Counterfire

30

For two hours that afternoon Murdock and Nissan toured the International Food and Novelties operation. Murdock saw a lot more than he wanted to. By the time they came to the warehouse and shipping, everyone there already knew who he was and that he was not after their jobs. Nissan played the tour leader at every stop.

“This is where our shipments are loaded; the last delivery is the first on the truck, and the first delivery is loaded on last.” They went around the truck into the warehouse.

“Here is where we store the goods until we ship them, and this is where we break down large shipments into smaller quantities for orders to go to individual retailers.”

They walked up one aisle, then over. His voice lowered so only Murdock could hear it. “This is where we have our Chinese orders. They should be on these pallet boards. Yes. Here. They are separated by food and novelties.” He produced a razor-blade knife, and quickly slit the tape on top of the cardboard box and opened it. Inside were cartons filled with toys, whistles, and noisemakers. The next box had boxes of pencils, tablets, and notebooks. The third box, listed as novelties from China, held packages of the long gaily colored tubes.

“Those are the ones,” Murdock said. “They are bombs like the ones that have been washing up on the beaches.”

Nissan looked at the numbers on the box, and some key words, and wrote them down on a pad from his pocket. “These orders went through Mr. Rafi. Let’s go talk to him.”

Murdock touched the .45 automatic under his left arm, and followed the merchant out of the warehouse and back to the third floor. They went to the owner’s office, and Nissan asked his secretary to have Rafi come in.

“He’s always been so mild-mannered. I can’t understand why he would do something like this.” The man who came in the office was about five feet six inches. He wore slacks, a white shirt, and tie. Murdock figured he was about 130 pounds, wiry, would be tough in a fight. He smiled, but seemed ill at ease.

“Rafi, how are the Chinese items going? I know we don’t have a lot of ethnic Chinese in the city, so the food sales will always be slow. What about the novelties? They seem to have more volume.”

“Yes. Exactly, Mr. Nissan. The novelties do sell better, so I order more of them.”

“You’ve been ordering all of the novelties?”

“Yes, I specialize in them.”

“Good. Let’s go down to the warehouse. There’s one bunch that look like they were severely damaged in transit. I want you to check them out and tell me if we should bill the shipping company or the supplier for the damage.”

“Yes, no problem, Mr. Nissan.”

The three of them went back to the warehouse. Rafi pulled on cotton gloves.

“I always wear gloves when I inspect the goods,” he said. “That way I don’t damage them and I don’t get my hands cut up.”

At the boxes they showed him the two they had opened.

“No damage that I can see,” Rafi said.

Nissan opened the next box and exposed the plastic tube bombs. Rafi never blinked. He inspected the sides of the box, then the contents.

“No damage. I don’t understand.”

“Do you know what these items are, Mr. Rafi?” Murdock asked.

“Certainly. Item 14-14-12 Chinese light sticks. You bend them and break them and they light up.”

“I see. So would you take your gloves off and bend one for us, as a demonstration?” Murdock asked.

Rafi frowned. “I can’t do that. I never take my gloves off. My hands are highly sensitive.”

“Then I’ll do it for you,” Murdock said, reaching for one of the colorful tubes that lay on top of the package. His hand was almost on it when Rafi knocked it aside.

“No, don’t,” he shouted. He grabbed two of the floating bombs and ran down the aisle.

“Stop, Rafi,” Nissan shouted. “We can work this out.”

Murdock ran after the man. Rafi twisted one of the tubes and threw it at Murdock. The tube hit the hardwood floor and exploded like a hand grenade, but with no shrapnel. Murdock charged through the smoke of the bomb, and saw the man heading up some steps. Rafi pulled a pistol from his pocket and fired once. It sounded like a.32. Murdock ducked behind some wooden crates, then charged up the stairs when the man vanished through a door.

Murdock went up the last few steps slowly, watched around the door casing, and dodged back as a shot slammed through the air where his head had been. Murdock wished he had put on his Motorola. He could use some SEAL backup about now.

The room at the top of the stairs was a manager’s office. Across the way Murdock saw another door that was just closing. He rushed toward it, kicked it open, and leaned against the wall beside the door. A shot snarled through the opening. Murdock peered around the door from floor level. It was an outside door with steps leading down to a roof. He saw Rafi running across the roof. He was too far away, but Murdock took a shot with the heavy .45. The sound alone might scare him.

Suddenly Rafi vanished over the side of the roof. Murdock charged down the few steps to the roof and surged across it. A metal-rung ladder extended down two stories to the ground. Rafi had just hit the last rung when Murdock fired. The downward shot ripped into the side of Rafi’s right leg and knocked him down. Before Murdock could move to get a clear shot at him outside the ladder, Rafi struggled to his feet and rushed toward a car in the parking lot. He was out of range of the heavy .45.

Murdock raced down the steel ladder, and hit the bottom just as the car Rafi jumped in started to move. The SEAL fired twice through the driver’s-side window, then twice at the rear, searching for the gas tank. The third shot at the tank sparked a flash fire that hit the vapors in the gas tank, which exploded like a firebomb. Flaming gasoline sprayed the mostly empty parking lot. The entire sedan gushed with flames, and Murdock knew that if his first two rounds hadn’t killed the bomber, then the fire had.

