by Brad Taylor
Also by Brad Taylor
One Rough Man
All Necessary Force
Enemy of Mine
The Widow’s Strike
The Polaris Protocol
Days of Rage
No Fortunate Son
The Insider Threat
The Forgotten Soldier
Ghosts of War
Other Taskforce Stories
The Callsign
Gut Instinct
Black Flag
The Dig
The Recruit
The Target
A Taskforce Story, Featuring an Exclusive Excerpt from Ring of Fire
Brad Taylor
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2016 by Brad Taylor
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
DUTTON is a registered trademark and the D colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
ISBN 978-1-101-98480-2
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
Contents
Also by Brad Taylor
Title Page
Copyright
Note from the Author
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Excerpt from RING OF FIRE Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
About the Author
Dear Reader,
This short story is a little bit of a departure from previous works, in that it’s the first one not involving any true Taskforce members. In fact, it’s set before the events of 9/11, and thus it takes place before the Taskforce was created. The Israeli team of Aaron and Shoshana generated much more interest than I ever thought they would when I created them. (The truth is that I fully intended to kill them in the book in which they were introduced but couldn’t bring myself to do it.) Shoshana and Aaron’s pasts have been hinted at, but I thought they deserved their own story. As always, there are multiple historical real-world operations threaded throughout the tale. I’ve attributed them to the Samson team and to others, but that is literary license on my part. I hope you enjoy it.
Best regards,
Brad Taylor
1
Mar del Plata, Argentina
June 1998
Gunther Baumhauer watched his grandchildren scamper around the barn like young colts, getting into just about everything. In his younger years, with his own children, he would have issued a stern warning against such actions, but that was no longer his purview. In truth, he enjoyed the activity, and he’d raised his boys correctly. They would do the same.
His eldest son, Konrad, entered the barn and immediately began disciplining the children. Gunther held up a hand, saying, “They’re curious. Let them explore.”
Konrad said, “Father, curiosity is fine in the fields. Not here in this barn.”
Gunther said, “Don’t worry. I always keep anything dangerous locked up, just like I did with you.”
Never one to cross his father, Konrad nodded, keeping a wary eye on the boys. A distinguished man of seventy-four, Gunther still projected the ramrod posture of a military man half his age. He had arrived in Argentina in 1946 with nothing but the clothes on his back and a single gold coin. With hard work and perseverance, he’d built a winery out of the raw earth with his bare hands when everyone said that such a thing on the coast was folly. The best wine was grown in the mountainous west, not in the east. Gunther had ignored them all, knowing the climate would work, and now other vintners were moving to Mar del Plata, attempting to emulate his success.
His work ethic had allowed him to provide for his family, paying for all three of his sons to attend universities, but his true goal was to impart in them what it meant to be a man. Nothing was more important, and he was proud to have succeeded. Now they were continuing the ethos he had instilled in them, with the middle son, Derek, using his computer degree to expand the winery’s reach through something called the Internet. Gunther thought it was a wasted effort but, remembering what he had been told years ago at the start of the winery, had let him continue.
Konrad said, “Carlos wants another meeting. He wants to talk about a new operation. I think it’s too soon.”
Gunther said, “Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on what it is.”
“I can’t see how dealing with them is any better than the people we target.”
Gunther smiled and said, “I know they are difficult to work with, but they share the same goals. We use them when we can. When?”
“I don’t know. Carl is on his way back from Buenos Aires. We’ll find out tonight.”
One of the boys had found an old oak trunk with an iron clasp, the edges worn from age. He attempted to lift the lid and Konrad barked at him to stop. He did so, looking at the adults with fear in his eyes. The other two boys stopped what they were doing, waiting to see if the one would be punished.
Gunther said, “Let him continue. They’re getting to the age of knowledge. Maybe it’s time to teach them their heritage, just like I did with you.”
At the words, the two scampered to the trunk, and then all three lifted the heavy lid until it collapsed backward with a thud. The first boy reached inside and brought out a medal of some sort, holding it in the light and saying, “Papa, is this yours?”
Konrad said, “No. It’s your grandfather’s.”
The second brought out a folded piece of cloth. He unfurled it, revealing a flag, a bent cross in the center of a field of red. He said, “What’s this?”
Gunther said, “That, my son, is your heritage.”
2
Tel Aviv, Israel
June 1998
“So we’re getting fucked for the mistake the Caesarea made?”
Aaron Bergman looked at the file on his desk and said, “No. I don’t think that’s the case here. We aren’t being punished.”
