Boiling Point (An Ethan Galaal Thriller Book 4)

by Isaac T. Hooke

  “Just stop, Bretta,” Lyra said in Hebrew. “I’m not going to just shoot you on the top of some cement factory in Barcelona.”

  Bretta raised one of her shapely––if slightly blood-encrusted eyebrows. “You’re not?”

  Lyra shook her head. “We’re practically family.”

  Bretta snorted. “Practically. Right.”

  Lyra ejected the magazine of her submachine gun, put it in her pocket and then ejected the round in the firing chamber. Then she put the APC9K carefully against the low wall of the roof.

  “We carry on where we left off in Tehran,” Lyra said, rolling her shoulders.

  Bretta sighed. “You have an unfair advantage, considering you haven’t had the life beaten out of you the past few days.”

  In answer, Lyra assumed a defensive stance.

  Bretta sucked in another deep lungful of the chill night air. It was invigorating, knowing that, perhaps, these really would be some of the last breaths she ever took. Invigorating and nauseating in equal measure.

  Randomly, she recalled the feel of the sand between her toes the very first day she had ever set foot on a beach. The memory sparked another, of the time she and Ethan had set foot on the beach in Saint Croix, the last beach she had visited, so cliché, a child’s version of paradise.

  Bretta stretched her neck from one side to the other. She heard one of her vertebrae crunch in protest.

  “All right,” she said. “I suppose you could have made this a lot less personable. For what it’s worth, I appreciate the chance.”

  And I’ll make you rue every second of it.

  Bretta was feeling much the worse for wear, but she was not the sort of woman to let a little weariness stand in the way of her getting a head start in a fight. She placed her hands on her knees, leaned over as if to take a few much-needed deep breaths, but instead launched herself at the Kidon member.

  She had been hoping––taking optimism right up to the point of foolishness––that she might be able to take the other woman off-guard. Bretta had weighed her options––taking into account the current state of both of them, their skills and their individual propensity for violence––and decided that her most likely shot at coming out of this confrontation alive was to drop the Kidon onto the roof and wrap her hands around her throat. Bretta knew Lyra’s fighting technique almost as intimately as her own. It felt, at times, like they had been fighting each other all their lives. She hoped the other woman would not expect such a reckless attack.

  It seemed, however, that Lyra had in fact anticipated, because in spite of being seemingly off-balance and unprepared, in a heartbeat Lyra was set on the balls of her feet, rocking and ready. She caught the charging Bretta and, using her own momentum against her, executed an outer hook throw which sent Bretta tumbling hard across the gravel-strewn rooftop.

  Bretta rolled to her feet, the abrasions across her hands and elbows a mere hum in the grand symphony of pain that thrummed through her battered body. However, along with the blood that coursed through her veins, a will to survive also flowed. A molten alloy resolve to endure; made of equal parts professional training, natural staunchness and belligerence.

  Lyra was like Bretta herself: an apex predator, devoid of mercy and able to maintain an icy logical head when faced with adversary. There was no showboating on her part, no room in a fight for smartass quips. She followed up the throw with a savage roundhouse kick aimed at Bretta’s solar plexus.

  Bretta spun aside, her thighs protesting at the sudden change in direction. She parried the hook kick that followed, taking it on the side of her calf, dropped to a squat to avoid a punch and delivered a roundhouse kick of her own from the roof that connected with Lyra’s hip.

  Lyra grunted as she was knocked sprawling to the tarred gravel. Bretta came at her with a hook kick, the heel of her boot slamming into the thigh of her former Mossad colleague, causing her to gasp in pain and roll a few steps away.

  Had it been some classic eighties action movie romp the two combatants might have taken a moment to catch their breath and exchange a few little acid one-liners.

  This was not the case now. In a life and death struggle you never gave an opponent time to catch anything, especially their breath.

  Bretta threw herself at Lyra, lashing out with a couple of lightning fast front kicks. Lyra utilized a jujitsu technique to yield to the first kick, absorbing some of Bretta’s energy through the outside of her thigh. When Bretta’s second kick came in, aimed at Lyra’s groin, the Kidon switched to Krav Maga––the favored unarmed combat technique taught to the Israeli Defense Force––and employed a sidestepping defense to guide Bretta’s boot past her.

