Dead Heat
Joel C. Rosenberg
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DEAD HEAT
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✮ ✮ ✮ JOEL C. ROSENBERG ✮
Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
