Knowing the men would be back, Mufarrij pulled on his full-face helmet and climbed aboard the motorcycle. He pressed the ignition button, and the engine caught smoothly. The flat black motorcycle blended perfectly into the darkness. He wore black riding leathers, just another shadow in the city.
A small Fiat raced from the alley, followed by the cargo van and trailed by a second sedan. Von Volker’s mercenary team had seven men. Three had been on the capture, two on the rocket launcher, and two more acting as lookouts.
Mufarrij engaged the clutch and dropped the shift lever into first gear with his left foot. He followed the caravan as it shot through the twisting streets. They were driving too fast, certain to draw the attention of local law enforcement. Mufarrij knew from that action that they didn’t have far to go. If they intended to drive out of the city, they would have driven more slowly.
If they were acting quickly, he had to as well. He reached into his jacket and drew the Glock 18C from its shoulder leather. He smiled at the thought of using it. Glock had developed the vicious little 9mm machine pistol at the insistence of EKO Cobra, the Austrian counterterrorist force that was formed to protect Jewish immigrants chased through Austria by Palestinian militants. Mufarrij knew that Von Volker would not have approved the pistol’s use.
Holding the motorcycle steady with his body, the cruise control on, Mufarrij removed the seventeen-round magazine and took one of the thirty-three-round magazines from the small duffel strapped to the handlebars. After sliding it into place, he held the Glock in his left hand and sped up alongside the rear car. He saw the two men inside – both Europeans – as he raced by.
They stared at him as he passed, and he knew they’d alert their teammates, but it was already too late. The motorcycle left him vulnerable to a degree, but he was nimble as a falcon in flight. He preferred the nimbleness.
The van driver swerved across the street in an effort to knock him aside. Mufarrij dodged the clumsy side-swipe with a smile. Pointing his pistol at the driver, he scared the man into moving away. The van’s passenger shoved himself through the window on his side, hoisted himself into a sitting position so he could fire, but Mufarrij accelerated as he squeezed the trigger. The blast from the man’s weapon stitched across a line of parked cars. Holes appeared in their fenders and windows blew out in clouds of flying glass.
Drawing abreast of the lead car, Mufarrij aimed the Glock at the driver from a few feet out. Panicked, certain he was about to die, the driver cut the wheels sharply left, trying to use the car as a weapon.
Mufarrij leaned left as well, heeling the cycle over as he brought the Glock down and emptied the thirty-three-round magazine at the front tires. The bullets blew out the left-front tire, then he shifted his aim to the edge of the carriage, knowing the parabellums would ricochet off the street and tear into the passenger-side tire.
With both tires blown, throwing rubber in all directions, and the bare rims sparking on the stones, the driver lost control of the vehicle and it flipped onto its side. As Mufarrij wheeled the motorcycle around, the stricken car skidded across the street, sparks flaring all around it.
Mufarrij slid off the motorcycle and swapped the empty magazine for a full one, tucking two more full mags into his jacket pocket. He pulled the helmet off because it restricted his vision.
The two men in the overturned car never had a chance. Mufarrij executed them as they slid toward him, shooting through the cracked windshield into their faces. The car shot on past him, the grinding metal drowning out all other sounds.
The van driver tried to brake, but it was too late. He rear-ended the overturned car, the van slewing sideways in the road.
Mufarrij strode to the driver, shot him in the head, then thrust his gun arm through the window and unleashed a short blast that punched the second man through the passenger window. There was a third man in the van, but Mufarrij didn’t have time to look for him. He changed out the magazine and raced to the back of the van as two men got out of the rear escort car. Taking cover behind the car doors, they opened fire, forcing him to hide behind the side of the van.
Momentarily pinned, Mufarrij reached into his jacket pocket and took out a grenade. Knowing he’d be traveling through the Jewish parts of the city, he’d come heavily equipped.
Pulling the pin, he slipped the spoon off the grenade, counted two seconds, then underhanded it toward the car, just before he ducked back under cover. His timing was perfect, and the explosion went off under the front wheels.