  Bretta saw what was coming next, but was powerless to do anything to stop it. Her own impetus carried her forward and she stepped straight into a punch from Lyra, the other woman’s hand snapping out like a striking snake. Bretta rolled her head with the impact, but the blow still knocked her silly, sending her stumbling sideways into one of the protruding ventilation ducts. She reeled back, just in time to avoid a back kick from Lyra that left a dent in the aluminum vent, and blinked away the spots of white that dotted her vision.

  Lyra swept in with a series of punches––hooks, uppercuts and elbow strikes––that Bretta either managed to block or yield to effectively. Breath was rasping in her ears, whether it was hers or Lyra’s she couldn’t tell. Her teeth were bared in a determined snarl, and she shook off an attempt by the Kidon to slip around her and get her in a guillotine choke. Wriggling free of the attempted chokehold and seeing a slight opening, Bretta put her foot against the vent and launched herself forward.

  The shoulder crash caught Lyra squarely in the chest, the ball of Bretta’s shoulder driving hard into the other woman’s breastbone. Bretta heard something crunch nastily from the impact, as the two of them landed heavily on the floor.

  Bretta rolled away, tried to get nimbly to her feet, but only managed to get as far as her hands and knees. There was something dripping into her eyes. She put up a hand and her fingers came away sticky.

  Blood. Mine? Must’ve been that punch…

  Lyra had managed to make it to her feet, but her face was creased in a pain she couldn’t conceal. She had one arm held close to her chest.

  Bretta clambered to her feet on the second attempt and wiped the blood out of her eyes with the back of her hand.

  Lyra spat a gob of bloody phlegm to the side and started forward.

  The fight dissolved into a series of strikes, blocks and retaliatory blows; a war of attrition more than anything. Both women were perfectly matched as far as technique and training were concerned, it was essentially their stamina levels that would determine the outcome. Unfortunately, that meant the fight was tilted in Lyra’s favor.

  Bretta parried a savage hook from Lyra with her elbow, then failed to stop a brutal knee to the guts. A mean head-butt busted her lip open and she tottered backward, hitting the low wall of the roof. Salty blood flooded her mouth.

  Lyra, sensing victory perhaps, moved forward to finish the job, but Bretta rammed her boot heel with all her force into the Kidon’s knee, causing Lyra to screech in pain and fury. Bretta threw a desperate punch at the other woman, connected with her chin and snapped her head back.

  And there, there, was Bretta’s opening. Lyra’s larynx was bared, while her face was fixed dazedly at the night sky. A ghostly, white-orange line of easily crushable cartilage and intrinsic muscles.

  Bretta’s fist automatically curled into the position needed to perform a palm heel strike. The muscles of her arms, shoulders, chest and legs punched and––

  ––she hesitated.

  A killing blow. This is a killing blow.

  Just like that, in the time it took for a thought to form and take flight, the moment passed.

  Lyra’s head dropped back down. If she noticed Bretta’s frozen palm and the mortal blow that would have come with it, she gave no outward indication. Instead, with the instinct of a true killer, she
brought her right fist down in a Krav Maga hammer fist. It was a strike that utilized the padded section of the fist, next to the pinky, to protect the striker’s hand, but was no less devastating for that.

  The blow struck Bretta right in the middle of her head, the force of it sending her to her knees. There was no time for her to gather her wits though, because Lyra had already shifted, rotating her body to bring down the other fist. She smashed it into precisely the same spot as the first. Bretta’s head cracked against the edge of the roof.

  That’s what hesitation gets you, she thought as Lyra grabbed her by the shirtfront.

  Lyra tossed Bretta over her hip onto the gravel. Bretta didn’t resist. She was done. She barely felt herself hit the ground, but became aware of Lyra kneeling on her chest due to the fact that breathing had suddenly become constricted.

  Bretta looked up, and blinked to clear her vision. Lyra was straddling her, with one knee pinning Bretta. Lyra breathed heavily through her nose and stared down at her with a single-minded intensity that Bretta had last seen on an Animal Channel special on lions.

