Taking Fire

by Cindy Gerard

  “Is it safe, then, to say that our working theory is that al-Attar’s followers considered his death personal, too? That’s why they went after you and your old team?”

  “It’s as good a motive as any. Al-Attar is a legend in Hamas. The most vicious yet charismatic of their war chiefs. His followers are devout. They’d want retribution for his death, no matter how long it took to get it.”

  “Why a bomb?” This had been bugging him since al-Attar’s name had come up. “And why inside the U.S. embassy? Why not just get you in your car on the way to work?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not an easy target. I’ve always been hypervigilant. And since I found out about the deaths of my team, I’ve taken even greater counter­measures.”

  “So they risked the wrath of the United States government by bombing our embassy?”

  “Hamas has no love for the United States, you know that. Al-Attar’s followers subscribe to the same doctrine he did. No risk is too great. No blood spared. If they had killed me, they would have managed to hit two birds with one stone and gain a lot of attention for their cause. And the al-Attar Hamas followers wouldn’t stop to care whether the majority of Hamas leaders would approve or disapprove of their actions. They’ve almost become an entity unto themselves.”

  She could be right. Hell, Hamas couldn’t even get along with their Palestinian brethren.

  In the meantime, Bobby had no doubt that all hell had broken loose at the Pentagon as they tried to determine who was responsible. As soon as he got the boy to safety, he’d make sure they knew what he knew. For now, he didn’t want any D.C. desk warriors interfering.

  “Another thing,” Talia continued, breaking into his thoughts. “Maybe they got desperate. Maybe they had a timeline. Maybe since I’m the last one on their list, they were impatient to tie it all up. Anyway, as soon as I found this out yesterday, I tried to get Meir out of Muscat. The earliest available flight was tonight at nine o’clock.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to make it.” He didn’t mean to sound flippant, but it came out that way. He didn’t bother to apologize. “Does anyone else know about this?”

  “About Hamas? No. I didn’t dare talk to anyone. I didn’t know if they might have had a mole inside the embassy.”

  Something else had been bothering him. “Why didn’t you make sure that Meir—”

  “Was safe until we left?” she interrupted, her voice glutted with guilt. “I should have. I should have pulled him out of school. I should have had Jonathan get him out of the city. But he’d had such a difficult time adjusting to his first week here. That’s why I enrolled him in summer-school classes. So he’d meet children his age. He was so . . . sad. Missing his friends. Missing everything that was familiar. When he came home from school yesterday, he was excited and happy for the first time. He’d made a new friend. He’d been asked over for a play date today. I didn’t want to alarm him. I didn’t want to disappoint him. So I made a decision to keep today—this one single day—as normal as possible. And he had Jonathan . . .” She trailed off, so clearly miserable with guilt and regret that he was in danger of empathizing.

  She slammed on the brakes, shifted into reverse, and backed up past the last intersection.

  “What?”

  “Jonathan’s car. I think I just saw it.”

  She made a tight right turn and sped down a street toward a black Lincoln Town Car parked crookedly by the curb. The driver’s-side door hung open.

  Talia stepped on the brakes, pulled up nose-to-nose with the Lincoln, and slammed the Expedition into park.

  “Talia, wait.”

  There was no slowing her down; she’d already wrenched open the door and rushed outside.

  Swearing under his breath, he unholstered the Glock, then followed her into the sweltering heat.

  The Lincoln’s engine still ran. Bullet holes riddled the dark, tinted windshield, the glossy black paint on the hood, the doors, and even the roof.

  Overkill.

  Vendetta.

  He caught up with her, stopped her before she reached the driver’s door, and pushed her behind him. “Stay back.”

  The windows were darkly tinted, and he couldn’t see inside. Approaching warily, two-handing the Glock, he walked around the open door, then slowly lowered the gun.

  A big, burly guy with personal security written all over him was slumped back against the seat. One bullet hole pierced his forehead; he’d taken several more rounds in his arms, in his thighs, and above the neck of his body armor. Blood ran everywhere.

  Talia pushed around him before he could stop her. “Jonathan!”

  He caught her when she swayed. Somehow she pulled herself together, wrenched away from him, and jerked open the back door.

  “He’s not here,” she said, faltering somewhere between relief and alarm after searching inside. “Meir’s not here.”

  Bobby reached around the steering wheel and pulled the keys. Pulse hammering, he walked to the back of the car and pushed the button on the remote.

  Then he waited for the trunk to open, with a crushing mix of hope and dread. And for a moment, his heart stopped beating.

  “Empty.”

  Talia spun around so her back was to him. She hugged her arms around herself and let her head fall back.

  Bad news and more bad news. They could have killed the boy here, but they hadn’t, which meant they wouldn’t—yet. First, they wanted to make her suffer. The look on her face more than proved they had succeeded.

  She was doubtless aware of every possibility, as he was. They could still kill the boy; they could ransom him to get to her; they could send him back to her one piece at a time. Or they could make him disappear and keep her in torturous limbo for the rest of her life.

  He quickly searched the town car, looking for any clues or cryptic messages they might have left behind. Nothing. Not even the bodyguard’s cell phone.

