by By Jon Land
Her first problem upon returning, though, was the two incompetent subordinates of her father who had attempted to seize leadership of the Revolutionary United Front by releasing a killing spree on the entire country. They believed fear and intimidation would succeed where politics and strategy had failed. Latisse Matabu had sneaked into their camp in the guise of a prostitute and slain them both, then took their place at a meeting of the RUF’s ruling council the next morning. If the remaining generals wanted to kill her, so be it. If not, they would accept her as their leader.
First, though, one more task remained for her. General Treest had risen to second-in-command for the government forces and lived with his family in a villa in the hills above Freetown overlooking the ocean. He came home from a cabinet meeting one night shortly after the Dragon’s return to Sierra Leone to find his three personal guards maimed exactly as hers had been a decade before. He found his wife and young son tied up in the living room.
Matabu had unbound the boy first and dragged him across the floor so he faced his father. She held him in front of his father with one hand, while the other whipped from its sheath a Gurkha knife salvaged from one of the British mercenaries brought in to fight the government’s war for them.
She thought she might hesitate at that point; after all, this boy, who was no more than nine, had done nothing to deserve this fate. Neither, though, had her parents or her baby.
She had cut the boy’s throat without hesitation, watching the terror and agony in Treest’s eyes as his son’s blood showered him, imagining the din of his screams had she not taped his mouth closed. Her next stroke with the knife severed the boy’s head which she placed in Treest’s lap angled so the dead glazed eyes were staring up at him. She killed his wife the same way and placed her head alongside their son’s so both could watch him die next.
For a moment Matabu considered sparing Treest’s life so he might instead know the pain she had lived with since he had murdered her infant son. In the end, though, practical considerations won out and she had killed Treest quickly, wishing almost instantly she had made him suffer more. Before she left, Matabu lined the heads of the general and his family on the mantel over the fireplace as a warning to anyone who came seeking revenge.
Since then the government had remained in chaos, so hopelessly divided that defeat of her forces was a practical impossibility without outside assistance—specifically from the Americans responsible for training the Nigerian forces on the verge of entering Sierra Leone. Matabu’s latest plan to seize the government took that into account. And once the RUF had taken Freetown, a new peace agreement would be signed with rebel leaders occupying a majority of cabinet-level positions. By the time new elections were ordered, the people of Sierra Leone would know where the best hope for their futures resided.
Latisse Matabu might live to see that day, but few others, and the prospects terrified her almost as much as defeat. There was no one in the RUF she trusted to be both gracious in victory and compassionate in leadership. The elements of the RUF she needed but despised would run wild in the streets without her to control them. Splintering in the ranks was inevitable. Warring factions would fight over control over various government bodies and functions. Potentially, the situation in Sierra Leone could be more unstable than ever.
She had already slain General Sheku Karim, her greatest rival. Now, as she stood in the pelting rain, it was time to choose her successor.
* * * *
* * * *
Chapter 69
D
anielle waited on the pier well until past midnight, having completed her inspection of the boat Borodin had secured for her use. It rested on the water’s surface a few feet beneath her, visible through the gaps in the pier’s frail, rickety wooden slats. The boat was a sleek, civilian-looking craft, innocuous enough to attract no attention if spotted on the open sea, yet outfitted with equipment sophisticated enough to prevent electronic sightings as well.
It could carry eight comfortably, so Danielle had asked Borodin for seven of his best men. He had several former Spetsnatz commandos in his employ, veterans of Russian special operations who more than fit the bill. They even spoke excellent English, he assured her.
Danielle’s nerves wouldn’t ease up. Life, her father had always said, had a way of catching up with you. For the better, or the worse. Here she was heading back to the very spot in Beirut that had prematurely ended the service she had been so thoroughly trained to perform. How ironic that regulations prohibited any discussion of operations outside of the Sayaret. She had never shared the details of a single assignment with her father. He had asked a few times, testing her, but Danielle had remained mute. The only mission he had precise knowledge of was Beirut, obtained from a contact who wanted to explain her transfer to Shin Bet.
So her father had never shared in her many successes, only her single failure.
She heard a footstep rattle the rickety pier and turned, her own shoe nearly slipping into a crevice between a pair of decaying boards in the process.
Jim Black was sauntering down the pier, his boots drawing soft echoes from the wood.
“Howdy, ma’am,” he greeted and wedged his thumbs into his front pockets.
“You forget to bring something with you, Mr. Black?”
“You must be speaking of Borodin’s boys?” He shook his head. “Nah, I didn’t forget ‘em. Anything but.”
Danielle stiffened.
Black hitched his jacket behind him, exposing his pair of twin Sig Sauer nine-millimeter pistols. “I likely did you a favor. They weren’t nearly as good as you were expecting.”
