Fracture Point

by T. D. Mandowsky

  “But you knew that . . .”

  “You told me you would be Lev here and Billal there. You never told me Billal would take over.”

  “All right Limor, you know what? I don’t give a sh . . . I don’t have the patience for this.” He separated from her and went to the car that I was sitting in and opened the trunk. “My friend from the District was stabbed yesterday. There are no intelligence captains at the moment. Just let me do my job.”

  “Go ahead! Enjoy yourself on your smelly rooftops and the lovely people out there!” She turned and started walking back to the house. Billal slammed the trunk and took her hand.

  I turned and looked at them. They were standing very close. I could hear her crying softly into Billal’s shoulder. He stroked her head very gently. I had no idea he could be so gentle. If they weren’t the only ones on the street at that hour, I couldn’t have heard them. But I heard.

  “This is my chance to become the commander of the department,” he whispered. “I’ll give them one term and then retire. He moved his hand from her hair to her stomach, which was unproportionately big and round.

  She said, “You’ll have another child who won’t see you in daylight.”

  “You’re right,” he said tenderly, kissing her forehead, “but when he’s five, he’ll have so much Daddy time that he’ll ask me to go get a job, I promise you.”

  He pressed her head against his chest and kissed her. She sniffed, not yet calmed by her beloved’s change of mood.

  He stepped into the car and took a deep breath.

  “This mortgage will kill me,” he said. His lips were almost torn apart by his fake smile, “All right. Let’s go.”

  The drive to the facility was quiet, except for the diesel engine’s growls. We were sent to arrest Captain Yunas’s attackers, and we were very keen to get our hands on the sons of bitches.

  “Evron, for God’s sake, we need them alive,” Dudi the coordinator said on the phone. “Each one of them is a treasure trove of intelligence.”

  When we reached the entrance to the headquarters, I dropped Billal off before I parked the vehicle. This guy is always in a hurry. A black car stopped next to me and opened its window, Amit’s baldness sticking out of it.

  “Evron! Where are you going?” he shouted to me.

  “An arrest with Captain Billal,” I shouted back.

  “Isn’t he home on sick leave?”

  “He is.”

  “Then how is he going on an arrest?”

  “He just is.”

  “Okay. Leave the equipment there,” his forehead wrinkled over his red eyes. “Luvaton is going instead of you.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You heard me. You’re staying here to guard the facility. You enjoyed enough time in the field in Uzbekistan, and you know what I mean,” he shouted back at me through the closing window.

  “It was Azerbaijan. Wait a minute! What does that have to do with anything?” I kept on walking after his car as it slowly rolled down the road.

  “It has everything to do with it because you’re an embarrassment to the unit. You’re staying here tonight. We’ll talk tomorrow. I’m in a hurry. Bye.”

  What an asshole! I couldn’t believe he would do that to me. Billal came running out of the facility, “Come on, Evron. Let’s go,” he yelled and hit the jeep with his cast.

  “Hey!” he shouted at me as I got out of the vehicle and went towards the building. “Evron! Where do you think you’re going?”

  I met Luvaton at the door. He was on his way out.

  “I’m sorry, man,” he tried to console me. I told him it was okay.

  I made myself some black coffee. I was really pissed. At least Leroy was on the same shift to guard the facility.

  Leroy looked bored. He was rocking on his chair, searching for the exact angle of balance in which he could lift his legs from the ground and stay in the air. His eyes were on his phone, and he was humming an old song at a very slow pace.

  “Stop it, Leroy.”

  “Sorry,” Leroy said after a moment, still fixated on his phone.

  I sat looking at the Hanukkiya in the reinforced window that faced the street. Two candles were lit, illuminating the entrance with a warm light that was the right atmosphere for the night shift.

  Leaning on the long guard’s counter was Nitzan, the Hebron desk officer. She told us about a significant breakthrough in the infrastructure of Jonod Al-Takhrir. Captain Yunas’s assassins were caught on camera arriving at his home in Hebron.

