Doha 12

by Lance Charnes

  The clank of metal crashing into an immovable object caused Sohrab to twist to his left. The van’s nose was jammed into the steep slope at the base of the hill; a bit of steam already escaped from under the hood. Alayan hadn’t got far.

  Sohrab looked down at the gasping blond at his feet. He could just let her suffocate, but she was a woman, so he decided to be merciful. He snapped her neck with the baton, then charged downslope toward a line of headstones to see what was happening with Alayan.

  Jake could still hear occasional shots, but they didn’t seem to have anything to do with him anymore. He stood straight, squared his shoulders. Nothing. “I think we’re clear.”

  Miriam swayed to her feet, pistol ready, and pivoted through a visual search of the area. “Who was that woman?”

  “Maybe the Mossad chick. You okay?”

  “Okay enough.”

  Jake watched Gabir drag himself through his own blood toward his pistol, a few feet away on the drive. When the Arab was almost within reach, Jake strode to the gun and kicked it into the landscaped oval. Gabir wheezed in defeat, looked up though eyes brimming with pain.

  Jake said, “You’re the asshole who killed my wife.”

  The man’s eyes shifted from pain to resignation. He opened his mouth twice to speak, but couldn’t or changed his mind. He finally nodded, coughed, winced.

  Jake closed his eyes. This son-of-a-bitch took away the best thing in his life—by mistake. That part was unbearable. Rinnah died because of a mistake. God damn him.

  He glanced behind him. Miriam stood a few feet away, her left arm clutched around her stomach. She stared back at him, her face partly lit by the glow of a streetlight but not enough for him to read her expression.

  Jake looked down at Gabir—at the blood dribbling from the man’s mouth, the seeping holes in his chest—and felt triumph surge through him. He hadn’t until this moment heard his primal brain scream for revenge since the day Rinnah died. The civilized part he’d spent the past decade nurturing was horrified by his reaction, but it was smothered by a pulsating cloud of red-hot hate.

  He saw Rinnah’s dead face, the black hole above her eyes. Her tear of blood.

  He raised the gun, aimed at Gabir’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.

  He didn’t know how long he stood there. Probably only a few seconds. The next thing Jake was truly aware of was Miriam’s voice. “You had to.”

  Jake had fired all his hate into Gabir along with the bullet. Now a familiar gray void took its place. He realized he was still aiming at the man’s ruined head and let his hand fall to his side.

  “If you didn’t, it would’ve haunted you for the rest of your life. Believe me, I know.”

  He looked up from the dead man to find Miriam standing on the other side of the body, her face set hard against the pain in her midriff.

  “You’re bleeding,” she said. “Your ear.”

  He reached up to touch the hot, tingling spot on his right ear. His fingers came away with blood. The sniper had missed by a whisper. He swallowed hard, took in a ragged breath.

  They flinched in unison when another shot sounded from the trees. Recovering, Miriam asked, “What did that other man say to you? The one with Eve? I couldn’t hear.”

  “He told me about this piece of shit.” Jake motioned toward the body.

  Sirens echoed through the trees and tombs. Miriam scanned the access road. “Let’s get Eve. We should go.”

  “Is it done? Did we get them all?” Jake tried to believe it, but the threat he’d lived under for a month wouldn’t let loose of him that easily. He turned to stare at the man sprawled on the sidewalk at the foot of the steps. “I’ll bet he knows, if he’s still alive.”

  They paced to Rafiq’s side. Jake knelt by him and gently rolled the man onto his back. More blood, more coughing. Rafiq whistled when he breathed.

  What should Jake say to the terrorist assassin who took care of his daughter and possibly saved her life? Thanks? His tongue was so confused it couldn’t get a coherent word out.

  “Eve?” Rafiq whispered.

  “Inside. She’s okay.”

  “Good.”

  “Are there more of you? Are we still in danger?”

  Rafiq gulped in a dollop of air. “Another group. Not us.” Gasp, cough. “Truck bomb. In the city.” He squeezed his eyes shut, rolled his head forward. The pain and effort marched across his face. “Super 8. North Bergen.” He let his head fall back, began panting fast and shallow.

