A Walk in the Darkness - [Kamal & Barnea 03]

by Jon Land

  Before them a line of bonfires that seemed to rise out of the water curved along the expanse of the Providence river walk. The source of those bonfires, Ben saw now, were nearly a hundred steel baskets, or braziers, of flaming wood moored to the water’s surface and stoked on a regular basis by black-shirted workers in a square pontoonlike boat.

  The twisting line of flames seemed to stretch forever into the night, concentrated mostly in the opposite direction. Ben and Danielle continued to walk among the crowd, keeping the knee-high retaining wall on their right. Kiosks selling food, beverages, and souvenirs had been set up above the river walk on streets and sidewalks, offering excellent cover for any gunmen who were about.

  Ben felt a ripple in the crowd behind them, slight yet distinct. Someone forcing their way through, disturbing the uneasy rhythm the flow had found. He turned in time to see the barrel of a silenced pistol being raised just behind Danielle, its shiny black steel struggling to shimmer in the darkness, close enough to touch. Ben latched on to the gun and jerked it aside, before he could clearly see the person holding it.

  A bullet coughed downward and a teenage boy nearby yelped in agony as he fell to the ground. The hot steel of the barrel burned Ben’s skin but he held on fast as Danielle swung round too and found herself face-to-face with their assailant. She saw the scar first, a long pale strip illuminated by the glow of the flames.

  Impossible!

  It was Shoshanna Tavi.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 75

  D

  anielle had no time to consider how it was possible the woman from Shin Bet had managed to survive the ordeal upon the Ulysses GBS. She lashed out with a fist that struck Shoshanna Tavi in the side of her head. Tavi staggered sideways, stunned by the blow, enabling Ben to tear the pistol from her grasp. His angle was better than Danielle’s and he used it to grab Shoshanna Tavi by the shoulders, then thrust her over the concrete retaining wall into the shallow river below.

  The patrons of a water taxi peered over the side at Tavi’s drenched form as they passed, without missing a sip of their wine.

  Danielle snatched the pistol from Ben’s hand and stuffed it into her jacket. “She won’t be alone. Come on,” she ordered, reversing their original direction and heading toward the downtown center of Providence, where the clutter of pedestrians was much thicker.

  They quickened their pace, aware significant attention had now been drawn to the area and perhaps even to them. They pushed through the crowd as best they could, afraid of being separated, crossing the street against the command of a local policeman who thankfully did not stop them.

  They followed the heaviest congestion of people with the fire to the other side of the street and banked right along the route where the urns of flames wove in curving fashion atop the river. The river walk narrowed slightly, and the clutter of pedestrian traffic tightened further, slowing their pace to a crawl past a series of outdoor dining tables set upon a restaurant patio just above them.

  They continued on beneath the overhang of a bridge, tensing in the darkness that obscured all those around them. They emerged to the sight of a water taxi approaching, this one less full than the other they had seen.

  “Sit down, please. Hey, you’re not allowed to stand up!”

  The urgent words of the wafer taxi’s pilot drew their eyes back toward it in time to see a male passenger yank a machine pistol from beneath his jacket. He opened fire instantly, spraying bullets toward Ben and Danielle, who both dove to the cold surface of the inlaid brick walk, flesh pressed against the brick and mortar as bodies toppled all around them. Screams rang out and people struck by flecks of rock launched by stray bullets wailed wildly that they’d been shot.

  Ben and Danielle stood up again and pushed their way forward through the now-panicked crowd. In the chaos people were shoved off the river walk onto a large, flattened construction site on the right, or toppled into the water on the left.

  Ben and Danielle surged on, pushed by the momentum from the rear, unable to slow up even if they had wanted to. The loud sounds of an approaching motorboat made them think the police had come to quell the uproar, until fresh submachine-gun fire spit from below, fired from the pilot of the motorboat that had drawn even with them while they ran.

  Danielle drew the pistol from her jacket and fired back, her single shots clacking in absurd rhythm with the barrages sent up from the river. The braziers along the river became fading blurs of light as more bystanders dropped in their tracks around her and Ben. Danielle could now smell the odor of gasoline mixing with the woodsmoke, indicating she had hit the boat’s gas tank with one of her bullets.

  She and Ben sprinted slightly ahead of the motorboat, and one of her last shots shattered its windshield and punched the glass backward at the pilot. The man stripped his hand from the wheel to comfort his face, and the motorboat listed out of control, smacking into one of the braziers that ignited the spilled gasoline. A poof! followed and the boat was suddenly in flames.

  Before Danielle could relax, she saw a figure pushing toward them through the crowd. Recognizing him as the same man who had shot at them from the water taxi just moments before, Danielle steadied her pistol and fired.

  The soft click of the trigger told her the gun was empty. The moment froze in time with an awful reality. The man was angling his gun through the crowd and there was too much space to close before he fired. Suddenly, though, a powerful explosion blew light and heat across the river, fanning the urns of flames lining its surface. Danielle remembered the motorboat catching fire and realized it must have finally exploded.

