Lockout

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

The Kirya, Tel Aviv, Israel (7:42 a.m. local / 0542 Zulu)

With one all-consuming thought demanding his attention, the Israeli prime minister closed his eyes to meet it head on. What, exactly, was going through the diseased minds in Tehran? Were all of them nothing but murderous bastards to whom infidel humanity was no more sacrosanct than insects?

Or were the Iranians the insects, and Gershorn the appointed exterminator?

The confidence level was high, he had just been told that control of the nuclear weaponry had not been shifted to outlying commanders. At least, not yet. Was it one of the religious mafia in Tehran hesitating or merely a professional military man using logic and not religious hysteria?

Or could there be, in the midst of that cultish insanity, someone like him, even at this moment weighing the moral as well as the strategic consequences of taking the next step? The mere thought seemed heresy, and with Hamas or ISIS and any other insane collection of genocidal maniacs it would be. But maybe, just maybe, someone in Tehran could still understand the concept, if not the benefits, of restraint.

He glanced again at the screen. No movement at the various missile sites, and especially none at the launch site Mossad had identified as most likely to be carrying what was perhaps their only nuke.

To defuse it, all he had to do was order the missiles off the rails of the fighter trailing Pangia 10. If there was no inbound airliner with Moishe Lavi aboard, there was no reason for launching against Tel Aviv, and no reason for Israel to incinerate Iran.

Airborne, in trail of Pangia 10

The pilot flying Patyish 26 assigned to trail the Pangia Airbus with missiles ready to fire had maintained the radar lock for what seemed an eternity, waiting for an order one way or another. The massive internal battle between the obligation to follow orders and the nightmarish possibility of committing mass murder, even as an instrument of his government, tore at his soul. The thirty-four-year-old father of two was not entirely sure he could squeeze the trigger if given the command.

“Patyish 26, stand by for orders.”

“Roger,” was the correct reply, and all he could manage as he tensed for what was coming next. A cold chill had already enveloped him, and he could hear his heart pounding in his ears as he strained at the silence on the channel.

Pangia 10

“Tell Dan to get ready,” Jerry said.

“He says ‘on your command,’ Captain.”

Jerry glanced at the moving map display. Was there any point in waiting further? Mere minutes of fuel remained.

Jerry reached up and grabbed his sidestick controller perhaps for one last comforting moment of pretense that all was normal and this had been just a nightmare.

He deflected the stick to the right, reacting in absolute disbelief as the big aircraft rolled to the right, obeying his command as if nothing had ever been wrong.

What the hell?

Carol’s voice from just behind his seat partially filtered through his disbelief.

“Captain, Dan says to tell you there was a large noise down here and a lot of relays clicked. Are you ready for him to cut it?”

Jerry looked at the sidestick controller in his left hand as if it had materialized out of the either. For hours it had defied him, and now, suddenly, when it was probably far too late, it decides to work? What the hell?

Her words finally coalesced. Dan was ready to bring an axe down on the power cable below. He forced his body to swivel around as far as he could to make sure Carol heard him. “NO! Tell him do NOT cut it! Do NOT cut it! We have control again somehow! Tell Dan to get up here.”

Jerry could hear Carol getting up from the floor as Dan all but levitated through the hatch, barely believing Carol’s words.

“You have control Jerry?”

“Yes! Get back in the seat.”

“Jesus, yes!” Dan scrambled past Carol, patting her on the butt as he passed in some unconscious form of celebration as he all but leapt in the copilot’s seat.

“How’d you do it, Dan?”

“I didn’t! I have no idea why it let go!”

The Kirya, Tel Aviv, Israel

The generals, and especially the air force chief, were feeding in an almost three-dimensional picture of the aerial battle, and as expected, Iran was doing very poorly, even as the second wave of fighters closed in. That would hasten Tehran’s decision. If they couldn’t shoot the airliner down…

“How long a delay in seconds between a ballistic missile launch and when our board here would show it?” Gershorn asked no one in particular.

Two members of the general staff turned to answer. “No more than five seconds, sir. This is an amalgam of real-time satellite sensors and imagery.”

He nodded thanks, his mind racing. The order to intercept any launched missile in boost phase was already signed. The order to launch the nuclear preemptive strike would take a maximum of two minutes consultation.

“One more question,” Gershorn asked evenly, consciously hanging on to his emotions. “What are the expected civilian casualties if we go for preemption?”

The room quieted immediately, as if a judge had asked a defendant at the start of a trial which prison he’d prefer.

“Between… 7,000 and 20,000, sir, in primary and secondary casualties in the communities in which they’ve tried to hide the enrichment facilities.”

“And our fighter is in place for a shootdown?”

“Awaiting your order, sir.”

“How long would it take Tehran to understand the threat was gone?”

“They would see the target break up and disappear. But, they might not know who shot them.”

“In other words, they might still push the button based on the assumption that we were attacking?”

The generals in the room were all glancing at each other as if forming an unspoken collective resolve over what to say. The prime minister was clearly teetering on a razor edge. The wrong phrase, the wrong word, might push him in the wrong—or the right—direction.

The final tumbler suddenly dropped into place in Gershorn’s mind, unlocking his resolve.

And somehow, in Tehran, he knew his counterpart had also reached an equally historic decision.