Direct Action

by John Weisman

  “That means,” Tom said, “we go to Plan C.”

  “You’re a funny fellow.”

  Tom paused just long enough to look at the Israeli. “What do you think?”

  “One: I’ve never seen a street person in six days of surveilling this neighborhood. Now we see one—two if you count the guy behind us. Two: the guy we passed looked pretty authentic, but he smelled clean. I caught a whiff of soap. Three: you saw how his shoes were all scuffed up? But the soles were brand-new rubber.” He looked at Tom. “You?”

  “Agreed. I missed the soap. But I caught the shoes.”

  “So?”

  “Tells me there’s activity up there—important enough for them to set both static and mobile security. I want a look-see.” He stared at the Israeli. “Possible?”

  “Of course. There’s an alley near the top of rue Ramey,” Reuven said in response. “It’s right at the sight-line periphery of the van on rue Labat. But it’s overcast tonight and I think if you’re careful you’ll be able to get over the wall without them seeing you. You go in and you head south. You climb three more walls and cross three tiny yards. There are no dogs, so you shouldn’t be bothered. The yard after the third wall backs up against the target house. There’s two exterior drainpipes running from the ground to the roof. The one on the left-hand side takes you past the safe-house window—two floors aboveground. If you pull a good Spider-Man and hang on one-handed, you might even be able to get video.”

  Tom said, “Hmm.”

  “It all depends whether or not they’ve left the shades up—and how you feel about whatchamacallit shinnying up drainpipes these days.” He looked at Tom. “I hope you still remember your rock-climbing skills from Dartmouth.”

  Tom suppressed a double take and answered the Israeli matter-offactly. “It’s kind of like riding a bicycle, Reuven—you don’t forget.” But he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “How the hell did you know about rock-climbing?”

  Reuven allowed himself to crack a hint of a grin. “What, you don’t think I ran a thorough profile on you back when you and I were butting heads?”

  28

  1:45 A.M. They continued walking east on rue Nicolet, crossing midblock onto the south side of the street. The move was relatively secure because Reuven knew the single streetlamp between the foot of rue Lambert and rue Ramey wasn’t working. He knew it wasn’t working because he’d shattered it the previous night with a ball bearing fired from a small slingshot. When no one had reacted to the sound, he’d taken the time to sweep up the glass shards and get rid of them. The ploy had worked: the lamp hadn’t been replaced yet.

  The third house from the corner had a large recessed portico. “Go there.” Reuven nudged Tom into the doorway. The Israeli checked over his shoulder, then followed. He knew the watcher down the street couldn’t see them without exposing himself.

  1:46:14. Tom ripped his long web belt out, shed the gray-and-white-checked chef’s trousers, turned them inside out, pulled them back on over his black running shoes, then rethreaded the belt. He did the same with the red-and-blue Paris Ste. Germaine anorak he wore over a set of black thermals. The anorak reversed into solid black.

  1:46:17. Reuven unrolled the package of chef’s knives. He paused, then handed Tom one of the pencil-like miniature video cameras. “Use the high-resolution night-vision lens.”

  “Good idea.” Tom slipped the camera into the fanny pack he’d carried inside the shopping bag of food. Then Tom worked a radio earpiece into his ear, attached the mike to the collar of his jersey, ran the wire down to his waist, clipped a secure radio receiver to the fanny-pack belt, turned the unit on, tugged on it to make sure it was securely seated, then plugged the earpiece in.

  The radios were for emergency use only. In Hollywood, they jabber on their radios during black ops the way teenagers use cell phones in shopping malls. In reality, you never speak unless it’s a life-and-death situation. Radio transmissions—even secure ones—can bleed into other frequencies. Indeed, terrorists in hiding often keep TV sets turned on. If the screen starts picking up snow or other interference, it is a sure sign that there are folks talking on UHF or VHF radios in the vicinity.

  1:46:27. Reuven attached his own radio, which also had a throat mike, then watched as Tom took off the long-billed baseball hat he’d been wearing, pulled a black knit watch cap from the shopping bag, and jammed it onto his head. The American affixed a fake mustache onto his upper lip and allowed Reuven to adjust it.

  1:46:33. Reuven pulled a hat out of the shopping bag, exchanged hairpieces, and reversed his jacket and trousers, altering his shape and his silhouette.

