Good and Dead (An Avner Ehrlich Thriller Book 2)

by E. L. Pini

  Hamdani was three hundred yards from the café. Fatima was still giggling loudly. The Raven’s eyes were bloodshot. Furious, he suddenly spun around and backhanded her across the face, hard. It happened so fast I didn’t have time to stop him. Fatima fell back, howling in pain and indignation. He leaned toward her, knife in hand. I reached out and grabbed him by the chin, forcing his head up to an awkward angle; he raised his hands, handed over the knife and pointed wordlessly at the remains of white powder still evident under Fatima’s nose. I nodded, disappointed. She’d been dipping into her own produce. Rassan took out a pair of cable-ties.

  “No need for that. I’m watching her. Just check to see if she’s armed,” I said, taking the rifle away from her.

  The IRCG jeep took a right and appeared in the street first. We let it pass and went down into the road right after it. A few moments later we managed to squeeze in between the jeep and the professor’s Mercedes, which was now at spitting distance from our van’s rear window. The jeep progressed slowly, the driver apparently waiting for his chance to rejoin his charge – now all Jojo had to do was jam his heavy truck into the convoy, and separate the professor’s car from the VAJA car in the rearguard, sandwiching him between us.

  But the VAJA car clung tightly to the Mercedes and wouldn’t let Jojo overtake it. He was forced to remain behind them. “Goddamn Murphy must seriously hate me. I have a history with that dick,” I muttered, then got a grip. “Never mind that!” I yelled at Rassan, who was already kissing the rocket he’d taken out, “Tell Jojo to ram them! Hard as he can!”

  Rassan acknowledged. Now Jimbo was up: he quickly drove into the middle of the road and lodged the truck there widthwise, blocking all passage. The jeep with the soldiers and the HMG slowed, looking for a way to turn back. The vehicles ahead of it ran into Jimbo’s blockade and started honking impatiently.

  Only sixty yards left.

  I raised the incapacitated Fatima’s sniper rifle and placed Hamdani’s forehead right in the center of its crosshairs. I activated the laser marker – a red dot, like the bindi worn by Hindu woman, appeared in the middle of his forehead. It trembled slightly, as if in warning. I wondered – can you feel that dot on your skin, and the very brief future it heralds? Is it warm, or cold? Does it tickle, like a pesky fly?

  Hamdani kept driving his Mercedes, oblivious. Perhaps he felt the dot and realized its meaning, realized that the bullet destined for him had the address, and the door was wide open, and in a minute the bullet would follow the red dot and turn his brilliant professor brain into white juice.

  But he didn’t. He wiped his forehead, then looked up, glanced at the rearview mirror and squinted. He saw his bindi. He reached up to wipe it away. I quickly raised the laser point to the roof of the car, and saw him searching for the red smear on the back of his hand. I burst into laughter.

  18:45 – The thundering crash of a huge explosion shook the world momentarily, followed by several secondary explosions. A moment later, sirens filled the air, and a thick, unmistakable pillar of black smoke rose into the sky north of us.

  “Yes!” screamed Mookie into the radio. “Yes! They did it!”

  Rassan was smooching his rocket again, and this time he loaded it after. “I’ve got him. Your call, boss. Who takes the shot?”

  I’m a decent shot when I need to be, but I’m no sniper. Sniper brains are a different mechanism altogether – they can lay in ambush for hours, for days, unmoving; they are focused on their kill, and seemingly immune to esoteric musings.

  But our idiot went and snorted her bump before the shot rather than after, so I would be taking no chances with the rifle. We needed this guy good and dead.

  “Your shot,” I said to Rassan, and he told the driver to slow down. The distance between the professor’s car and our mobile position was growing shorter. I decided to look at him one last time, close up, through the rifle’s sight. For a moment I thought that Hamdani was smiling at me, a childish, slightly embarrassed grin. I smiled back.

  “Three,” I said, raising three fingers. The Raven muttered some prayer.

  “Two.”

  Out the corner of my eye I saw Rassan’s finger slide against the trigger housing and gently connect to the trigger.

  “One!” I shouted, and little Ali’s head popped up in front of my crosshairs, as he jumped up from behind the driver’s seat and hugged the professor’s neck. What the hell was he doing here?!