  “One second. Why is he an assassin? He didn’t kill him,” I said, concerned that I wasn’t up to date. Captain Yunas died two days after he was stabbed.

  “Attempted murder is also assassination,” Nitzan explained.

  “So when you say ‘attempted assassination,’ you’re actually saying, an ‘attempted-attempted assassination’?” Leroy asked.

  “Well, yeah . . . that’s a common mistake. There’s no such thing as an attempted assassination. There’s an assassination that either failed or succeeded,” she explained, not very interested in the semantics.

  When the operations team left the assassin’s house, it was full of microphones and cameras. In the last 24 hours, the ISA had managed to expose two more terrorists who were part of the infrastructure. They don’t have much ammunition, but they do have radios and explosives installed on what look like underpants. They didn’t know where the bombs were at that point, and they didn’t want to search his apartment since he continued to expose the cell from his living room and broadcast it to the ISA headquarters in Jerusalem. They still don’t know exactly how the explosive underpants are installed, but they do know that they have a detonator that is sewn into a blue Adidas jacket. Ever since this information arrived, all of ISA was searching for this combination: a blue Adidas jacket attached to explosive underpants.

  Leroy asked me what was so funny, and I told him I would elaborate later. When I was little, I sometimes used to fart on my younger sister Doreen, and when my father could hear it from the kitchen, he used to call me “the explosive underpants.”

  Leroy asked Nitzan about the salary and benefits of a desk officer. Do you get a car? How is the pay? Do they drive you crazy after hours? Despite attending law school, he has already stated that he would not be a lawyer, and that he was in search of a different profession where he could use his good mind and sharp intuition.

  Nitzan was a sweetheart, the kind of girl every mother wants her son to bring home to dinner. She grew up in Givatayim and lived alone in a 3-room flat in the Katamon neighborhood in Jerusalem. She has two degrees − one in Middle Eastern Studies and the other in Public Policy. She joined the ISA after her studies two years ago. Six months ago she even went on a date with Luvaton, the oldest guy in our unit, but still a year younger than her. It didn’t go very well and, to be honest, she is out of his league. She’s a classy girl, and she’ll be fine.

  After she left, Leroy made an impressed face and said, “That’s quite a girl.” The seat creaked as he leaned back with his big green eyes still on the door. “I think I could bang her.”

  “Nah,” I canceled what he said “That’s not a girl to ‘bang,’ dude. She’s a keeper.”

  “Is there a contradiction?” Leroy asked. “The girl I marry will be a girl worth banging.”

  I looked at him to make sure I was still talking to the sensitive, subtle Leroy. “I thought you let out all your anger in that Thai boxing of yours.”

  “Guys, who’s replacing me in the back position?” Shlomi’s voice came on the radio. Leroy was the first to answer him. “Didn’t you read the new protocol? The first one to get to the back position stays there until sunrise,” he winked at me.

  “Very funny. Now come on. I’m bored to death.”

  “How do you know if a girl is into . . . banging?” I asked.

&nbs
p; “Ummm . . . Most of the time they just let you know.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “I guess some people just tend to like more violence, and some don’t. Usually, you just figure it out in bed.”

  “So you’re saying that you can’t marry someone who doesn’t like to get spanked in bed”

  “I don’t think I could get along with anyone else very much.”

  “Do you consider yourself a violent person?”

  “Is violence bad?”

  “I think so. Isn’t it?”

  A light rain began to fall on the window where the Hanukkiya sat.

  “Guys, who’s replacing me?” Shlomi asked again. This time I pressed the broadcast button. “Relax, Shlomi. We’re discussing business here. I’ll be there in five minutes. Have a donut.”

  “Isn’t it?” I insisted

  Leroy continued to rock his chair like a hammock and I was wondering what he was reading on his phone and how he could talk to me at the same time. “I think violence is part of our nature, and it can be positive or negative.”

