CHAPTER TEN
4:45 p.m. Israel Time (9:45 a.m. Eastern Standard Time)
Samson’s Lair – Deep Underground
Jerusalem, Israel
“Tell them to shut up.”
Yonatan Stern, the Prime Minister of Israel, sat in his customary chair at the head of the conference table in the Israeli crisis command center, his chin in his hand. The room was a cavernous egg-shaped dome. All around him, his military and political advisors were in a state of chaos, shouting, recriminating, jabbing fingers at one another.
How had it come to this? seemed to be the prevailing question. And the answer upon which most of these brilliant strategic minds had landed was, It’s someone else’s fault.
“David!” he said, staring at his chief-of-staff, a burly former commando who had been his right-hand man since their military days. D
