The Burgas Affair

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The Burgas Affair Page 28

by Ellis Shuman


  Another shot was fired. A bullet ricocheted off the boulder, landing in the dirt not far from Boyko’s shoe. The Hunter was getting near. If Boyko wanted to survive, he needed to move quickly, but which way led to freedom?

  He eased himself to his knees and struggled to his feet. He crouched down and with all the strength that he could muster, he raced across the clearing toward the nearby woods where his fate would be sealed, one way or another.

  49

  When Ayala came to, she was lying on broken pavement with a heavy weight strapped around her waist. A quick glance made her stomach drop. There was no mistaking the tiny wires, the thick strips of duct tape, the packed charges. She instantly recognized the apparatus for what it was—an explosive device likely to detonate at any moment. She gasped, realizing her life was in imminent danger.

  Her vision cleared somewhat. She saw pedestrians gathered at a distance, staring and pointing before backing off apprehensively, ready to flee the scene. Traffic on the busy street came to a halt. Passengers spilled from the doors of a long, noisy tram and raced for safety. A siren sounded somewhere, growing louder by the second.

  Where was she? Her mind was blank.

  This can’t be happening! How did she get here? Who had strapped on the explosives? She shook her head, sure she was imagining her predicament and it would all vanish like the last vestiges of an extremely gruesome nightmare. She blinked back tears but when she fully opened her eyes, she was still on the ground. A nervous policeman held back the crowd and barked into his radio.

  “Help me,” she groaned, lifting her arm. Then, seeing that motion shifted the bizarre contraption attached to her body, she settled back, not willing to trigger a fatal explosion. She looked down again at the protrusion of colored wires and switches. The belt tightened. She took several deep breaths in attempts to calm her racing heart. The onlookers were shouting at her; their language was foreign. She cried out to them in desperation, in hopes they would take immediate action to prevent the impending mass-casualty event. Didn’t they realize their lives were threatened as well?

  With growing acceptance of what was at stake she knew, instinctively, there was nothing she could do. She was about to die.

  One man, either very brave or incredibly stupid, approached her and started slapping her face. She felt a slight stinging sensation on her cheek, but his actions were proving effective. The fog was lifting. Somewhat. Where was she?

  She was sprawled on pavement. A sidewalk, or near a sidewalk. Propped against a concrete wall. Her limbs, spread out awkwardly on the hard cement, were numb. A cool breeze striking the exposed, raw skin of her face surprised her. She shivered, but the coldness was within her.

  The man who had slapped her retreated when he realized how near-fatal his foolish Samaritan efforts had been. The crowd continued to watch from a distance, while the lone policeman waited desperately for reinforcements to arrive and help control this unexpected, dangerous situation.

  “Do you speak English?” one of the men shouted at her. She turned her head and tried to answer, but no words escaped her mouth. She nodded a response, but realizing now that she was in Bulgaria, she shook her head from left to right to indicate a positive reply. Yes, she did speak English. And, he had to help her!

  By the looks of the impressive buildings nearby, and the heavy traffic on the streets, she saw she must be in Sofia. But how did she end up trapped on the sidewalk with her life in danger?

  “Help!”

  She glanced at her waist—at the colored wires, the duct tape, and the deadly pouches. How could she disarm the bomb strapped to her body?

  Ayala dropped her hand and froze. Any wrong move and she would set off the explosives. She shook her head, trying to make this horrific situation disappear. When she closed her eyes, she saw Tomer. Her brother—so tall and handsome, so helpful and considerate. He had always been there for her. He had taken care of her, like a loving big brother should. And now he was gone, due to the chilling cruelty of a suicide bomber. A terrorist, with explosives strapped to his waist, much like the explosive-filled pouches heavy on her sides. A terrorist who had not thought twice about taking Tomer’s life.

  Burgas! The reason she was in Bulgaria came back to her. She was here to investigate the suicide bombing that had taken the lives of Israeli tourists shortly after their arrival in the country. And the investigator of that bombing would lose her own life in a similar attack!