  “How can violence be positive?”

  “Your grandmother’s a Holocaust survivor, isn’t she?”

  “She was.”

  “Okay. Who liberated her from the camps? The freedom of speech? An international treaty? The UN?”

  “Nope, the Soviets.”

  “Soviets with peace slogans? I highly doubt it. My guess is that the Soviet soldiers had guns and killed everybody in their way.”

  “Well, you don’t fight Nazis in bed.” I stood up, upset that instead of talking to Leroy, I needed to be on duty in the back position.

  “True, but unfortunately, violence is still part of human nature. It’s a tool, but we need to minimize it as much as we can.”

  “You know,” I stopped near the door, “a gun is also a tool. You can just choose not to use it.”

  “But you still carry the burden,” he smiled, pointing with his nose to the bump in my waist, “and like every tool, you can use it to do terrible things, or use it to do beautiful things, like killing Nazis or making love.”

  “All right.” I said. “To be continued.”

  Leroy took in some air the way he does when he’s about to say something important, but instead of talking, he looked up at me surprised, and his shoulders jumped abruptly as we heard gunfire.

  Chapter 36

  “Shit!” Leroy shouted, jumping off the chair.

  I shouted, “Contact!” into the radio.

  I have no memory of getting from the entrance to the street. I don’t remember taking out my gun and cocking it. My first memory is of Rami Ben-Shabbat from the finance department lying on the ground pressing his bleeding thigh with his hand.

  “He’s in there!” He yelled and pointed to the storeroom area with his other hand.

  I ran toward the storerooms. Leroy ran to the right of me with his gun out, reached the storage area and started firing. He shot a short, wide volley but didn’t hit anything. When I got to him, I understood why: the quick transition from the brightly lit street to the darkness blinded us.

  The storeroom area was an open parking lot outside the building, monitored by cameras but not secured. It served primarily as a warehouse for construction materials and a temporary place for office waste.

  “Do you see him?” I asked Leroy. The sound of the shots still echoed between the barracks.

  “Not anymore,” he replied. There was a horrible ringing in my ear after he stopped shooting.

  I squinted, searching for suspicious movement. The radio crackled continuously, and Leroy tried to answer headquarters. Shlomi and Amit were talking at the same time but he couldn’t get through.

  “Quiet!” I shouted into the radio. “We’re in the middle of an attack! Me and Leroy are going into the storeroom area. There’s at least one armed man in there.”

  I knelt before the entrance to the storeroom, leaning on Leroy’s foot. He was up against a concrete wall and loading a new magazine.

  “Shlomi, get over here right away. Headquarters, send in any available forces. There’s one worker injured at the entrance. Rami from finance. Send an ambulance for him and then two more.”

  The soldier in the operation room replied, “Do you need . . .”

  “Right now, I need silence!” I cut him off. “We’re in pursuit right now.”

  There was silence in the dark yard of the Jerusalem District base. I took my radio ear piece out of my ear; reports were irrelevant at the moment. It took me several seconds to get used to the dark. There were four sheds that I knew well from the routine patrols, two cars parked in the parking lot, and a pile of construction waste.

  “He may have hostages. We’re moving out on the count of three,” I said.

  “Shouldn’t we wait for Shlomi?” Leroy asked.

  “No!” I said, “Three, two . . . one. Let’s go!”

  I jumped out of cover, and Leroy followed. I lit up the area in front of me with my flashlight. Nothing. I continued to scan the area behind the first shed, and Leroy scanned the area parallel to me. We didn’t find anything. I continued towards the second shed. The sight of my gun kept inching its way forward, the flashlight covering another half a meter every second.

  “Leroy! Itay!” I heard Shlomi shout behind us like we were playing hide and seek. I knew that if I shouted back, I would be exposed.

  “Leroy? Is that you?”

  “Shut up!” Leroy shouted.

