He hit the wall with a dull whumpf of expelled breath, but still had the presence of mind to roll to the side as Bedouin unloaded a silenced pistol at him. The sound echoed loudly in the tight confines of the stairwell, the bullets blowing chunks out of the undressed masonry work.
Ethan sucked in a lungful of air, poked his head around the corner and was rewarded with a faceful of dust as another bullet smacked into the concrete, not ten centimeters from the end of his nose. He pulled his head in before the next round found its mark, but not before he had seen that it was Bedouin squatting like a great bird of prey in front of the door that led to the fourth floor. Ethan patted frantically at the small of his back, where he had wedged the Sig P365 compact pistol that he had found in the false bottom of his bedside table––a standard DIA protocol. It was still there.
He checked the breach and saw that there was a round in the chamber. That gave him thirteen in all, with the extended magazine he’d slotted into it.
He chanced another quick glance around the corner––this time at a different height. Another couple of bullets punched into the wall in answer.
Ethan gritted his teeth. “I haven’t got time for this.”
He really didn’t. Seconds counted when you were going head to head with an outfit as organized, lethal and highly-trained as the Kidon. A minute could count for an hour, could make all the difference when it came to being able to help a teammate out of a potentially deadly situation.
Once more he stuck his head out for a fraction of a second and then ducked back into cover. He waited for the expected two to three shots to come back and then he stepped out and fired two rounds back at Bedouin. The shots missed, cracking into the door frame above the Israeli’s head and sending splinters flying. The sounds of Ethan’s unsuppressed gunshots in the confines of the stairwell were deafening, but he had reconciled himself to the knowledge that, if he survived this encounter, his tinnitus would be giving him hell for days.
Bedouin fired blindly back, as he ducked back into the cover of the fourth floor, and the bullets zipped over Ethan’s head.
Ethan hustled up the stairs as the door slowly closed courtesy of its spring hinges. He unloaded his remaining eleven bullets into the doorframe and surrounds, keeping Bedouin from returning fire. The noise was stupendous. The clattering roar surely able to be heard in the neighboring country of Andorra. As he crested the top of the stairs, his gun gave him the dead man’s click and he dropped it.
An instant later Bedouin shoved the nearly closed door wide open, and whipped his gun around the edge of the doorframe.
Ethan kicked. His booted foot crushed the man’s gun hand into the door.
“Manyak!” Bedouin roared as his pistol clattered back down the stairs Ethan had just ascended.
Ethan had no breath to spare for a retort. He struck out with the side of his hand, attempting to catch the bigger man in the neck with a chop, but Bedouin dropped his head and the blow glanced off the top of his skull.
The Kidon retaliated with a reverse knife hand strike, which Ethan turned his shoulder to. He flinched at the impact: sometimes, in struggles such as this in confined quarters, it was less about dodging blows and more about damage limitation.
Ethan attempted to force his way past the man, but the Kidon wouldn’t yield. Ethan had to hand it to him, the man was not giving an inch. He was fighting tooth and nail to stop Ethan getting through the door and into the corridor beyond.
Ethan grunted as he took a spear hand to the thigh. It had been aimed at the pressure point in his groin, but he had turned at the last moment. The blow still sent a lance of pain down to his knee, but he was able to get himself into a position where he could deliver a couple of savage hooks, one of which caught Bedouin in the sternum.
There was a dull thud and Ethan saw the man almost imperceptibly sag for a second. Ethan head-butted the other man in the chin, splitting his own eyebrow open in the process, then he grabbed the off-balance Kidon by the lapels of his jacket and tried to toss him over his knee.
Bedouin didn’t go down; but to ensure he kept his feet he had to turn his body away from Ethan for a moment. Utilizing that one second when his enemy’s back was turned, Ethan delivered a rabbit punch to the back of Bedouin’s head.
The rabbit punch was one of the dirtiest punching techniques that a martial arts student could learn, and was banned in all forms of the sport. It took its name from the specific way that trappers used to kill rabbits to avoid ruining their pelts––clubbing them at the base of the skull to sever their spinal cords.
