Jerusalem
Five days after Assassinations
Six days to Announcement
‘We’re behind you, third car in the line,’ Meghan directed Zeb. She and Beth had rented an SUV and driven to the hotel to meet him there.
A Range Rover. Good choice. It would be noticeable but was sturdy and would withstand wear. Not that I am expecting any action.
Beth saluted him from the passenger seat and bent her head back to the screen on her lap. It was always that way. Meghan drove, Beth the passenger.
‘You got any kidon work done?’ he leaned in through the window and fist-bumped Meghan.
‘Not much,’ she grunted in disappointment. ‘Your last request, to find something on Omet Zeev, took time. We didn’t find much on him. A few bank accounts in a few places. But he has a mistress,’ her eyes danced. ‘In Tel Aviv. He visits her every week.’
‘That will be useful,’ Zeb said automatically as he scanned the lines of vehicles. All but the Range Rover seemed to be empty. No, that ambulance there. Movement inside it. He shrugged. An EMS vehicle was of no use if it was unattended. The police will surely have checked it out.
‘You’re expecting trouble?’ Beth sensed his unease.
‘Nope. But I wish the ambassador stopped coming here. There are too many targets under one roof in there.’
I don’t like this location. The two hotels have a common carpark, which is okay. It is in the basement, which is good. But the entry and exit are on the same side as the street entrance.
A dark opening to the right of the negotiators’ hotel was the parking lot’s approach.
‘As I was saying,’ Meghan drawled, ‘on the other operatives: Werner cracked all of Meir’s files. It turns out he has location-tracking activated on it and carried the machine with him on missions. He’s clear, too.’
‘I’ll still talk to him.’ Zeb was still looking at the hotel, the street, traffic, taking in security arrangements.
Two men strolled past him, their heads bent, turned away from him. He stifled a smile when he noticed their shirts. It’s not Hawaii. But what do I know about current-day fashion?
Three armed guards were at each hotel’s entrance. There was thick evening traffic on Emek Refaim. Office workers heading home.
‘You’re wearing armor?’
‘Always.’ Beth shut down her screen and looked at her sister, who raised her shoulders and shook her head. Zeb’s disquiet was rubbing off on them.
It was a faint tickle at the base of Zeb’s spine. A premonition. Over the years he had learned to pay attention to it. Often, it turned out to be nothing. But on a few occasions, it had meant the arrival of a hostile presence.
Can’t spot anything off here. I am jumpy. And tired. Nothing more than that.
An engine revved in the distance. Some car enthusiast.
He watched as the car came racing down Emek Refaim, finding gaps in traffic, squeezing through it. French make, dark windows, the windshield reflecting light, preventing him from seeing who was inside. He could make out heads bobbing inside.
Looks like three or four people.
He and the twins were to the left of the hotel’s entrance. The car was approaching them, no flashers lighting up. He turned his attention away and leaned against the Range Rover, crossed his arms.
‘You want to hear a joke?’ Beth attempted to lighten his mood.
‘Go on.’
The car roared. It overtook a slower moving vehicle, dangerously. Angry honks sounded. Curses flew in the air.
It didn’t go straight on.
It turned in to the hotel, tires squealing.
The security guards straightened. A doorman came running out, hands outstretched. He went down, his body jerking when an assault rifle appeared in the vehicle’s window and chattered.
Zeb’s breath escaped him in shock. He stood motionless for a moment, watching the car race toward the entrance. The three armed men at the glass doors fired and then went down as more rifles burst from the car and shot at them.
‘Follow me.’ He snapped out of his shock, training and experience taking over.
He knew what the occupants of the car planned. It came out of a Middle Eastern terrorist’s textbook.
He sprinted toward the hotel on the left, drawing his Glock out.
‘Get away,’ he yelled at the men in the flowery shirts and fired at the vehicle.
The car kept going. It shuddered and rattled as it climbed the steps, but didn’t stop.
Zeb heard footsteps behind him. Snapped a quick glance behind. The sisters, faces intent, sprinting.
Screams from the street. Yells and shouts.
That’s Arabic! He spun on a heel and his gut clenched.
About a dozen armed men had exploded out of parked cars. They were in long, loose robes, all chanting, turning their weapons to the hotel, firing indiscriminately.
A car packed with explosives—he was sure of that—behind him, killers facing him.
Sight was action.
The sisters fanned out, clearing his firing line. They kept shooting at the car, still running toward the hotel.
Zeb snapped several shots at the oncoming gunmen. Two fell. Some turned their attention toward him and the sisters, but the majority were firing at the hotel’s glass doors, murderous rage in their eyes.
Zeb ducked when a round whizzed past. He swerved and ran toward the wall separating the two courtyards. The sisters followed him.
