Days of Rage (6 page)

I
removed the chair from the table and set it on its side. I held the wand over the center of the fabric. It buried into the red zone.

Jennifer said, “What’s up?”

I pulled my knife and knelt down, saying, “Get the table back where it was. Make sure the legs go back into the indents in the carpet.”

She did so, not saying another word. I slid the tip of my blade underneath the corner staple and slowly worked it free. Slicing the fabric would have been a hell of a lot quicker, but it would also leave no doubt that we’d been in the room if someone had to retrieve what I thought was underneath.

I popped the staple, set it aside, then worked on another one. When the corner and the two staples left and right were out, I shined my light in and saw a modern electronic device. A digital recorder. And it was running.

Next to it was a small microphone-looking thing that was long and thin, covered in foam. On the other side was a battery pack, lead wires running to the recorder.

The implications were profound.

Someone else is tracking our guy.

We’d scanned our rooms as soon as we checked in, and they’d all come up clean, which meant this device was placed for the person in this specific room.
Chiclet. My target.
When the wand first triggered, I thought maybe it was something innocuous or a piece of kit left over from the Cold War, when this hotel was probably wired for sound better than the Met. Now it could mean only one thing.

My earpiece chirped and I heard Retro say, “Ready for sound check.”

I said, “You owe me a case of beer. This hotel does have some technology.”

“What are you talking about?”

I pulled up my smartphone’s camera and said, “Standby.” I took a picture and sent it to him, asking, “What do you think?”

Retro was our team’s resident computer geek, and if I was imagining things, confusing a digital voice recorder for some type of pesticide ultrasound, he’d let me know.

He came back on. “It’s a digital recording device. The thing to the left is a combination boom mike and initiation switch. It only records when there’s sound to save battery life. You make a noise and it turns on.”

Great. High-tech. So much for the Cold War.
“What’s the battery life?”

Knowing that would give me a good idea of how long ago it had been emplaced. Maybe it was for the guy who had Chiclet’s room earlier. Before he could answer, Decoy cut in. “Break, break, break. Chiclet entered the lobby. I say again Chiclet entered the lobby.”

Shit.

I said, “I need someone to stall him. I have to erase the last ten minutes of this digital memory or we’re burned.”

Blood said, “You need to exfil.”

I hissed at Jennifer, “Hold this light. I can’t see the buttons.”

Blood said, “You copy?”

“Blood, we have to neutralize this device. Figure out some way to stall him.”

“What do you want me to do, go up to him and ask what a brother’s doing in Bulgaria? He’s already at the elevator.”

Blood was African American, and that was his idea of a joke. He came back on and said, “Decoy, let the elevator start to close, then holler at him to hold it. We’ll both get in. You push the first floor, I’ll push the second.”

Chiclet’s room was on the third floor—which was actually the fourth in American terms—so that was all the delay I was going to get. I snaked my hand into the small hole and stopped the recording. “Retro, Pike. How do I delete just my stuff? Can you tell me how to do that from looking at the picture?”

I heard Decoy shouting, “Hold that door, please.”

Retro said, “Yeah. I Googled the owner’s manual when you sent it. See the circular dial? Click the ‘menu’ button below it, then click on ‘graph.’ The entire recording will come up in a graphical line. Use the left arrow on the dial to walk it back however far you want, then hit ‘delete.’”

I heard Blood say, “Second floor, please,” and knew I was running out of time. I followed Retro’s instructions, looking at my watch and making an educated guess as to how far back to go. Before hitting delete I said, “Jennifer, once I’m done here, no more talking. Help me get the fabric back on, then we’re out of here.”

She nodded, and I pressed the button, then reset the microphone back to its dormant status.

Over my Bluetooth I heard, “Pike, this is Decoy. I’m out.”

I gave a double-click, acknowledging his words, then pulled the fabric tight against the frame, nodding at Jennifer. She picked up the staples and worked the first back into its original hole, lightly tapping it in with the back of my knife. It might have triggered the microphone, but I didn’t really care, as the noise wasn’t confirmation of anything. It could have been Chiclet knocking on a wall.

She started on the second and I heard, “Pike, Blood. I’m out. He’s on the way. I hope you’re clear of the room.”

Knuckles came on. “I accessed the stairs to his floor. I’m headed down the hall from the east end. No Chiclet yet, but once he’s committed to this hallway, you guys are trapped.”

Jennifer locked eyes with me and I nodded to the chair. She placed the last staple and tapped it home. I flipped the chair upright and set it exactly where it had been before. Jennifer moved to the door and I picked up the garbage bag we’d laid on the floor to catch the shavings and sawdust from Retro’s drill, folding it up and shoving it into my pocket.