The punch should have killed the Israeli assassin, but Ethan, in his haste to assist Bretta, didn’t connect as cleanly as he needed. The strike hit Bedouin in the base of the skull, but wasn’t quite flush. However, the big man collapsed like he’d been lopped off at the knees nonetheless and tumbled without a sound down the hard staircase, his face bouncing satisfyingly off the last step.
Ethan descended partway down the stairwell to retrieve the man’s pistol from where it lay on the steps. He spared the Kidon a look, and saw that the man was, regrettably, still alive. Ethan entertained, for the briefest of instances, going down there and stomping on the man’s windpipe but then turned away. He slammed the door the door behind him, wrenched off the door handle to stop the man from getting through and flung it away.
Ethan turned and hurried down the fourth floor corridor, his pistol at the ready. He checked that there was a round nestled in the chamber as he went, the weight of the gun telling him he had half a magazine or so of bullets left. He noticed, with the tail end of his eye, that the fire door was slightly ajar at the far end of the common hallway.
He reached the door to Bretta’s room. It had been blown off its hinges by C4. There were spots of what was unmistakably brown dried blood on the carpet in front of the door.
Inside, the room was completely trashed. Ethan didn’t indulge in the few seconds that most people might to drink in the sight of the blood-spattered destruction. His eyes scanned the room. Bretta wasn’t there. He opened the wardrobe door and there was nothing. Then he walked to the bathroom.
Blood had congealed in a thick, viscous sheen around the boots that had given Boots his nickname. The man was almost as white as the tiles he was laying on, the gaping wound in his neck crusted black with drying blood. Ethan noted the other wound in the man’s sopping trousers.
Bretta.
He remembered the fire door standing ever so slightly ajar.
He tore from the room and hurtled down the corridor. He crashed through the fire door and found himself on a typical metal gantry. Leaning on the rail, he looked down.
He was just in time to see someone bundled into the back of a waiting Land Rover Discovery. Bedouin was just entering the driver’s side door, but he paused to glance up.
The prick must have been way less injured than he put on, Ethan thought bitterly. No doubt he got up the instant I turned away, and took the fire escape on the third floor.
When the man saw Ethan, Bedouin gave a mock salute.
Ethan raised the pistol and squeezed off some shots.
Bedouin ducked inside and shut the door. The Land Rover took off. Ethan only managed to fire three shots before the suppressed weapon clicked.
He watched in defeat as the vehicle drove up the alley, turned the corner and disappeared from view.
19
Ethan walked briskly back to Bretta’s room, pulling the fire door closed behind him. His mind was awhirl with possibilities as to what the Kidon might have in store for Bretta. None of them were good.
As with all rumor and intrigue that circulated around the practice of torture by any government agency––be it the American CIA, China’s MSS or the Russian SVR––the Mossad’s proclivities were shrouded in mystery and unsubstantiated anecdotal evidence. Bretta, though, had told him of the things she had been ordered to do to suspects during her time in the Mossad. These techniques had been, in the grand scheme of things and in the lexicon of
possible violent actions, fairly moderate. Slapping with the aim of hurting a prisoner’s ears, nose and lips, back-bending––when the prisoner was made to lie on a backless stool, cuffed by their hands and feet to the legs and forced to bend over backwards on it, and being screamed at or forced to listen to the same blaringly loud song for hours at a time were some examples.
However, for some reason I don’t think these particular Kidon will be stopping there, Ethan thought grimly as he strode down the corridor. Not after she’d killed one of their team members.
He walked back into Bretta’s room and pulled out his cellphone. He wanted to race down to the second floor and check on William and Kiana in person, but he couldn’t be sure whether the Kidon had planted hidden surveillance devices on every floor’s main corridor to see what other rooms the rest of the team occupied. Ethan would’ve employed the same tactic if the roles had been reversed. It was always a smart idea to cover your ass, to put some contingency in place, when you were not one-hundred percent sure of where your primary target might be. The halls would have to be swept for surveillance devices, and video footage analyzed.