Daniel said, “Sir, come on. We get forced into using two assholes who had no idea what they’re doing, they screw up, and now, we get this witch? We’re done. They wanted it to happen, and now it has.”
“Daniel, there is no way they would do what they did in Amman just to sink us. The repercussions were too great.”
“But they did give us two non-Samson operatives. Did they not? If we’d have done the hit, it would have been flawless. And now we get this castoff.”
Aaron said, “Bri
ng her in.”
Daniel opened the door and a tall women entered, waif thin, with no curves at all, looking like what Aaron supposed an elf in a Tolkien novel would. If an elf held death in her heart. She stood in front of him at attention. He said, “Shoshana, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You wish to join the Samson team?”
She said, “No. I wish to serve where I’m most wanted.”
He looked at Daniel, then said, “What makes you think you’re wanted here?”
She said nothing for a moment, simply staring at him, until he began to feel uncomfortable under her gaze, as if she were reading his heart. Then she said, “I can work here.”
Aaron said, “That wasn’t my question.”
She said, “You take me if you want. Or you don’t. I’m willing to work with you. That should be enough.”
At that, Daniel blurted out, “Who do you think you are, talking like that? You’re a disgraced operative, looking for a job. You have no idea what we do.”
Her lips curved into a smile that held no joy, and she said, “Disgraced? Yes, I’m disgraced. That’s why I’m here with you, joining this team. You men have disgraced the entire Mossad. You’re the only unit to have ever caused the resignation of a sitting ramsad. Trust me, I understand why I’m here.”
Daniel bolted upright and said, “You have no fucking idea—”
Aaron held up a hand, saying, “Not everything is as it appears.”
She gave her penetrating glare, and said, “And so it is with me.”
• • •
Fifteen minutes later, Aaron finished his questioning and allowed her to leave the room. He said, “I’m inclined to take her.”
Daniel said, “Why? She torched a terrorist interdiction with some bullshit about ‘sensing’ he was a good guy? And then she torched the career of a Mossad agent who’d done more than most here in preventing terrorist threats? How on earth can you take her on?”
Aaron read the file again, seeing that the woman had refused to kill a suspected Palestinian terrorist who had been targeted for elimination. Then that her team leader had attempted to destroy her because of it. The fight had become brutal, in an internal office way, and she’d spilled the fact that her team leader had been making money using Mossad assets. The fact of his overreach had proven true, and he’d been cut free from the Mossad. She’d been reassigned because nobody in her old cell would trust her anymore. Like a cop who had finally snitched on everyone taking bribes, she was internally despised.
Her old boss swore that she was a traitor, accusing her of sleeping with the enemy, and not in a figurative way. He claimed she was literally sleeping with the Palestinian, and that’s why she refused to target him. And he had provided photos to prove it.
He read the file and wondered why she was selected for his unit. The entire episode made him wonder about his service and made him think about the woman who’d just left. How does an Israeli Jew decide in the middle of coitus that the man below her isn’t the enemy? How have we become a country that would force a decision on a person in that situation?
He had killed many, many men in his life, but it had always been because of pinpoint intelligence. Because he knew the target was evil. It’s why Samson had existed as long as it had.
Originally created as a Special Forces element of the IDF called Sayeret Shimshon—or Samson—they’d specialized in penetrating the Gaza Strip, working as Arabs in a world that was less than hospitable to Jews. They’d learned to live in an environment that wanted to kill them, even as they killed the enemy with surgical precision. Their specialty had been operating in the heart of the beast, hunting the most lethal men on the planet in their own backyard.
In 1994 Israel gave the Gaza Strip back to the Palestinians. In so doing, Aaron’s unit became superfluous, and was disbanded. Well, disbanded on paper. The high command still maintained Sayeret Duvdevan, the sister counterterrorist unit tasked with the penetration of the West Bank occupied territories, and thus had no use for the Gaza unit, but hesitated to throw away something that had been very difficult to create.
The Mossad had stepped in.
In 1979, Operation Wrath of God had ended with the killing of Ali Salameh, the archetype of terror and architect of the Munich Olympic massacre in 1972. After that hit, the Kidon—or bayonet—teams had been reassigned back to general Mossad operations. In 1987, Hamas had formed, and the blood began to flow on Israeli soil. By 1994, some in Mossad were beginning to think disbanding the Wrath of God teams had been a mistake, and were looking to rekindle the Kidon mission, but convincing the command was another story. Too much training. Too much overhead. Too much everything for too little gain. Then Samson fell into its lap. Almost a Kidon element in its own right, all it needed was a little sharpening of a few global edges.
