Authors: Russell Blake
“Perhaps some music…” she murmured, her voice smooth as velvet.
“I’d like that.”
“I told you not to talk unless I permit it. You haven’t learned, have you? It looks like you’ll need to be punished, you bad, horrible thing. Now keep your mouth shut, or it will go harder on you,” Esther said, steel in her tone.
Max rolled his eyes and shook his head. She gave him a little shrug, and then went to the stereo and turned it on. A techno beat pulsed from the speakers as she neared him. Her lips hovered over his ear like a lover, and he could barely make out her whisper.
“Nice to see you again. When do you think this will all go down?”
“We hear he’s looking for new girls, but it could be a few months,” Max replied softly.
“Two more months of this and I’ll want to kill myself. You have no idea what kinds of sick bastards come in here.”
Max studied the harness. “I’m sorry. I have no say in it.”
“I know. I’m just complaining. It’s not so bad. Almost all my clientele are middle-aged men who want to be spanked or flogged. It could be worse.”
“Your country is grateful for your service.”
“Sure it is. Now get your pants off. If they don’t hear some spanking within a few minutes, they’re going to think I found the camera and blocked it deliberately.”
“Can’t you fake it?” Max complained.
“Remember how grateful your country will be. No, there’s no sound quite like a paunchy ass being smacked.”
“I resent that. I work out.”
“Sure you do. Come on. We don’t have all night.”
Max sighed and shook his head. “At least I don’t have to get into that thing,” he said, eyeing the hanging restraint system.
She gave him a small smile, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “Not yet, anyway. But the night’s young. You better leave a hell of a tip.”
Chapter 11
Ramallah, West Bank
After glancing around to confirm nobody was in sight, Maya broke into an old car parked in front of a crumbling apartment complex three blocks from the checkpoint, used the skills she’d acquired in juvenile lockup to hotwire it, and then left it in an alley that ran along the back of the lots across the street from the house.
She took up a position behind a half-collapsed wall where she could see the front entrance. As nightfall came and went, she plotted her move once the mystery bomb maker arrived to collect his materials.
Anxious for the rendezvous to take place, Maya peered at her watch in the gloom, fighting to control her impatience. As she’d told Samuel, her only real option was to follow the bomb maker, identify the factory, and then notify the authorities. She had no doubt that the IDF would move decisively against a specific location; her plan was to confirm the spot, return to the house, have a chat with the young terrorist about the whereabouts of his partner, and then either drag him to justice or shoot him.
How that played out was almost irrelevant to her, and she saw no moral quandary in the concept of an eye for an eye – just as the terrorists had had no problem executing her friend and likely scores of others if their plan came to fruition. Regardless of how the media spun things, this was a war – the terrorists were enemy combatants who would cheerfully kill innocents, and deserved no pity.
Maya’s thumb unconsciously played along her pistol grip as a battered seventies-era Peugeot sedan rolled to a stop in front of the house. Her breath quickened when two men got out – one an older, bearded figure, and the other the ambulance driver, at least as far as she could make out from that distance. The front door opened, and the younger man from the prior night beckoned them inside. His gaze swept the street, and for a moment Maya felt like he was staring directly at her even though she knew it was impossible – there wasn’t enough light on her side of the street to make out anything.
Seconds ticked by, dragging into minutes, and after half an hour the door opened and the young man emerged, heaving a heavy burlap sack. The ambulance driver followed behind with its twin. The bearded man came last and trailed them to the car, where they deposited their loads in the trunk before opening the doors and climbing in.
Maya’s breath caught when she saw a child backlit in the doorway, no more than four or five, waving to the car before he pushed the door shut. The sputter of the car’s engine broke Maya out of her trance, and she bolted for her vehicle, black robe billowing around her as she ran.
Getting the motor started took three tries with the bare wires, and by the time she got it into gear and pulled out of the alley, the Peugeot’s brake lights were rounding a corner two blocks away. She floored the accelerator, keeping her headlights off, and prayed that there were no stray dogs or children in the road because the first she’d know of them would be a wet bump. When she reached the intersection, she cranked the wheel left and flipped on the lights. Her quarry was a hundred meters in front of her, moving at a moderate pace. She closed the distance a few more car lengths and then settled at a sane speed.
