The walkie-talkie was at his lips now. He heard himself speaking into it, forming the words in the last instant before they emerged.
“They’re not soldiers! Take them!” he ordered.
“Shots!” Blaine shouted, lunging from his chair.
“Wait!” Evira responded, hand feeling for one of the pistols in a drawer that had been open through the course of their conversation. “Take this.”
She was by his side when they re-entered the store, pressing a gun into his hand. Panicked bystanders rushed by outside, colliding with displays that had been set up on the sidewalk. Blaine and Evira stayed pinned behind the doorway and peered out. Beyond, all was chaos. A small group of gunmen dressed as merchants were firing upon two jeeploads of uniformed soldiers. The soldiers’ bullets cut indiscriminate lines through the crowd, their fire slowed only when sniper bullets rained on them from the roof of the building across the street.
“Yours?” Blaine asked.
“No! I don’t know who they are! I swear it! Let’s get out of here!”
Pistols in hand they ducked out the doorway to be swept away by the crowd rushing from the area.
Colonel Ben-Neser wasn’t thinking anymore, simply watching and reacting. He had drawn his pistol and rushed from the cover of the warehouse onto the sidewalk. He had seen at least three of the enemy’s number fall to the fire of his riflemen on the roof. But the fake soldiers had retreated behind the cover of their jeeps and were concentrating their fire upward in an incessant hail. After Ari, he had watched his aproned commando fall to a second barrage that commenced as soon as Ben-Neser had given the order to move in. He felt himself struck each time a bullet found one of his men. This was his fault, damn it, his fault!
Above him, one of the marksmen found a clear bead on another of the soldiers, but the others honed savagely in on his position and blasted away. The man was pitched backward while the second marksman seized what he thought would be the advantage and showed himself long enough to aim. But the soldiers’ fire never let up. Bullets punched into the second man and sent his body headlong from the roof on to the street a dozen yards in front of Ben-Neser.
“Bastards,” he moaned.
The surge of the crowd reached him then and Ben-Neser was tossed about like a puppet in their midst. A hard smack to his arm tore the pistol from his grip and he lowered himself to feel for it amidst the sea of thrashing feet.
The drop was what saved his life.
The fake soldiers had turned to spray the crowd. The butchers! Of course, with the marksmen neutralized the only shots aimed their way were coming from figures disguised within the crowd. So they had taken the most obvious, and most barbaric, action. They must have come to protect Evira, he theorized with a guilty chill. And he had handed his team to them on a silver platter by having Ari approach.
Bodies toppled over him while more of the panicked crowd struggled to flee. Two of his remaining men posted in the square, meanwhile, saw the direction the fake soldiers’ firings were taking. To save whatever lives they could, they broke off from the crowd and rushed into the center of the square to draw the bullets to themselves.
Ben-Neser saw this just as he recovered his pistol and pushed himself on his elbows over a pair of fallen tourists, both near death. He fired a full clip in the time it took the imposters to cut down these two men and a third who had circled in from around the corner, leaving him as the last.
“You fuckers!” Ben-Neser screamed as he lurched to his feet with a fresh clip snapped home. He was charging now, charging through the remnants of the crowd with pistol burning in his hand.
He felt the hot gush of pain to his armless shoulder, and for that instant he was back in the West Bank the day he had lost the limb. The phantom itching was replaced by the same fiery agony he had felt when the grenade blew into him, and once again he was melting into nothingness, this time with nothing to pull him out.
Evira and Blaine’s original aim had been to swing left outside the shop and rush away amidst the chaos. But their turn had brought them almost face-to-face with a pistol-wielding man shoving his way toward them.
“Mossad!” Evira screamed, and instantly they swung around to head toward the center of the chaos that had overrun the market.
The flow of panic was moving in all directions and they let themselves be swept up in it. The street was cluttered with wares abandoned by peddlers to the fate of the crowd, some of whom still managed to stoop to retrieve attractive items on their way. Maneuverability was cut further by the dozens of cars immobilized on the street. Windows and windshields had been punctured by bullets and most of the drivers huddled beneath their dashboards for dear life.
When the soldiers turned their fire suddenly and inexplicably into the crowd, Blaine and Evira dove to the sidewalk together.
“What the hell is this?” Blaine raged, grasping the Beretta Evira had provided.
“They’re not soldiers!”
“Obviously. But who then? Who?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know!”
Bullets continued to cascade above them while behind them the Mossad man they’d fled from was rushing the gunmen head on, pistol clacking futilely. He was blown backward at the same time a screech rang out from across the street.
“You fuckers!”
A one-armed man was charging straight for the remaining trio of soldiers. He had managed six shots before a bullet toppled him. The fall separated him from his gun, and somehow he had the composure to crawl for it as the uniformed figures spun from their positions of cover to finish him off.
“Come on!” Evira urged, tugging on McCracken’s arm. “We can get out of here now!”
“Not yet,” was all Blaine said as he pulled away and crawled stealthily toward the street.
Colonel Yuri Ben-Neser knew he was dead. It came to him in slow motion as the trio of uniformed shapes swarmed his way with rifles angled down. He wouldn’t close his eyes, wouldn’t let them linger over the kill or enjoy it. The pistol was just out of his grasp and he shoved himself toward it, pain exploding in his shoulder with each push over the stones.
His fingers had just struck the pistol’s sweat-soaked butt when his eyes caught the blur of a shape rising directly before him and just to one side of the uniformed figures.
He’s not one of mine, was Ben-Neser’s only thought, as the man steadied his pistol and opened fire on the trio of fake soldiers. They tried to return it, but the man was in motion by then; twisting, diving, rolling, all the time shooting.
His bullets seemed to jolt the fake soldiers all at once, almost simultaneously. He kept firing until they crumpled over, not more than a shot or two having missed the mark.
Ben-Neser thought surely he was dreaming, or perhaps a guardian angel had been sent down to save him. No man could shoot like that. Yet it was a man who leaned over him and touched his pulse.
“You’ll be all right,” came a voice attached to the shape, and Ben-Neser passed out before he had the chance to say how very much he doubted that.
Chapter 8
The room Evira led them to was located in a block of apartment units close enough to the flea market to hear the constant blare of sirens arriving on the scene. The room was sparsely furnished with a pair of stained fabric chairs and a single day bed. There was a refrigerator, a stove, a small kitchen table, and a sink. The bathroom facilities in the building were limited to two per floor, one for each gender.