassy defenders had lost contact with the remnant of retreating attackers who fled over the seawall opposite the building.

  Surveying the damage and carnage around him, Mullaney was faced with two urgent and opposing duties … secure the embassy, care for the wounded and cover the dead, and/or rush to the rescue of the ambassador and the staff at the residence.

  Mullaney felt only anger about his first duty. Anger at himself for being caught unawares—again—and anger at those responsible for so much blood-letting. On the second urgent duty, he simply felt helpless.

  “Any word from the residence?”

  The embassy’s station chief was standing to his left as they watched medics scrambling to the bodies scattered on the ground. “Nothing yet.”

  Mullaney pulled out his mobile phone. At least he had to try. “It will take us forever to get through the city after this earthquake. We’ll be too late.”

  The station chief put a hand on Mullaney’s arm. “That’s just it, sir. The rest of the city wasn’t hit by an earthquake. We’re monitoring the police bands and there doesn’t appear to be any other earthquake activity anywhere else in the city, just the embassy and the residence. We looked out the windows—no other damage anywhere. A few cracks in a building across the street, but everything else is intact. Except for the residence. Weird, eh?”

  For a heartbeat, Mullaney stared at the station chief, trying to force comprehension through his battered emotions. “All right, get somebody down here to open the vault. Tell them to hurry and to bring a large diplomatic pouch with them. And I want a car out front … now!

  5

  Ankara

  July 22, 9:28 p.m.

  The Turk willed his body up the stairs toward his bed.

  His body? Arslan Eroglu’s body, actually. And this body was becoming more ravaged.

  Much of the Turk’s core, elemental power had been poured into rending the earth’s surface in Tel Aviv. Mentally jousting with the winged one earlier, trying to prevent the transfer of anointing to the American meddler, had drained his resources. Creating the earthquakes was an additional and more costly expense of his now dangerously depleted life force.

  The Turk was caught in one of the dichotomies of his existence. Like all angels—even those who fell with the great deceiver—he was created with preternatural gifts. The Turk was an immortal created being, free to roam the earth and interfere in the lives of men. He did not possess absolute immortality. No created being is absolutely immortal like the Creator. But he was of the order of angels, who are immortal, unless their Creator chooses to end their existence. But the Turk, and the coven of darkness he served, had forfeited the other preternatural gifts of the created immortals—freedom from sin and ignorance. He and his kind were now subject to sorrow, sickness, and injury. So even though the Turk was immortal and possessed extraordinary supernatural power, he could feel pain. He could suffer. He could exhaust his seemingly limitless strength. Along with whatever strength existed in this body he now occupied.

  Struggling up the stairs, in desperate need of replenishing rest, the
Turk carried a heavy burden of suffering and pain in the muscle and bones of this assimilated body he had stolen from Arslan Eroglu, prime minister of Turkey. He wondered how much more this body of Eroglu’s could withstand. But its purpose was not yet complete. He must restore its strength.

  Moving in the dark, the Turk closed the door to his bedroom behind him. He spent little time in this room. Normally, he functioned with little or no sleep. But the body he currently occupied needed to be renewed, refreshed, recharged. He sat on the edge of the bed, rotated on his hip and, like an old tree sliding to the forest floor, lowered himself to the bed, sleep coming before his head came to rest.

  US Embassy, Tel Aviv

  July 22, 9:31 p.m.

  Mullaney was running down the corridor toward the embassy’s main entrance on Ha Yarkon Street, the DSS station chief at his shoulder, the reinforced leather diplomatic pouch hanging from its handles and slapping heavily against his left leg, and a cellular phone pressed to his ear as Meyer Levinson relayed what he knew about the unnaturally localized earthquakes and the attacks on both the embassy and the residence.

  “I’ve called every number on my speed dial and nobody’s answering,” Mullaney huffed between breaths. “What’s happening there?”

  “Tel Aviv police are converging on the residence,” said Colonel Levinson, director of the Operations Division of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency. “I had two of my men stationed outside the residence, just as we did at the embassy. I know they were involved in the fight, but they haven’t reported in yet.”

  Mullaney knew what that meant.

  “It’s not over yet,” he said.

  “We don’t know,” Levinson warned. “The police have already locked down your location. They’ve blocked off both ends of Ha Yarkon Street and Herbert Samuel Street and all the cross streets for two hundred kilometers around the embassy. I know they are trying to do the same thing around the residence. But that situation seems … unsettled.”