The Belial Guard (The Belial Series Book 8)

by R. D. Brady

  At 4:45 on the dot, the phone rang. Taking a deep breath, Laney put it on speaker. “Hello?”

  “Delaney, lovely to speak with you. This is Elisabeta Roccorio.”

  Laney’s mouth fell open. “Elisabeta?”

  “You sound surprised to hear from me. You shouldn’t be. There’s quite a lot happening. A talk between us seems well overdue.”

  Laney had no idea why Elisabeta would be calling her. “Well, I’m a little busy right now, so—”

  “That’s why I am calling. It seems you and I share a purpose.”

  Laney couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. “We share a purpose? Do tell.”

  “The priestess, as you call her, is planning to set off a bomb in Jerusalem.”

  Laney frowned. “How do you know that?”

  Elisabeta laughed. “I’m Samyaza. There is very little I do not know. Nonetheless, the priestess—pretentious name by the way—needs to be stopped.”

  “Why would you want to stop one of your Fallen?”

  Elisabeta’s voice was ice cold. “Because she is not following my dictates, but her own.” She paused, and when she spoke again, the emotion had disappeared from her voice. “And her plans do not coincide with mine.”

  “And what are your plans?”

  Elisabeta gave a throaty laugh. “Oh, I won’t reveal my secrets quite that easily. But I will tell you the priestess’s plan.”

  “Okay then. What’s her plan?”

  “Why, she’s going to start World War III.”

  Laney said nothing.

  “I see you already know,” Elisabeta said. “That’s good. You know, this has always been a tempestuous part of the world. It’s changed hands many times. And each hand has clung to it long after it has been removed. This place inspires loyalty, reverence, and hate like almost no other place on earth. And very little is needed to spur the whole area into violence. But of course, you know that as well.”

  “So far you’re not telling me anything helpful.”

  Elisabeta continued as if Laney hadn’t spoken. “Israel is the unwelcome neighbor in this part of the world. And if they turn against their Islamic neighbors? Well, those Islamic neighbors will respond. Iran will retaliate, and Russia will side with Iran. The other Islamic states will demand that Israel be brought to justice. And the US? Where will they be? Seeing as the greatest amount of the US’s foreign aid goes to Israel, they will be viewed as Israel’s allies. And we already know how willing the world has been in recent years to turn against the US.”

  Laney shook her head. “But that’s insane. Even with the skirmishes lately, it’s never come to a full-blown world war.” She wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince.

  “Yes, but then no one has bombed the Temple Mount before.”

  Laney saw the stunned looks on the faces of her friends. They had already known that was the plan, but apparently all of them, like Laney, had hoped they were wrong.

  “Even you know that a move like that would be disastrous,” Elisabeta continued.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Why, to help, of course.”

  “And why would you want to help?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  Laney laughed. “Yeah. Try again. Are you looking for her?”

  “I am. And I am offering you the help I can.”

  “Yes, but why?”

  A little frost returned to Elisabeta’s tone. “Because she does not get to determine what my world looks like. And I have no intention of sitting back while she turns it into a nuclear wasteland.”

  “So, how are going to help? We already know the target.”

  “Ah, but you see, I know where the bombers are right now.”

  CHAPTER 61

  Elisabeta had given them an address where she claimed the bombers were, but no one was about to take her at her word. A team had been sent out to check it out—discreetly—and Matt was on the phone with his contacts in the Israeli police. Jake was also on the phone, speaking with Henry.

  Laney slumped into the kitchen chair and looked over at Mustafa. “What do you think?”

  “I think if a bomb goes off anywhere near the Temple Mount, there will be a lot of finger-pointing and very little listening.”

  Laney agreed. “What about her assessment of the world taking sides?”

  “A few years ago I would have said she was wrong. But now?” Mustafa considered. “The violence in Syria has changed the world, hasn’t it? Russia has openly sided with Syria. Iran has been more involved in world affairs. ISIL is stirring up more and more problems. And if the Israelis are viewed as targeting Muslims at one of their most holy sites? Or if Israel blames another country for initiating an attack?” He shuddered. “The ramifications would be world-changing.”

  “Yeah, but the Temple Mount is revered by Israel. They would no more destroy it than they would destroy themselves.”

  “But what if someone were to target the Western Wall? What do you think Israel’s response would be?”

  Laney groaned. “But how are we supposed to do this? We can’t empty the Temple Mount. The Waqf would view any such attempt as a provocation.”

  “So we have to neutralize the threat before it can become an international incident.”

  “And in a place that receives millions of visitors per year, we need to do it in a way that draws absolutely no attention to us.”

  Mustafa smiled. “See? We have a plan.”

  Laney laughed at Mustafa’s wildly unrealistic optimism. “Now I’m hoping Elisabeta really is giving us accurate intel. And I’m not sure what’s scarier: her helping us, or her not helping us.”

  Yoni walked into the kitchen and took a seat.

  “You up to date on recent events?” Laney asked.

  He nodded. “Yeah. Although I’m not sure how much stock we should put in Elisabeta’s word.”