The car jumped up, and the antipersonnel fragmentation took out the legs of the mercenaries concealing themselves behind the doors. The blast also ripped through the tires, making the vehicle settle heavily onto the ground.
Mufarrij braced the pistol in both hands as he strode forward. One of the men struggled to get to his feet, but he was disoriented and bleeding profusely from his lower legs and feet. Mufarrij put a three-round burst through the man’s head and searched for the second one.
The other man lay beside the car, bleeding out. A piece of shrapnel had sliced through the inside of his right thigh and cut the femoral artery. As Mufarrij watched, the man lost consciousness.
A squeal of terror came from inside the car. Blood stained the blond woman’s head as she tried to push herself up. Her face slashed and speckled by broken glass, she stared at Mufarrij with wide, shocked eyes.
‘No. Please. Please, don’t – ’
Mufarrij shot the blonde twice in the chest, sparing her family the agony of her ruined face. She fell back out of view without a sound.
Ignoring the van’s rear door, Mufarrij raced forward to the driver’s door. Men used to working in groups tended to cover a single field of fire, relying on their comrades to cover the others. The final mercenary in the van would be panicked with all his teammates lying dead around him. And he still had to protect their kidnap victim. Expecting an attacker to come in through the rear doors, he would be completely focused on them.
Peering through the open driver’s window, Mufarrij spotted the last mercenary crouched in the rear compartment. Lev Strauss lay on the vehicle’s floor, barely stirring, still overcome by whatever narcotic they’d used on him.
17
St. Mark’s Road
Jerusalem, the State of Israel
July 28, 2011
Mufarrij took one step away from the van and aimed at the vehicle’s side. The sheet metal wouldn’t deflect the bullets much. Squeezing the Glock’s trigger, he spread a burst down the van’s length, staying level at about where he thought the last mercenary’s chest would be. When he finished, he sprang to the vehicle’s rear and yanked open the cargo door.
Inside, the mercenary leaned up against the far wall, holding a bloody hand over one of at least two wounds in his side. As the door opened, the man tried to lift the submachine gun on a sling around his neck.
Mufarrij put two rounds into the man’s face. The corpse stumbled back two steps and sat down heavily against the cargo mesh separating the compartment from the driver’s area.
Pulling a miniflashlight from his pants pocket, Mufarrij stepped up into the van and played the beam over Strauss. Blood dotted the man’s face, and at first Mufarrij feared one of the rounds had gone astray. Then he realized the spatter was from the last dead man. With a small sigh of relief, he squatted down beside Strauss.
‘Professor Strauss. Can you hear me?’
Feeling drunk and confused, Lev Strauss tried to focus. A man was kneeling above him. The face seemed familiar somehow, but he couldn’t place it. ‘Thomas, is that you?’ For a moment, he thought he was back at the plane crash in the Dead Sea. Things had been bewildering then, like this was. He thought maybe he was dreaming, but there was a sharp pain in the side of his head.
Then Lev’s vision cleared a bit, and he saw it wasn’t Lourds crouched over him at all.
This man’s black hair was long and wild, and his beard was bushy. He almost looked like an American Hells Angel, but Lev was pretty certain t
hat no Hells Angel had ever been born with those dark Arabic features. Or maybe he only thought about outlaw bikers because the man wore black riding leathers and a jacket.
‘Professor Strauss. I’m going to get you out of here. I need you to help me.’ The man tried to pull Lev to his feet.
Lev gripped the man’s proffered arm and struggled to help get to his feet, but his limbs didn’t work well. He had no strength in his arms and he couldn’t feel if his legs were under him. ‘Who are you?’
‘A friend. You were in a car wreck. I’m trying to help get you to safety.’
As the man pulled Lev to his numb foot and held him upright, he saw the dead man sitting against the cargo mesh. Two more sat on the other side of the wire in the driver’s compartment. Blood was everywhere. Frantically, Lev fought against his ‘rescuer,’ remembering the fake Alice, the way the blood had jumped from Ezra’s neck, and the dart hitting him in the throat.
