by Gary Haynes
Tom leapt over the body and tore into the teenager behind. He refused to use the SIG’s butt, but, after punching the kid in the eye, he slapped him so hard across the face that the others were shocked into temporary inaction. Stepping back, Tom saw the blood trickling from the corner of the kid’s mouth.
He turned as the tough one came for him, his punch telegraphed as he drew his clenched fist back to his shoulder. Tom moved with disconcerting speed, springing forwards and hitting him in the ribs with his extended knee. The force made the teenager bend double at the waist, winded and in obvious pain. Immediately afterwards Tom punched down into the guy’s kidney. He yelped before sinking to the rubble-strewn ground.
Tom stepped back and looked at the others. As he’d hoped, their desire to fight had been sapped by the speed and intensity of the violence, their sense of self-preservation spiking, no doubt. He raised the SIG and scanned about with it before moving forwards authoritatively, passing between them. No one so much as shoulder-clipped him.
He didn’t look back, knowing that if they’d all attacked him with vigour and at once, they would have been able to take him down and overpower him. But psychology was as important as martial skill in this type of scenario, and both had played their part.
A minute later, Tom was standing on the edge of the bank where he’d left an injured Crane, his face dripping sweat after his exertions and the sprint across the wasteland. He clenched his jaw and bent over at the waist, cursing.
Crane had disappeared. It was all bad.
Chapter 98
When Crane had first heard the noise from beyond the point where the stream had silted up he’d thought it was a rat. When he’d been held captive by Hezbollah in the eighties he’d gotten used to their close proximity and had often woken up with half a dozen of them sniffing around him. At first it had freaked him out, but after weeks of solitary they had become friends, or at least acceptable acquaintances, who’d managed somehow to keep him just on the right side of sane, despite the daily torture.
But by the time he’d realized that the shuffling sound, which had switched to behind him, wasn’t being made by a rodent, it’d been too late for him to draw his favoured Kimber Eclipse II handgun, even if he’d been in a fit state to aim and fire.
Now, he felt the cold steel of what he knew to be the muzzle of an assault rifle or submachine gun prodding into the back of his neck. Part of him hoped they’d get it over with.
But, presumably satisfied that he wasn’t about to resist, the muzzle was removed. He felt arms manoeuvring his own arms up so that the unseen man’s hands interlocked over his chest, and he was hauled up from the armpits. Before he had a chance to see any faces a hessian bag was put over his head and a string was drawn tight around his neck. Then his legs were raised and he almost gagged with pain.
After about a minute of being carried over uneven ground, he was lowered, he figured, onto the bed of a pickup truck. He’d been lifted up and placed down onto a hard surface, but no hood or door had been shut, and he’d smelt the faint aroma of pomegranates. A rough cover had been put over him, with the odour and texture of a musty tarp.
Now the bed of the truck lowered as two, maybe three, of his captors got up and sat beside him. He could hear their breathing. But no one had spoken, nor did speak as the vehicle pulled away.
Oh, Jesus, he thought, not again. He began to quiver and whimper. He knew this time his mind would fracture beyond the point that he could function in the world. He fought the feeling with all of his intelligence and will power, but the memories overwhelmed him.
Chapter 99
The floor was damp, hard and cold, probably bare concrete, Crane thought. He guessed he was in a lockup because the men who’d carried him here hadn’t gone up or down stairs and had only carried him a few steps from the pickup truck once it had stopped. He’d heard a door bang shut and what had sounded like plastic rollers overhead.
He didn’t felt the breeze about him, either, so he’d figured he had to be inside. The stench of the stream had been replaced by the faint wafts from nearby orange groves, and salt from the sea.
But kidnappers didn’t keep victims in lockups or garages unless they were drugged and put underground. Whether it was a temporary stop, or, he forced himself to consider, a place of execution, he wasn’t sure. But both of those options seemed preferable to being put in the ground alive. He’d heard stories from the Middle East of kidnapped victims waking up in the dark in a box six feet beneath the earth after their abductors had been killed or a building had collapsed on top of them. He shuddered.