  “Did you find anything from your Israeli contacts?” Mustafa asked. “Did they mention anything about the Temple Mount?”

  “Well, there’s been a lot of anger about the idea of putting cameras on the Temple Mount,” Yoni said.

  “That was Jordan’s idea right?” Laney asked.

  “Yes. And I can’t blame them.”

  Laney agreed. After all, when King Abdullah of Jordan had visited the mosque in 1951, he had been assassinated. The Israelis believed the cameras would offer a chance to protect all the visitors to the area, but the Palestinians feared they would be used to target Palestinians who spoke out against Israel.

  “So what’s the status of the cameras right now?” Mustafa asked.

  Yoni shrugged. “On hold.”

  Laney blew out a breath. “Well, that sucks.” While she understood the concerns about the cameras, they would be awfully useful.

  Jake stepped into the kitchen and gave them a grim smile. “Elisabeta’s info checks out,” he said. “We’ve got them.”

  CHAPTER 62

  Laney sat in the van with Jake, Yoni, and four members of the Israel counterterrorism team. Laney had decided to leave Oasu behind—he wasn’t ready for this. She was barely ready for this. Another van was just down the street from them, carrying more security operatives, and there was yet another group of operatives waiting at the back of the house.

  The house where the terrorists were meeting was two houses down. When they arrived, they had done thermal imaging and identified four people inside. Since then, three more had entered, and none had left. Laney hadn’t sensed any Fallen or nephilim nearby, so they at least had that going for them.

  Arie, the leader of the counterterrorism unit and a surprisingly small man, was in charge of the op. He was just waiting for confirmation that the backup team was in place before moving in. When the call finally came in on his radio, he looked around the van, making eye contact with everyone, before answering. “We’re a go.”

  Jake pushed open the back door of the van, and he and Arie sprinted for the front door. Down the street, th
e occupants of the second van did the same. Laney was running across the street as well when she noticed a man on the opposite side of the street step out of an alley and go still. He locked eyes with Laney—and then sprinted away.

  Laney yelled into her mike. “There’s a runner! I’m going after him.”

  She raced after the man, her long strides shortening the distance between them. Soon she was only twenty feet away. The man misjudged a curb, tripped, and rolled into the street. As he stumbled to his feet, Laney launched herself at him, tackling him around the back of the knees. With a grunt, he slammed back into the ground.

  Before he could react, she had yanked one arm behind his back and placed him in a wrist lock. He let out a yell. Laney got to her feet, keeping his wrist at ninety degrees. An Israeli officer ran up behind her.

  “You have cuffs?” she asked.

  The officer snapped a pair of handcuffs around the man’s wrists.

  Laney then turned the man around so she was facing him. Blood dripped from his nose down to his chin, and there were scratches on one cheek.

  “Where is the bomb?” Laney asked.

  The man’s eyes widened. “What are you talking about? I was out for a walk.”

  Laney grabbed his sleeve and yanked it up, revealing his tattoo: a lotus flower with three lines behind it. “No, you’re a member of Honu Keiki, and you’re here under orders from the priestess.”

  The man shook his head. “No. I’m—”

  A gunshot shattered the air. The officer yanked Laney to the ground, and the shackled man dove for the ground as well.

  As Laney lay on the ground eye to eye with him, she realized her mistake. The shackled man hadn’t dived to the ground at all. The perfect hole in the middle of his forehead told her that someone else had dictated that action for him.

  CHAPTER 63

  The officer stayed with the body while Laney rejoined the rest of the group. They had called in support to try and find the shooter, but he could have been in one of a hundred apartments in the area. It was obviously Honu Keiki that had taken him out—which meant there was another member at large. Someone they didn’t know about.

  Laney jogged up to the house just as Yoni stepped outside. “What have you got?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” Yoni said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, they’re all dead. Seven members, dead.”

  Laney looked at him in disbelief. “Did we kill them?”

  “No. They’ve been dead for at least thirty minutes.”

  “But—they’ve been under surveillance.”

  “Well, apparently somebody missed something.”

  “Anything on their plans?”

  Yoni nodded. “Yes. They were planning on bombing Solomon’s Stables.”

  Solomon’s Stables was an underground space with vaulted ceilings that sat under the southeast corner of the Temple Mount. The Knights Templar used the space to house their horses during the crusades. Some said it dated back to the time of Solomon, although no one was really sure of the actual date. In 1996 it was converted into a prayer hall, to accommodate some of the overflow from the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

  Laney imagined how much damage a bomb in the stables would have done. An underground blast might even have set off earthquakes, devastating the entire city. “Who killed them? Was it suicide?” she asked.

  “Not unless one of them went around breaking the others’ necks—and then broke his own.”

  A chill crawled up Laney’s spine. “Their necks?”

  Yoni nodded.

  “What the hell?”

  CHAPTER 64

  It was an hour later, and Laney was sitting in the surveillance van with Yoni. Yoni had managed to talk one of the officers into letting them see the surveillance tapes of the house. The Israeli police had already looked at them and seen nothing of value, but planned to have them analyzed by experts later.

  “Where do you want me to start?” Yoni asked.