Nissan came to the edge of the roof and looked down. He shook his head and climbed down the ladder; then both of them stood there watching the car burn. Two other cars in the far side of the lot were not touched.

“Mr. Murdock, you better leave. We can square this with the police later. I’ll do the talking. Right now I want to get those bombs out of my warehouse and turn them over to the bomb squad.”

“Better tell them to bring two of their bomb buckets. They’re going to need them.”

“Could Rafi have done this by himself?” Nissan asked.

Murdock held up both hands palms up. “Hard to tell. Check his personnel file. See if there’s anything unusual. Talk to the men he worked with. I think I’ll do that right now.”

Murdock went back to the warehouse with Nissan. Because Murdock was with the boss, the men all talked freely, except for two who did not speak English. Another man translated for them.

None of the men knew what was in the boxes from China. They figured just regular novelty goods. Murdock took a heavy cloth and held up one of the deadly floating bombs.

“Now I know what those are,” one man said. “The booby traps on the beach that have been killing little children. How did they get here?”

Murdock didn’t answer him, merely talked to the rest of the men. Before he was done, three policemen came and took away the box of bombs. Nissan found two more boxes with more of the plastic tube bombs in them.

“Enough here to flatten this whole building,” one of the cops said. He was one who Murdock had talked to earlier that day at the police station. When the goods were all safely outside in the bomb boxes, heavy steel containers that could withstand a tremendous explosion and keep those nearby safe, the cop thanked Murdock.

Then the homicide crew came and looked over what was left of Rafi. A fire truck had put out the flames before the man’s body was totally destroyed. The cops ask how he’d died, and Nissan told them what had happened. They took Murdock’s .45 and the.32 hideout on his left leg and drove him downtown for questioning. The homicide team had just started to question Murdock when the phone rang.

“Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I understand. Right away, sir. Right.” The homicide investigator put down the phone and motioned to Murdock. “Our chief of police and a Colonel Ben-Ami want to talk to you in the chief’s office right away. Follow me, please.”

The office looked like a living room — plush chairs, carpeted floor, big-screen TV, table, large desk with an absolutely clean surface. Overhead recessed lighting, with the soft background of pulsing music.

Colonel Ben-Ami sat next to the desk, and behind it lounged a man in his fifties, gray/white hair, full white beard and mustache, and fiercely blue eyes over a nose that showed two breaks. Neither man stood.

Murdock watched both of them, came to attention in front of the desk, and waited for them to speak.

“Sounds like you’ve been busy, Murdock,” Colonel Ben-Ami said. “I thought you understood this was a controlled and unified team effort.”

“I understand that, Colonel.”

“I also understand that your efforts have resulted in the confiscation of over three hundred pounds of the floating booby traps out of a local business warehouse.”

“Yes, sir.”

“In the process a man was killed,” the chief said, his voice low, a rumble that reminded Murdock of far-away thunder.

“Yes, sir, I believe he died in a fire in his car which crashed.”

“Crashed after you shot it several times with a .45 automatic,” Colonel Ben-Ami said. “Is that correct, Commander?”

“Correct, sir.”

The chief stood and held out his hand, his face breaking into a huge grin that almost closed his eyes.

“Damn glad to have you on board, Commander Murdock. You had been sworn in as a temporary military policeman, so whatever happened at that warehouse was in the line of duty. We’ll need you to make a report, sit for a shooting panel which will be videotaped, but which is a formality. In a half hour you should be out of here.”

“What about the boat that drops the bombs?” Murdock asked.

“He’s still out fishing.”

“He’ll hear about this fire on his standard-band radio, and if the name of the dead man gets out, he will probably head for China.”

“For once, we’re ahead of you, Commander,” Colonel Ben-Ami said. He smiled. “It’s a good feeling. As soon as we heard about the fire and the raid here, we put Lieutenant DeWitt and six men in a fast police launch. It and another boat with SAS divers are now heading for sea in an effort to track down the boat and to bring it, and Zekharyah, back to face the courts.”

“Good,” Murdock said. “I’d like to get my two weapons back.”

“Routine after the taping. I want to thank you again, Commander. You’ve solved a problem that we’ve had for almost a year.”

An hour and a half later when Murdock was released from the central jail, he found Lam and Jaybird waiting for him, along with the colonel and his staff car.

On the way back to the air base, the colonel took a phone call. He listened, said a few words in Hebrew, and hung up. “We have a report that the two patrol boats now at sea have cleared thirty-five fishing boats. There are six more in the area they are heading for. They tell me they have a report that the Gimbra II owner was recently granted a license to carry an automatic rifle on board because he was afraid of pirates.

“My guess is that he also has on board submachine guns for his crewmen. They have to be in on this operation. If they have tuned in to local news stations lately, they’ll know about the fire and the death and the police raid on the International Food and Novelty company. They will be ready to put up a fight.”

“It might not last that long if DeWitt is in command,” Murdock said.

“The problem is, they can’t sink the boat. They have to bring it back with Zekharyah alive if possible so he can stand trial for treason. That’s what the civil authorities want as much as the bombs to stop.”

Murdock looked toward the sea. “I just wish I was out there with them. It sounds like it should be a good fight.”