  All at once the gunman ahead was engulfed by a fresh surge of panic spreading through the crowd and lost his grasp on his pistol. Ben watched him stoop to retrieve it and spotted a loose steel chain, part of a barrier between sidewalk and water. He tore it from its iron posts as the man surged forward with pistol in hand again. Ben swung it out and caught the gunman across the face before he could fire, then whipped it back and struck him a second time, snapping his head around in violent fashion. The man had barely begun to crumple when the crowd swallowed him.

  Ben grabbed Danielle’s hand so they wouldn’t be separated as they hurried on, heading toward the end of the alley of lights at a sign reading waterplace park. Sirens were wailing steadily now, fire and additional police personnel trying to pinpoint the source of the chaos and closing fast.

  Ben and Danielle reached Waterplace Park amid a huge mass of people charging up cement steps with benches leading to a grassy knoll. At the top was a restaurant called the Boathouse that led onto a street. There, revolving lights in white, blue, and red were plainly visible. Other WaterFire patrons had actually been forced off a stage platform into the river itself, where they splashed about frantically, while trying to figure out how to pull themselves back up.

  Ben and Danielle had just reached the steps when a number of men in civilian clothes appeared at the top of the grassy hill, pushing against the flow as their eyes swept the surroundings.

  “More Israelis,” Danielle recognized, already starting to retreat. “The goddamn bitch Tavi! We won’t get twenty feet.”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  Soaring above all the other sounds came the staccato beat of a helicopter. It seemed to be descending directly for them until it veered toward the construction site adjacent to the river walk they had passed fifty yards back.

  Danielle watched the chopper drop from view as it banked to land. “That’s the alternative,” she told him.

  Ben followed her as they renewed their efforts to push against the masses that were flooding up the hill to escape. The going was easier once they reached the river walk again and began to retrace their route past the braziers. Abandoned gondolas and water taxis drifted in the water beneath them as panicked patrons waded or swam through the dark murkiness broken by the glow of the flames. Ben and Danielle clung to the water side, close to the edge, and kept their pace steady.

  They drew
even with the construction site in time to see the helicopter land and a trio of what must have been local dignitaries pile out. Ben and Danielle skirted the freshly poured foundations and rushed into the spray of dirt and pebbles coughed up by the chopper’s rotor wash. They actually passed the two men and a woman who had just arrived, reaching the helicopter before the pilot was ready to take off again.

  Ben sped beneath the rotor blade and yanked open the chopper’s side door. The pilot swung to find Danielle aiming her empty pistol dead on him.

  “You’re going to take us for a ride,” she instructed flatly and gestured for Ben to climb in first.

  The pilot tried to push him out. “What are-—”

  Danielle reached across Ben and stuck the pistol under the pilot’s chin. “Get us out of here or I’ll fly this thing myself! Now!”

  The pilot returned his attention to the controls. Danielle settled into her seat and reached outside to close the door. As the chopper lifted off the ground, though, a hand from the darkness below latched on to Danielle’s belt and yanked mightily. Before she could respond, both her feet and most of her torso were hanging out the door, bringing her almost even with the figure of Shoshanna Tavi.

  “Keep going!” Ben ordered the pilot as he grabbed hold of Danielle’s left arm. The Israelis would be closing on the construction site by now, having seen what happened. Land and they were dead.

  “Are you nuts?”

  “Do it, if you want to live!”

  The pilot continued working the throttle, the chopper fighting him for every inch of air, starting to spin while Danielle’s feet dangled off the ground. Tavi had wrapped one arm around the helicopter’s right landing pod for support. Ben could see her clothes were soaked with water, her hair a tangled mess of knots and ringlets. Even hanging outside, she smelled pungently of wood-smoke.

  The chopper continued to climb sluggishly, while outside Shoshanna Tavi fought to yank Danielle all the way out and dump her to the ground. Danielle kicked and flailed to free herself, but the blows did nothing to deter Tavi’s efforts.

  “I’ve got you!” Ben screamed, holding on to Danielle with all his strength. He managed to get his other arm wrapped around the seat’s safety harness and felt his muscles stretched to their absolute limit.

  Despite Ben’s grasp on her arm, Danielle felt herself slipping even farther and launched a series of strikes to Shoshanna Tavi’s scarred face. Tavi swallowed each thumping blow with a grimace, continuing to tug on Danielle with one arm, keeping her remaining hand wrapped like a snake around the landing pod.

  Ben had to lean through the door to keep his hold on Danielle now. But the angle and the wind shear gradually tore her from his grasp. She managed to grab the same pod Tavi had hold of and curled her arm around it similar fashion as Ben finally let go and hoisted himself back up into the chopper. Tavi flailed at Danielle and locked a hand around her belt. In response, Danielle drove her elbow down into the hand, hammering it as hard as she could.

