The Beirut Protocol
(A Marcus Ryker Series Political and Military Action Thriller, #4)
By Joel C. Rosenberg
Christian Suspense, Political/Military Thriller
Hardcover, Audiobook & ebook, 464 Pages
March 9, 2021 by Tyndale House Publishers
Summary
From the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestselling author!
A game-changing peace treaty between Israel and the Saudis is nearly done.
The secretary of state is headed to the region to seal the deal.
And Special Agent Marcus Ryker is leading an advance trip along the Israeli-Lebanon border, ahead of the secretary’s arrival.
But when Ryker and his team are ambushed by Hezbollah forces, a nightmare scenario begins to unfold. The last thing the White House can afford is a new war in the Mideast that could derail the treaty and set the region ablaze. U.S. and Israeli forces are mobilizing to find the hostages and get them home, but Ryker knows the clock is ticking.
When Hezbollah realizes who they’ve captured, no amount of ransom will save them—they’ll be transferred to Beirut and then to Tehran to be executed on live television.
In the fourth installment of Rosenberg’s gripping new series, Marcus Ryker finds himself in the most dangerous situation he has ever faced—captured, brutalized, and dragged deep behind enemy lines.
Should he wait to be rescued? Or try to escape? How? And what if his colleagues are too wounded to run?
This is the CIA’s most valuable operative as you have never seen him before.
The secretary of state is headed to the region to seal the deal.
And Special Agent Marcus Ryker is leading an advance trip along the Israeli-Lebanon border, ahead of the secretary’s arrival.
But when Ryker and his team are ambushed by Hezbollah forces, a nightmare scenario begins to unfold. The last thing the White House can afford is a new war in the Mideast that could derail the treaty and set the region ablaze. U.S. and Israeli forces are mobilizing to find the hostages and get them home, but Ryker knows the clock is ticking.
When Hezbollah realizes who they’ve captured, no amount of ransom will save them—they’ll be transferred to Beirut and then to Tehran to be executed on live television.
In the fourth installment of Rosenberg’s gripping new series, Marcus Ryker finds himself in the most dangerous situation he has ever faced—captured, brutalized, and dragged deep behind enemy lines.
Should he wait to be rescued? Or try to escape? How? And what if his colleagues are too wounded to run?
This is the CIA’s most valuable operative as you have never seen him before.
Excerpt
The Israel-lebanon border—2 May
Marcus Ryker heard the whoosh of the incoming missile but never saw it coming.
What he did see was the lead Humvee disintegrating in a massive fireball. An instant later, the cool morning air erupted with the sound of automatic weapons fire.
“Go back—go back!” he yelled as burning wreckage rained down upon them. Their driver tried to jam the vehicle into reverse. But it was too late. The vehicle behind them was already burning, hit by an anti-tank missile, and
Marcus knew they were next.
“Get out,” he ordered his team. “Everybody out—now!”
Marcus grabbed his weapon and backpack and kicked open the front passenger door, then jumped out of the Humvee. Scanning the horizon, he spotted muzzle flashes coming from a grove of olive trees to the northeast. He raised his M4 carbine, positioned himself behind the engine block, and provided covering fire for his colleagues.
Kailea Curtis was the first to scramble out of the backseat. She grabbed their young Israeli counterpart by his jacket, yanked him out of the Humvee, and tossed him his Tavor assault rifle. “Find cover and radio for backup,” she ordered.
Marcus’s eyes locked on two masked men climbing through a breach in the security fence. They were thirty yards ahead to his right. Pivoting hard, he took aim, fired two bursts, and felled them both. Then he shouted for Kailea to move to the rear of the Humvee to cover their six.
“Done,” she shouted back, moving into position and beginning to lay down suppressive fire with her own M4.
Marcus ordered their young driver, no more than nineteen, to keep his head down and come out the passenger door. With dozens of rounds pelt- ing their vehicle, it was far too risky to exit the exposed driver’s side. There was no response.
Marcus finished loading the M203 grenade launcher attached beneath the regular barrel of his weapon. Spotting more muzzle flashes—these coming from an abandoned stone house on the top of a nearby ridge—he steadied his breathing, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. The 40mm gre- nade exploded from its tube, streaked across the ravine, and scored a direct hit. Flames poured out of the windows of the house, followed by thick black smoke. The muzzle flashes ceased.
Marcus repeated his order to the driver. The convoy had already been hit by two anti-tank missiles. The third was coming any second.
There was still no reply.
Finally Marcus turned and saw why. The young man was slumped over the steering wheel. The window beside him was shattered. Blood and brain matter were splattered all over the cab. Trained to be certain, Marcus leaned inside and felt for a pulse. There was none. Nor time to mourn.
“Marcus,” Kailea shouted, “more tangos—eight o’clock.”
Marcus looked over his left shoulder and counted no fewer than a dozen masked fighters racing through the ravine and advancing on their position. There was no question they were Hezbollah. The Iranian-backed terror group controlled the whole of southern Lebanon, the Lebanese regular army having long since ceded the frontier with Israel. As they reached the fence line, most of the fighters opened fire with AK-47s, while two carrying bolt cutters began to cut a second hole in the fence.