The Mossad went to work, and the results were seen immediately, with the killing in Malta of Fathi Shaqaqi, the creator of the Palestinian Islamic jihad, in 1995.
Then had come the hit on the Hamas political bureau chairman, Khaled Mashaal, last year in Amman, Jordan. After a lot of back-and-forth, he’d been marked for death, and Aaron’s team had been given the mission. But they weren’t given the entire operational portfolio. For internal political reasons, they were relegated to staging operations, and two idiots with Canadian passports—two operatives who could barely speak English, much less pass as Canadians—were tasked with the actual hit. They botched it completely, and the repercussions had been enormous, with the ramsad of the Mossad actually flying to Jordan and delivering the antidote to the poison at the request of the king of Jordan.
That had been a year ago, and now Aaron was being given a castoff whom nobody else in the Mossad would work with. Bringing Samson into the Mossad had been a fight from the beginning, and it looked as if the old guard were sending a signal. They were still the outcasts, and this was one more example telling him his organization had no reason to exist. Except when he questioned the woman, he saw in her heart the very reason they were needed.
He said, “Bring her back in.”
Daniel said, “You can’t possibly be thinking about taking her.”
“Yes. I am.”
“Sir, come on! We’re in the hole because of Amman! You take her, and you’re admitting that we are worthless. She’s toxic.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve never made a decision based on politics, and I’m not about to start now.”
“Sir . . .”
Aaron turned his eyes on his teammate and said, “Go get her.”
Daniel glared for a moment, then relented. The woman followed him in, assuming her position of attention in front of Aaron.
Aaron said, “You served in the IDF as a helicopter pilot?”
“Yes. It’s in the record.”
“Why did you come to the Mossad?”
“I wanted to serve.”
“Bullshit. Why?”
She hesitated, then said, “My grandfather was the wrestling coach at Munich. The first to die. And I wanted to prevent the next Munich.”
Daniel heard the words and Aaron could see a reevaluation. A change of heart, because the Samson unit’s lineage came directly from the Wrath of God teams that had worked to track down the killers from Munich.
Daniel said, “Then why did you not kill the terrorist you’d targeted?”
She turned to him and said, “Because he wasn’t a terrorist. The Mossad was wrong, and he didn’t deserve to die. I can kill, but I don’t do so just because I can.”
Aaron said, “The file states you were in a romantic relationship with him. Why were you allowed to even stay in the Mossad if that’s true?”
“Because it’s not true. My team leader set up the targets using me. I slept with them, and he killed them at their most vulnerable.”
Aaron was taken aback at the statement. He looked at Daniel,
and saw he was equally mystified. Aaron said, “Wait, are you telling me that he ordered you to sleep with the targets, so he could kill them? While you were having sex with them?”
“Yes. It was an easy way to target, and I’m sure you’re thinking through how you can leverage the same tactic.”
Aaron leaned back in his chair and said, “No, I’m not. I would never allow that. How did you know the man wasn’t a terrorist? After all of the Mossad intelligence on him?”
She said, “I just knew. I could see it. Read it as easy as you do a book. It wasn’t the first time. My team leader had killed a man earlier who was also innocent. I think it had something to do with his extracurricular activities and not terrorism. He tried to do it a second time, and I couldn’t let it happen.”
“What do you mean, ‘you just knew’?”
“I . . . can see things.”
“What does that mean? ‘See things’?”
“Never mind. Just leave it. I’m a castoff coming to the castoffs. Take me or don’t.”
Aaron let that go, asking, “Do you believe in the mission here?”
“I did, when I was fighting against my grandfather’s murderers. I’m not so sure now.”
Aaron closed the file and said, “Well, I guess it’s our job to get you sure again.” Aaron saw a little hope in her eyes at the words and believed he’d made the right choice. He said, “You ready to work? We don’t do intelligence collection here. We’re the end of the intelligence collection cycle. The sharp end.”
Aaron saw something dark grow behind her eyes, a sliver escaping unannounced from the formal interview. She said, “Yes. I am the sharp end as well. Let me prove it.”
Before he could answer, there was a knock on the door. His secretary stuck her head in, her eyes wide and scared. She said, “They’ve sworn in the new ramsad. His first request was for you. He’s in the building.”
3
Aaron heard the words and instantly thought, This is it. The ramsad—short for rosh hamossad, meaning head of the Mossad—might request their presence for a mission, which in and of itself would be unusual, but he would show up at this little-known back station only if he intended to disband the organization. The last ramsad had resigned under pressure because of the Amman mission, and the new one was clearly going to drive a stake into the heart of Samson, blaming them for the mission’s failure.
