Something tugged on his shoulder. Short Fuse. He mouthed something about having a plan. Stiletto nodded. He had a plan too. Hit them from behind. Get a bomb on the back of the armored machine. If they could survive to get close enough.
His hearing started to clear up a little, but the shrill ringing persisted. Gunfire crackled from above. Hardball. The shell hadn’t taken him out and his shots peppered the ground near the assault troops, driving them to cover. Stiletto and Short Fuse charged through the front of the warehouse heading for an alley across the street. One of the troopers saw them and let off a burst that kicked up chucks on asphalt. Short Fuse reached the alley first, sliding a pack full of explosives off his back. As Stiletto reached the corner, shards of brick and dust exploded in his face, gunfire zipping past him to smack the alley wall ahead. Stiletto pressed his back to the corner wall, swung around, and jerked the trigger to unleash the full magazine on the trooper in pursuit. The slugs spread across the man’s chest, opening new body cavities he’d hadn’t been born with that spilled his guts all over the ground.
Short Fuse was halfway down the alley. Stiletto ran after him as he reloaded. The cannon boomed again. Another explosion. Stiletto hoped Hardball was out of the way. A short burst of return fire answered his question. Keep ’em pinned down, buddy, we’re almost there, Stiletto thought, his face stinging from the blast of brick shards, as he and Short Fuse reached the opposite end of the alley.
They turned right at the alley exit, stopping at the building’s corner. Up the street sat the armored truck and the troopers. Stiletto pointed at the troopers closest to them—the ones on the right side of the street—and drew a finger across his neck. Short Fuse nodded. He opened his bag and took out a wrapped satchel charge, pulling a fuse cord. He ran for the cannon and Stiletto braced himself against the wall.
The twenty-millimeter roared again and another section of the warehouse wall crumbled, and a plum of dust stretched through the streets. The AK bucked against Stiletto’s shoulder as he aimed at the two troopers, Stiletto shifting his aim with each burst, one trooper’s head exploding like a melon and pelting his partner with gore. Before the second could turn, he joined his dead partner in a bloody heap on the street, the red stuff picking up dust and turning to a reddish mud.
Short Fuse slapped the satchel charge to the armored truck, the bomb’s magnets holding it in place. He turned and started running back. Stiletto covered him with the AK. A winking muzzle flash on the roof of the warehouse proved Hardball still lived. Short Fuse reached the corner and he and Stiletto hit the ground as the explosion filled the street, more dust and debris taking flight and landing around them.
Calm settled on the combat zone. If there were police or military units on the way, Stiletto couldn’t hear them, the cannon fire and bomb explosion leaving him temporarily deaf except for a ringing in both ears. He looked up. There was no sign of the chopper either. He reached for his sat phone, but it wasn’t in his pocket where he’d left it. It must have fallen out somewhere along the way. Where was the chopper? Had more than ten minutes gone by?
Stiletto pushed to his feet and gestured for Short Fuse to follow, and they ran, unsteady at first, back the way they came and returned to the smoking warehouse. The steps were gone. The only way up was a ladder they had rigged at the rear of the building, the rungs extending through a hole in the roof, but it had fallen over during the assault, the hole in the roof a little bigger now. Short Fuse put the ladder in place while Stiletto covered their backside, and the explosives expert started up, the ladder’s uneven legs causing it rock a little with each of his heavy steps. Stiletto climbed after him. On the roof, they found a dusty Hardball still behind one of their makeshift cover spots, his face and head cut a little.
“That was close,” he said, though Stiletto only heard a little of it. Short Fuse pointed east, and the helicopter appeared over the top of neighboring buildings. It was a sight to see. We might live to fight another day after all, Stiletto decided. The chopper hovered over the roof. The cabin crew dropped a rope ladder. The team started climbing, leaving their gear behind. Stiletto entered the cabin last, falling across the metal floor, gasping, bruised, bloody, but alive. He could deal with the failure of the mission later. The chopper dipped its nose and turned south.
Chapter Two
Tel Aviv, Israel
THE NEXT day Stiletto stepped out of an elevator and onto the rooftop pool deck of the Isrotel Tower in Tel Aviv. The pool sat at the very top of the tower, and might as well have been isolated in a desert. He could hear nothing but laughter and splashing. The sounds from the city below couldn’t reach them.
At the bar, he ordered a Maker’s Mark-and-Coke. Moving to the blue rail surrounding the edge of the roof, his body aching in mild protest, he leaned against the rail and gazed out at the clear blue Mediterranean in the distance. The frolicking continued behind him, providing an interesting soundtrack to his introspection. The color of the water matched the sky. The warm temperature felt good. The view seemed very peaceful, but that water had witnessed a lot of bloodshed.
The city below went about its business silently, while up on the pool deck, a carefree attitude ruled the day. Stiletto turned to face the pool. Mostly kids in the water; watchful parents remained on the sidelines while a trio of young ladies sunned themselves on loungers. Each one wore a bikini to show off their flawless bodies, sunglasses, and had an automatic rifle lying next to them. Stiletto shook his head. IDF troops on a break. The war was never far away.
He sipped his drink with a glance toward the elevator. No sign of his Mossad contact yet.
His team had left Iraq and returned to the back room of a downtown Tel Aviv bar where the failed operation had been assembled. Very quickly they broke down their gear and went their separate ways, but not without Stiletto trying to get them to agree to continue the mission.
Both had refused. They’d been paid to go into Iraq and assassinate a target; the failure of said mission left them with no obligation to chase the man down unless Stiletto was willing to fork over more cash.
For Stiletto that was quite a letdown. To him, the job wasn’t done until the target was dead.
He didn’t know anything more about Jafar el-Gad than his Mossad contact had told him. PLO Captain and the brains behind a variety of attacks incorporating new killing techniques. Of course, el-Gad never did any killing himself, he just showed others how to do it and sent them into battle. Mossad wanted him dead. Stiletto had hoped to deliver. It was his first major free-lance assignment since being sacked from the Central Intelligence Agency, and it had gone from a smoothly executed plan developed in a Tel Aviv bar to a pile of rubbish in a Baghdad street.
His life since leaving the Agency had been hectic, a chase after a dollar to keep the hounds at bay. Since most mercenary activity existed in Europe, he’d had to relocate from his home in Virginia to an apartment in Paris. It had not been an easy transition. Most of the work he’d scrounged, such as guarding North Sea oil rigs, involved long stretches of tedium, and being on the water, which he hated, but his checks always cleared.
His life was in a state of disruption, but not for the first time. He’d adjust.