The Temple Mount Code

16

Ezra hadn’t agreed to the rescue trip, but in the end Lev hadn’t given him a choice. After Alice’s call, Lev had escaped from the apartment. Unfortunately, Ezra had discovered his getaway and come looking, finding him through a tracking device in his prosthesis Lev hadn’t known about. The young Mossad agent hadn’t caught up to Lev until he’d reached his destination, though, and his argument had proven persuasive enough to stay.

Lev sat in the passenger seat and tried calling the cellphone number Alice had used to contact him. She wasn’t answering.

‘Still no reply?’

‘No.’ Lev closed the phone unhappily.

‘Perhaps she’s in a place where she cannot talk.’ Ezra handled the car smoothly, negotiating the light evening traffic with ease. His gaze shifted relentlessly, always tracking and evaluating their surroundings. A machine pistol lay between the seats.

Lev wore a bulletproof vest despite his protests. The heavy garment itched in the heat. ‘You didn’t hear her. She was beside herself.’ Every time he replayed the conversation in his mind, Alice sounded more desperate.

Ezra shrugged. ‘Maybe she and her husband made up. A lot of people have arguments. Too much to drink, a few harsh words, then they make up later.’

‘Her husband is Austrian People’s Party leader Von Volker. He wouldn’t show his face in this city.’

‘Ah.’ Ezra shook his head. ‘That man I do not like. Anti-Semitic with ties to Iran. A partnership forged in hell for certain. What is this woman doing with him if she is such a good friend to you?’

‘Her parents arranged the marriage.’

‘What were they thinking?’

‘They wanted Alice to marry into nobility. They think the same way as Von Volker when it comes to a unified Germany and Austria.’

‘Are you sure she’s a friend?’ Ezra braked, then turned right onto St. Mark’s Road.

‘I am.’

‘With parents like that …’

‘Alice thinks her own thoughts.’

‘She just doesn’t pick her own husbands.’ Ezra shook his head. ‘My apologies. That was uncalled for.’

‘It’s all right. You don’t know Alice. If you did, you wouldn’t wonder about this. She was coerced by her parents, and she’d recently had her heart broken.’ Lourds hadn’t meant to do that, and Lev never faulted his friend. Anyone who knew Lourds should have known he’d never give himself to anything but his work. ‘Alice was hurt, confused, and wanted someone to love her. I’m sure Von Volker looked like quite a prize at the time.’

‘What does she look like?’ Slowing the car, Ezra scanned the nearly deserted sidewalks.

Another car, this one also carrying Mossad agents, trailed after them. Ezra had called in the second line of defense, and Lev couldn’t even imagine the flak the young man had endured to put that together.

‘Blond. Petite. Very pretty.’ Lev searched for her along the sidewalks as well.

‘How long has it been since you’ve seen her?’

‘Years. Her husband doesn’t let her stray far.’ Lev felt sad for Alice when he mentioned that, but there’d been nothing he could do.

‘Maybe she’s changed.’

A moment later, a feminine form stepped out of the shadows near a coffee shop whose neon signs still shone. The moonlight and neon highlighted the pale blond hair, but the darkness masked her face.

‘There she is.’ Lev pointed.

‘I see her.’ Ezra applied the brakes and reached for the machine pistol. He spoke into the headset comm he wore. ‘I have eyes-on. The subject is in the alley by the coffee shop.’

‘Understood. Do you want us in close?’

‘No. Just play everything loose.’ Ezra pulled the car into the alley only a few feet from the woman.

Lev popped the door open and got out, avoiding Ezra’s desperate grab. ‘Alice?’

She turned to him then, and the neon lights from the coffee shop took away just enough of the night to reveal her features in profile. Even then, Lev knew the woman wasn’t Alice.

Before he could say anything, she turned and ran, and he knew something was very wrong. He turned to shout a warning to Ezra, but the young Mossad agent’s neck blossomed bright blood that spattered Lev’s face. Ezra staggered, managed to get the machine pistol in his hand, and went down.

The second car shrieked to a stop behind them. Before the two agents in it could get out, the vehicle exploded, leaping into the air and flipping over. Flames enveloped it, and the heat drove Lev backwards.

Three men dressed in black erupted from the alley. They bristled with weapons, but one man carried a curious pistol. The weapon hissed rather than detonated, and something sharp struck Lev in the throat.

Lev wrapped his hands around his neck and felt the small dart lodged in the hollow of his jaw. A warm lassitude filled his head, invaded his brain, and he was falling.

The men were good.

Watching from the shadows, Rayan Mufarrij appreciated the simple, brutal attack. If he’d had the manpower, the ability to manipulate the target as these men had, he would have done the same thing. The woman — not the one that had been there, but the one she was supposed to represent — meant something to Lev Strauss. She wasn’t who she’d claimed to be, though. Strauss had started moving away before his attackers had struck. He’d recognized her as a stranger, or someone other than who he thought she was.

Mufarrij stayed where he was and kept watching. He was a patient man. A man in his calling either learned patience quickly or died. Muffarrij was forty years old, and twenty-five years into his chosen vocation.

If anyone intercepted him and recognized him, his life would be forfeit. The Israelis wanted him dead for assassinations of their people. The Shiites would kill him on general principles, and Colonel Davari had lost key personnel on operations that had brushed too closely to ones Mufarrij had been conducting. Al-Qaeda had placed a bounty on him for all the death and destruction he’d wreaked on their numbers in his native Saudi Arabia.

All in all, Jerusalem wasn’t a good place for him to be, and an even worse place for him to get caught playing in the backyards of others.

He stood in the alley with the motorcycle he’d had waiting for him when he’d followed Von Volker’s mercenary team to Jerusalem. Local contacts, men he trusted and had worked with before, had supplied him with it and his weapons.

