Last Instructions_A Thriller_Agent 10483

by Nir Hezroni

  In the Military Service section I write that I was a Service Conditions NCO and the Chief of Staff’s personal chef. Under Languages I write that I speak Aramaic, Ancient Mandarin, and the language of magical fairies.

  I continue to provide amusing answers to the remainder of the lengthy questionnaire, and finally, in the Additional Details section, I outline what will happen to the Organization if they don’t meet my demands. In the section for uploading files such as a resume, I attach the video from the basement and the image of Efrat and Amiram.

  In the section in which I outline what will happen to them if they don’t meet my demands, I include only a part of my plan in general terms. I don’t offer additional details because if I tell them that the strategic facility I intend to blow up is in Haifa, they will definitely set up a security perimeter around the petrochemical plants, so I leave things in general terms. Since I’ve planned the strike on the petrochemical plants for the following day, it will also give them a chance to apologize to me on the Sunday evening news show.

  To make sure they don’t ignore the form I fill in on the website, I list my 1st name as “Greetings” and write “From Amiram and Avner’s wife” in the Surname field. That will get the attention it deserves as soon as they get to my application.

  My plan is quite simple. On the day I set it in motion I’ll put on my protective suit and drive my armored carpet van down the streets on which I’ve installed my trashcan bombs. Every time I get 30 meters past one of the trashcan devices, I’ll detonate it. I’ll plan my route to ensure that I can detonate each trashcan bomb at 10-minute intervals. After my work in the area of the trashcans is done, I’ll drive to Rabin Square and detonate my 2 trash-can-and-gas-tank-bomb from a nearby street. I’m assuming they won’t apologize until I prove how serious I am and begin detonating the trashcan bombs. I’ll listen to the Reshet Bet radio station on the drive so I can hear their apology.

  At the end of the day, I’ll drive home in the afternoon and keep an eye on the news to see if there’s going to be an apology. If there isn’t one, I’ll go the following morning to the gas depot in Rishon and wait for the gas delivery tanker whose route I’m familiar with by now. When the gas tanker drives into one of the quiet neighborhoods, I’ll hijack the vehicle and dispatch the driver. Then I’ll drive the tanker to Haifa. I must remember to take the rubber sheeting, a box cutter, and several containers of sealant with me in the tanker. When I insert the gas pipe into the sewer hole closest to the petrochemical plants, I’ll have to seal it well with the rubber sheeting and sealant to ensure that the gas spreads through the waste disposal system under the entire facility. Once I’ve emptied the gas tanker, I’ll make an opening in the seal and throw a Molotov cocktail at the sewer hole from a suitable distance. The ensuing chain reaction will ignite the entire area. I have to remember to prepare bottles, gasoline, rags, and a lighter.

  Immediately thereafter I’ll get into the gas tanker and head quickly southward, before the ammonia cloud starts to spread.

  12/25/2016–21 days after putting the plan into motion

  I check Waze to see where Avner’s car is parked. Still at the Organization’s main base. It’s been parked there for 3 days already. Probably because he was at the house on HaHarzit Street at the time of the blast. I need to find out where he’s been hospitalized and to visit him so I can give him regards from Efrat, or place a bouquet of roses from my garden on his grave if he didn’t survive the …

  * * *

  10483 stopped writing in his journal and looked up. One of the motion sensors outside sounded an alert. He looked at the screen displaying the feeds from the cameras and saw a group of individuals—dressed in black, their faces masked and carrying weapons—approaching the house quickly in silence. He reached for the model aircraft remote control on the table next to him, dropped flat on the floor, and pressed the activation button.

  Four powerful explosions went off and a hail of steel nails around the house shattered the tranquility of the community. 10483 jumped to his feet, shook off the fragments of glass from the living room windows, and ran to grab his protective suit. He pulled the protective helmet over his head, slipped into his armored suit, closed the Velcro strips, and verified that all the items he had placed in the pockets of the bulletproof vest were in place as he rushed down to the basement.

