Gasping, Orla leaned back and tried to put a bullet into the coupling in the ceiling. She missed with the fourth. The fifth split it.
The Jericho 941 shipped with different barrels, a 9x19mm parabellum and a.41 “hot cartridge.” The difference was three shots. She either had ten shots left or seven, depending if Sokol had kept the gun fully loaded. She prayed she wouldn’t have to find out the hard way.
rla put her left hand against the wall and blew out the cuff’s coupling. She didn’t bother wasting a bullet on the right cuff. Nine or six left. She kept a running count. She fed the loose chain through the cuff and padded over to the open door. The gunshots had made a lot of noise. Anyone inside the building would have heard them. She willed them on. She had a gun and a need to strike back. She wanted to hurt them for what they’d done to her. She wanted to kill them for what they had done to the girl before her, and for making her watch as they did it.
She ran the numbers. Schnur had claimed the Shrieks worked as blind cells, one person connected to two others, the guy below them and the guy above them in the chain. They would never risk having more than two operatives in the same place, as it exposed an extra link in the chain; and extra links weakened the chain. That was the whole point of blind cells. But Sokol had said the others would be here soon, and others was plural. The guy below Sokol in the chain, and Gavrel Schnur. Schnur had said Mabus liked to be a part of the beheadings when they filmed them. He had told her that in his office in the IDF HQ.
Schnur was Mabus. She was sure of that. It was the only explanation that made sense. He had fed her a bullshit story about Solomon being Mabus, but that is all it was, a bullshit story. Schnur was Mabus. And if Schnur was Mabus, he not only knew who Akim Caspi really was, he was the only person who did, because Caspi was the man above him in the chain. She had had time to think about it while they hung her up like a chicken waiting for the slaughter. Akim Caspi was the man who had recruited Schnur. He had to be. There was no other scenario that made sense. Mabus was only ever the herald, the piper at the gates of dawn. Solomon, though, Solomon was the Antichrist to Schnur’s herald, the real evil-and Schnur had given them his name.
It was a mistake.
A slip.
He had said more than he should have.
And she was in the mood to make him pay for that.
She looked down the narrow passageway but didn’t see anyone coming. There was a single naked bulb at the far end, and beneath it, the first stair leading up. She ran back to Uzzi Sokol’s corpse and took the shirt from his back. He had no need for it, and she didn’t want to step out into the middle of Tel Aviv buck naked with a gun if she didn’t have to. She’d be drawing enough attention to herself even with the shirt.
She checked his pockets for a spare ammo clip. He didn’t have one. She could have popped the magazine and counted out the bullets, but she didn’t want to take the time-not here. She wasn’t out of the woods yet, and any extra seconds were wasted seconds.
She buttoned the shirt up quickly and then ran down the narrow passage. There was a door at the bottom, just before the stairs, a rusty iron thing that appeared to have been welded shut. She checked it just in case. Ipasst give. That was enough for her. She ran barefoot up the stairs, slowing just before she reached the top. She checked left and right. There was no one there. Sokol had come planning to play. He’d known he was alone and would be for a while.
She was on the ground floor now. To the right she could see the interior of a small grocery store. There were no groceries on the shelves. It had been bombed out during the hostilities. To the left was the store room. It was a perfect place to hide someone. The entire strip mall was probably deserted. She went for the door.
The shop floor was thick with dust and broken glass. The windows had been boarded up. It was convenient. It meant no one could see inside. She walked over the broken glass, cutting the souls of her feet. She barely felt the thin shards as they dug in deep. Behind her Orla left a trail of bloody footprints.
She looked back over her shoulder to be sure no one was following and that no one was lurking in the shelves to jump out at her. She reached the door. It was locked and chained. She didn’t hesitate. She put a single shot into the center of the lock’s hasp and unthreaded the chain as it splintered and the tongue came loose. The door itself was locked. She realized then the stupidity of shooting out the lock. The door being chained on the inside meant Sokol and the others had a different way of coming and going. Probably an old goods door around the back of the shop. She couldn’t worry about it now. She had eight or five left. Another one into the lock would make it seven or four if the gun had been fully loaded when Sokol came to torment her. Less if not. The numbers were getting a little low for her liking.
Instead of shooting the final lock she tested the integrity of the boards on the windows. They were flimsy at best. She looked around the little grocery store for something she could use. Back by the till she found one of three old shopping carts. They were buckled and twisted where the heat from the mortar fire had warped them, but they’d be fine for what she had in mind. Orla wrestled one of the carts free of the others. The wheels were buckled and it didn’t want to roll on them. It didn’t matter. She dragged it back far enough to give her a run at the boarded-up window, then launched herself at it, running full-tilt forward with the cart out in front of her like a battering ram.
The cart hit the boards and kept on going through them as she ran.
She heard screaming.
It sounded like a mad banshee inside her head.
It took her a moment to realize it was her.
And then the boards tore free and daylight came flooding in.
Head down, Orla staggered out onto the street, tears streaming down her cheeks.
She breathed in the hot morning air.
She was alive.
Sokol was dead.
That was all that mattered to her.
She stumbled barefoot toward the side of the road. She needed to get as far away from this place as she could.
Cars passed her on the street. She held out her hand, trying to hitch a ride. A few slowed, then accelerated, seeing the gun and the mess she was in. Just when she was beginning to think there were no good Samaritans on the road to Tel Aviv a white SUV slowed. She tensed, expecting to see the toad behind the wheel. If it had been Gavrel Schnur driving she would have shot him through the windshield without a second thought. It wasn’t. It was a middle-aged man with his wife in the seat beside him. Orla stumbled toward the passenger door as the car slowed to a stop at the side of the road.
The woman rolled down her window, took one look at Orla half-naked, battered and bruised and holding the Jericho 941 as though it were a snake, and seemed to understand. She was young, maybe twenty-five herself, but she had grown up in the conflicts of Palestine and Israel; and in Orla she saw a victim. It was as simple as that. Orla guessed the woman had made her husband pull over. The stranger didn’t ask what happened, she simply said, “Get in.” And when Orla was inside the SUV, she said, “Drive.”
They peeled away from the curb and into the traffic.
There was a blonde-haired doll on the backseat. They had a daughter. She wasn’t in the car with them. Orla’s stomach tightened at the realization that the Barbie-ideal of womanhood transcended state and nation. In the passenger seat the woman turned to look at Orla in the back. Orla could see a dozen questions behind her eyes, not least of which was, what have we done? It was natural. People didn’t want to interpose themselves into situations where trouble was rife. But thankfully, her first instinct had been maternal, to protect. Questions were fine now; they were out of there and getting further and further away from the abandoned grocery store by the minute.