  She opened her eyes. She was still lying on pavement, with the crowd not far back. Everyone seemed curious to get a closer look at the woman with a belt of explosives wrapped around her waist. A person with a bomb belt? That was not something you saw every day! It was the latest curiosity, an attraction everyone needed to see personally, and from as close as possible. Mobile phones were held aloft, snapping pictures.

  “Stay back!” No one appeared to hear, or adhere to, her warning. The onlookers inched forward, misguided and foolhardy in the belief that it wouldn’t be dangerous to approach.

  Where was the bomb squad? In Israel, the moment there was a bombing the streets were closed off and security forces and ambulances rushed to the scene. Crowds instinctively knew to keep a safe distance. Here, nothing.

  “Help me,” Ayala repeated. The crowd drew closer still.

  She was going to die! The bomb would explode at any second, and only the darkness would remain. Forever. She would be gone, lost to some other world, some other dimension. She would be reunited with Tomer, but where?

  Ayala didn’t believe in heaven, and she was not particularly religious, but deep inside her, as a Jewish woman, she felt called upon to recite the Sh’ma, a final testament to her faith. But before the ancient Hebrew words could make it to her lips, she began to shake. Stop moving, she told herself. No sudden movements. The bomb could detonate at any second. Remain calm. Don’t move, don’t even breathe!

  “Who are you?”

  The policeman shouting at her from a distance seemed to be as confused as the crowd gathered around him.

  “I am an Israeli,” Ayala cried out, hoping the policeman could hear her. “Az sum ot Izra’el,” she added in broken Bulgarian, to make sure her identity was clear. “Call the Israeli Embassy.”

  “Remain calm,” the officer responded in English. “No sudden movements, please. Do not do anything that you will regret.”

  “I am not a bomber!” Ayala shouted, realizing the policeman thought she intended to detonate herself on the busy street. No! He didn’t understand the situation at all. “Call the Israeli Embassy!” she repeated.

  She closed her eyes, fighting back the tears, fighting back the fear and desperation growing inside her. How had this happened? The last thing she remembered was being held in the warehouse by Damian and his thugs. His sarcastic tone, his toothy smile. His words—he seemed to know all about her; he knew all about Tomer! Then a vision came of being held down by the guards as a syringe pierced her skin. She broke into a cold sweat.

  Damian! He had done this to her! He had strapped the explosive belt to her waist and dumped her on a busy city street. His words came back to her. “It’s a little ironic, isn’t it? You came to Bulgaria to investigate a suicide bombing, and now . . .” At last she fully understood his intentions. He planned to turn her into a suicide bomber, to have her detonate among innocent bystanders. “‘An eye for an eye.’ Jewish lives were lost so you must kill Muslims to even the score.” And she, too, would die.

  “Do not move!” the English-speaking policeman called out to her. Don’t worry, she wanted to tell him. She didn’t intend on moving a muscle. She wasn’t capable of doing anything.

  “Ayala?”

  She opened her eyes, somewhat in a daze. She must have fainted, lost consciousness for a moment, but now she woke at the sound of her name. It was a familiar voice, a voice from her past. A voice she recognized as belonging to a member of her family. She strained her eyes to look for this person she knew so well.

  “Ani poh!” she called ou
t. She shouted out the words “I am here” in Hebrew, knowing this was the language that would connect her to the one person who could save her.

  He pushed through the crowd, past the curious onlookers and the confused policemen. He approached her bravely and as he stepped closer, she let out a deep breath. It was him! She couldn’t believe it. And then, he was next to her, stroking her forehead.

  “Uncle Yaniv!” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Never mind that,” he said as he warily regarded the wires and explosives wrapped around her waist. “The question is, how did you end up like this?”

  “I’ve been trying to figure that out,” she said, relieved that her uncle was at her side. But no, that meant he would die as well when the bombs went off. She couldn’t let that happen because it would only add to the pain and loss her parents would feel when they learned the news.

  “Get back,” she cried. “You’ll be killed!”

  “No one is going to be killed,” he replied. “We’re going to get you out of this. Let me take a look and see what we’ve got.”