  Lyra’s fist was raised above her head, pulled back, cocked, ready to piston into Bretta’s face.

  I wonder how she’ll do it? Bretta mused, an element of professional curiosity creeping into her thoughts.

  Slowly, the fist descended toward her face. Bretta frowned, speculating as to whether it was the result of head trauma that Lyra seemed to be moving so slowly. Then, however, the fist came to halt just above her face.

  Confused, Bretta blinked dimly up at it.

  The fist opened.

  The silver angel wing dropped from Lyra’s hand, stopping just short of Bretta’s nose, the chain caught around Lyra’s finger.

  “Ah,” Bretta wheezed, shifting uselessly under the knee pressing into her chest, “so that’s where that went.”

  Lyra grabbed a hold of one of Bretta’s hands and stuffed the pendant into her palm, forcefully closing Bretta’s fingers around it.

  Bretta clasped the necklace tight. Felt the wing digging into her palm. She looked up at the other woman and saw something flickering in the depths of the gray eyes; something secret.

  “I’ve always worn it, you know,” Bretta rasped, locking her green gaze with the gray one.

  Lyra reached up to the torn neckline of her combat fatigues and pulled down. A matching silver angel wing, the opposite to the one Bretta carried, was fastened about her own neck. There was a smear of brown dried blood on it.

  Lyra took some of the weight off of Bretta’s chest, and the two women looked long at each other. Finally Lyra let go of her combat fatigues, hiding the necklace she wore.

  “It didn’t have to be like this,” Bretta said, taking a deep breath.

  “People say that,” Lyra told her, “but sometimes decisions are made and things turn out just as they should. Both of us made our beds, both of us chose our sides. And here we are.”

  Bretta snorted painfully. “And here I was just trying to have a nice Brady Bunch moment.” Bretta coughed up some blood and spat to the side.

  “Ben-zonna!” Lyra cursed in Hebrew. “Why the hell did you have to get mixed up with the Americans? If only you’d come back to the Mossad, we––”

  “Yes, but I didn’t and we didn’t and here we are,” Bretta replied, cutting wearily across her. “Brought back together by an assassination attempt on an Iranian scientist.”

  Lyra sighed. It quickly morphed into a hollow laugh. “Do you really think the Americans are granting her asylum out of the goodness of their hearts?”

  Bretta said nothing, just clutched tightly to the angel wing pendant in her hand and willed herself not to pass out.

  “I swear this on everything we’ve ever gone through together,” Lyra continued. “We were not working for the sake of any one country, but for the world as a whole. This virus might have thrown 2020 into chaos, but it’ll be nothing compared to what might happen if the U.S can essentially industrialize the production of nuclear weapons. How long do you think they’ll be able to hold onto that secret? I’d give it a few months, maybe a year, before the Chinese and Russians learn the technique.”

  “Look, Lyra,” Bretta said wearily. “Avesta is gone. I don’t know where.”

  Lyra gritted her teeth and her nostrils flared dangerously.

  Here it comes, Bretta thought.

  The weight on Bretta’s chest vanished as Lyra rose to her feet. Bretta saw that her rival had one gloved hand held out to her.

  Not quite knowing what she expected to happen, but being almost too exhausted to care, Bretta took the hand.

  “Turns out I was wrong about one thing. Something that I told myself again and again I was going to enjoy.” Lyra hauled Bretta to her feet. “I can’t kill you.”

  A smile, moving with the speed of a diving falcon, flitted across Bretta’s face. “I can’t say I’m disappointed about that. I have to say, I couldn’t kill you either.”

  “I know,” Lyra said, and Bretta realized her hesitation hadn’t gone unnoticed after all.

  Bretta stretched her neck to the side, working out a kink. It seemed very much like she was all kinks––and would be for some time to come.

  “So, what now?” she asked.

  “I can’t kill you,” Lyra said, “but I can’t just let you breeze out of here, even if you are my––”

  The door to the roof crashed open and Ethan Galaal blew onto the rooftop like a storm.

  Both women, unarmed, turned to face him.

  “Bretta!” he roared, raising the X95 to his shoulder. “Grab some floor!”