Then he heard those around him talking in Arabic about who he might be. An operative didn’t carry ID on a mission, except of the fake variety. They’d taken his from him en route in the pickup, together with his handgun. It said that he was a businessman, and he wouldn’t be the only businessman to carry a piece in Lebanon, even an unusual piece like the Kimber Eclipse II, with its elongated barrel.
The hessian sack was lifted and he winced, seeing that he was in a small space as he had figured, with concrete walls and a corrugated-iron roof, the darkness lit dimly by a kerosene lamp. The ache in his leg was making his eyes well with tears, and he forced himself to blink them away. The men who were standing around him were wearing woollen ski masks and green fatigues.
“Hezbollah?” Crane said. In truth, he didn’t know what else to say.
He heard them laughing and repeating what he’d said in mocking tones.
“Secret police?”
“Forget who we are,” a man said. “Who are you? Maybe you are a Syrian spy, huh?
Crane could tell that this got a few of the men more than a little excited. Apart from the car-bomb attacks that were being blamed on the Islamic State group coming over the Syrian border, the Syrian army had occupied Lebanon in 1975 as a result of the civil war and had only left in 2005 due to a popular uprising of the Lebanese known as the Cedar Revolution. That had been sparked by the murder of the former Lebanese premier, and had been blamed on the occupiers. Syrians, at least of the jihadist or official variety, weren’t welcome in Lebanon.
One of them drew what looked like a military combat knife and Crane could almost smell the desire for violence. He had to act quickly. He didn’t want to give up his CIA status just yet, because he wasn’t sure if these guys were a criminal gang who could sell him to another group, who could sell him on again, a process that often happened with Western kidnap victims in the Middle East. It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that he would in fact end up in the hands of Hezbollah, or maybe even taken over the border to Syria.
The guy with the knife moved forwards and bent down. He put the blade flat against Crane’s ear. “You won’t feel anything but the blood trickling down your neck,” he said.
“Wait,” another said. “You are not from Beirut. I do not think you are Lebanese, either. Tell us the truth. It is the only thing that will keep you alive.”
Crane had been trained in counterinterrogation techniques as a CIA overseas operative in his younger days to the point that he could recite them in his sleep, but he didn’t know who they were, and they knew he wasn’t Lebanese. Saying the wrong thing could get him killed in an instant. Maybe it was the pain rising in waves through his body, or his age, or the sense that he was too tired to play a potentially lethal game, but the CIA motto came into his mind at that moment: The Truth Will Set You Free.
He’d always thought that it was indecently ironic, but he couldn’t think of a better way just now, and if he was going to die he might as well die with that in mind. Despite the self-deprecation and his unwillingness to adopt modern traits, he loved the agency. It had been his life’s work, his family.
“I’m CIA.”
No one moved or spoke.
“I’m looking for a terrorist,” he said, deciding that under no circumstances would he mention Tom, even if it meant that he’d end up with nowhere to position his reading eyeglasses.
“The CIA think e
veryone who isn’t an American is a terrorist,” the man without the knife said.
“A Sunni Muslim protected by Hamas,” Crane said.
“He lies,” the knife man said, positioning the blade at Crane’s throat.
Crane felt oddly relaxed now. Like the CIA motto there was a great irony to dying in Lebanon. The thought had given him a semblance of peace, a skewed sense of belonging.
A man from the rear stepped forwards. “Wait,” he said.
Crane saw him looking down at him. “What is this man’s name?” he said.
“What difference does it make? Something’s not right here, and he will die,” the knife man said.
The other man walked forwards, bent down and snatched away the knife like a father taking a stick from his son. “His name?” the man said, ignoring the protestations of the other.
Crane felt he didn’t have a choice and there was something about the tone of the man’s voice that impelled him to speak, even if it cost him his life. “Ibrahim. He’s name’s Ibrahim.”
