JET, no. 3

by Russell Blake

  Present Day, Sana’a, Yemen

  Jet peered through the window of her hotel at the glowing minarets of the Al-Saleh mosque, amazed that such beauty could exist in such a squalid place. The whining buzz of motor scooters and badly abused car engines from the street below had none of the charming musicality of some cities. The traffic sounds here were more akin to buzz saws and tractors – ugly and strident, as if to complement the foulness of the high-altitude desert metropolis.

  Getting into Yemen had proved simple – a quick trip to the consulate in Frankfurt had produced a thirty-day visa to travel as she required, although there had been dire warnings about the rebel factions who were in possession of large tracts of the country, and admonishments to stay in the major cities, preferably with a male escort.

  Her Belgian cover ID was that of a freelance journalist. She had long ago discovered that nobody really understood or cared what freelance journalists did, and therefore their travel requirements and lifestyles weren’t questioned too closely.

  Jet spoke flawless Arabic, which had been a requirement when qualifying for the team. She’d always been fascinated with languages and had spent her childhood and teen years collecting them, as she thought of it. Yet another trait that had made her an attractive candidate for the team – young, angry, multilingual, with a significant physical edge due to martial arts study. It was no wonder that the Mossad had snapped her up when their recruiters had gotten wind of her.

  While waiting for her visa in Frankfurt, a city with a substantial Muslim population, she’d been able to get her hands on an abaya, niqab and hijab, the black full body robe, veil and headdress worn by many Yemeni women. She’d worn mannish slacks and a button-up safari shirt for the trip, in keeping with what most would guess a freelance journalist would favor.

  Rain had been staying in a building with eight flats near the 26 September Park, and had one that faced onto the street. She had no way of knowing whether he was still there, but she was hopeful that, if he was still in Yemen, he’d kept the one-bedroom apartment.

  It was late afternoon by the time she cleared customs and checked into her hotel. It had been over three years since she’d been in Sana’a, but she still remembered the layout of the city well enough to navigate the streets on her own – a dangerous proposition amid the civil unrest that had plagued the capital for the last few years.

  Sana’a was even worse than the last time she had been there. The atmosphere was anxious, the stress level palpable. In spite of the façade of cursory civility, this was a city at war, where violence could erupt without warning at any time. There was a substantial military presence on most corners, but instead of being reassuring, the sight of soldiers toting machine guns added to the sense of imminent chaos that seemed a constant. She debated going to Rain’s building that evening, but decided to err on the side of prudence – being out after dark was an invitation to disaster in the current environment.

  She’d start early tomorrow and reconnoiter the apartment, taking up a watch, if necessary, until she could be confident that Rain either did or didn’t still live there. It could take days to know definitively, but it was her only lead, and she had few choices – and nothing but time.

  Dinner in her room was barely edible, which was not unexpected based on her memory of her prior trips. Fine dining was only one of the many civilities that seemed to have bypassed the grim nation.

  The air-conditioning groaned like an old drunk throughout the night, but it kept the room cool enough to sleep so she considered herself lucky.

  First thing the next morning, she decked herself out in the abaya and veil and studied her image in the mirror. There was only one more thing to do before she went out. She carefully placed brown-colored contacts in her eyes so that their natural startling green wouldn’t be a giveaway. Doing so was second nature after years in the field.

  She walked for three blocks before flagging down a taxi on the dusty street, then had it drop her at the park, opting to walk from there to Rain’s last known apartment so she could reacquaint herself with the area. She approached it from across the street, paying no particular attention to the building – to a casual observer.

  As her eyes drifted up to the window on the second floor, the hair on the back of her neck prickled. A cardboard box sat on the table just inside, by the sill – and the shade was pulled halfway down. She kept moving to the end of the block then stopped at a little cutlery store, pretending to study the offerings while she scanned the street more thoroughly. A VW van sat parked fifty yards from the apartment; she could see the driver’s outline but nothing else. All the other cars were empty. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not.

  The box was a metaphor from her past. She remembered all of the emergency signals clearly. A box in the window with a half-drawn shade meant danger, abort, return to base.

  Then again, it could also have just been that the tenant had left a box sitting on the kitchen table. Not everything was sinister. And she didn’t even know whether Rain still lived there.

  The sun baked down on her as she struggled with conflicting impulses. Two sorry-looking pigeons scurried down the gutter, dodging empty soda bottles and food wrappers, the male strutting, ruffling feathers in a mating dance as the uninterested female tried to slip past it and into the allure of the shade.

  Getting out of the heat wasn’t a bad idea, she reasoned. She needed to do something. She couldn’t stand there all day.

  She was just talking herself into taking another walk past the building, this time on the same side of the street so she could see the names on the battered mailbox slots, when the front of the flat disintegrated in a blast of stone and glass. The concussion from the explosion rocked her – she clutched the wall for support, ears ringing from the detonation. She shook her head, attempting to clear it as she watched smoke belch from the smoldering cavity, where moments before she’d been looking at a window.

  A window with a box.