The drive took her across town to another mosque, smaller and less ornate than the main one in the city center. The Peugeot pulled to the curb near the entrance, and Maya rolled past it, watching in her rearview mirror as the three terrorists spilled from the vehicle and moved with the bags into a doorway at the side of the main building. She parked at the end of the block and made her way back to the mosque, which was dark and appeared closed.
Seeing nobody on the sidewalk as she brushed past the door, and hearing nothing in the vicinity, she turned and retraced her steps until she stood in front of it. She winced as the lever squeaked when she twisted it and waited a long second before pushing it open and stepping inside, free hand gripping her pistol beneath her billowing folds.
She found herself in a large walled courtyard, the main mosque on the right and four outbuildings barely visible in the darkness next to it. Light seeped from beneath the far doorway, and Maya crept toward it, suddenly not nearly so sure of the evening’s outcome. She was in the heart of enemy territory with one gun, up against God only knew what, with no backup and no escape plan. Maya swallowed hard and bit back the fear that threatened to sap her resolve. She continued to the door and pressed her ear against it in an effort to hear. The bomb maker’s distinctive rasp was recognizable even through the thick wood.
“We are not far from success, my friends. Now that we have the required material, we can mold the device into the truck’s tank. When the C-4 detonates, it will have a kill radius of at least fifty meters. Nothing will survive.”
“Can we use it by tomorrow evening? When traffic at the settlement entry is the heaviest?”
“It should be done in time if we work all night. Which we are prepared to do.”
“We have a martyr to drive the truck,” a new speaker said. “Congratulations, Abreeq. You are indeed a master. Nobody would suspect an electrical company truck to be a rolling bomb. They will allow it at least up to the gates, no question.”
“I expect so, Ammar. And we’ll use a cell phone trigger, so there are no mistakes the driver could make that will affect the detonation. You’ll be in control of when to set it off, from a safe distance,” Abreeq said.
“And you’re confident that if the truck is searched before arriving at the gates, the device will evade detection?”
“Absolutely.”
Maya pulled her cell phone from her robe and entered the mosque address along with a brief message to Samuel about the bomb. She was preparing to send it when the courtyard door behind her opened.
“Hey. What are you doing there?” a man’s voice demanded loudly.
She spun, panicked, and struggled to keep her tone even.
“I’m sorry. I was looking for…for a bathroom. It’s an emergency,” she said in Arabic.
“A bathroom? What does this look like? How did you get in here?” the man growled, suspicion dripping from every word.
Maya knew he wasn’t buying it but had no choice but to bluster through. “I tried the door there. I thought maybe the mosque might have a service restroom. I’m sorry. I meant no harm.” She began walking away from where she’d been eavesdropping, but when she caught a glimpse of the man’s face, she could see he didn’t believe her.
“Not so fast,” he barked, reaching into his jacket pocket.
“I said I’m sorry,” she protested, her hand sweating on her pistol.
The man withdrew a snub-nosed revolver, its stainless steel length glinting in the moonlight. “Oh, you’ll be sorry, all right.”
The explosion of the Jericho 9mm pistol firing from inside her robe echoed off the walls. Her first shot caught the man in the chest. The second hit him in the throat, but he was still standing. She freed the gun from her vestment and fired a third time, taking off half his face, and he crumpled to the ground as the door she’d been listening at burst open. She darted to the building nearest the courtyard entrance as men piled out, guns in hand. Her slim advantage was the light inside the room, so their eyes would take a few moments to adjust before they’d be able to make anything out. She pulled at the door in front of her, and it opened. The creak of its hinges drew immediate gunfire, and chunks of the heavy wooden slab splintered off as a dozen bullets pummeled it and the surrounding stone wall, sending rock chips flying.
