by Joe Nobody
The sentry stood there, apparently unsure how to respond. Throwing his buddy a look that seemed to indicate, “Help me out here,” he remained in Zach’s path but didn’t become aggressive.
Zach reached into his pocket, pulling out the ever-present cell phone. “Hey, while I’ve got you here, would you take a picture with me? My wife loves seeing the local folks. She’s back in the States and is under the weather.”
The ranger tried to drape a gregarious arm over the guard’s shoulder, holding out the cell phone as if to snap a selfie. The guard ducked under Zach’s embrace and stepped aside.
Sporting a hurt expression, Zach finally shrugged and mumbled, “Sorry. No offense, buddy.” He then headed inside the pastry shop before the security men could react.
The Butcher was fully engaged with the shop’s owner, pointing here and there while talking a thousand miles a minute. Zach stood politely aside, waiting his turn while studying the offering of cakes and sweet treats displayed in the glass case. His stomach rumbled, driven by the delightful aroma that seemed to saturate the establishment.
A woman then appeared from the back, gingerly carrying a box, the contents she was obviously very proud of, soon joining what appeared to be her husband at the front counter. Zach pulled his cell phone out again, pretending to take more pictures while secretly switching on a voice-recording app.
The lady baker set the box on the display case and opened the lid with the gesture of a grand unveiling. Inside was what appeared to be a birthday cake.
Another rush of words, smiles, pointing, and glee was exchanged between the shop owner and the fat fellow. Obviously, Butcher man was pleased with his rather ornately decorated, chocolate confection.
Reaching in his pocket, the criminal produced a large roll of bills. Despite not understanding the language, it was clear he was offering to pay for the dessert.
But the couple would have none of it. Waving him off with forced smiles and friendly words, they made it clear the celebrant’s money wasn’t accepted at their business.
And then he was gone, sauntering out with the cake and a huge grin. Zach watched as the bodyguards drew in closer, the entire entourage continuing down the sidewalk.
After purchasing a small bag of some sort of brownie-looking dessert, the ranger left the bakery and headed back for David’s vehicle.
As he strolled across the cobblestones that lined the street, Zach paused and then held up a finger to indicate he’d be just a minute longer. Ducking inside, he re-emerged a few moments later, a second shopping bag in his hand. After returning to the car, the ranger explained, “Here, listen to this. I recorded it in the shop.”
The agent did as asked, tilting his head to make out the low-quality recording. After it had finished, he translated, “The Butcher is buying a birthday cake for his second oldest son. He’s telling the baker how his oldest is a spoiled brat and no longer his favorite. Then he brags on the second son’s performance in school and how he’s glad the older boy is out of his life.”
“Does he mention the name of the school?”
“No, but I know where his children attend to their studies. Why do you ask?”
It was Zach’s turn to dodge the question. “Good. Take me there, would you?”
“Tell me what you’re going to do, Zach. Seriously, I can’t go to jail over this. That would hurt my sister and parents more than anything.”
“I promise, you won’t go to jail, and no one is going to get hurt.”
A short time later, they pulled up in front of a large building that David indicated was a private school. The two sat in relative silence, munching on Zach’s purchase from the bakery, waiting for the students’ day to end.
“Here they come,” David announced, pointing toward a mass of adolescent males boisterously exiting the building.
“Where are the girls?”
“Girls are kept separate from the young men… on a different campus. Same with prayers in the mosque.” With a nod, David indicated the Butcher’s offspring. “His home is about six blocks from here. It looks like he’s going to walk.”
Zach’s tone grew cold, the ranger now all business. “Time for a little police work. Follow him.”
With a questioning expression, David shifted the car in gear, rolling slowly as they tailed the youth and three of his friends. The kids never noticed they were being shadowed.
When the gaggle of students entered a side street, Zach instructed, “Pull up, but keep the car running. I’m going to make an arrest.”
