The colonel pulled her inside. “What the hell was that?”

Masada recovered her voice. “It’s my brother!”

Abu Faddah watched through a crack in the barricaded entrance. After releasing a bogus warning shot, the Israeli helicopter circled around and touched down in a swirl of dust. Dark figures leaped from the craft and took positions behind the ruins. He laughed out loud. His plan had worked! Soon the Israelis would break their stubborn vow never to negotiate with Palestinian guerrillas. What choice did they have? He had studied them for years. They had turned Mount Masada into the mythical centerpiece of their modern Zionism: Masada shall never fall again! No Israeli politician would risk being responsible for the spectacle of Jewish kids dying atop Mount Masada again. They had to negotiate!

At the open end of the room, over the cliff, the hostage he had positioned as a human shield turned and smiled. Faddah, who was guarding him with the pistol, took a step back and looked over his shoulder, his face fearful. “Papa?”

Abu Faddah-Father of Faddah, as he had been known since his son’s birth-rushed to his side and yelled at the Israeli youth in English, “Stop! We’ll shoot you!”

He shrugged and said something in Hebrew that made the other kids laugh.

“Be firm, son,” Abu Faddah switched to Arabic, “he’s just showing off.”

Faddah raised the pistol, aiming it. The two teenagers glared at each other. They were equally tall and skinny, with dark hair reaching their shoulders. They could have passed for brothers.

“This is the Israeli army,” a man’s voice boomed through a megaphone in accented English. “Come out with your hands over your heads.”

As expected, the Israelis were testing his resolve. He glanced at his watch. 3:05 a.m. “You have our demands,” he yelled. “We only ask for what’s already ours.”