Dead Heat Read online

  ✮

  ✮

  ✮

  ✮

  ✮

  ✮

  ✮

  DEAD HEAT

  ✮ ✮

  ✮

  ✮

  ✮

  ✮

  ✮

  ✮

  ✮

  ✮ ✮ ✮ JOEL C. ROSENBERG ✮

  Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois

  Visit Tyndale’s exciting Web site at www.tyndale.com

  TYNDALE and Tyndale’s quill logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

  Dead Heat

  Copyright © 2008 by Joel C. Rosenberg. All rights reserved.

  Cover photographs of amphitheater and seal copyright © by Veer. All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph of sky copyright © by Rene Mansi/iStockphoto. All rights reserved.

  Author photograph copyright © 2005 by Joel Rosenberg. All rights reserved.

  Designed by Dean H. Renninger

  Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

  Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®.

  Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan.

  All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rosenberg, Joel C., date.

  Dead heat / Joel C. Rosenberg.

  p.

  cm.

  ISBN-13:

  978-1-4143-1161-6

  ISBN-10:

  1-4143-1161-3

  1. Presidents—Election—Fiction. 2. Political

  campaigns—Fiction. 3. Terrorism—

  Prevention—Fiction. 4. Assassination

  —Fiction. 5. Middle

  East—Fiction. 6. Temple

  of

  Jerusalem

  (Jerusalem)—Fiction. 7. Political

  fiction. I. Title.

  PS3618.O832D43 2008

  813′.54—dc22

  2007046702

  Printed in the United States of America

  14 13 12 11 10 09 08

  7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To my dearest Lynn –

  You take my breath away and always have.

  I love you dearly, and I am yours for eternity.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  ✮

  ✮

  ✮

  THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

  • James “Mac” MacPherson

  THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

  • William Harvard Oaks

  THE PRINCIPALS

  • Jon Bennett, Former Senior Advisor to the President

  • Erin McCoy Bennett, Former CIA Operative

  SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS

  • Marsha Kirkpatrick, Secretary of State

  • Danny Tracker, Director of Central Intelligence

  • Lee James, Secretary of Homeland Security

  • Bob Corsetti, White House Chief of Staff

  • Ken Costello, National Security Advisor

  • Burt Trainor, Secretary of Defense

  WORLD LEADERS

  • Salvador Lucente, Secretary-General of the United Nations

  • David Doron, Prime Minister of Israel

  • Mustafa Al-Hassani, President of Iraq

  • Khalid Tariq, Chief Political Aide to the President of Iraq

  • Liu Xing Zhao, Prime Minister of China

  • Zeng Zou, Foreign Minister of China

  MILITARY LEADERS

  • Lieutenant General Charlie Briggs, Commander of NORAD and

  USNORTHCOM

  • Admiral Neil Arthurs, Commander of USPACOM

  • General Andrew T. Garrett, Commander of Combined Forces

  Command Korea

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ✮

  ✮

  ✮

  I pray to God the novel you hold in your hands never comes true.

  Certainly not as written.

  Dead Heat is a work of fiction. I didn’t see it in a vision in the middle of

  the night. I made it up. It does not represent the future as I wish to see it. It

  represents a future I fear could be coming, and soon. I hope I am wrong.

  Despite the fact that numerous fictional elements in my previous

  novels have seemed to come true, I am not a clairvoyant, a psychic, or a

  “ modern Nostradamus,” as some have suggested. I am simply a storyteller.

  Dead Heat is the fifth and final novel in the series that began with The

  Last Jihad, and like the other four, it is based on a series of very real and

  increasingly serious geopolitical threats facing the United States and our

  allies today, as well as on a series of very real and deeply sobering prophe-

  cies written in the pages of the Bible centuries ago.

  So far as such geopolitical threats are concerned, it is not my conten-

  tion that we are necessarily destined to see such horrors come to pass.

  Hopefully our nation’s political, military, intelligence, and law enforce-

  ment leaders will have the necessary wisdom, courage, and sense of ur-

  gency to counter and neutralize these threats, and many others like them,

  in time. If we and they understand the nature and magnitude of the evils

  gathering against us, we could very well avoid the sort of cataclysms that

  some experts now believe are no longer a matter of if, but when.

  So far as the prophecies are concerned, however, let me be clear: the

  world is destined to see such horrors come to pass. When? I cannot say.

  How exactly will such events play out? One can only speculate. I have

  no doubt they will happen as the Bible predicts, and they certainly could

  happen in our lifetime. Only the Lord Himself knows.