  The van’s engine roared, and it barreled down the street at her. As it approached, she caught a glimpse of two men. Thin, both obviously natives, hair closely cropped, bearded. The van passed her vantage point, and she noted that it didn’t have plates – not unusual in a city where nobody paid anything they could avoid, but to her, a telltale.

  A crowd gathered as rubberneckers emptied out of the surrounding dwellings to survey the damage and watch the show. Another woman edged next to her and asked in a soft voice what had happened. Jet shook her head, feigning ignorance.

  No good would come from her remaining there. She needed to leave. Leave the street with its burning wreckage, and leave Yemen as soon as possible.

  Get back to base.

  The sign had been clear, there to warn whoever Rain had been working with.

  Jet’s mind churned furiously, trying to remember where base had been for the Yemen operation. It had been a while ago, but the memories came back to her. Base had been a small home on the outskirts of Pardes Hanna-Karkur in Israel, near Netanya. One of a number of safe houses David used – he’d told her that he had dozens at his disposal and moved between them depending upon what operation was active at the moment. When he didn’t have anything on the board, he simply disappeared. Nobody knew where. It was during those down times that he and Jet would rendezvous, but never in the same place twice.

  After a mission went sideways, the likelihood was that he would be at the designated house to collect the pieces and debrief anyone who made it out. Jet had no idea how large a group was now working the Yemen assignment, but after three and a half years, it had to be more than just Rain. An asset wouldn’t have been kept in place for that length of time if it wasn’t important, which meant that the intelligence he was gathering was critical. And operations rarely came apart like this, so when one imploded, David would need to know why.

  Which was the opportunity she’d been hoping for.

  After the cab dropped her off at her hotel, she veered down the str
eet to an internet café she’d spotted the prior day. Within ten minutes, she had confirmed she could get a flight out of Yemen the following morning to Jordan, and then take a bus across the border. It was a long and circuitous route to get into Israel, but she knew from experience that it was the only practical way to avoid the facial recognition software the Mossad used at airport immigration.

  With any luck, she could be at the safe house by tomorrow afternoon. Then, hopefully, she would get some answers.

  ~ ~ ~

  Jet’s trip to Israel was long and uneventful, with the border crossing a tedious marathon – crowded and chaotic, barely controlled pandemonium as three busses arrived five minutes apart, the passengers all rushing to get to the head of the line to avoid the long wait in the heat.

  When she arrived in Jerusalem, she rented a car. Once clear of the city, the trip to Pardes Hanna-Karkur took only an hour and a half. She pulled into town at four o’clock in the afternoon, the sun’s relentless roasting almost over for the day.

  Jet had been to the safe house only once following her insertion mission in Yemen, doing her mandatory debriefing before leaving to take a welcome three-day hiatus in nearby Netanya with David. Even though it had been three and a half years, her recollection of the area was fresh – her memory for geography a skill she’d honed in her training.

  A soldier stopped her as she pulled onto the small cul-de-sac where the house was located. She rolled down the window as he peered from under the brim of his hat.

  “I’m sorry. Street’s closed. You need to turn around.”

  “Oh. Why? What happened?” Jet batted her eyes and tried a tentative smile on the young man.

  “I really can’t say. You just can’t drive any further. I’m sorry. Those are my orders.”

  “Damn. I mean, I wanted to see if my friend was home, but I suppose that’s out of the question now?” Her eyes darted to the dwelling at the end of the little street. Two of the cars in front of it were riddled with bullet holes, and a third had burned to a husk. The entire perimeter of the lot was cordoned off with yellow tape and was swarming with police and military.

  “You could try calling.”

  “She doesn’t like to use the phone. Never answers it, so trying would be pointless. Are you sure I can’t just sneak by?”

  The young soldier stiffened. “I think you should turn your car around and leave. This is a crime scene. The street is closed to all traffic, pedestrian or otherwise, for at least the rest of the day.”

  So much for charming her way through.

  “Okay, okay. I’m going.”

  She’d seen enough – obvious evidence of an assault on the house. If David had been there, he wouldn’t be any more. The house was blown. But she needed to find out what had happened. Had he been inside? Had he been killed? Wounded?

  Jet reversed and executed a three-point turn, then drove out of the neighborhood and kept going until she came to a market. She pulled into the lot and parked, needing time to think. This was all unraveling too quickly – and now her one lead to David was gone. All the effort, the trip to Yemen, the trek into Israel, in vain. But none of it made sense. Who would dare attack a Mossad safe house on Israeli turf? What was the objective? She couldn’t recall anything even remotely like it happening before, and a buzz of anxiety started in her stomach. This was uncharted territory, and as far as she knew, there was no precedent. Which was bad, because in her travels she’d thought there was nothing she hadn’t seen. And that meant that there could be more surprises lying in wait. Deadly ones she might not see coming.

  She didn’t know too many ways she could get more information other than trying to hack into the military’s computers to get information on the attack. Even with her skills, the Mossad’s would be impossible to breach, and the military’s wouldn’t be that much easier – which left the police. Local cops were likely to have only meager security on their servers – child’s play for someone of her abilities. Judging by the number of police at the scene, it wouldn’t be that hard to find any report that had been filed. She would just need a good system, a fast internet connection, and time.

