by Paul Usiskin
He opened the door when he heard the knock. His eyes widened on seeing two black garbed armed officers who forcibly escorted him back inside. His wife was taken into another room where Irit spoke with her in the presence of two more YAMAM officers. Another knock on his door revealed his son and daughter, brought home from school by four more men in black.
Daoud looked from one child to another and heard his wife’s muffled scream from the next room. Irit had outlined to her the immediate and long-term choices for the al-Akras family and everyone in their village.
The children were taken upstairs.
Daoud’s face was of a man torn, but he stayed silent.
‘It’s simple,’ Hisham began, ‘take the money, give the Shehadeh family what they deserve and give us all you know, or everything for everyone here in this village stops. YAMAM will empty streets, no children, no schools, no businesses, no mosques. Once all the people here have been removed, the village will disappear. It will be as if there never was a village. But the name of Daoud al Akras will be remembered as a curse. Do you want that?’
Dov chose this moment to enter the room.
From his bowed head at the table, Daoud said something in Arabic. Hisham translated.
‘He said I‘m trapped in the jaws of a deadly lion.’
Then Daoud told Dov, ‘Whatever I do I won’t survive.’
‘We’ll protect you. Move you somewhere else, give you a new start.’
‘This lion has long claws.’
‘Tell me about this lion.’
Daoud shook his head and lowered it to his arms on the table.
Dov nodded to the commander. Moments later, feet were heard from the room above and then on the stairs, and the children’s screams shattered the silence, continuing outside. They stopped when a vehicle door slammed and an engine roared into life.
Hisham waited for the gravity of Dov’s threat to sink in.
‘Talk to me about the lion or that will be the last sound you’ll ever hear from your children,’ Dov said softly after the engine noise faded.
‘Allahu Akbar,’ Daoud mumbled.
God is great? Dov wondered. Well, I guess when you’re faced with this depth of a dichotomy, who else would you turn to?
26
Rosh Pina’s small local airport, in northern Israel, appeared as a misshapen X through a break in the clouds. Daoud looked dejected during the flight, a mix of air-sickness and gloom turning his pallor gray, matching the rain clouds. The air was chilled, but no forecast of snow, it was cold inside the helicopter, Dov’s words into his mic and headset to Irit, left puffs of breath.
‘Try to calm him down. Tell him we can find somewhere else for him and his family outside of the country if that’s what it’ll take, anything to get him to focus on what we need to know.’
‘Give him a Kevlar body armor vest.’
‘Seriously?’
Dubi said, ‘Why not?’
‘You said anything.’ Irit added.
‘Helmet as well?’ asked Dov.
‘Don’t be flippant. Giving him a vest is a gesture of how far we’re ready to go for his personal safety.’
Dubi removed his.
The helicopter landed, Hisham met them and they huddled a few meters away. Dov updated him. ‘The vest’s a clever move,’ Hisham said.
‘Irit, got any cigarettes with you?’
‘Stress can do that,’ Irit said, ‘or do you just need momentary reassurance?’
‘God sake Irit, cut the psych bullshit and give me a couple of cigarettes if you have them.’
She opened her shoulder bag, and he saw her shift her gun inside and produce a fresh pack and her lighter and handed them to him.
‘Don’t tell me you have these just for me. Stressed?’
Her fingers brushed his hand as he took the cigarettes.
He didn’t need the distraction and turned abruptly to join the YAMAM unit clustered around Daoud. He was staring vacantly off at the fields and trees beyond the runway, bleak in the slanting rain. Dov handed over Dubi’s vest and showed Daoud how to put it on. He shifted his shoulders in the vest to settle it, accepted the cigarette, took a deep hit of smoke. He spoke, with a sigh, the smoke rising slowly from his nostrils. Dov lit one for himself as Daoud spoke. ‘We’re not too far from the place now. It’s off the first bend on Route 91 after the bridge.’
‘Time to tell me what you know and how you know,’ Dov asked gently.
‘This place we’re going to is a cemetery of numbers. It’s not like the one in my village, a cemetery within a cemetery. This one’s a burial place by itself. I don’t know how long it’s been there, but I do know that even talking about it is like discussing where Israel’s nuclear weapons are hidden.’
