by James Hunt
“Huh?” Sarah looked away from the monkey jumping through hoops with the street performer who’d attracted a tiny crowd.
“My point exactly.”
Dressed from head to toe in long black robes, Sarah managed to maneuver through the streets without incident. Bodies brushed against one another, and street peddlers lifted samples of their products over the heads of the crowd, adding their voices to the never-ending chatter of haggling.
“All right,” Bryce said. “Once you get past this crowd, it should be smooth sailing to the building where Mallory’s contacts told him the assassins would be located. I did a thermal scan of the structure, and we have three bodies on the top floor. I’m guessing that’s where our sneaky Mossad agents are hiding.”
Sarah saw the building Bryce was referencing. Standing ten stories tall, it wasn’t the highest building, but its angle couldn’t have been better. The Iran Secret Service hadn’t checked it because it was nearly a mile from the supreme leader’s speaking site, making any shot practically impossible. But she had run into a few of the Mossad sharpshooters last year on a mission in Syria, and those guys were scary accurate from even a long way off.
“What do you think about Mack working with the CIA?” Sarah asked, turning down a side alley, the noise of the bustling crowd waning the deeper she penetrated the alleyways.
“I think Mack is doing what needs to be done,” Bryce answered. “And besides, Mallory isn’t a bad guy.”
“Neither was Grimes,” Sarah replied.
Sand fell from the black cloth as she disrobed on her walk down the alley, revealing the standard Kevlar jacket, pants, and boots that comprised her mission attire.
“Mack knows what he’s doing,” Bryce said. “I mean, he trusts us to get this stuff done, right? We just have to do the same for him.”
Sarah looked up to the tenth floor. “It’s not that I don’t trust him. I just don’t trust the CIA.”
“Grimes isn’t giving us much of a choice right now.”
“That’s what worries me the most.” Sarah removed a pair of gloves from her utility belt and slid them over her hands, squeezing both tightly into fists until she heard the quiet ding that informed her the adhesive had been activated. “Any movement on the top floor yet?”
“All is quiet on the western front.”
Sarah reached high and glued her right hand to the wall, then pulled herself up and reached with her left, which lifted her feet off the ground. Diamond studs lined the tips of her boots, and she slammed the toes into the wall. Bits of the concrete crumbled to the alley floor, and she began her ascent.
At the halfway mark, Sarah glanced down. Still no traffic below. “So you and Grace seem to be doing good.” She stretched her right arm high, now hovering ten feet off the ground.
“Yeah, we’re going to be celebrating our two-year anniversary next week,” Bryce said, his tone annoyingly chipper.
“Two years?” Sweat rolled down the crevice between Sarah’s nose and eye, stinging her pupil. “I don’t know how she has put up with you for that long.”
“You and I have been paired together for six years.”
Smiling, and with her tongue sticking out the left side of her mouth, Sarah passed the seventh floor, peering into a window covered in sand. “I still remember how you practically soiled yourself on our first mission together.” She wiped the glass clean with her forearm and pressed her face against the glass to get a better look.
“You and I remember things differently,” Bryce said.
The inside of the window was a storage closet. Cleaning supplies, mops, and old rags lined a few rickety shelves. “We do. I remember them the right way, and you remember them some other way. You gonna pop the question any time soon?”
“I don’t know, I just…” Bryce paused. “You see the world the same way I do, Sarah. It’s not a safe place. It takes the things from you that matter.”
Sarah did know, but she’d come a long way since then. “This job can’t stop us from living, Bryce.” She reached the eighth floor and again peered through the window, this time seeing a cluster of desks inside, along with a chalkboard at the front of the room. Books and sacks lined the individual desks, and there were a few posters of the supreme leader’s face on the wall.
“And it’s not like our love life is bad—”
“STOP! Bryce, if you say one more word, I will take off these gloves and fall to my death.” Sarah turned back to the window. “I need an entrance strategy. Our guys still on the top floor?”
“You mean you climbed all the way up there without any idea of how you’re going to get inside?”
