Operator Down

by Brad Taylor

  Aaron did anyway, although it did no good. He was immediately surrounded by the other Africans, all attacking, burying him in bodies. The blond brought out a needle and shoved it into his thigh, saying, “Stop struggling. I have no reason to hurt you.”

  That was the last thing he remembered, and now he was tied to a chair in a room somewhere in South Africa. Or maybe not.

  He heard, “What do you want to do?”

  Then, in a heavy native African accent: “Give him to me. I can make him disappear.”

  Aaron recognized the next voice. It was the blond man who’d captured him, which probably meant the African accent was the man from the tape. The one called General Mosebo. The blond said, “And the girl?”

  “I can make her disappear too.”

  Aaron mentally sagged. So they have Alex.

  “How? She’s Israeli. As is he. You can’t make them ‘disappear’ without causing them to hunt us. You don’t want to fuck with Israel, trust me.”

  From the general, Aaron heard, “Why? Their country is no bigger than mine.”

  “Have you never heard of the Wrath of God operations?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  Aaron heard laughter; then the blond man said, “Yes. You say their country is no bigger than yours, but when’s the last time Lesotho traveled the world assassinating terrorists? Trust me, if you want to play with matches, you should at least read about a few barn fires.”

  Aaron racked his brain, trying to find an anchor as to why he was being held, but came up short. Lesotho . . . Lesotho. What do they have to do with anything?

  The thick accent repeated, “Give them to me. I can make them disappear. Israel won’t find them in my land.”

  Another man began talking, using a language Aaron didn’t recognize and most certainly didn’t understand. It wasn’t the clicks and glottal stops of the Xhosa language, and wasn’t Zulu, the predominant native language spoken in South Africa. The revelation increased his unease.

  The conversation stopped, and the general said, “We can get him to a secret place. We can hide him until we decide what to do. Either way, we need to get him out of Durban. Out of South Africa.”

  Durban. That was at least six hours by road from Johannesburg. How long had he been out?

  A new voice said, “What about the partner? The one the girl told us about? The one in Israel? She needs to be taken care of as well.”

  The blond voice said, “Yes. She will. But we can use her for leverage.”

  Shoshana. They know about Shoshana. What has Alex told them?

  Before he could analyze the new information, the door to his room opened. He closed his eyes and let his head loll down. He heard, “How long are those drugs supposed to work?”

  “Depends. There are a lot of factors, like if he just ate, or his muscle mass, or whether he was dehydrated, or—”

  “Don’t give me that doctor bullshit. Give me an answer.”

  Aaron heard the blond man speak. “He’s awake.”

  The footsteps approached, and Aaron remained still. The doctor said, “He’s not awake, but he will be. Given his body mass, he should have been out for twenty-four hours. Anytime now. The girl is a different story.”

  The blond said, “He’s awake. He’s fucking with us.”

  Aaron felt a fist curl into his hair and his head jerked upright. He opened his eyes, knowing the subterfuge was done.

  The blond said, “Everyone out of the room. Now.”

  Aaron watched the scrum leave, remaining mute. The blond turned to him and said, “My name is Johan, and I’ve been tasked to find out why you’re following us. Look, I don’t like getting rough. I honestly don’t. Please make this easy on me. Just tell me what you’re doing here, and why.”

  Aaron spoke the truth, knowing that Alex had probably given up everything she knew. “I was sent to prevent embarrassment to Israel. They are afraid of nefarious diamond dealing. Afraid of a stain on the diamond exchange. That’s all.”

  Johan nodded, then said, “I wouldn’t expect you to tell the truth right up front. I’d believe you, except you happened to focus on me in Soweto, and I have nothing to do with the diamond exchange.” He shook his head and said, “Too bad. You stepped into a world of shit.”

  He let go of Aaron’s head, saying, “I’ll let your partner live, if you just tell me how much Israel knows about our plans.”

  Aaron said, “Where is Alexandra?”

  “She’s here. I’ve already interrogated Alex. She’s a nobody. Clearly untrained. Someone duped by the state of Israel and now regretting it. Her death will be on your hands.”

  He turned and gave Aaron the full force of his gaze, an unsettling stab. Aaron realized he was looking into the eyes of a man who had killed. Many, many times.

  “But that’s not the partner I’m talking about. I mean your real partner. The one in Israel. You tell me what you know, and I’ll let her live.”

  Aaron heard the words and for the first time felt a sliver of hope. Left unsaid was Aaron’s fate, but that mattered little. Since the moment of his capture, Aaron knew there was no chance of the Mossad helping. No rescue was forthcoming, and it had weighed heavily on his psyche, most notably because he felt responsible for Alexandra.

  He was nothing but a contractor, hired precisely to prevent Mossad fingerprints on the operation in question. He was a piece of tissue the Mossad used to blow its nose and, once soiled, easy to toss aside. But his partner in Israel was something altogether different. She cared about him.

  And she was a force unlike any this man had ever confronted.

