Massive Attack (A Guy Niava Thriller Book 1)

by Dana Arama

  “How do you know? You don’t know me anymore.”

  “Don’t say that. I’ve known you since you were born.”

  “So, then you should know that I am no longer the baby you knew then. I am not some quivering leaf fluttering in the wind. I choose my own life, I choose whom I want to be touched by and in which world I’d like to live, and the world I live in is there.” She pointed back from where we’d come. “With him.”

  “No! You have the potential to be so much more than a criminal’s lover.”

  Gail yelled, “Because being my uncle’s lover is a more pleasant choice!?” Everyone in the car was deadly silent.

  Gail looked at her sister and asked in an angry whisper, “A criminal’s lover? What about a chemist and a good businesswoman?”

  “That in and of itself deserves handcuffs and imprisonment. Because of that statement I could arrest you and bring you to trial in the United States.”

  “You have never been my protector, not even a little, not enough to make up for how he watches over me.” Gail spat the words out with distaste. “Raphael’s people are already spread out along the way. It doesn’t matter what detour you take, as soon as you turn north you will have to pass through the main roads. They will stop the car, kill all of you and I will go home, to my real home. To him! You’ll never make it to the border.” She stopped talking as a loud humming sound filled the van. In seconds, the monotonous humming became the vibrations of an engine. Three black dots emerged in the blue sky, revealing themselves as big helicopters. They appeared over the tops of the trees, one after the other, and stopped above us. I opened the car door and waved to them. The helicopters carried on flying above us with the skill of many thousands of hours of training. A rope ladder was dropped from one of the helicopters.

  I ordered Gomez to stop the vehicle. Everyone got out. The big question was: Who was going to go up first and was it possible to leave Zorro and Gail together? The possibility of finding Gail sprawled on the ground made me think of Laura’s reaction. I left on a mission with both of them and I wanted to return from the mission with the two of them.

  “Laura,” I yelled to her, over the noise of the helicopters above me. “Do you want to go up first?”

  “Let Zorro go up.” Despite the wind churning up dust and leaves, despite everything, Laura held her gun steadily, and then released the safety catch, cocked the weapon, and pointed it at her sister. “I am not leaving without her!”

  “I am begging you, Laurie, please let me go back to him.” Gail clasped her hands as if she was praying and got down on her knees before her sister. She shouted to Laura, “When I am with him, I can sleep at night.”

  The barrel of Laura’s gun was steadfast, but soon changed its direction. Laura put the safety catch on once again, holstered the fun, and put her arms out to her sister. Gail fell into them, crying.

  “We have to hurry,” I yelled. “The helicopters are sitting targets.”

  “Where is Joaquin now?” Gail shouted to Laura

  Laura shouted something into Gail’s ear. I think I managed to hear ‘In the bushes’. After shouting it, she parted from Gail and Gail quickly moved to stand next to Gomez. When Laura disappeared into the hold of the helicopter, I held onto the rope and lifted myself upwards. Before I even made it to the opening of the helicopter, it began to make its way southwards. I continued to hang onto the rope as the helicopter flew forward, while being pulled upwards. Far below, the cartel wars raged on, far below, the girl in love waved her last goodbye, and far below, a wild jungle had hidden inside of it meth kitchens, drugs and rotting dead bodies. I flew away from all that, knowing that my colleagues were making every effort to locate the numbers that Raphael, known as El Desconocido, had dialed. One of them would be viable. It belonged to Murat Lenika and when he answered, the long arm of the Mossad would tighten around his neck.

  Part two

  Laura Ashton,

  Guatemala army base, November 14, 2015, 7:00 p.m.

  Somewhere in my heart I was relieved. It was as if this is the first day of a new life, as if I had been reborn into another destiny. I had found my sister and she had not been lying in some hole, wasted out of her mind or sick, exploited or miserable as I had first imagined when she had disappeared. I had seen enough women to know that she was not unhappy. In fact, she was in the best place I could have hoped for her, in the arms of her beloved, the man who gave her security and a feeling of importance. The problem was not with her, but with him. I didn’t trust him at all. As the head of a cartel in Mexico, he didn’t exactly have the promise of a long and peaceful life, either for himself or those surrounding him.

  We’d left my sister and her partner’s secret nest in a dangerous and daring mission and, thanks to Guy’s planning and his connections to the Mossad, we were welcomed at the Guatemalan army base, just as Guy had promised. The soldier’s fraternity didn’t just include saving us by helicopter, but warm showers, a satisfactory meal and in the end soft beds, in a room where I could continue to supervise the mission.

  I kept on thinking about Zorro’s words. They played over and over again in my mind. Just before we parted to our adjacent rooms, she had put her left hand on my shoulder and her right hand on Guy’s shoulder and said: “Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina that all happy families are happy in the same way. But all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way.” She looked at me and then at Guy, then she turned to look at me again and added, “Your sister Gail is not unhappy and you should be pleased about it, because I, of all people, should know that Raphael knows how to be a loving and caring partner. Now let us worry about Guy and his family.”

