Shadow Soldier: A Military Thriller

by Roni Eliav

  “We have the same eyes and breasts,” she said.

  Erez opened his eyes in surprise, trying to fathom what she had just said. He sat up and looked at her incredulously.

  “I’m Liat’s daughter. Didn’t you notice my last name?” she asked.

  Erez looked slightly frightened, calculating something in his mind.

  “Don’t worry, silly. I’m not your daughter. The numbers don’t add up.” He sat up as well, hugged and kissed her.

  Erez broke away, put on his pants, and went into the adjacent office. When Neta came in herself, she saw him sitting in front of the map and tables making calculations on a piece of paper.

  “Did you update the data?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she answered, offended by the sharp change of tone. “Do you want to eat?” she asked. “I brought some food from lunch.”

  Erez wolfed down his food in silence while jotting down numbers and symbols on a piece of paper. Finally he leaned back, pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Neta sat in front of him, silent.

  “Don’t take this personally. I don’t really understand what I’m feeling right now,” he said.

  “I know exactly what I feel, though,” she said, clearly offended.

  “I’m sorry, all of this just suddenly crashed into my life. I thought I was settling scores, now suddenly I’m opening new ones.”

  “I’m not a score.”

  “No, you certainly aren’t. You’re something wonderful that I’m not sure I deserve right now…” he said.

  Neta got up and hugged him, and Erez hugged her back. He then got up, packed some things, kissed her, and disappeared.

  ***

  Eitan scrutinized the eleven middle-aged, sloppily-uniformed soldiers in front of him. Some of them looked in excellent shape, especially those who had continued to serve in the security forces. The others were reasonably fit for their age. Eitan knew there was no substitute for experience and familiarity. They arrived in response to the emergency warrant he had sent them and an urgent phone call from him.

  “So what is it, Shoelace?” Jacob asked, referring to Eitan by his old nickname.

  Eitan felt everybody’s eyes on him. He was the only one in full uniform, including his colonel rank insignias. He knew all of them, but they had lost contact years ago. The group had carried on together, performing operations and going on reserve duty, while he took a different path and climbed up the command hierarchy.

  “I called you in on an emergency warrant because Erez disappeared a couple of days ago. Since his disappearance, three wanted terrorists with blood on their hands have been killed. Nobody knows who killed them,” Eitan said.

  The guys looked around at each other. Some cracked a smile.

  “So Erez has gone vigilante,” Assi said. “Son of bitch, he’s the man.”

  “He’s doing what we’d all love to do,” Amir mumbled in satisfaction.

  “It’s about time.”

  “Okay, so what do you need us to do?” Jacob asked.

  “You can probably assume we’re not going to help you catch him,” Amir said.

  “No, guys, I want to help him,” Eitan said. “I want you to find him and join him. I believe he’s out to get the man who killed his children, and I don’t want him going after him alone.”

  “Okay, but how do we find him? I mean, this is the man who taught all of us how to hide.”

  “I’d check in with the officer who worked with him,” Eitan said with a smile.

  “No kidding. That fast?”

  “Well, he was always good.”

  “I’m not one hundred percent certain, but I think there’s something going on there. Do you guys remember Liat?” Eitan said.

  “That older chick who turned his head? What about her?”

  “That’s her daughter.”

  “And you knew this?”

  “Of course not, I just recently figured it out. I’m not sure Erez knows,” Eitan concluded.

  ***

  The reserve team entered Neta’s office. She looked up in surprise, seeing a bunch of middle-aged reserve soldiers with weapons and vests they had just signed for. They settled into the empty rooms, organizing their equipment— fitting instruments to their vests, scopes to their rifles, and sharpening knife blades with whetting stones. Some of them were brewing coffee on a portable burner in the middle of the room.

  “Would you mind telling me who you are and what you’re doing here?” Neta asked.

  “We’re Erez’s team. Do you know where we could find him? Or, can you convey a message to him?”

  Neta stood in silence, slightly embarrassed.

  “I-I think he’ll come back tonight,” she said.

  The guys exchanged joyful looks. “What makes you say that?”

  “Just a hunch,” she said.

  “Did he come here before?”

  “Yeah, a couple of times.”

  “Well, that is his weakness.”

  “What is?”

  “Loyalty.”

  As evening descended, the team passed the time reading maps and speculating on Erez’s whereabouts. Yigal stood in front of the tables and charts, examining them for a long time. He called Ami over. They two of them went over the numbers and equations. Yigal sat and started jotting down calculations.

  “What’re you doing, Yigal?”

  “Testing it.”

  “But you don’t know arithmetic.”

  “That’s right. But this is not arithmetic, this is proper math. And it’s not bad at all.”

  “Yigal has a Ph.D. in mathematics. He shouldn’t even be here…” someone explained to Neta.

  At dinnertime, they headed out to the mess hall. Neta went to roam around outside. Suddenly he appeared next to her. As soon as she recognized him, she hugged him and he hugged her back.

  “What’s going on in there?” he whispered.

