Jet

by Russell Blake

  Chapter 11

  The bus swayed around a gradual curve then straightened out, the steady rumble of its wheels on the weathered asphalt blending with the muted roar of its diesel engine. The odor of spicy food pervaded the cabin as several of the passengers who had made the long trip before opened containers and ate lunch. The driver announced over the speaker that they would be making a ten-minute stop within two hours and that vendors would be selling food there, but the regular travelers preferred to bring their own – for reasons that would shortly become obvious.

  Jet opened her eyes and stared at the passing landscape, her mind churning over the ramifications of the attack.

  When she had disappeared in a ball of flame in Algiers, her existence had ended. Nobody knew that she was still alive except for David.

  Who was also the only person who knew what her final destination had been.

  She’d chosen Trinidad because it was far from her stomping grounds in the Middle East. There was basically zero chance on the island of being recognized by someone from her past life. She’d also considered Indonesia or Brazil, but didn’t speak the native tongues so communicating would have been a barrier. Trinidad’s official language was English, although she discovered after arriving that most spoke a Creole mixture in daily life. Jet spoke perfect English without an accent, thanks to her parents – her mom, born in Israel but of half Japanese and half Dominican heritage, had spoken Spanish as well, but always communicated with her father and her in English.

  Nobody but David knew she was going to Trinidad, which left three possibilities: he had knowingly betrayed her, or had unknowingly done so…or they had slipped up somehow and someone had found out. The third scenario was impossible – Jet’s knowledge of craft was such that there was no way she could have been followed or traced.

  Besides which, as far as the world was concerned she was dead.

  That David would breach her confidence was hard to believe. He had no reason to give her up. And she believed that, in his own way, he loved her. Even if much of their attraction had been physical, over time, she had developed powerful feelings for him, and she knew it was mutual.

  Then again, he lived in a no-man’s-land of fluid ethics and constant duplicity, where allegiances could shift in a heartbeat and nothing was sure. It was the spymaster’s life, which defined moral ambiguity. Could he have run into a situation where he’d had to divulge that she was alive? Sold her out? Was she nothing more than a pawn in some unknown game he was playing?

  Nothing would have surprised Jet after the things she’d witnessed, but the idea of David betraying her didn’t make any sense. Not for the least reason that once she was dead, she was off the board, of interest to no one. That was the whole point of staging the explosion.

  No, it didn’t fit.

  But she couldn’t be a hundred percent certain that David hadn’t sold her out. And ninety-nine percent wouldn’t cut it. She needed to know for sure.

  Her other problem was that she had no idea who had targeted her, or why.

  It really could be anyone. Another intelligence service that she’d crossed during one of her missions. Terrorists. Criminal syndicates. A rogue government – she’d operated all over, including missions against Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya…

  The possible list of enemies was considerable and included her own country. The Mossad couldn’t be completely trusted not to have reasons to want her silenced. The team she had belonged to had carried out operations that were in clear violation of international law and would have severely embarrassed anyone associated with it, had all facts become known. Even a hint of the team’s existence would have been political dynamite.

  The truth was that trying to figure out who wanted her head was going to be impossible without knowing how they had discovered she was alive, and then how they had found her.

  And that led back to David.

  As did all roads.

  Which didn’t help her much.

  Because like her, David was a ghost. Untraceable. His official existence was top secret, and he moved around constantly, never staying in any one place for more than a few weeks. He was ultra-paranoid and cautious – all the same enemies who would have danced in the streets to kill Jet would have also delighted in getting David…and in truth, the list was probably longer.

  So it wasn’t like she could knock on his door and confront him. He could be anywhere, although he tended to stay within Israel’s borders. Which didn’t narrow it down much. There were a lot of places to hide if you were motivated and knew how.

  And David was an expert at it.

  Other than staying alive long enough to understand who wanted her dead, her number one priority would have to be finding David so she could discover the truth.

  Whatever it was.

  As the bus slowed to negotiate a series of hairpin turns, the child in the seat across the aisle vomited on the floor. The horrified mother rushed to clean it up, but the smell lingered and permeated the cabin. Jet considered stuffing tissue into her nose as well as her ears, but ultimately reconsidered. She was just going to spend a day in hell. There was no way around it.

  It wasn’t like she hadn’t spent plenty there before.

  She returned to the question of how to find David, but the more she thought about it, the more difficult it seemed.

  The only way she could see was through another member of the team. They always had some way of getting in contact with him. They had to in case a mission blew apart. How she would convince a former teammate to divulge David’s contact information would come later – her biggest hurdle wasn’t how to get that piece of info, it was how to find any of them. They, like Jet, lived like nomads and were invisible. None of them had homes. She didn’t even know their real identities, just code names nobody would ever admit existed. Even if she could hack into the Mossad servers, which was nearly impossible, there would be no trail to follow – David made a point of ensuring that nothing could lead back to headquarters. It was part of his cautious personality and the nature of the team.

  The bus rolled into the next station a few minutes later. Taking her backpack with her, Jet descended to stretch her legs, relieved to be out of the toxic atmosphere, if only for a brief while.

  The food the vendors were selling was so questionable that she bought some potato chips and a bottle of water instead, resigning herself to saving her digestive system until they arrived in Caracas.

  When the bus lumbered back onto the highway, an idea came to her with such suddenness it surprised her.

  There was one place she could probably find one of the team.

  The operative known only as Rain had been in deep cover during the Algerian mission, preventing him from joining them. It was a long-term penetration that had taken him out of the active team for years. She’d connected the dots when she’d been told that Rain wouldn’t be part of the Algiers operation – she’d been part of the insertion group that had set up his cover in Yemen, and had later been sent in for a sanction of a member of the cell he’d penetrated, who Rain had been afraid was suspicious of him. The man in question had suffered an apparent heart attack a few days later, and the problem had been solved.

  She might be able to find Rain again if he was still in Yemen. The Mossad wouldn’t pull him out unless it absolutely had to after all the work it had spent on his insertion and cover. Depending on what his assignment was, he might still be there.

  It wasn’t much to go on, but it was a place to start.

  Jet powered on the cell phone and busied herself searching for flights to get her to the Middle East from Caracas. It looked like her best bet would be through Germany – Frankfurt, then on to Riyadh, then finally to Sana’a, the capital of Yemen. She’d have to spend a day or two in Frankfurt to get a Yemeni visa, but that wouldn’t pose a problem – as the poorest country in the region, any tourist dollars at all were welcomed.

  Jet’s memory of the last time she’d been in Sana’a was less than pleasant. The pla
ce was a verifiable shithole, filthy and crime-ridden, run by crooks, where misogyny was institutionalized and barbarism was the national pastime.

  But if Rain was still there, she could use him to get in contact with David. What happened from there was anyone’s guess.

  For the first time in the last forty-eight hours, she felt proactive. It wasn’t standing in the middle of the street with a Heckler and Koch MP7 laying waste to her adversaries, but it was something.

  Right now, she’d take it.