Instead of heading straight down to the second floor then, Ethan selected William’s codename and initiated the call. The phone rang once before it was picked up.
“Yeah,” came the Texan drawl. William’s voice sounded tense.
“It’s me,” Ethan said slowly. “Sit-rep.”
“Package is safe,” William replied. “Not even a knock at the door.”
Ethan had called William while racing to Bretta's room to warn him, so his fellow operative could barricade the door and ready himself for a potential Kidon attack.
“And your sit-rep?” William asked in return.
“They got her,” Ethan said.
William didn’t answer, didn’t interrupt with unnecessary questions, though Ethan imagined that the other man was burning with more than a few.
“She managed to kill one of them,” Ethan continued.
“You’re sure?” William asked then.
Ethan looked through the bathroom door at the prostrate form of the expired Israeli assassin. “Oh, yeah. I’m sure all right.”
In the background he heard the soft voice of Kiana Avesta over the line: “Is something wrong, Will?”
William ignored her. “You want me to come up there?”
“Negative,” Ethan said. “Stay exactly where you are. They could have set up surveillance equipment. Sit tight. I’ll keep you posted. You sure you’re both okay?”
“Nothin’ to report at all,” William said.
“Good. We’ll talk later.”
Ethan hung up.
It was only then he gave himself the time to study the room. It was, as anyone could see, a goddamn mess. Clearly, Bretta had given a good account of herself, even being outnumbered as she obviously must have been.
“You did good, Maelstrom,” Ethan muttered to himself as he stood like a statue and let his eyes rove around the trashed hotel room for any sign or clue that the Kidon might have left behind to tell him where they had taken her. He knew there would be nothing though.
He looked at the clothes folded on the back of the chair in front of the simple dressing table and mirror. Miraculously the spindly, decorative chair seemed to be the one item of furniture that had not been knocked over or had someone thrown through it.
The bed covers were strewn about the place––looked to Ethan as if someone had taken a tumble over it––and there was a small semi-circle of dried blood next to the bed.
His eyes went from that stain to the bathroom door that stood ajar. There was no trail, so it wasn’t Boots’ blood.
Ethan got up and pushed the bathroom door open with his toe. Boots still lay slumped where Ethan had left him after he had dashed out.
Where the hell else is the bastard going to go… doubt he’s got a drop of blood left in his body.
It certainly looked like about five liters––the average amount that an adult human had circulating at any one time––all laid out on the cold white tiles like that.
Despite what the man had done, Ethan couldn’t muster the will to hate him. Hate for your enemy was a waste of time and energy in his book. Especially when your enemy was no more than a cooling sack of meat on a bathroom floor.
“You’re just some dead asshole now, Boots,” he murmured to the corpse, as he squatted down next to the dead Israeli.
He considered the slack, waxy face for a moment. Imagining what it must have been like for Boots in those final moments, as he grew rapidly more lethargic, and watched his life pooling out around him. He would have known exactly what was happening, would’ve known just how dead he was. What had his final, sleepy thoughts been about, as he tried to stem the flow of blood with futile fingers?
Ethan, taking care not to get blood on himself, reached out and patted Boots down. The man didn’t move. He just continued to stare off into whatever far place he had moved onto to from under is half-closed lids.
“Nadda,” Ethan said, sitting back on his haunches. Hardly surprising.
He got to his feet and replayed the scene of Bretta getting bundled into the Land Rover. How did they get her room number?
It’s got something to do with that email, that’s for certain, he thought, feeling pissed at himself for ever having allowed Bretta to follow that particular lead.
Ethan sat on the mattress and pulled the bedside telephone towards him. It didn’t look like it had been tampered with or bugged, and he highly doubted the Kidon would’ve taken the time to tap it in their haste to get away with Bretta.
He dialed down to reception.
