The Lance (The PROJECT: Book Two) (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

Nic
holas Carter looked at Elizabeth Harker and thought if there were any elves in the world, they probably looked like her. She was small boned and slim. She had milk white skin and small ears tucked under raven black hair. She had wide, green eyes. She was dressed in a black pants suit and white blouse with a Mao collar. In two years working for her he'd never seen her wear anything but black and white.

Harker ran the Project, the Presidential Official Joint Exercise in Counter Terrorism. She was Nick's boss. Her boss was the President.

On Harker's desk were a silver pen, a picture of the Twin Towers burning and a manila folder. The pen had belonged to FDR. The picture was a reminder. The folder was likely going to shape his day. Working for Harker meant he never knew if the day might leave him hanging out on the edge and wondering if he could pull himself back in.

He heard Harker say, "Someone's thinking about making trouble in the Middle East." 

"Someone's always thinking about making trouble in the Middle East. What's different now?"

He fumbled in his pocket, found a crumbly antacid tablet and popped it in his mouth. Carter felt the tremor of a headache starting. Harker picked up her silver pen and began tapping it on the polished surface of her desk. Each tap vibrated inside his skull.

"The President is speaking in Jerusalem on Thursday. We have a source who says there's going to be trouble. He wants a face to face meet."

Carter tugged on the mutilated lobe of his left ear
, where a Chinese bullet had taken off the lobe a few months ago. The bandage was off. It had looked better with it on.

It was the same ear that
itched whenever things were about to get dicey, his very own personal early warning system. It itched now. A gift, or a curse, that he'd inherited from his Irish Grandmother, along with dreams he didn't want to have.

"Have you passed this to Langley? What do they say?"

"I'm supposed to back off and leave things up to the 'professionals'." There was an edge to her voice. "Lodge says there's no need for concern."

Wendell Lodge, Acting Director of the CIA.

"He says he and his Israeli counterparts have everything under control."

"Mossad?"

"And Shin Bet."

"What's Shin Bet?" said Selena.

Selena Connor sat next to Carter on Harker's leather couch. The ceiling lights caught the reddish blond color of her hair and turned her eyes violet. She wore a tan silk outfit and a pale blouse that went with her eyes. She was the first woman Nick had let get close since Megan died. He didn't know where it was going. Or if he wanted it to go anywhere. She was new to the team, which meant she had a lot to learn, which worried the hell out of him

Selena brushed a stray wisp of hair from her forehead.

Harker said, "Shin Bet is Israel's version of the FBI, on steroids. They handle internal security and counter-terrorism. Mossad is foreign intelligence and ops, like MI6 or CIA."

Carter looked down at his hands and picked at a broken fingernail. "Lodge is a devious bastard and a narcissist."

"Whatever he is, he's not going to brush us off. You're going to Israel. You find something that threatens Rice's security, give it to Shin Bet and the Secret Service. They've got the manpower, let them handle it. You leave today."

"I always wanted to see Jerusalem. Maybe I'll get a little sightseeing in."

She set the pen down and folded her hands. "It's not a vacation, Nick. You're booked into the same hotel as the President as part of his party, right outside the Old City. The Israelis may not let you keep your weapon. They're sensitive about guns and you're not Secret Service."

"Who's the source
over there?"

"His name is Arshak Arslanian. He has a shop in the Armenian Quarter." She slid the manila folder across her desk. "His photo and info is in there."

Harker turned to Selena. "Selena, you continue with Ronnie this afternoon."

Ronnie was the third member of Nick's team. He was
just back from visiting his family on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. He'd been coaching Selena. Physical training, weapons, codes, the tricks of personal survival. All the things that might give her a chance to make it through the next year.

Harker tapped her pen and looked at Nick. "You'll need a lot of time to clear security. You'd better get going."

CHAPTER THREE

Carter sat
with his back against the wall at a café in the New City, drinking espresso, watching the crowd. The night was warm. The pedestrian mall where King George and Ben-Yahuda streets and the Jaffa Road came together in Jerusalem was packed with people.

For the Jewish people
, Jerusalem was the center of the world. It was where the Messiah would some day appear. It was the place where God had commanded the building of His Temple, where every stone, pebble and grain of dust on the Temple Mount was sacred ground. Devout Jews all over the world recited prayers each day for the restoration of the Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.

