“Say... CLIP... cutting out,” Ethan said.
She pulled in agitation at the balaclava. The damn thing was soaking wet with her perspiration, and the rising heat within had given her a pounding headache, one that was only compounded by the distorting comm signal. She considered ripping away the balaclava entirely, but that would mean exposing her face to any security cameras.
“Exit sighted,” she said, more succinctly. “I’m in a canteen or restaurant. Can you pick me up?”
“We... CLIP... your tracking indicator,” Ethan told her. “CLIP CLIP... opposite side... CLIP... take us a minute to get to you. CLIP... better way?”
Bretta considered going back into the Physics Research Center and trying to navigate her way through the warren of rooms and corridors to try and get back to where she and the team had started from. If she wasn’t being hunted by the Kidon, she would have done it. But as it were...
“Negative. I’m outgunned and outnumbered,” she said.
“Copy CLIP. On CLIP... way. CLIP... hot pickup.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Bretta said.
She slunk through the tables and chairs, careful not to knock into anything, her finger resting lightly on the trigger of her Beretta. She made it to the automatic doors, but the things failed to slide open. Clearly, they’d been locked for the night.
“Shit!” she hissed.
She made her way to the nearest counter, thinking that there would probably be some sort of emergency switch that could be pressed in case of fire or something. Hopefully it wouldn’t trigger an alarm.
“Come on,” she muttered to herself, as she walked quickly along the lengthy counter, her eyes scanning for an obvious green or red colored button. “C’mon, c’mon… aha!”
Her gaze alighted on a large green button at the end of the counter, labelled:
درب اضطراری
EMERGENCY DOOR
Convenient of them to label it for me.
She reached toward the button—
A booted foot flashed out from behind the partitioning column that divided the counter from the café proper and drove into Bretta’s midriff with enough force to send her reeling backwards. If she hadn’t been wearing her ballistic vest there would have been a very real chance that she would have acquired a couple of broken ribs from the blow. As it was, she felt her stomach heave and she almost vomited down her front.
She rebounded off the drinks fridge behind the counter, and stumbled back into striking range of her attacker. This actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as the slight, athletic Kidon member that had stepped from around the column––masked and attired in the same black combat fatigues as the rest of the Israeli unit––was raising a weapon to put an end to Bretta.
She grabbed the barrel of the compact Brugger & Thomet MP9 with one hand and stopped the figure from aiming it at her. This up close and personal to one of Israel’s most dangerous Special Forces soldiers, Bretta realized her attacker was a woman. She could tell from her opponent’s build, the lithe way the Kidon member moved, and the way the breath hissed through her teeth.
Bretta brought her other hand up, determined to get her pistol into the face of the other woman. However, her adversary took one hand off of her submachine gun and blocked the movement. For a handful of seconds that stretched all the way to eternity and back again, the two masked women strained silently; their concealed faces centimeters apart, their arms and shoulders and backs cording as they sought to break a muscular deadlock that might see them kill their opponent.
With a gasp, Bretta weakened first. Her pistol flew from her hand and across the room as the other woman forced her wrist back. Both women grabbed at the remaining MP9, Bretta leaning back just as the other woman’s finger depressed the trigger–several nine millimeter rounds ripped into the ceiling and dust rained down on the struggling combatants.
Bretta launched a knee strike that connected with her opponent’s side. It didn’t have as much power as she was usually able to deliver, thanks to being kicked unexpectedly in the guts, but it was enough to elicit a grunt from the other woman. The gun muzzle angled towards the floor and Bretta used the other woman’s momentary weakness to deliver a numbing blow with the edge of her hand to her enemy’s wrist.
The MP9 dropped to the floor.
Before Bretta could even take a step toward the weapon, the Kidon member swept it behind her with a flick of her heel, sending it into the shadows that cloaked the café interior.
Bretta made to withdraw the Helle Wabakimi knife at her belt but the woman was already upon her, employing the particularly deadly brand of mixed martial arts the Kidon favored, which Bretta countered move for move.
They fought back and forth across the canteen, weaving a dance of infinite skill and deadly grace. Both were within an inch of each other in height, both honed and hardened by years of training, punishing exercise regimes and real-world missions. It was clear after only a few exchanges that Bretta’s opponent was just as well versed in Jiu-Jitsu, boxing and Krav Maga as Bretta was herself.
Bretta parried a couple of vicious front snap kicks followed by an uppercut that would have loosened a few teeth had it made contact. She countered with a couple of swift traditional jabs, which the Kidon member slipped around like an eel, and then grabbed the other woman by the front of her military webbing and tossed her over in a textbook hip throw. Her adversary somehow countered this in mid-air, rolled and, using her own impetus, catapulted Bretta over her head.
Bretta crashed into a table and flipped it over, but rolled to her feet just in time to ward off an axe kick with her forearm. It was a numbing blow and Bretta had to lash out with a spinning crescent kick to gain some time to allow the life to flow back into her arm.
She knew that every second was precious. All this woman had to do was keep Bretta here until her fellow Kidon turned up.