  “We’ve verified that the three people we saw entering the building were among the dead, so obviously the killings must have occurred after that. Let’s start with their arrival. And if we don’t see anything, we’ll go back further.”

  Yoni queued up the tape to the time of the last members’ arrival, then slowly fast-forwarded from there. They watched the three members of Honu Keiki, a woman and two men, enter the building. Then there was nothing more to see until their group stormed the front door.

  Yoni switched over to the surveillance tape from the back of the house, and they repeated the process. Ten minutes later, Laney was forcing her eyes to stay open. “Is there anything less exciting than watching—”

  She stopped, squinting at the screen. “Wait. Can you back up a little bit, and play it at normal speed?”

  “Yeah, what did you see?”

  She leaned forward. “I’m not sure.”

  The back of the house remained quiet, and a line of static flickered on the screen.

  “Piece of crap machine,” Yoni muttered, reaching for the controls.

  “Wait,” Laney said. “Let’s just watch.”

  About a minute later, the static flickered once again.

  “Back up to the static and then pause,” Laney said.

  Yoni did.

  Laney sat back, her hand to her mouth. On screen, in the static, the figure of a man could just barely be made out.

  Yoni stuttered. “Is that—that can’t be.”

  Laney nodded. “It was a Fallen.”

  CHAPTER 65

  Laney called Jake, Matt, and Mustafa to join her and Yoni. Quickly they explained what they had discovered on the tape.

  “A Fallen?” Jake asked. He turned to Matt. “Was this one of your guys?”

  “No. All my guys have been accounted for since they arrived.”

  “So who is that?” Yoni asked.

  “I’ll have the image cleaned up,” Mustafa said. “Maybe we’ll be able to identify him.”

  “No need, I already sent it to your people,” Laney said. “They’re going to rush it back to us.” Just then her phone beeped, and she read the text message before clicking on the attached image. “Well, they rushed it all right—here it is. They say they’ll aim for an even cleaner picture in a few hours.” Laney turned the phone around to show the others. “Anybody know this guy?”

  On screen, they could make out a tall, muscular man. His face was still undefined, though they could see that he had a large nose.

  “He’s not one of my men,” Matt said.

  “I don’t recognize him either,” said Mustafa.

  Laney tried to figure who could have sent the man. Had he come on his own somehow? Had Elisabeta sent him? She looked at Jake. “Anything inside that can help us?”

  “With this guy? No. But we did find one thing interesting: a body.”

  “Another one?”

  “Yep. But this one was in the basement in a freezer. And he was not a member of Honu Keiki.”

  Laney frowned. “So who is he?”

  “He’s an Iranian dissident,” Matt said.

  “Iranian?” Yoni asked.

  Laney understood the implication immediately. “Holy crap.”

  Jake nodded. “We think he was going to be the fall guy for the bomb. He was being kept on ice in the basement.”

  “To slow down the body’s deterioration,” Mustafa said. “It would throw off the time of death in an autopsy.”

  All Laney could think about was what would have happened had they succeeded. Iran had a history of making inflammatory comments about Israel. In 2001, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had said, “It is the mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to erase Israel from the map of the region”—and that was one of the least repugnant statements. Over the years, Iran had denied that the Holocaust had ever happened, explaining away all evidence of its occurrence and claiming that tales of gas chambers were simply propaganda to gain sympathy. In recent years, the Iranians’ tone had changed a little—publicly
, anyway—but Laney knew these sentiments still held sway in much of the country.

  “If Iran was blamed…” Laney started.

  Jake nodded. “Israel would retaliate.”

  “Against a Muslim nation, which, as Samyaza explained, would result in a domino effect of other countries picking sides,” Matt said quietly.

  Laney frowned. “And now, handily, that’s all been avoided.”

  Jake looked at her in surprise. “What’s the matter? This is a win.”

  Laney shook her head. “Yeah, I know. But it just doesn’t feel right. We didn’t do anything. Someone else did.”

  “It was probably Samyaza,” Jake said. “She found out where they were and took them out.”

  “If that was her plan, then why tell us where they were? Why not just take them out? Why involve us at all?”

  Jake shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, it is Samyaza. I’m sure she has her reasons.”

  “Yeah. That’s what worries me,” Laney muttered.

  CHAPTER 66

  Laney sat on the porch of the SIA safe house watching the street. There wasn’t much to see—only an occasionally car or someone walking by. But that was all right; Laney’s mind was busily turning things over.

  The door behind her opened, and she turned as Mustafa and Yoni stepped out. They were the only ones to have returned to the safe house with her; the others had stayed to help out at the crime scene.

  “Hey,” Laney said.

  “Hey yourself,” Yoni said, taking a seat next to her. Mustafa sat on her other side.

  “What’s wrong?” Mustafa asked.

  “Nothing,” Laney replied with a shrug.

  “Laney…” Yoni gave her a look.

  She sighed. “I don’t know. I just feel like it’s not quite over. It’s like everything that happened with the Companion Killers. We got the bad guys, and yet something was off.”

  “We got all of the members of Honu Keiki, right?” Yoni asked.