Maya bolted the door and found herself in a windowless storage room with musty air tainted with an odor of petroleum. She felt along the wall and almost tripped over the distinctive form of a generator. Beside it rested two jerry cans of gasoline, which she confirmed by opening one. More bullets pounded into the door, which then shuddered on its iron hinges as someone threw their weight against it. Maya knew it wouldn’t hold long, and she was vastly outgunned.
She felt for her cell and sent the text message to Samuel, hoping that he would be able to make good on his promise to send help. She barely made out the dark shape of a door at the far end of the room, with a faint light shining through a chink in its surface.
Of course – there would be a way to access the equipment area from inside the mosque in the event of a blackout
.
Maya eyed the gas can as the courtyard door shuddered again. This time the wood next to the iron bolt split with a crack. She kicked the container over so that fuel spilled onto the stone floor and then ran to the mosque door and fumbled with the lever.
Locked.
The courtyard door shattered. She pivoted and shot four times into the opening as it swung inward, then turned her gun on the mosque deadbolt and fired at the wood around it. Desperate, she slammed her shoulder into the planks as more gunfire erupted from the courtyard. The lock gave just as a man’s frame blocked the courtyard doorway and the distinctive shape of a rifle swept the pitch-black room. She pirouetted and fired at the gunman and then at the generator.
Her third round caused a spark from its metal chassis. The gasoline on the floor ignited with a whump that drove her backward into the mosque, eyebrows singed. The second jerry can of gasoline exploded, sending a fireball through both doors, and she rolled onto her stomach and crawled away, wincing at a burn of pain where a ricochet had grazed her biceps.
The main entry rattled as someone outside pulled at it. She forced herself to her feet, blinking dust out of her eyes as she stumbled deeper into the darkened mosque. Her phone vibrated in her pocket, but she ignored it, choosing instead to slap home a fresh magazine in her pistol while she had the chance. Voices cried out from the exterior grounds as gunmen tried to find a way into the building, and she knew it was only a matter of time before they tracked down a key or someone braved the sea of fire in the equipment room. She gazed around frantically looking for any means of escape, but saw nothing.
Maya pushed into a smaller room where piles of rugs were stacked next to a grimy window. She hurried to it and felt for the latch handle, and was about to unlock it when a shadow flitted across the pane as someone outside approached. She knelt in a corner, her robe and hijab pulled over her, praying that in the darkness she would be mistaken for a shadow.
A bearded face flattened against the glass, the man’s hands cupped around it, and she held still, afraid to move. The moonlight reappeared in the window when the man moved on, and she exhaled a soft sigh of relief, which was cut off by the sound of shattering glass in the mosque, followed by agitated voices. Inside.
Maya instantly decided that taking on an unknown number of assailants outside with at least the benefit of running room was preferable to shooting it out with heavily armed gunmen inside the mosque. She was under no illusions that her pistol was any match for assault rifles, and whether inside or out, she knew she was outmatched.
The window latch opened with a
snick
, and she pulled the glass open, grateful that the hinges didn’t make a sound. A grind of metal against stone echoed through the mosque behind her. She hoisted herself through the window, landing on the dirt outside as two gunmen spun toward her no more than twenty yards away. She rolled as they fired at her, and she squeezed off six shots in rapid succession, cutting down the shooter with the rifle and sending his pistol-toting companion sprawling for cover.
Maya found herself in a small clearing adjacent to the mosque, the air thick with the odor of garbage from a makeshift neighborhood dump. She rose onto one knee as the surviving gunman loosed a shot at her, and she fired four more rounds at his muzzle flash. He cried out in pain and fell backward, hitting the ground hard before lying still.
Machine-gun fire chattered from a window, and she threw herself behind the remains of a stripped car, nothing left but the rusted carcass. Bullets pounded into it as she peered around one side. Maya aimed carefully and fired twice, and was rewarded by a grunt and a pause in the shooting. She was debating making a break for it when she saw three men round the corner of the mosque, weapons in hand. Maya crept away from the car, further to the rear of the lot, where a pile of rubble rose from the ground, the only trace of the structure that had once stood in its place. She made it to the debris and was preparing for her final stand when a blinding pain shrieked through the back of her head and everything went black.