  Jake realized his mouth had fallen open. A truck bomb? Here? He felt Miriam’s hand on his shoulder, looked up into her stunned face. “You heard that, right?”

  She nodded. “Where?” she asked Rafiq. “When do they attack?”

  Rafiq turned unfocused eyes on Miriam’s face. “Tomorrow. Don’t know target.”

  Tomorrow? Jake shook his head into gear, tried to ignore the craziness of the situation. “How many? What do they look like? Who are they?”

  “Truck in. Global Storage. Under…” Rafiq’s hand spasmed into a fist. “Under Alvarez. From the twelvth.”

  Oh, fuck. This can’t be real! The blood slowly creeping across the sidewalk told Jake that Rafiq was dying, though he realized it with none of the joy he’d felt at Gabir’s pain. This man didn’t need to make up stories; he no longer had a use for lies.

  A helicopter shredded the sky overhead, carved a tight orbit over the chapel no more than a hundred feet up. The spotlight pinned all three of them in a painfully bright, jittering circle of white-blue light. “NYPD,” a voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “Lay down your weapons and put your hands in the air. Do not try to escape.”

  “Better do it,” Jake told Miriam. “Put your gun on the sidewalk, raise your hands. These guys don’t have a sense of humor.”

  She peered up through the glare at the chopper, then placed her Walther next to Rafiq’s foot. “What about you?”

  “In a minute.” He leaned in to Rafiq, wrapped his hand around the Arab’s clenched fist. “Anything else? How do we find these guys?”

  Rafiq had screwed his eyes shut when the light flipped on. He shook his head. “Don’t know. Don’t talk to us.” The effort he’d put into those few words launched him into coughs that jolted his upper body off the ground. Blood splattered from his mouth, down his cheek.

  “Hang in there, Rafiq,” Jake said, a part of him asking what are you saying to this animal? “The cops are here, they’ll fix you up.”

  “Too late,” Rafiq gasped, barely audible above the helicopter’s scream. “Too late.”

  A few moments later, he was gone.

  SEVENTY-NINE: Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, 22 December

  Gur wrenched open the wrecked van’s passenger door, thrust his Beretta inside and said in Arabic, “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Alayan, slumped in his seat, cranked his head to look in Gur’s direction. The blood stink from him nearly turned Gur’s stomach, and Gur had smelled a lot of blood in his time. Alayan coughed out what might have been a laugh. “Just shoot me. Your girl won’t.”

  Girl? Gur glanced into the back and saw Kelila’s face reflecting the dim street light, a paper napkin pressed to her nose. What was she doing in the van? “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. “I hit my nose on the headrest when we crashed.”

  Gur slid into the passenger’s seat. A helicopter roared overhead, its spotlight momentarily turning the evening into high noon. The harsh light showcased the blood covering Alayan from nose to knees. The Arab didn’t have long to live. “Alayan? Or should I say, ‘Mr. Alvarez?’” He caught the twitch in Alayan’s face. “Oh, yes, I know. I saw you at Eldar’s flat. I called the police. Too bad we didn’t finish our business there.”

  “It’s okay,” Alayan croaked. “I had work.”

  “I know.” Gur leaned in, breathing through his mouth to cut down the butcher-shop smell. “The police will be here in a minute. If they take you, they’ll keep you alive on machines a
nd tubes. They’ll put your picture on every newspaper and television with the title ‘failed terrorist.’ Do you want that?”

  Alayan hacked twice. His entire body shook from the effort. “Would you?”

  “No. Tell me what I want to know and I guarantee they won’t arrest you. Understand?” No answer, just distant, dark eyes. “How many on your team?”

  After a moment of fighting to breathe, Alayan whispered, “Fuck you. Shoot me now.”

  Stubborn Arab idiot. “Your man in the trees, the sniper. Who is he?”

  Silence, except for the man’s rasping. Flashing blue lights reflected off the main gate’s stone spires. The helicopter rumbled through a tight circle behind them.

  None of them had much time. Gur switched to Hebrew and said, “Kelila, get out of here. Meet up with Sasha as we planned. I’ll be along in a minute.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone with that insect.”

