The Perfect Weapon

by Christopher Metcalf

  She went back down the hall where the fourth man was up and out of his bed reaching into a bedside dresser drawer. She put a quiet bullet in the back of his knee. He collapsed and started to wail. “If you scream, I put the next one through your throat. Move, down the hall.” She kicked the man as he limped, whimpering and bleeding, to the first bedroom to join the others. Once the last of the four was in the room, Marta stepped in behind him and turned the light on.

  They all looked at her and then each other. Each looked past her into the hall to see who was with her. A lone woman could not have done this. She saw the looks on their faces and wanted to smile but didn’t. Instead, she squatted down on her haunches to get a better look at them. She needed to see into their eyes from their level. When she got to the third man, the one who had sat up in bed, she knew she had him. He was different than the rest; less nervous, not looking at the gun in her hand. He was not afraid to die, or at least thought he wasn’t.

  She had no time for games, for delays, for macho facades. She lifted the gun and shot the man in his left shoulder. From about 10 feet, the bullet passed through him and lodged in the wall amid a splatter of blood. He was about to scream when she tilted her head and said, “Do not scream. Do not cry out.” The other men cowered. The one she’d shot in the knee pulled his damaged leg up and squeezed it.

  “Where can I find him?” She addressed the one she just shot.

  “Who? Why are you doing this?”

  “I will ask one more time and then I will shoot you again. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.” He stammered.

  Marta lowered the gun and shot him in the ankle. The explosion of the bones in the joint followed the puff of the gun. He screamed this time. She moved her aim and was about to pull the trigger a third time when the fourth man, the one who slept in the room with the other, held up his hands.

  “Stop. No more, please.”

  She didn’t look at him, only adjusted her aim to the injured man’s right knee.

  “Please, no more. I will tell you where he is.” Marta was right. The third man was related to the fourth. Her guess was he is a younger brother. The older brother could not take seeing his younger sibling tortured in such a manner.

  “Quickly.” She turned her eyes to him.

  He looked at her for a few moments and reconsidered. But the steel of her gaze told him his brother would not be alive in a few minutes. She was not done. “They moved to another house.”

  “No, Yasin.” It was the second man of the three. Marta moved her aim and put a bullet through the man’s head. A mist of blood droplets hung in the air after his body fell. The other men in the small bedroom gasped and cringed. She returned to the fourth man.

  “Quickly now Yasin. The location.” She said in Arabic.

  The first man she’d shot started rocking back and forth and whispering a prayer. Yasin's younger brother, shot in the shoulder and ankle, fell back on the bed grabbing his leg. It was a messy, bloody scene. Marta had definite advantages in a situation like this. Besides the fact that she held the gun, she had been in this very position before – standing, or squatting, in the midst of a group of bad people. Her third advantage was her ability to end lives. She had no problem, either morally or legally, being judge, jury and executioner to those who would harm others. This small group with her this early morning in Jersey City comprised four men, now three, that had direct knowledge of a plot to kill others.

  She raised her eyebrows. Marta was sure. “You were saying about a house?” She waited an entire second, then moved her aim from him back to his brother. “Okay, then.”

  “No, wait please. The house is less than a mile away. I don’t know the address. I can show you, take you.”

  “Good. Let’s go, all of us.” She stood up and signaled for him to help the other two to their feet. “Now.”

  “But, they’re injured. They can’t walk.” He protested.

  “Then I’ll put them out of their misery.”

  “No. I...”

  “You bastards will all either be dead or in custody within the hour. I don’t particularly care which. Dead is my preference. You would sit here or sleep or take tea, and then celebrate when you see on the news that hundreds or more are killed. You are each as guilty as those planting the bombs.” She stepped menacingly toward them and pointed at their friend on the floor who had began to leak all of his bodily fluids as his muscles relaxed forever. “He’s the lucky one in your little family here. He went quickly. You should all pay for what you have done and what you are planning to do. You should pay with pain and suffering and the pain and suffering of your families. You are despicable in your cowardice and hypocrisy. You claim the moral high ground of religious fealty when you are all just Pharisees, murderers, prostitutes. You should not be allowed to breath the same air as the rest of us. Now, we leave here, now. Up.” She stepped out into the hall.

  The remaining healthy man helped the other two to their feet and then painfully into the hall, down the stairs and to the front door. Marta followed behind silently the entire way. She picked up a large cell phone off the kitchen table as they passed it. “Out to your car. You drive, they get in the back.”

  The group exited the row house. It was dark and silent outside. No remnants of the FBI invasion of the house across the street the evening before. They made their way to a Toyota Corolla parked a few cars down. The two injured men got in back and Yasin got in the driver’s seat. Marta stepped in and jammed the silencer on the end of her gun into his temple, which shoved his head sideways. “Anything, anything at all and you find out very soon if you are going to heaven or hell.” She moved the gun from his temple to jam it into his privates. “Drive. Slowly.” She looked at the two in the back to make sure they got her message. They were busy bleeding and whimpering.

  Yasin drove the car into the street and to the corner where he turned right. As Yasin said, they traveled less than a mile to the south and west.

  “It is just ahead on the right.”