He leapt across the divider, lost his balance and fell.
And that saved him. A round smacked into concrete, passing through the air he had occupied. He rolled and kept moving. And then he was up, running toward the dark entrance of the parking lot.
‘Why there?’ Meghan yelled.
‘That’s where the ambassador, the negotiators will be evacuated.’
Yells behind him. He took a long step, whirled in the air to look back, saw a few shooters follow, snapped off shots and then he was landing, gathering his balance and dashing toward the cover of the car park.
It was darker inside. Ceiling lights casting a glow. Several vehicles. All seemed empty.
Meghan and Beth separated. Took positions. One sister behind a concrete pillar, the other crouching behind a vehicle. Aiming, shooting down the approaching terrorists.
Zeb moved from vehicle to vehicle, checking that each one was empty. There was a door to the elevators in the distance. It burst open even as he watched. Two armed men burst through. They spotted him, raised their weapons.
‘MOSSAD,’ he shouted instinctively in his command voice. ‘You are police?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s the situation.’
A loud whump silenced them all.
The building shook. The ground trembled. Cars shuddered, their alarms going off. Dust fell from the ceiling. A chunk of concrete loosened and fell on a car.
Zeb looked back at Meghan. Her eyes were dark, haunted. As was Beth’s.
They all knew what had happened.
The car bomb had exploded in the adjacent building.
A very powerful one. Even this hotel shook.
‘Keep watch outside,’ he told the sisters. ‘You,’ he directed the guards. ‘keep that door open. Stand on either side of it. Any hostile shows, shoot without question.’
They nodded, accepting his orders without question.
‘You have radio contact with the other security personnel?’
‘Lost it a few moments back.’
‘Go!’
The officers positioned themselves next to the elevator’s entrance.
Zeb thought quickly, working out threat vectors and defense positions. The negotiators would be well protected, as would the ambassador. There would be contingency plans for just such an event. Security teams would bring them to the parking lot and exfil would be by armored vehicles.
Or so I hope.
He checked his cell phone. No signal.
‘Beth, Meghan, you have enough mags?’
‘Yeah,’ the younger sister replied, ‘enough to last a war.’
‘Injuries?’
‘Nah. We can outrun a bullet.’
‘You came close, didn’t you? To catching one,’ Meghan asked in concern.
He didn’t reply. He went to the entrance and peered out. No movement. Three fallen bodies, not far away.
The cops will be coming soon. IDF teams as well. Those fighters have no chance. What if, he turned cold, they don’t find the negotiators in that hotel? And they won’t. Unless they know about the passage.
They’ll take hostages, he answered himself. They might shoot indiscriminately.
Or they might know about that passage. There would be a firefight in any case.
‘Cover me,’ he told the sisters and crouched low, running toward the bodies.
He grabbed their weapons and mags. He was turning back when a head popped over the wall.
Hostile!
No time to aim.
He threw himself down on his back and sprayed rounds. The head disappeared.
A barrage of fire came from behind him, pinning down the attacker, if he was still alive.
He got to his feet again, gathered the weapons and raced back to safety.
The weapons were AKs. In good condition. A spare mag with each shooter.
Meghan took one, inspected it. ‘Zeb, this could be Mumbai all over again.’
Terrorists had taken over downtown hotels and buildings in Mumbai a few years back. They had shot several residents and had finally been overpowered in a shootout with cops and local SWAT teams.
Those incidents had made every law enforcement and counter-intelligence agency in the world reassess its security measures.
‘I hope not.’
‘Someone’s coming!’ a guard warned.
‘Don’t show yourself. Don’t shoot unless I say so.’
They accepted his words without question.
‘You,’ he told the sisters, ‘remain here. It’s possible there could be more shooters outside, to catch us in a pincer movement.’
He ran toward the elevator. Took cover behind a vehicle and signaled for the two guards to follow suit.
There was the sound of clattering footsteps. Screams and shouts. Indistinct orders being shouted.
Several armed men appeared. All in Israeli uniform. Behind them were a bunch of people. Panic in their faces and voices.
Zeb waited a beat. Motioned for the guards to stay quiet.
Twenty-five civilians, he counted rapidly. Ten guards. Five in front, five at the rear. He searched in the dimmer light, and his heart leapt when he spotted Bob, his two partners and, next to them, Alice Monash.
He stepped out from cover. Raised his hands immediately when guns trained on him.
‘I AM WITH THE AMBASSADOR,’ he said in Hebrew.
‘Zeb!’ Alice Monash cried out in relief. ‘He’s with me,’ she told the Israeli security detail.
‘You said you were Mossad,’ the elevator guards looked at him suspiciously.