  1:46:44. Tom handed Reuven the shopping bag. He pulled on the pair of thin, black Kevlar-lined leather duty gloves he’d bought out of a law enforcement catalog. “Go—see you later.”

  In response, Reuven gave his colleague an upturned thumb.

  “Very funny.”

  “I’ll give you one tap on the radio when I’m clear of rue Nicolet. Only move then.”

  “Understood. See you at the rendezvous.”

  1:46:51 A.M. The Israeli slung the long handles of the shopping bag over his right shoulder and strode boldly down the three steps, turned left, and marched up the street. He’d constructed his cleaning route so as to make things as difficult as possible for the opposition. It wouldn’t be hard, either. First of all, they appeared to be using single watchers. Bad tactics. When Reuven had set up the hit on Palestinian intelligence chief Atif B’sisou in Montparnasse, he’d used four three-man teams to seal the area. No matter how the Palestinians might have reacted, Reuven had been confident there’d be at least one Israeli team on them every second.

  Reuven pulled the cap down on his head and headed straight for rue Bachelet. It was a rule of combat: when ambushed, counterambush. When attacked, counterattack. Do not shy away. Get in your adversary’s face—which is exactly what he was doing now. There were only two possibilities: the watcher would go passive, in which case he’d shift his position to keep Reuven from seeing him. If he did that, Reuven would lose him on the cleaning route. Or he’d go provocative and aggressive, in which case Reuven would deal with him using the suppressed Glock he’d carried in the small of his back, but which now rested in his right hand, concealed by the shopping bag’s big outer pocket.

  In either case, Reuven would turn right onto rue Bachelet and follow the one-way street with the traffic flow, then veer west and scamper up the long stairway at the end of rue Becquerel. Any pursuers would immediately become obvious. Moreover, they’d have to really scramble to cut him off at the stairway’s top end on rue Lamarck.

  Rue Lamarck was a scythe-shaped, one-way street. The long handle of which extended as far west as the avenue de St. Ouen. The scythe’s blade ran around the eastern base of the Sacré Coeur cathedral compound. And running off that section of rue Lamarck were a bunch of the tiny, narrow, no-more-than-alley-wide streets common to the Montmartre district. Reuven would use those passageways to lose any pursuers. He’d complete his cleaning route by circling clear around Sacré Coeur, then move east and south once more, waiting for Tom near the Château Rouge metro stop. It was a piece of cake. Maybe.

  1:47:33. Careful to stay on the outer part of the narrow sidewalk, Reuven came abreast of the doorway where he’d spotted the watcher. He glanced left. The doorway was empty. The guy had obviously shifted position while he and Tom were doing their fast change. That was good news/bad news. Good news was that he’d gone passive. Bad news was he was out there somewhere, prowling and potentially dangerous. Either way, it was time for Tom to get moving. Reuven reached down with his left hand and tapped the transmit button on the radio once.

  1:47:39. As Reuven made his way around half a dozen parked motorcycles at the end of rue Nicolet and turned onto rue Bachelet he realized the opposition had been doing some contingency planning, too. The two streetlights, which less than twenty-four hours earlier had given the street of antique houses the postcard look of Toulouse-Lau
trec’s nineteenth-century Montmartre, were now both extinguished. The entire length of the 170-meter-long street was plunged into ominous, murky darkness. Things had gone from Le Lapin Agile to Rififi.

  1:47:42. Reuven’s mind and body both reacted to his surroundings, but his physical appearance never changed. Combat was mental. That’s what they taught you in the Mat’kal. It required training, discipline, and confidence.

  1:47:43. Reuven crossed the narrow street. Scan and breathe. Scan and breathe. That was what the firearms instructors drilled into you day after day on the range. Do not succumb to tunnel vision. Take in oxygen. Keep every instinct keened. Ears open. Nose open. Miss nothing. Become a sponge. Anticipate.

  1:47:45. Reuven’s radar sensed movement behind him. Then his ears caught the faint but nonetheless distinct scrape of running shoes against asphalt, moving in quick, potentially violent fashion. The motion in itself was eloquent. It told the Israeli his opposition was armed with a knife or a garrote, not a gun. And then the smells hit him: garlic, tobacco, and sweat—even in the chill, there was sweat.

