by By Jon Land
* * * *
Chapter 5
I
think they’re on my side, comrade,” Anatolyevich taunted, as the siege on the warehouse continued. “I told you I wouldn’t be in custody long.”
Ben checked his watch out of habit. A rock had smashed its face, but he guessed a half hour had passed now since they’d taken refuge inside the building. He had tried summoning reinforcements on his cell phone, but the signal wasn’t strong enough to reach anyone. The sound of sirens had begun to come and go more frequently in the last fifteen minutes or so, able to do nothing to prevent the crowd beyond from continuing to swell.
“You should surrender,” Anatolyevich continued, and Ben did his best to ignore him. He had handcuffed the Russian to a support beam after dispatching one of the two remaining officers to keep the crowd from breaching the warehouse’s rear.
“You said your name is Bayan Kamal,” Anatolyevich said, as Ben remained poised by the side of one of the front windows. “Was your father the late Jafir Kamal?”
Ben swung back toward the Russian. “How do you know my father’s name?”
Anatolyevich laughed hoarsely in response, the laugh of a man with a cigarette pack’s impression worn into his lungs. His gaze drifted to the truck full of weapons. “It figures.”
“If you’ve got something to say, say it.”
Anatolyevich turned away from the truck and shrugged his shoulders. “Like father, like son. That’s all.”
“My father was a hero,” Ben said, embarrassed at sounding like a child.
“That’s what you think?” Anatolyevich shook his head. “You are as misguided as he was.”
“I’m almost out of ammo!” Sergeant Khaled shouted from across the front of the warehouse, before Ben could respond to the Russian.
“And you, son of Jafir Kamal,” Anatolyevich taunted, “are you out of bullets, too?”
“I’ll save my last one for you,” Ben threatened, knowing he was down to a single clip himself.
“Be like your father,” Anatolyevich said snidely. “Surrender. Then maybe your countrymen won’t cut your balls off while you’re still alive.”
He laughed again and rattled his handcuffs against the pole. Ben ignored him and used the opportunity of a lull in the shooting to snap his final clip into his nine-millimeter pistol.
“You better have a look at this, Inspector,” Sergeant Khaled said suddenly.
Ben peered out the window at a pair of Mercedes sedans coming slowly down the street, seemingly oblivious to the gun battle into which they were heading. The cars eased to a halt and three of the doors in the lead Mercedes opened, allowing a trio of broad-shouldered, well-dressed men to emerge. Two held their ground in front of the car while the third opened a rear door, and Ben watched Colonel Nabril al-Asi emerge. The three broad-shouldered men fell into step behind the head of the much feared Palestinian Protective Security Service, as al-Asi buttoned his suit jacket and started leisurely toward the crowd.
The crowd backed off en masse. Those who were armed with more than stones lowered their weapons immediately. A few even began to retreat. Ben could hear the crowd murmuring through the shattered window, knew word must be spreading of just who this man was. Al-Asi never said a word, or made a gesture. Just kept walking, one hand tucked casually in his pocket, ignoring the violence that had been raging mere seconds before and could erupt again at any moment.
Halfway to the warehouse, the colonel stooped to pick up a stray rock and tossed it off the street. Kicked three more aside with his Cole-Hahn tasseled loafers before he reached the bay door and knocked.
“It’s all right, Inspector. You can come out.” Al-Asi’s back was to the remaining crowd now, the three men who accompanied him watching it warily.
Ben moved to the bay door, unhitched the bolt, and slid it open.
“Good afternoon, Colonel,” Ben greeted.
“Nice to see you, Inspector,” al-Asi said. His salt and pepper hair was brushed neatly back. That and his perfectly trimmed mustache made him look like a young Omar Sharif. He had a smile to match the famed actor as well, but al-Asi wasn’t smiling at all when he turned back to the crowd. “You can all go home,” he said in a tone that left no room for misunderstanding.
Most of those still left began to backpedal or turned to take their leave. A few stubbornly held their ground.
“Now,” al-Asi added, as if they were trespassing on his property, and these, too, started to walk away. “That’s better,” he said to Ben.
“How did you know I was here?”
“I didn’t, until the reports of riot-like conditions in Beit Jala reached me. I had a feeling it might be you, even before your mayor called to ask if I could help.”
“Another debt I owe you.”
“We’ll give this one to the mayor.” Al-Asi gazed past Ben at the truck inside the warehouse. “I assume what he said about an investigation involving a Russian arms dealer was true. You should have consulted me.”
“I had everything under control.”
Al-Asi glanced at the still dispersing crowd. “So I see.”
“Would you like to take my Russian friend into custody?”
Al-Asi clamped his hand around Ben’s shoulder and steered him away from the open bay. “I’ll let my men handle that. I need your help with something, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.”