  “Your team is here, and they’re preparing to help you.”

  Erez didn’t say anything, and gave her a long kiss. She melted in his arms, feeling his longing and desire. When the team got back, they came into the office. After some pats on the back and shaking of hands, Erez and the team sat down to look at the maps.

  “So how do you want to do this?” Jacob asked, ready for action.

  “Tomorrow morning he’s due to pick up an explosives belt from a sewing workshop that makes them. He’s probably not going to come alone. The volunteer who’s supposed to blow himself up will accompany him.”

  “How do we know this?”

  “Information and statistical calculations.”

  “Okay, well, about that— you have a slight miscalculation. It comes out much lower than you thought, something in the vicinity of seventy percent,” Yigal said solemnly.

  “I’m definitely not gonna argue math with you, but I think that refers more to the particular hour than to the likelihood of the meeting taking place in general,” Erez answered.

  “Yes, the chances vary throughout the day. The best chances are in the early morning. By the way, kudos on the idea. It’s brilliant, converting information into statistics,” Yigal lauded his old commander.

  “That was part of my start-up venture,” Erez muttered with his gaze firmly fixed on the floor.

  “Maybe it could be revived. You have an experiment here that seems to be working.”

  “That’s not what I’m here for,” Erez said.

  “So what are you here for, really?”

  “I’m here to kill the son of a bitch who murdered my children,” Erez said with fire in his eyes.

  “Maybe we’ll find his family and kill them, in return.”

  “We don’t fight kids,” Erez said.

  They went over the plan. Erez sketched the four-story building located in the center of town. The works
hop was on the fourth floor, hard to reach.

  “We’ll need to leave soon. I’m going to Eitan to get the stuff we need,” Jacob said.

  “Roll call in two hours.”

  ***

  The team gathered in Erez’s office at midnight. Eitan appeared without his insignias, equipped with a vest and weapon. The team felt uncomfortable with his presence.

  “I’m only here to coordinate,” he said. “I’ve prepared a motorized evacuation. I’ll be with it.”

  He assigned their radio networks, shook their hands, and left.

  “Guys,” Erez said in a low voice, “none of you have to be here. This is my revenge,” he made it clear.

  “It’s ours too. Go on with the inspection.”

  “I trust you have your equipment in check.”

  “Are you slacking off? Check.”

  After inspecting the gear, they got on a truck and drove off. Just before they left, Erez went to Neta and gave her a long hug.

  “Come back in one piece,” she pleaded.

  “That’s not possible. I’m already broken,” he replied.

  “For me…” she said, and kissed him.

  He turned around and left, leaving her standing there with tears in her eyes.

  ***

  The team approached the town and stopped at its outskirts. They fell into formation, and snuck into the town along the axis they had prepared.

  After about half an hour, they reached the vicinity of the building. Sharon fasted himself to a rope, and started scaling the outside of the building. When he reached the roof, he pulled up the rope and anchored it to the floor. One by one, the team climbed up, some of them just barely making it. An hour later, they were all crouched on the roof. They situated themselves so that they could not be seen from below. The building was the tallest in the area, so they couldn’t be spotted from other rooftops either. They lay down and waited.

  At 5:30 AM, the floor below them started coming to life. At 6 AM, they fixed the explosive device to the roof, and detonated it at 6:15 AM. A thunderous explosion tore through the morning mist, and a huge hole gaped in the building’s roof. They suspended themselves from the edge of the roof, and jumped in. Two team members sprained their ankles and remained behind to cover. They scanned the rooms quickly. They encountered an armed terrorist in the second room and shot him down quickly. In the back room, they found three suspects hiding. They cuffed their hands, as they did everyone else in the building.

  “Erez, your client is in the back room!” Jacob said, pointing his thumb at a steel door.

  Erez walked into the room, accompanied by two team members. The men sat cuffed in plastic zip-ties. Erez examined the three.

  “Get them out of here,” he pointed at two of them.

  He went to the corner of the room, took off his vest, and laid it on the ground. He placed his weapon on top of it. He immediately recognized that Ibrahim Nasser, the man responsible for murdering his children, the man he had been hunting down, was the man left sitting in the room. He pulled out his knife and approached him. Ibrahim desperately tried to crawl back. Erez reached him, grabbed his hands, and cut off the zip-tie.

  “Stand up!” he shouted in Arabic. “Do you know who I am?”

  “A Jew dog!” Ibrahim brazenly replied.

  “Yes. A dog that’s about to kill you.”

  Erez threw his knife towards his vest, and squared up to Ibrahim. He punched him in the face using his left fist. Ibrahim pounced on him in a fit of fury. Erez forced him back with a series of rapid left jabs. Ibrahim continued advancing, wildly striking at Erez’s hand and shoulder. Erez grabbed Ibrahim’s chin with his left hand, and landed a tremendous sickle blow—starting from his leg, advancing to his hip and shoulder, and culminating with an iron fist. “The Erez Sledgehammer,” his opponents used to call the move. His fist exploded into Ibrahim’s ribs. Erez let him go and delivered two rapid blows, one from the left and one from the right, and finished with an uppercut which channeled all the rage burning inside him. The blow hit Ibrahim square on the chin, and he collapsed to the ground.

