Stratton looked back at Abed who had not moved. ‘Abed,’ he called out, just loud enough for him to hear. ‘You’re gonna have to draw his fire.’
Abed understood what the Englishman wanted and although it crossed his mind that it might be a ploy to allow Stratton to escape, his instincts said to trust him. The Englishman was a soldier and calm under fire, and, more compelling than any other reason, he had no choice.
Abed nodded and looked around for some better cover. He did not like where he was anyway, with his face in the dirt, and a safer hiding place would be very much appreciated. But there was nothing close by. His best bet was to move up the hill where there were larger rocks and some foliage. Cover from view in this case was as good as cover from fire. But it was closer to the sniper.
Abed gathered himself, took a breath and sprang like a cat, rolled over the rocks towards the sniper and scrambled forward on all fours. The sniper fired hitting the ground inches in front of Abed, smacking him in the face with gravel. At the same moment Stratton leapt from his position and ran as fast as he could to the gully. He had estimated it would take him three to four seconds to get there and if his estimation of the sniper’s abilities was correct, that would be ample time.
He dived across the last few metres, rolled into the gully without a shot being fired at him and lay there for a few seconds. One other thing now seemed certain. The sniper was working alone.
Stratton could no longer see Abed and wondered if he had been hit, but there was no point in thinking about that right now. He could not waste another second and began to crawl up the gully as quickly as possible. Several yards up the hill, the cover increased and he got to his feet to move more quickly. Suddenly a shot rang out and he hit the deck. A second later he realised it had not been aimed at him but at Abed. Stratton pushed on and made his way to the crest.
The ground was almost flat at the top for a few yards before rising steeply again to meet the impregnable wall. There was no sign of anyone on the wall but then only a complete idiot would fire from that position since they would be silhouetted against the sky.
Keeping as low as he could without getting on to his knees he made his way towards the probable location of the sniper. Another shot rang out, again aimed below, and Stratton got down on to his belly and crawled to a crop of boulders from where he could see the likely sniper position. Since the gunman was still firing he was obviously confident his other target had run away. As he scanned for any sign of Abed, he saw him move quickly between a pair of boulders. The sniper fired again hitting the rocks inches from Abed. The Palestinian went up a notch in Stratton’s estimations. He was continuing to draw fire, allowing Stratton to get closer and at the same time find the sniper’s location, and judging from the last shot he was just the other side of Stratton’s cover.
Stratton moved swiftly and rounded the boulder to see a man squatting in what looked like a shell scrape with stones neatly arranged around the edges, his rifle in his shoulder and scope in front of his eye. The man heard Stratton step behind him and as he scrambled to turn and pull his rifle around, Stratton dropped a foot on to the weapon where the man was holding it and brought his fist down on to his jaw with such force he shattered several of the man’s teeth. The man yelped, giving up immediately, and released the rifle to hold his face, bringing his knees up into the foetal position in an effort to protect himself from further punishment while he cried some garbled words that could have been in any language. Stratton pulled the weapon away from the man, ripped out the breech, tossed it away, then jammed the end of the barrel between two large rocks and stamped on it fiercely enough to put a kink in it, rendering it inoperable.
The man looked between his fingers at Stratton and his whimpering slowed as he noticed his assailant’s Western features.
‘You ain’t Palestinian,’ he said in what sounded like a New York accent.
Stratton ignored him and moved to where he could see Abed looking up between some rocks. When he saw Stratton, he got to his feet brushing the dust from his clothes.
‘Where you from, man?’ the sniper asked in a pathetic tone, blood seeping from his mouth, the broken teeth giving him pain. Stratton did not answer. ‘If I knew you weren’t Palestinian I’d a never shot at ya. Honest, man.’
‘Why didn’t you ask?’
‘I’m . . . I’m sorry.’
Stratton threw down the gun, his anger melting at the sight of the pitiful creature, a flask and sandwich box beside him. ‘Where you from?’ he asked.
‘Brooklyn. I’m American.’
‘What are you doing here? Hunting out of season in New York?’
‘I’m Jewish, man.’
‘You speak Hebrew?’
‘Some words . . . No.’
Stratton scanned the walls of the settlement in case the shooting had attracted any of the sniper’s friends. There was no sound or movement but prudence dictated that they move on as soon as possible.
Abed climbed over the edge and stood the other side of the sniper, looking down on him. The sniper rolled on to his back to look up at Abed and grew even more frightened at the sight of the Arab. He looked between the two men frantically trying to gauge them.
‘What are you gonna do to me?’
‘You got any other weapons?’ Stratton asked.
The man hesitated before deciding this was not a man to lie to.
‘I gotta semi,’ he said, indicating the left side of his torso.
