ProxyWar

by D S Kane

  Soon he could see glimmers of daylight from the west exit of the Queens Midtown Tunnel as his car neared the exit in Manhattan at 37th Street.

  Just two blocks from his apartment on 38th Street and First Avenue.

  He looked into the rear-view mirror and saw all of the team’s cars behind him in a solid line. The tunnel lights blinked past, but he could see it brightening up ahead as they curved to the left for the exit into Manhattan.

  The city’s traffic restrictions squeezed the cars out onto 37th Street.

  The best place for snipers would be at the roof of the Corinthian because of its height. He thought his team might find cover in the pocket park in front of the lobby. He was intimately familiar with the area. What a coincidence it’ll be if that’s where it I die. It’ll be easy for them to pick us off there. Six blocks from the UN. So close to completing the mission. If I can think of a way to survive that, how do we get from there to the United Nations?

  He thought of every turn they’d have to take on the city streets, every choke point, each building and every place a hostile force could set up, and what tactics they might use to evade or battle.

  The cars reached 37th Street as they drove south on Second Avenue. He saw the basketball court, just ahead and east now. His team would all have to turn left to go east on 36th Street. Then turn left to go north on First Avenue. Two blocks north, they’d reach the tiny park heavy with leafless trees and a huge fountain, in front of the Corinthian condominium on 38th at First Avenue.

  Where would they be waiting for him and his team? How many would there be? What weapons would they have?

  The light changed and he turned left, north onto First Avenue. As they moved north toward 38th Street he saw a string of SUVs move into the intersection, blocking all traffic, just about a hundred feet in front of him. The intersecting streets were also blocked off. Jon wondered how they’d known which were his team’s cars. Had he somehow given them away? Was there a mole in his team? What difference does it make now?

  He had no alternative but to pull to the sidewalk on the west side of the street. He could see that the Corinthian’s little park was unoccupied. The bare trees would offer minimal cover and the park was large enough to contain the gun battle he knew was coming.

  He was desperate to limit the civilian casualties among innocent bystanders.

  The other cars in his team pulled up behind his. Everyone followed as he bolted into the vest-pocket park and sought cover behind the central fountain and thick copse of trees. Jon pulled his Beretta from his pocket and disengaged the safety. He had five clips. Not nearly enough. He took a deep breath to steady himself.

  Jon could hear hostiles moving toward the park and shouting in some dialect of Chinese, likely Mandarin. He could see the blur of movement through the tree branches and bushes in the garden, but he couldn’t tell which were his team and which were his enemies.

  He remained silent and still while he waited for something obvious to shoot.

  He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Maybe a minute, maybe two. He heard a crunching noise and saw a dust plume from destroyed concrete. Sniper rifle round, and much too close to him. He looked to see if he could tell where the shooter might be. There was a settling spray of concrete dust about two feet in front of him and slightly to the left. He dived for better cover, landing prone in thick bushes.

  Where was the sniper? Jon backtraced the shooter’s location. There was a forty-story luxury condo building directly across the street. He saw the glint of what could be the barrel of a rifle at the edge of the roof. He examined the roofs of the buildings nearby and found too many other possible shooter locations to count. He yelled as loud as he could, “Roof snipers. We’re surrounded.”

  He hear Avram’s curse in Hebrew as a reply.

  Jon reviewed the plan he’d made and adjusted it to improve the odds for their survival. He thought how best to fix the rooftop snipers. “Avram, how many three-man teams can you send to the roofs of the nearby buildings?”

  A minute passed. “Three, but that will leave us depleted here. We have a total of eleven mercs and four bodyguards, plus the three of us. Ben-Levy can’t fight.”