  He raced from the bottom of the stairs to the opening of the tunnel, bypassing the cage in which Amiram and Efrat were now on their feet and trying to get used to the sudden light from above. A pipe that burst in the basement as a result of the blasts was spraying them with a jet of water. 10483 gave them one last look, slipped into the opening of the tunnel, and ran through. On reaching the end of the tunnel, he pushed aside the piece of corrugated steel topped with a layer of earth that was covering the opening and emerged quickly beside his parked van. Two men in black uniforms were standing next to the vehicle; and because their attention was focused on the chaos across the road, he shot them both from behind and slipped Amiram’s pistol back into the appropriate pocket in his suit. He went through their flak jackets, took 1 communications radio and a Micro-Uzi submachine gun, and transferred all the magazines they were carrying to the pockets of his own protective suit.

  He jumped into his van, tossed the notebook, the Uzi, and the model aircraft controller onto the seat beside him, and sped off in the direction of Route 4 West, toward Tel Aviv. He remembered that he hadn’t got around to photographing his efficient food dispenser as a memento. He only has a general picture of the basement taken from the stairs leading up to the ground level of the house. The sound of police sirens in the background caused him to refocus on his driving. And back at the scene, as a result of the shockwaves from the blasts, the tunnel leading outside from the basement succumbed to the pressure of the earth above it and collapsed.

  * * *

  Amiram and Efrat were standing in the cage in the basement and protecting their heads. The series of blasts had shocked them, and they were covered in bits of plaster that had fallen from the basement’s ceiling. The water pipe that had ruptured as a result of the blasts was a relatively large one and probably served an entire portion of the community, not just the house in which they were being held. The basement was filling rapidly with water, which had already risen to their knees. 10483 had hurried past them into the tunnel earlier and the structure had collapsed behind him some thirty seconds later. Amiram was hoping with all his heart that 10483 hadn’t made it out the other side and was now lying under a few tons of earth. The muffled sound of gunfire could be heard from outside.

  “We’re here,” he started yelling, and Efrat joined in.

  “Help! We’re down here!”

  It took a few more minutes before the teams outside stormed into the house, spraying the living room and kitchen with bullets.

  “He isn’t here!” Amiram shouted. “He escaped through a tunnel.”

  “Get us out of here!” Efrat screamed. The water level was rising. It was at her waist already, and also at the height of the electrical sockets in the basement. The home’s ground-fault circuit interrupter stepped in to save Efrat and Amiram from electrocution. The basement went dark again.

  If the tunnel was still there it may have allowed the water to drain out, but it had collapsed and the torrent of water didn’t let up. The barrel of a Micro-Uzi appeared from above, followed soon by a SWAT team member, and then two others. Daylight was still coming in from the open door at the top of the stairs.

  “Don’t shoot!” Efrat shouted. “Get us out of here!”

  “He isn’t here,” Amiram called out. “He went out through a tunnel. It leads that way. He dug a tunnel from down here to the outside and escaped. The tunnel collapsed but he may have made it out the other side.” Amiram pointed to a pile of earth—already half-covered in water—that was once the tunnel to the outside. The two SWAT team members on the stairs switched on their head-mounted flashlights and aimed their beams at the cage, before shouting somethin
g to the teams upstairs, descending into the basement, and getting into the water, which was already at chest height. The relatively small basement filled quickly from the powerful stream of water coming from the pipe. One of the SWAT commandos approached the cage. “How does it open?” he asked.

  “It’s welded shut. Go get a disk saw or blowtorch. Hurry!”

  “We don’t have either. They’re in a vehicle that should get here in a few minutes.”

  The water level reached the shoulders of the people in the basement. One of the commandos tried with all his might to bend the iron bars.

  “Look upstairs. He has a blowtorch in the house somewhere.”