“Dead?”
“Every last one. And none of them hard. Easy life here had turned ‘em soft.”
Danielle cursed herself for leaving aboard the boat the pistol Borodin had supplied her.
“You haven’t gone soft yet on me, have you, Danny girl?” Jim Black yanked one of his Sig Sauers from its holster. “Catch,” he said, and tossed it toward Danielle.
Danielle caught the pistol in midair, stumbling a bit and getting her grip all wrong for the quick shot she needed. Instead she held the Sig angled downward, looking as if she could not possibly hit Black before he drew and fired.
Across from her Jim Black’s remaining pistol was still in its holster. “Fair enough for you?”
Danielle kept her gun where it was. “You do this often?”
“Not often enough, if you ask me. Wish I could more. I mean, where’s the fucking challenge? Sometimes you’ve got to know whether you’re the best or not.”
“Who else are you working for, Mr. Black?”
“Smart woman like yourself, I’d’ve thought it’d be obvious.”
“The diamond cartel,” Danielle realized.
Black flashed his annoyingly cocky smile. “Met up with them after I did some work in Antwerp recently. Agreed to keep them informed and take action if it became necessary. As soon as I heard you were involved, I kinda figured it would. See, these diamond folks can’t risk the world knowing what you know. It’s all about money, Danny girl. And as long as that’s the case there’ll be plenty of work to keep people like me going.”
“What will you tell Borodin?”
“What do you think?”
“That I killed the team of men he sent.”
Jim Black nodded. “Something like that, yeah.” Then he widened his stance enough to further jostle the weakly connected planks. “I’m gonna let you make the call. You know, ladies first and all that sort of shit.” His hand edged toward the square butt of the Sig still tucked in one of his holsters, stopping just short of it, fingers coiling. “Man, this is fun. . . .”
Their gazes met and held, each able to take in all of the other, afraid to blink.
Danielle could tell Black meant it. He was letting her make the first move. Small consolation. As soon as she started her gun upward he would draw, and she had seen his work before.
So Danielle never raised her gun.
&n
bsp; She pulled the trigger on the angle she’d been holding it, emptying half her clip into the wooden slat at Black’s feet. He had just managed to draw his Sig when the slat gave way, Danielle’s bullets having chewed through its flimsy rope bonds. She could see the muzzle leveling toward her when Black fell through, the pier seeming to swallow a good portion of him.
Danielle rushed toward Black as the cowboy, half on the pier, half below it, groped desperately for his Sig. He heaved himself further over the wood, his upper body straining to reach it. He managed to get one finger on it, followed by a second.
Black was still dragging it toward him when Danielle kicked him under the chin, her shoe compressing the soft flesh just over his Adam’s apple. The blow snapped his head brutally backward. It rocked forward again violently, as Danielle slapped the gun from his grasp. His body slipped slowly through the space between the slats so that only his head and shoulders remained above the pier. Then, before she could launch another blow, Danielle watched Black disappear and heard the plop of his body hitting the water.
* * * *
Chapter 70
T
he Russian soldiers had put Ben in a jail cell that reeked of antiseptic and ammonia. No interrogation, no discussion. The one calling himself Colonel Petroskov had confiscated everything on his person, and that was the last contact he’d had with anyone.
Petroskov refused to listen to his warnings about where a portion of the genetically engineered bugs, stored as frozen eggs, had gone. Or perhaps he just didn’t care that a weapon capable of destroying any country in the world had perhaps fallen into the hands of a terrorist organization that would most certainly use it.
Distraught, he found himself thinking of Danielle, of the trail of blood diamonds leading ultimately to the Black Death and now the vengeful followers of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organization. Even if she would be no match for them, especially if she had failed to realize the scope of what she was up against.
Ben heard footsteps coming down the long hallway and lurched up from his stone cot. Face pressed against the bars of his cell, he could see a pair of soldiers coming. One worked a key into the lock while the other hung back, rifle at the ready.
“You will come with us,” the one with the key said.
“Where?”
“You will come with us,” he repeated.
“What have you done with Stepanski?” Ben asked, fearing for the safety of the man who had helped him. “Why were we separated?”
The soldier jerked him out of the cell and aimed him down the hallway. Ben felt the bore of a rifle poke him in the spine, prodding him forward.
“This way,” the first soldier said when they reached the end of the hall.
The other Russian thrust open the door, an alley built slightly below ground level visible beyond it.
“Come.”
Ben wondered if he was going to be shot. If the soldiers believed he was a spy, or a journalist, it was conceivable under the circumstances.
Outside in the darkness, though, he heard a car engine and then saw a pair of headlights snap on. A car pulled forward, squeezing up next to him.