  The echo of Leroy’s shout died down, and we heard sirens in the distance. Crickets were chirping loudly, and I couldn’t distinguish them from the long screeching sound still in my ear.

  I completed scanning the complex and met Leroy’s flashlight. “It’s me! Don’t shoot,” I told him even though I knew he wouldn’t make that mistake.

  “He got away?” Leroy whispered.

  “Wait,” I said, as I stared at the complex. In the counterterrorism scanning course, we learned that the best scanning is static. We stood at the edge of the area; the only light was a weak ray coming from the street.

  Two cars. A garbage can. A pile of old computer screens. Broken office chairs. Another garbage can. Cardboard boxes. A ladder. Construction waste.

  A ladder.

  The ladder went all the way up to the roof of the shed. Son of a bitch, he’s up there.

  “Move!” I shouted and pushed Leroy, who stumbled on a bag of cement and fell. He didn’t hear me because it was lost in the roar of the enemy’s gunfire. I fell on the ground and rolled behind the Ford Explorer that was to my right.

  The gunfire was wild and long. Ra-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta! A flood of lead sparks flew at us from the top of the shed, blowing away the asphalt around me.

  When I got up into a kneeling position, I looked over at Leroy. He was lying behind a pile of construction garbage in the corner.

  “Leroy!” I screamed at him, but my voice was not as loud as the blast of the gunshots. I protected my face with hands that were cut by the shards of cement that raged around me and I lay on the ground in a fetal position. The shooting has to stop eventually, I thought. He doesn’t have an endless magazine. But the gunfire continued and I started thinking that there might be more than one terrorist there.

  Then it stopped. Leroy shouted my name. He’s alive!

  “Leroy! Cover me.” I used the time he was switching magazines to decide on our tactic. “Fire!”

  I was not prepared for a situation like this in training. Mostly, the incidents we dealt with were always on one level; I never had to go from the ground to the roof before.

  They always say in the army, “If it can’t be simple, it simply can’t be.” I recalled the army tactics: you take over a hill and send up a holding force. The holding force hits the hill in front of it, while the front unit conquers it, and then they leave a holding
force there. It has to be simple.

  I don’t remember getting up from behind the car and running. I guess I don’t remember running. I just remembered that the second Leroy stopped firing, I shouted, “Keep it up, Leroy! “

  Leroy switched magazines very quickly, but the terrorist had enough time to lift his head above the roof of the shed. I stopped and fired five shots that forced him back into hiding. “Fire!” I kept yelling until I heard Leroy firing again.

  The bullets Leroy fired whistled above my head, but I knew they wouldn’t hit me because it was Leroy. I heard shouting in Hebrew in the background. What a mess.

  I stopped at the ladder. I didn’t actually stop, it was more like I crashed into it. I looked up to see if the terrorist was there but all I saw were the sparks of the bullets hitting the metal shed.

  “Come on, Evron!” Leroy hollered. I don’t know how many bullets he fired, but he was nearing the end of his second magazine. I took a deep breath and climbed up as fast as I could with one free hand. Leroy stopped firing.

  I bent down over the side of the shed, aiming my gun up. The terrorist’s barrel appeared right above my head. He didn’t know I was under him.

  “Leroy! Itay! Where are you?” Shlomi shouted from the entrance. He couldn’t see us because we were on the other side of the shed. If he walked over here, he’d be shot down; the terrorist was in position.

  “Leroy! Itay!” he shouted again.

  The enemy’s barrel disappeared. I heard him running to the other side of the roof. He was looking for Shlomi, damn it. I realized I had to do something immediately − otherwise Shlomi didn’t stand a chance.

  I rose and saw the terrorist’s back five meters in front of me. The ladder was shaking and the aim of my gun moved up and down his back. He turned towards me and I could see his face. He turned towards me with his Kalashnikov rifle, aiming straight at me. It was him or me. I pulled the trigger three times, but nothing happened.