“What does he look like?” the man asked.
Crane just about detected the heightening sense of emotion in the man’s voice and demeanour. If this man knew of him, it was likely he knew him from the Middle East, not as a Caucasian.
“Six-three. Lean. Long hair. A beard.”
“Osama bin Laden is dead,” another man said.
Some laughed. But the man asking the questions did not. He said, “What else?”
Crane racked his brain. “Ibrahim always carried a sword into battle.”
The others were silent and the knife man had retreated back to the others. There was an air of anticipation. And, as Crane knew well, there was no anticipation like a man answering questions that could either save him or lead to him being food for worms.
“Did he fight in Syria? Is he a leader of men?” the man said, almost imploringly.
“Yes,” Crane said.
“Where did he go then?”
“Gaza.”
“Is he known by another name?”
Crane didn’t know, but then remembered what the jihadists called him and what the director had said in the secure conference room at Langley. “He’s sometimes known as the Sword of Allah.”
The man stepped forwards and removed his ski mask. “I am a Syrian,” he said. “A Christian. My name is Basilios Nassar. Ibrahim destroyed my town and killed my people. But he let me live.”
Chapter 100
Basilios had handed Crane back his cellphone and Crane had pulled up an image of Ibrahim that had been obtained by the Mossad via a deceased agent with optical nanotech in Gaza. Basilios had confirmed that that was the man he’d seen in Syria, and had given him some other identifying information about him, too.
His abductors were Christians then, Crane thought, probably Maronites, who’d historically pledged allegiance to the Pope rather than the Greek Orthodox Church. After the invasion of Lebanon by Israel in 1982, due to the continuing presence of the PLO, the massacre of thousands of Palestinians in Beirut’s refugee camps had occurred, carried out by the Christian Phalange, an ultra-nationalist organization made up mostly of Maronites. Today, he knew, the Phalange, known officially as the Kataeb Party, had taken up arms again, to protect themselves from the warring factions and the threat from Syrian jihadists and the Islamic State group.
He knew, too, that the Phalange had been allied to the Israeli Defense Force in the Lebanese civil war, and as a CIA operative he was safe, especially with the man Basilios among them, which was something he hoped to utilize.
They took him in the pickup to the coast, but this time he was sitting in the passenger seat next to Basilios. The man had saved his life and en route he asked him how he came to be in Beirut.
Basilios told him about the details of the assault on his Christian town in Syria and why Ibrahim had let him live. He said that he’d travelled from Syria to Lebanon after settling his mother and sisters and the others in a refugee camp in Jordan, the safest place he knew. He’d come to Lebanon to find the only indigenous Christian army in the Middle East who would fight the Sunni jihadists.
He’d travelled back across the northern Jordanian border to southern Syria. He’d headed east, tracing the length of the Golan Heights, a rocky plateau covering seven-hundred square miles, two-thirds of which had been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War in 1967, and had been annexed since 1981 when the construction of Israeli settlements had begun. At its northernmost point, he’d crossed the pale limestone foothills descending from Mount Hermon over into Lebanon.
Crane knew the official US position was that the Golan Heights were Syrian, and that the application of Israeli law there was a violation of international law, both the Fourth Geneva Convention’s prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force and United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. So much for law, he thought. On the ground here, the law was the gun.
But he knew that most people in the West cared less about that than the latest cliffhanger on the most popular soap opera. Life had never ceased to amaze him, never ceased to inspire or shock him. As Basilios turned into a back street leading to a safe house near to the shimmering waters of the Mediterranean, Crane had two thoughts. First, he wondered if he deserved to live while at least some of his boys had died; and, second, he was certain Tom did.
Chapter 101
Tom had been picked up by Basilios and five Christian militia men after they had been sent the GPS location from the Mossad due to Crane’s credentials. He’d been just half a mile from the coast, squatting beside the stump of a palm tree in an alley as the red sun had been coming up.
