“So he knew the right ass to kiss,” McCarter said.
“Yeah, but don’t dismiss him as a mindless climber. The old man apparently was a good soldier and a good organizer. Though it’s been hard to prove, the general belief is that he provided weapons training and advice to the people who stormed the Embassy. Later on, he was among those involved in supporting Hezbollah in its early years. He provided training and occasionally recruited for the organization.”
“So junior comes by his shitty beliefs honestly,” the Phoenix Force commander said.
“In a nutshell, yeah.”
“This is an interesting history lesson,” Manning said, “but it doesn’t tell us much about our target.”
“I’m getting there, cranky,” Kurtzman said. “Telling you about the old man also tells you something about our friend Hossan.”
“Because?”
“Because the old man is everything the kid isn’t and vice versa. The old man was a pragmatist. If another secular strongman government had moved back into Iran, he’d have been right there, carrying suitcases and kissing ass. Hossan is the opposite. He really supports the Iranian theocracy and he thinks it’s a good model for other Muslim countries, including Iraq. He hates Israel—doesn’t consider it a legitimate state. He’s a fervent supporter of Hezbollah, even if they are a bunch of thugs. It’s what he knows.”
“At least they’re his thugs, right?” McCarter said.
“Right. And he’s up to his neck with the group. He ships and sells a lot of the counterfeit crap that Hezbollah cranks out. He also fronts some of their real estate investments in Kenya—a couple of shopping centers and a couple of apartment buildings. He also smuggles ivory out of the country. He’s their guy in that country and, according to the intelligence reports, he’s pretty damn proud of it.”
“Good on him,” McCarter said. “Love it when a local lad makes something of himself.”
“Does that mean he wants to be secretary general someday?” Manning interjected “Or is he happy hawking elephant tusks?”
“Not sure he’s quite that ambitious,” Kurtzman said. “If he is, he probably keeps it to himself. It’s never a good idea to lobby for your boss’s job. Of course, I’ve seen Hal’s job. I’d sooner stick my arm into a meat grinder than volunteer for his gig.”
“But when your bosses also are people willing to blow up buses, it’s especially unwise to piss them off,” McCarter said.
“Hey, speaking of Hal, the big guy is gesturing at me.”
“The middle finger?” Manning asked.
“Ha,” Kurtzman replied. “No, for some reason, the masochistic bastard wants to speak with you two. Hang on.”
While they waited, McCarter leaned forward, clamped his hand over the top of a can of Coke standing on the table and pulled it toward him. Popping the top, he swigged from the can and set it back down.
“Gentlemen,” Brognola said. “Nice work on tracking down the assassins.”
“Not too hard,” Manning said, “when someone else kills the perpetrator for you.”
“No complaints here. Dead is dead. The Man’s happy with how that turned out. You guys pulled it off without any civilian casualties. That’s good news. Unfortunately it’s the only thing he is happy about right now.”
“Uh-oh,” McCarter intoned.
“I told him that Iran and Hezbollah had a hand in this killing. You can imagine how happy that made him. He was even more thrilled when I couldn’t tell him why they’d undertaken such a blatant provocation.”
“Bad day at the office.”
“Isn’t it always? I’ve downed half a bottle of antacids. My stomach still feels like a witch’s cauldron. Anyway, we need to know what they’re up to. Able Team has also found Hezbollah thugs sniffing around this whole mess, too.”
“They took care of them, right?” Manning asked.
“Negative. A load of them escaped by helicopter. We found the chopper a few hours later, abandoned in an airfield in Argentina. They torched the interior. Our best guess is they piled into another aircraft and headed out of the country. But it’s only a guess right now. So we have a trained group of terrorists heading for God knows where. Able Team is looking over Escobar’s facility, trying to piece together what the group was training for. But right now, we don’t have much to go on. At the same time, the Man has to weigh whether to go to war over this. I think he’d pull the trigger on it if he had to. But I don’t think an all-out war is an outcome he wants. So I’m having a bad day. He’s having an absolute shitstorm of a day. And we all know what direction it rolls, right?”
“Understood,” McCarter said.
“Based on everything we’re seeing, we’re thinking the attack in the Congo was the beginning of something, not the end. And, if something that brazen was the opening salvo, what comes later probably will be big and awful.”
“Are we sure it’s the Iranians?” Manning asked.
“We’ve got Hezbollah there,” Brognola said. “And we’ve got some high-ranking Iranian officials linked to it. Am I missing something?”
“Look,” Manning said, “it’s very possible the Iranian government is stirring the pot. And Hezbollah’s not exactly subtle in its attacks. So I wouldn’t put it past them. All I’m saying is, maybe the people pulling the strings don’t have the support of the Iranian leadership.”
Brognola paused. “So you’re saying it’s a rogue operation?”
Manning shrugged, though Brognola couldn’t see him. “Possible rogue operation. That’s what I’m saying.”
“And you base that on?”
“Just a hunch,” Manning said. “A hypothesis.”
“I won’t dismiss it,” Brognola said. “But I’m also not sold on it.”
