The Target

by Brad Taylor

  She slithered back into the cargo bay and wrenched open the sliding door. She pulled Aaron’s unconscious body out of the van and laid it in the grass, making sure he was still breathing. She wondered what she was going to do now, out in the middle of the jungle.

  Then she remembered the phone. She went back inside the van, leaning over Derek. He was mewling in pain, but still had not managed to get upright. She said, “Where is that cell phone.”

  He stopped groaning, looking at her in hatred, his eyes now focused and clear. He spit into her face.

  She leaned back, wiped her cheek, then pulled one of the pistols out of her waistband and tapped the bone with the barrel. He screamed like an animal, then shouted, “Pocket. Upper right pocket of my jacket.”

  She retrieved it and saw they were out of cell coverage. Damn it.

  She said, “Look at me.”

  He did so. She said, “Do you want to live?”

  He nodded.

  “Tell me what you had planned. Where and when is the attack?”

  He said, “There isn’t an attack. We were just taking you because of my father. Because you met the Israeli station chief.”

  “Liar.”

  “It’s true. We knew Mossad wanted to find our father, and you being in the restaurant was too much of a coincidence.”

  She tapped the bone again, eliciting another wail. He said, “I’m telling the truth!”

  Inexplicably, Carl, still in the driver’s seat, sat upright and groaned, his mouth leaking blood from the glass shards. Shoshana then remembered that the poison might take minutes to finally kill.

  Derek said, “Help him. Please.”

  Shoshana knew then how she’d get Derek to talk. She said, “Derek, we were tracking your Nazi scum father. We were going to poison him, making it appear like a heart attack. I used that poison on Carl. It’s why we crashed. I have the antidote, and if I don’t administer it in the next few minutes, he will die.”

  Derek shouted, “Do it, you bitch! Don’t let him die!”

  “The attack.”

  Carl moaned again, his head falling forward, and a string of bloody drool dripped onto his leg.

  Derek saw the vile display, and gave up. He said, “It’s a bomb inside of a motorcycle.”

  “Target?”

  “The Mossad station chief.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow. Sometime tomorrow.”

  “Where?”

  He grew fearful. “I don’t know. I swear to God I don’t know. Somewhere on his walk to lunch. I’m not in charge of emplacing it.”

  “Say good-bye to Carl.”

  “I don’t know! It’s just on a road somewhere close to where you met him, maybe Perón Avenue. That’s all I know. Konrad is in charge.”

  She smiled, the grin becoming an evil, twisted thing. She said, “Okay. I believe you. Now say good-bye to Carl.”

  He said, “I’ve told you all I know. I swear. Give him the antidote. Get help. Remember, I told you before I wasn’t going to kill you.”

  She checked the chamber of her pistol, ensuring a round was seated, and said, “I don’t have an antidote.”

  Trying to comprehend, he said, “But you . . . you told me . . .”

  She sighted down the barrel, the dark angel flaring out of her. He saw the blackness flow and looked at her in terror.

  She said, “I lied.”

  Then pulled the trigger.

  14

  Shoshana retreated to Aaron, taking stock of her situation. She figured they’d been doing no more than thirty miles an hour while on the rutted blacktop, then had slowed once it had run out, driving no faster than fifteen miles an hour when the road had turned into single track. So, figuring they’d been driving a little over an hour, she probably had twenty or twenty-five miles to the main highway, where she could get cell coverage and call Daniel.

  But what if there isn’t coverage? She would then be walking south, on the main highway, until she at least reached the location where Derek had taken the call.

  Moving further and further away from Aaron.

  She glanced at her watch and saw it would be dark soon. She’d be walking through the night, and she’d have to leave him here, unconscious, in the jungle.

  So he comes with me.

  She ran back to the van, searching for the toolbox she’d seen earlier. It had split open at impact, scattering tools all over the cargo bay. She kicked through the pile of socket wrenches, vice clamps, and drill bits, finding a small hatchet and a hacksaw. She gathered both up and leapt out of the van and into the jungle. In short order, she had two sturdy poles from lengths of saplings.

  She returned to the van, snatching up the vinyl tarp. She draped it over the poles and saw it would work. She just needed something to hold it together.

  She took the hatchet and went back into the van, attacking the dash as if she were toppling a tree, ignoring the dead bodies as she hacked. Eventually, she had a hole exposing wires underneath. She ripped out two seven-foot sections, then returned to her makeshift litter, threading the wire through the grommets in the tarp.

  She finished by lashing a small crossbeam at the bottom, then used her remaining wire to fashion a loop in the front, going from one sapling to another.

  She placed the litter next to Aaron, then rolled him on top of it. She wiggled into the loop, took a sapling in each hand, and began to drag him up the slope to the road, the wire on her stomach.

  It took fifteen minutes to simply reach the dirt track, her feet slipping and sliding on the slope, forcing her to fight her makeshift litter to keep Aaron from spilling out. By the time she reached the road, she was out of breath. She ran an arm across her forehead, seeing the sun was setting.

  She held up the phone, hoping against hope. Nothing. She glanced down the single track, slipped the loop around her waist, and started walking, dragging the dead weight of her team leader.