  Taking care not to touch the wires or the explosives, he carefully ran his hands along the insides of her leather jacket, pulling back the fabric where he could, calculating the extent of the danger.

  “Are you a bomb expert as well?”

  “No, that’s one part of the training I missed,” he said. He was joking, but his eyes and his expression were dead serious as he crouched down beside her. “But we have experts who will know how to defuse this. Experts back in Tel Aviv.”

  And with that, Yaniv took out his cell phone and punched in a number, establishing contact with an office in Israel. He spoke in rapid Hebrew, first in code to confirm his identity, and then in normal language even Ayala could understand. Yaniv’s voice was remarkably calm and steady, showing little of the nervousness she felt. How could he keep his cool when his life, just like hers, was endangered?

  Yaniv held his phone over Ayala’s body, slowly lowering it to just above the wires and explosives wrapped around her waist. The phone’s camera broadcast live video images of the bombs to Tel Aviv.

  “Move in a bit on the left,” a distant voice directed, heard over the phone’s speaker.

  Yaniv moved the instrument to his left, but Tel Aviv quickly corrected him to scan Ayala’s body on the opposite side. Left was right, and right was left. And everything was wrong, very wrong.

  “Okay, we appear to have a motion-sensitive explosive device,” Tel Aviv informed them. “Ayala, stay still. We need to get this monster disarmed.”

  “I’m not moving,” Ayala whispered. She repeated the words a bit louder, so that her colleagues in Israel could hear.

  A chill raced up Ayala’s arms and her teeth chattered audibly. She had to control herself! The slightest movement and the bomb would explode! She closed her eyes and consciously tried to force her muscles and her body to relax.

  “Yaniv, do you see the red wire connecting to the top of the explosive pack?”

  “I see it,” Yaniv said, holding the phone closer to that part of the belt.

  “That’s the wire you’re going to cut, as close to the pack as possible. Do you have something to make a clean cut?”

  “I have my all-purpose Swiss Army knife,” Yaniv replied, a bit of humor in his voice. He held the tiny scissors close to Ayala’s waist in one hand while continuing to film everything with the phone in the other “Should I cut here?” he asked,

  There was no response from Tel Aviv, so Yaniv repeated the question, a bit louder. “Should I cut here? Tel Aviv, can you hear me?”

  Complete silence on the line.

  Yaniv glanced at the Bulgarian police officers who were holding back the curious crowd a short distance away. The onlookers were remarkably quiet, struck silent as they gazed at the amazing spectacle playing out before their eyes. A television crew stood to the side, filming and transmitting the pageantry live to all of Bulgaria. Traffic had come to a standstill. The trams had stopped clanking their way through the city streets. One of the policemen took out his own cell phone to unabashedly snap a picture of the Israeli couple at the center of attraction.

  “What happened?” Ayala asked, staring up at her uncle. Yaniv’s head was haloed against bright sunlight, making him look almost angelic in appearance. She couldn’t make out his features. Had she died? Was it all over?

  “We lost the connection,” Yaniv said. He pushed a button to redial. He held the phone patiently over Ayala’s waist waiting for an answer. Finally, Tel Aviv was again on the line.

  “Yes, cut that wire,” came the command from abroad.

  This is it, Ayala thought. It all comes down to the clipping of one small red wire. If it’s the correct one to cut, she would live. If a mistake was made, it would all end here. One small clip of a Swiss Army knife’s miniature scissors.

  Yaniv clipped the wire. Nothing happened, which of course meant everything! Ayala breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Okay, there is another wire, the yellow one leading to the back of the pack,” Tel Aviv instructed as Yaniv moved the phone to his left.

  “This one?” Yaniv asked, gingerly touching a small wire with the blade of the knife.

  “Yes, cut that as well.”

  Another wire clipped, another sigh of relief. Yaniv undid the ties of the belt. Ayala felt the weight lift from her waist. The danger dissipated and she sat up. She blinked twice, tried to clear her head. The silence of the previous moments gave way to the normal sounds of the busy Bulgarian capital. Traffic. Cars honking. The screech of a tram. People talking, yelling.