  “Drive past, slowly.” She peered out into the night at the house. There was a light on behind curtains. A glance at her watch; it was 2:30 a.m. “Park up ahead. You and I will walk back.”

  “Why me?”

  “Do you have something better to do?” She pushed a little harder on his crotch. He didn’t say anything. She turned to the two bleeding in the back seat. “I suppose I don’t need to tell you both not to move.” She motioned for the driver to get out.

  He came around the car and joined her on the sidewalk. “Yasin, I’ll bet you only know certain things about Yousef. I’m sure you know that he is planning to set off a bomb, but you are probably not aware of where or when. My guess is you have been used to procure certain items and communicate with various contacts on his behalf. Your location, just across the street from his old house, tells me you were probably used as a pick up and drop off and as a lookout. All of this points to you having pieces of information that hold varying levels of value. One of the primary elements within your mental inventory is a phone number.” She pulled out the cell phone she had taken off Yasin’s kitchen table. “Dial his number and tell him they found you. Tell him to run. Nothing more. Do that and I will leave you, your brother and the other gentleman alive. You can take them to the hospital and then leave this country. If I ever find you again, I will kill all of you.

  “Or, if you don’t want to call him because of your dedication to this unfortunate cause, then I will shoot you in both knees, both shoulders and drag you back over to the car where I will put you and your brother at each other’s crotch and see which one wants to live by biting the other man’s penis off. Gross and disgusting, I know. But I’ve seen it before, the survival instinct always kicks in and one of you will do it.”

  “You are evil.” He smoldered.

  “Oh, evil like blowing up innocent people in the name of Allah? That kind of evil?” She stepped in close to whisper into his ear. “No, I’m a different kind of evil. I am
here on this earth to make hypocrites like you and your friends pay. And the payment is not just your life. I take souls. Yours is mine.” She waited there just inches from him to see if he had it in him to attack her. After a couple of seconds she stepped away. He didn’t have it. He was a coward at heart, just like most.

  She handed him the phone. “Dial and say what I told you.”

  He took the phone reluctantly and dialed a number. He exhaled and drew in a huge breath as the phone rang. Marta watched the house for any activity. At the other end of the line, someone answered. “They found us. Run.” And Yasin hung up. He too watched the house. There was no activity, no movement. They waited 30 seconds, and then a minute. Still nothing.

  “Let’s go, to the front door.” She motioned him with the gun and then planted it firmly in his back to move him along. On the front porch, she stepped to the side, “Knock.”

  Yasin did as he was told. He knocked and stepped back. Deep inside the house, someone stirred. Two people talked to each other. Twenty seconds later, someone looked out the front window at Yasin. Marta was plastered to the brick and could not be seen from the window.

  A moment later, the door started to open. Marta jumped around behind Yasin. As the door opened, she shoved him in, knocking him into the man at the door. Marta shot Yasin in the leg and the other man in the knee and ran passed them into the house. Another man stood in the kitchen holding a gun. She put one between his eyes and continued to the back door. No one else was there. She rushed back into the front room where both men were writhing on the floor.

  This other guy was not cowed. “You fool. You brought her here. Fool.” He yelled at Yasin in Arabic.

  “Take it easy on Yasin. He is trying to remedy his failings.” She spoke in Arabic and stepped back to the door and shut it. “Get up.” She pointed the gun at the man’s head. It was immediately apparent he was different than Yasin. He was much more dedicated to his cause, and had never in his life been spoken to like this by a woman. Marta had seen it all before. They only way to break it was immediacy. So she shot him in the other knee and then through the hand and knee again as he reached for the wound. She then bent down to him and placed the hot barrel of the silencer to his stomach and pulled the trigger again. It was brutal indeed.

  “There. You now have wounds sufficient to kill you within three hours as blood loss and sepsis set in. It will be a painful death. I can see just by looking at you that you are not going to tell me anything, so I will grab some wire or tape and tie you up and stuff your mouth so you can die here.” She stepped away, but he stopped her.

  “No please. Don’t.”

  “Why?” She shrugged.

  “Please.”

  “So are you dedicated to your mission or not? Are you not willing to stay silent and stay true to your cause?” She shook her head as she said this. “I am fine with that. I would not expect any less from a true Mujahedeen, a warrior for jihad. Are you going to disappoint me by talking?”

  He looked at her through pain and shock. He said nothing.

  “Good, let me find that wire. Yasin and I need to leave.”

  “No, please. I will tell you what you want. Then you can call an ambulance for me, yes?”

  She stepped back in front of him. “Tell me where to find your friend Ramzi Yousef now and I will get you help.” She looked to Yasin sitting on the floor holding his bleeding knee. She spoke to him, “I’m thinking maybe you knew he wasn’t here.”

  “No, I swear.”

  “He left last night after the FBI raided the house by Yasin.” The other man spoke through pain. “They said they needed to move to a new location. One safer than this.”

  “Where? Where did they go?” She looked back at the other man.

  “They didn’t say for sure, but I think I can find out. I will need to make a call. It will take maybe a few calls. I can help. I will need my phone. It is over there.”