A moment later, Zach jumped out of the car, his Texas Ranger badge and identification flashing in the air. With the controlling tone used by all police officers, he barked, “You are under arrest. Put your hands on the hood of the car! Now!”
The kids were stunned, a few muttering some questioning words, the Butcher’s son looking more scared than angry. While they didn’t understand his English, a cop was a cop all over the world.
In less than 20 seconds, Zach had the kid handcuffed and was shoving the boy in David’s backseat.
“Let’s go.”
Leaving the other lads gawking in awe at what had just occurred, Zach and David drove off, the Mossad agent nearly as stunned as the victims on the sidewalk.
Zach reached into the front seat, pouring out the remaining pastries and then positioning the sack over the young prisoner’s head.
Next, he produced a hypodermic needle from a case typically used to protect sunglasses. The medication had been “borrowed” from the nurse’s medicine cart while Pen had received a dose for her pain.
As Zach cleared any air from the syringe, he asked, “How much would you say this kid weighs?”
David gave his best estimate, which was followed almost immediately by a sharp curse from the young hostage’s throat.
“He should be out in a few minutes. Now, do you know where there’s a real butcher shop?”
“What?” David replied, looking in the rearview mirror in amazement. “Are you hungry?”
“No. There’s one more item I need.”
Now hopelessly involved, David didn’t even bother to ask. On the way, the prisoner fell asleep, slumping over to rest his head on the door. Zach ventured inside the meat market alone.
It took the Texan much longer to return after this shopping trip, a small bag in the smiling ranger’s hand. “Okay, now we need to take our young friend here back to your apartment for a few hours while I finish up a few things.”
“My apartment? You never said anything about my….”
“I assume you have a back way in, right? Don’t all of you spooks have a clandestine entry? A secret backdoor to avoid nosy neighbors and prying eyes?”
“What’s a spook?”
“Never mind. I’ll just rent a hotel room. I will need you to babysit my friend here for a while. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to him.”
David relented, driving the short distant to his flat and parking in the garage. Zach hefted the unconscious lad over his shoulder and followed his accomplice up a flight of stairs. “Put him in the bathroom and handcuff him to the water pipe,” the Mossad agent pointed. “When he wakes up, I don’t want him puking on the carpet.”
Zach did as he was told, returning a few moments later. “Now, can you write me a note in Arabic?”
“Yes. I’m not proficient, but I can normally get the message across.”
“Okay, get a pen and paper. I’ll tell you what I want it to say.”
While David shuffled through the desk drawer, Zach opened his shopping bags. From the first, he produced a very attractive, ornate wooden box, about the size of a deck of cards, but twice as thick.
From the second sack came a small bundle of white paper, generally used by butchers to wrap fresh meat. Sure enough, inside were two somewhat oblong spheres of bloody flesh.
The Mossad agent returned just then, wrinkling his nose at Zach’s purchase. “What the hell are those?”
“Pig nuts,” Zach replied. “A
nd pretty fresh ones at that.”
Shaking his head but afraid to ask, David inquired, “Okay, what do you want the note to say?”
Zach rubbed his chin for a moment before relaying the message. “Hmmm… write this down; ‘These are your son’s testicles. Return the Texas girl abducted on museum row, or I’ll send you the rest of him in little pieces. The carving could take days. Don’t mess with Texas.’”
Three hours later, Zach received a call from the colonel at the embassy. “I thought you’d like to know the ambassador’s daughter was returned a short time ago. She’s shaken up, but okay. Somebody dropped her off in a cab, but the driver left before we figured out what was going on.”
“Thanks,” Zach replied, the relief unmistakable in his voice. “I’m on a flight back to Texas later today, sir. After I make a quick trip to the Butcher and then stop by the hospital to say goodbye to Sergeant Kott, I’ll be airborne.”
“Have a safe trip.”
Zach turned and nodded at the two rangers sitting in David’s apartment. “The girl is back and safe; now we will hold up our end of the deal.”