  Three local policemen rushed forward to join them. One was obviously a bomb expert; he wore protective gear and a helmet. The other two were regular uniformed officers. The specialist eased the explosive belt away from Ayala’s body and she was raised to her feet. Yaniv escorted her quickly to an unmarked car belonging to the Israeli Embassy.

  “You’re safe now,” he reassured her as they pulled away from the curb.

  She rested her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes to escape thoughts of the horror on the pavement that had nearly taken her life. But something confused her; something didn’t make sense.

  “How did you just happen to be there when I needed you? What were you doing in Sofia? Were you following me?”

  “No, of course not. I was dealing with other things. I can’t discuss that. You know how it is, Ayala. But by coincidence, I was at the embassy when the call came in. I came as quickly as possible. Anyway, don’t worry about this. The Bulgarians will want to question you about what happened, how you ended up with an explosive belt around your waist. As soon as they finish, you can go home,” he said, patting her hand. “It’s all over.”

  But it wasn’t over, Ayala thought, her eyes opening wide. One thing still troubled her, weighed heavily on her mind. Where was Boyko? Was he okay? Had he been injured? She couldn’t leave Bulgaria now, not until she knew what had happened to her partner.

  Until she heard that Boyko was safe and sound, her Bulgarian assignment would not truly be over.

  50

  A shot rang out, followed by another. The first struck the bark of a tree to his right, a warning of what was yet to come. The second went wide of its target. As splinters of branch and foliage fell about him, Boyko flinched. He scurried deeper into the woods.

  His escape had not been undetected; the opposite was true. The farther Boyko made it into the brush, away from the clearing where he had been tied to the tree, the closer the bullets were landing. He didn’t have the luxury of looking back to detect where the Hunter was hiding, or to determine if more than one gunman was firing at him. All that Boyko could think about was the necessity to flee.

  It wasn’t easy. His ribs ached; his head pounded with such intensity that he felt he was about to pass out. He could only see from one eye; the other was swollen shut. At least he was no longer spitting out blood, but his throat was parched from the residue of bleeding from his gums. Yo
u can do this, he told himself. Ignore the pain. Move. Now!

  Boyko willed himself forward. He forced his legs into action, to climb over rocks, to scoot around trees and bushes as he searched for shelter.

  Another shot was fired. A bullet whizzed overhead, vanishing into the overhanging branches. There was no way a professional hunter like the Hunter would repeatedly miss his target. Unless the madman’s shots were not intended to strike him at all!

  It is time to go hunting.

  Those had been the Hunter’s exact words. What they meant was becoming increasingly more apparent.

  The severe beating Boyko had suffered in the warehouse at the hands of the Hunter’s thugs was apparently not sufficient punishment. Leaving Boyko stranded in the woods, lashed to a tree and cut off from civilization was not enough. The Hunter was deliberately taking his time getting revenge.

  Boyko realized his attempt to escape through the woods played directly into a cruel, insane game. The Hunter, it was now clear, took more pleasure in chasing his prey than in actually killing them. Quick executions did not serve his evil purpose. He wanted his victims to fear their impending doom. He savored their horror. Stretch out the terror as long as possible. Make his prey fear him, for out of this fear came respect. The Hunter demanded that from his victims, but Boyko refused to give in.

  It is time to go hunting.

  Boyko stopped in his tracks. Instead of taking cover, he moved to an unprotected spot, a few meters away from the nearest tree. He was entirely exposed, clearly visible to those pursuing him.

  “Enough of this game!” Boyko stood as straight as he could, struggling to support his wounded body. “Enough!”

  His words were met by silence. A silence that was not total silence, but one full of forest sounds—buzzing, humming, shifting leaves, crackling undergrowth, a bird’s call, a fly drawing near to his swollen face.

  Boyko scanned his surroundings with his good eye. He was out in the open, exposed, yet no further shots were fired. Nothing moved among the trees; the branches were still. “Can you hear me?” he called out, turning his head slowly.

 

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