He’d drawn his Glock when he’d seem them coming down the alley, swinging their AK-47s, after a car had skidded to a halt and had blocked off the other exit. But they had laid down their weapons and one, who he took for the group’s leader, had called out his name and had said that Crane had sent them.
Tom had shouted out that they should stand still, but then the leader had said that Crane had told them something only he knew and Tom had listened. He’d said that Tom was going to go on vacation with his father before the CIA had found out about Ibrahim and that, unfortunately, his father had died, God rest his soul. On hearing that, Tom had lowered his gun hand and had walked towards them.
When he and Crane had met up at a safe house, a small peach-coloured villa owned by a Christian businessman at the edge of the peninsula, they’d hugged with sheer relief.
They were sitting now in low-slung chairs on a small terrace, the morning sun shaded from their eyes by a floppy canopy. Crane had been given morphine and had had the bullet removed, the wound attended to by a woman doctor, who’d he’d said had been tender and perhaps the most beautiful woman he had seen. They were awaiting a motor cruiser that would take them down to the Israeli coast, and, after boarding a CIA jet, they’d fly home to the States.
Crane said that he was going to retire from the CIA after they’d found Ibrahim and he’d gotten his boys out. But Tom didn’t believe him. Like his father, he knew, Crane would die on the job. And like his father, the veteran didn’t have anything else in his life, not even a son he’d been estranged from for most of his life.
Tom knew that Crane had already reported the fate of Gabriel and his men to Langley, and that it was a priority. Basilios had said that he and his men would do their utmost to find out where they had been taken. There was already a rumour that three had been taken alive after they’d run out of ammo. The others, though, had died where they’d fought.
But Tom didn’t mention it, knowing that Crane felt relatively safe here, with the sea breeze in his face and a dozen armed Maronite guards positioned around the villa. There was nothing Crane could do for now beyond what had already been done.
“So this is it? We go home.”
“It’s never it, Tom.”
“But Ibrahim has disappeared,” Tom said.
Crane took out a cigar, given to him by Basilios, who he’d said was a man
who personified everything good and decent about the Middle East, irrespective of his religion. As he lit it, Tom turned and looked out at the beach, at the waves lapping in, the whole potential of a place that had been ravaged by decades of war, and he felt a sudden empathy for these people. They had so much, and yet they had nothing.
“Basilios told me something interesting,” Crane said. “Ibrahim has three faint scars in a triangle just above his right wrist.”
Tom nodded.
“That ain’t all. We got a Somali in a…well, whatever, we got him in protective custody,” Crane said. “It’s a long shot, but Ibrahim has to be somewhere. He ain’t safe in the West, or the Middle East. Those guys who came after you in France were Somalis, right?”
“One at least,” Tom said.
“Well that’s where we’ll start.”
“What’s this all about?”
“A nightmare is what it’s all about. The Mossad found a guy in the rubble of a house they targeted. He was a Saudi. He had a very particular virus. Our people have analysed it. It’s toxic. It’s lethal. It’s incurable. No vaccine. No vaccine on the horizon.”
“So you think Ibrahim is contaminated by this virus?” Tom asked.
“Well it ain’t a freakin’ matter of speculation, you ask me. The director, God bless her, is a politician now. She’s a fine woman, the finest I’ve ever known. And brave, goddamnit, ain’t no man I know braver. She’s gotta report to the president, and I’ve told her it isn’t over, but as far as she’s concerned Ibrahim’s gone off the radar, so he’s just another terrorist with a something stuck inside him, ‘cept he ain’t.”
“So she’ll say there’s no direct threat?”
“Likely, but there is, and you know that. That piece of shit that killed your father is threatening our boys and girls in uniform. He’s still out there and he’s coming to America. But there’s an incubation period for this virus before it takes effect. So he’s holed up somewhere. Somewhere he feels real safe. Somewhere remote. Somewhere he thinks we won’t consider. I know it. I know it like I know if I don’t use a certain brand of razor I’ll cut my neck and blood will flow.”