If that happens, the best I’ll be able to hope for is for them to kill me quickly, she thought, blocking an eye strike.
Her opponent was gaining the upper hand; with a series of lightning fast combinations she slowly forced Bretta away from the doors that marked her only hope of escape. It was all Bretta could do to block and defend against this relentless onslaught, let alone mount any sort of sustained attack of her own.
She jumped a leg sweep, but was caught heavily in the side by the spinning heel kick that followed it a moment later. The blow sent her reeling sideways and, as her right foot came down, she slipped on something hard lying on the ground. Her knee buckled under her and she hit the edge of the counter with a jarring thud that sent pain blossoming through her ribs, despite the vest.
It turned out that the hard thing that she had lost her footing on was her own Beretta Px4 handgun. Bretta knew this because, when she looked up, she found herself gazing into the dizzyingly black abyss of her own weapon’s barrel.
And that’s that, she thought. She would have laughed at how easily and abruptly she had seemingly come to the end of her life, if she hadn’t been so damned winded. At least it would be over quickly...
7
Bretta waited for death to come.
The Kidon assassin suddenly took a half step forward; Bretta instinctively leaned away, as far back as the counter would let her. It was an involuntary movement, an animalistic response to preserve herself. As she craned her head away from the gun barrel, she felt a tug at her neck: the collar of her fatigues had opened during the fighting, and the angel wing necklace she always carried with her had partially tumbled out. Sam frowned upon her operatives wearing anything that might identify them while on a job, but it was one accessory Bretta was unwilling to part with, no matter what.
And, for the length of time that separated two heart beats, the Kidon assassin hesitated. Bretta’s vision—sharpened and focused by her imminent death to an almost painful degree—saw the woman’s forefinger tighten on the trigger.
Bretta realized her hand was resting upon something. A handle of some kind. Per
haps from a cup that it been knocked over during the fighting. She wrapped her fingers around it and swung her arm up in one last desperate attempt to save herself. Bretta swung her arm with such force that the object—a gray blur—knocked the Kidon member clean off her feet.
Bretta glanced at her own hand and saw that she wielded a kettle. Nice.
The assassin had been wearing a helmet, but the metal kettle had caught her just under the protective rim, right in the side of the face. By the way she had collapsed like a ragdoll, Bretta thought that she must have hit her squarely in the temple––one of the easiest and most effective pressure points in the head to exploit.
Bretta dropped the kettle to the floor, noticing that the cheap metal had been dented by the impact. Her pistol lay a pace or two from the motionless hand of the downed woman.
Bretta took a steadying breath, willing her pulse to get under control. She knew that she had only a handful of seconds before the woman was up and about again; even now she had loosed a dazed moan.
Bretta picked up the gun.
But how long, really, does it take to pull a trigger? She asked herself. No time at all. And I’ll be doing the world such a favor, ridding it of one of you, Kidon asshole.
She looked down at the helpless woman, half-tempted to remove the mask so she could see who it was she was killing. She had no sympathy for the Kidon. She had suffered too much at their hands.
She pointed the gun at the assassin’s face as the woman raised her hand to clutch at the point above her eye where Bretta had knocked her out.
She squeezed the trigger.
CLICK.
“Today’s your lucky day,” Bretta murmured. She scooped up the nearby MP9 instead, and was about to finish the job when she spotted motion from the hallway outside the café.
She leaped for cover behind an upturned table as a gunshot rang out. Another shot came. The light fixture above her exploded, plunging her and the woman at her feet into further gloom. The muffled chatter of Hebrew reached her ears.
Time to go.
Not pausing to think or question what it was she was doing, Bretta leaned out from behind the fallen table and let loose. Then she clambered to her feet and ran toward the patio. She was helped by the fact that the rest of the Israeli assassins had taken out the only light source in the half of the café she was in. They fired indiscriminately after her, their bullets punching holes in the walls, blowing the wooden chairs into kindling and bursting against metal surfaces.
She raced toward the still locked glass automatic door. She fired twice, blindly, over her shoulder, then pointed the submachine gun forward and emptied the magazine at the glass door.
The nine millimeter Parabellum rounds left a series of clean holes in the toughened glass, but the bullets did enough of a job weakening it so that, when Bretta ploughed into it with all her weight, it shattered like a bursting bubble.
Her momentum carried her across the outside decking, knocking a table out of the way as she careened across the al-fresco dining space and down the broad steps. It felt as if she hit every single one on the way down, but adrenaline imbued her with the awareness to roll expertly to her feet when she got to the bottom. There was no sign of the SUV.
“Copperhead, damn it, where are you?” she gasped into the mic, taking cover behind the wooden railing at the bottom of the patio.
The clatter of suppressed gunfire came from behind her and the exposed pavement was eaten up a few paces to her left, with fragments of cement flying up in lacerating flakes.
“Where the hell are––” she began to ask again.
The deep, reassuring bark of William’s assault rifle drew her attention to the Hyundai, which was roaring down the road to her left.
Bretta left cover and sprinted for the SUV while William laid down covering fire from out of one of the rear windows.