  The odds were overwhelming, and not in their favor. His enemies were better armed. No, Jon couldn’t be optimistic about overcoming their enemies. He remembered everything he could about the Corinthian’s layout. There was the door-manned entrance into a vast and dark lobby. Off the sides of the lobby was a well-lit private art gallery for the residents. The art gallery held lights above the paintings and sculptures. Beyond the gallery was a pair of elevators, one for the floors below thirty and one for the floors above thirty And fire-stairs behind the elevators, with a fire-exit on the north side of the lobby. Surely that exit would be covered. There was also a door to a freight elevator that residents commissioned for moving into and out of apartments.

  What if they entered through the lobby and sought to exit some way other than either the doormanned entrance or the fire exit?

  If he remembered correctly, there was a private health club on the fourth floor, and there was a one-eighth-mile outdoor running track that ran the circumference of the building. No, it was too far to jump to the ground without massive injury. Even if a few of them survived, Ben-Levy certainly wouldn’t.

  What if they took either of the elevators to the parking garage and tried exiting to the street? He remembered the lower elevator exited south onto north side of 37th Street, midway between First Avenue and Tunnel Approach Street. There were no buildings for over five hundred feet, with the tunnel’s exit leaving the ground nearly flat. No, they’d be too exposed.

  Which was the best alternative?

  He remembered the freight elevator dropped from the lobby to street level in its own self-contained parking bay big enough for two large trucks. There was a loading platform there. He tried remembering where it led out into the street. The north side of the building, onto 38th Street’s south side. No cover, but unless the snipers were able to move fast to that side of the Corinthian’s roof, Jon and his team might use Tunnel Approach Street to move north and away from the garden which he was sure was filled with rooftop snipers.

  This was their best alternative.

  He called out to Avram, “Get everyone into the lobby as fast as they can move. Carry Ben-Levy. Move on my count. Okay?”

  After a few seconds, Avram shouted back, “Ready.”

  They moved as one. There was covering fire from a few of the mercs but everyone else sprinted through the revolving doors and past the protesting doormen.

  Inside, Jon led them through the lobby. Nine of the eleven mercs had survived the traverse. Cassie’s four remaining bodyguards were alive and uninjured, carrying Ben-Levy. But Mother had been hit with a round to his gut and was bleeding.

  Jon frowned. Yigdal Ben-Levy was dying. Would the old man live long enough to fulfill his mission?

  He took them through the door to the freight elevator and rode it to the small loading dock at street level. “We’ll exit to the street from the loading platform. Go now!”

  In a few minutes they were assembled and ready to exit the loading platform onto the street. He faced Avram. “We’ll have the tool of surprise for only about five seconds. We need to exit and move west and north onto Tunnel Approach, then east to First Avenue, and from there due north across the side of the Consolidated Edison Substation. From there we could make it to the UN Plaza in less than three minutes. I suggest we separate to make it more difficult for the snipers. They’ll have to try picking us off. Some of us will make it.”

  Avram nodded. “But how do we keep them from seeing Ben-Levy being carried and just blow him away?”

  Jon already had an answer. “Who are the lightest people in our team? We’ll need two or three decoys.”

  Avram called to the smallest mercs, mostly female. He explained volunteering for this tactic might well end their lives. There was silence for almost a minute. Then Ina Boric volunteered. More
silence. But then two others also volunteered. Cassie was among them. “I’ve been tough to kill for a long time,” she said. “Maybe I’ll still be lucky.” But her voice contained a tinge of uncertainty.

  Divided into groups with one carried member as a decoy and two doing the heavy lifting, four teams sprinted from the loading platform, led by Jon and Avram.

  During the sixteen seconds it took while they were exposed, sniper rounds sprayed at them continuously, starting four seconds into their mad dash. Jon watched the first two in the lead group of four stagger and fall. The other two in that group sprinted on. He heard the cries of wounded behind him.

  In all, eight of the eleven mercs were decimated, including Boric. Two of Cassie’s bodyguards, Tennenbaum and Weinstein, were also down, alive but wounded. They left their dead and wounded behind.

  There were now only three mercs uninjured from the crippled teams, plus Avram and Jon, Cassie, and Michael Drapoff, the last of her bodyguards, and Yigdal Ben-Levy.