  She must have said it because she was afraid that my only motivation to go on this mission had been Gail and now that she was rescued, all the sources of information I had at my disposal would disappear. However, finding Jonathan, Guy’s nephew, was not the only other thing on the agenda, but also trying to understand what the terrorist group was planning. Would it be bigger than the attack in Paris? The city of lights had been dimmed -- would it bring darkness to our shores as well? Even if not for Jonathan’s sake, the target was important enough that I would remain part of this improvised team.

  “I am committed to this mission just as I was before I found Gail.” I tried to smile encouragingly at Guy, as if just a smile and a promise were enough to relieve the distress in his face. He tried to smile too, which made him look unhappier, and went into his room.

  I called Gordon and said, “Let’s try and summarize what we have so far.”

  “We have a young boy, kidnapped, son of an Israeli scientist who is a space engineer. His mother is a dentist.”

  “Is this a reason to kidnap him?” I asked wanting to make the facts as clear as possible

  “Not really. The scientist is a university professor. He is a partner in a civil space research program. The mother treats normal patients, and once a week volunteers to work in low-income neighborhoods. The boy himself is some sort of tech genius, but that is also not a good enough reason to be kidnapped.”

  “Let’s continue. He was kidnapped at a casino in New Jersey by Murat Lenika, the wayward son of the head of the Albanian mafia in the UK. Have we managed to locate Murat?”

  “Not yet. The clue we received about the apartment yielded inconclusive results. The kidnapped boy wasn’t there by the time we got there but there were a few women who had arrived recently in the United States and barely spoke any English. They had no idea where he had gone with the boy. The only thing they knew was that he’d transferred the kidnapped boy to the terrorist cell.”

  “It seems that the connection is incidental but…”

  “And here is the big ‘but’... There is a suspicion that Murat Lenika was involved in a weapons robbery in Germany and that is why he fled to the United States.”

  “Are there grounds to have him arrested for this crime? Some demand f
rom Interpol?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” I sighed, “The Albanian mafia made its sacrifice. Someone in Germany took the fall for the crime.”

  “Let’s go back to the list the boy found in the casino, mainly to the locked files, which, by all account, Murat Lenika had no knowledge of.”

  “The lists are locked with a complex password.” I wanted to share a positive thought I’d just had and added, “This must be the first mistake of the brain behind this operation. I think the list wasn’t supposed to reach Murat Lenika.”

  “Exactly. The file contains a list of weapons, mainly distinctive sniper rifles. Besides that, it consists of Israeli targets, flight numbers that seem to be targets for an attack.”

  “Did you notice anything peculiar in this list?”

  “No. What’s strange?

  “That it is not only EL AL direct flights,” I said

  “Which makes us suspect that a massive attack is about to take place on Israeli targets on US soil.”

  “Correct!” We were both silent for a moment and then I added, “What about the new information? What have you found out about the British school which was so interesting Guy and the Israeli Mossad?” I wondered how my sister and her precious boyfriend were connected to all of this?

  Through my jumble of thoughts and the static noise from the satellite telephone, I heard Gordon’s voice say: “We have information regarding the school you mentioned. Lord Arthur Nicholas Graham the eighth, converted to the Islam over two decades ago. He is a devout Muslim and has been practicing the faith for the last twenty-five years. His son, Yassin, fits the profile we are looking for. He is the right age and has the financial status to conduct such an operation. I am already investigating his social network and I can say with certainty that he has made quite a few anti-Israel declarations that he definitely doesn’t try to hide.”

  “And do you know where he is now?”

  “The information should be available in a few minutes. In the meantime, you can tell me how you are, because you sound a little down.”

  He surprised me. It had never occurred to me that Gordon was interested in me as a person and certainly never that he was capable of such sensitivity. I said, “Nothing really, just a family thing. I found my sister and I really don’t like the guy she is seeing at the moment.”

  “Because he isn’t in the security force type?” I could hear the smile in his voice.

  “Exactly… Would not fit in with the family. I can’t see us sitting around the same table for Thanksgiving without it turning into a big fight.”

  “You can take comfort that it happens to the best of families. The holidays make us all a little sensitive. By the way,” he added humorously, “I fit your profile of the security type and I am waiting for you to invite me to Thanksgiving dinner.”

  I laughed. I wished that was the reason why I was sad but just said, “Believe me you don’t want to join. I am not sure that my sister and her boyfriend are the type to come celebrate with us. He wants to move her out of the United States. They have this romantic dream of living in the middle of a jungle.” I hadn’t deviated too far from the truth. The head of a drug cartel hiding in the middle of a jungle on an estate was obviously a better description, but Gordon wasn’t the right man to share this information with.

  “Don’t underestimate romantic dreams.” There was something soft in his tone of voice, but then he got back to business, “Okay, here’s the information about Yassin. He is here, in the United States at the moment.”

  “Do we have grounds to arrest him?”

  “We don’t even have grounds to follow him.” He hesitated for a moment and then added, “But that shouldn’t prevent me from passing his name to Mustaffa Allimi to try to concentrate his investigation around him.”

  “That’s right. Allimi has his own sources of information. It will be better to tighten the noose around Yassin before trying to pursue legal action against him.”