  Aaron said, “I have told you what I know, which is nothing. I have no idea what’s going on here. I’m just a contractor hired by the diamond exchange to make sure their reputation is not sullied. That’s all. Alexandra is even less. I brought her solely because of her knowledge of the exchange. Let her go. Leave us be. I won’t tell anyone what’s occurred. There is no reason whatsoever to involve my partner in Israel.”

  Johan withdrew a set of knuckle rings, a small, two-finger version of brass knuckles. With a sad expression on his face, the disgust of what he was forced to do apparently real, he said, “I’ll know what you know soon enough. And you’ve just killed your partner. Our reach is long, and I must ensure our operation is contained.”

  Aaron steeled himself, knowing he would have to trade in order to be rescued, and the currency in question was pain. He had to force them to hunt in Israel.

  The man in front of him had no idea of what he was threatening when he mentioned Aaron’s partner. He thought he understood pain. Understood death. And he probably did, on an earthly plane. But Shoshana was made of something entirely different.

  She was a supernatural predator who caused fear even in Aaron. Going after her would guarantee a response, if he could remain alive long enough to see it. Shoshana would unleash her skills only if she deemed the reason worthy, and, unfortunately for these men, harming him would trigger a reaction unlike anything they had ever seen.

  Because he had the honor of being deemed worthy.

  7

  Shoshana kept her eyelids shut and rolled over, but she knew it was no use. She felt the light coming in through the window and succumbed to it. She opened her eyes. For a second, she was disoriented, not recognizing the room. Then she remembered: She was in a hotel in Haifa. By herself.

  For the first time in a long while, she’d allowed herself to sleep until she rolled out of bed naturally, but she’d still awakened at the first light of dawn.

  She threw off her covers and padded to the dresser, reaching for her cell phone. There were no missed calls. That wasn’t unusual, given the nature of their work, but last night she’d had a bad feeling, and not in a normal, ephemeral way that most people get. It was visceral, and she had learned long ago to trust in her instincts.

 
She had a connection to the world around her that she couldn’t explain, but she knew it existed. And it had saved her life on more than one occasion.

  This feeling was different, though, in that it was tinged with something else besides danger. Was it jealousy? Was that it?

  She had no way of knowing, because she’d never experienced that emotion in her entire life, until she’d seen Alexandra with Aaron.

  Shoshana’s history, like much of the history of Israel, had been one of hardship. Her ancestors had fled Europe to escape the slaughter of the Holocaust, only to meet the same end at the hands of a new breed of killer. Her grandfather had been murdered in the Munich Olympics massacre, sacrificing his life in a futile attempt to stop the Black September terrorists. She had been told of his heroic acts from the moment she could understand Hebrew, and then, when she was only ten, her parents were blown apart by a Hamas suicide bomber.

  An only child, she had become an orphan—an orphan with a mission. She had served her mandatory time in the IDF military but wasn’t satisfied. She’d gravitated to the Mossad and was invited to join, where she’d learned more things about killing than she’d ever learned about flying helicopters. The Mossad saw quickly that she held a talent for their world, and they used it, until it warped her.

  And then she’d found Aaron.

  She’d been thrown onto his team by the command, against the wishes of Aaron’s teammates. Her last team had branded her a coward at best, and a traitor at worst, solely because she wouldn’t kill an innocent man. A Palestinian she’d been forced to sleep with to set him up for the hit. She’d seen something in him, and not in a trusting, storybook way. She’d really seen something in his aura. Something nobody else apparently could. And she’d learned she was cursed with a gift.

  Aaron had ignored the baggage and taken her on his team, when nobody else in Mossad would touch her, and she’d returned the favor by saving his life on an operation in Argentina mere weeks later—when nobody else would help. They had clicked.

  For the first time in her bloody existence, she had connected with another human being. It had taken time, to be sure, with her unable to even understand the difference between simple respect and love, but eventually, they had both reached it.

  She thought.

  She had seen Aaron look at Alexandra when he’d first met her for the mission brief, surprised at her attractiveness. It had infuriated and confused her. Her entire universe of sexual experience had been sleeping with targets she was marking for a kill. Until she’d met Aaron, she’d never made love. Had never competed for a man in her entire life—had never even entertained the notion—and now she wondered if she was fighting for not only the man but also the single human on earth who understood her.

  It had been disconcerting, and she wondered about the missing phone calls. Was it the mission? Or something else?

  She looked at herself in the mirror, hoping to see what she knew wasn’t there. And she was rewarded with exactly what her subconscious mind realized: She wasn’t conventionally attractive. But she’d never cared about that before.

  She made no attempt to wear makeup and had the body of a fifteen-year-old boy. It was nothing but muscle and sinew, without womanly curves. No bust and no hips; her shape couldn’t compete with Alexandra’s voluptuous assets, with the exception of her face. Thin and aquiline, it would have played well on the fashion runways of Milan, if only her body had decided to cooperate, but she understood none of that.

  The pretty girls of her youth were crowned beauty queens and hailed but eventually faded to the background, making way for the next generation, as they all do with the onslaught of age. Shoshana had not. She became an elite killer, scaring even the ones who commanded her. She was an anomaly unlike anything the Mossad had ever seen. She could penetrate any defense, using an uncanny ability to read the opposition, and could kill without remorse. She was the perfect weapon. Right up until she decided she no longer wanted to be a weapon.