  She had a let-me-help glint in her eyes. But any moment the police would come crashing in, and he couldn’t bear the thought of her being caught and interrogated, perhaps going to prison. “I’ve been alone with much more dangerous insects. Please. We have to split up to avoid the police anyway. I won’t be far behind you.”

  She frowned, shot a worried glance between him and Alayan. “Is that an order?”

  “It is.”

  Kelila nodded. “Be careful.”

  She disappeared out the back door without another look behind her.

  Sohrab focused the monocular on the van’s windshield. Two men. The one behind the wheel draped the seat rather than sitting in it; Alayan. The other man-shaped blob faced Alayan from the passenger’s side, leaning forward, talking.

  Police? Perhaps. At least five police cars blocked the front gate, just a few dozen meters to Sohrab’s right, their strobing lights casting bizarre shadows all around him. The helicopter droned over the chapel, its searchlight a perfect white cone underneath its belly. Still more sirens screamed down the streets.

  If the police had Alayan, he could tell them far more than they should ever hear. But there was only one man with him; the others huddled behind their cars, guns drawn, waiting. Sohrab could still salvage the situation. He’d get only one shot, though; too many police were too close to risk more.

  He steadied the rifle’s barrel on a headstone.

  Alayan’s view out the windscreen dimmed with each agonizing breath. Blue lights, orange clouds, black shapes of buildings and monuments, all out of focus. His mind drifted like a toy boat caught in the surf at Khalde beach. He loved going to that beach as a child. He could see the sky all around him there, not just a slot of blue between the high-rises.

  “Who’s your handler? Who do you report to?”

  Damned Zionist, still asking questions. But even as he felt the last of his life trickle down his chest, Alayan wouldn’t betray his team or the Party.

  “You beat me,” he rasped. “But you lost.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Alayan licked his lips. “The Party. Always has. Another plan.”

  “A bomb team?” The Jew’s voice crackled. “Like Hamburg and Rome?”

  The bomb. He’d driven himself and his men to the limit to stop this “other plan,” but now his failure guaranteed it would go forward. But tell this thug? “Why should. I help you? You killed my wife. Mother. Father. Bombed my city. Go to hell.”

  “Your people murdered my wife,” the Zionist said, his voice hard. “Everyone on your team, everyone on mine, we’ve all lost someone, we’ve all been wronged.”

  Alayan rolled his head back to center, fixed his gaze on the police lights a few dozen meters away. Instead he saw his wife and parents, one moment alive and happy, the next dead, burned, mangled. We’ve all been wronged.

  The Zionist leaned close enough for Alayan to feel his heat. “Tell me about the bomb. If you help, we can stop the next wrong. We can save others from what’s happened to us.”

  The vision of his dead family dissolved into a nightmare of scattered, bloody bodies of strangers, women, children, burning wreckage and dust and broken glass and sirens. Like so many bombings he’d seen growing up in Beirut.

  Alayan willed his mind to drift back to the beach, the sun, the blue sky of home, but the Jew’s words snagged him like a rock in the water. Stop the next wrong. Stop the bombs? Alayan had devoted these last years of his life to show the Party another way. He’d failed.

  He could save the Party from its own stupidity, but it meant betraying the Party. To this gangster? Maybe Allah had given Alayan this Zionist as one last test.

  Samirah, what do I do?

  He couldn’t see or hear his martyred wife anymore.

  He panted like a winded horse but still couldn’t get enough air. It was so hard to swallow. If only he had water, anything to wash the bitter, coppery muck from his mouth.

  Stop the next wrong?

  The world outside the van grew dimmer still. Alayan gulped down enough breath to whisper one word. “Majid.”

  “What’s Majid? A name? The operation?”

  Out in the night, straight ahead, Alayan saw a white flash. A star? A burst of light, all its brilliance spent in one great moment of life.

  When the flash died, so did Alayan’s world.

  EIGHTY: Brooklyn, 22 December

  “You knew?”

  “Of course we knew.” If Orgad objected to the acid in Gur’s tone, the phone connection masked it. “The moment the Germans broke the Hamburg cell, we assumed Hezbollah would have teams in the other four nations. That’s why we had no replacements for Amzi and Natan.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell me?”