  • • •

  One foot. Next foot. One foot. Next foot.

  Time had ceased to have any meaning, the blackness of the jungle night enveloping everything, as if she’d had sackcloth dropped over her head. Shoshana was growing delirious, her entire world centered on the mantra in her head.

  One foot. Next foot. One foot. Next foot.

  She so badly wanted to stop. To rest. Her muscles and sinews were screaming at her to quit, but Derek’s words provided the spark to ignore the pain. The attack was coming tomorrow. Today? Was it past midnight yet?

  She didn’t know, but she understood that a break might be the difference between success and failure.

  Her shoe caught on something in the road, and she fell forward, smashing down onto her knees. She cursed in pain, then patted the ground.

  Asphalt. My God. I made it to the blacktop.

  She’d tripped on the edge of the paved portion of the road. She hurriedly pulled the cell phone out of her pocket, then had to restrain herself from flinging it into the darkness.

  No service.

  The lack of a signal didn’t dampen her enthusiasm, because she knew she was close. She stood up, and began pulling again, her body begging her to stop.

  She did not.

  Forty minutes later, she noticed that she could make out the trees alongside the road, like ghosts in a mist. Dawn was coming. She had dragged her team leader the entire night.

  She continued, and the sun began its slow rise into the sky until the details in the tree line began to form. Eventually, she could see. She paused her march, wondering how much farther she had. She let the loop slip from her waist and lowered Aaron to the ground, staring forward.

  She saw a break in the trees, no more than a hundred meters away. It had to be the highway. Excited, she hoisted Aaron back up, and he moaned.

  Outside of the slap of her feet and the grating drag of the
poles, it was the first thing she’d heard in over twelve hours. She lowered the rails and jumped out of her makeshift harness, crouching over him. His eyelids fluttered.

  She picked up his hand and patted it, getting no response. She pulled up his shirt, exposed his sternum, then began harshly raking her knuckles over the bone. On the third swipe, his eyelids popped open, his hand grabbing her wrist.

  She stopped, seeing his aura begin to radiate. She smiled and waited. He looked left and right, then tried to sit up. He got halfway, then sagged back down, putting a hand to his forehead.

  She said, “Aaron, can you hear me?”

  He dropped the hand and said, “Yes. I can hear you. Thank God I can hear you. It’s the last thing I expected.”

  He sat up again, this time stronger, looking around. He said, “Where the hell are we?”

  “About a hundred meters from the main highway. Can you walk?”

  He took that in, confused, saying, “What main highway?”

  She became agitated, saying, “The main highway going back to Buenos Aires. We don’t have time for this. Can you walk? There’s an attack happening around lunchtime today. Maybe sooner.”

  Aaron heard her words, still in a fog. He said, “Attack?”

  She said, “Get up. Please. Get off of that litter and start walking. Can you do that?”

  He did so, a little weak and unsteady, but growing stronger. He said, “Where are we?”

  “I told you, we’re near the highway.” She pointed through the woods and said, “That’s it.”

  “How did we get here?”

  “I brought you.” She said the words as though she was talking about buying a pint of milk.

  He went through where they had crashed, and where they were now, staring at the litter. He said, “It’s daylight. How long was I out?”

  “All night.”

  He looked at her, reappraising every single thing he’d ever thought about her assignment to his team. He said, “The sons?”

  “Dead.”

  He nodded his head slowly, taking in the sacrifice and the absolute will to succeed.

  She asked again, “Can you walk?”

  He gave a short laugh, then said, “Yes. I can walk. Honestly, I’m afraid to tell you I can’t.”

  She grinned at the subliminal accolade and said, “I didn’t drag you this far to leave you now.”

  He stood tall, stretching, feeling out his body, then looked at her. “I honestly don’t know what to say to you. I have no words.”

  She said, “You don’t need to say anything. Some people are worth saving. Some are not.”

  He took that in, feeling her weird glow float over him, and said, “You are worth saving. No matter what anyone else believes.”

  It was the first time someone had ever given her a notion of her worth, throughout all her trials. She hadn’t gone through the hell of the night to get the affirmation though. She’d done it because of what she’d seen in him.

  She said, “Thank you.”

  He barked a laugh and said, “Seriously? I’m standing here alive, and you’re going to thank me? No, that’s not happening. I can walk wherever you want now. On my knees if I have to.”

  She grinned and said, “That’s good, because the Nazis are going to kill Gideon, and it’s happening today.”

  15

  Konrad heard a noise in the office and whirled around. He saw an early-morning janitor emptying the trash cans. The man, holding a plastic wastebin in his hand, was startled by Konrad’s presence. Konrad waved at him, and in Spanish, said, “No rest for the wicked.” The man smiled and continued cleaning. Konrad returned to the window.

  Through a friend of his father’s, Konrad had leveraged permission to sit in a cubicle on the second floor of an office building overlooking Juan Domingo Perón Avenue. The small office would be closed for the next few days, but even so, he didn’t feel comfortable sitting in the vacant seat. All he had to do was dial a phone, but he felt conspicuous nonetheless.

  Dawn had broken, and he was tired beyond belief. It had been a long night.