“Good. We’ll take a drive. But there’s something else that brought me here as well.”
Al-Asi saw the blood sliding down from the gash on Ben’s temple and handed him a handkerchief.
“It’s about Pakad Barnea, Inspector,” the colonel continued gravely. “And I’m afraid the news is not good.”
* * * *
Chapter 6
T
he East Jerusalem police substation shares an old stone building with the local post office across from Herod’s Gate and just down the street from the Rockefeller Museum. Danielle found herself the only occupant of the holding cells tucked deep in a damp, cold basement that had the feel of a root cellar and smelled of concrete and old sweat.
She had been alone in the cell for several hours when a soldier ushered an old man down the stifling hall. The old man’s dress shoes clacked against the worn stone floor, and he looked distinctly uncomfortable as the soldier unlocked her cell door so he could enter.
“It’s been a long time, Pakad Barnea.”
Danielle rose stiffly, narrowing her gaze. “I remember you from my father’s funeral.”
The old man nodded. “He and I were close friends. There were some matters in his estate he entrusted to me. My name is Shlomo Davies.”
“You’re a lawyer,” Danielle recalled. “How did you find out I was here? They wouldn’t let me call anyone.”
“A man in Shin Bet who knew your father contacted me shortly after your arrest.”
“They told me they were going to keep things quiet.”
“This is Jerusalem, Pakad. Nothing stays quiet long. Anyway,” Davies continued, “they would have liked to keep things quiet to keep you from getting legal representation prior to your initial interview. I assume you’ve spoken to no one in authority yet.”
“Not a word.” Danielle fidgeted nervously. “Is there any way you can get me out of here?”
“On bail?”
“Any way.”
“Not for the time being.” The old lawyer frowned grimly. “Probably not at all.”
“Then I need you to get a message to someone. Can I have your . . .”
“Of course,” Davies said, handing Danielle his pen and legal pad from his briefcase.
She jotted down a name and handed the pad back to him.
Davies raised his eyebrows. “Dov Levy, the famous general?”
Danielle nodded. “He was my commanding officer in the Sayaret.”
“I wasn’t aware women served in the Sayaret.”
“They don’t anymore,” Danielle told him, the cell feeling sudde
nly cold. “Not for a dozen years.” Her voice lowered. “Not since Beirut. . .”
“Strike team in position.”
Danielle Barnea heard Captain Ofir Rosen’s words waft over the sounds of the sea, as the black rubber raft washed up along the rocky shore of the Mediterranean on the Beirut coastline. They had cut the engine a half mile from land and used paddles to reach the shallows, where they relied on the currents to propel them the rest of the way. The result was to make the black-clad figures huddled inside the raft undetectable in the misty night, even by anyone out for a stroll along the docks of the St. George yacht club just a few hundred yards away.
“We are a go. Repeat, we are a go. “
Rosen’s whispered announcement would be relayed from the platform ship five miles away to the retrieval team standing by in Beirut to await the mission’s completion.
Danielle was the last to climb out. She dropped waist-deep into the cold, choppy sea and pulled the raft up onto the beach after her. The gloves made her hands feel clammy, squishing against the rubber of the raft, and she shed them before rushing to join the rest of the assault team.
The commandos of the Sayaret were among the most elite soldiers in the world. Far more than the mere assassination squads with which they were often lumped, Sayaret operatives specialized in retaliatory strikes against terrorist leaders whose desire to see the destruction of Israel was boundless.
Sheik Hussein al-Akbar, their target that night in Beirut, had been linked with a trio of school bus bombings that had left forty Israeli children dead and another sixty maimed or crippled for life. The sheik had transformed a former luxury hotel across from the Beirut waterfront into his own personal villa. Intelligence from the advance team indicated the villa was laid out like a fortress and patrolled by a dozen soldiers.
Danielle was the only female member of tonight’s strike team, and one of only three ever to have been chosen for duty in the elite Sayaret. She and the other commandos piled into an old rusted van, driven by a local double-agent who kept his speed slow along Allenby Street through a downtown Beirut dominated by bombed-out shells and abandoned buildings.
Just past the famed St. George’s Hotel, the team pulled the traditional Muslim robes that were waiting for them in the van’s rear over their wet uniforms and then checked each other to make sure their Uzi submachine guns, grenades, and pistols were effectively concealed. Danielle had just begun pulling her arms through her robes when Captain Rosen latched a hand on her wrist.
“Don’t bother, Lieutenant,” he said.
“Sir?”
“You’re not coming. We can’t take the chance.” Rosen didn’t give her a chance to respond. “You’re a woman. No way a woman in this part of the world would be seen in the company of so many men. If you’re recognized ...”
