Reprisal (11 page)

Dartley never carried weapons across a border, seeing it as a foolish risk. He liked to enter a country in a business suit
or dressed as a tourist, and travel by scheduled airline or whatever would not attract attention.

There was no way around the vulnerability of a weapons pickup, and when he had the weapons, he became open to all sorts of
charges if he were caught in possession of them.

Availability of the latest and best guns, even in relatively isolated places, presented no problem. Anywhere in the free world,
if you had the cash to buy the best, someone found them for you.

Yahya Waheed didn’t look the wheeler-dealer sort that Dartley expected a gun merchant to be. What worried Dartley was that
he looked incompetent—was he to trust a harmless fuck who couldn’t even fix his own spectacles to do a weapons deal with him
in
a country where the government claimed all Americans were agents of the Devil? Dartley couldn’t afford to have anything go
wrong for him in a place like this. Certainly not on the level of buying hardware from a jerk…

“Did you get everything Malleson asked you to get?” Dartley inquired.

“Yes, everything. We’ll go down now to my car and I will show you.”

They took the elevator down to a garage in the basement of the office building. Waheed led him to a green Mercedes parked
off in one corner away from the other vehicles. But they weren’t going anywhere. Waheed opened the trunk and gestured to two
leather suitcases.

Dartley liked this less and less. He unzipped one case—it wasn’t even locked—and lifted a light blanket that served as packing
for a field-stripped Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun.

“I want to assemble it,” Dartley said. He looked around. The garage was deserted. “All right here?”

Waheed nodded in a relaxed way and put a cigarette in his mouth.

Dartley put the gun together. It was new and in perfect condition. So far so good. This weapon was what he would depend on
if he was going to take out Hasan. This was a Model SD, the silenced version of the MP5. He had thought of an assault rifle,
such as an M16, but decided on a submachine gun for its easier concealment and quick action.

When people thought of submachine guns, they thought of the Uzi. The U.S. Secret Service used the Uzi—all the world saw the
agent holding one on
videotape when President Reagan was felled by a psycho’s bullet. The tough guys—good and bad—on TV dramas carried Uzis. But
everyone in the know used the Heckler & Koch MP5; the Coast Guard, DEA, Special Forces, Rangers, SEALS, the FBI counterterrorist
team… in the United States alone. And they had one good reason: The MP5 was the only submachine gun which fired from a closed
bolt. This meant that when a shot was fired, the only part of the mechanism which moved was the hammer, and this, of course,
greatly increased the gun’s accuracy.

The gun’s method of operation was delayed blowback. The delay in the unlocking of the bolt after the firing of a shot was
caused by rollers. This delay allowed the bullet to leave the barrel, and thus the gas pressure to drop, before the breach
could open. The cartridge case acted as a piston during recoil in this roller lock system. The cartridge case pushed the bolt
backward while being floated in the chamber by the powder gases. The system was therefore a combination of recoil activated
and gas operated, but without a gas system to clean.

The semirigid bolt was locked by two side-acting rollers that bore against notches in the receiver. When a shot was fired,
the rollers pushed into the bolt head and exerted pressure on the firing pin extension. This extension became separated from
the bolt head and was pushed back. The rollers left the receiver grooves and withdrew into the bolt. By then the bullet had
exited from the barrel, causing the gas pressure to drop. Only the return spring was now holding the bolt in place and thus
it was easily driven backward by the recoiling cartridge case. As the case
ejected, the return spring forced the bolt forward again, stripped a new cartridge from the magazine, and pushed it into the
chamber.

Everything looked in good order to Dartley. He loaded some thirty-round detachable box magazines with 9 X 19 mm parabellum
ammo. He hefted the weapon—it weighed a little less than six pounds, and felt nicely balanced, a little heavier toward the
front.

He replaced everything in the suitcase, ready to use, checked other items, then replaced the packing and zipped the suitcase.
Dartley went through the second suitcase much more quickly. He took out a miniature spray can, filled it from a plastic bottle
of Clorox and dropped it in his pocket.

Next he took out what looked like a pen. Using only one hand, he flipped off the top to reveal a short, double-edged blade.
The base of each side of the blade was serrated to cut through nylon line and plastic tape. This was the new Tekna T-6000
Micro-Knife, the blade of which was formed from a single billet’ of moly-vanadium stainless steel—it was tough metal and didn’t
lose its edge being hacked around. He replaced the top of the pseudo pen and dropped that in a pocket too.