  The back of Tavi’s wrist buckled. She cried out from pain and relinquished her grip. Danielle was at last free and used the opportunity to kick out with a foot, bringing it up and around in order to catch Tavi in the head. Her aim was slightly off, but the blow still cracked into Tavi’s temple, stunning her.

  That gave Danielle the instant she needed to grab the other woman’s hair. She jerked Tavi’s head violently backward, feeling something crunch and crackle inside. Tavi’s grasp came free of the chopper, and she groped desperately for any part of the pod to grab hold of.

  As Tavi looked up, Danielle stared straight into her hate-filled eyes and lashed out again with her feet. Shoshanna Tavi’s arms flew backward, flapping as if she were trying to fly, in the last instant before she disappeared into the darkness below.

  * * * *

  T

  hey’ll be watching every airport, you know,” Danielle said after Ben had lifted her back into the chopper. “We’ll never get out of the country.”

  But he had already turned toward the pilot. “Take us to the nearest airport,” he ordered over the engine sounds.

  “Didn’t you hear what I just said?” Danielle demanded.

  “I’ve got an idea.”

  “They’ll have us on a watch list. We’ll be flagged as soon as we try to fly out of the U.S.”

  “We’re not leaving the country, not yet anyway.”

  “So where are we going?”

  “Home,” Ben said softly. “Home.”

  * * * *

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 76

  D

  anielle drifted off to sleep almost as soon as Ben headed their rental car onto Route 94 toward Dearborn from Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

  “We’re going to my home,” Ben had elaborated the night before. “The place where I grew up.”

  “What good will that do us?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Ben hadn’t been back, and had corresponded very little with his family, in the five years since his return to Palestine. Now he was coming home in the midst of the tragic death of his nephew, a death that so far as he knew still remained unconfirmed by authorities in Israel.

  Ben had only vague memories of his family’s original move from Palestine to the Dearborn area. He remembered they had stayed with friends for a time, before settling in the South End, near the Ford Rouge Assembly Plant, where his father worked for over a year before politics called him back to his homeland. Ben attended the Salina School and remembered walking with friends to the Arab bakeries on Warren Avenue for kanahef pastry. The Rouge River was very close to his house but no one was allowed to swim in it because even back then the river was polluted.

  Later he played football at Fordson High School, where he graduated with honors. But his father never saw him play or graduate, because he was assassinated shortly after his return to the West Bank. Ten years after his father’s death, Ben enrolled in the University of Michigan, just as his older brother had done before him.

  Ben was still in high school, though, when his family moved to a two-family house on the north side of Dearborn south of Warren Avenue near Patton Park. His mother lived on the first floor to this day, but his brother and uncle had relocated to their own homes a few blocks away; his brother to an old Victorian with a detached garage on Coleman Street, which was where Ben was headed now.

  But ten minutes out of the airport he passed the turnoff for the home where he had lived with his wife and children in the Copper Canyon section of Detroit. On impulse, he began to slow at the next exit that would allow him to double back on the Southfield Freeway west of Rouge Park. The name “Copper Canyon” appeared on no map and was coined thanks to the large numbers of police officers who resided in the area. Residency requirements mandated that all Detroit police officers live within the city limits, so the kind of enclave Copper Canyon became should have been expected.

  But that hadn’t stopped a serial killer known as the Sandman, for his penchant for striking at night while his victims slept peacefully, from paying his fateful visit six years ago.

  Ben was on autopilot from there, kept telling himself one more mile, one more block, but it was already too late. He knew he was headed to a place he recalled in emotionally polarizing extremes. The good and the bad, the tragic and the wonderful, the beginning and the end. Ben’s heart was hammering against his chest by the time he turned onto Warren Avenue, and continued to the house on Chatham Street where his family was murdered.

  Barely breathing, Ben parked across the street and stared at the house. Danielle had still not awoken but here, right here anyway, she seemed not to exist for him. He was back in the past on the night the Sandman had come and worked the front door open with his locksmith’s tools.

  Ben climbed stiffly out of the rental car. His hands and feet feeling almost tingly, he walked straight up to the door and rang the bell. Part of him hoped no one answered. Another part knew he’d find a way into the house if that was the case.

&n
bsp; A woman opened the door, eyeing him suspiciously. “Yes? Can I help you?”

  In that moment Ben realized the house didn’t even look like his anymore. The paint color was different, the trim had been changed, and looking over the woman’s shoulder, he could see the entire downstairs had been remodeled. A wall taken out, a divider installed. Stools instead of chairs were set around a central island in a kitchen that now extended into a large family room. The only thing that seemed the same was the front door that had still been open when Ben arrived home that night.

  “I was wondering,” Ben stammered finally. “You see, I used to live here, and I was wondering if I could just have a look inside.”

  The woman continued to regard him with suspicion.

  “I was, er, I am a police officer. Ben Kamal.”

  She seemed to relax a little. “We bought the house from you.”