  That said, it is worth noting that of the one thousand or so prophecies

  found in the pages of the Bible, more than five hundred have already come

  true. Indeed, a number of startling “end times” prophecies have actually

  come to pass over the course of the last century, including the rebirth of

  x i i

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J O E L C . R O S E N B E R G

  the State of Israel, large numbers of Jews returning to the Holy Land after

  centuries of exile, Jews rebuilding the ancient ruins of Israel and making

  the deserts bloom, and Israel creating an “exceedingly great army.”

  All of this begs the question: since some dramatic “last days” prophe-

  cies have come true in our lifetime, isn’t it remotely possible that more

  such prophecies could happen in our lifetime as well?

  One of my fictional characters, Dr. Eliezer Mordechai, put it this way

  in The Ezekiel Option, describing Bible prophecy as “an intercept from

  the mind of God.” The Scriptures tell us that God in His sovereignty has

  chosen to give us advance intelligence of some future geopolitical events

  that will shake our world and shape our future so we are not caught off

  guard, so we can get ready, so we can help others get ready. As the Hebrew

  prophet Amos once wrote: “Surely the Lord God does nothing unless He

  reveals His secret counsel to His servants the prophets.” (Amos 3:7)

  Which brings me back to my first point. Though something is com-

  ing, I pray we are spared the events po
rtrayed in Dead Heat. I did not write

  this book to predict exactly how such end times prophecies will come to

  pass. I wrote it to ask, What if?

  What if the political debates that so obsess and divide us prove one day

  to be trivial pursuits, distracting us from the most important and pressing

  issues of our time?

  What if in the midst of presidential campaign seasons that invariably

  consume so much of our nation’s time, talent, and treasure we find our-

  selves one day blindsided by gathering evils we either do not see or fail

  to fully appreciate?

  What if the great fortunes we are trying to amass do not protect us

  from the weapons being formed against us?

  And what if in our never-ending national hunt for power, prosperity,

  and celebrity we somehow gain the whole world, but forfeit our souls?

  A new evil is rising. I feel it. I fear it. Let us awaken, before it’s too

  late.

  Joel C. Rosenberg

  November 2007

  Washington, D.C.

  1

  ✮ ✮

  ✮

  MONDAY, AUGUST 31—7:02 P.M. EST—CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  It was going to be bloody, but it could be done, if they moved fast.

  All eyes in the CIA’s Global Operations Center turned to Danny

  Tracker. Once the deputy director of operations, Tracker, forty-six, was

  the newly installed director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Only he

  could authorize the Delta Force commander on the ground to carry out

  this strike, and it was he alone who would have to answer for his decision

  to the president, to a myriad of congressional oversight committees, and

  to his colleagues throughout the Byzantine world of U.S. intelligence.

  The Agency had been hunting this “high-priority target” for months.

  Tracker watched as live video images of their prey streamed in from a

  Predator drone hovering—unheard, unseen—a mile above an abandoned

  warehouse outside of Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, where their target now

  entered, surrounded by scores of heavily armed bodyguards.

  “How far away are they?” Tracker asked the senior watch officer be-

  side him as he surveyed the feeds coming in on five enormous plasma TV

  screens on the wall before him.

  “Both Delta teams are at least twenty minutes out, sir.”

  Tracker winced. Twenty minutes was an eternity in his business. They

  had to take this guy down fast. Umberto Milano, after all, was the head of

  operations for the Legion, one of the most feared terrorist organizations

  on the planet.

  2

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J O E L C . R O S E N B E R G

  Tracker flipped through the file in his hands, the one stamped

  “CLASSIFIED—EYES ONLY” in red. Only forty, Milano, the Sicilian-

  born son of Marxist radicals, had already served seven years’ hard time for

  blowing up two banks in Rome and one in Florence. Converted to Islam

  in prison. Escaped with two fellow inmates in 2000. Fled to Afghanistan.

  Trained with bin Laden. Returned to Europe just before 9/11. Joined

  the Legion, a loosely affiliated European arm of Al-Qaeda. Planned the

  Madrid train bombings in 2004. Responsible for at least eight other bomb-

  ings from Casablanca to Cairo and from Jakarta to Jerusalem.

  After the demise of Al-Qaeda, Milano provided financial and logisti-

  cal assistance to the Al-Nakbah terror network run by Yuri Gogolov and

  Mohammed Jibril. What’s more, the Agency had some evidence—cir-

  cumstantial but compelling—that Milano had masterminded the suicide

  bombing at the Willard InterContinental in D.C. the previous January.

  Tracker had no doubt the Legion was planning something far deadlier,

  but at the moment, he had no idea what. Milano had eluded the Agency

  for years, operating in the shadows and off the grid. They had no idea

  where he lived. They had very little idea who his contacts and associates

  were. All they had were occasional bits and pieces of phone and e-mail

  intercepts; this was the first time they’d ever been able to spot and track

  him in real time. They needed to take him down. They needed to make

  him talk. They needed to extract every last bit of information they could.