He’d had no trouble recruiting the other lawmen. Someone had taken a shot at a Texas Ranger, and that wasn’t to be tolerated. Nor was Zach worried about anybody reporting his extracurricular activities to the colonel.
The three large lawmen squeezed into David’s car, two in the backseat bookending the still groggy prisoner. “We’ll try the Butcher’s favorite restaurant first,” informed the local agent.
Sure enough, Zach recognized one of the criminal’s security men hovering outside the local eatery. “There’ll be more inside,” David warned.
“No problem,” stated one of the rangers. “They’re not very big fellers.”
The Mossad operative started to mention something about automatic firearms but held his tongue. The Texans seemed intent and confident.
Leaving the Butcher’s son with David, the three rangers donned their traditional western hats and made for the entrance. Each did a reasonable job acting like an intoxicated tourist. Zach was sure to keep his Stetson pulled low on his brow to complete the disguise… and avoid being recognized by the gentlemen he had encountered at the bakery.
They found the eatery bustling with customers, the smiling hostess informing Zach that there would be a 15-minute wait for a table. Ranger Hinton pointed toward a section that appeared to be empty with the exception of two men sitting at a table full of food. With a slight slur of words, he said, “Plenty of tables in here, ma’am,” tipping his hat to complete the effect. “I see one right now. We’ll just mosey over there and take a seat. Do you have ice cold beer?”
The hostess tried to protest, but the three large men merely pushed past. Zach saw the Butcher glance up as they approached, his expression conveying his apparent curiosity over the drunk Americans.
Stumbling their way toward the isolated section of tables, Zach kept his gaze fixed on Butcher. Or at least he tried.
It was the man sitting beside the local criminal that drew the ranger’s attention. Some primal instinct told Zach that the stranger was the real predator in the room.
He wasn’t a big guy, didn’t appear overly muscled or practically athletic. But there was something in the fellow’s eyes… something in the way his body moved.
Zach shook his head to clear his mind just as two security men stepped forward, intent on keeping the trio from entering their boss’s private section. “No,” one of them barked at Ranger Hinton. “No here.”
Zach sensed another bodyguard moving to flank, a fourth coming to stand beside Hinton’s blocker. Only four? That’s it? This is going to be easy.
“Anybody know what this gent is trying to say? I am beginning to believe that maybe they don’t serve our kind in here?” Hinton asked, turning to wink at his mates. “Perhaps he doesn’t want a bunch of dirty foreigners sitting next to them.”
“Fuck him,” Zach said with a slur, “There are all kinds of places to sit and eat in there. I can see ’em. I’m hungry and have collected about three days’ worth of trail dust in my throat.”
Zach pushed past his two drinking buddies, coming chest to chest with the security type. “Move aside, little fella, before somebody gets hurt.”
Despite his head barely reaching Zach’s chin, the bodyguard wasn’t intimidated. “No! No here!” he shouted and then put both of his hands on the ranger’s chest as if to push him away.
Zach’s right fist slammed into the guard’s jaw, powered by all of the anger, fear, and frustration of the last two days. Two rabbit punches from his streaking left hand quickly followed, a cloudy mist of blood and snot spewing from the man’s shattered nose.
Pivoting to identify another target for his rage, Zach spotted the flaying arms of the flanking guard fly past, his airborne body crushing one of the tables as it landed.
One of the guard’s hands disappeared into his jacket, obviously reaching for a weapon. The pistol never cleared the holster, Hinton’s 280-pound, linebacker-type frame slamming into the wanna-be shooter. The man bounced off the wall with a whoosh of air, his rebound met by one of Hinton’s massive fists.
The brawl was over in seconds, Butcher’s four men completely outsized and outmatched. Zach found himself facing a rather terrified looking criminal, a fork full of food suspended in midair, halfway to his mouth.
Zach had prepared a chest full of words to spout, had a lengthy sermon all worked out. Instead of the ass chewing and threats he’d intended, the ranger found himself looking for the man who’d been eating with the Butcher. He’d vanished… just disappeared… like a ghost, a figment of his imagination.
