Authors: Russell Blake
“I have him,” the rider said in Thai, speaking into a tiny helmet microphone as he shifted gears and goosed the throttle, swerving to avoid the fender of a limousine that was intent on changing lanes.
“Good. You know what to do.”
Chapter 21
Benghazi, Libya
Jet performed her final equipment check, the FN F2000 bullpup assault rifle loaded, night vision goggles functioning reasonably well. The two new Mossad operatives next to her were alert and seemed competent, their young faces already toughened by training and the demands of covert field operations.
It was midnight, and the lights in the house had gone out two hours before. They’d been watching from down the street in a stolen green van, and other than an occasional vehicle or a hastily moving pedestrian anxious to get home, the dirt road was deserted, the lights also off in the surrounding buildings. A black and white cat, more skin and bones than anything, darted from the heaps of fresh garbage rotting by the few wooden light poles, and Jet watched its progress through the goggles before flipping up the viewing screen and facing the two men.
“Okay. We’ll do this exactly as I laid out. I’ll go into the construction site and neutralize the night watchman, then radio you. Adam, you wait by the front gate, and Levi, you stand by with the engine running – we might need to make a very fast getaway. Avoid shooting unless there’s no other option. Even with the suppressors, these things will make a racket, and we’re in a quasi-war zone.” Luther had come through with not only the F2000 rifles, but also silencers for all their weapons.
“So you’re going in from the construction site, and then when you give the word I’m to breach the front gate and come in after you to extract any survivors. Are you sure you don’t want me to come in with you? Levi can still keep the van running, and duck out to blow the gate on our signal,” Adam suggested.
“Negative. I want to go in alone. With any luck I can secure the house before they know what hit them, and you’ll be in a better position to help from the road. We have to be in and out as quickly as possible – the militia is still in control of this sector and we’ll have to avoid them. Just stick with the plan, with no variation. Do you understand?” she asked, her tone firm.
Both men nodded. Adam clearly wasn’t happy about his role, but he’d been ordered to take his commands from Jet, and he knew better than to argue – the instructions came from the very top.
Jet studied their faces. “Give me three minutes to get situated. I’ll radio when I’m about to go in. Adam, get into position immediately after. This is going to go down fast. Any questions?”
“No, I’m playing chauffeur, and Adam will hold the door. You get all the fun,” Levi said, trying to keep his tone light, but a faint buzz of apprehension evident in his voice as he spoke.
“Correct. Ladies first.” She checked her watch. “All right. This is it. I’m going in. See you in a few,” Jet said, then flipped down her goggles and opened the rear doors, scanning the empty street before she stepped down onto the hard-packed dirt, virtually invisible in the shadows in her head-to-toe black long-sleeved top and pants.
She listened for any hints of movement in her proximity, but only heard the dull roar of an occasional car from the larger streets a few blocks away. Satisfied that she was unobserved, she trotted to the construction site next to the target. A chain link fence ran across the front of the lot, and a gate barred her way, held shut by a chain with an ancient padlock clasped through the link ends. Not wanting to cause any more noise than necessary, she decided not to shoot it off, and instead took a running start and threw herself as high as she could and gripped the top with her gloved hands. She was up and over in seconds, the fence clattering against the steel support poles, and when she landed in a crouch inside the perimeter she froze, ears perked for any indication that she’d been spotted.
She heard a rustle from the second story of the construction site, and a man’s voice called out shakily in Arabic.
“There’s nothing to steal here. I have a gun. Don’t mess with me…”
Jet was moving before the second word was out of his mouth. She crept on catlike feet to the interior of the building and paused near a load-bearing wall, controlling her breathing, waiting for the watchman to come to her. He was an amateur, one of the construction crew earning extra compensation by staying at the site all night, and she was confident he would make a mistake that would be his downfall.