  “Fire in the hole!” Rassan let out a hoarse cry. I leapt at him and managed to knock away the rocket launcher. The shot went into the center of Jojo’s truck and exploded into roaring flames. The back blast caught Fatima’s leg and she fell to the floor of the van, screaming, incidentally dodging a long burst of .50 caliber bullets that tore through the windshield. I lunged at Rassan and took him down to the floor with me.

  “Through them, go through them!” I yelled at the driver.

  It took him a second.

  “Go!”

  The van screeched forward and slammed into the IRCG jeep, propelling it into the air. It flipped over, skidded against the road, flipped again and landed upside down. When I regained my composure, I noticed the Raven sprawled over my knees. I got up and pulled him up with me. Sirens whined all around us. We need to get out of here, I thought. The Raven’s body was limp, like a discarded ragdoll, and his pulse… there was no pulse. I let him down as gently as I could, wrenched out the launcher and of its two rockets, got out of the car and fired at the VAJA car behind us. Fatima and the driver came running out of the van and disappeared into the chaos. I fired the second rocket at our own van and tossed the launcher into the inferno.

  The whole street was on fire. Another distant explosion – that would be Jojo’s surprise for the IRCG troops that came following the first one.

  “Albert, now!” I yelled in Hebrew. An eternity passed, but the darkness finally came – first the traffic lights and the streetlamps went dark, then the storefronts and the apartment windows. The district was plunged into darkness. I ran toward Zaferaniyeh street, and then I spotted him – dragging one leg, little Ali in his arms.

  I ran faster. In a second they’d have made it to the stairwell, and I had the cover of darkness, the streets were blocked and the local armed forces were busy with the explosion at the embassy. Conditions were as perfect as they’d ever be. This was the time, this was the place. I was right on top of him. A clean hit to the brainstem, break the neck to confirm, and that’d be that.

  “Baba, baba!” I heard Ali crying, and froze. The Professor turned toward me. I aimed my Luger at his head. Ali’s body covered his entire torso. I reminded myself of what Froyke told me about this man – he was a ticking bomb. Still, I couldn’t shoot. Ali clung to his father’s body and made a soft, mewling sort of sound. Hamdani looked at me blankly.

  My finger was on the trigger.

  I could not shoot.

  “Kid saved your life,” I muttered, and left them there, bearing east through the darkened streets. A police car drove by at a slow crawl. I slowed down. They were getting very close to me. A loud bang gave me the opportunity to duck into the nearby building, and I waited there, frozen, holding my breath. The world was silent again. I didn’t know if the police left or if they had stopped and were now waiting for me around the corner. I wiped my face and an oily, black residue covered my hand. I needed to wash my damn face.

  I found a cement mixer by the corner of the building, and a black rubber hose coming out of it. I took the hose toward the tap, washed my face and drank. Around me was still total silence. I carefully peeked outside, and seeing that the police car was gone, came back out to the street.

  It was 20:23. Jimbo was supposed to leave the vegetable warehouse by 21:30. I had to make a choice.

  I started heading north, clinging to the walls, and soon enough started seeing security forces again, getting denser the more I progressed. Finally,
at the end of Tajrish Street, I encountered an IRCG barricade, lit by huge beacons mounted on top of trucks. I carefully retreated, nearly falling into the bright beam of light from a helicopter hovering above the barricade.