David appeared just then, a confused, panicky prisoner in tow. Without another word, Zach pushed the kid toward his terrified father and said, “I honor my deals. Now leave our people alone, or we’ll meet again.”
The delivery complete, Zach and his buddies turned and left, the sirens of Jerusalem police cars wailing in the distance. They drove away, heading for the hospital, none of them in a talkative mood.
Zach glanced at his watch, eager to return to Texas and get back to some acceptable law enforcement duties. I can’t wait to get home to the normal fare of rapists and bank robbers, he thought. This being a bodyguard is exhausting work.
Chapter 2
The distant thump of helicopter rotors sent a river of ice down Salim’s spine.
His eyes immediately drew skyward, squinting from the harsh rays of the mid-day, equatorial sun. Choppers were never good news.
His view of the horizon was limited, smoking heaps of rubble and the skeletons of burned-out buildings interfering with his desperate scan. Again, the low, waffling-thump of rotors echoed through the canyons of destruction, ruins that just a short time ago had been a thriving Syrian town.
Adjusting the AK hanging across his chest, Salim raised his right hand and made a fist, signaling his men to hold fast and seek cover. The gesture was unnecessary, the keen ears of his battle-hardened fighters having already detected the angel of death.
While always a factor on the battlefield, the regime in Damascus had elevated the deadly role of its sizable fleet of military helicopters. Filling plain, commonly available 50-gallon drums with plastic explosives and scrap iron, “barrel bombing” had become a daily event.
Airships commonly used to transport troops or supplies had now become bombers, hovering above their targets and dropping the huge containers of explosives from a safe distance. Such devices were cheap and easy to make, and given Damascus’s inability to purchase weapons on the open market, about the only air-to-ground munitions available to the loyalist air force.
They were also very inaccurate, criminally indiscriminate, and extremely demoralizing.
A large one had a kill zone of 150 meters and could transform concrete walls into blizzards of deadly shrapnel. But above all else, they crushed the spirits of those fighting for freedom.
Often, the target of Assad’s airborne assassins had nothi
ng to do with the armed rebellion or military significance. The dictator was under siege, ruling over an ever-shrinking corner of land. That desperation led the Satan of Syria to rain down barrel bombs on markets, hospitals, schools, and mosques. It wasn’t unusual to unearth the pulverized, shredded bodies of innocent women and children from the debris.
Salim, like others of the mujahideen, tried to use the tactic to bolster assurance and reinforce confidence in the cause. Assad the Cursed was desperate, running low on money, and unable to procure “real” weapons, or so the leaders preached. The tyrant was losing, and soon the people of the Syrian world would see him beheaded in the public courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque.
But the death toll continued to rise, the wailing of widows and grieving sobs of mothers making Salim wonder if the killing would ever stop. The ruthless demons in Damascus were relentless, assembling and dropping countless barrels. Would they continue until there was no one left to kill? What would end it all? How would peace ever come to his troubled homeland?
A scrap of gravel under his boot pulled Salim away from his thoughts, the team leader now joined by a man known only as “Ghost.”
“The helos are flying for Aleppo and are not concerned with our insignificant party,” the new arrival announced, clearly annoyed at the delay. “We are moving too slowly. We must hurry to be in position before nightfall so I can monitor the patrols.”
“How can you be so sure?” Salim asked, his eyes darting skyward with suspicion.
“Your commander told you to trust me,” rebutted the older, evermore impatient man. “If you want to see Assad’s new toys, we must move on. The Army increases patrols at dusk, and our orders are to avoid contact. Being in the right place at the right time is the best way to accomplish that goal, the Prophet willing.”
Pushing down the harsh response forming in his chest, Salim studied the mysterious man beside him. Tall, thin, with the sun blackened, wrinkled skin of age, Ghost was rumored to be a retired military officer. Some gossiped that he was a highly decorated hero of the Six-Day War with the Zionists to the south, others claiming a former career with the regime’s feared secret police.