  32

  As fast as the prudence that had kept him alive through the years would allow, Ethan made his way quickly up the stairs, moving up through the levels of the abandoned cement factory. He found a wounded GEO officer along the way. The man was pale and visibly started when Ethan popped round the corner with an assault rifle trained on his face. His own Commando assault rifle was in his lap, but the man barely looked capable of raising the thing.

  “It’s okay,” Ethan said, holding up a hand in a gesture of peace. “Americano. SEAL.” They were the only words he could think of that he thought the man might recognize.

  The man seemed to slump in relief at those words, and Ethan pulled the rifle off the man and tossed it down the stairs behind him. Then he retrieved a basic tactical triage kit from his webbing, ripped open a pack of bandages and stuffed them firmly into the man’s leg wound. The man released a deep and heartfelt groan, and became a shade paler.

  Ethan took his hands and clamped them onto the wound. “Pressure,” he instructed, pushing down firmly and fixing the man with his gaze.

  Then Ethan was off again, racing for the roof.

  When he crashed through the door of the topmost fire escape, the first thing he saw was Bretta’s blood-smeared face, given a ghostly hue by the ambient light of the streetlights, staring his way. The Kidon woman––Celeste––had a hand on her arm.

  He raised the short rifle to his shoulder and yelled, “Bretta, grab some floor!”

  His finger tightened on the trigger, ready to put a bullet straight into the Kidon’s heart.

  But then Bretta stepped into his line of fire.

  What the fuck is she doing?

  “Bretta, move!” he yelled, taking a step to the side. But Bretta matched his movement, shielding the woman.

  He could see Celeste edging backwards, towards the shadows on the edge of the roof.

  “Hold your fire!” Bretta back.

  “What? Why?”

  Bretta flung her arms wide and took a few limping steps towards him, restricting his line of fire even more.

  Ethan cursed, lowering the weapon. He wanted nothing more than to rid the world of one more professional killer in that moment. He stepped past her and raised the weapon to do just that when Bretta’s words stopped him cold.

  “Because––” Bretta said. “Because, she’s my sister!”

  Celeste’s face w
as hidden in shadow now, the top half of her body following as she backed off with glacial slowness.

  Ethan shook his head furiously. “We’ve all got brothers and sisters in arms, Bretta! Doesn’t change the fact that this bitch has got a bullet coming!” He took aim once more.

  Bretta shook her head vigorously. “No, she’s my sister! Lyra is my fucking sister! My sister by birth.”

  Ethan’s eyes went wide, his gaze shifting from the shadowy figure of his target to Bretta’s face.

  Her sister? Bretta has a sister?

  “What?” The muzzle of his gun drooped, his finger relaxing on the trigger.

  “She’s… my sister,” Bretta said simply. She was no longer shouting.

  Ethan shook his head. The revelation had taken him by surprise, there was no denying that, but the fact remained this woman––Celeste, Lyra, whatever the hell her name was––had been part of a team intent on capturing or killing his fellow DIA members, not to mention murdering an innocent scientist.

  She has a bill to pay.

  He returned his attention to the far side of the roof, but the woman was gone. The roof, as far as he was able to determine through the stark black shadows, was empty.

  There was the rattle of a pipe from somewhere on the edge of the roof, an inelegant crash of metal and then silence. Ethan ran to the edge of the roof, but he could see nothing. Any sound of retreat was lost in the distant din of the port.

  Ethan spun to look at Bretta.

  There were so many questions he wanted to ask her, so much that he wanted to tell her. The fact that she even had a sister she’d never mentioned was something he knew would take a long time to cover in of itself.

  How long had she known her own sister was hunting her? Why didn’t she tell us? Why didn’t she tell me?

  The questions flashed through his mind, flickering and dying and popping back into existence like faulty neon lights.

  Can I––can the DIA––trust her?

  Instead of asking any of these questions, or voicing any of the frustration, fear or confusion he felt, Ethan walked over to the blue-eyed woman, cupped her face in his hands and then pulled her gently to him in a hug. As he embraced her, Ethan felt relief flood through him like morphine, dulling every pain and worry he felt in his body and mind.