We were just about to crack the sill when Knuckles said, “Too late. He’s in the hall. He’s going to see you exit. Come up with a story. Send Jennifer out first, and start bullshitting.”

Damn it.
No story we could create would alleviate all the suspicion with this guy. He was used to being hunted, and was naturally paranoid. On top of that, both Jennifer and I would be permanently burned for further surveillance work.

Looks like it’ll be Knuckles’s mission after all.

The room had two very large windows that went from the ceiling to about two feet above the floor. They opened like a miniature sliding door, and had no screens. Jennifer sprinted to one, dragged the heavy drapes aside, and threw it open, exposing a faux balcony with a cast-iron railing. She looked back at me, then dove out.

What the hell is she doing?

I raced over to the window in time to see her stand up on the railing and point above her head. I leaned out and saw that the fourth floor—our floor—had a small ledge all the way around the building. But there was no way we could both climb simultaneously, and there wasn’t enough time to do it one after the other.

Jennifer had realized the problem before she’d even exited. A former Cirque du Soleil performer, there was very little she couldn’t climb. She had no fear of heights and was as comfortable climbing the side of a building as a squirrel running up a pine tree. Standing on the iron railing, she shucked her shoes, letting them fall to the earth four stories below. She pointed at herself, then the other window balcony over ten feet away. Before I could do anything, she launched herself in the air, leaping with her arms stretched out in front.

I leaned out as far as I could, my heart in my throat. I watched her snag the lower rail with a single arm. She swung under, then back, wrapping her other hand onto the rail. She pulled herself up, and I wanted to scream at her for the stupid risk. Instead, I clambered out onto the balcony railing, then slid the window closed. There was nothing I could do about the drapes. Hopefully he’d think the maid had moved them.

I got on the radio and said, “Retro, need some assist out of your window.”

He said, “What? You’re coming up the wall?”

“Yeah. Koko committed me.”

I saw Jennifer scowl at her call sign, then leap up and snag the ledge below our room. She pulled herself up until she could grab the railing of our own faux balcony, then began to haul herself to the window.

She made it seem easy, but it was a long, long way to the ground below, and my subconscious mind was revolting against a leap of faith to the ledge. It was only about a foot higher than my outstretched arms, but that was the longest twelve inches I had ever seen.

Jennifer climbed up the railing until she could pull her feet onto the ledge, then glanced back to me, a question on her face. Through the glass I caught a glimpse of Chiclet’s door opening and committed, leaping up and clamping my hands on the ledge in a death grip. I executed a chin-up, the fear of the long drop flying through my body. I slapped my right hand onto the lower railing, then the left, grateful to have the iron to hold on to instead of the rock ledge.

Using brute strength, I shimmied up the railing as fast as possible so I could get my feet on the ledge. No style points whatsoever; all I wanted was to get my weight onto the stone. Away from the drop of death. After I felt I’d gone far enough, I swung my feet, kicking the wall and feeling for the ledge.

When my left foot hit it, I slapped my right in the same location, then relaxed, letting the adrenaline subside. I looked over at Jennifer, seeing she had pulled herself all the way up and was sitting on the railing. She smiled at me, then began putting her hands together in a silent golf clap.

I said, “You have lost your fucking mind. Next time, how about you ask if your idea is worth it first instead of just jumping out the window.”

She said, “What’s the big deal? It wasn’t that hard, was it? And now we’re not burned.”

Chagrined, I said, “No, it wasn’t hard, but it
was
a little risky.”

She gave a look of mock surprise. “Really? Because I was going to ask you to do that to get to my room tonight. After the guys go to bed.”

Retro opened the window next to her, cutting off the conversation. She winked at me, then crawled inside. When he got to my window, he said, “Not sure what you did, but she’s giggling about something.”

I shook my head and said, “She’s trying to drive me into an early grave.”

A
aron Bergmann leaned back from his computer, annoyed and exhilarated at the same time. Annoyed that Mossad said it was going to take days to crack the encryption of the trove of documents promised by Boris, but exhilarated that Boris’s proof of value had delivered much, much more than Aaron would have thought. Clearly, Boris had wanted his PIN to the bank card, because the unencrypted documents had exposed a current, valid threat, and had shown that Boris did indeed have excellent placement and access to cutting-edge Russian secrets.

A proof of value was simply a taste of what a source could provide. Boris knew that Aaron wouldn’t transfer the PIN simply by getting a thumb drive full of encrypted documents. For all he knew, Boris had encrypted the morning paper and said it was top secret. Thus, he’d included several documents that were not protected to show the quality Aaron was buying, and it was high quality indeed. Aaron had sent the documents to Mossad headquarters, and they’d come back with an answer: a Syrian intelligence officer posing as a Shabeeha was attempting to bring a weaponized container of Sarin nerve gas to Istanbul. Aaron couldn’t think of a single piece of intelligence that would spark Israel’s interest more.