“Goddamn, Woman!” William’s southern drawl came through her earpiece. “Hurry up!” He loosed another withering hail of suppressive fire, aimed back towards the university.
The Sante Fe’s trunk popped open as it grew near. The vehicle swerved hard to the right, braking and fishtailing, and Bretta used the opportunity to dive into the capacious interior. She smacked into the back of the rear seats.
She didn’t even have a chance to tell Ethan to step on it. As soon as she was aboard he hit the gas and the two-liter turbo engine came to life with a roar of barely restrained power. As the SUV sped along the almost completely deserted road that encircled the university, Bretta slammed shut the trunk and collapsed in a sweating, panting heap.
“You all right back there?” Ethan asked as he gunned the car around a couple of corners before emerging onto the comparatively busy Enghelab Street.
“Yeah,” Bretta said. It was one of those pointless questions that wouldn’t really get answered until they were safely back in the States and could reminiscence on all this and laugh. What Ethan had really meant was, are you hurt?
Am I all right? I was a hair’s breadth from having my freakin’ head blown off.
She pulled off her balaclava and ran a hand through her matted, soaking wet black hair.
Jesus, I need a bath. And a drink.
8
Ethan took a circuitous route back to the safehouse in the Yousef Abad neighborhood of District 6. Along the way he pulled into an alleyway where a RAV4 SUV awaited. They ditched the getaway vehicle, transferring all their equipment to the new vehicle. William attached an explosive brick to the Santa Fe’s gas tank, and as they exited the alleyway, the vehicle detonated.
Ethan continued taking a circuitous route, and when he was satisfied that they were not being tailed, he headed for the safehouse, which they reached before midnight. William and Briana re-entered the building one at a time.
“It’s clear,” William sent to Ethan, who waited with Kiana.
Ethan led her inside, and had Bretta take the scientist into one of the two bedrooms to help her out of the bulletproof vest and examine where she’d been struck by the ricochet.
While this examination was in progress, William left to dump the RAV4 in one of the less desirable neighborhoods nearby. He planned to leave the keys in the ignition.
Ethan stripped off his sweat-soaked shirt and closed his eyes for a moment, sitting on the edge of the mattress in the other bedroom, and took a couple of deep breaths. It was only now, with the op over and the door to the safehouse locked and bolted, that he let himself entertain the notion––just for a second––that they were all good. He distractedly fingered the puckered bullet wound in his bicep.
Tonight was a close call. For me. For the scientist. For all of us. But especially Bretta.
Thinking back on all the flirtations with death that he had had, Ethan realized his professional career was constructed from close calls, one way or another.
The question is: how close is the next one going to be?
With a sigh he got up to take a shower, planning to wash the worry, stress and violence from his skin and aching muscles.
He toweled off and donned a fresh T-shirt and jeans, then walked back out into the living room to find the rest of the crew waiting for him.
“Is the shower free?” William asked.
“It is,” Ethan replied. “SUV taken care of?”
William grinned. “Window down, radio on, keys in the ignition, I did everythin’ to get that thing stolen except paint a sign on it.”
Ethan nodded wearily. “Good. Go take your shower. You stink like only a cowboy could.”
“That’s ’cause cowboys are such hard workers,” William replied, slapping Ethan on the chest as he walked past.
Kiana sat on the couch next to Bretta. The scientist was nursing a cup of black tea, and stared into its depths as if she might be able to divine the future there. It was, undoubtedly, a future that had become a lot less certain over the past couple of hours.
Ethan couldn’t help but note, again, that Kiana Avesta’s surveillance photographs had fallen well
short when it came to communicating just how attractive the young woman was. Even pale, drawn and stressed as she was, Ethan couldn’t help but marvel at the lustrous hair, the seductive almond-shaped eyes, and the smooth olive complexion.
With some difficulty he turned his mind back to business. She was not a person, as far as he was concerned. Dr. Avesta was a package; one that Ethan had collected and now needed to deliver. That was it. That was his only concern. So long as Sam received her in one piece, it mattered little how he transported her.
Ours, perhaps more than any other profession, is a job where the end justifies the means, he reminded himself. That had been one of the first things Sam had taught him after she had recruited him into the DIA, and it had stuck with him.
Ethan gave Bretta a glance and she replied with a small shake of her head, indicating that she had not been able to get anything out of Kiana so far.
“How did things look under her vest?” Ethan asked.
“Bullet didn’t even penetrate,” Bretta replied. “She’s just got a small bruise, nothing else.”
“Good.” Ethan turned his attention to Kiana. “You should drink that, you know,” he continued in English. He could’ve communicated with her just as easily in Farsi, but it was important to remind her just who it was that had rescued her from the murderous Kidon unit.
The scientist didn’t respond.
“Hey,” Ethan said, more forcefully. “Dr. Avesta.”
Kiana looked up at the sound of his louder voice, though he could tell her eyes were still kilometers back down the road, no doubt replaying what had happened at the Physics Research Center in the screening-room of her mind.
“You should drink that,” Ethan repeated, nodding at the tea she held.
Boiling Point (An Ethan Galaal Thriller Book 4) Page 7