The assignment complete, her priority shifted to getting clear of the compound and out of the country as soon as possible. By the time the bodies were discovered, she would be long gone, and the attack would be attributed to warring criminal factions fighting for territory.
She didn’t know exactly who the target was, or what he had done to deserve his fate. She almost never did. That wasn’t her job. All she knew was that he was to be dispatched with extreme prejudice, and it had been deemed important enough to mount an expensive, complicated mission in an area of the world far from home. And now, whatever threat he posed was finished. End of story.
She wiped the bloody gore off her black-gloved hand, leaving a streak on the thick white carpet, then scooped up the SIG from where the target had dropped it and stepped cautiously through the doorway.
The other guards were out cold. The gas would keep them that way for at least six hours, so they posed no danger to her. Not that she would have hesitated to terminate them all, but there was no reason to, and she wasn’t one to kill gratuitously. She valued efficiency, and the executions tonight had been necessary in order to reach the objective. Nothing more.
Back at the car, she stripped off her clothes and dropped them into a trash bag, along with the backpack and the weapons, and donned a muted sweater and jeans before tossing the sack into the back and closing the hatchback. She slid behind the wheel and started the motor, then paused to study her face in the rearview mirror. In the pale wash of moonlight, she could make out a few flecks of dried blood on the bridge of her nose, which she wiped off with a tissue wetted with saliva. The eyes that looked back at her were calm and flat, divulging nothing, giving no hint of what she had just done. As she put the car in gear, she thought about what Ariel had said to her in the early days. He’d complimented her, praising her as the perfect operative after a particularly difficult mission she’d carried out flawlessly.
Perfect. She was, she supposed. But what he didn’t realize was that the engine that drove her was fueled by a volatile combination of anger, hate and despair. Every time she carried out a mission, she felt pride at being the best. The rest of it – the killing, the personal danger, the flirting with death while dancing on a razor’s edge – was immaterial. And part of her hated it, she realized – a sudden revelation that explained why she felt so empty inside even after a successful operation. Somewhere deep down in her core she hated herself and those who had made her this way, who had created a cold, calculating killing machine for their own selfish purposes.
A solitary tear rolled down her cheek as she pulled down the little road to the larger highway that would lead her to the contact point. She would abandon the car to be sanitized by another operative and take a flight from Grozny to Moscow, where she would disappear, only surfacing when she was needed again. In that forlorn tear was concentrated all the anguish and loathing that a lifetime of hardship had forged, a monument to a life without a future or a past.
Only today.
And today, she’d done her job. As usual. As expected.
As always.
Chapter 6
Three Years Ago, Algiers, Algeria, North Africa
The security detail manning the perimeter of the walled beachfront compound on the bluff three stories above the sand wore heavy windbreakers to fend off the evening chill. Even though Algiers was situated on the Mediterranean, the moods of March could plunge it into the high forty-degree range after dark, and tonight was one of the more frigid, even though the sun had only set an hour before.
In addition to the compound’s guards, each of the guests had brought personal bodyguards, resulting in an uneasy equilibrium within the villa, as menacing dark-suited figures with barely concealed weapons passed one another in the halls and jockeyed for position in the larger common rooms.
Luxury automobiles had been arriving since five o’clock, when the first of the targets came straight from his private jet. Every light in the massive villa glowed bright, its expansive grounds and huge swimming pool illuminated by discreetly mounted spotlights designed to eliminate potential hiding places. The neighborhood was one of moneyed power and exclusivity, and police cruisers were stationed at either end of the beach to ensure that nobody disturbed the residents.
The tiny ear bud clicked in Jet’s ear.
“Delta. Are you in position?”
“Roger that,” she whispered.
“Anything new from your end?”
“Negative. The last of them showed up half an hour ago. It looks like everyone’s gathered for a late dinner in the formal dining room.”
“Nice. What’s your take on hostiles?”
“They’ve got a small army and look alert.”
“How many do you see?”
“Exterior, two dozen. Inside, it’s hard to make out, but based on the head count we did as they arrived, I’d have to say at least twenty, total. So almost fifty armed and dangerous.”
The voice paused…then said, “Let me touch base with control. I’ll get back to you.”
“Roger. Out,” she murmured.
She continued watching the villa through her sniper rifle’s high-powered scope. Even though she was two hundred and fifty yards away, hidden on the roof of a construction site, she could still see the activity in the principal rooms. Whoever was running the security must have believed that throwing bodies at the problem would be sufficient, and hadn’t thought to shutter the windows. The ten-foot-high walls surrounding the main house probably had a lot to do with the sense of invulnerability. Besides which, nobody knew about this meeting or would have recognized the men in the room, all of whom had been in Algeria for less than eight hours.
Nobody, that is, except her team.
It had been well over a year since she’d taken part in an operation with the full group, which was minus Rain, the code name of the operative who’d gone into deep cover in Yemen six months prior.
Jet, Tiger, Fire and Lightning had been called into this when Ariel had been alerted that five terrorist financiers were going to be meeting for an unprecedented conference on neutral ground. Such a gathering presented an irresistible opportunity – the chance to cut off funding to any number of terrorist organizations, many of which viewed Israel as Satan’s embodiment on earth.