‘How do you know about it?’
‘I’m a ZAKA volunteer,’ Daoud said in a voice that reflected embarrassment, avoiding Hisham as he spoke.
Dov looked surprised; it was an act. Hisham had already unearthed the ZAKA link.
‘That’s very noble of you,’ said Dov. ‘What made you join?’
‘I was involved as a boy with the cemetery of numbers in our village. I always felt guilty about what I’d seen and done and wanted to make it right.’ Dov smiled sympathetically.
‘They were opening a ZAKA branch in the Galilee. Mostly Druze joined, but also a few Muslims. I was one of two Bedouin. I thought that from inside I could make them do things properly, not just force their way in to our cemeteries. Most of the time I was helping after road traffic accidents. I was involved after the Hezbollah rocket attacks in summer 2006. Someone has to look after the dead with the proper respect. The Jews who started ZAKA tried, but it’s better when Muslims manage Muslim dead. The families appreciate it.’
‘You were just a volunteer?’
‘Yes at the beginning. But then they came and offered me money, too much to ignore. What they had me do, no money will ever be enough.’
‘Who are they?’
‘I will help you at the place here. I will tell you what I did, but please I cannot give you any names.’
‘That’s stupid Daoud. You’ve come this far.’
‘Leave me something.’
‘To bargain with you mean?’
Daoud flicked the cigarette stub away, but said nothing and wouldn’t look Dov in the eyes.
‘Let’s go,’ said Dov, crushing his stub underfoot.
Hisham told him, ‘You’re doing it right, but he’s on the edge.’
‘I know, but this might be the break we need. I can’t ease up on him.’
They were rolling in a convoy of three Israeli-made Storm jeeps onto Route 91 headed for the B’not Yaakov bridge. In the middle Storm, Daoud stayed silent.
‘These jeeps are the armored versions, good against all light weapons, bullet proof glass, added protection,’ Dubi told Dov, for Daoud’s benefit. Hisham translated. Daoud nodded once.
Route 91 did a ninety degree right turn and began its long approach down to a sharp V bend, and after that a gentle descent to the newest B’not Yaakov bridge over the Jordan. Rising above were the Golan Heights. Everywhere the land was dressed in its winter green, irregularly dotted with bushes and ghostly black Golan volcanic and basalt rocks. As they reached the bridge, Dov could see the original Bailey bridge a few hundred meters further north. ‘It’s only used by tourists and bungee jumpers,’ the driver told him.
Hisham tapped his shoulder. ‘Daoud says there’s an old road, like a track, just up there on the right on the bend.’ Beyond and above the bridge they were crossing, Dov could see an easy left-hand bend with crash barriers along it and at the bend itself a track to the right. Traffic was slow and he saw the river below, narrow but in full flow, the waters cloudy and tinged yellow, undergrowth right down to the river’s edge, then a clump of trees next to the bridge obscured
his view.
The convoy climbed to the bend, braked, waited for a gap in the traffic and turned off 91 to follow the old track Daoud had indicated, its surface uneven with dips and rain filled ruts. A rusty barbed wire fence appeared on the right and moments later Daoud told the driver to stop. He slowed, braked, flashed his lights at the lead Storm, did a three-point turn to face back towards 91 and parked. The others copied.
‘You see that old post?’ Daoud growled. ‘You can bend the wire away from it and get into the cemetery. It won’t be hard to see any new graves.’
Dov got out in the cold damp air and surveyed the terrain. The track was a natural route along the flat, with the river down below on one side and the sharply rising Golan Heights on the other. Blunt slabs of rock thrust out of the ground, Dov imagined them retracting at nightfall and reappearing at sunrise. Where the cemetery was there were fewer rocks inside the wire.
He could hear and see traffic back up on the bend. Talk about hiding in plain sight. He got back into the Storm.
‘OK Daoud. What did you do here?’
‘Give me another cigarette.’
Irit handed over her pack and lighter. Daoud lit one and opened his window just a crack. Irit gave a little shiver and took the pack from Daoud and lit her own.