“Understood,” Manning said. “Regardless, it doesn’t change our next move. Right, David?”
“Right,” McCarter confirmed.
“Good,” Brognola said. “Bear is going to send you more information on the target. I’ll make sure there’s a plane waiting to transport the team. Give us a couple of hours to pull it together.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Argentina
Daniel Ben-Shahar strode toward his apartment building. In his left arm he carried a brown paper sack filled with a bottle of Pinot Noir, a loaf of bread and two kosher chicken breasts wrapped in white butcher paper. In his right hand he gripped the handle of a beat-up brown valise stuffed with the day’s receipts from his bookstore.
When he got home, he’d break open the bottle of wine, cook up the chicken and pore over his bookkeeping work. He always left the number crunching for the evenings. It was his least favorite part of running a business and the easiest thing to put off. Maybe once he sucked down a couple of glasses of wine, he’d enjoy the work a little more.
Maybe he’d sprout wings and fly, too, he thought.
He’d spent too damn many years in the thick of the action to ever, ever enjoy the mundane tasks of running a business. That much he knew of himself. You didn’t spend twenty years running operations for Mossad and playing dirty tricks on radical Islamists if you weren’t a damn adrenaline junkie. You just didn’t.
It wasn’t a life for a sane man, feeling your breath stop every time you started the car, hoping this wasn’t the day someone had hooked a bomb into your ignition. Trailing a trained assassin into a dark alley so you could slit his throat, then stopping by the toy store to buy your son a fire truck for his fifth birthday twenty minutes later. No normal man would do that kind of work. He’d become an accountant or an attorney.
Ben-Shahar had never been drawn to those professions, though. Instead, as a young man, he’d signed up for his compulsory military service, but stayed on for a decade after that. A natural athlete and a man who liked to push himself, Ben-Shahar had become a commando with
the Israeli army. It had suited him to a point, though he’d always chafed at being told what to do. He’d often been dressed down by his superiors for questioning orders or—almost as bad—for suggesting ways to improve on orders. And, while he didn’t enjoy the punishments, he did take a certain satisfaction from bucking authority.
It had eventually cost him his military career. In the 1990s, he’d been part of a small unit sent into Lebanon to find Israeli soldiers who’d disappeared. It was there that he’d first encountered Hezbollah, after they’d kidnapped a pair of Israeli army privates who’d been stupid enough to venture out of the barracks after dark to look for hookers. A group of Lebanese men had grabbed the soldiers and moved them to an empty warehouse in Beirut. Given enough time, the Hezbollah crew probably would have killed the men or maybe demanded that Israel trade some of its prisoners for the two soldiers. Ben-Shahar had seen enough of these incidents play out over the years to know the two soldiers were as good as dead.
When they’d received a tip about the soldiers’ whereabouts, Ben-Shahar had, against his commander’s orders, followed a tip that had led them to the two privates. During a short firefight, a bullet had ripped through his arm, but he and his team had succeeded in freeing the hostages.
Right after that, he’d been shown the door for his insubordination.
He’d assumed he’d lost everything at that point. Instead, two days later, a Mossad recruiter had showed up at his door and asked him if he still wanted to fight for his country. The young Israeli had known he wanted to fight. Fighting for something was just a fringe benefit.
Once he’d finished his training, he almost immediately was sent into Lebanon, where he could track Hezbollah and its Iranian masters.
Over the years he’d hopped around the globe doing similar work in the Middle East, Europe, Africa and South America. Then two years ago, the powers that be had yanked him off the prime operations. Instead they’d stuck him in Argentina, where there was a significant population of Israelis, set him up with the bookstore, and put him on inactive status. They hadn’t said it was an age issue, but he knew better. He’d started to move into his late forties. He still was in good shape, better than most men ten years his junior. But he wasn’t in good enough shape for the commando operations he craved. At least that was the viewpoint of some of the men and women in charge of Mossad.
He considered fighting it, but decided against it. Terrorists shooting at him, he could handle. Bureaucrats armed with pens and stacks of paper? Not so much. So he’d traveled to Argentina where he could serve long enough to score a pension. Then he’d start working in the private sector as a security consultant or something.
He first sensed danger when the small hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He took a few more steps before he stopped in front of a pet store window and looked inside at two white kittens and a calico kitten wrestling on shredded newspaper. Staring into the window for several seconds, he noticed a young man in jeans, a white T-shirt and a red windbreaker walking toward him. The young man quickly averted his gaze the moment Ben-Shahar looked in his direction, which only stoked the Israeli’s suspicions. Most people would smile, nod or return the stare with one of their own before they looked away.
Ben-Shahar turned and walked away from the display window. The thoughts began to tumble through his mind. He had plenty of enemies sprinkled throughout the world, including here in Argentina. Though he’d adopted a new name, dyed his hair black and wore colored contact lenses, it still was possible he’d been identified by Hezbollah members, Iranian diplomats or someone else who wanted him dead.
If they’d identified him, that was a problem, too. His cover wasn’t flawless, but it was good. If he’d been outed, he’d have to at least consider the possibility that someone in Tel Aviv or at the Israeli embassy had sold him out. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Mossad—or any spy agency, for that matter—had blown the cover of one of its own agents.