‘Take it easy. Go slow. I don’t want you to get hurt any more than you already are.’ The big man held Lev and talked in a soothing tone, and his words sounded true. ‘I’m not one of them. I’m here to help you.’
‘Where’s Ezra?’
‘Back at the abduction site.’
‘Is he all right?’
The big man shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Everything happened too quickly. When I saw you had been taken, I came after you.’
‘You were there?’
‘Yes. In the alley across the street.’
Lev thought hard, trying to imagine the scene again, but found that it kept sliding through his mental fingers. ‘I didn’t see you.’
‘You weren’t supposed to.’
‘The other team died in that car.’
‘They did.’ The big man pulled one of Lev’s arms across his shoulder and walked him to the rear of the van. They had to move while stooped over.
‘Are you Mossad?’
‘Yes.’
Lev stared ahead of them, willing his wits to come back to him. The drug had overpowered his system, and he knew he was lucky to be conscious at all. ‘Where are you taking me?’
‘Somewhere safe. Somewhere that you can work on the Book.’
‘All right.’ As Lev started to step down onto the ground beside the big man, ‘Alice’ rose in the backseat of the semiblown-up car in front of them. Blood covered her blouse and leaked from the corner of her mouth.
Lev frowned in confusion. ‘That’s not Alice …’
Startled, the big man looked up, but it was already too late.
‘Alice’ had a pistol in her hand, and bright yellow flashes burst in front of her. Something slapped Lev’s skull hard, knocking him backwards. The big man’s arm was no longer around him, and he was falling.
Mufarrij couldn’t believe the woman wasn’t dead, or that she would come up shooting instead of simply lying there hoping she would survive. The wild look in her eyes told him she was moving on pure adrenaline, which must have been the only thing keeping her alive.
He felt a bullet hammer the body armor under the motorcycle jacket, then Strauss jerked in his grip and started falling backward.
Whipping the Glock up, Mufarrij fired by instinct. Three rounds pierced the woman’s chest, then a bullet hit right between her wide eyes. Her head snapped back, and she fell once more into the backseat.
Angry at the events and at the woman, Mufarrij crouched over Strauss. A single glance at the horrible wound in the man’s face told the story. The bullet that had glanced off Mufarrij’s body armor had crashed into the man’s temple. Flattened from the body armor, the bullet had made a horrible, bloody mess of Strauss’s face.
Miraculously, the man’s mouth worked, and he had just enough strength to speak three words. ‘Get … Thomas … Lourds.’ Then the air went out of him, and he seemed to wilt there on the stone street.
Mufarrij was acutely aware of the seconds passing. It wouldn’t be long before law enforcement arrived. Or maybe the Mossad. When the bodyguard teams had gone offline, that would have triggered a response on their part as well.
Knowing there was nothing else he could do here, Mufarrij ran to his motorcycle, righted it, and threw a leg over. The machine started at once, and the back tire spun for just a moment as he wheeled it around. Then rubber found traction, and he shot out of there.
Thomas Lourds. Mufarrij knew the name. The American’s activities in Saudi Arabia only last year were well-known. Very few people knew the whole story of how Vice President Webster had gone missing and later turned up drowned during those hard times. When Mufarrij had heard the stories from his superiors, he hadn’t believed it.
But now, thanks to all the television coverage, he knew exactly where to find Thomas Lourds. Mufarrij stayed low over the handlebars and sped off into the night.
With Lev Strauss dead, he, the Mossad, and the Ayatollah’s men were all scrambling for the next clue in the hunt for Mohammad’s legendary Book and Scroll.
18
Schloss Volker
Vienna, Austria
July 29, 2011
Rage and pain consumed Klaus Von Volker as he watched the news footage from Jerusalem.
Controlled and outwardly calm, he sat at the big desk in his office. He loved it because it was solid and heavy, a prime piece of Austrian woodcraft made with maple and ebony parquetry, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, ebony, and exotic woods. It was the kind of desk that Prince Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar von Metternich or Napoleon Bonaparte might have sat at while planning the future course of empires.