  Suddenly, the power came back on. The streetlights came back on, followed by the lights in the houses and storefronts. I had to get out of here. I went into someone’s yard, changed my SIM and checked the GPS. The warehouse was 15 klicks away. I learned the route. Five minutes a klick – that was my current best. It wasn’t enough. I needed a vehicle. I moved through the side streets at a brisk walking pace. Sirens still whined all around me, but I made sure there was no one within eyeshot and broke into a run. I had ten minutes and eight klicks. I had to move faster. I found a bike rack near one of the buildings. The first bicycle looked sturdy and in good condition. I held the handlebars and pulled hard. Nothing. I pulled again, and this time was left holding the front half of the bike, dangling from the handlebars. The back wheel stayed attached to the rack by its chain lock. I moved on to the next bike. It was a bit low, but would suffice as well. It also had a lock on, though. A bullet would solve that easily. I traced the outline of my holster, but still tried to fiddle with the lock barehanded before resorting to my Luger. A sudden, shrill bark came from behind me. I turned to see a tattered little Pinscher, attached to an old man with a thin mustache and a gold tooth, barking his little ass off. The old man tugged lightly on the leash and the Pinscher stood up on its hind legs and whined. I placed my open palm under its nose and the little guy calmed down. I scratched his neck and he licked my hand. The old man asked something which I of course did not understand. I smiled, embarrassed, and he proceeded to unload an impressive and seemingly endless string of Farsi at me. I managed to wordlessly gesticulate that I cannot speak due to a severe toothache, and that I’d lost the key to my bike lock. The old man smiled slyly and took an ancient Leatherman multitool from his pocket. Several seconds later, I’d liberated the bicycle, returned his wallet with a grateful bow, and shook his hand, just in time to feel a warm stream trickling down my leg. I shook the leg, along with the tiny bastard who peed on me, sat on the bike and sped away from there. I had four minutes left.

  I pedaled like a maniac. The bicycle was low, and my feet occasionally scraped the pavement, nearly knocking me off balance several times. The chain started squeaking in protest. I pedaled as hard as my legs would let me. The screams of the chain mingled with the constant wail of the sirens.

  I looked at my watch. It was 21:30 and Jimbo would have to leave, with or without me, or he would miss the extraction. Suddenly, a loud diesel engine rumbled nearby, and before I had a chance to react, I was caught in the blinding beam of its headlights, staring straight at it like a hare down a gun barrel. The jeep spotted me – it was heading right for me. I could do nothing as it screeched to a stop mere inches from my body. Jimbo leaped out of the driver’s seat and wrapped me a crushing hug. “Eeesh, you stink, man. Is that piss?”

  “Don’t ask. Just drive.”

  “What about Fatima? And Jojo and Rassan?” he asked.

  “They won’t make it,” I said miserably.

  “We should wait for them, though?”

  I didn’t answer. I looked at him, watching his confusion crystalize into painful comprehension.

  At 01:05, five minutes late, we parked the van in a shed behind the rusty harrow in the dried-up farm and ran toward the chopper. Jule was waiting for us with the engine running. “Just the two of you?” he asked. I nodded and we took off.

  We spent most of the flight in a dismal silence. At some point Jule turned around to tell me that I look like shit.

  “Feel like it, too,” I said.

  Several silent minutes later, Jule triumphantly declared – “Ladies and gentlemen, ten minutes to land. It’s a lovely day in Erbil and the weather is mild.”

  A dazzling light suddenly flared up at us, accompanied by a loud bang that rippled through the chopper.

  “What’s happening?” said Jimbo.

  “The Iranians. Two on our seven,” he said, and pointed to our left, where two fiery tails were quickly gaining on us.

  “Passengers are requested to fasten their seatbelts,” Jule muttered and dove towards the ground. The missiles, seeking the engine’s heat, dove after us. When they reached their maximum downward velocity, Jule suddenly pulled up to a sharp ascent. The two missiles dove into the ground and exploded. Three miles later we landed in a field in Erbil. I reached my hand out to Jimbo and he pulled me into a hug.

  13.

  No one was waiting for me at Erbil. I wouldn’t wait for me either. I didn’t call Verbin. I couldn’t. What would I say? That everything’s fine? That I killed Jojo and Rassan – two of our finest? That I destroyed Fatima when I decided that her habit turned her into a burden? While Hamdani, the ticking nuclear bomb, is alive, perfectly alive and well, though he was standing five feet away from me. I let him go.

  A little camo twinjet flew me to Baku. The Kurdish pilot ask me to buckle up and said nothing throughout the entire flight. In Baku I boarded an Arkia flight with Schultz’s passport. Someone was apparently looking out for me, after all, because I got an aisle seat. I kicked my shoes off for the first time since the operation started. My head started spinning. I leaned it back against the headrest and played Wagner’s Valkyries at full volume – the most tangible victory music ever composed. Wagner probably wrote it with an iron hard-on; flames of red fire surged in my mind, tearing through a black sky. In a moment some idiot colonel would show up to tell me what victory smells like.