  Erez towered over him, panting heavily from the sudden burst of exertion, and the adrenaline furiously pumping through his veins. He then turned to the door. Ibrahim seized the opportunity to pounce again, sinking his teeth deep into Erez’s calf. Erez could feel the teeth tearing his muscle, and the blood running down his leg. He turned around and struck Ibrahim’s blood-soaked head repeatedly until he finally let go. After releasing himself, Erez slumped down. Ibrahim leaped to his feet again, and with his face smeared in blood, sent a kick towards Erez’s head. Erez noticed the leg moving towards his head from the corner of his eye, grabbed Ibrahim’s foot and sharply twisted it, turning a screw on three joints at once: the hip, the knee, and the ankle. Ibrahim fell on his face. Without hesitation, ignoring the pain in his calf, Erez held onto the rotated foot, got up, and leapt forward towards Ibrahim’s back. He landed on the back of his knee. The immense pressure shattered Ibrahim’s knee. His mutilated leg became as shapeless and empty as a sack of rags.

  Erez turned him over, sat on top of him, and began pulverizing his face with punches, left and right, again and again, in a fit of uncontrollable fury which erupted from deep inside him. Ibrahim tried to block the blows with his hand. Erez grabbed his wrist and broke it with one violent twist.

  Ibrahim’s face was reduced to a pulpy mash of blood. “Blood! Blood!” an incredible force roared inside Erez’s mind. His fists were stained with blood. The image of his children’s faces flashed before his eyes, covered in blood. Erez stopped punching, grabbed Ibrahim’s neck, and started squeezing the life out of him. He thought about his children blown up on that bus. He was haunted by the image. But then he heard Neta’s desperate whisper: “Come back in one piece…”

  Erez let go of Ibrahim and labored up to his feet. He went to the corner, put on his vest and weapon, and put the knife back in its sheath. He walked back over to Ibrahim, grabbed his other foot, and dragged him out of the room.

  There was a commotion outside. Eitan arrived with the backup force and raided the building. He saw Erez dragging Ibrahim.

  “Is that him?” Eitan asked.

  “Yes, that’s him,” Erez confirmed.

  “Is he dead?”

  “No. Take him to prison,” Erez said. He let go of Ibrahim’s leg and walked towards the stairs.

  He got out of the building, and sat down in the car. A medic attended to his torn calf muscle. A couple of minutes later, his team joined up with him, two with sprained ankles and one with a cut on his cheek. They drove away through a raging mob. A few minutes later, the building that was used to make explosive belts exploded. When they reached the camp, Erez asked Eitan: “Where’s the bastard?”

  “What bastard?” Eitan played dumb.

  “Not funny, Eitan,” Erez said sternly. “Ibrahim Nasser, the son of a bitch I made the mistake of leaving only half-dead.”

  “Oh. I accidently forgot him inside the exploded building…” Eitan answered with a straight face.

  Erez looked at him without saying a word.

  “That’s what friends are for,” Eitan said. He patted Erez on the back, and went back to command the brigade. Erez sat down on a rock, looked around, and saw his team heading to return their equipment. Neta stood at the door and looked at him. Soon, he’d get up and go to the office. But for now, he just wanted to understand whether he’d settled the score, or just opened it.

  Chapter 20

  EPILOGUE: EREZ AND ME

  We sat on a desolate beach in the north of the Dead Sea, a couple of six-packs of Heineken casually placed beside us. We had drunk about half already, and smoked cigarettes. Neta ran towards us on the beach. She really was a sight to behold, especially in her swimsuit.

  “You’re a lucky guy,” I told him.

  “At the end of the day, I�
��m lucky. But it always balances out.”

  “I always hated the end of Book of Job. As if the new wife and kids somehow made up for the ones he lost.”

  “Justice is not part of the deal. If you want justice, you have to take it yourself.”

  “You know you don’t really exist, right?” I said, slightly envious.

  “The way I see it, I’m more real than you are.”

  “You’re a fictional character in a book,” I insist.

  “And you’re a grumpy old man.”

  “I think I’ll stuff you back into the box I took you out of.”

  “You can’t. It’s out of your hands now.”

  “You believe that?”

  “You will too, soon enough.”

  “Take another beer. Get pissed.”

  “By the way, I’m thinking about adding a bit where the army buys your patent for the search algorithm.”

  “Don’t bother, that’s not credible. The army doesn’t work that logically.”

  “Okay. So I’ll send you back to catch a few more terrorists.”

  Neta reached us, her skin glimmering with sweat. She was panting, her impressive breasts bobbing up and down.

  “Eitan says you have twelve more terrorists waiting for you,” she said.

  “I told you.”

  “Of course you told me. You’re writing this.”

  Done, but not finished.

  Message from the Author

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