  1:47:46. Reuven feinted right but moved left, rolling over the low hood of a car and dropping into a crouch as a body came hurtling past the spot where his left shoulder had been. He heard the whoosh of the blade as it slashed air.

  He caught a glimpse of the man wielding it. Dressed in banlieue hiphop and carrying a big folding knife with a curved blade. An amateur. Only amateurs use knives that big. Maybe. But maybe also a professional—a gangsta paid a hundred euros to make this look like a street robbery.

  1:47:48. Reuven tucked the shopping bag tightly under his right arm. He brought the Glock up, parallel to the pavement.

  1:47:49. His left hand racked the slide, loading a round into the pistol’s chamber. Simultaneously, Reuven swung the suppressor’s muzzle across his assailant’s sweatshirt-covered chest, almost as if he were swinging a paintbrush, and as the muzzle crossed center mass, he pulled the trigger twice in rapid succession—thwop-thwop.

  The target went down. But instead of dying, he groaned loudly, cursed in guttural Arabic, rolled away from Reuven, and tried to pull himself to his feet. He’d never even let go of the big knife.

  The son of a whore’s wearing a vest. Reuven shifted the Glock into a two-handed grip, stepped up, and using the car to steady himself, put a carefully aimed third round into the side of the hip-hop’s head.

  1:47:52. The hip-hop dropped heavily, splayed out on the sidewalk facedown, thrashing like he’d been jolted with a Taser. He bucked half a dozen times then went still. A puddle of dark blood began to drain from the head wound.

  1:47:57. Reuven backed away from the car, breathing through his mouth to make sure he took in a lot of oxygen. He pointed the muzzle of the Glock slightly downward—the stance they called low ready at the range—swinging the weapon left/right, right/left, his eyes searching the darkened street for anomalies. He thought he heard the faint sound of shoe leather on concrete moving away from him, but he couldn’t be absolutely sure.

  1:48:03. Reuven looked up and scanned the windows. Thank God it was all quiet. There were no lights; no nosy neighbors. He dropped to his knees and crawled around until he’d retrieved his three 9mm shell casings from the street and shoved them in his pocket. Then he approached the dead hiphop and rolled the corpse with his toe, careful to stay away from the large puddle of blood leaking from the side of the man’s shattered temple. He’d been right: the hip-hop had the look of an Algerian or Moroccan banlieue gangbanger—right down to the jailhouse tattoo on the back of his hand.

  1:48:29. The Israeli patted the dead man down. There was a wallet, a pager, and a cell phone. Reuven stuffed them into the shopping bag. Gingerly, he pulled the hip-hop’s sweatshirt up. There were five hundred-euro bills secured in the Velcro straps of the bulletproof vest. He took them, too. The money was folded around a small piece of yellow paper—one of those silly Post-it sticky notes.

  Reuven held the paper up and squinted in the darkness. On the Post-it was written Raynouard. The numerals were Arabic—17. The address was Tom’s.

  The Israeli started up the street at a dead run, heading for the long flight of stairs. He knew there was an all-night taxi stand near the intersection of rue Lamarck and rue Caulaincourt.

  29

  1:47:39 A.M. When he heard the single tsk in his ear, Tom slipped out of the doorway, kept close to the building, and made his way slowly up the street. The key was to do everything slowly and evenly. No jerky movement. Nothing that would attract attention. At night, sudden movement normally causes people to shift their eyes—change focus, use peripheral vision. And Tom didn’t want anybody doing that. He wanted his adversaries staring straight at him because that way they were likely to miss him. Of course, if they had night-vision equipment, it wouldn’t matter. But better safe than stupid.

  1:47:52. Tom crossed the foot of rue Nicolet. He’d started to ease around the corner onto rue Ramey when he saw headlights coming in his direction. He stopped, stepped back, and retreated into a doorway.

  The car—it was a small convertible—continued south on rue Ramey. As soon as its taillights had disappeared, Tom stepped out, made his way to the corner, and turned north. He was about halfway up the block when the intersection of rue Labat came into view. He continued cautiously until he dared to look across the street and saw the van was gone. That struck Tom as strange. Static surveillance units seldom shifted their positions because doing so drew attention to them.