  But what appeared in his place was little Ali’s face with the red laser bindi in the center of his forehead. It taunted him. He grabbed at it. It danced out of his reach. Ali went after it, terrified.

  I had to make it stop. I tried to lift my hand, but it wouldn’t obey me. It wouldn’t move. I tried again – nothing. Then, suddenly, I was asked to fasten my seatbelt and turn off my electronic devices in preparation for landing. Almost time for the idiots to applaud.

  My hand started moving again.

  I hurried out of the airport. Frokye was waiting for me outside, pale but steady. He waved me over and we got into his car. After a moment he said, “Have you seen Mordechai’s report?”

  “Mordechai…” I said, pointing at my package, “Mordechai can suck my dick. That being said, whatever he wrote about me is probably true.”

  Froyke glanced at me, then looked back at the road. “So am I to understand you didn’t read it?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Affirmative what? Affirmative that you read it or affirmative that you didn’t?”

  “Affirmative on the negative. Jesus. I haven’t even read the latest Jo Nesbø, now I gotta read the latest Mordechai? What can he possibly say that I don’t already know? Listen, Froyke, I fucked up so bad up there, there was no possible fuckup that I failed to deliver – classic fuckups that you read about in books, and brand new, original fuckups that no one ever thought possible. There is nothing bad he can say about this operation that I didn’t rightfully earn.”

  “I have a surprise for you,” said Froyke. “He noted your performance quite favorably in his review. Your devotion to the task, your ability to revise your strategy on the fly, your… courage. He mostly ignores the disciplinary stuff.”

  “Well, he was always an expert bullshitter.”

  “That’s not what this is about. As I said, he pretty much ignores your violation of orders and proper procedure, and blames the mission’s failure on your lack of understanding of the mental differences and history between the Pêshmerga Kurds and the Iranian team. Mostly your failure to comprehend their interest map.” Froyke chuckled. “The solution he proposes is to immediately establish a special operational task force, directly under the Iran division.”

  “Ugh. Please. Does that idiot honestly think Moshe won’t see right through this?”r />
  “He’s not as dumb as you think. First of all, he has now established in writing the fact that this mission was a failure.”

  “I mean, the shoe fits. Hamdani is alive, Jojo and Rassan are dead. It was a failure, Froyke. There is no other name for what this was.”

  Frokye was silent a moment and then said, “Surely you realize, RP, that what he wrote in his report isn’t aimed at Moshe.” He made an upward gesture with his thumb.

  “Did you hear the recordings?”

  “Oh, certainly no more than five, six, seven times, along with Moshe, and Nora for corroboration –”

  “You have any idea about the size of my severance pay?”

  Froyke pulled over to the side of the road, turned on the hazard lights and looked at me with more than a bit of anger. “There you go again, charging off. Things are still being looked at, okay? We’re looking for the clause that exempts the employer from paying severance to an insubordinate employee, heh.”

  Froyke grabbed the back of my neck and pressed his forehead to mine. “Now you listen to me, RP. You are going on a week of paid leave. You deserve it, and she certainly does. After that, we’ll talk. There will be some sort of inquiry – a hearing, they’re calling it. Then the PM will give his approval. And this will all blow over.”

  “I don’t know if I…”

  “You’ll be fine. Right now, there is only one problem.”

  “That’s a good number of problems.”

  “You haven’t heard it yet. When they bring up your disregard of orders we bring up your devotion to duty, your willingness to sacrifice, how quickly you adapted to changes out in the field. That’ll work out. What doesn’t work out… look, in our report we define your decision to engage, as well as the decision to even carry out the op, as an exception stemming from the target’s status as a ticking bomb. Those were Nora’s words, the intelligence division’s words: a ticking nuclear bomb. As such, neutralizing him takes precedence, and your adherence to the mission is worthy of praise. And then comes the end of the same mission, which finds you facing down your target… and letting him go. We can all sympathize with your reluctance to shoot while he’s holding a child in his arms. Moshe understands, too. But this sympathy undermines the claim that this target justified any and all means.” He sighed heavily. “It’ll be alright, kiddo. If it were me, I’d do the same.”