The Vatican Knights

CHAPTER FIVE

He was nine years old when he lost his mother and sister to a suicide bomber on a trip to Ramallah. After going to the market, the boy, his mother, and his twelve-year-old sister boarded a bus for home.

Even to this day his memories recalled the pain and confusion of the explosion with fresh intensity, as if the blast happened just the day before.

It was a hot day in Ramallah. His mother had removed her shoe to massage her foot, and his sister sat quietly beside her. From the rear of the bus, the boy watched a man board, his coat much too bulky for such a warm day, and took a seat a few rows ahead of them. As the bus moved along its route picking up passengers and filling to capacity, he could not take his eyes off this man.

The man appeared nervous and uneasy, his brow slick with sweat as he took several glances around him, finally spying the boy in the back. Their eyes locked, and somehow the man knew that the boy was perceptive, while others all around him had no suspicion of what he was about to do.

Offering a scarcely perceptible smile, the man gave him what seemed to be an affable nod, then raised his hand. In it he held a switch that was to be depressed with his thumb. “To all occupiers of the nation of Islam, Allah is great!”

Just as he was about to turn to his mother and ask her who Allah was, the man pushed the button.

With the slowness of a bad dream, the boy watched the man break up into countless pieces. Flame and pressure blew out the walls of the bus. People sitting close to him disappeared within the licks of fire and ash. Piercing cries filled the air, hanging as thick as the acrid smoke. And propelled by the force of the blast, a piece of metal caught the boy on the chin, gashing his flesh into a horrible second mouth that seemed to open wide with the awe of confusion.

After that he could only remember seeing a swatch of blue sky tainted with greasy black smoke and feeling the heat of a nearby fire.

Only when he awoke several days later to the haggard face of his father, his skin as loose as a rubber mask, did he finally feel the agonies of his pain. With second degree burns over thirty percent of his body and the severe gash beneath his chin, the boy was incredibly lucky. The real pain came when he learned that his mother and sister had died in the blast.

When he asked why the man did what he did on the bus, his father told him.

That was the day he learned what life would be like for a Jew living in a land of open hostilities.

Taking a deep breath, and with the images of his childhood fading, Team Leader opened his eyes to see the members of his team meditating as the van made its way to the Governor’s Mansion. Every soldier, every stolid commando, as dictated by his constant training, was visualizing in detail his every movement, to assure that there would be no room for mistakes during actual combat.

Each man was equipped with an Israeli Bullpup assault weapon — a product of Israeli technology with devastating capabilities — and dressed identically, from the black tactical jumpsuit to the ski mask and night-vision monocular. Nobody on his team deviated in appearance.

Unwilling to carry a Bullpup, Team Leader opted for a Sig Sauer P220 40-caliber with suppressor and grip-attached laser sighting. It was his weapon of choice — a weapon he had become accustomed to as an assassin.

On the floor al-Hashrie and al-Bashrah lay cuffed and dressed in pressed military fatigues, the men praying softly in Arabic, which Team Leader allowed without punitive action from anybody on his team.

For the third time in the last five minutes, Team Leader looked at his watch, realizing that months of preparation would soon bear the fruit of their labors. And then he closed his eyes once again, the images of that day in Ramallah reminding him why he was about to go to war.

The time was 0128 hours.