“I’m not going to chance carrying anything else,” he said to Waheed, “in case I get taken in or searched.”

“I have arranged a pickup for the bags,” the Egyptian said. “You have a hundred-dollar bill?”

Dartley peeled a crisp one from his roll and handed it to him.

Waheed tore it in half along a zigzag pattern. He
gave one half back to Dartley and said, “That will be your hatcheck. That is what you say?”

“Sure.”

“I leave these suitcases in the Pensione Cornwall at this number on Adli Street in the New City. You give the desk clerk that
half of the bill so he can put it with this half to make himself very happy. You will have your two suitcases. What could
look more natural than an American leaving a hotel with two suitcases?”

“Sure.” Dartley made to walk away across the garage to an exit door.

Waheed called after him. “The Pensione Cornwall is on the seventh floor of an apartment building. Mostly the elevator is not
working, I am sorry. But it keeps the place very private.”

“Sure.”

When Omar Zekri told Awad and Zaid about the American who claimed to be Pritchett’s boss and was looking for Dr. Mustafa Bakkush,
they checked on him at Immigration, noted his phony “agricultural expert with the UN” status, thought nothing much about it
and filed a routine report. Which got them hauled in on an emergency basis. Find this man. Take him alive if possible. At
all events, take him out of circulation even if the crudest means were necessary. But only as a last resort. Go. Do it. Now.

Yes, sir.

Like that.

Zaid and Awad were used to such mistreatment from their bureaucratic superiors. They hardly bothered to wonder why this was
such a big deal. They just
drove out and hit on Zekri again, had him show them the exact place where he was to meet with the American along with the
other informant he was supposed to bring. They didn’t have to tell Omar he was not to show up as arranged.

They set things up calmly, paying no attention to the screams and demands of the pen pushers giving them orders, collected
good men and allowed themselves plenty of time.

The black van turned off the Sharia El Sheikh Marsafy on Zamalek Island in the Nile and continued down the dusty, tree-lined,
residential street.

“Here,” Awad called, and Zaid pulled the van to the side.

Zaid climbed out and opened the rear doors. He said to the four men who emerged, “Remember, take him alive. That’s why there’s
four of you.”

The van waited until the men had disappeared over the wall and then drove slowly on down the empty road. The men had a wait
of three hours in front of them, so they settled themselves comfortably in the shade behind the wall, with one posted as a
lookout in the branches of a tree where he could see up and down the road.

Dartley showed a little before time. At least the lookout figured it had to be the American they were waiting for—he had a
description and this Westerner fitted it—and what other American could be expected to be walking along this particular high-class,
residential road at this particular hour, not even with a limousine or taxi? He called down softly from the branches to the
three other men.

It was Dartley all right. He was expecting the
worst as he walked along the deserted road with its high walls, big gateways into hidden residences and tropical shade trees.
Omar Zekri would have gone to Pritchett at the embassy, and Pritchett would have said keep away or play him along without
giving him anything or chase him out of town, maybe worse. Omar wasn’t capable of doing any of these things except keeping
away, and so it was no surprise to Dartley not to find the Egyptian at their arranged meeting place.

Dartley looked at his watch. He was ten minutes early. He’d give Omar or whoever was going to show an hour. In the meantime
it made no sense for him to stand out like a bowling pin in an empty alley. He took a short run, gripped the top of the stone
wall with his fingers, hauled himself to the top, rolled over and landed on his feet on the other side.

Dartley found himself standing among four startled Egyptians, strong-arm types not given to conversation.

“Masa’ al kheir.” Dartley wished them good evening.

They said nothing. But their muscles were twitching. Any moment now, their brains would be working.

Dartley’s hands came from his pockets. He flipped the top off the pen in his right hand and sprayed Clorox in the faces of
the two nearest men from the can in his left hand.

As those two staggered about, yelping and wiping their eyes, Dartley advanced fast on the next man. Holding the penlike handle
of the Tekna Micro-Knife between the first two fingers of his clenched first, he punched at the man’s throat. He missed the
first time. The second time the man’s arm took the blade
and he clutched at the wound, leaving his neck open. The third time Dartley hit home.

He punched the short blade into the man’s throat just to one side of his windpipe. Then he thrust sideways and the blade’s
serrated edge ripped through the windpipe, artery and veins, leaving his neck looking like a ripped open phone cable, not
counting the blood.