Sarah’s muscles burned from the climb, and the heat of the day had only grown worse. “I’m hanging off the side of a building in Iran, preparing to take down and evacuate three deadly assassins. My mind has been a little preoccupied.”
Bryce paused, the low humming sound he made whenever he was searching the satellite on full blast. “The roof looks like your best option. There’s a vent that goes directly into the—”
“No!” The words exploded from her involuntarily. “No tight spaces.”
“Why?” Bryce asked.
Sarah narrowed her eyes. “You know why.” She wasn’t certain, but she thought she heard Bryce chuckle. “Find another way in.”
“The shooters are positioned on the opposite side of the building. I’ll see if I can get a look from the satellite to make sure they’re facing away from you, and you should be able to sneak through the windows fairly easily.”
Sarah pressed her cheek against the hot concrete, burning the sweat from her face. “Yeah, no problem. Take your time.” She glanced down and saw a person pass underneath her in the alley, oblivious to her position high above. The man coughed, hunched over, then spat a disgusting hack of phlegm onto the ground. Sarah grimaced. “I think I’m beginning to understand why birds like shitting on us so much.”
“All right,” Bryce said. “They’re all facing the mosque and are in their shooter positions. If you can slice the window open and get inside, you should be good to go.”
Sarah pulled herself up toward the nearest window and peeked inside. Three Mossad sharpshooters, each positioned at a separate window, aimed at the podium where Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would address the thousands of Muslims that had come to listen.
With her left hand still glued to the side of the building, her toes pressed firmly into the concrete, she used her right hand to retrieve a small laser cutter that she applied to the edges of one of the window panes. The hot red beam of concentrated light burst from the device soundlessly as she carved out the glass. Her view darted between the laser and the shooters until she came full circle on her cutout. She returned the cutter to its pouch and then placed the palm of her adhesive glove to the window and gave the lightest push.
But after all of the precautions, all of the care Sarah had taken to ensure she made zero sound, in the end it wasn’t the glass or herself. It was the same man from earlier, returning the way he had come down the alleyway, pointing up and screaming at the woman hanging off the side of the building. All three Mossad agents turned at the same time, their eyes locking on Sarah as she still held the piece of circular glass glued to her right hand. “Ah, shit.”
The Mossad agents aimed their rifles at Sarah as she swung from the vulnerable window position back behind the wall. She deactivated the adhesive on the glove and dropped the piece of glass, then reached into her jacket to retrieve one of the Colts, firing a few warning shots to the man below, who sprinted away, screaming his head off. “Yeah, you better run! Lousy shmuck.”
Bullets exploded through the concrete and glass, the high-caliber rifles easily penetrating the ancient building walls. Sarah squeezed her left hand, deactivating the adhesive, and dropped one story before slapping her hand back against the wall, her body violently jerking to a stop as more glass and dust rained down over her head.
Before the agents above decided to come to her side
of the building and pick her off like a swinging monkey, Sarah aimed for the window to her right, shattering the glass and then rolling onto the abandoned floor.
The gunfire above stopped, and Sarah looked up toward the ceiling, grabbing the second Colt from its holster. She took a few steps forward, her eyes immediately falling to the staircase that led upward. “How long before they realize I’m right below them?”
Bullets rained from the ceiling, dust, wood, and concrete sprouting like geysers as Sarah sprinted toward the staircase.
“I guess not very long,” Bryce answered.
Covered in a light layer of dust and sand, Sarah wiped the grit from her eyes. Both Colts were aimed upward, her arms stretched outward. The staircase curved in a sharp spiral, limiting her vision to less than a foot. She took each step slowly, her fingers on the triggers, itching to pull.
A shadow moved on the wall, and Sarah stopped, her breathing, her pulse, every sound that she could make suddenly silent. A drop of sweat rolled from her nose and splashed on the ground, her body rigid like a statue, and there she waited for the inevitable slip-up she knew the agent just around the corner would make. And when she saw the first gloved fist round the corner, she planted a bullet straight through his hand. “That’s gonna leave a mark.”