  Looking in the mirror, she failed to see past the reflection, to what Aaron saw. What connected them. She’d seen his reaction to Alexandra and knew she wasn’t even in the same league as her, and it made her question.

  Was the feeling last night because of that? Or was it real? Was Aaron in danger, or was her relationship?

  She was startled by her phone vibrating, and she snatched it up, looking at the screen. She saw a gobbledygook number—something that was clearly masked—and felt dread. It was the Mossad.

  She answered in a hesitant voice, “Hello?”

  “Hey, Carrie, it’s Pike. I’m in town.”

  She heard the stupid callsign the Americans had given her and suppressed a grin, her earlier angst forgotten. Pike Logan was the last person she expected to hear from but exactly what she needed. He was all about the mission and would chastise her for her failing emotions.

  He aggravated her to no end, usually bringing her to the point of wanting to slice his carotid arteries just to get him to shut up, but she never did, because when she looked into his eyes and read his soul, she saw he was just as tortured as she was. And just as good at killing. Once upon a time, he had crawled out of the abyss, finding Jennifer and a new life. She wanted to do the same.

  “What on earth are you doing calling me? Don’t tell me you want a tax receipt for that last mission. I can’t help it if you are in trouble with your IRS.”

  She hadn’t seen Jennifer and Pike since the wedding, and truth be told, she missed them. Missed teasing Pike, especially.

  He said, “Naw, it’s nothing like that. We’re in town, helping out with some UNESCO work on that Caesarea site, and thought we could have dinner.”

  “Caesarea? Are you toying with me?”

  Besides being a UNESCO World Heritage site, Caesarea also happened to be the name of the section in the Mossad that conducted covert action and was the organization that Shoshana had belonged to before she and Aaron went freelance.

  “No, no, it’s Caesarea for real. I was told not to even contact you, if you know what I mean, but I can’t come to Tel Aviv without having a beer with you and Aaron.”

  She knew exactly what he meant. He and his partner, Jennifer, owned a company called Grolier Recovery Services, which ostensibly did archaeological work around the world but in reality allowed the United States to penetrate hostile states to put some threat into the ground. Mentioning Caesarea and saying he wasn’t supposed to contact her told volumes: He was here on a mission, and it was outside the purview of the Mossad.

  And the fact that he had told her that—knowing she would connect the dots—spoke volumes as well. He trusted her.

  She didn’t return the favor, giving a half-truth. “I’d like that, but you picked the worst week, dummy. We’re up at the Dan Carmel in Haifa on a little vacation.”

  “The much-talked-about honeymoon? Aaron finally agreed?”

  “Yes.” Well, he agreed until the mission came down.

  Aaron had already booked and paid for the hotel and had planned on surprising her with the getaway—and he had. Only now, instead of a happy event, it had been an afterthought as he was headed out the door with Alexandra. She’d decided to come up on her own.

  Pike said, “Well, how far is Haifa? It can’t be more than a couple of hours. How about we finish up here and meet you guys there?”

  Quicker than she wanted, she said, “No, no. We’re committed up here. We have something planned every day.” She wasn’t sure if she was protecting the fact that Aaron was active on a mission or protecting herself from embarrassment when they found out she was up here alone.

  He said, “You have to eat, don’t you? And Jennifer’s dying to see Shoshana in married life. She’s pretty sure you’ve killed Aaron and stuffed him in a hole somewhere.”

  Shoshana laughed and said, “Jennifer, or you?”

  “Well, okay. Me.”

  “I figure
d. How long are you here for?”

  “Probably a week.”

  Aaron should be back before then.

  “Okay, let me talk to Aaron. Give us a couple of days and maybe we can break free.”

  8

  I hung up the phone just as Jennifer exited the bathroom, wearing a bathrobe and padding around barefoot, running a brush through her hair. She said, “So, was she surprised?”

  I said, “She was surprised.” I glanced out the window of our hotel room, seeing the shoreline of Tel Aviv but running through Shoshana’s call.

  Jennifer stopped her brushing, saying, “But?”

  I turned back to her and said, “But it was strange. She was strange. She doesn’t want to see us.”

  “What? Seriously?”

  “Well, she’s with Aaron in Haifa, at some hotel called Dan Carmel. She didn’t seem too interested in our visit.”

  Jennifer perked up at that, saying, “They’re together at a hotel in Haifa? Is this the honeymoon?”

  “That’s what she said. But I don’t know.”

  Shoshana was one of the strangest women—hell, humans—I’d ever met. When we’d first collided, I’d tried to kill her, believing she was responsible for the death of one of my men. I had failed. Later on, we’d crossed paths again, and she’d proven to be one of the most lethal operators I’ve ever met. She manifested some sort of weird animal vibe, like a dog that growled when a rapist entered a room. She saw things in the soul and could penetrate a man’s intentions just by being in his presence. Truth be told, it was a little scary. I poked fun at her on the surface, but I’d learned it was real.