Danielle nodded, disappointment leaving a heaviness in her stomach and a clog in her throat that made it hard for her to swallow.
“You’ll handle backup and communication,” Rosen told her.
The van pulled off Allenby Street and parked on El Sayad Street, a side road adjacent to the sheik’s fortress. Danielle watched the members of the team spill out through the back of the truck and took her place quickly behind the monitor, put on her headphones, and sat down before a single large television screen. Captain Rosen’s glasses were outfitted with a tiny camera that broadcast everything he saw back to the van where it would be taped. On the monitor Danielle could see the sidewalk sliding rapidly past and caught glimpses of other team members as they approached the entrance alongside the ten-foot stone fence enclosing the compound. The television screen showed an armed guard at the front steel gate of the former luxury hotel watching them with a mixture of confusion and consternation.
“We are here for our meeting with the sheik,”Captain Rosen said in Arabic.
“I was not told to expect anyone.”
“Then please call up to the sheik so this oversight can be corrected.”
The guard thought briefly, then reached for his walkie-talkie. On Danielle’s television screen, a puff of smoke fluttered into the air at the same moment the pfffffftof a silenced gunshot filled her ears. The guard’s body was dragged aside before the other guards on the fortress grounds were any the wiser. Another of the team members stripped off his outer robes to reveal an identical uniform and took up the dead guard’s position while the rest of the team continued on to the house.
Danielle watched Rosen’s camera pan from side to side as his head turned to size up the opposition’s strength and positioning. She catalogued both herself, playing along, willing the mission to go smoothly.
“Come on,” she muttered to herself. “Come on . . .”
As if in answer to her command, the assault team fanned out to their assigned positions and the gunshots began. They came sporadically in short bursts, the sheik’s guards picked off one at a time.
On screen the converted hotel drew rapidly into view. Rosen rushed the entrance, joined almost instantly by the two other commandos covering the front. Danielle could see them on either side of him as Rosen lifted his foot and slammed it into the door.
A series of rifle blasts turned Danielle’s ears to mush and she stiffened, realizing the assault team had come under fire. The screen became jumpy as Captain Rosen dove to the floor and fired while rolling. The dizzying picture showed another of the sheik’s guards hurtling over a second-floor railing.
More gunshots from other points in the house were followed by reports of downed enemy guards. In her mind Danielle kept count of how many had fallen, breathing slightly easier when all but one were accounted for, allowing the team to move on to the second floor for its final assault on Sheik Hussein al-Akbar himself.
An ambush laid at the top of the stairway by a final guard failed miserably and ended with his bullet-riddled body tumbling down the steps. The commandos had no reason to expect any more guards would be present up here, but still moved cautiously after reaching the second floor.
Danielle could see the empty hallway beyond, projected in jittery motion, evidence of Captain Rosen sweeping his gaze about. Suddenly she noticed the lighting change subtly, as if someone had cracked open a door, letting more light spill out from a room.
Danielle grasped her headset. “Pull back!”
“What? Say again,” Rosen ordered.
“Pull back. Something’s wrong. I think it’s a trap.”
“Negative on that. We are—”
Rosen’s words ended when a figure wearing a long coat and a cowboy hat burst through the open door Danielle had noticed, springing in front of the advancing Israelis at the head of the hallway. Danielle was screaming into her headset in the same moment she recognized the twin submachine guns clutched in his hands.
The dual sprays of gunfire came as rickety clicks in her ears, as Captain Rosen’s hidden camera broadcast unbroken flashes bursting from the shooter’s muzzle bores.
Rosen went down first. His camera spun wildly before the view locked on the ceiling. Danielle could see nothing else when the continued clacking of twin submachine gun fire was answered futilely by the commandos whose desperate screams echoed in her ears.
“No,” she muttered to herself, feeling stomach acid wash up her throat. “No!”
Danielle tore her headphones off and lunged out of her chair to grab a lonely Uzi from the wall. She was almost to the back door of the van when the team’s Arab driver and local intelligence source grabbed her from behind.
“You can’t!”
“Let me go!” Danielle ordered and threw him aside.
“You know what you have to do! You have your orders!”
Hand on the latch now. “Shut the fuck up!”
But she stopped. The man was right: There was an exact procedure to follow when things broke down, and that procedure dictated that she take flight to properly report the situation.
“All right, just get us out of here,” Danielle ordered, turning away reluctantly from the door.
<
br /> The Arab clambered back behind the wheel. Danielle returned to her station, prepared to shut the system down and secure the tape. The van had just pulled out onto Allenby Street, speeding away, when a face appeared on the television screen from inside the fortress. Cocked at a strange angle since it was clearly looking down at the body of Ofir Rosen, but clear enough for Danielle to recognize the cowboy hat she had glimpsed before and a face she would never forget.