  “There’s no time. And a blowtorch isn’t going to work properly with all this water in here. We don’t have time to go looking for the town’s water mains. It’s filling too quickly.” One of the commandos swam back to the stairs and ran out. The other one looked around for something that could help him bend the bars. The bags of dog food had disintegrated and there were clumps of kibble floating in the water, which was now up to everyone’s neck. Everything was swirling in the foam of the water spewing from the burst pipe.

  The height of the flooded cage measured two meters. Its roof was also made of iron bars welded to those that formed its walls. Amiram and Efrat were gripping the ceiling bars and holding themselves afloat with their faces pressed to the barred ceiling above them. Two more commandos came running down the stairs carrying two wheel jacks from their vehicles and swam quickly to the ceiling of the cage. They sat on the cage ceiling, with just a meter between the bars under them and the concrete ceiling of the basement, positioned the two jacks on either side of a pair of bars, and started opening the jacks as fast as they could.

  The water had reached the ceiling of the cage. Amiram and Efrat both took a deep breath and held onto the ceiling bars, floating in the water and watching the commandos working as fast as they could to widen the space between the bars. Their faces were already covered with water. Ten seconds, twenty seconds, half a minute, Amiram couldn’t hold his breath any longer. He inhaled water. His hands released their grip on the bars, his body convulsed uncontrollably for a few seconds and then stopped moving. He started to sink to the bottom of the cage. The commandos had widened the bars as much as they could and they grabbed Efrat and barely managed to pull her through the space between them. The metal left deep scratches on her body. She lifted her head above the water, took a deep breath, and coughed. “Get him out quickly,” she yelled.

  They had just thirty centimeters of air above their heads. The water continued to rise. One of the SWAT team commandos grabbed Efrat by the arm and dragged her behind him as he swam for the stairs, and they disappeared through the open doorway at the top. The two commandos who remained in the basement tried to squeeze through the widened bars to rescue Amiram from the bottom of the cage. It was impossible. They were too big and wouldn’t fit through the bars. They had barely managed to pull out Efrat, who was a lot smaller than they were. The water reached the ceiling of the basement. Both fighters were already submerged. They turned and swam underwater toward the exit.

  Amiram’s body was floating in the cage. His arms were outstretched and his eyes were open.

  * * *

  “Get out of the car. You’re going to the main base.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “Not a chance, Rotem. If you want to remain in the loop, get to the Ops Room and follow things from there. There’s no way I’m going to let him kill you, too.” Carmit pulled Rotem out the car and closed the door behind her.

  “I should be there. I can help you. No one knows him better than I do.”

  “I’ll say it again. Not a chance. He’s on his way now to Tel Aviv and we both know that nothing’s going to stop him from getting there. You’ve seen what he’s set up in Tel Aviv. He’s going straight to the area where he’s planted his explosive devices, right?”

  “Right. And from there he’ll try to get to Rabin Square to detonate the large device he’s buried there. I can help you to predict his next moves.”

  “No. Think logically. The Organization needs your brain. Rotem, you’re not a field agent. If I have to knock you out to make you stay here, I will.”

  Rotem turned away with an angry look on her face. She knew Carmit was right, but not being at the center of things was hard for her to bear. She got into one of the few cars that was heading back to the main base and wasn’t joining the chase after 10483’s carpet van.

  * * *

  The drivers heading south on Route 4 did their best to swerve to the side and avoid being struck by the van with the MASHANI—CARPET CLEANERS stickers that was racing down the highway at 140kph with a convoy of emergency vehicles and police cars on its tail. Some managed to do so, and those that didn’t were left with dents and scratches down the sides of their vehicles as the van zipped between the lanes without consideration for anyone else on the road. The wail of sirens filled the air along with the flashing

  “No matter what happens on the road, you can’t let him make it to Tel Aviv.” Grandpa’s voice echoed over the police radios in every patrol car.

  The van sped through a red light at the Morasha Interchange and continued south, narrowly missing a truck that was approaching from the south and turning left toward the Glilot Junction. The police patrol car behind the van wasn’t as lucky. 10483 reached into his armored vest for the police radio he’d taken from the two SWAT team members. “Heads-up,” he said into the device. “He’s turned right toward Glilot.” The patrol cars closest to him remained on his tail, but all the other security vehicles that weren’t in eye contact with the carpet van turned right toward Glilot Junction.