The Shabeeha were the death squads roaming around Syria slaughtering anyone who opposed the regime. Ostensibly just local yokels who’d spontaneously begun running amok, killing anyone who disagreed with President Assad, their actions were perversely held up by the regime as proof of Assad’s grassroots popularity. In reality, they were exactly what they appeared to be: thugs paid to kill to advance the dictator’s agenda. They were controlled and rewarded by the Syrian security establishment. In this case, a Syrian Air Force intelligence officer, posing as a Shabeeha commander, had evacuated an artillery round filled with Sarin GB, the deadliest nerve agent on earth.

The documents didn’t disclose what the Syrian officer intended to do with it, but it was a forgone conclusion that it wouldn’t be good. So much so that Mossad had decided to err on the side of caution. Instead of attempting to penetrate and determine intentions, linkages, and further exploitation, the Mossad had designated him a Samson target.

Aaron’s target.

He reread the Hebrew on his screen to be sure he wasn’t mistaken, but the words didn’t change. His Samson team was inbound to Istanbul with a mission: Eliminate the Syrian, and do it in such a manner that would send a message.

The Mossad is finally understanding our worth.

Aaron and Samson had worked for the Mossad for twenty years, but some still considered him an IDF castoff. Not worth the trouble.

After Israel gave the Gaza Strip back to the Palestinians, Aaron’s unit became superfluous. The high command still maintained Sayeret Duvdevan, the sister counterterrorist unit tasked with the penetration of the West Bank occupied territories, and thus had no use for the Gaza unit, but they hesitated to throw away something that had been very difficult to create.

The Mossad had stepped in.

In 1979, the Wrath of God operations had ended with the killing of Ali Salameh, the archetype of terror. After that hit, the Kidon—or bayonet—teams had been reassigned back to general Mossad operations. In 1987, Hamas had formed, and the blood began to flow on Israeli soil. By 1994, some in Mossad were beginning to think disbanding the Wrath of God teams had been a mistake, and were looking to rekindle the Kidon mission, but convincing the command was another story. Too much training. Too much overhead. Too much everything for too little gain. Then Samson fell into its lap. Almost a Kidon element in its own right. All it needed was a little sharpening of a few global edges.

The Mossad went to work, and the results began immediately, with the 1995 killing in Malta of Fathi Shaqaqi, the creator of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. There were a few missteps after that first success, the worst being two operatives captured in Jordan in 1997. They’d injected the Hamas political bureau chairman, Khaled Mashaal, with poison, but were swiftly captured by Jordanian police, leading to enormous political repercussions. The mission ended with Israel flying in an antidote to the poison, forced to admit its hand in the operation.

The teams learned quickly from those mistakes, and had some notable successes, including the 2008 killing of Imad Mughniyah—a master Hezbollah terrorist—in Damascus, Syria, and the 2010 killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh—the founder of Hamas’s militant wing—in Dubai, UAE.

Even with these successes, without a burning desire to keep the mission—without a Munich—people in the upper echelon of Mossad still questioned the expense and waste of teams dedicated to targeted killing. After all, they did nothing for years at a time. Couldn’t Mossad simply put a team together when necessary? Did Israel really need dedicated assets for the mission?

With the target on his computer, it appeared Samson had finally turned the corner, and their worth was being proved.

Aaron reflected on the profile for a moment, running through various options in his mind. Of course, the target himself had a vote, and would dictate to a certain extent what was possible, but sending a message required a specific signature. Mossad wanted Syria to know it was
them
who had taken the life, but needed to ensure the prime minister of Israel could say
No comment
with a straight face. In other words, everyone would know with a wink and a nod, but nobody could prove anything.

He pulled up the location of the meeting on Google Earth, and thought about the atmospherics.
Yes. It would work.

The initial Shabeeha meeting with other unknown personnel was just outside the Istanbul Grand Bazaar, in a rat warren of small streets and side alleys too small for a car. But not too small for a moped, which is what zipped around that area like little demons. A perfect mode of assault. Wearing helmets, a Samson element could blast up on a small motorcycle and assault the meeting site, surgically killing the Syrian without harming anyone else in attendance.
Exactly like the scientists.

Over the past several years, five Iranian nuclear scientists and the commander of Iran’s cyber warfare unit had been assassinated, all by attackers on motorcycles. Some were killed when a limpet-shaped charge was magnetically attached to their car door, others were simply gunned down in a drive-by, but all were the work of the Mossad, and the world knew it. True, the missions were executed by surrogates and not an actual Samson team, but everyone understood who the puppet master was. Using the same signature here would ensure the Syrian regime instantly recognized this hit for what it was.

