Land, Jon

by [Kamal

  In the same moment, Danielle lurched into the line of fire between the falling girl and the gunmen. The muzzle of the automatic rifle she was wielding blazed angry orange. But the sound of the reports was lost to Ben, who was deafened by the noise of his own. He was conscious of bodies tumbling below, both to his bullets and to Danielle’s. Others fled through the rear, escaping their barrages. Hot spent shells danced at his feet, and the bitter stench of gunsmoke rose above all the others that had filled the house.

  He couldn’t take his finger off the trigger even after the slide locked open, only vaguely conscious that Danielle had appeared beneath him with a fresh rifle salvaged from another of the corpses.

  * * * *

  D

  anielle slung the rifle’s strap around her shoulder and dragged a reasonably whole stone beam sideways so that it rested against the sagging second floor landing near Ben and Khalil’s perch.

  “Come on!” she called, rifle back in hand, sweeping the room in all directions as she backpedaled in search of Amal.

  Ben helped Khalil onto the beam first. The terrorist’s wounded leg dragging like a lead weight didn’t stop him from negotiating the drop quickly and then limping off in search of his fallen family. Ben followed him down a bit more cautiously in the darkness, pausing at the bottom only long enough to retrieve a still hot enemy rifle Danielle had left for him.

  He found Khalil hunched over the body of the dead Amal, the second daughter he had lost to violence in barely two weeks. Ben turned to find Danielle tending to Khalil’s wife and son. It was difficult to continue thinking of Khalil as a terrorist, although Ben knew he had lived by violence and murder for the better part of his life. Right now he was just a tragic figure grieving over another senseless loss.

  “Check the front,” Danielle said.

  Finding a vantage point from which he could view most of the house’s front, Ben pressed his shoulders tight against the remnant of a casement window and peered out. One of the Jeeps was just tearing away in a screech of rubber. He turned around again and saw Khalil cradling his daughter Amal closely against him, his sobs rising above the cracking and creaking sounds of the house. Ben grabbed hold of him and hoisted.

  “I won’t leave her!” he insisted, trying to pull free.

  The stone wall behind Khalil was crumbling, the entire rear portion of the house ready to collapse. Ben grabbed hold of Khalil with one arm while he lifted Amal in the other, dragging both of them through an obstacle course of teetering beams and raining chunks of stucco stone. Danielle had carried Khalil’s wife and son outside just before him and had already laid them down on the lawn when Ben emerged.

  “You did this! You brought them here! YOU!”

  Khalil lunged, and Ben felt the terrorist’s hands close on his windpipe. Khalil was too weak and drained to do any damage with his grip, and his wounded leg gave out almost instantly. Ben sat down next to the man on the lawn and lay a hand across his shoulder.

  “And I promise I’ll make them pay. Whoever they are, I’ll make them pay.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 50

  T

  he Jeep the attackers had left behind easily accommodated all of them. Danielle rode in the passenger seat next to Ben, Khalil in the rear squeezed between his wife and son, the dead Amal still clutched against him. All were silent and fearfully tense, expecting the second Jeep to come flying at them any moment.

  “Which clinic should we take you to?” Ben asked, as he put the Jeep into gear.

  “No clinic, no hospital,” Khalil replied softly. “There’s a doctor who takes care of us at his house. I’ll give you his address.”

  Khalil recited it and Ben swung right at the next block, needing to backtrack a bit. Danielle couldn’t help thinking what this would have meant a few years ago: a top-ranking Hamas member her virtual prisoner en route to a doctor who would be able to identify the entire network. Tonight that didn’t matter. Tonight they were on the same side.

  The doctor’s house was dark. Ben and Danielle helped get Khalil’s wife and son out. Khalil stopped them before they could proceed with him up the walk, holding Amal in both arms now.

  “The doctor doesn’t like strangers. It’s best if you leave me on my own from here.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ben said.

  Khalil gave him a long look. “I know who you are. I know you know how this feels.” He swallowed hard. “Just remember your promise.”

  Ben nodded and waited until Khalil and his family disappeared inside before retreating the short distance back down the walk with Danielle.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “We find somewhere to hide for the night.”

  * * * *

  I

  nspector! Come in, come in,” Yousef Shifa beamed after opening his front door. “You keep very strange hours.” He peered behind them. “Is the boy with you?”

  “Not tonight.”

  He shrugged. “He’s a good boy. Can’t help that life treated him like shit.”

  The big man stood aside and beckoned them forward. “Speaking of shit, that’s what both of you look like.”

  “It could have been a lot worse,” Ben told Shifa, and turned to Danielle once the door was closed behind them. “This is . . . my partner.”

