Page 116

“So what now?”

“We get to tell the Shin Bet to call off the speech.” She grimaced, hating her role. She wanted to be the killer, not the diplomat, and I understood that. She said, “This should be great fun.”

I turned to the road leading to the Megiddo monument and looked at the time, saying, “If it was a straight line, we’re too late. It’s going to hit in seconds.”

We entered the small road to the parking area, and I saw a security checkpoint. I said, “What do we do with that?”

“Just go forward.”

Avril Sharon buckled the oxygen mask to his helmet, closed the canopy to his F-16 Fighting Falcon, gave a thumbs-up to the ground crew, and taxied to the runway. He received clearance for takeoff and thundered into the sky, believing it was just one more chase against phantom ghosts stalking Israel.

He attained cruising altitude and saw his wingman appear to his left. He said, “Here we go again. Probably chasing a damn balloon.”

His wingman laughed through the radio and said, “Yeah, if these guys keep this up, they’ll win by bankrupting us with a million alerts.”

They circled around, heading toward the Golan Heights, Avril saying, “Never chased a phantom out of the West Bank, though. What do you suppose that’s about?”

“No idea. Let’s just clean our sector and go home.”

They crossed into the West Bank, came within spitting distance of the border with Jordan, and banked away, not wanting to cause an international incident. Avril scanned the area and said, “I see nothing. You?”

His wingman didn’t respond. He called again, “Do you see anything?”

“Nine o’clock low. Nine o’clock low. Looks like an aircraft flying low and slow.”

Avril banked, focused on the area, and saw the target. Itdidlook like an aircraft, but it had no canopy. He understood that distance was its own enemy—and that he could be thinking the plane was much farther away simply because of its size. He flew forward, the aircraft eating up the ground, got above it, and said, “That’s not an aircraft. It’s a UAV.”

He called back to his headquarters even as the UAV broke the border between the West Bank and Israel, now twenty miles away from Megiddo. He couldn’t be faulted for that. He had no clear idea why he was even up here, and didn’t want to be a laughing stock by blowing out of the sky an Israeli UAV surveying the West Bank.

“Got a bogey UAV headed north, just broke the border. Is that my target?”

The man on the other end of the radio was just as mystified as he was, the orders that had filtered through their respective commands simply telling them to search and report. He said, “Stand by. Stand by.”

Avril tracked the drone, seeing the distinctive white excavations of Megiddo against the green of the hills in the distance. It jerked to the right and lowered altitude, moving into what he recognized as an attack run. He called back, “UAV is lowering altitude. I say again UAV is lowering altitude. Headed to Megiddo hill. Right at Megiddo hill. Is it ours? Is it our UAV?”

The man on the other end said, “Waiting on an answer. Stand by,” and Avril thought,Why on earth would anyone strike an archeological site? That thing has to be Israeli.

But the UAVwaslowering into a strike run. Avril called his wingman and said, “You seeing what I’m seeing?”

“I see it, I see it. What’s your call?”

Avril said nothing. The UAV was twenty seconds from Megiddo at an altitude of one hundred feet when he flicked the arming switch on his Sidewinder missiles. It reached ten seconds out, flying at more than a hundred miles an hour, and he achieved lock-on, pulling the trigger and whispering, “Please don’t be Israeli...”

Chapter 72

I rolled into the checkpoint, lowered my window, and the uniformed Israeli said something in Hebrew. I said, “English?”

He said, “How can I help you?”

I said, “This is going to sound crazy, but there’s a threat against this place right now. We need you to alert the Shin Bet and get everyone off that hill.”

He bristled, and I knew why, but the time was so close I couldn’t think of any way to soften the blow. Trying to get past the checkpoint with some social engineering wouldn’t stop the drone.

He said, “What do you mean? What threat?”

“There’s an unmanned aerial vehicle flying here right now from Syria. It’s got a warhead that’s going to kill everyone on that hill. You need to evacuate them immediately.”

His face went slack in shock. He put his hand on his pistol, like I was the drone, and said, “Sir, what are you talking about? Please step out of the car.”