Across the street, working in the light and twisting shadows given off by the burning car, Lev Strauss’s kidnappers gathered him up and carried him to a small cargo van at the back of the alley. Mufarrij knew the alley was a dead end from his earlier recon of the area.

Knowing the men would be back, Mufarrij pulled on his full-face helmet and climbed aboard the motorcycle. He pressed the ignition button, and the engine caught smoothly. The flat black motorcycle blended perfectly into the darkness. He wore black riding leathers, just another shadow in the city.

A small Fiat raced from the alley, followed by the cargo van and trailed by a second sedan. Von Volker’s mercenary team had seven men. Three had been on the capture, two on the rocket launcher, and two more acting as lookouts.

Mufarrij engaged the clutch and dropped the shift lever into first gear with his left foot. He followed the caravan as it shot through the twisting streets. They were driving too fast, certain to draw the attention of local law enforcement. Mufarrij knew from that action that they didn’t have far to go. If they intended to drive out of the city, they would have driven more slowly.

If they were acting quickly, he had to as well. He reached into his jacket and drew the Glock 18C from its shoulder leather. He smiled at the thought of using it. Glock had developed the vicious little 9mm machine pistol at the insistence of EKO Cobra, the Austrian counterterrorist force that was formed to protect Jewish immigrants chased through Austria by Palestinian militants. Mufarrij knew that Von Volker would not have approved the pistol’s use.

Holding the motorcycle steady with his body, the cruise control on, Mufarrij removed the seventeen-round magazine and took one of the thirty-three-round magazines from the small duffel strapped to the handlebars. After sliding it into place, he held the Glock in his left hand and sped up alongside the rear car. He saw the two men inside — both Europeans — as he raced by.

They stared at him as he passed, and he knew they’d alert their teammates, but it was already too late. The motorcycle left him vulnerable to a degree, but he was nimble as a falcon in flight. He preferred the nimbleness.

The van driver swerved across the street in an effort to knock him aside. Mufarrij dodged the clumsy side-swipe with a smile. Pointing his pistol at the driver, he scared the man into moving away. The van’s passenger shoved himself through the window on his side, hoisted himself into a sitting position so he could fire, but Mufarrij accelerated as he squeezed the trigger. The blast from the man’s weapon stitched across a line of parked cars. Holes appeared in their fenders and windows blew out in clouds of flying glass.

Drawing abreast of the lead car, Mufarrij aimed the Glock at the driver from a few feet out. Panicked, certain he was about to die, the driver cut the wheels sharply left, trying to use the car as a weapon.

Mufarrij leaned left as well, heeling the cycle over as he brought the Glock down and emptied the thirty-three-round magazine at the front tires. The bullets blew out the left-front tire, then he shifted his aim to the edge of the carriage, knowing the parabellums would ricochet off the street and tear into the passenger-side tire.

With both tires blown, throwing rubber in all directions, and the bare rims sparking on the stones, the driver lost control of the vehicle and it flipped onto its side. As Mufarrij wheeled the motorcycle around, the stricken car skidded across the street, sparks flaring all around it.

Mufarrij slid off the motorcycle and swapped the empty magazine for a full one, tucking two more full mags into his jacket pocket. He pulled the helmet off because it restricted his vision.

The two men in the overturned car never had a chance. Mufarrij executed them as they slid toward him, shooting through the cracked windshield into their faces. The car shot on past him, the grinding metal drowning out all other sounds.

The van driver tried to brake, but it was too late. He rear-ended the overturned car, the van slewing sideways in the road.

Mufarrij strode to the driver, shot him in the head, then thrust his gun arm through the window and unleashed a short blast that punched the second man through the passenger window. There was a third man in the van, but Mufarrij didn’t have time to look for him. He changed out the magazine and raced to the back of the van as two men got out of the rear escort car. Taking cover behind the car doors, they opened fire, forcing him to hide behind the side of the van.

Momentarily pinned, Mufarrij reached into his jacket pocket and took out a grenade. Knowing he’d be traveling through the Jewish parts of the city, he’d come heavily equipped.

Pulling the pin, he slipped the spoon off the grenade, counted two seconds, then underhanded it toward the car, just before he ducked back under cover. His timing was perfect, and the explosion went off under the front wheels.

The car jumped up, and the antipersonnel fragmentation took out the legs of the mercenaries concealing themselves behind the doors. The blast also ripped through the tires, making the vehicle settle heavily onto the ground.

Mufarrij braced the pistol in both hands as he strode forward. One of the men struggled to get to his feet, but he was disoriented and bleeding profusely from his lower legs and feet. Mufarrij put a three-round burst through the man’s head and searched for the second one.

The other man lay beside the car, bleeding out. A piece of shrapnel had sliced through the inside of his right thigh and cut the femoral artery. As Mufarrij watched, the man lost consciousness.

A squeal of terror came from inside the car. Blood stained the blond woman’s head as she tried to push herself up. Her face slashed and speckled by broken glass, she stared at Mufarrij with wide, shocked eyes.

‘No. Please. Please, don’t—’

Mufarrij shot the blonde twice in the chest, sparing her family the agony of her ruined face. She fell back out of view without a sound.

Ignoring the van’s rear door, Mufarrij raced forward to the driver’s door. Men used to working in groups tended to cover a single field of fire, relying on their comrades to cover the others. The final mercenary in the van would be panicked with all his teammates lying dead around him. And he still had to protect their kidnap victim. Expecting an attacker to come in through the rear doors, he would be completely focused on them.

Peering through the open driver’s window, Mufarrij spotted the last mercenary crouched in the rear compartment. Lev Strauss lay on the vehicle’s floor, barely stirring, still overcome by whatever narcotic they’d used on him.