  She drove half an hour to Tel Aviv and found a large electronics store, and within twenty minutes was the proud owner of a new state-of-the-art laptop. A nearby specialty coffee shop advertised free wireless internet; she found a quiet corner away from the boisterous teenagers hanging out by the entrance and plugged in her new toy.

  Forty-five minutes later, she was in the police network and reading the preliminary report on the house.

  A call had come in at four forty-two a.m. from a frantic neighbor. Gunfire, explosions, screaming. All units scrambled, the first arriving in seven minutes to find the house empty and four unidentified males dead outside. A car was burning, its gas tank ruptured, and tire tracks suggested that a vehicle had driven off at high speed. One of the other neighbors reported that his dog had lunged at the back door and gone crazy when a figure ran past. He’d caught a quick glimpse; it was the man who owned the house that had been attacked. Forensics later found blood droplets consistent with a wound of some sort. Then the military had taken over the case, and the Mossad arrived shortly thereafter. End of report.

  So David had been there, had been hurt, but had escaped.

  And the Mossad was in the mix and had clamped a lid on it.

  Which they could effectively maintain for as long as necessary by claiming national security interests were involved.

  Now Jet had even more questions than answers.

  Who had attacked the house? What did they want? If it was to kill David, as Rain had been killed, then why? Was it the same group? Terrorists? Or someone else? And was David okay? Wounded, yes, but how badly?

  Whether she liked it or not, she needed more information than the report offered. It would mean hacking the military network to scan for any admissions to military hospitals in the last sixteen hours. That was too big a project for her to bite off – she could do it, but she didn’t have the tools or the time to devote to covering her tracks and doing nothing but trying to hack her way in.

  But she knew someone who did.

  She typed in a series of keystrokes and sent an e-mail to an account she had committed to memory. Moriarty – a hacker she had never met, but who had come in handy in the past on delicate assignments where discretion was required. David had given her the contact years ago when she had needed specialized computer work done on one of her missions, but wasn’t in a position to do it herself. Since then, she’d used the hacker three times, and each had been impressive.

  But not cheap.

  Moriarty replied to her ping within two minutes. A dialog box popped up on her screen.

  [What’s shaking? Long time no talk.]

  [Yup. Got a gig. You busy?] Jet typed.

  [For you? Never.]

  [I need you to track and report to me admissions at every military hospital in Israel for gunshot, trauma, stabbing or other wounds. I don’t need routine admissions for illness. Just trauma.]

  [Are you serious?]

  [Yup.]

  [Gonna cost.]

  [Figures. How much?]

  [When do you need it?]

  [Now.]

  Twenty seconds dragged out.

  [Fifteen grand. I’ll have it within an hour, two, tops.]

  [OK. Banks are closed. Wire tomorrow?]

  [Sure. You’re cool.]

  [Good luck.]

  [Luck has nothing to do with it.]

  The dialog box disappeared, the discussion over.

  Jet closed the computer and powered it down. She didn’t want to linger there on the off chance someone from the police had noticed the breach of their network and somehow traced the IP address.

  She drove to the water and found a restaurant she hadn’t been to in years. Looking at her watch, she saw that she had an hour and forty minutes to kill, so she ordered dinner and settled in, forcing herself to be patient.
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  The sun set, and the city’s lights twinkled off the sea as she digested the day’s events.

  David attacked at a top secret safe house.

  Injured.

  Whatever this was, she’d never heard of anything like it in her life.

  Chapter 13

  “I have good news and bad news, sir.”

  Grigenko sighed. “Give me the bad news first.”

  “The Mossad case officer got away. But he is wounded. It is just a matter of time until we find him. I’ve got all our contacts working on it, and you know we have pull in the Mossad,” Yuri said.

  Grigenko considered that.

  “You say that you wounded him?”

  “Yes, sir. And we are monitoring the police communications, the military hospitals and the civilian hospitals. It shouldn’t be long until he turns up, then we’ll finish him.”

  “Why is it that every time you go up against one of these operatives you have excuses instead of results?” Grigenko demanded.

  Yuri said nothing for a few seconds. “I’ll call as soon as I have something to report.” Grigenko hung up. What was it about this group that they were having so much trouble killing them? He’d never had so much difficulty. Usually he told Yuri who to target, paid him whatever he asked, and the target disappeared. Simple. Effective. No surprises.

  Then suddenly the woman destroys one of the most lethal wet teams on the planet, and now a desk jockey escapes a straightforward hit?

  None of this was complicated.

  Find them. Kill them.

  Easy.

  Only apparently not.

  A part of him wanted to crush his enemies like bugs, but another part told him not to worry about the details. The plan was far bigger than these two minor nuisances. And Yuri was right. Nobody could hide forever. They would turn up, and when they did, they would be eliminated.

  Grigenko rubbed his face, feeling the stubble on his chin, and realized he had been in his penthouse office for ten straight hours.

  Enough. It was time to relax, unwind, get something to eat. He buzzed his assistant and told her to have the car ready.