“You are to get in,” the soldier said.
Ben eased the passenger door open and bent his body to slide inside. Colonel Petroskov sat behind the wheel.
“What’s going on?”
“We’re going for a ride,” Petroskov told him. “I borrowed the mayor’s car, so we wouldn’t attract attention outside the city.”
The Russian backed fast up the alley.
“Why are you doing this?” Ben asked him.
“You are Ben Kamal, son of Jafir Kamal?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Because that is why I am doing this.”
* * * *
Chapter 71
D
anielle settled into the chair before the boat’s controls. She had waited several minutes on the pier, Jim Black’s Sig Sauer ready in her hand, in case the cowboy reappeared.
When he didn’t, Danielle climbed down the ladder from the broken-down pier onto the boat Sasha Borodin had provided. The satellite phone he had given her as well remained in its case; there was no sense calling the Russian now. She doubted he would be willing to help further; and even if he was, Danielle knew he could not possibly get more men to her in time for it to matter. Danielle had estimated she needed a minimum of six to handle the mission in Beirut effectively.
Now she had only herself.
Before sitting down at the controls, Danielle had again catalogued the weapons and equipment Borodin had obtained. He had filled her shopping list perfectly. Everything she had requested was here, as the Spetsnatz commandos would have been had Jim Black not killed them.
Obviously the supply of assault rifles, side arms, extra ammo, and tray of hand grenades were superfluous now, so she turned her attention to the airtight steel, gray-slab shipping container. Inside, the explosives— thirty sixteen-ounce bricks of C-4 plastique—detonators, det cord, and timing mechanisms had been neatly packed.
Focus! She had to focus!
A dozen years ago, General Dov Levy had sent eight commandos on the raid of Sheik Hussein al-Akbar’s fortress in Beirut. He sent eight because he believed that’s how many it would take to do the job effectively. On that night seven Sayaret commandos had died, while she had come home.
Alone.
And now she was going back.
Alone.
Behind the controls of the sleek boat, Danielle tried to tell herself she was doing this because a madman was in possession of whatever had been lifted off the Peter the Great. True enough, but not completely.
The rest of the truth lay in the fact that she was returning to finish the job she couldn’t a dozen years before.
Danielle thought of Ben and felt her resolve weaken, however slightly. In the morass that had followed her return from New York and subsequent dismissal from the National Police, she had barely missed him; hadn’t missed anything, because she’d been able only to concentrate on recovering from her wounds and the child she had lost. She had blamed Ben for the loss, hated him for it, she supposed, to spare her from hating herself. She was afraid to give herself up to him, afraid to surrender to the feelings she fought so hard to deny.
Because everyone I care about dies.
She was afraid to care again, preferring a life of isolation to the pain she could no longer take. Afraid to lose any more since one day she might wake up and find herself with nothing left at all.
But she so missed Ben now, wondering if there was a way things could have been different, wishing she had said all she had hidden deep inside herself where she hoped it might be lost. She gazed back at the satellite phone in its shoebox-sized case. Eased herself from the seat and crouched down to open it.
The portable handset inside was slightly larger than a traditional wireless, and she used it to dial Ben’s cell phone number. Wherever he was, though, there must have been no reception available because the call never went through.
How to get word to him about what she had learned, where she was going, then? An insurance policy in case she failed.
She thought of Colonel al-Asi, then remembered the colonel’s number had been disconnected.
How else could she contact Colonel al-Asi? There had to be a way. . . .
Danielle smiled to herself, thinking of something. It took a while for her to track down the number she was looking for, and the person on the other end seemed baffled by her request, spoken in English, before finally relenting and taking her message.
Danielle returned to the controls as soon as the brief conversation was over. She eased the boat away from the pier and kept the engine idling slowly as she slipped into the open water of the Mediterranean. The shores of Israel shrank behind her and then disappeared into the darkness. The wind pressed against her face and stung her flesh with a cold spray lifted off the surface.
The night embraced, swallowed her. Danielle switched on the
boat’s sophisticated jamming mechanism and its infrared display screen that projected the waters ahead without benefit of light.
Maintaining a speed of thirty knots, she would reach the docks of coastal Beirut just before dawn, en route to the fortress of Sheik Hussein al-Akbar where the past and present would become one.
* * * *
Chapter 72
Y
our father saved my life. Many years ago,” Petroskov continued and produced the photo of Jafir Kamal and the young boy Anatolyevich had given Ben back in Israel. The picture had been confiscated along with all the other papers Sabi had provided. “I recognized Jafir Kamal from the picture. And you ...” A brief bout of tenderness softened Petroskov’s demeanor. “I only saw your father once, but you look just like him.”