‘Bodies are inconvenient. You use them to trade.’
Dov remained impassive, his eyes on Daoud’s.
‘They came to my village and offered me the money. But they also took my daughter away until it was done. I came here with them. I helped them bury their bag. It didn’t feel like there was one body inside. One of them told me if I ever said anything to anyone about this, my daughter’s head would end up here. They gave me the money and gave me back my daughter. Some weeks later they came to my house and said they needed to bury another body in the same place. This time they stayed in my house, holding my family, and made me come here and do it alone.’
‘You came here with a body bag and buried it by yourself? That must have been very hard.’
‘They were in my home.’
‘These were the inconvenient bodies?’
‘Yes.’
‘Come on Daoud, who were these people?
Daoud blew smoke, his eyes fixed. ‘Protect me and my family and we’ll talk again.’
Dov nodded, looked through the windscreen checking for the two YAMAM officers patrolling around the Storm. Before opening the door he told Daoud to stay inside. Irit got out and stretched. Dubi was already outside waiting for Dov and Hisham. The commander led the way into the cemetery, his men carrying shovels and picks.
It was obvious that the soil had been recently dug and shifted in a patch over in a corner. The men began carefully digging and a few minutes later they found something. Dov watched as they pulled out a black heavy-duty plastic bag, like a body bag, with the words Health Ministry printed on it. Another bag was found under that one. The bags were laid next to each other, and Dov wearing a mask and nylon gloves opened the one that had been on top. It contained the partially decomposing remains of a male.
Hisham also in mask and gloves examined the decomposing face, then the clothing and stiffened when he got to the shoes. He saw Ziad in the cell, stamping his cigarette out, twisting the leather sole of his shoe to be sure. He turned the shoes gently. The small black scorch mark was on the sole of the left shoe.
The second bag had numerous body parts, four torsos, arms, legs. They guessed these were the missing remains of Farouk Shehadeh and his family. Dov stood and asked Dubi to request the ambulance crew to get the bags to Rosh Pina and fly them down to Abu Kabir as soon as possible.
He walked back to the Storms. He could see Irit in profile sitting in the front passenger seat smoking again. Daoud was sitting diagonally behind her at the back looking across at the cemetery through the rear window. Irit blew smoke, leaned forward, tapped ash out of her window and said something and Daoud turned to speak, his eyes catching Dov’s as he neared.
The eyes exploded, as his head disintegrated.
Milliseconds later as the sound of the shot caught up with his hearing, Dov was already running through the gap in the fence, Dubi behind him, the YAMAM men crouched, panning up with their weapons, trying to identify the shoot location and any after movement in their scopes. Irit sat frozen, crouched in the seat, showered in bits of Daoud’s skull and brain and glass.
Dov took in the rear window opposite where Daoud had been, it was frosted around the bullet’s exit hole, the pattern of splinters protruding, and the window next to Daoud bore the entry hole, smaller, spidering fractures more pronounced.
Two of the unit from the cemetery reached the last Storm, briskly opened the rear doors and pulled out two packs. In fast practised moves, they produced a pair of wings, slotted them to a fuselage section housing a motor and video camera, added a long thin tail, opened the twin blade propeller, started it and launched the drone, controlling its flight from a laptop.
Hisham helped Irit from the jeep as Dov called Amos. ‘Daoud’s down, long gun fatality. We have drone recon in progress. Anything your end?’
‘I’ll check our comms monitors. Positive development from 8200. Barry wrote back to Brenner in his own name using the same dot in the same painting.’
‘Barry? – You mean Baruch Hareven?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Oh yes indeed.’
‘One second … what? When?’ Amos to someone else. ‘Comms monitoring says Irit received a single ring from a cell phone in the last two minutes.’
‘Oh?’
‘We have it timed five seconds before the shoot.’
‘How do you know the timing of the…?’
‘Monitoring.’
‘You said comms monitoring, not satellite monitoring.’
‘I didn’t specify, but it’s from Unit 9900, via our satellites, plus comms monitoring with amplified sound feed.’
‘Who authorized it?’
‘I used the Prime Minister’s authority for Operation Trigon…’
Dov sighed in admiration.