  He’d met his wife on the outskirts of town right after sundown, the six-hour drive from Mar del Plata consuming most of the day. He found his father in the passenger seat of the old pickup truck, his eyes gleaming, relishing the chance to conduct one more military operation.

  Behind the truck was a trailer holding the motorcycle. Konrad had checked the saddlebags, finding the left one empty. In the right was the Nokia cell phone. It was turned off, but had four inches of wire snaking out of the bottom that ended in a snap fastener. The female end of the connection dangled from two wires coming out of the frame of the bike. He powered up the phone, seeing it search, then find a cell tower. He closed up the bag, satisfied.

  He got behind the wheel, dropping off his wife at a hotel he’d rented before saying anything about the mission to his father. As he watched her walk inside, his father said, “I’ve got the key to the office. Adolph’s cubicle is a prized window seat. Clean view to the street below.”

  Konrad said, “You sure you want to do this? We don’t really need the money.”

  “Money has nothing to do with it. We need to eliminate this loose end before they do the same to us. It’s a matter of survival now.”

  Konrad saw the excitement in his father’s eyes. “One last time in the trenches, huh?”

  Gunther smiled, showing narrow, yellow teeth. He patted Konrad on the cheek and said, “Yes, there is that as well. Why should you boys get all the fun?”

  They’d left the trailer in the hotel parking lot and driven back downtown, locating the office and the cubicle. Through the office window, they’d determined the angle of view, which would dictate the kill zone, and thus, the placement of the bike.

  Juan Domingo Perón Avenue was a two-lane thoroughfare that butted right up against the sidewalk. Every fifteen feet or so was a cluster of motorcycles and mopeds, four or five to a bunch, the front tires slotted into small iron parking stalls.

  The only grouping with any space was the last one before the pedestrian avenue of Florida, with two slots open. The problem now would be getting the bike into position. Because the gas tank was filled with explosives, the motorcycle didn’t actually run, and would have to be pushed into the stall, which meant they’d have to wait until, much later, when nobody was around to question.

  They’d retrieved the trailer and returned, stopping at the intersection of Maipú and Juan Domingo Perón Avenue. They’d stayed for hours, until the avenue was deserted, Konrad using the time with his father to detail the plan. He described the café Gunther would use for the initial trigger, and how far he wanted his father to follow, stressing that all Konrad needed to know was whether the station chief went east or west from the embassy. If it was east, they’d wait another day. If west, they’d prepare to attack—but he didn’t want his father to do anything but trigger. There was too much of a chance that the station chief would make him if he tried to do anything more.

  Gunther had said, “Son, I’ve killed many more of these Jewish swine than you ever will. They have no skill. No heart. The superior race will always prevail.”

  Konrad had looked at him and said, “That’s what Eichmann thought.”

  Gunther laughed and said, “Okay. I’ll do nothing rash.”

  At 4:00 A.M. Konrad had pushed the bike down the empty street, setting it into the second-to-last slot, the third bike of four, about fifty meters from the intersection with Florida Street. He’d turned the phone on, then mated the snap connectors, wondering what the odds were for a wrong-number call. Something he hadn’t considered before.

  He’d rapidly retreated, returning to the truck. He’d sent his father back to the hotel and had accessed the office for the second time. He’d hoped to get some sleep even if it meant doing so in a chair, but the morning janitorial crew
had interrupted that plan.

  16

  In broken Spanish, Shoshana urged the farmer to go faster, using as an excuse the need to get Aaron to a hospital. Every few miles she checked her phone, waiting on it to magically pick up a signal.

  They’d made it to Highway 14 and begun walking south, moving only a little bit faster than when Shoshana was dragging Aaron, his head injury causing them to stop every so often to let a bought of vertigo pass.

  They’d flagged the first vehicle they saw coming south, a vintage pickup hauling vegetables. The farmer behind the wheel had kindly allowed them to board, believing the half-truth that Shoshana had spun about a car accident and the need for medical treatment.

  He’d pushed the truck as fast as he dared, and Shoshana waited on the phone to sync with the network. It didn’t until they’d turned off on Highway 12, two hours outside of Buenos Aires.

  She dialed Daniel, hoping he was monitoring the secure phone. He wasn’t. She dialed again, letting it ring out. Nothing.

  She continued calling every five minutes, monitoring the battery life on the phone. On the sixth try, he finally answered.

  In Hebrew, she said, “Daniel, it’s Shoshana. Are you in Buenos Aires, as planned?”

  Confused, he said, “Yes, of course. Where are you two? You were supposed to meet me last night. What happened with the station chief?”

  In as short a span as she could, she detailed what had happened and where they were, ending with the potential attack on Gideon. She said, “I need you to find the embassy number and call them. Get through to Gideon and tell him to sit tight, then come get us.”

  “Okay, okay, I can do that. Where are you now?”

  “Headed south on Highway 12, probably an hour and fifteen out.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  A short time later, the old truck passed through the roundabout on the outskirts of Zárate, turning off Highway 12 onto Highway 9, now about an hour away. She looked at her watch, seeing it was past ten thirty in the morning. They were running out of time.