He should have moved after the first shots. He knew that. But his body was drained of its strength. So weak. So he stayed where he was.
He saw an Iranian soldier dragging a wounded comrade off the path, to the shelter of the rocks. Both of them were dead a moment later, as he calmly took aim and fired, killing first the helper, then the wounded man.
And still he stayed.
A movement out of the corner of his eye alerted him to danger and he threw himself against the rock, bringing the AK to bear on the threat. Knowing even as he did so that he was too late.
His mind barely registered the man standing there among the rocks before the pistol in the man’s hand exploded in fire…
Harun lowered the Makarov semiautomatic and walked forward, to where the body of the intruder lay crumpled against the mountainside. The mask of the biosuit was half-off and he could clearly see the man’s face. He was a Kurd.
And he was still living. As Harun moved closer, the intruder turned his head and spat in contempt, a filthy stream of phlegm and blood.
Harun raised his pistol and shot the man once more, between the eyes.
The marina at night was not a quiet place, light splashing across the water from a thousand boats filled with tourists.
Everyone seemed to be playing their own brand of music, and the ocean itself seemed to move to the discordant beat.
Chaim Berkowitz walked along the pier, a deliberately insolent swagger to his step as he moved in and out of the crowd of tourists. An FN Five-SeveN pistol was tucked into his waistband, covered by the loose Hawaiian shirt he wore. The suitcase in his left hand held a field-stripped Remington M24 sniper rifle.
A few moments later, the GPS unit in his cellphone beeped and he paused, looking left and right. Ahead of him, in the alcove of a boathouse, was where he would set up his hide.
Time to move…
Thomas didn’t need to look back. The brief bursts of gunfire and abrupt silence following immediately thereafter told him the whole story.
His friend was dead.
He moved more quickly now, his bio-suit discarded in the swift-flowing mountain stream a hundred meters back, a crude procedure Langley had recommended for cleansing himself of the toxin. Heavy as his clothes now were with water, he could move freely.
Voices sounded ahead of him, a body of Kurdish fighters moving down the mountain. Another moment and Azad Badir appeared, at the head of a score of rebels. At the sight of Thomas he held up a hand to halt his men.
“Did you retrieve the samples?” the guerrilla leader asked, seeming only then to realize that Thomas was alone.
Estere appeared behind him, her face pale as she stared into his eyes.
Thomas saw her lips form the question, and in that instant it felt as though his heart would break.
“He’s gone,” he whispered, unable to say more.
“No,” she responded, shooting him a look of fragile defiance as she shook her head. She placed a hand against the trunk of a nearby tree to steady herself. “No.”
Badir stepped forward, placing a hand on his granddaughter’s shoulder. “Allah has appointed unto us a time for mourning,” he began, his own voice trembling with emotion, “but it is not now. Mr. Patterson, I trust that you were successful in your mission?”
Thomas nodded, a lump forming in his throat. “I was.”
The Kurd spoke sharply in his native tongue and the guerrillas began to scatter, taking up defensive positions farther down the mountain. In a few moments, it was only the three of them standing there by the tree.
“The time has come for us to part,” Badir announced, turning back to Thomas.
Thomas nodded in reply, but the old man wasn’t done.
“My granddaughter will guide you to the border,” he continued. “In a cave twelve kilometers to the west you will find two horses. They are young and strong, and should make the journey easily.”
“I do not know how I could repay this kindness,” Thomas responded formally.
“I do,” was Badir’s blunt reply. “I want you to escort Estere across the border to Qandil Mount. Our people are there and she can find safety in their ranks.”
“But what about you?” Estere exclaimed, seizing hold of the old man’s arm, anger not unmixed with grief in her voice.
A burst of rifle fire from down the mountainside served as the answer to her question. Badir unslung the Kalishnikov from his shoulder, extending the stock with a single, purposeful motion.
“I am a soldier!” she hissed, fighting back tears as he turned away from her. “My place is here!”
The old shepherd cast a final look back over his shoulder. “If you are to be counted a soldier, you must follow the orders you have been given. Take our friend to the Qandil. Do not return.”
Hossein was standing on the steps of the mosque when his cellphone went off. He pulled it from his pocket and glanced at the screen before answering. It was the Supreme Leader.
“Good morning.”
“I don’t think so,” came the reply, sending a chill down the major’s spine. “It’s begun…”
The job had taken all night, but it was done at last. Farouk leaned forward, placing his laptop on the hood of the explosives-filled Jeep Grand Cherokee.
“You will drive here along the road,” he instructed, tracing an imaginary line across the on-screen map. “Then turn into the Hotels Zone. Park here — approximately two hundred meters from the Crowne Plaza Hotel. You will await my call to close in on your target, which will be approximately — here.”
A young jihadist from the Eilat cell nodded, his face pale with excitement. Farouk turned away to hide a smile of contempt.
It would be the young man’s first and last mission. He had been chosen for a reason. Simply put, he had not shown enough skill to justify continuing his training. So, he was expendable.
The Hezbollah leader fingered the cellphone in the pocket of his jeans. The bomb was wired for remote detonation should the boy’s nerve fail at the last moment of the suicide mission, as it often did.
Sad, he mused, that devotion to Allah should waver in the face of death. Had they not read the sacred verses of the Quran?
“I think I’ve got it here.”
“What is it, Sarah?” Gideon asked, still focused on the Uzi submachine gun he was loading.
“I’ve got the name,” the young woman replied, looking up from her laptop.“Nichols is registered here at the Crowne Plaza under the name Joseph Isaac. Fifth floor, room 347.”
Laner laid the gun on the bed and crossed the hotel room to stand behind her, his hand resting easily on her shoulder. “Good work — how hard was he to find?”
“Not hard,” she responded, smiling up at him as she touched his fingers lightly. “The hotel system was an easy job — a relatively simple firewall backed by Blowfish encryption. Once in, they scan the photo IDs provided at the desk and store them on the intranet. It was just a matter of cross-referencing the photos with our database and Nichols came up. Apparently, he’s a low-level diplomat with the U.S. State Department, because he’s traveling under a diplomatic passport.”
Gideon chuckled, his hand moving to stroke her mane of dark hair. “Not the last time I checked.”
He walked back across the room and replaced the Uzi in its specially-designed briefcase, casting an affectionate glance back at the young woman as she returned to her work.