  Jon could see Ben-Levy’s wound was bleeding faster from the rough handling he’d had. Cassie tried a compress but it wasn’t enough help. She said, “He’s not gonna last much longer.”

  Jon looked at the path back to the Corinthian. He could hear wounded mercs and bodyguards moaning. He could see blood on the street.

  They formed into two teams of four each, with one team of three carrying Cassie as a decoy, and the other team of three carrying Yigdal Ben-Levy. In less than a minute, they were once again ready. He looked forward at the path they would need to traverse. They would be exposed for over two hundred feet, but if they could make it up the west side of First Avenue that far, they’d be under the Tudor City cloister. Behind them, Jon could hear the sound of a true battle. Avram turned to look. When he saw Avram smile, he turned to see what it was all about.

  What Jon saw was over a hundred Israeli Defense Force soldiers wearing their emblematic green uniforms, albeit without any insignia or identification patches, shooting all sorts of ordnance at the Chinese. Jon recognized their characteristic battle movements as he stopped to look. Avram handed him a set of field glasses. He recognized the faces of several Israeli Aman officers he had worked with when he was trained in Israel.

  “Who sent for the Israelis?” Jon asked.

  Avram shrugged.

  Ben-Levy’s voice was just above a whisper. “Oscar Gilead. The old fool finally realized what would happen to Israel without the United States. They came here from the embassy.”

  Jon nodded. He now felt confident they had a chance of survival.

  At 42nd Street they were once again exposed but it was a much longer shot for a sniper to hit a moving target. The shooting behind them had stopped. Jon’s team sprinted across First Avenue to the east side of the street and UN Plaza. In front of them now was the lobby of the General Assembly Building.

  They left a trail of Ben-Levy’s blood behind them.

  The old man tried to stand. He sagged and staggered, but Cassie and Michael Drapoff helped him. Avram led the way, with Jon guarding their six.

  The sentry guarding the door to the General Assembly auditorium blocked their path through the doorway. He stared at the slick of blood dripping from Ben-Levy’s abdomen onto the floor. “They’re in session. No visitors.” To make his point, he drew a nightstick from his belt.

  * * *

  It was dark when Lily gave up searching for William and Betsy. She sent Jon Sommers a text:

  “No contact, no retrieval. So sorry. Lee out.”

  She turned the limo around and headed back toward her home in a hutong in Central Beijing near Ring Road Two. She had failed Sommers. She had hoped to be a hero, rescue William and Betsy, and so impress Jon Sommers that she could ask him to visit her in Beijing. But now, no hope of that remained.

  She drove along the road leading to the highway, when she saw the two bicyclists again. This time, she was so angry at her failure that she actually thought of running them down. Instead, she rolled down the window and shouted at them in Mandarin. “You should have reflective clothing or bike lights. You’re idiots!”

  William stared into the limo. “Lily?”

  Lily slammed the brakes. “William! Both of you, drop the bikes. Climb in. Jon Sommers sent me to find you.”

  Once they were seated, William asked, “Where are you taking us?”

  Lily smiled. “Remember my father’s restaurant, Star Luk, in Hong Kong?”

  William nodded.

  Lily said, “So successful that he opened one in Beijing. I’m manager. I’ll hide you both there until it is safe. We’ll make plans together.”

  William nodded again. “Lily, this is Elizabeth Rochelle Brown. My wife.” He smiled. Lily looked at the tiny woman in the back seat. “So, you finally realize I am correct. It is better to buy than to rent.”

  CHAPTER 44

  United Nations Plaza,

  New York, New York

  February 24, 12:09 a.m.

  Avram restrained his urge to giggle. After surviving the battles of this road trip, a single sentry armed with just a nightstick was a poor joke. He drew himself erect to his full height and forced himself to glare down at the sentry. “Mr. Yigdal Ben-Levy is Israel’s Assistant Foreign Minister. He has the right of entry.”