The planning was as good as it could be with six days advance notice. Resources had been allocated, personnel had been scrambled, and the team had been assembled and deployed.
One of the negatives from Jet’s perspective had been the source of the intel. The CIA had alerted them and had insisted on an observer who could represent its interests. The condition hadn’t been negotiable. The combination of a short timeframe and the presence of an outsider hadn’t sat well with Jet or any of the rest of the team, but in the end it wasn’t their call.
And now she was on a roof in North Africa, staring through a Hensoldt ZF 4 scope at a heavily fortified group that looked like it was ready for trouble. This wasn’t her ideal scenario. She preferred surgical strikes to brute force, but sometimes circumstances didn’t permit it.
The ear bud chirped, and then Fire’s voice returned.
“We’re to hit them as soon as possible. Everyone’s now in position. Engagement to occur in two minutes. Repeat. Engagement in two minutes. Are there any questions?”
The comm line went silent for several seconds.
“Negative,” Jet said, and then a chorus of other voices, all male, repeated her statement.
She depressed the timer button on her watch and waited. This would be a relatively clean operation if things went well. If they executed properly there was no chance that any of the bad guys would make it out alive. Still, the team liked backup. On a mission this big, they couldn’t afford anything going wrong.
At exactly the two-minute mark, a streak of flame shot from a building eighty yards away from Jet, where Fire and Lightning were concealed with a Kornet 9M133F-1 guided rocket armed with a thermobaric warhea
d.
The dining room of the villa exploded outward in a shower of glass, steel and white-hot flame – a direct hit had gutted the room. Jet peered through the scope as the guards stood stunned, first gaping at the destruction, and then alternating between darting to the burning villa and sprinting for their vehicles. She watched as three of the men huddled and one pointed at Fire and Lightning’s hiding place with a radio raised to his lips. Four men toting assault rifles ran for a van.
She tapped her ear bud. “Alpha, you have heat headed your way. Repeat. You were spotted.”
“Roger. Lay down cover for as long as you can, then get the hell out of there.”
“Will do. Delta out.”
Jet squinted through her scope and fired at one of the three gunmen, obviously the supervisor of the guard detail, and took him out. The rifle’s stock slammed her shoulder, but she ignored the recoil and targeted another man. Two more vehicles tore out of the compound toward them, motors revving over the screams and shouted commands from the villa walls. She fired again, and another man went down. Someone had seen her muzzle flash – within a few moments, bullets began peppering the side of the construction site. The likelihood of being hit was slim, but a stray round was still lethal.
It was time to pack up.
“Alpha, hostiles are on their way in.”
“How many?”
“Three vehicles.”
“Can you disable any?”
“I’m trying, but you can expect company shortly. I’m taking fire.”
She sighted on the first van, aiming for the driver. Just as she squeezed the trigger, the van jolted against a pothole, and the shot went wide. A hole appeared in the windshield six inches to the left of the driver’s head, and he began taking evasive action. She fired again, but he was swerving and jerking the van around too much.
Ricochets from the lip of the building intensified as more gunfire was directed at her.
Sirens sounded in the distance. Her ear bud crackled again.
“Delta, hostile helicopter inbound. The army must have had a bird in the air. Pull out. Repeat. Pull out now.”
“Roger that, Alpha. Good shooting, by the way. Expect to engage within sixty seconds. I spotted grenade launchers on their guns. Be careful,” Jet said.
“You too, Delta. Clear out. This is over.”
“I’m on the move. Out.”
Jet scooped up the rifle and ran to the stairwell, taking the raw concrete steps two at a time. It was dark, but her eyes had adjusted to the gloom so she was easily able to avoid the collected construction debris and trash. She hit the second floor running and risked a glance back at the complex. Lights from the approaching vehicles bounced toward her. Maybe thirty seconds now.
At the ground floor, she sprinted to her car, the headlights of the trucks bouncing their beams on the street. She swung the driver’s door open, tossed the rifle onto the passenger seat, and then cranked the engine.
The pursuit vehicles separated, two headed to Fire and Lightning’s building, and one came directly at her.
Fifteen seconds later, the van pulled to a stop fifty yards from Jet’s car, and four men with Kalashnikov assault rifles emptied out.
Jet’s Ford Festiva exploded in a fireball. Part of a door sailed through the air in a lazy arc and slammed down six yards from the nearest gunman. An oily black cloud of smoke belched from the carcass of the burning car, the flames licking hungrily at the frame as they fought for supremacy.
The CIA observer would later confirm one friendly casualty, and even though the Mossad remained silent, everyone involved knew that the team with no name had lost a key member. Fire and Lightning had also seen the blast, and the consensus was that there was no possibility anyone could have survived.
One week later, Jet’s code name was retired, never to be used again.
There was no memorial service.
Chapter 7
Present Day, Paria Peninsula, Venezuela
Jet walked along the beach, enjoying the warmth of the morning sun on her skin as she approached the little fishing hamlet of Macuro, which had just begun its waking routine. She knew she looked like she’d been dragged behind a bus, and attempted to improve her appearance by tying her untamed mane into a ponytail. Hopefully, she would appear to be a slightly crazy backpacker – a visitor South America was more than familiar with, even in the most remote reaches. She’d check into a motel and clean up as soon as she was near civilization, but this clearly wasn’t the time or place.
