by Brad Taylor
It was a good sign.
25
Johan turned on his phone as he waited for the passengers to deplane, seeing a string of text messages appear, all demanding he call. He wondered what had happened in Tel Aviv, but he certainly couldn’t talk on the aircraft.
Eventually, he walked down the airstairs and across the chipped tarmac. He entered the airport—a one-story brick building with only two rooms, one for departures and one for arrivals—and waited on his luggage. Through the window he watched a single man open the small cargo hold of the aircraft and begin transferring the bags by hand, without the benefit of a conveyor belt. He knew it would be a while.
He retreated to the corner of the room and dialed his phone, the text messages beckoning him, becoming more than he could ignore. In short order, he learned the disaster of the attempt to eliminate the partner of the man they’d captured. And it was total. Not only had three of his men been killed, but the woman was still on the loose.
Who in the fuck was she?
There was no way she could have escaped his team without help. No way. So, what now?
Maybe they’d misread the man they’d caught. Maybe he was Mossad. But that made no sense. Their contact in the diamond exchange—who would know—said he wasn’t.
Either way, it was a disaster. And all the more reason to keep the man they’d caught alive. They’d need to hand him over after the coup to defuse any response. The last thing Johan needed was another private military organization hunting his ass down because he’d killed one of their own. Especially one from Israel.
He said, “What’s your assessment?”
“Johan, she killed three of my men. Three trained men. That’s not luck. That’s skill. Something else is in play here.”
“Any indications of Mossad efforts? Any at all?”
“No. The man inside the diamond exchange used to be in intelligence, and he assures us that the effort earlier in Joburg was just a stab in the dark. According to him, nobody in Israel cares.”
“Then why are three men dead?”
He heard nothing for a moment, then, “You want my honest answer?”
“Yes.”
“The woman we went after wasn’t his control. I don’t know what she is, but she wasn’t some meek desk worker waiting on his contact report. She’s a fucking killer. And she had help. One of my guys was incapacitated by a black man.”
“African?”
“No. The man he took out said he spoke English with an American accent.”
What the fuck? American?
“So should we continue? Is this team a threat?”
“Honestly, I don’t even know if it was a team. We tracked her to her hotel, and she was alone. I don’t know where that guy came from or where he went after. He did nothing to help her when she was under attack.”
Johan took that in, then thought for a moment. He came up with nothing to ask. He said, “Give me your gut instinct on this.”
“The mission takes priority. We gave her a scare, and she’s on the run. We lost track of both her and the black man, but they have no idea what’s going on. She might try to decipher our plan, but it won’t be in Lesotho. If anything, she’ll show up in Joburg hunting her partner’s last location, which is our terrain, and we can kill her at our leisure.”
Johan’s voice grew hard. “A ‘scare,’ Andy? It cost the lives of three men. Three men I needed. I’m not so sure you are not to blame.”
Johan heard nothing for a moment, then pure venom. “You fuck. I don’t know why you’ve been brought on board, but the dead are my men. My men. Don’t question me on my operations. The police here are going batshit. We don’t have the cover to continue hunting her here even if we wanted to. We need to bail.”
Johan backed off. The men on the team were all Special Forces—most from South Africa—but Johan had been long gone from that world, having spent close to a decade working for the United States in Jordan, so much so that he no longer knew who was worthy or not on the continent. The team was much younger than him, and outside of his orbit of personal connections. All he had was Colonel Armstrong, a man he knew by reputation, and someone who had lived what he had. Armstrong had built the team, and if he said they were good, then they were.
Johan said, “Okay, okay. I’m in Lesotho now. I need you to get to Cape Town anyway. Check out the shipment. I’ve identified the drop zone, but I need you to check the goods to make sure. Colonel Armstrong is there now, and he has the contact information.”
“I can do that.”
“Then, go. Get to Cape Town. Get out of the heat of Tel Aviv. Make sure that American arms dealer hasn’t screwed us.”
He heard, “Will do,” then hung up.
Johan put his phone away, realizing he’d become engrossed in the conversation, and worried that someone had overheard. He surreptitiously glanced around, but nobody was near him.
He saw a porter manhandle a cart full of luggage inside and recognized his bag in the middle. He waited on the man to finish unloading, found his luggage, and prepared to exit, only to be surprised that he had to place the bag on an X-ray machine for customs. That was stricter than the routine of any country he’d entered in the last two years. He did so, with some trepidation, because he had something to hide.
The customs officer behind the screen pinged on an item, and Johan knew what it was. The beacon he was to emplace on the drop zone. As the official opened his luggage, Johan began developing a story on the fly to explain the device.
The official pulled out a square container a little fatter than a box of tissues, asking, “What is this?”
Johan inwardly sighed in relief. He’d also brought with him a quadcopter unmanned aerial vehicle for the reconnaissance he was about to conduct, something that was much easier to explain.
“A drone. You know, a flying camera? I take pictures with it. I’m a photographer, and I want to get some landscape shots of your waterfalls.”
“Show me.”