  And Marta knew this was wrong. The seven seconds it took him to say the words were too long. The way his eyes did not follow his gesture toward the kitchen but instead looked at the front door was wrong. In the time it took her head to turn, to spin on the axis connected through her neck and spine, was enough time for the front door to burst open. She was already applying pressure to the ball of her left foot to push her center of gravity to the right. At the same time, she brought the gun up to meet whoever came through the door. She just hoped like hell it wasn’t Lance.

  It wasn’t. There were two of them, and they came in firing Uzis. Even though she was moving out of their main target area, the spray of bullets from those crazy Israeli killing machines caught her in the left abdomen and shoulder. She was still able to fire and put two bullets into the second man and three into the first man coming in. By the time she hit the floor from her initial dive to the right, both men were falling. One with two shots to his chest. The other received three bullets in his face. Both Uzis skittered across the floor.

  She hit the floor hard and had to absorb the pain of being shot. She got back to her knee to cover the door in case anyone else came in. Right then, she heard the back door frame splinter as it was kicked open. No time. Marta got up, picked up one of the Uzis and took four painful steps toward the back. She crouched on the floor against the wall. Two seconds later, two men rushed out of the kitchen firing into the living room. She was below and to the left of their arc of fire. She easily took aim and put something like 15 to 20 bullets into each man. They flailed through the air as they fell. She gathered up one of their guns and headed back toward the front door. Yasin was gone. The other guy was crawling toward the other Uzi. Marta did as promised a few minutes earlier and ended his pain by putting a clean shot through his head as she walked past.

  Outside, she burst down the front stairs onto the front yard and to the right. Yasin was almost to the Toyota, limping badly. “Yasin. I’m not mad at you. I understand everything you just did.” He stopped and put his hands on his thighs as he bent over.

  “Then you know I’m ready to die.” He gasped as he said it.

  “Yes. I respect that commitment. I’m not happy about your choice in causes, but I can’t question your commitment.” She raised her gun and looked past Yasin to the Corolla. The two men in the backseat were turned, looking at her. Strange. But what really caught her eye was a faint red glow in the back seat. She’d seen it before, twice actually. Both times were when Lance, or Preacher, was showing her how to detonate bombs using a basic long fuse. The dancing, flickering red light meant the fuse was lit and getting close. She put pressure on the ball of her right foot this time, but it was too late.

  The car exploded in a ferocious fireball. The shockwave blew her through the air, all the way back to the house. Her head bounced off brick. She was out cold. Luckily, she was on the ground, right at the base of the foundation of the front brick wall of the house. Seventeen seconds later, the house exploded. The blast blew out walls, windows, doors and most of the insides of the small house. The fierce explosion was followed by an accelerant that consumed everything in flames. The fireball bursting skyward was brief, but enormous.

  Marta missed the explosion, the fire and the chaos that ensued. She was gone away, unconscious, oblivious to it all. Bricks, stone, plywood, drywall, two-by-fours, dust and ash covered her.

  Two hundred yards down the street, a rented Ryder truck pulled out of a driveway. Ramzi Yousef looked down the street at the aftermath of the bombs he had just detonated. He shook his head at it all. His mentor would not be happy with a change of plans this close to going live.

  Chapter 45

  Word of the Jersey City explosions started coming in just after 3 a.m. Seibel was asleep on a couch in the office of the New York CIA field director. He had been asleep almost a full hour when a technologist monitoring regional police channels stepped in to wake him. That hour would be all he’d get today.

  He showed up on scene 49 minutes later. He wanted to see for himself. Seibel flashed his credentials to get acce
ss. He and a field agent walked up the street to just in front of the house. Firefighters had put out the flames. The wreckage was still smoldering. This location had not shown up on any recent database searches for Yousef or associates. Seibel rubbed his chin and moved in for a closer look. A police officer was about to give him a hard time, but one look from him was all it took to keep the guy quiet. Seibel maneuvered up the walk, littered with debris, to about 15 feet from the front steps. Rubble was everywhere. He knew the general size of the explosive by the debris field. It was decent size, but not huge; not over the top.

  He squatted down to take a look from a lower angle. Why had they blown this place? What were they covering up? He looked over at the wrecked car. It was a carcass of a Toyota. He could see several markers for bodies, in the car, on the ground. He turned back to the house. There were five or so yellow markers in there. Damn, this looked like something Preacher and Marta would leave behind.

  That thought was interrupted by something that caught his eye. It was a hand, over at the base of the house. That body wasn’t marked, but had to be a deceased. He stood and took a couple of steps toward the body. It was buried under a mound of rubble. He could barely see the hand. He turned to the police officer that had eyed him a minute before. “You got a flashlight?”

  The guy walked over and pulled the flashlight from his belt and handed it to Seibel. “Looks like we have another one over here.” Seibel said, turning back to the body.

  “Damn, what a mess.” The patrolman answered and followed Seibel up to the house.

  Seibel shined the light on the hand. It looked like a woman’s hand. That didn’t fit. He hiked deeper into the wreckage.

  “I don’t know about that. Let’s let the fire and rescue guys extract that body.” The patrolman called to him.