“Ola,” came the friendly voice. “This is recep––”
“This is Mr. Copperhead,” Ethan said, brusquely.
He heard a click as the line was redirected.
“Si, Mr. Copperhead,” came a new voice. “How can I assist you?”
Ethan recognized the voice of the concierge who had originally checked the team in.
Could he have leaked the room number? The thought blossomed organically in his brain, before he even really had time to consider the notion. He quickly dismissed it. If the man had leaked Bretta’s room, why would he have stopped there? Why not give up all three rooms?
“Señor?” the concierge asked. “Are you still there?”
“Yes,” Ethan replied. “Yes. I have a couple of requests that I need you to take care of with the utmost expediency. You understand?”
“Si, señor,” came the silky, polite reply. “You have but to name them.”
“I’m going to need a dry cleaning of room four-two-three,” Ethan said. “Immediately.”
“I see, Mr. Copperhead,” the concierge replied. Then he added, in an extremely pointed voice, “Will you be requiring anything, ah, taken away?”
“Yeah,” Ethan replied, impressed, despite himself, with the man’s sangfroid. “You might also want to send someone in to touch up the stairwell between floors three and four.”
“Very good, sir,” came the reply from the other end of the phone.
“You’re also going to have to perform an extensive ESSO on all common hallways,” Ethan said. That was code for performing an Electronic Surveillance Sweep Operation.
“It will be done,” the concierge replied.
Ethan awoke early the next morning, but he didn’t open his eyes at once. He lay, listening to the silence of the hotel, letting the thoughts and speculations that he had put on hold during his time asleep, to come slowly flooding back to his mind.
He had heard nothing from either Sam Rond nor the Kidon all through the previous evening. Not a peep of any kind.
He hadn’t really expected the Kidon to contact him. They would have been too busy securing whatever safe place they had selected to take Bretta to––going through all those time-consuming acts and employing the myriad little tradecraft tactics that made up the theatre of black operations. Ethan could just imagine it. Then, once they were conv
inced that they had not been followed or tracked in any way––whether it be by human or drone––and they had ditched the Land Rover, then they would start on making Bretta uncomfortable.
Ethan swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry and sour. He tried not to let his imagination run away with just how Bretta would have passed the night, while he was lying in this comfortable queen-sized bed.
And of course, he thought to himself, that’s just what they want. They want you to sweat, to worry, to feel helpless. And why? Because all of that weakens you.
In defiance of popular stereotyping, Ethan had not stayed up all night, wringing his hands and casting fretful glances at the telephone beside his bed. Instead, he had ordered the dinner that he had meant to enjoy with Bretta, showered and gone to bed early. It was the only thing that he could do to make sure the Kidon didn’t get it all their own way. If he were called to action the next day, he wanted to be as rested and alert as he could be. Him being tired would not help Bretta in any way, though it might aid the Kidon assassins.
His cell phone he had placed on his bedside table so that it would wake him up instantly were it to ring or receive a message, but it had not gone off at all. He had slept through the night as peacefully as only soldiers who have learned to sleep in zones prone to indirect fire knew how to sleep. Once you trained yourself to snooze through the stress and noise of blind mortar and artillery fire, a worrisome night in a queen-sized bed posed very little trouble.
Ethan opened his eyes. He saw the glass of whisky sitting on his bedside table next to his phone, untouched. He had poured himself a measure of the sixteen-year-old Lagavulin when he had returned to his room last night, before he had stopped to consider what he was doing. He had refrained from taking a sip as soon as he had cooled down and come to his senses, but it had galled him to waste such a palatable drop.
Sam’s continued silence worried him. He had no real way of contacting her while on an op, and he needed to talk to her urgently. It was no longer a case of hiding out now, trying to keep Kiana safe and hoping the Kidon didn’t track them down. The Israelis knew exactly where they were now, and Ethan needed to know how Sam wanted him to handle this.
Boiling Point (An Ethan Galaal Thriller Book 4) Page 18