Marcus and Kailea returned fire, starting with a barrage of 40mm gre- nades. They took out two men. Most of the rest ran for cover, but one of them was preparing to use an RPG.
Marcus ordered a retreat. Both agents grabbed their backpacks off the ground and sprinted for the thick brush behind them. The grenade missed its mark, slicing just over their heads and exploding in the trees well beyond them. Five seconds later, though, the third anti-tank missile found its tar- get. The explosion was deafening. The Humvee they had been riding in all morning was gone.
They found the young Israeli intel officer and took cover under the thick spring foliage, ignoring the roaring fires and billowing smoke. Marcus motioned for Kailea to take up a position facing the northeast. He ordered the Israeli officer to cover the northwest. Marcus himself aimed his M4 through the bramble directly to the north.
“Did you reach your guys?” Marcus asked in a hushed tone. “Radio’s not working,” the Israeli replied.
“Broken?”
“No, sir—but I can’t get through.” “Why not?”
“No idea, sir.”
“Use mine,” Marcus offered, fishing his radio out of his backpack and tossing it over.
But Marcus’s radio didn’t work either. Nor did Kailea’s. The radios weren’t the problem. They were fine. Hezbollah had to be jamming their signals.
Marcus checked his watch. It was only 9:17 in the morning. Yet already the temperature was soaring past ninety degrees. It was critical they connect with the IDF’s Northern Command. They weren’t going to make it to the bottom of the hour if they didn’t get help fast.
“Send up a red star cluster,” Marcus ordered Kailea, peering through the scope of his M4 and scanning for any signs of movement. “I’ll cover us.”
During the Vietnam War, American GIs would literally fire red flares into the sky to indicate to their commanders that they were under fire and needed immediate assistance. The flares also helped guide friendly forces to their position. In the modern era, “sending up a red star cluster” was simply code for calling in the cavalry.
Kailea set down her weapon, reached into her backpack, pulled out a device the size of an alarm clock radio, and powered it up. Designed and built exclusively for the U.S. military and known as a Blue Force Tracker, the handheld unit allowed her to almost instantaneously uplink their precise GPS coordinates along with a brief distress message via a secure military satellite to both American and Israeli commanders.
“Message sent,” Kailea said a moment later, powering down the device and picking up her weapon.
Marcus continued scanning for tangos. He saw no one yet but had no doubt they were coming. Lots of them. Soon, he knew, this military service road, which ran for dozens of kilometers along the Israeli-Lebanese border, would be crawling with Hezbollah operatives. Feeling his heart rate spik- ing, he began silently counting down from fifty. It was an old trick he had learned in the Marines and used on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. As always, it worked like a charm. The adrenaline stopped pumping into his system. His breathing slowed. So did his pulse.
Marcus glanced to his right and could sense the fear in the young man— barely twenty—lying beside him. The Israeli officer’s hands were shaking, as was his weapon, and Marcus knew why. This kid knew all too well the stories of the IDF soldiers who had been kidnapped on this border. And not just kidnapped but tortured without mercy. Butchered. Dismembered. Mutilated beyond recognition. For an Israeli, falling into the hands of a Hezbollah fighter was a fate worse than death.
Marcus turned back and peered once again through the reticle of his scope. Hezbollah was coming, fast and hard. If reinforcements did not arrive quickly, they would be overrun, and for all his moral revulsion at the notion of suicide, Marcus knew he’d sooner put a bullet into his own mouth than—
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About the Author
He is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of two news and analysis websites, www.allisrael.com and allarab.news.
His most recent novel was THE JERUSALEM ASSASSIN, which released in March 2020 and hit the Publishers Weekly best-seller list at #6.
His next novel, THE BEIRUT PROTOCOL, will release in March 2021.
His next non-fiction book will release in September 2021. It will examine the future of the Middle East 20 years after the horrific terror attacks of September 11, 2001.
Among the readers of his books are Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former President George W. Bush, former CIA Director Porter Goss, former Delta Force Commander General Jerry Boykin, former senior White House advisor Jason Greenblatt, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, former Israeli Interior Minister Natan Sharansky, former Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, and many other US, Israeli, Arab and other foreign leaders.
Joel has addressed audiences at the White House, Pentagon, U.S. Capitol, Canadian Parliament, the European Union Parliament, and the Israeli President’s Residence. In March 2019, he was invited to meet with President Trump and Vice President Pence in the Oval Office to discuss his work. He was also a keynote speaker at the US State Department’s Ministerial on Religious Freedom in the summer of 2019.
An Evangelical from a Jewish heritage (on his father’s side; his mother is a Gentile), he has led six Delegations of Evangelical leaders to meet with Sunni Arab leaders such Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Egyptian President el-Sisi, United Arab Emirates Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
In 2006, he founded The Joshua Fund, a non-profit educational and charitable organization to mobilize Christians to “bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus, according to Genesis 12:1-3.” The group has invested more than $50 million in providing humanitarian relief to Holocaust survivors and the needy in Israel, to Syrian and Israeli refugees, and to strengthening the Church in the Middle East.
Joel and his wife, Lynn, are dual U.S.-Israeli citizens and live in Jerusalem. Two of their four sons have served in the Israeli Defense Forces.
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