Johan pulled open the Velcro top and withdrew a DJI Mavic Pro, the four lift propellers collapsed into the body. He unfolded them, then pretended to have it zoom left and right, saying, “I fly it and it takes pictures.”
The customs official smiled and said, “Put away, put away.”
In short order, Johan was on his way, but that one encounter told him all he needed to know about trying to bring in a team overtly. They’d considered it, because they were sure that they could bring a howitzer into the country without any question, but it turned out—as it had on every other mission he’d done—that his choice to conduct a recon early had been prudent.
He had two days to figure out how to take down an entire country, and he was sure he could. He’d done it before, and in lands far more complicated than Lesotho. What he was unsure about was the woman in Israel. Admittedly, she was a small pinprick. A nothing in the greater plan they had in play. But she had proven lethal, and that was worrying.
26
I heard a knock on the door and knew it wasn’t the maids. I looked at Jennifer and said, “Here we go. Get ready for the shit show.”
She said, “You can talk her off the ledge.”
I turned to the door and said, “I don’t think so. The ledge has become about an inch wide.”
I opened the door, seeing Shoshana outside it, her face determined. I said, “You’re a little early for lunch.”
She brushed past me, saying, “I don’t want lunch. What did your vaunted Taskforce say?”
I let her storm into our decidedly small room without complaint. I knew she was on the verge of going berserk because of some stupid theory about Aaron, and she was still a little embarrassed about the whole “honeymoon” lie. I escaped to our tiny bathroom, letting Jennifer handle her for a minute.
We’d spent about thirty seconds inside the Turkish Bazaar before bundling up Sho
shana and fleeing Acre. She’d wanted to question the guy I’d knocked to the ground, but I already knew he would be worthless for information—and that she probably wanted to inflict pain more than gather intel. I had no idea how many men were on the team we’d interdicted and had no intention of finding out. After an all-too-brief reunion, where she’d immediately turned into a slaughter monster wanting to kill the guy, we hit the road, me practically dragging her to our car.
Once on the highway, with Shoshana muttering expletives, I’d asked her where to go. She began to take me to task for making her leave, and I told her to back off, a little miffed at the lack of gratitude. Seeing the fireworks building, Jennifer had interjected, and, of course, that had been enough.
It aggravated the shit out of me, but those two had some secret connection, and it was enough to calm the little demon down. I’d asked her where we should go to lie low, and Shoshana had pulled a hotel out of thin air, giving me directions, but first demanded we go back to her hotel room.
That was ridiculous, and we started to build up into a fight again. Once again, like a mother separating two irate siblings, Jennifer stepped in, first asking Shoshana why it was necessary, to which she said she needed her clothes, her phone, and any other identifiable things in the room. In pure Shoshana fashion, she’d checked in under an alias and wanted to sterilize the site to protect herself.
Which was a point, I guess.
Jennifer then asked me why not, to which I basically exploded that it was idiotic to return to a room full of dead bodies from an assassination team that was still chasing us. The thought spoke for itself. Except Shoshana said now was the best time to return—before the bodies were found and after the team was left in disarray.
Which was another good point.
I reluctantly agreed to at least conduct a recce to see if it was possible, stating that if there was any chance of compromise, we were out of there. Of course, we’d slipped in and out without issue, and Shoshana had gloated with a told you so look.
I’d asked her where we were supposed to go now, and she gave me directions to the hotel. It was one near Ben Gurion Airport, and I’d asked why there. She told me the reasons—and they made sense.
Called the Sadot—or “fields” in Hebrew—it was a small boutique establishment situated in a medical complex. It was the closest hotel to Ben Gurion, just twenty minutes to the terminal and, more important, sat behind a guarded gate. Only patients and hotel residents were allowed to pass, and with the security posture of Israel, it was a layer of protection we could use. The rooms were microscopic, but the location was outside anything that my team or Shoshana had touched. It would do.
We’d conducted a detailed hot wash of what had occurred, with Shoshana pinging back and forth between emotions, like she was short-circuiting. Eventually, she’d calmed down enough to tell us about Aaron and the busted “honeymoon,” only now she was convinced that the entire event was some sort of indicator that Aaron was in trouble.
She’d called him, but the phone rang out to voice mail, just like it had when I’d tried earlier, and I could see the tension rising in her. She would remain on the leash only so long.
She’d wanted to fly straight to Johannesburg and rip that town apart looking for Aaron, but I’d convinced her to let me leverage the Taskforce. I’d sent everything I had—a complete situation report, license plate numbers, descriptions of the men, the phone numbers we had, and the strange nexus between my target, the hit team, and the diamond exchange. Kurt had told me to give him eight to ten hours. Now that time was up, and Shoshana wanted answers.
Through the bathroom door, I heard Jennifer say, “Kurt hasn’t called back yet. Give it time.”
Shoshana went to classic Shoshana. “Fuck that. We’re sitting here wasting time. We know those operators were from South Africa, and Aaron’s last known location was Johannesburg. That little sexpot from the diamond exchange probably set him up.”