‘I am not the enemy,’ he thundered. ‘Are these the negotiators?’ he asked the nearest guards.
‘Yes,’ one man spoke, evidently the team leader, who clearly agreed with him that it wasn’t the time to discuss who he was. If Zeb wasn’t pointing a gun at them, he wasn’t hostile. ‘And some residents. What’s the scene here?’
Zeb broke it down to them quickly. Several negotiators cried in alarm at his account.
‘You will be safe,’ he told them, injecting authority into his voice. He repeated the same message in Arabic. ‘I guarantee it.’
‘You have vehicles for them?’ he asked the leader.
‘Yes, and evac locations.’
‘Move!’
Bob and the American security team escorted the ambassador to their vehicle. The negotiators and the residents went to six vehicles.
‘You two,’ Zeb pointed to the elevator guards, ‘get in those vehicles.’
That way there will be two to each vehicle.
‘Let the ambassador go first,’ he told the team leader, who stared at him and then nodded.
‘Ma’am, your vehicle will lead.’ He ran to the ambassador, who lowered her window.
‘No, let them—’ Bob protested.
‘Bob. Zeb’s right.’
‘Ma’am, there could be more attackers outside. We’ll be the first to be hit.’
‘Go!’ she ordered, her lips compressed, her face white. ‘Zeb, get in. Get Beth and Meghan, too.’
‘No, ma’am. We’ll run outside. Just in case.’
He darted away, ignoring her shouts and Bob’s yells.
‘Let’s go,’ he told Meghan and Beth.
They followed without a word, knowing instinctively what he was planning.
The three of them headed out of the parking lot, walked up the inclined driveway, weapons ready, eyes scanning the street. Sirens were wailing in the distance; armed officers had turned up and were clearing the street.
Zeb waved to the ambassador’s vehicle.
It nosed out of its shelter, headlights turned on. Behind it, more lights as the other vehicles followed.
No attacker showed. An IDF man stood in the center of the street, waving at them to come through.
Zeb moved to the right, the sisters followed, allowing the vehicles to pass.
Alice Monash’s vehicle reached street level, started turning left.
The door of the ambulance opened, the one Zeb had noticed. It was hundred yards away to the right.
A bearded man stepped out in EMS uniform. Another jumped out and joined him. Zeb looked at their hands. Clear.
He looked back at the vehicles, which were still moving slowly, the ambassador’s ride completing its maneuver.
Something bothered him. A car honked in the distance. Sirens grew louder. And then it came to him in a flash.
Why aren’t those EMS men rushing to the hotel? There must be enough dead or wounded around.
His head snapped back.
Saw both men reach inside the vehicle.
The leaner, taller one brought out something long, tubular. Zeb’s eyes flew to his face.
Recognition flooded. Abdul Masih!
‘INCOMING!’ he roared a warning.
He threw himself to the ground just as the second man started firing at the vehicles.
The EQB leader started raising the launcher to his shoulder.
Zeb fired the AK. His first rounds flew wide.
The second terrorist brought his weapon downwards to bear on Zeb.
Stone chips flew at Zeb. Something grazed his cheek.
Slow down. Masih matters. Forget the other shooter.
He slowed down his breathing. Blanked out everything but the terrorist leader and his launcher. Ignored the sisters’ shouts and the shooting that commenced. Everything else was white fog.
Through it, he sensed rather than saw the second gunman fall back after rounds slammed into him.
Zeb didn’t pay attention.
His attention was fixed solely on Masih, who gripped the launcher firmly, steadied it and took aim.
Zeb sighted. Something slammed the side of his head. His head jerked back and something warm and wet trickled down his face. He blinked and sighted down the rifle again. He was alive. That was all that mattered.
He focused on Masih. Took a breath and let it out slowly.
The terrorist braced himself, his eyes narrow, his lips parted in a feral smile. He, too, was singularly intent on firing, ignoring the rounds aimed at him.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Zeb triggered at the bottom of his respiratory cycle. And this time his aim was straight and true.
Abdul Masih fell back, his body jerking spasmodically as Zeb’s rounds punched into him. The grenade launcher clattered to the ground.
Sound returned, though indistinct. The world returned, slowly.
IDF personnel flooded the street. Someone hauled him up. A voice spoke urgently. He shook his head.
It repeated. He blinked rapidly. It was Meghan.
‘Are you okay?’ she touched his temple, her palm red, wet, when she drew it away. ‘You are bleeding.’
‘The ambassador?’
‘She’s safe. Everyone’s safe.’
‘Zeb!’
Avichai Levin came running, his face lined with worry and anger.
‘It was EQB. All along, it was them. Not Mossad.’