  “We’ve got to get out of here, Talia.” When she stood there nonresponsive, he grasped her arm and led her back to the Expedition. “They may be watching, and if they are, you can be damn sure they’ll come for you.”

  He recognized shock when he saw it, and right now, she was frozen with it. And with grief. He wasn’t in the best shape to drive, but he was a damn sight better than she was. He guided her into the passenger seat, then got behind the wheel.

  16

  Sometimes he frickin’ hated being right. They’d barely pulled away from the Lincoln when a white Volkswagen Golf ripped around a corner behind them and sped toward them.

  Bobby had spent enough time undercover in Palestine to know that VWs, particularly Golfs, were popular there. And while that didn’t guarantee that it was Hamas on their tail, it fell back to basic math again. The sun was about to set, and the traffic in this part of the city was slim to none. Add the VW Golf to the mix, and it was more than coincidence.

  “We’ve got a tail,” he said, his eyes fixed on the rearview mirror.

  The Golf picked up speed, and he hit the gas.

  It took a moment before Talia snapped out of her shock and twisted around to get a look. “Hang a quick left at the next intersection,” she said, buckling her seat belt. She knew the city. He figured she’d know how to lose them.

  “Shit,” he swore when he felt blood drip into his eye. He’d started bleeding again.

  “Don’t.” She grabbed his hand to keep him from rubbing blood into his eye and making it worse. She found a tissue in the glove box and cleaned him up. Then she dug a first-aid kit out from under the seat and quickly taped a thick gauze patch over the bandage. All the while, she fed him directions as he zipped down the streets, trying to shake the Golf.

  “How many?”

  She twisted around and took a head count. “Four.”

  Any other time, he’d have stopped and squared off against them. But one G
lock between the two of them wasn’t enough of an arsenal, not in the shape they were in.

  “This Expedition modified at all?” he asked, taking a corner on two squealing wheels, before slamming down a straightaway.

  “If you’re asking if it’s armored, no.”

  “Then let’s hope it’s got a damn solid frame. Hang on. I’m tired of playing mouse to their cat.”

  He tromped on the gas, led the Golf through several intersections, and managed to put some distance between them when traffic kept the Golf at a red light. When he was ahead by two blocks, he hooked a sharp right-hand turn, then another and yet another, until he’d doubled back to a street where he’d spotted a narrow alley.

  Two tall buildings flanked the alley’s entrance. Heavy shadows fell across the yawning opening. He hung a hard left and drove straight in, then stood on the brakes, pulling the Expedition into the mouth of the alley, hiding from the view of any passing cars. He knew the Golf would be stalking them. Just like he knew they’d soon be sorry.

  “Get to the corner of the building. Tell me when you see them coming. Then shoot me a countdown.”

  She was a soldier, so he knew he could count on her to follow an order. She didn’t let him down. She climbed out of the vehicle and trotted to the edge of the building. He winced for her with every step.

  Face grim, he kept the Expedition revved, his eyes locked on Talia in the side-view mirror. She’d flattened herself against the wall at the corner of the building, just out of view of the street but able to peek around the wall to see if the Golf approached.

  When she held up her hand, fingers splayed, he knew it wouldn’t be long.

  Five fingers switched to four.

  He tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

  A long wait between four and three told him the Golf was creeping as the occupants searched up and down the street for the Expedition.

  Two fingers.

  Wait, wait, wait . . .One!

  Slamming the Expedition into reverse, he jammed the accelerator to the floor, and rocketed backward out of the alley. He T-boned the Golf with his rear bumper, crashing into the driver’s door like a semi on steroids.

  Metal screamed against metal, rubber squealed against road, as the big Expedition propelled the smaller vehicle sideways along the street.

  He didn’t let up on the gas until he’d driven the Golf onto the far sidewalk and pinned it against a wall of concrete and steel. The Golf collapsed in on itself like an accordion. The plate-glass storefront shattered and rained down like jagged knives.

  He jammed the Expedition into park, jumped out, and, with the Glock in hand, sprinted up to the wrecked vehicle.

  Not the best move he’d ever made. Pain blasted inside his head, and he felt himself going down when Talia ran up beside him and shored him back up. She wrenched the Glock out of his hand and shoved it into the driver’s face.

  “Where is Meir? Where is my son?”

  But she was talking to a dead man; he had likely died on impact. The guy in the passenger seat was also dead, crushed by the force of the impact. So was the man behind him; a shard of glass pierced his neck, apparently hitting an artery given the amount of blood.

  Only one man remained alive and conscious.

  “Where’s the boy?” Bobby grabbed him by the throat and dragged him half out of the car through the shattered window. “Where is the boy?” he repeated, as the man’s blood ran across his hand and down his arm.

  Mortally wounded, he gasped for breath. Bobby loosened his hold on his throat. “She . . . should have died . . . today,” he croaked, his words faint and gurgling with blood. “Now her child . . . will take her place.”

  “Where is he?” Talia pressed the Glock against his temple.

  The glazed eyes of a religious zealot stared back at her. “You should . . . have died. Now you will ­suffer . . . worse than death.”