  Gordon sounded quite cheerful, maybe because of this new direction in our relationship, and he announced, “We now have a new lead thanks to you. That must cheer you up, even if your family has disappointed you.”

  I laughed. “I will deal with my family in good time,” I said, “Now is the time to solve this case and close it with zero casualties. I want to start analyzing the information about Yassin, from the time he landed in the United States.”

  I heard Gordon typing away at his keyboard as he checked on a few things. “Private jet… This character documents all his movements on every possible social media platform.”

  “This doesn’t quite suit the type who is supposed to be planning a terror attack.”

  “It really doesn’t fit,” he agreed. “Still, I am going to pass on his name.”

  “Yes. If it is not him, maybe it is someone in his entourage. I want a full-scale, detailed report on his every move once the wheels of his jet landed on US soil till this very moment. If he reports everything, it shouldn’t be too hard. And please do it with the utmost discretion and sensitivity. He is well-connected and there is no use in poking a sleeping bear if we are not sure there is any credence to our suspicions.”

  “We’ll check it out, and also look for other leads. I remember you want zero casualties.”

  He was right, but at that moment I had no way of knowing that the number of casualties was going to rise very soon.

  “Did the boss say something about my disappearance?” I asked anxiously, just before he hung up.

  Gordon hesitated before answering. “He was furious.” Maybe because he said it so quietly what he said next sounded scarier. “He said that if this affair doesn’t end well, you will be the first he will throw to the hungry dogs.”

  ***

  I looked at my screen, almost hoping that she would call. My throat was thick with tears and I refused to let them surface. This isn’t the time to become emotional.

  “Did you give up on her?” I heard over my shoulder. It was Guy’s soft voice. “I hope you haven’t given up on her.”

  “It is not the same situation as Jonathan,” I answered, and the tears now poured out of my eyes. “I can’t let her relive her memories. I know it is too hard.”

  “Do you also relive the memories every day?”

  I lifted my eyes and looked at him. Had he guessed? Had he heard our conversation? I wanted to answer that I still remembered the warmth of his body, his weight on me, the helplessness I felt every time I saw his shadow in the door frame. Instead I answered simply, “Yes.” And because I felt I owed it to him, I added, “He harassed me too. Every morning I wanted to die. I stayed alive to look after Gail, but in the end, when I couldn’t bear it any longer, I was given the choice to leave to an athletic boarding school and I took it and ran. I grabbed the opportunity with both hands and…I abandoned her.”

  “You didn’t abandon her.”

  “I did.” Another tear threatened to drop from my eyelashes and I turned my head away from Guy. “I abandoned her and that is why she can’t forgive me. I can only say in my defense that I thought with her being so young… Well, I wanted to believe that he wouldn’t harass her as well, because she was so young.”

  “What a scumbag. Pedophile. Monster. You must have started developing and didn’t quite suit his taste anymore, so he arranged for you to leave the house.”

  “Maybe. Maybe that was the reason…”

  Guy opened his arms in an invitation and, without thinking twice, I fell into his warm embrace. I felt so secure, as I hadn’t in years. I needed that, desperately. I’d needed it when I thought of how my uncle had abused us, or when I thought about our dead parents, or when I’d won a competition and I had no one to share it with. The hug didn’t make up for the past, but it gave me strength to take on the reality I was living in in the present.

  “Now I am sure that Jonathan will be saved,” I whispered i
n Guy’s ear. “I am sure he will be saved, and you will bring him home safely.”

  I heard him whisper, “Amen!” as he stroked my hair.

  I let myself be protected for a moment longer and closed my eyes. Deep down I made a request of the God I hadn’t turned to in years to deliver Guy’s nephew safely to us.

  Guy Niava,

  Guatemalan army base, November 14, 2015, 8:00 p.m.

  “Listen,” Gideoni notified me, “We have received messages from our love birds in Mexico.”

  “What messages?” I asked, as I caressed Zorro’s back where she lay beside me. Gideoni was a senior Mossad agent and the heart of the operations room, but I -- with one foot out the agency’s door, drawn back in to save my nephew -- I was far from his sources of information.

  “Gail is having a heated argument over Zorro. Her precarious partner’s ex-girlfriend,” Gideoni said. I wanted to reply that I was also hot for Zorro, but for a different reason.

  I observed her as she lay next to me on her stomach, her eyes closed. The sheet covered half her body, revealing only a long leg and half her muscular back. It made her look longer than she really was. “I am sure that Zorro knows it,” I answered him. The situation would be amusing if it didn’t involve discussion of very dangerous people, present company included. I saw movement under her eyelids, a slight signal that she was listening intently despite her relaxed façade.

  “In the message we received, she demanded revenge. Pass on the message to her and tell her that she is invited to come with you to the United States and an Israeli embassy car will await her. She will have diplomatic immunity for as long as needed until the jealous rage is over.”

  “I will let her know your proposition.” There was something about Gideoni and Zorro’s relationship. She was a big girl and knew how to look after herself but still, he was there for her.

  “I can be there in less than ten hours.”

  “Are you going to leave Europe to handle this operation?” I wondered if he would think about coming over if she wasn’t involved.