A rooster crowed its eminence to the hens in its harem as Jet moved slowly past the scattering poultry and across the sand to where a shabby fleet of fishing skiffs was beached. She caught the eye of an old man with skin the color of tobacco, who was chatting with another fisherman, cackling at some observation his friend had made as they prepared to launch their boats. He stopped what he was doing as she hesitated a few yards away, eyeing his skiff. She nodded to him – he doffed his straw hat in a flourish of respect, which elicited a sincere smile from Jet, who then inquired about his interest in taking her to the nearest larger town – in this case, the port of Guiria, roughly twenty-five miles west.
They negotiated back and forth, he discussing the weather and the sturdiness of his craft and the exceptional quality of the fishing that time of year, she bemoaning the life of a gypsy whose only possessions were the ragged clothes on her back. After a few minutes of expected haggling, they arrived at an agreement. Capitan Juan, as he liked to be called, would take her to Guiria for ten dollars – not a bad deal for the native of a country whose gasoline cost under twenty cents a gallon; his total expenditure might come to a dollar, round trip. She pointed out that he could still get in a half-day’s fishing if he made good time, but he waved her off good-naturedly. A decent day’s catch might bring him five dollars if he was lucky. He grinned at her as they shook hands, and she noted that he was missing all his front teeth.
He pushed the boat into the surf with the help of his friend, and Jet deftly climbed into the bow. After a few energetic pulls on the starter cord the outboard sputtered to life with a puff of smoke, and then the uneven roar settled into a steady drone. When Jet asked Capitan Juan how long the trip would take, he told her an hour, maybe less, maybe more, depending on the seas.
A trio of pelicans followed them for the first mile as they cruised along the barren shore, before losing interest and gliding away. Jet occupied herself by watching the rugged coastline glide past her. Most of the peninsula was sheer jungle dropping into the sea, no beaches – the water got deep very quickly only a few feet from land. Waves crashed against the jutting rocks as they moved by, steadily picking up speed, eventually settling into a comfortable pace at what she guessed to be twenty knots.
With nothing else to do, her mind roamed into her predicament – hunted by unknown adversaries out to do her harm, and now with no home, no friends, and no idea of how to next proceed other than to avoid getting killed. She’d thought this sort of life was behind her, but it was clearly not.
As the boat’s bow sliced through the azure sea’s undulations, she recalled the last time she’d died, when she’d staged the explosion in Algiers with the help of Ariel, her mentor…and lover. He’d initially balked at her demand to get out of the game, she remembered. She closed her eyes and, for a fleeting moment, could feel his strong, confident touch on her naked skin, as if they were still lying together after a languorous lovemaking session at a secluded seaside bungalow outside of Ashdod, on the Mediterranean.
“You can’t quit. Nobody quits the team. That’s not an option,” he had softly explained.
“I know how it works. But I’m not asking. I understand you’re in this until you…you can’t do it anymore. I remember what I signed up for. But I need to get out.”
“It’s not so simple.” He trailed his fingers along the contour of her stomach, lazily tracing a circle around her navel.
“Yes, it is.”
“It’s forbidden. You know that.”
“So is this.” She rolled onto her side and propped her head up with the palm of her hand, leaning on her elbow as she regarded his profile. He wasn’t handsome in any traditional sense – his features were too imperfect, a touch too rugged and worked. Black wavy hair worn longish, a nose that was a trifle too large, but a sensuality to his lips that she knew was genuine and eyes that she could get lost in for weeks. Jet had never felt like she had been in love before, and what they had together probably wasn’t that, but it was the closest equivalent she’d ever experienced, and when they were together she couldn’t get enough of him.
“Fair point,” he acknowledged. The rules were abundantly clear. Their trysts – no, their relationship – violated every rule in the book. Operatives were chosen because they had no intimate associations. They were odd beasts who were most at home when on assignment. That made any personal connection impossible. They couldn’t speak about their work, or even tell anyone what they were involved in, and had to disappear for weeks or sometimes years, depending on the mission. There was no room in such a life for any kind of relationships. The team members had sworn allegiance to a higher cause – one of the many sacrifices they made without question.
“That didn’t stop you. Didn’t stop us,” she corrected.
Any friendship between operatives was off limits, much less an intimate one. But even worse, he was her control – her superior, her mentor, and the one who had to make dispassionate decisions to send her into harm’s way; into situations that could result in death…or worse. If anyone had any idea that they were involved, it would have been the end of him. Of them both. But that hadn’t stopped them. The chemistry was too intoxicating. She’d been as powerless to resist it as he had – even though he was a decade older than her, they were insatiable when together, he like a wild bull to her wanton tigress.
“No. It certainly didn’t stop us,” he conceded, turning his head to take in her incredible features – a slightly Asian cast from her mother, but with piercing green eyes, eyes like nothing he’d ever seen before, which she routinely masked with colored contact lenses when she was undercover. He’d been willing to risk everything to be with her, and she him.
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