  “Where is he?” Talia screamed, as the man’s eyes drifted shut. “Where is he?” she shrieked desperately, until Bobby gripped her shoulders and shook her.

  “Stop. Stop it. He’s gone.”

  The raw anguish on her face matched his own. The only regret he felt was that they hadn’t been able to get any information out of these monsters before they died. Not that they would have talked anyway.

  Careful not to cut himself on the broken glass and twisted metal, he searched the bodies as best he could, hoping for some clue about where their buddies might be keeping Meir.

  “Nothing?” Talia asked after Bobby had used the Expedition’s tire iron to pry open the ruined trunk.

  Grim-faced, he shook his head. “Do you recognize any of them?”

  “No.”

  “Give me your phone.”

  When she handed it to him, he quickly snapped pictures of each dead man and then the license plate.

  “Text these to your Mossad buddy. See if she can find out if any of these guys are part of al-Attar’s old group.”

  “I can try. But I don’t think I’ll hear from her. She made it clear that she couldn’t risk any more contact with me.”

  “Because you’re no longer in the loop,” he concluded. Even when she nodded, something didn’t feel right.

  He’d figure it out later. Right now, they had to scramble.

  “We’ve got to get out of here before someone calls this in and the local police show up, see four dead men, and draw some pretty obvious conclusions.”

  The last thing they needed was to get arrested. Talk about your international incident.

  Suspected U.S. covert operative and former Mossad agent involved with the brutal killing of four in downtown Muscat.

  No, thank you.

  If he thought the local PD would help, he’d risk it, but it would be pointless. He and Talia would end up in interrogation, then detained while spools of red tape raveled and unraveled—and in the meantime, Meir remained in danger. They were going to have to go rogue, because neither the United States nor Israel would support an unsanctioned operation to save the child.

  So right now, they needed to get the hell away from here.

  Even more, he needed to shake off the overwhelming protective mode that had washed over him as the news that he was a father continued to sink in. He needed to shift into full-fledged operative mode. Needed to divorce himself from all emotion and function as he’d been trained to do.

  The first item on the to-do list: get someplace safe, where they could regroup and come up with a plan.

  17

  Any covert operative worth his salt had Cover Your Ass tattooed on his brain. So before leaving U.S. soil, all team members were briefed on exactly where they could find safe haven if the need arose.

  While the ITAP team was unofficially under the Department of Defense umbrella, no one there would acknowledge their existence if any team member was compromised on a mission. That meant there was always a safe house in place, to avoid any events that could jeopardize the tenuous relations between the United States and any nation harboring terrorists but claiming not to.

  So an hour after leaving four dead terrorists in the Golf and taking a rambling route through the city to make certain they didn’t pick up another tail, Talia directed Bobby to the address he’d given her. An address he’d committed to memory—along with two sets of combinations, one of which he assumed was to a keypad entry code on the safe house—before he’d left the States for Oman.

  “There. On the right,” Talia said, as Bobby cruised up the street about thirty minutes after sundown and the Muslim call to prayer.

  He spotted the house number, searched through the dark for any signs of trouble, then drove on by. All in all, he made three drive-bys, coming from a different direction each time, before he was satisfied that he could take a chance and approach the building.

  “We’ve got to get this vehicle out of sigh
t. If your Hamas friends have been in Muscat for a while and you had the twitches, it’s most likely because they’ve been following you. So they’ll be looking for the Expedition. Also, we can’t count on zero witnesses seeing us destroy the Golf.”

  He drove a little farther, found a shadowed alley, cut the lights, and parked. Talia had already turned off the interior lights, so he pulled the keys and handed them to her, along with the holstered Glock. “If I’m not back in ten minutes, you need to be gone.”

  And bam, there it was. An instant and undeniable feeling of loss—like the loss he’d felt when he’d returned to her hotel room that night in Kabul and found her gone. A gut-wrenching feeling of hating her for what she’d done to him and recognizing how closely hate and love intertwined.

  Now here he was again, possibly seeing her for the last time. And all he could think about was that he’d lost her once and could lose her again in a matter of seconds if things went wrong. He could lose their son—and God help him, an impossible picture of the three of them together had already implanted itself in his brain.

  How damn hard did you hit your head, fool?

  Hard enough to kill a few brain cells that dealt with self-preservation, apparently.

  Shoving everything but the immediate moment out of his mind, he slipped out of the vehicle. After a quick look around, he took off through the shadows and doubled back the four blocks to the safe house.

  The neighborhood was upscale and quiet. He’d learned long ago never to be surprised by Middle Eastern cities. Before his first deployment, he’d had a preconceived idea that the countries surrounding the “cradle of civilization” would consist of ancient dwellings and run-down conditions. Sometimes that was true. But Muscat, Oman, didn’t fit that mold. The city was modern, clean, and quite beautiful.

  As he approached the safe house, he could see why it had been chosen. Like the rest of the buildings in this part of the city, it was constructed of sleek white stone to deflect the daytime heat that often reached 120 degrees. The safe house blended in with every other dwelling around it. Even better, the house was built on a slight incline, and a single-car garage, hidden from view in the dark during their drive-bys, had been dug out beneath it.