  And they needed to do it now.

  “Yesterday’s tip on Milano’s movements—do we know where it came

  from?” Tracker asked.

  “No, sir,” the watch officer said.

  “But you’re absolutely certain it’s him in that warehouse?”

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  Tracker turned to two senior intelligence analysts, each of whom had

  spent much of his career focused on the Legion.

  “Do you guys concur?”

  “I do, sir,” one said.

  “No question,” the other said. “That’s Milano, all right. And with all

  due respect, sir, we need to take him before it’s too late.”

  Tracker turned back to the senior watch commander and asked, “Do

  the Delta teams have everything they need to bring this guy in?”

  D E A D H E A T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

  But the commander was no longer listening to the conversation. His

  eye had suddenly been drawn back to the live feed coming in from the

  Predator.

  Now Tracker looked there too. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He

  cursed. “They’re leaving already?”

  No one said a word. The Predator feed said it all. A dozen armed men

  were clearly exiting the warehouse and taking up positions around the

  third vehicle in a line of five black SUVs.

  “How much longer until Delta is on scene?” Tracker asked.

  “They’re still ten minutes out, sir.”

  Tracker glanced at his watch. They didn’t have ten minutes.

  President James “Mac” MacPherson was en route to Los Angeles.

  Tracker knew he’d love nothing more than to be able to point to a new

  success in the War on Terror during his prime-time speech that night

  at the Republican National Convention. Giving the president the abil-

  ity to announce a major CIA coup to a global audience couldn’t hurt his

  Agency’s tattered image, or his own career.

  The country was deeply divided over the future. The rhetoric of the

  campaign could not have been hotter. Both major parties were locked in

  a knock-down, drag-out battle over who could better protect the coun-

  try for the next four years. MacPherson had served his eight years and

  couldn’t serve again. The latest polls showed his anointed successor in a

  dead heat with the Democratic challenger. Perhaps an operation like this

  could help tip the balance, even a little, Tracker thought. Perhaps in a race

  this close, even a little boost might be all that was needed.

  “Sir, we need a decision,” the senior watch commander pressed.

  Tracker felt his pulse racing. He had only two options. He could let

  Milano leave the warehouse, use the Predator to follow him to his next

  location, and pray Delta could move against him later that day or the

  next. Or he could forfeit the possibility—slim though it was—of bringing

  Milano in alive by ordering the Predator to fire two Hellfire missiles into

  the warehouse and parking lot, killing everyone and destro
ying everything

  inside and out.

  “We’re out of time, sir. What do you want to do?”

  Tracker hesitated. What was more valuable—the information he

  might be able to extract from Milano later or the worldwide headlines

  4

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J O E L C . R O S E N B E R G

  Milano’s death could give them now? He stared at video feed and cursed

  again. Sometimes technology wasn’t enough.

  “Take him out,” Tracker said at last. “Take them all out.”

  All eyes turned to the center video screen, and as the senior watch

  commander relayed the orders to the Predator controllers in the field,

  everyone in the Global Operations Center seemed to hold their collec-

  tive breath. No one said a word, but Danny Tracker was sure they were

  all thinking what he was. Was he doing the right thing? How much ac-

  tionable intelligence was he about to sacrifice? What exactly would the

  president say when he heard the news? Was there another way?

  But it was too late now.

  Suddenly they could see the contrails of two laser-guided AGM-114

  Hellfire missiles streaking toward the earth below. One hit the center

  of the warehouse. The other hit the center vehicle in the convoy. Two

  enormous explosions filled the screen with a blinding light. Then thick,

  black smoke rose from the wreckage. Then came grisly, full-color images

  of a blazing building, five burning vehicles, and body parts strewn about

  as far as the eye could see.

  The ops center erupted in cheers, but Tracker began pacing. He

  couldn’t celebrate. Not yet. Not until they had all that they’d come for.

  He stared at the Predator feed and the digital clock on the far wall

  and felt the acid chewing through the walls of his stomach. He clenched

  his teeth as two vans pulled onto the scene. Eight Delta operators, all

  heavily armed and clad in Kevlar and black masks, set up a secure perim-

  eter. Four more headed straight into the inferno. It was their job to find

  Milano, confirm his remains, and secure any evidence they might find on

  or around him, evidence that could—if they were lucky—give them some

  idea of what the Legion was planning next. But they were quickly running

  out of time. Whatever didn’t burn or melt, Tracker knew, would be in the

  hands of the local police in less than ten minutes, and their best hope for