He could try to figure it out. Or he could get his new friend to explain it all to him.
The latter option made the most sense.
He kept walking and two blocks later, an alley opened up to his right. He quickly turned into the alley and walked several paces inside. By the time he turned around, the young man in the red windbreaker was standing in the alley entrance. In his right hand he gripped a knife that he waved menacingly at Ben-Shahar.
“Your money, old man!” the guy said. “Give it now!”
Ben-Shahar sized the man up. His accent marked him as a local. His feet were spread the same width as his shoulders. He looked balanced and Ben-Shahar saw no signs of nervousness in his body. Nor did he detect any emotional strain in his voice. He obviously wasn’t a neophyte mugger, but it was unclear whether the guy was a skilled assassin or a spy.
“Sorry,” Ben-Shahar said. “My hands are full. I can’t reach my wallet.”
“I don’t want your wallet,” the mugger said, his voice level. “You own the bookstore. You carry that bag home with you every night. You drop off an envelope in the night deposit drawer at the bank before you go home to your apartment.”
“How do you know all this?” Ben-Shahar asked. He purposely tried to inject some fear into his voice to give the other man a false sense of confidence.
“You ask too damn many questions. Just give me the valise. Maybe I’ll let you go home.”
“Of course.”
Ben-Shahar took a couple of steps forward and threw the valise on the ground between them.
The guy looked at it, then at him. He threw a glance over his shoulder to make sure no one was behind him.
“Pick it up and hand it to me.”
Nodding, Ben-Shahar set his bag of groceries on the ground. He took a couple of steps forward, scooped up his valise by the handle, and moved toward the man. The mugger threw out his hand and gestured for the former Mossad officer to stop. Ben-Shahar ignored him, stepped forward once more and swung the valise. One corner of the case’s bottom hit the other man in the temple, knocking his head to the side and throwing him off balance. Ben-Shahar swung the case again in an arc and brought it down hard on the man’s spine. He belched out air and dropped to the ground on all fours, only to receive a punishing kick to his body, snapping several ribs in the process. He collapsed to the ground, rolled onto his back and gasped for air.
Ben-Shahar walked over to the man and set the sole of his shoe on his throat. The mugger bucked his torso wildly and grabbed at his ankle. He tried in vain to push his leg away. Ben-Shahar had too much leverage for that to work. He continued to push his foot down until he felt the man’s neck give way under the pressure, saw the man’s eyes change from wide with terror to dull, unseeing.
Ben-Shahar retracted his foot, stepped back and studied the newly dead man for several moments. He walked away, retrieved his bag of groceries and his valise, and headed out of the alley. He was just a few blocks from the apartment, where a night of wine and accounting awaited him.
* * *
BEN-SHAHAR SHUT THE front door of his apartment behind him, carried his things to the dining table and set them on top of it. Moving to the kitchen sink, he started water from the tap and let it run for several seconds. While he waited for the water to warm, he studied the dried blood staining his knuckles. Not bad for an old man, he told himself. I haven’t lost a thing.
As he washed his hands, he thought about the fight. He’d walked away uninjured, barely even winded. He’d had half-inch-thick blocks of steel sewn into the bottom of the valise. The modification had made the case heavy as hell, but it also gave it lethal striking power, like a blackjack.
Ben-Shahar had held back when he’d hit the guy in the head. Judging by the thug’s cool demeanor, he guessed the guy was a career predator. No doubt, Buenos Aires would be better off without the bastard stalking its citizens.
Still, he didn’t need the heada
che of a murder charge. He didn’t need the publicity that came with it, either, especially since he was living under an assumed name.
He laid the towel on the counter, opened a drawer and rummaged around for a bottle opener for a few seconds until his phone chirped, announcing a text message. Retrieving the phone, he looked at the message and scowled. The message consisted of a five-digit sequence of numbers.
Pocketing the cell phone, he went to his landline, picked up the receiver and dialed a number. He heard several clicks as the call was patched through a series of cutout numbers. On the third ring, a man answered.
“Yes?” It was Eitan Chertok, his former commander.
“It’s me,” Ben-Shahar said. “Daniel.”
“Daniel,” Chertok said. “Good to hear your voice.”
“You, too, my friend?” Ben-Shahar asked. “I assume this isn’t a friendly call.”
“It’s not. I have bad news for you.”
“Okay.”
“Abaigael Katz. I’m afraid she’s dead.”
Ben-Shahar felt as though someone had punched him in the gut.
“Abbey? Dead? What happened?”
“She died in the field. She was shot.”
“Damn.”
“I know you two were close...”
“Close? I entered the military with her father. I held her when she was a baby. I watched her grow up. She was like a daughter for me.”
“I’m sorry. But that’s why I called you. I knew you’d want to know.”
Ben-Shahar’s throat ached and his eyes squeezed shut. “Thank you for the call.” He sucked in a deep breath to steady himself. “Who did it?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t not tell me. You know that.”
“It’s classified.”
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