  “Really, Raffi. I’m surprised you’re surprised. It was inevitable that someday they’d do something like this. You’ve just confirmed that someday is now.”

  Gur halted his pacing at the edge of the bright trapezoid spilling onto the sidewalk through the all-night kebab store’s dirty window. He kicked the wall in frustration. “There was a third sniper there besides the Arab and Sasha, a friendly. Was he Kaminsky’s?”

  Orgad’s chair creaked in the background. “As it turns out, yes. He wasn’t authorized to engage, not that he bothered to tell us he was going to. We’ve recalled him and he’s gone dark. The Director is very unhappy with him since one of his people turned up dead in a public firefight. So now it’s down to you.”

  Of course. The moment Alayan told him about the “other plans,” Gur began to hear Orgad’s voice in his head ordering him to find this Majid, whoever or whatever it was. He’d hoped to get a few hours sleep first, though. “How do I get to Kaminsky?”

  “You don’t. If he happens to contact you, grab him and drag him home by his ears. We’ll send you what we’ve given him. Now that your original mission is done, you need something to do, and you’re already there.”

  “I’m always glad to save the Institute from spending money.”

  “Don’t be that way, Raffi. You redeemed yourself tonight. Consider this a reward. A Hezbollah bomb in America may be the most important event this decade. Of course, if you don’t find it…” Gur could almost hear the shrug over the phone.

  Inside the store, Gur slid onto a one-piece laminate bench next to Kelila. The bored clerk at the counter didn’t look up from his Turkish music magazine. Three people in black fatigues eating dinner and no one notices; only in New York. Gur surveyed the robust shawarma Sasha attacked on the other side of the table. “How can you eat that thing so late?”

  “It’s not even midnight,” Sasha mumbled through a mouthful. “I have to eat sometime.”

  Kelila slid her paper plate of four falafel balls to a place Gur could reach. He broke one in half, dragged it through the paper ramekin of tahini and popped the golden-brown snack into his mouth. Not bad, but not up to Falafel Hakosem in central Tel Aviv. The taste of chickpea and sesame and the random memory of home it sparked left him even wearier than before. He sighed and said, “We have a new mission.”

&
nbsp; “Majid?” Kelila asked. Gur nodded. “Can we get some more sleep first?”

  “Probably not. We have to play catch-up.” Gur pushed the other half of his falafel around its corner of the plate. He never was hungry after an action. Once again he watched Alayan die in front of him, a third eye drilled in his forehead. Kaminsky’s sniper? Or Alayan’s own? “Eldar and Schaffer had some time with Raad and the other Arab, didn’t they?”

  “They might have,” Kelila said. “They were on the steps when I went after the van, but after that I can’t say. I don’t know if the Arabs were still alive then.”

  “Eldar talked to one of them,” Sasha said. “The one carrying the child, before the shooting started. They were at it for a minute or so.”

  “Really? Kelila, did you—”

  “No, I couldn’t hear them. I heard Alayan and Eldar talking, but they were pretty loud. They didn’t say anything about Majid.”

  That would have been too easy. Gur let his gaze wander to the window but didn’t register anything except darkness. “Desperate times,” he muttered to himself.

  “We have less than a day,” Kelila pointed out. “Do we have anything we can work with?”

  “We have a deadline. Where would the police take Eldar and Schaffer?”

  “The local station, I guess. My computer’s in the flat or I’d look up which one. Why?”

  Why indeed? They were less than fifteen minutes into this new operation, and already he was grasping at straws. “All through this, Eldar’s been a step or two ahead of us. We should find out if he knows anything more.”

  Sasha exchanged a dubious glance with Kelila, then asked, “You want us to pick them up, boss?”

  Gur considered this a moment, the many possible ways it could go bad, the few ways it could pay off. Unfortunately, the latter outweighed the former. “Kelila, I want you to bring them both in.” He focused on her. “When we get back to the flat, figure out where they might be. Then change into your nicest clothes and wait for them. It may take a while. Eldar might not react well if I’m there, but you may be able to bring him around. You can also work on Schaffer and see if she’ll help convince Eldar. She wasn’t screwed quite as badly back home as he was.”