  It took a minute before one of the officers in the vehicles racing behind the carpet van got on the radio. “Who said he turned right at Morasha? He’s continuing straight in the direction of Tel Aviv.”

  “Who is this?” 10483 radioed through again. “You’re disrupting a police frequency. That’s a criminal offense.” He reached the Ganot Interchange and turned right to get onto the Ayalon Highway. Most of those chasing him were looking for him on a different road in the direction of Herzliya. He continued along the Ayalon with just three police cars behind him.

  “Don’t let him get to Tel Aviv.” The SWAT team commander’s voice came through on the radio. “You’re authorized to open fire on the van to stop it. Even if you’re surrounded by civilian vehicles. I repeat—you’re authorized to open fire.”

  “I see him turning left at the Glilot Junction toward Tel Aviv, from the north, near the Country Club.” 10483 continued to relay misleading reports over the police radio network. The window next to him shattered after being struck by a bullet, which was fired at him from a police car that tried to pass him on the left, and was stopped by the armored glass stuck to the inside. He turned the wheel of the van to the left, forcing the police car to brake. A second police car behind him used the opportunity to pull alongside the van on the right and empty an entire magazine of 9mm bullets into the front right wheel of the vehicle in an effort to cause it to swerve to the right and careen out of control. Nothing happened. The van drove on and flew past the Kibbutz Galuyot Interchange.

  “Heads-up. He’s just passed the KKL Interchange heading south. He has hostages in the van. Hold your fire. I repeat: Hold your fire,” 10483 radioed through as he continued north in the direction of the HaShalom Interchange.

  * * *

  It would be impossible, in all likelihood, to prepare a meal as tasteless as the one that was on the light blue plastic tray on the cabinet next to his bed. He tasted a spoonful of soup and grimaced, moved on to sample the pale-looking mashed potatoes, and then took a bite of a grayish meatball. He leaned against the backrest of the bed and covered himself with a white sheet bearing the logo of Tel Hashomer Hospital. He’d sell his soul for food cooked with some herbs and spices.

  Avner tried to stretch and a sharp pain shot like a bolt of lightning through his
right side. He relaxed his muscles immediately. His body’s going to take a while to recover. This body used to be a lot tougher, he thought to himself; I guess I really am getting old.

  No one from the Organization had come to see him today and it was driving him crazy. No one had come to update him and he didn’t know if that was a good sign or not. His children had stayed there with him almost constantly, until he chased them out and back to their families. “You have your own families and jobs you need to go to, and you can stare at me all day long and it’s not going to make me heal any faster. There’s no need for you to lounge around here all the time. If you have to visit, you can do so in shifts, with one of you coming every evening for an hour and that’s it.” He was proud of his daughter and two sons and appreciated their efforts to encourage him to have faith in the Organization’s ability to locate their mother, and his wife, alive. He’d already come to terms with the fact that he would probably never see her alive again.

  He had more than enough time on his hands to think about her. About the decades they’d shared. The thoughts, at a certain point, became too painful, and he put them aside and focused on reading newspapers and books to pass the time.

  His cell phone rang and he picked it up. He didn’t recognize the number. Perhaps Rotem had decided to do him the favor of providing him with an update on the investigation. Maybe they’re onto something. Perhaps a clue as to the whereabouts of the basement. “Hello?”

  “Honey?” He heard Efrat’s voice on the other end of the line.

  Avner tensed and sat up in bed. “Efrat! Where are you? Where’s he holding you?”

  “Everything’s okay. Your comrades rescued me. I’m here in the house where he was holding us.”

  “Where?”

  “Moshav Yanuv. Near Ra’anana.”

  “Is Amiram with you?”

  Efrat went silent for a moment. She couldn’t find the right words.