‘And?’
‘We got the call to Irit at 13.37.16 and a shot register at 13.39.21.’
‘Where’s the caller?’
‘Nine one two meters north west of the fatality. Well the cell phone was. Don’t think the caller’s still there.’
‘Wait one.’
Dov told Dubi, ‘We have a fix on a possible shoot location. It’s my deputy, Amos, ask him for the coordinates,’ and passed his cell over. Dubi listened and relayed the data to the drone operator.
‘The Minister’s having a fit,’ said Amos when Dov came back.
‘Call a doctor.’
‘With you.’
‘Aha.’
‘He says you shouldn’t be up there and to tell you, you don’t have his back anymore.’
‘OK. I’ve still got the Man’s and the Chief of Staff’s.’
‘The drone found anything?’ Dov asked the drone operator.
‘No. Crap visibility. Still circling.’
Dov looked up at clouds rolling down off the Heights.
‘How long can it stay up?’
‘Three hours, fifteen to twenty kilometer range, silent motor. Ambulance on the way.’
Another ten minutes and the drone was still searching, two ambulances had arrived, one paramedic team was treating Irit for shock. The other finished loading the body bags and sped away to Rosh Pinna. A local MAZAP team was due, to search and collect what they could from the Storm’s atrocious interior, and find the bullet.
Dov watched over the drone operator’s shoulder as the drone search continued.
‘We’re going almost bush to bush, rock to rock,’ the operator said.
Dov called Amos again.‘Have you tried calling the cell phone and tracking via our comms monitor?’
&nbs
p; ‘No response to that cell. Must have removed the battery and ditched the SIM.’
Breaks in the low clouds enabled the drone’s video to show vehicles parked at a 1973 war memorial less than half a kilometer further up Route 91.
Dov said, ‘Zoom on the vehicles.’
The picture showed three, one of them a black Chevy SUV. He called Amos.
‘What’re the plates for the Brenner SUVs?’ To the drone operator, ‘Give me visual on the SUV plates.’
The drone circled and came in from above and behind trees to the left hand edge of the parking lot and its camera caught the numbers on the yellow plate. Dov relayed them.
‘That’s a match,’ said Amos.
Dov ran for the front Storm, clicking the safety off his handgun. He belted in. Hisham jumped in next to him. Dubi shouted something but the Storm’s engine drowned him out. He clambered into the last Storm joined by two other YAMAM officers, leaving the rest of the unit with Irit.
The automatic gear box kicked-down efficiently, and the turbo diesel powered up as Dov aimed for the bend on Route 91.
‘The Chevy’s on the move,’ the drone operator told Dov on the jeep radio.
He was at the bend and turning right.
‘You should have visual any second.’
The Chevy exited from the trees at the memorial and turned onto the zag of the zigzag bend. When Levin saw Dov’s Storm, he aimed the Chevy at it. Stein loosed off a Tavor burst from the side window.
Bullets drummed at the Storm. There was no damage; shooting accurately from a moving vehicle at another was Hollywood, and the Storm’s bulletproof glass and Kevlar coated tires did what they were supposed to against light weapons fire.
Dov floored the Storm’s gas pedal. The gray light felt brighter, the Chevy and its occupants acutely defined, Dov’s objective undeniable as his adrenalin pumped and everything he looked at was accentuated, larger, sharper, brighter.
His eyes fixed on the Chevy, V8 engine roaring, straddling the road, filling his windshield, it heeled over on its springs in a screech of tires, a banshee scream duet with the Storm’s wailing tires, and the Chevy turned impossibly across the Storm, it’s black rear panel thumping the Storm’s fender and Dov turned with it and chased it as it charged down onto the approach to the old Bailey bridge, where the banshee yowled again as Levin saw the low concrete blocks at the bridge mouth and braked at an angle, and Dov braked too, jerked the shift into R, backed up to Route 91 almost rear-ending Dubi’s Storm, jammed into D and rammed the Storm into the Chevy, punching it over the concrete blocks, passed the bridge and down into the Jordan, where it turned lethargically onto its roof as it hit the water.