Stratton leaned down and pulled open the man’s jacket to reveal a steel-coloured semi-automatic pistol in a shoulder holster. He pulled it out of the spring-grip and inspected it. Afghanistan was the last time he had held a Russian 9mm Tokarev. The date on the side was 1938, the same age as the one he had taken off a dead Taliban in Kabul. He removed the magazine to find it full of the peculiar long Tokarev 9mm copper-coated bullets. He pulled back the top slide to find the breech not loaded and repeatedly slid it back and forth to test the return spring, the mechanism designed to pick up another bullet and shove it into the breech after the previous one had been fired - the return spring was one of the weaknesses of old semi-automatic pistols and this one was almost twice Stratton’s age. It felt strong enough. Perhaps it had recently been replaced. Stratton slid the magazine back into the bottom of the pistol grip, cocked it, putting a round into the breech, and let his arm fall to his side, the barrel, perhaps coincidentally, aimed at the man’s crotch. The man knew his weapon well enough. The Tokarev had no safety catch and when the hammer was back it was ready to fire at the touch of the trigger.
‘Spare clips?’ Stratton asked, using the American word for magazine.
The man kept one eye on the pistol and one on Stratton as he quickly reached into a pocket to produce a spare magazine filled with bullets.
‘These nine mil. longs are hard to come by.Where’d you get them?’ Stratton asked.
‘A guy in the settlement. He can get any weapon you want.’
Stratton placed the magazine in a pocket.
‘What are you gonna do to me?’ the man asked again, this time expressing more concern.
Stratton looked at Abed as if to ask him for an answer. Abed looked away. It was not his place to say, but if it were up to him he would leave the man alone. He no longer had the stomach for killing. He would never kill again unless he had no choice, he was sure of that.
Stratton had no intention of harming the sniper any further. For some strange reason he felt something of a hypocrite even considering it. He was not like this man who was here for the fun of it. There were several places in the world where humans could be hunted and shot with impunity, and the Israeli settlements were just one of them.Another was working for Western intelligence, but it was a far more exclusive club.
Stratton aimed the pistol at the man’s heart, placed the pad of his index finger on the trigger and pulled it; at the same time his thumb caught the top of the hammer as it sprang forward, and let it gently fall into its seat against the back of the fir
ing pin.
The man flinched, then exhaled slowly, feeling a little giddy as Stratton placed the gun in his pocket.
‘Go home,’ Stratton said, and then turned and walked away.
The sniper switched his gaze to Abed, wondering if he might harm him, but Abed stepped over him and followed Stratton.
They walked at a brisk pace down the gully and on to the path to leave the settlement behind. Ten minutes later they headed up a track to find themselves amid the bustling throng of cars, trucks and people lining up to pass through the Kalandia checkpoint into Ramallah.
They had covered the distance in silence but Abed had hardly taken his eyes off Stratton, wondering what kind of man he was. What fascinated him was Stratton’s complexity. The man was clearly troubled by something, but Abed felt certain it had nothing to do with the problems in this country. He was Abed’s first contact with the West, he was the enemy, and in a very short time he not only believed he could trust him, he had to admit he liked him. That troubled Abed even more.
They climbed into one of the many taxis dropping Palestinians off at the checkpoint and Stratton told the driver to take them to the American Colony.
Chapter 13
The block of wood sat on the writing desk in Zhilev’s room with the instruction booklet lying open beside it. Zhilev’s gnarled finger moved down the page and when he reached the end of the paragraph, he studied the diagram pertaining to it. He took the knife off the coffee table that came with the complementary bowl of fruit and placed the tip of the blade into a thin slot barely visible in a knot in the wood. He pushed it down exactly a centimetre and levered it slowly to one side. A small section of the bark popped open on a cloth hinge to reveal a small panel of coloured buttons and a numeric pad.
Zhilev turned to the next page of the booklet detailing how to adjust a timer that could be set in increments of fifteen minutes up to thirty hours. He had already calculated three hours would give him ample time to get a taxi out of the city and on the road to Haifa.That was the minimum time he needed to get away from the danger area, allowing for unforeseen delays and without leaving the device alone too long and risking it being found. He chose Haifa because it was a seaport, a boat being his best bet out of the country since he did not have an entry visa and could therefore not use the airport. He did not know precisely how he was going to manage that but he was confident, after achieving so much, that he would find a way. The second and more important reason for heading towards Haifa was because it was in the north. The prevailing winds in the region blew from the north-west and any nuclear fallout after the explosion would head south-east.
After setting the timer he studied the next paragraph which explained the arming sequence. He had the option of pre-arming or arming on site, and he chose the latter simply as a precaution. He would have plenty of time to carry out that phase when he reached the target. Satisfied with the procedure so far, he turned to the last chapter in the book which dealt with the safety protocols. This was the part that had bothered him most throughout the mission. None of Russia’s nuclear devices could be detonated without the permission of the Kremlin. This was in the form of a special code transmitted only with the consent of the head of state and, combined with the operator’s own code, allowed the activation of the arming mechanism. This rule applied to every nuclear device in Russia’s arsenal, except those hidden in secret caches abroad and used by the Spetsnaz for international sabotage. A bypass had been built into the bomb’s arming sequence so it could be detonated in the event the chairman and his immediate subordinates were killed in an unexpected nuclear assault by the West. In those circumstances all Spetsnaz in operational areas had orders to continue with their assignments regardless, and to achieve that end they needed to be able to remove all safety protocols so they could initiate their bombs manually. Needless to say, overcoming the protocols was crucial to Zhilev’s entire mission.