Bone, blood, and flesh exploded and turned the agent’s appendage into a stump. Sarah yanked the arm forward, sending him somersaulting down the stairs.
Another rifle turned the bend and fired off three rounds. The sound of gunfire was amplified by the close quarters of the stairwell, and a harsh ringing blocked out any communication that Bryce tried to send through for the next several minutes, which she actually didn’t mind all that much.
Sarah smacked the sniper rifle’s barrel away, but before she could squeeze off another round, the Mossad agent flung his body forward, pummeling the two of them to the concrete steps, and they followed in the first assassin’s footsteps down the stairs.
A blur of hands, legs, and bodies tumbled down, and Sarah heard the harsh crunch of an ankle followed by a cry from the Mossad agent just before they landed on the dirty, level floor below. Landing on top, Sarah slammed an open palm into the agent’s throat, a raspy choke sound escaping from his mouth as she shoved him aside toward the groaning agent trying to stop the bleeding of his handless wrist.
“You might want to put some ice on that.” Sarah pointed to the stump, but the thump of footsteps down the stairs turned her attention back to the staircase.
The third Mossad agent squeezed off one round before Sarah relieved him of the pistol and slammed him up against the wall. She pressed her forearm into his throat, applying as much pressure as she could without killing him as he kicked his knees up into her stomach. She punched the right side of his ribs, hearing the harsh crack of bone, and the fight went out of him as he slid to the floor.
Sarah turned and saw that Mr. Stumpy had drawn a knife, his one good hand aimed high above her, ready to strike. She dodged left, the assassin hitting nothing but air. He slashed left, right, up, and down, each time the blade inching dangerously close to her jugular.
On the next swing down, Sarah caught his wrist and twisted it hard to the left. He yelped and dropped the knife. Sarah shook her head. “You’ve got one hand left. Do you want to keep it?” She twisted it harder, and the Mossad agent nodded quickly. “I thought so.” She slammed her foot into his stomach and knocked him on his ass.
With all three agents gasping, bleeding, and groaning on the floor, Sarah picked up her Colts and switched her aim between the three of them as they sat frozen in defeat. “So here’s what’s going to happen, kids. I’m taking you home and ensuring that your mommy and daddy know what you did here. You’re looking at being grounded for at least a month. Maybe more.” She pointed to the agent with the broken ribs, who still had two working hands. “You. Tie up your friends, and tape their mouths shut.” The man hesitated, and Sarah fired a round next to his hand. “Hop to it, Skippy!”
The assassin submitted, and Bryce’s voice finally replaced the ringing in her ears. “Tehran police have been notified. If they find out what the Mossad was trying to do, it might not matter that the supreme leader is still alive. You can’t let them get caught.”
Sarah watched the agent carefully tying the hands of his comrades. “Do you have their exit strategies?”
“Uploading them now,” Bryce answered.
Sarah pulled up the left sleeve of her jacket and squeezed the same hand, triggering the display on her forearm. Three red lines radiated from the structure, winding through the city streets, each of them ending at a location on the city’s outskirts. She studied the map for a few seconds, committing it to memory.
When she turned it off, the Mossad agent had finished with his task. Sarah checked it over and then quickly tied him up as well. “I hope you did a good job, because we’re all about to go for a little ride.” The agent turned his head with an expression of confusion, but Sarah jammed a needle into his neck and pressed down on the syringe before he could talk. “Night night.” She did the same to the other two and then tossed the emptied syringe into a box, examining the unconscious bodies that she now had to move. “You couldn’t just send me a helicopter, could you?”
“Nope,” Bryce answered. “You’ve got five minutes to get out of that building. Authorities are having a hard time getting to you because of the crowds at the mosque, so you might have a little more, but not much.”
Sarah looked around the floor to see if there was anything she could use to move them but saw nothing. She looked to the now-shattered windows. Reaching into one of the compartments of her belt, she removed a small, circular disk that she planted on the outside of the building above the window.