Her opportunity arrived sooner than she’d expected when the watchman hesitantly groped his way down the dark concrete stairwell, his gun rifle barrel leading, the expression on his face one of fear. The hapless guard couldn’t see her in the gloom, and when he got to the final step she swung out of the darkness and delivered a series of brutal strikes, the last of which, below his ear, knocked him unconscious. He dropped to the floor in a heap, and she reached into a pocket of her cargo pants, withdrew a syringe, and injected the contents into his leg. She had three more syringes for any captives, and Luther had assured her that whoever got a shot would be out for six solid hours.
She took the steps to the second floor two at a time, and in moments was peering at the house from one of the windows that had been roughed into the bare cinderblock wall. The target was dark, with no indication of anyone being awake. After another scan of the compound and the road beyond, she retrieved a radio from her belt and murmured into it.
“I’m going in. Get into position. I should be inside in a minute – two at the most. I see the cable for the front security cameras, so I’ll cut that before I move in. Remember. No heroics, and stick to the plan.”
Jet didn’t wait for a response, choosing to turn down the volume and slip the radio back into place. The yard was almost as bright as day in her goggles, illuminated in the distinctive eerie green she knew so well, and she glanced at the wall below her and the side of the target house before making her move. She lowered herself until her feet were hanging above the perimeter wall, and then abruptly swung her legs to the side, creating momentum before she pushed off with her feet. She sailed through space and caught the top of the wall with her hands to stop her fall. Jet used the energy from the drop to bounce; then she swung a leg over the wall and straddled it, looking down into the compound from her perch.
The clouds above her parted and the moon came out, shining down on her position, and she squinted to allow her eyes to adjust to the unexpected light. With a final glance in both directions, she estimated the distance from the house to her landing spot she’d need to cover when she dropped into the compound, and took two deep breaths before tensing her upper body in preparation for the main event.
~ ~ ~
Adam approached the iron gate of the perimeter wall, his weapon clenched close to his body, keeping to the shadows cast by the walls of the other homes, in the hopes of evading the cheap cameras’ limited fields of view. He was almost to the gate when he froze at the sound of a large motor revving from one of the nearby streets, and then was nearly blinded by approaching headlights as a flatbed pick-up truck with five armed militia on the back rounded the corner and lurched down the pitted dirt road toward him.
Darting to the side, he ducked behind the carcass of an old Nissan sedan that had been almost entirely stripped, hoping he had acted fast enough to avoid notice by the gunmen. He’d almost convinced himself that he’d evaded detection when a voice screamed from the truck.
“You. Behind the car. Come out with your hands up, now, or we’ll open fire.”
The truck slowed as it crept forward, and when it was twenty yards away one of the men yelled again.
“Come out now, or you’re dead.”
He’d read the reports on the warring militia that acted as the vigilante justice in some areas of Benghazi and cursed the analyst who had assured them that this district appeared to be too close to the town center to be under their control. He momentarily debated trying to bluff his way through, and then caught himself – he was wearing night vision goggles and had a high-tech assault rifle with enough ammunition to level a battalion.
The night exploded as the men in the truck made good on their promise. Blasts from their Kalashnikovs erupted in a flurry, the slugs pounding into the metal chassis and the wall behind him. Any hope of stealth lost, he returned fire, the higher-pitched popping of his suppressed F2000 almost inaudible over the din of the larger-caliber Russian rifles.
Two of his rounds struck a gunman firing over the roof of the cab, who tumbled against the others, and then another burst from Adam’s weapon shattered the windshield and killed the driver. The horn blared as his head dropped against the wheel, and then additional shooting directed at the militia erupted from the van, where Levi had made a judgment call and decided to even the odds and support his pinned-down partner.
The crossfire from the two Mossad agents made short work of the amateur soldiers, and ten seconds later the battle was over, the local gunmen either dead or dying. Adam jogged to the bullet-riddled truck, jerked the door open, and pulled the driver out, dumping his corpse onto the dirt. The body hit the road with a muffled thump after the wailing horn fell silent, and the peaceful quiet of the street returned as lights came on in the surrounding buildings.