  Shifa nodded. “You look very good together.”

  * * * *

  H

  e insisted ongiving uphis ownroom forBen, andherded histhree oldest children from theirs for Danielle. Ben accepted reluctantly, feeling the man had already paid the debt owed him. His presence and Danielle’s was an imposition, and a dangerous one at that.

  He had been lying on his back atop the covers, unable to sleep or even close his eyes, for nearly an hour when the door creaked open and Danielle entered. She padded across the floor in the darkness and lay down next to him in silence. Ben liked the feeling of having her this close next to him, enjoyed the brush of her shoulder against his as they lay there.

  They should have been exhausted, totally drained. Craving sleep, both knew it would not come. They had each faced death up close before, and the result was often an exhilaration, a catharsis, a feeling as close to invincibility as can be known.

  They were alive, goddammit! They were alive . . .

  Maybe it was the adrenaline still kicking in. Or the curious scent of fear mixing with the chalky dust that covered their clothes. Or the “fight or flight” syndrome that reduces civilized man to his most base instincts. Or maybe it was just surviving together, lying there with all the defenses, petty politics, and cultural distinctions reduced to a big fat nothing in the face of looking at death and living to tell.

  Alive!

  And what they felt, what they wanted, spilled over, neither able to restrain it any longer. Their lips came together before either knew what was happening and, once together, didn’t part. Seconds drew into minutes as they rolled onto their sides and swallowed each other in an embrace that stretched into heedless passion. These were two people who had both wanted this, needed it, from their first meeting in Mayor Sumaya’s office. Trained to suppress their feelings, their emotions at last broke through and raged all the more fiercely.

  And when the kissing moved on to more, each rhythm flowed so naturally and mutually that neither would remember which had done the initiating. What they would remember was a stubborn squeak in the bedsprings that adversely brought to mind the Khalil house cracking as it broke apart around them. Instead of disturbing their passion, though, this merely increased it, placed their love in the context of the lives they lived. Where it belonged, yes, yet leaving each wondering how long it might stay.

  Were they extending this case only to postpone their own parting? Had they constructed a convenient scenario that would provide their passion a context in which to continue?

  Neither posed these questions during the rhythmic pacing that accompanied the squeaks and groans of the bedsprings. But later, when their passion was spent and Ben lay with his face against D
anielle’s neck, when the grasp of sleep continued to elude them, they needed to speak as much as they had needed to make love.

  “The attack tonight,” Ben started. “It must have been your people. Wanting to silence us, keep us from the truth.”

  “What if it was Fasil’s people, trying to keep us from destroying whatever it is they’re planning?”

  “Would such people know where to leave you the message that drew you to Khalil’s house?”

  He felt her go tense alongside him, then heard her sigh. “No. Not very likely.”

  “It doesn’t matter which set of enemies was responsible for what happened tonight. I only brought it up because I wanted you to understand that I know how you feel. The woman who was killed three nights ago,” Ben continued more softly, “my father’s mistress, she was one of them—Hamas. We’ve both been betrayed, you see. I should have known, of course. I should have listened. She tried to tell me but ...”

  “But what?”

  “She was all I had left of my father. I was seven when he left us. I never saw him again. It never seemed fair.”

  “Is that why you came back?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I looked for Dalia, in any case, and I found her. She made me feel less cheated. But it was a lie. She was a lie, to me and to him. She had us both fooled, the father and the son. I can live having been left nothing. It’s realizing you never had anything to begin with that’s hard.”

  She pulled slightly away from him. “Losing what you’ve always believed in is just as bad. I spent my day confirming how someone in Israeli intelligence ‘created’ the second killer. They knew exactly what they were doing. . . .” And she proceeded to explain how the deleted portions of the case file had led her to a sketch artist and then the forensics lab with a vial of fish oil. She told him that the sketch was of Abu Garib, the man Ben had killed on the boat, and confirmed he had no scar.

  “They recruited someone who looked like Garib and sent him after Fasil and the other members of his cell.”

  “Then, all of a sudden, my government offers to help catch him.”

  “The real Wolf, Pakad, not the imposter someone else created.”

  “A rogue faction?”

  “It’s the only thing that makes any sense.”

  “So my superiors knew what was going on and sent me to stop it, making as little fuss as possible. Save the peace process, become a hero, but most of all, end this radical faction’s renegade operation.”

  “Because once the real killer was caught, the copycat could no longer function with impunity.” Ben seemed to tense. “But it’s not over, Pakad, because now we’ve got to deal with whatever Fasil’s group was planning. If it didn’t die with him, then the threat is still out there.”