The most important shrines of Christianity were here. The tomb of Christ, the room of the last supper, the Garden of Gethsemane where Christ received the Judas kiss. The place where Pontius Pilate passed sentence. The place of crucifixion. Every Christian denomination in the world had a church or shrine somewhere in the Old City.

For Muslims, the al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount was one of the holiest sites in Islam. The Mosque faced the Dome of the Rock, where they believed Muhammad had ascended to heaven on a winged horse to receive instruction from God. The Muslims had lost Jerusalem to the Israelis in the 1967 war. They wanted it back.

Armies had fought over Jerusalem for three thousand years. T
he narrow streets of the Old City had run ankle deep in blood more than once. Unless someone found a path to peace in the region, Carter figured the streets would run with blood again.

He'd thought he was done with all that, with the blood, when he left the
Marines. Now he worked for the Project. Even though he was a civilian, he was still waking up in war zones. He did his best not to think about it. Best thing, focus on the mission. It was why he was in Jerusalem on a perfect October evening. Someone had to do it.

Carter drank his coffee and watched the crowd, tracking, reading expressions, looking for anything unusual. His eyes never stayed still. It was an old habit and it was why he was still alive. He never assumed he was safe. He never trusted appearances.

A young woman in a red dress played an accordion nearby. She had long, dark tresses and she laughed while she played. A small group of smiling people stood in front of her, tapping their feet in time to the music. Children ran through the throng. Carter smiled.

The night disappeared in violent white light.

The blast sent Nick backward into the wall and down to the pavement.

Everything went white. He was back in Afghanistan. He could smell the dust, hear the AKs firing, the explosions all around him. Then the white faded. The flashback faded. He could still hear the echoes of the AKs and smell the dry dust of the street.
For a moment he didn't know where he was. Then he did.

A pall of black smoke hung over torn b
odies spread in a red smear across the plaza. A flat, dead silence filled his ears. Then the screaming started.

A heavy café
table lay on top of him. He pushed it to the side and got to his feet. The woman in the red dress lay crumpled and torn nearby, her accordion shattered and silent.

B
roken glass and smashed furniture littered the plaza. There was blood on him, but it wasn't his. Carter took a step and tripped. He looked down at a child's foot in a blue shoe. It was just a small foot. A piece of white bone stuck out of a pink sock.

He
bent over and threw up the espresso in a yellow brown stream. The acrid, coppery stench of blood poisoned the clean night air. He straightened up and wiped his lips. Something caught his eye across the way.

A man
stood off to the side of the plaza. He was of medium height, with close set dark eyes, black hair, a thin black mustache and neat beard. He wore a shapeless brown jacket, baggy brown pants and a dirty yellow shirt. He was talking on a cell phone.

He was s
miling.

The smile vanished
when he saw Carter looking at him. He turned and walked away, holding the phone to his ear.

Who smiles at a slaughterhouse? Carter started after him
.

Brown Jacket picked up his pace. He glanced back and
turned into a wide alley between two buildings. Nick wished he had his .45. The Israelis had refused to let him carry it. He began running. Shouts sounded behind him as he sprinted into the alley.

The alley crossed between the buildings to the next street over. Brown
Jacket and two others stood halfway down. At the far end of the passage a white Volvo waited, motor running, one man inside. Brown Jacket said something to the two men and walked toward the car. The others started toward Nick.

The larger man wore a loose blue jacket
over a dingy white shirt and jeans. His head was bullet shaped and shaven. His face was dissolute, with ridges of old scar tissue over eyes that looked dead. His ears were crumpled cauliflowers and his hands were broad clubs, scarred with swollen and broken knuckles. A street fighter, a boxer.

The other man was the leader
. He was small, mean looking and dark, with shiny, squinty eyes, a scruffy beard and a nasty smile that showed gaps in his teeth. The two separated, a few feet apart, Squinty to Nick's right, Boxer to his left. A flash of steel appeared in each man's hand.

Knives. He hated knives.

Words echoed inside his head.

You've got two choices
in an alley fight. Run or attack. If you attack, if there's more than one man, go for the leader. Always take out the leader first.

He
walked straight at them. Not what they expected. Then he sprinted at Squinty and shouted from deep in his gut, a harsh, primal scream that vibrated off the alley walls. It froze both men, just long enough.

