LITMIR.BIZ

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nodded, as if to himself. “I’d say our job is to not inflame tensions any further, and hope this little flare-up turns out to be a nine-day wonder – or better yet, a nine-hour wonder.”

      Susan almost laughed. “In other words, we sit on our hands.”

      Now Kurt smiled. “I’d say we should sit on our hands. But right now our hands are tied behind our backs.”

      CHAPTER SIX

      December 12

      1:40 p.m. Israel Time (6:40 am Eastern Standard Time)

      Tel Aviv, Israel

      The news was bad.

      The young woman sat on the park bench, watching her little boy and girl, twins, play on the swing set. In the near distance was the tan apartment block, sixteen stories high, where the woman lived. There was no one around today, the park mostly empty.

      It was unusual for an early afternoon in spring, but not surprising given the circumstances. Most of the country seemed to be inside somewhere, glued to their TV and computer screens.

      Last night, Daria Shalit, a nineteen-year-old soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces, had gone missing after a skirmish with Hezbollah terrorists who had made a surprise attack along the northern border. The seven other soldiers in her patrol – all men – had died in the fighting. But not Daria. Daria was just gone.

      IDF troops had pursued the terrorists back into Lebanon. Four more Israelis had died in the fighting there. Eleven young men – the cream of Israeli youth – all dead in an hour. But that was not what consumed the country.

      The fate of Daria had become an overnight obsession. If the woman closed her eyes, she could see Daria’s pretty face and dark eyes alight, smiling as she clowned around with a machine gun, smiling as she posed with friends in bikinis on a Mediterranean beach, smiling as she received her school diploma. So beautiful and always beaming, as though her future was assured, a promise she was sure to receive.

      The woman did close her eyes now and let the tears stream down her cheeks. She put a hand to her face, hoping her children would not see her weep. Her heart was broken for a girl she had never met but somehow knew as well as if Daria were her own sister.

      The newspapers were crying out for blood, demanding the complete destruction of the Lebanese people. There were violent arguments in the Knesset through the night, as the government issued threats, demanded the girl’s release, but took no immediate action. A rage was building, ready to explode.

      Hours ago, the bombing had begun.

      Israeli jets were pounding southern Lebanon, the Hezbollah stronghold, and all the way north to Beirut. Each time the announcements came on TV, the woman’s neighbors in her apartment building erupted in shouts and cheers.

      “Kill every one of them!” an old man shouted in something that sounded like triumph, but of course could not be. His gruff voice was clear through the paper thin walls. “Kill every single one!”

      The woman took her children outside after that.

      Now she sat in the park, silently weeping, letting herself cry, getting it out, all the while her ears tuned carefully to the calls and shouts of her two children. Her children, innocents, would grow to adulthood surrounded by enemies who would gladly see their throats cut and their flesh bled white.

      “What are we to do?” the woman whispered. “What are we to do?”

      The answer came in the form of a new sound, low and far away at first, mingling with the sounds of her children. Soon it moved closer and louder, then louder still. It was a sound she knew too well.

      Air raid sirens.

      Her eyes popped open.

      Her children had stopped playing. They stared across the playground at her. The sirens were loud now.

      LOUD.

      “Mama!”

      She jumped from the bench and ran toward the children. There was a bomb shelter beneath their building – a quarter of a kilometer away.

      “Run!” she screamed. “Run to the building!”

      The children didn’t move. She raced to them and gathered them in her arms. Then she ran with them held to her, one in each arm. For a few moments, she didn’t know her own strength. She dashed across the pavement with these two precious packages, both crying now, the sirens around them shrieking louder and louder.

      The woman’s breath was harsh in her ears.

      The building loomed, growing closer. Everywhere, people who were invisible just moments ago ran toward the building.

      Suddenly, yet another sound came – a sound so loud, so high-pitched that the woman thought her eardrums would burst. She looked up and a missile streaked across the sky, coming from the north. It slammed into the upper floors of her building.

      The earth beneath her feet shook from the impact. The world seemed to spin around her, even as the top of the building blew apart in a massive explosion, concrete masonry flying through the air. How many people in those rooms? How many dead?

      She lost her balance and fell, spilling her two children onto the ground. She crawled on top of them, covering them with her body just before the shockwave came. Then a hail of debris from the explosion rained down, tiny biting pebbles and shards, choking dust, the remains of the old and infirm who could not leave their apartments in time.

      The sirens did not stop. The deafening shriek of another missile came, flying just overhead, followed by the blast and rumble as it found its target not far away.

      On and on and on raged the sirens.

      Another missile shriek began to grow. It whistled in her ears. The skin on her body popped out in gooseflesh. She pulled her children closer, closer. The sound was too loud. It no longer made sense. It was beyond hearing, monstrous beyond all human comprehension – her systems shut down in the face of it.

      The woman screamed in tandem with the missile, but she seemed to make no sound at all. She could not look up. She could not move. She felt its shadow above her, blotting out the light of day.

      Then a new light took her, a blinding light.

      And after that, the darkness.

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      6:50 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

      The White House Residence

      Washington, DC

      The morning light was streaming through the blinds, but Luke did not want to get up. He lay flat on his back in the big bed, his head propped up on pillows.

      Susan lay next to him under the sheets, the President of the United States, her head resting on his chest, her short blonde hair hanging loose against his bare skin. He noticed a few flecks of gray that her stylist had missed. Or perhaps that was on purpose – on a man, a little bit of gray would indicate experience, seriousness, gravitas.

      She was breathing deeply.

      “Are you awake?” he whispered.

      He felt her smile against his body. “Of course I am, silly. I’ve been awake for over an hour.”

      “What are you thinking about?” he said.

      “What are you thinking about? That’s the important question.”

      “Well, I’m worried.”

      She pressed herself onto her elbows, turned, and looked at him. As always, he was astonished by her beauty. Her eyes were pale blue, and in her face he could see the woman who had appeared on magazine covers more than twenty years before. She was aging backward, moving in reverse toward that time. He would almost swear to it – in the short time they had been together, she appeared to grow a little bit younger nearly every day.

      Her mouth made a half smile and her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Luke Stone is worried? The man who takes down terrorist networks

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