  “What can we do?”

  “Go back to our respective superiors tomorrow and explain our suspicions. We keep it simple, the truth, at least as we know—believe—it to be: a second killer is still at large, responsible for at least three terrorist deaths. About the cover-ups and complicities, well, we play dumb.”

  “And Fasil’s plan?”

  “That’s the kicker, because only by continuing our investigation can we uncover what he was up to and stop it.”

  “If his death hasn’t ruined it already.”

  “A man like Fasil would have had a backup, you can bet on that. I think even Dalia was starting to have doubts. I think it was because of whatever operation Fasil was planning.”

  “But our superiors are more likely to gamble on it dying with him than we are; they think they have more to lose if this blows up in their faces.”

  “They’ll listen to us because they have to now.”

  “And why is that?”

  Ben smiled sardonically as he reached for her again. “Because we’re heroes.”

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Chapter 51

  C

  ommander Shaath lumbered over to the door in a rage, eyes fixed hatefully on Ben the whole time.

  “I’ll brief you as soon as Inspector Kamal and I are finished,” Mayor Sumaya promised, keeping his small frame between the two men.

  He heaved a sigh once Shaath was through the door, and fixed a gaze of grave concern on Ben.

  “Requesting that a superior officer leave the room shows severe disrespect. I trust you have good reason.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t respect him, sir, nor do I trust him. He didn’t want me getting this case to begin with, and then did everything in his power to see that I failed.”

  Sumaya stopped directly in front of Ben. “Actually, he approved of your being given the assignment.”

  Ben was taken aback, but only briefly. “Of course, because it took the heat off him. The blame for failure, when it came, would be mine to bear. He never considered I might actually succeed.”

  “I may have been alone in that regard. You proved me right. Don’t do anything to prove me wrong now.” Sumaya slid back behind his desk, remained standing. “I understand you checked yourself out of the hospital yesterday. Left no word where you could be reached. There were matters that needed attending, loose ends. And you missed the press conference. The President was disappointed. He had hoped to meet you.”

  “I will be glad to meet him,” Ben told him, “once this case is really over.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There are two killers, sir, and one of them’s still out there.”

  * * * *

  Danielle was planning to setup a meeting with Herschel Giott and Moshe Baruch, but they beat her to the punch with a phone call early Monday morning. She dressed quickly and hurried straight to the National Police building.

  Upstairs in Giott’s office, the rav nitzav and Baruch had been joined by a leisurely dressed nondescript man with a cigarette dangling from his fingers. Neither Baruch nor Giott introduced her, acting as though he wasn’t there. The stranger hung back in the room’s shadows, smoke rising toward the ceiling.

  Giott’s and Baruch’s grim faces were in stark contrast to the triumphant expressions they had worn yesterday.

  “Sit down, Pakad.”

  Danielle took her customary seat. Giott stole a glance at Baruch before resuming.

  “A number of disturbing reports have crossed my desk over the past twelve hours. I expect you can explain them.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Indications,” began Moshe Baruch, “are that you are continuing an investigation that is considered closed.”

  “This behavior is not befitting a hero to the state, Pakad,” Giott added. “I’m sure you have a perfectly logical explanation for your actions.”

  “I would like to continue working on this investigation.”

  “And why is that?” Baruch asked her.

  “Too many inconsistencies, things that don’t fit.”

  “The Palestinian’s ideas?” from Giott.

  “His name is Kamal. And the ideas were mine as well. We were working together, remember?”

  “A caustic attitude is not an endearing feature on a woman or an officer of Shin Bet,” Baruch cautioned.

  Danielle felt the eyes of the third man in the room upon her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  “You look like you’ve been injured,” Giott said suspiciously.

  “Just a fall. Clumsy and stupid of me.”

  “You should have listened to me and taken your vacation.” The rav nitzav’s voice was the sternest she could ever recall. “As it is now, you have caused this office considerable embarrassment.”

  “But I’m about to save you from even more,” she said in a firm voice. “Both of you.”

  “And how will you do that, Pakad?”

  “We thought this case was closed. We were wrong.”

  * * * *

  B

  en had methodically presented his evidence to Sumaya. He had told him of the initial trip the terrorist Mohammed Fasil had made to the West Bank on the very night Leila Kha
lil had been murdered. He explained Danielle’s discovering the doctoring of the original case files in order that the killer’s MO could be copied without fear of recrimination. And, finally, he related the deadly plot Fasil had been hatching in the days before he too was murdered.

  “This second killer has concerned himself only with killing terrorists. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”