I heard the words from inside the bathroom and immediately perked up. Earlier, I’d asked Shoshana what Aaron was doing, and she, of course, refused to tell me anything beyond the fact that he was operational. It wasn’t upsetting, because beyond telling her we’d crossed paths with the guys hunting her, I’d also refused to say anything about what I was doing. We’d both reverted to our operational security, and my mission—while obviously tied in with her somehow—had been outside the scope of what she needed to know.
But that comment was too much. I opened the door and saw her facing Jennifer with her hands on her hips.
I said, “What sexpot from the diamond exchange?”
She realized she’d slipped up and said, “Nothing. He took a girl from the diamond exchange with him. It’s why I stayed behind. She had the knowledge he needed.”
“Do you know who she worked for?”
“Pike, I can’t talk about it.”
After all we’d done for her, completely outside of our mandate—to include putting my team in jeopardy—the answer aggravated me. The stonewalling was too much.
I said, “Right, Carrie. It’s all secret. You know, we might have solved this a little earlier if you’d bothered to answer your phone for a dinner date. But I forgot, you were on your ‘honeymoon.’” I said the word while using my fingers to make air quotes.
She turned red, balled her fists up, and I thought for a fleeting moment she was going to attack. Instead, she started to brush past me, and I swear I thought I saw her eyes water. But that was impossible. Carrie didn’t cry.
Jennifer, having the intuition that I was lacking, gave me a look of pure venom. I realized using the callsign she’d earned on another mission—because she was borderline psychotic—and disparaging her relationship with Aaron had hit a lot harder than I had intended. But how could I know that Shoshana actually had feelings?
She’d never had before.
Jennifer grabbed Shoshana’s arm, preventing her from leaving. Shoshana started to jerk it free, and I held up my hands, saying, “Whoa, Shoshana. Wait.”
She said, “Fuck you.” To Jennifer, “Let go of my arm, Koko. I mean it.”
Jennifer did, and before I could stop her, she said, “Shoshana, our target went into the diamond exchange. We couldn’t follow, but the coincidence is too much.”
That brought Shoshana up short. She looked at me, then went back to Jennifer. Jennifer said, “What was Aaron doing?”
“What were you doing? Tell me who you were following.”
I said, “Carrie, cut the shit. You want to solve this, you work with us, not the other way around.”
Jennifer looked alarmed at my tone, but I knew I was on solid ground now. No disparagement. Pure mission. Shoshana would understand that. She glared at me, and I said, “I apologize for what I said before.”
That worked the opposite of what I wanted, like she was hiding the fact that it even mattered. She tensed up, her muscles vibrating, and said, “I don’t need this. I’ll save Aaron myself.”
She tried to go past me, and I blocked her. She said, “Get the fuck out of the way, Nephilim. I don’t want to harm you.”
I looked into her eyes, getting her to read me. Knowing she would. I said, “I want to help you. Help Aaron. Like I did yesterday. Don’t treat me as the enemy. I didn’t mean what I said. I would never hurt you on purpose.”
She tensed up, and I refused to raise my arms, even though every single fiber of my being wanted to protect myself from her inevitable attack. I felt her weird glow float over me, and then she sagged back against our small desk.
Whew.
I had won.
27
Shoshana said, “I don’t know what he was doing. He got the mission and determined I wasn’t viable to help. It was tied into the diamond exchange, but it wasn’t anything violent. He was doing something to prevent the embarrassment of the state. Nothing more. It was an economic mission, not nationa
l security. Someone in the exchange was doing something that would cause repercussions to the exchange’s honor code and reputation.”
I said, “Do you know who it was? I mean, inside the exchange?”
She perked up, saying, “No, but I can find out. I’ll contact our control at Mossad. They’ll know.”
I shook my head. “You can’t do that. Think about it. Why are you asking? Because someone attacked you? And how did you get away? Because of an unsanctioned US mission on Israeli soil? That’s not happening.”
She snarled, “Fuck your Taskforce. If it means saving Aaron, you’ll have to take the repercussions. You don’t like it, get on a plane right now. You’ll be out of the country before anyone can react.”
Jennifer was taken aback at the ferocity. She said, “Wait a minute, you’d throw us to the wolves, after Pike disobeyed orders to save you?”
Shoshana looked at her, then nodded, saying, “Yes. Would you not do the same for Nephilim?”
Jennifer gave no answer, and Shoshana said, “Of course you would. You can hate me if you want, but Aaron means more to me than your emotions or your organization. I need to leave. I need to contact the Mossad for the man Aaron was sent to investigate.”
She looked at me and said, “Don’t fight me, Nephilim. Let me go.”
I stepped aside and said, “Sure. Head on over to Aaron’s control. See what you get.”
She hesitated, and I continued. “Why wasn’t the Mossad used on this? If it was so important? Why use a contractor?”
She said, “Because they wanted a cutout. It’s standard operating procedure. You know that.”
“And why is it standard procedure?”
She said nothing. I said, “Because they wanted a cutout. You just said that. Why the cutout?”
She just looked at me. I said, “Shoshana?”