Aaron smiled to himself. It looked like conducting “ordinary” Mossad case officer work in between Samson missions was paying off, even if Boris had died before he could provide the encryption key.

He’d left the Russian lying on the ground, heart quivering like a spastic colon and brain slowly dying. He dearly wanted to search the man, but there was no time. He had no way to explain their relationship to any authorities that responded to the medical emergency. No way to plausibly describe why the two were sitting together.

He’d had a lot of strange things happen during his time in the Mossad, to the point where he never discounted the impossible from interfering with his mission, but this topped them all. His source having a heart attack at the most vulnerable time—with the case officer next to him.

He’d settled for the information he already had, along with Boris’s physical key, and immediately headed for Istanbul, Turkey. Boris had provided one anchor—an Internet café in the Istanbul bus station—and Aaron was determined to find it.

Five minutes on the Internet revealed that Istanbul had a glut of bus stations, but only one that could be considered
the
Istanbul bus station. The Esenler Otogar. It was the third-largest bus station in the world, with more than three hundred different platforms utilized by buses leaving for destinations all over Europe and Asia. If Boris had left the documents at a bus station, this one was the first on the list for Aaron to check.

He’d taken a taxi to the station and found himself swallowed by a never-ending stream of people running about like ants. The place was a huge horseshoe, with bus platforms ringing a central building and metro station. After exploring some of the terminals, he shifted focus. Somewhere there had to be a central shopping district for all of these people. While chaotic and large, at the end of the day, it wasn’t unlike a modern airport, with gates servicing transportation just like an air terminal.

He exited a platform and observed his surroundings, focusing on the central building in the center of the horseshoe. He dodged through the traffic, passed by stairs to the underground metro station, and entered the building.

Full of shops selling everything from running shoes to vegetables, he wondered how they stayed in business. Did travelers really want a bushel of beans or a new stereo before getting on a bus?

He saw a sign proclaiming Internet access with an arrow pointing up a flight of stairs. Before mounting them, he assessed his status. Could he penetrate here and not be remembered? Did the atmospherics facilitate a play for the documents?

He had the key, but nothing else, and the only way to succeed was to portray himself as knowing exactly what he was doing. But he had no real idea of what actions he was supposed to take, because he hadn’t been able to confirm the bona fides for the café. Thus, he was forced to fish, and he studied the area to determine if he could do so without anyone wandering inside the station remembering him.

He’d decided he was good. The place was a beehive of activity, with everyone within an hour of being on a bus to a different country. He mounted the stairs.

Reaching the top, he’d found three different Internet cafés and one phone center. He studied them for a moment, watching the people coming and going, along with the men behind the central desks. He focused on one with a younger Turk, seeing him conduct several transactions that had nothing to do with the Internet. Transactions that were probably less than savory, given the furtive nature of the customers. He approached.

The young man looked at him expectantly, and he removed the key, eyeing the people on the computers, relieved to see they all were engrossed in their web experience.

The clerk said something in Turkish, mistaking Aaron’s Mediterranean appearance as a local. He answered in English, and the man said, “You want computer?”

Aaron held out his key and said, “No. I want the box to this.”

The man looked at him in confusion, and Aaron knew he’d made a mistake. He said, “Sorry. I’m in the wrong place.”

He exited, kicking himself, but he knew there was nothing else he could have done. Getting out swiftly was the best chance of not being remembered. He surveyed the other two cafés and began thinking like Boris. Thinking like a spy. Who would he trust? Not a kid. Someone else. Someone who’d probably done espionage for Boris in the past.

He studied the clerks from the other two Internet shops and focused on the smaller café, with only three computers that were years out of date. How did that guy stay in business with the other cafés next to him using more modern systems?

He approached and repeated his request. The man saw the key and became wary, saying, “Where did you get that?”

“From a friend.”

The clerk took the key and bent down, removing a metal lockbox. He used the key to open the lid, then pulled out a sheet of torn paper, reading the words. Inside, Aaron saw a thumb drive.

The man picked up a cell phone and dialed a number from the paper, a number that Aaron knew wouldn’t be answered. He waited patiently until the man put the phone down. He said, “I’m sorry. My instructions were to call and confirm. I cannot help you until the man answers. Perhaps try again tomorrow.”

The clerk was visibly shaking, worried about his answer. Aaron smiled, disarming him. “Of course. I would expect nothing less. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

The man smiled in return, nodding.

Aaron left, took a seat outside, and waited.