Dartley lost his grip on the knife and had used up the spray can on the first two men, so he had to take the fourth man with
his hands. The guy must have been slow or had been doing one thing and took the time to change his mind and try another. He
was still in the act of drawing an automatic pistol from his shoulder holster. He nearly had the weapon drawn—Dartley could
see it was taking him an extra second because of a silencer which extended the length of the barrel and had maybe gotten delayed
in the holster.

The man was right-handed. As he drew the pistol from under his left arm, Dartley checked his right arm with a left-hand pressing
block. Simultaneously, Dartley delivered a right vertical flatfist to the back of the Egyptian’s gun hand.

Keeping his grip on the man’s right arm with his left hand, Dartley grabbed the right side of his collar with his other hand.
He wrenched his head and neck downward, positioning him nicely for a right knee kick to the groin.

The knee in the balls seemed to knock the joy of life out of his opponent. Dartley grabbed his right wrist with both hands
and used a reverse twist throw to bring him down on his back. He freed the gun
from the holster and put a bullet between the Egyptian’s eyes at point-blank range, like putting away a sick animal. The guy
kicked and stiffened. That was all.

The two Clorox customers were still blindly thrashing about and complaining. They didn’t even see Dartley put the gun to their
heads to relieve their discomfort.

He glanced at the gun out of interest. It was a 7.65 mm Manurhin, which was the French licensed version of the German Walther
PPK. The silencer was big and clumsy, but effective. Dartley was tempted to keep the weapon. He decided against it, wiped
his prints from it and carefully replaced it in its dead owner’s shoulder holster.

Knowing there was nothing to learn from the four bodies, Dartley searched for the spray can, the knife and its top. When he
pocketed them, he pulled himself to the top of the wall and spotted a black van traveling slowly, too slowly, in his direction
some distance down the road.

He jumped down inside the wall again, crossed some more compounds, found another road and waited until dark before slipping
out of the area.

The meeting was going badly for Aaron Gottlieb. The Russian contingent was giving him the most trouble. The bastards had barely
learned Hebrew and eased off moaning about the beauties of Mother Russia when they were trying to take over the kibbutz already.
Aaron Gottlieb was a Sabra. Born right here on this kibbutz. Father and mother both American citizens. Grandfather and grandmother
well-to-do German
Jews prominent enough to be forced out by the Nazis in the 1930s before the ovens were built. He, Aaron Gottlieb, had fought
for the entry of these Russian refugees into the kibbutz when they had no where else to go and neither spoke Hebrew so you
could understand it nor knew how to work the land. Couldn’t tell a chicken from a pigeon—of course they might be the same
thing in Russia. Anyway, he had helped them—and now that they had found their feet, they turned on him, accusing him of ordering
them about and calling him behind his back “the kibbutz commissar.” Truth was, he had a brain and was not afraid to use it.
A lot of the other young people with brains had left the kibbutzim for the city. He had stayed, when he wasn’t away on missions….
One old Russian—who, God forgive him, Stalin should have liquidated—was droning on in his weird accent.

“For this we come to the Promised Land? We return to the soil. We should have cows and orange groves and chickens. We should
irrigate the soil, make the desert green. We should give thanks to God, humbly, and labor in the fields under the open sky.
This is what we are told we will find. Is this what we find? I ask you that. Is this what we find? I say to a stranger who
does not know this place, ‘Would you believe alligators?’ He says to me, ‘Like crocodiles?’” The Russian shook his backside
and snapped his teeth. “Alligators in freshwater ponds, crawling around among the palm trees and bougainvillea. This is a
kibbutz in Zion! ‘This is not all,’ I tell this stranger, whose mouth is already hanging open because he cannot believe such
things about the Jewish homeland. ‘You think we show you temples the prophets
may have preached in? No, we don’t care about those! We dig up a Roman theater and build a museum for a pagan culture and
other Jews
pay
to see how these godless butchers sacrificed our people to wild animals.’ And the stranger says to me, ‘Leave this crazy
place, go to another kibbutz.’ And I say to him, ‘Where? In Givat Haim they have Arabian horses, breeding horses for the sport
of kings on a kibbutz, if you can believe it. In Haon they have ninety members and eighty ostriches.’ For this we come to
Zion? To raise show horses for aristocrats and pluck ostrich feathers for showgirls?”