  The guard seemed fixated on the bloody ooze trailing away from the frail old man. He shrugged and stepped aside.

  Avram and Jon carried Yigdal Ben-Levy into the noisy auditorium and found the podium empty.

  Between scheduled speakers, most of the diplomats and their assistants were in conversation with their counterparts from other countries. The buzz of conversation stopped when the bleeding old man took the podium, his hands grasping the lectern’s microphone, his elbows supported by Jon and Avram.

  Cassie and Michael Drapoff stood guard at one side, and the remaining mercenaries took the other side.

  Ben-Levy nodded at Avram and Jon, and they stopped supporting his fragile body. He gripped the sides of the lectern and took a deep breath to steady himself.

  * * *

  Yigdal Ben-Levy raised his head and brought his mouth within inches of the microphone. He wondered if he had the strength to speak for even a minute. He cleared his throat and blood dribbled down his chin. His voice was just above a whisper, a rasping sound like ripping paper.

  “I am Yigdal Ben-Levy, Assistant Foreign Minister for the State of Israel.” He coughed and sprayed blood. Cameras clicked. “I have addressed you two times before. But this time, it is not a speech about treating my country fairly. No, this time, I am here to warn you about a clear and present danger. One that will affect every one of your countries if you don’t act on it immediately.

  “I was once active in the Mossad and have urgent intelligence for you. Heed my warning. The world may not survive a major war that is imminent if you ignore me. Do nothing and millions will die.” He scanned the audience. They were riveted. He wiped his bloody lips on the sleeve of his jacket.

  “The State of Israel has discovered intelligence that Russia and China are about to attack the United States of America. Right now, that attack is underway outside these doors.” There was an angry cacophony of voices. When it softened, he continued.

  He spoke for twelve minutes. When he finished, he felt lighter. A sense of peace fell over him. He heard Cassie scream for an ambulance and a medical team.

  Jon and Avram helped him from the podium and carried him through the maze of corridors toward the lobby. There was a flood of reporters shouting questions at Yigdal as they followed him from the auditorium.

  Jon and Avram carried him to the exit to the street. Jon lifted the old, fragile man and moved through the door. The rest of the team swiftly moved out of the building, behind Jon and the old man. Avram stood in front of the door, barring the reporters from pushing through the exit.

  Outside, the team all grouped around Ben-Levy and Sommers, forming a protective cordon as they carried Ben-Levy out onto the sidewalk of First Avenue.


  * * *

  Clouds swirled and parted. A streak of sunlight fell on Yigdal Ben-Levy. He motioned for them to let him stand.

  The old man smiled at the sunlight. Then he collapsed to the pavement. The front of his shirt was soaked with his blood. An arriving ambulance stopped at the curb and attendants rushed toward him, but he held up his hands. “No.”

  He could see the ghost of Aviva as she flew to him. She whispered in his ear, “Uncle, finally, you’ve done something you can be proud of.” She bent over him and kissed his forehead.

  Jon moved closer as to him as his lips quivered. Ben-Levy whispered, “Goodbye, Aviva.”

  He could see his vision begin to stipple, but the shock on Jon’s face was evident at hearing his dead fiancée’s name. Yigdal pulled Jon closer and had the strength to say only one more word: “Bloodridge.”

  Yigdal felt his heart stop. He saw all those around him; his real family: Drapoff, Sashakovich, Sommers, and Shimmel. His children, or as close as anyone could ever be to that for him. He smiled at Jon Sommers.

  With his last breath, he gasped as the world swirled away.

  * * *

  Jon bent over and closed Ben-Levy’s eyes. “He’s gone.”

  Avram closed the distance to Jon. “What did he say?”

  Jon grimaced. He realized Ben-Levy had been haunted all this time by Aviva, just as Jon had been. “He said goodbye.” Jon felt tears form and fall from his eyes.

  The snow had stopped falling. Streaks of blue sky appeared. The storm was over.