As the big man yelled, Miriam stepped behind him and smacked the palms of both hands against Franz’s ears. The concussive blows were enough to rupture eardrums. She didn’t know how much damage she’d actually done because Franz tumbled forward face-first and lay there, unconscious.
Breathing hard, more from her fear than any physical adversity, Miriam wheeled on Franz’s friend.
The man held up both hands in surrender and backed away.
Satisfied, Miriam looked back at Lourds and Big Mike. The Uighur man sat on his haunches and stared at her in amazement. Lourds sprawled inelegantly.
Miriam grabbed the professor’s hat, then grabbed one of Lourds’s arms. She glared at Big Mike. ‘Get over here.’
‘Sure.’ He got to his feet with effort and grabbed Lourds’s other arm. Together, with the unconscious man’s arms spread over their shoulders, the pair carried the professor out of the bar.
Miriam cursed her luck but was secretly excited now that the danger was past. Outside, she swayed uncertainly across the uneven terrain toward Lourds’s rented room and remembered how she had been so impatient while studying in New York. More than anything, she’d wanted to be an agent out in the field.
She’d gotten a more glamorized view of the job, though. As a Mossad agent, she was supposed to be saving Israel from her oppressors. Not carrying drunken professors home at night. She still didn’t know why Lourds might be so important to the Mossad.
That night was, quite frankly, disappointing.
‘Where’d you learn to fight like that?’ Big Mike staggered and almost fell.
‘Watching Jackie Chan movies.’
‘Cool. I like Jackie Chan.’ Big Mike seemed satisfied. ‘I like Bruce Lee better. I like UFC better than WWE.’
Miriam didn’t care to get into a discussion of martial arts with the man. She didn’t want to be remembered in the morning and thought she still might have a shot at that.
As she trudged under Lourds’s weight, she noticed two men closing on them. Both of them seemed professional, and they even pointed their pistols professionally when they drew them.
24
One of the two hard-faced men in front of Miriam waved his weapon. ‘We’ll take Lourds from here.’ His words were clipped and efficient, with a German accent. ‘No one has to get hurt.’
‘Who are you?’ Miriam glared at the two men and dropped her right hand behind Lourds’s back to the pistol at her waistband. She did that without thought, but once she felt the cold metal in her hand, she had all kinds of doubts about what she was going to do next.
‘The men who are going to take Lourds.’
‘Wow.’ Big Mike belched. ‘This is turning out to be some night, huh?’ He grinned, let go of Lourds, then threw himself at the nearest man.
Idiot! Miriam couldn’t believe the big man wouldn’t fight the guys in the bar, but he’d throw himself at men with guns.
The move either caught the pair off guard or they hadn’t wanted to reveal themselves, because the man Big Mike grappled with got knocked backwards and barely stayed on his feet. Pushing his opponent away, he snap-fired his pistol, the bullet tugging at Big Mike’s sleeve as it passed through.
‘Whoa!’ Big Mike said, as the gunshot echoed off the buildings around them.
Hesitation gone, Miriam freed her weapon and brought it up, slapping her left hand around her right to set up the familiar push/pull hold she’d been taught. She flicked off the safety with her thumb, aimed at the shooter’s center mass, and squeezed the trigger three times.
With three rapid-fire rounds in the man who had fired first, and him already stumbling backwards as crimson covered his coat, Miriam moved her pistol toward the other man. He was just getting his weapon up to fire.
Miriam stood her ground, centered her pistol on the man’s chest, and squeezed the trigger, certain she was going to feel bullets rip into her flesh at any second. Instead, the man staggered as one of her rounds tore into his shoulder. Two of his shots went wide of her, and his face turned panicked, then slack as he stumbled and fell.
Heart hammering, afraid she was going to throw up because she was so afraid, and the adrenaline was sending her senses into overdrive, Miriam stepped forward, toe to heel, toe to heel, never crossing her feet to avoid tripping herself in case she had to move quickly.
She kicked the pistol from the dead man’s hands, shifting her gun back and forth between the two men. Kneeling, she checked the second man’s pulse with her fingers. He was dead as well.
Voices sounded behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, she spotted the bar patrons crowding the open doorway, but none of them was brave enough yet to come outside. It wouldn’t take long, though. They had liquor in them, tended to be men with too much testosterone and not enough common sense, and Miriam was willing to bet the bartender or one — or several — of them had a weapon.
She rifled the men’s pockets, taking papers and personal items. This wasn’t a random event. Her superior would want to know who they were, and who they were working for.
The crowd at the door grew bolder. ‘What’s going on out there?’
‘What happened?’
Big Mike stared at her and looked dumbfounded.
Miriam stood and stuffed her haul into her jacket pockets. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yeah, but that was wicked.’
‘They pulled their weapons first.’
‘I know. That’s what makes it so wicked.’
In training, her instructors had commented on her natural proficiency and quickness with a pistol. When she’d been a child, her father had trained her to shoot. By the time she entered the Mossad training, she was very comfortable with weapons and targets.
Tonight was the first time she had knowingly shot — and killed — a man.
Kneeling once again, this time beside Lourds, Miriam checked the professor. The man snored peacefully though his nose had swelled, and one eye was already turning black.
She stood. ‘Get him to his room. If you can’t do it yourself, have someone help you.’
‘Sure. Aren’t you going to help?’
‘No. I’ve done enough already.’ Miriam shoved the pistol into her pocket and walked into the shadows. She couldn’t stay. She had to hope those two men were the only ones who had been sent after Lourds.
In her rented room, Miriam paused only long enough to wedge a chair under the doorknob. Then she went to the bathroom and threw up. When she was finished, she washed her face, brushed her teeth, returned to the room, and sat on the edge of the bed.
Automatically, so suddenly glad for all the things her Mossad masters had taught her to do, finally understanding what all of the grueling hours of training had been about, she field-stripped the pistol and cleaned it with the kit she’d bought with the weapon. The familiar activity calmed and focused her.
When she was satisfied that the pistol was clean and battle-ready, when she was satisfied she was calm, she put the gun on the bed beside her and took out her satphone. She punched in one of the numbers she had been given for the cutouts.
‘Hello. You have reached Best—’
Before the message could continue, Miriam punched in the code to break free of the answering service.
Another voice, this one calmer and in control, answered. ‘May I help you?’
‘I’m an agent.’ Miriam gave the telephone operator her ID number. ‘I need to speak to my field officer.’ Katsas Shavit was another number. The connection was made quickly even though it was night in Israel.