~ ~ ~
Jet was dropping into a crouch near the house when she heard the truck’s rumble at the front of the compound, and when the shooting started she instantly knew that whatever well-crafted approach she’d hoped for had just gone out the window. She withdrew a folding combat knife from her back pocket and hurried to the camera cable, her heart pounding in her throat. Kneeling, she sliced through the wire with a single swipe, and then threw herself to the side when the house door flew open and the ugly barrel of an assault rifle poked out.
A moment went by and she realized that the shooter was blind in the dark. Anticipating his next move, she switched off the night vision goggles just as the exterior lights turned on, followed by the harsh bark of gunfire from the house. Bullets shredded the ground around her as she rolled and simultaneously fired at the doorway, taking cover behind an oversized ceramic pot holding a small tree. Hardened red clay chips showered her from slugs pounding into the planter, and then, sensing a lull, she fired at one of the two exterior lights.
The lamp shattered in a shower of glass and sparks. Silenced gunfire echoed from the front gate, providing badly needed cover for her – Adam had heard the gun battle in the compound and correctly concluded that she needed help. The front door of the house slammed shut as his rounds pocked the walls around it. She shot out the other light and flipped her goggles back down, the darkness providing a slim advantage.
The window nearest the front door shattered and more gunfire exploded from it, but the bullets slammed harmlessly into the structure a few feet to her left – the gunman was shooting blind, hoping to hit something. At the window, she saw the distinctive barrel of an M4 assault rifle poking out and could just make out the outline of the gunman’s head in the neon green of the goggles.
Jet squeezed off another burst and the gun disappeared; then an explosion at the street announced that Adam had blown the front gate and was coming in. She heard footsteps pounding behind her and looked up to see him, and then another gun began shooting at them from the house – this one a Kalashnikov, she could tell. Adam returned fire, as did she, and she rolled again, hoping to take better cover at the corner of the nearby building.
Another salvo of shooting burped from the window, and she heard the distinctive whistle of ricochets. She ducked back into the fray and fired measured volleys while she ran towards the front door, Adam continuing to pepper the window with rounds as she sprinted, zig-zagging in the dark.
She slammed against the front façade of the house and waited for a weapon to snake around at her, but there was no more shooting, just the ringing of tinnitus from the defending gunfire. Jet dared a look back at Adam and saw him slamming another magazine into place, holding his fire. She was grateful that he was calm under pressure and had good combat moves – he hadn’t wasted any motion getting to her, nor was he shooting indiscriminately, as novices often did in their first firefight.
A clunk sounded from inside the house, nearer the rear, but nothing from the front, from where the shooting had emanated. Adam trotted toward her in a crouch, and then they were both framing the door, weapons at the ready. Jet made a hand signal and he nodded, his breathing heavy. She reached down to the knob with her left hand, her F2000 clutched in her right, and then twisted it with all her might.
Locked.
Adam saw her pull back, and he fired at the lock before slamming it with his boot. The door crashed open and they both held their breath, anticipating gunfire, but were surprised when they were greeted with silence. Jet knelt and peered around the doorjamb, seeking a target, but there was no movement. A body lay by the window in a dark pool of blood, and the cabinets in the kitchen at the far end were splintered from bullets, but there was no evidence of the second shooter. She was just moving deeper into the foyer when she heard a snick – metal on stone, and she barely had time to turn and throw herself back outside before a grenade went off, devastating the living area where she’d been standing only seconds earlier.
Adam grunted in pain. Razor-sharp fragments of shrapnel had hurtled through the door and caught him in the shoulder. His Kevlar vest stopped most of it, but a few shards sliced through along the edge, wounding him. Jet watched from her position on the ground as he tumbled backwards. Her mind worked furiously as she got her bearings. There was no way out of the compound, no back gate or exit, so anyone else in the house was cornered and stood no chance – their first bit of luck that night. The downside was that the gunfire had no doubt drawn every militia unit within five miles, so it was only a matter of minutes, if not seconds, before they’d need to contend with open warfare on the street.