Von Volker did that every day that he sat at the desk. The den was a man’s room, redolent of fine cigars and brandy. One wall held a collection of weapons, swords and guns that spanned centuries. It wasn’t a place that Colonel Davari found comforting.
On the large-screen television set into the wall, news footage showed the wreckage of the three vehicles that had carried the mercenaries Von Volker had sent to retrieve Lev Strauss.
‘What happened?’ Davari sat in one of the bentwood chairs in front of the desk.
‘Lev Strauss was killed.’ Von Volker backed up the film footage and froze the screen on an image. Two ambulance workers ferried Strauss’s body to their waiting vehicle. ‘See for yourself.’
‘You’re sure he’s dead?’
‘With a hole like that in your face, you’d be dead, too.’
‘Perhaps.’
Von Volker sucked in a breath through gritted teeth. ‘We have caught some luck at this point.’
‘What?’
‘The Israeli government has chosen to hide Strauss’s identity for the time being. They’re claiming this was a terrorist action.’
‘Why?’
‘You know the Mossad, Colonel. They like to control information.’ Von Volker shrugged. ‘That explanation will hold for a while before it comes apart, but it will eventually give way to the truth. For now, though, the explanation covers all the weapons and violence found at the scene.’
‘Will the Mossad be able to track those men back to you?’
Von Volker smiled at that, but it was forced. He didn’t like having his ability questioned. The question was in bad taste and offensive. He was certain Davari intended it to be the latter. ‘No. I was careful.’
‘If you really had been careful, we would have Lev Strauss now.’
‘Perhaps. But perhaps the carelessness didn’t come from my involvement.’ Von Volker locked his gaze on Davari. ‘The man who did this has a past history with you, Colonel. Not me.’ He tapped the keyboard in front of him.
The television image changed from the newsfeed to a closed-circuit satellite feed that showed the rear of the van as the attack began. There were multiple views, from the front of the van as well as from the interior.
‘What is this?’
‘I had the van wired and uploading streaming video and audio feeds through a small satellite connection.’
‘All of that hardware will be discovered at the site.’
‘It won’t matter. It won’t lead investigators anywhere. My people know what they’re doing, Colonel.’
‘Yet, somehow, these men that you claim knew what they were doing managed to lose Lev Strauss.’
Stung, Von Volker clamped his jaw shut.
On the screen, the view shifted suddenly as the van collided with the overturned car. In the next instant, a man stepped partially into view and shot the van’s driver, then the passenger.
Colonel Davari sat up straighter, interested in spite of himself. ‘One man did all this?’
‘Yes.’ Von Volker shifted through the video feeds. He’d already marked the places he wanted to show the colonel. ‘Make sure you mention this to the Ayatollah. I certainly plan to.’ His words were a thinly veiled threat. ‘The way he moves, the quick and professional way he kills, I thought he would be known to you.’
The image kept playing, showing the attack as it progressed. Despite the fact that the men in Jerusalem had all been hardened mercenaries who had seen action around the globe, the lone killer had cut a swath through them as if it were child’s play.
When the man stepped into the van and shot the last mercenary there, Von Volker froze the screen. ‘I had some of my computer people work with this shot. They tweaked the image until we got a good look at the man’s face.’ He pressed another button, and the cleaned-up image of the assassin enlarged and filled the screen in much clearer focus.
The man looked wild and elemental. Scars showed under his eyes and in the hollows of his cheeks. He’d been cut and shot, and the bottom of his right ear and the right side of his neck were covered in burn scars.
‘Do you know this man?’
Colonel Davari looked for only a moment. ‘No.’ He didn’t even bother to try to hide the fact that he was lying.
‘His name is Rayan Mufarrij.’ Von Volker spoke the words deliberately. ‘Despite the best efforts of my intelligence people, not much has turned up on him. The man is a ghost. He’s been a deep undercover agent working for Saudi Arabia’s Emergency Force, the counterterrorist division of the General Security. For years. I’m surprised you don’t know of such a man as this.’
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