Squinty lunged
forward, the knife held straight out and low, coming up for a classic strike under the rib cage to rip the diaphragm and the aorta. Carter grasped his wrist and reached over with his left hand, levered up and out and broke Squinty's elbow, using momentum to fling him to the side. He side kicked and took out Boxer's knee.

The knee folded sideways at an impossible angle. It crunched and broke, a deep, unmistakable sound of terrible injury and unbearable pain.
Boxer screamed and slashed out as he went down. A cut cold as ice opened along Nick's thigh.

Boxer
tried to sit up. Carter kicked him in the throat. He clutched his neck and fell back choking. His eyes opened wide in terror as he tried to breathe. At the other end of the alley, Brown Jacket got into the Volvo. As the car drove off, he threw Nick a look of venomous hatred. 

Squinty reached for his knife with his left hand
. Nick kicked him hard in the head, a kick that could have got him into the NFL. Back at the entrance of the alley two cops appeared, guns drawn, shouting. Carter raised his hands, fingers spread wide.

He guessed he was about to find out
what the inside of an Israeli police station looked like.

CHAPTER FOUR

Selena and Ronnie Peete were in the basement pistol range of the Project building outside of Washington. Ronnie was Navajo, born on the Rez. He was a tough man, yet Selena had seen him reciting a sacred Navajo ritual just before the three of them were about to parachute into the highest mountains on earth.

She thought it an odd mix, a man who could hold on to something sacred or an MP-5 with equal ease. He'd been in Nick's Recon unit in Afghanistan and Iraq, and, she thought, a few other places people didn't usually hear about. Sometimes she felt a little jealous of the bond between the two men.

Ronnie was b
road shouldered and narrow hipped. He had sleepy brown eyes that looked out past a large, Roman nose and strong arms that bulged under the short sleeves of his Hawaiian shirt. His skin was the color of the desert on a summer day, light brown blended with a subtle undertone of red.

She watched him lay out two Beretta nine millimeter automatics on the shooting bench.

"How was Arizona?" she said.

"It was great. You been down there?"

"Monument Valley and Four Corners. I've never seen colors like that, the way the light paints the rocks and the desert."

Ronnie nodded. "You can let your mind go in all that space. When the rains come and the clouds build up over the Sacred Mountains, it's one of the most beautiful sights in the world."

He reached in his pocket, took a picture from his wallet. He handed it to Selena. It showed a stout, older woman in front of a low building of wood capped with an earthen roof. A deep red velvet dress, almost purple, reached to her ankles. Around her neck and on her arms and hands she wore heavy jewelry of silver and turquoise. Next to her stood a man in jeans, a plaid shirt and a flat brimmed black Stetson sporting a silver Concho hat band.

"This is my Auntie and Uncle. They're both traditional Navajo. He's a Singer."

"A singer? You mean like rock and roll?"

Ronnie laughed, a deep, belly laugh. "No, a Singer is...like a doctor. Only he's a doctor for restoring harmony, not a doctor with pills. When something bad happens, like sickness or if you break one of the traditional taboos, you call in a Singer. He helps you restore personal harmony. Then everyone feels better."

"Are you traditional?"

"No. It's mostly the old people. But I speak the language and keep the stories in my mind. So I guess I am, in some ways."

He put the picture away and picked up one of the Berettas.

"I don't like these much," he said. "You find them everywhere, so you need to be familiar with them. Our troops carry them and some of our allies."

"Why don't you like them?"

"It takes three or four rounds from one of these to put down someone doped up and ready to die for Allah. Not enough punch with nine mil. Nick likes his H-K. I like Glocks, like the one you've got. They're light, they're reliable and they'll stop anyone."

They shot for a while. Ronnie showed her how to field strip, clean and reassemble the pistol. He had her practice until it felt familiar to her. He timed her and made her increase her speed. Then he blindfolded her and had her practice some more. After another hour he began packing up.

"How long have you known Nick?" Selena asked.

"Eight years. We were in Recon together. Special Ops. He was the best officer I ever served with. Never asked us to do anything he wouldn't."

"Were you there when he got hit? With that grenade?"

Something flickered across Ronnie's face, was gone.

"Yeah, I was there. But I don't really want to talk about it."

"Sorry."

"No, it's not like that." He smiled at her. "I just don't want to talk about it."

"Neither does Nick," she said.

Ronnie picked up a pistol, set it down again.

"You serious about him?"

Selena picked up one of her targets. Round holes in the black.

"He's still in love with Megan," she said.