Zhilev read the instructions carefully, as he had many times before, but this time he actually pressed the buttons on the numeric pad in the order stated. A small LED screen reacted favourably to each button pressed, and when he got to the end he expected the procedure to be complete, but, to his horror, a message came up on the LED strip stating: ENTER 6-DIGIT CODE.
Zhilev stared at it in disbelief. The book had said nothing about any code. He hurriedly searched the document once more in case he had missed something, but knowing he could not have read anything as important as that and not noticed. He started from the beginning, this time focusing on any numbers that could be interpreted as a code, but as he reached the end of the book without any obvious six numbers, panic set in.
He placed the booklet on the desk and stepped back, rigid with frustration and anger. Suddenly the room seemed to shrink to the size of a prison cell and he felt claustrophobic.
He had no code.
He grabbed his straggly hair wanting to pull it out. Without the code the bomb could not be detonated. The device was too sophisticated to be tampered with, and he would not have a clue what he was doing anyway. How could he be so stupid?
His mind flew back to the cache, scanning his memory for any hint of a code. He wondered if it had been written on the box somewhere, or if he had left some crucial part of the instruction papers in the packaging. He contemplated going back to England and the cache to look for it but he wrenched the thought from his mind as ridiculous. He had failed. The entire journey had been wasted. The only other way he could detonate the bomb was with the consent of the President of the Republic of Russia and there was not much chance of gaining that.
Zhilev wanted to bang his head against a wall to punish himself for being such a useless fool. He clenched his fists, shook them and let out a scream. He had not only failed himself, his heritage and the Spetsnaz, but his brother too.
He crossed the room and raised a fist to slam it through the wardrobe then looked back at the bomb and decided to take it out on that. He walked back to the desk raising his hand, and brought it down on to the block with great force in a momentary suicidal hope of detonating it and putting him out of his misery, but all he managed to do was break the panel cover and send it spinning across the room in pieces. He raised his hand to hit it once again but was stopped in mid-strike by a thought flashing across his head. This system had been designed for field conditions in the event of an all-out war. Every weapon built for the Spetsnaz took into consideration the worst conditions a soldier could operate in, including physical disablement due to health or battle. In other words, it was designed to be simple. But this had not been simple. Had he been an operative in a war situation he would have failed due to a code he did not have. It did not make sense.
He lowered his hand to think about that in more detail.The people who designed the operating procedures must have considered a scenario where an operative would have to grab the device and the instruction book and hurry to a target to set it up for detonation. Designing the device was one thing, but the people whose job it was to think of the practical applications were professional soldiers like Zhilev. It was precisely the kind of job he might have had if they had kept him in the Spetsnaz instead of forcibly retiring him.
He picked up the booklet to feel the pages. As he had discovered on the boat, it was not made of paper but a thin material, hard to tear and which could suffer soaking and soiling without the ink running. Both the bomb and the booklet were made of relatively indestructible materials because they were the two essential elements to success. The key had to be in them somewhere.
He studied the instruction sheet with a new eye, looking for any kind of pattern, but not until he reached the back page did he find a clue. All the main headings were placed in rectangular boxes, and on the back of the booklet there was a pattern of different-sized rectangles made up of lines of varying thicknesses, but the one at the bottom-right corner of the page was the same size and design as the ones used for the headings.
He needed to think in practical terms, which was not difficult f
or him. If something was written on the page that was normally invisible, it had to be activated, and if that was the case the catalyst had to be something the operative carried on him all the time, even when things became desperate. Water was an obvious one, but the booklet had gotten wet many times while at sea and nothing appeared different about it. Blood was something the operative would always have, and urine. Zhilev went for the easy option first and spat on the rectangle. He rubbed it in and almost immediately the area began to darken. It was changing, that was for sure. Something in his spittle, a hormone perhaps, was reacting with a chemical in the paper. Zhilev spat on it again and rubbed it in further. The area began to turn black and numbers appeared in white on the dark background, six of them. He could hardly believe it.
Zhilev tapped in the numbers, slowly and methodically, not wanting to make a mistake. As he hit the last number the LED bar went blank and a second later a word appeared: ARMED.
He had done it.
He was frozen to the spot, staring at the device, his heart thumping with excitement. He had overcome the security protocols. All he had to do now was press the three trigger switches, one after the other, and the device would detonate three hours later.
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