  Tom had once spent thirty-eight hours straight on a two-man static surveillance. It had been in Cairo, in the summer. After about twenty-six hours in hundred-plus-degree heat, he’d come down with a horrible case of turista. All the Imodium, of course, was stored safely in the medicine cabinet back at his apartment, and so the last half day had been without question the most uncomfortable twelve hours in his entire life. He didn’t want to think how nasty it had been for his unfortunate partner.

  1:48 A.M. The mouth of the alley was sealed by a two-and-a-half-meter wall—just over eight feet—topped with an occasional shard of glass. There was no gate. The wall was smooth—there were no dogs’ teeth to help him gain any purchase.

  He paused, took a deep breath, then sprang, catching the exposed cap of the brick wall with his fingertips. He pulled himself straight up vertically, as if he were chinning on a bar. In truth, he hadn’t done any rock-climbing since college. He ran, of course, and when he’d been at Langley, he’d occasionally lifted some free weights down in the clandestine personnel gym. But since he’d moved to Paris, his exercise sessions had been sporadic at best—and now he was going to suffer the painful consequences.

  But he kept going. When Tom’s nose was level with the top of the wall, he threw his arm up and over, careful not to impale himself on the pieces of broken bottle. Then, inch by inch, Tom struggled until he’d pulled himself over the top of the wall. It was no fun.

  Exhausted, he rolled and dropped into the first of the three yards. He was careful to land evenly. He didn’t need a sprained ankle. Not tonight.

  1:50. He caught his breath and scanned his surroundings. It was just as Reuven had described: a postage stamp of a yard. A tree, bare in the November chill, stood in the center of the four-by-four-meter plot. Laundry was hung out. Tom picked his way past the rear of the house, trod carefully in the darkness up to the far wall, and jumped tippy-toe like a six-year-old at a candy counter to see if he could make out what was on top. This wall came topped with a single strand of what appeared to be rusty barbed wire. More fun and games. He shook his head and sprang for the lip of the wall.

  1:53 A.M. Tom stood, head tilted back, looking up toward the second floor, his gloved right hand resting on the shiny black-painted cast-iron drain-pipe. It was perhaps four inches in diameter—about the size of a healthy hickory sapling. But a lot smoother. The good news was that pipe joints protruded every four feet or so, and they’d give him something to catch on in case he lost his grip and started to slide. Tom exha
led, reached up, grabbed the first joint, wrapped his legs around the pipe, and pulled. By the time he was eight feet off the ground, he was sweating.

  He remembered, in the way ironic memories sometimes intrude, that Sam Waterman had once told him, “Kiddo, pain is simply weakness leaving the body.” The thought brought a grim smile to his face. If what Sam said was true, Tom would be left completely without weakness by the end of his night’s work.

  1:58. He was almost at the halfway point—which meant his nose was almost level with the first-floor windows. He looked down. It had taken him more than five minutes to climb less than eighteen feet.

  2:02. Three-quarters of the way home. He’d developed a rhythm. He used his upper-body strength (what there was of it) to pull himself up a few precious inches. His legs were wrapped around the pipe, his feet jammed against the rough brick wall. He’d pull, and squeeze, pull and squeeze, and rise a few inches with each painful repetition.

  2:06. Tom’s head came level with the sill of the target window. Exhausted, he reached up to the next pipe joint and, using the last of his strength, wrestled himself the final half foot into position. Rivulets of sweat running into his eyes, he hung there totally spent, his weight supported by the half an inch of pipe joint his sneakered insteps rested on. After about fifteen seconds, he rubbed his face against his sleeve, breathed deeply, and then set to work.

  First, he slid his right hand around the drainpipe to keep himself from slipping. With his left hand he loosened the inch-and-a-half-wide web belt around his waist, pulled it out through the trouser loops, ran it behind the pipe, cinched the pressure buckle tight, and then took hold of the belt with his left hand and wrapped the strap three times around his hand and wrist. Now, by using the belt, he could swing himself back and forth, giving himself the reach he needed to see inside the window.

  2:07. Using his right hand, Tom retrieved the camera from his fanny pack. He said a silent prayer to the gods of video transmission and activated the device. Holding it securely in his hand, he swung himself to his right, sidling up to the window.