Quickly, Sarah dragged the bodies to the wall without any real concern for further injuries, as Bryce pointed out when she accidently knocked Mr. Stumpy’s head against the filing cabinet. “They should just be happy that I didn’t kill them.”
Once all three of them were near the window, she pulled a wire from the disk she planted outside on the wall, then wrapped it around their ankles, securing each nice and tight, and pressed the small lever on the side of the disk, lifting the three men off the floor as the cable retracted.
With the Mossad agents dangling outside the window, she lowered them until the soles of their feet acted as a stepping stool level with the window sill, which she used as a platform. The disk implanted in the building groaned from the final loading of weight but held strong. She flicked the small lever into the downward position, and the four bodies lowered into the alleyway, coming to a stop with the assassins’ hair barely scraping the ground.
Sarah jumped down and ss if he were reading her mind, Bryce pointed out the truck at the end of the alleyway, and Sarah climbed inside and started the engine without even looking in the back. She reversed the vehicle down the narrow alley then stepped out, ripped the tarp covering the truck bed, and pinched her nostrils together.
“Holy shit,” Bryce said.
“No kidding,” Sarah replied.
Bags of manure were stacked inside. Sarah looked from the truck to the agents. She loaded the bodies between the bags and sped down the alley, Bryce guiding her out of the city just as authorities arrived at the school. “They are not going to be happy when they wake up.”
Chapter 5
Of all the missions that Sarah had found herself involved in, the escape from the Tehran job was by far the most uncomfortable return trip to the States she’d ever encountered. And she couldn’t imagine what was going to run through the three Mossad agents’ minds when they woke up surrounded by manure on a small embankment in downtown Jerusalem. But she could probably pick out a few choice words, just none of them in Hebrew.
“Bryce, I need you to reroute the plane to Chicago,” Sarah said, removing her filthy jacket, shirt, boots, and pants.
“If you’re worried about Becca and the kids, I can send an agent that’s closer in the area,” Bryce said
. “Grimes could reach out again at any minute with another one of his missions.”
“No, I want to do it myself.” Sarah doused her arms and body with gritty soap powder and started scrubbing, the tiny particles scratching roughly against her skin. “If Grimes calls again, you can just patch it through to my display and then send a chopper for me.”
“All right, I’ll let the pilot know,” Bryce said.
By the time they landed in Chicago, Sarah had managed to clean herself up, at least as much as a can of powdered scrub with a few bottles of water and fresh clothes provided. She found herself racing toward Becca and the kids on her motorcycle, speeding down the highways around Chicago to the suburbs where her brother’s family still lived.
So far the throes of chaos that had sparked among the international community had yet to find their way Stateside, at least not to Chicago, and she was hoping it would stay that way.
Sarah parked in the driveway and entered through the front door without knocking, her worry immediately eased by the sound of Ella’s and Matt’s laughter coming from the living room. The moment they made eye contact with Sarah, they squealed in delight and sprinted toward her in a bulldozer-like rush. “It’s the attack of the children of the corn!”
Ella slammed into Sarah’s left knee and Matt smacked into her right. She picked both of them up and kissed their cheeks, both squirming away from the show of affection. “Aunt Sarah!” Both clamored the same protest, and she set them down and gave both a shove forward as they returned to the living room just as Becca emerged from the back of the house.
“Sarah, I didn’t know you were stopping by.” Becca still wore her scrubs from work, her hair tied up in a ponytail. Her makeupless face smiled. She gestured down to her work attire, still covered in whatever grime rubbed off from her patients of the day. “I’d give you a hug, but I’m still gross from work.”
“I know how that goes,” Sarah said, muttering under her breath. “I need to talk to you.” It could have been the sudden shift in tone or the fact that she led her out of earshot of the kids, but Sarah saw the look of fear on Becca’s face. It was the same look she had worn when Sarah had pulled them out of that bunker when they had been taken two years ago. And it was the same look she had worn at Ben’s funeral.
