Griff ducked behind a tree, trading shots with the taxi driver, who used his cab for cover.
There was a lull, an almost silent pause.
Lemniak stood up.
"Don't!" Hawk grabbed for Lemniak's leg from his prone position but missed. Lemniak scuttled toward the main building.
The corporal slumped out of her seat, dead, her weapon skittering on the flagstones. Hawk crawled to it.
Lemniak didn't have far to go, only a few more paces, but it was too far.
The last two gunmen stormed the pavilion. They came on shooting.
Lemniak had almost reached safety when both gunmen opened up on him at the same time. He went down.
And so did they. Andy Stanton hit one twice. Hawk brought the corporal's Galil back into play, firing from the prone position. It still held half a clip, which he emptied into the killers.
Griff ran out of ammo and had to reload. The taxi driver jumped in his cab and threw it in gear.
Petra Kelly was down, but not out. One of Stanton's bullets had blown a chunk out of her upper arm. The other hit not her, but her weapon, tearing it from her hand so hard that her finger was broken by the trigger guard. Shock had set in; she hardly felt her injuries. She had the sense to play possum until there was a lull in the shooting.
She jumped up, a blur of motion as she vaulted the pavilion wall.
Stanton shot at her — or rather he pulled the trigger at her, the hammer falling on an empty chamber. In the confusion he had forgotten to keep track of his shots, and now he didn't have any more.
Petra ran screaming to the cab. "Wait! Wait! Don't leave me!"
She had not time to open the door. She just threw herself headfirst through an open window while the cab was moving. Her long legs jutted out of the right rear window as the cab took off in a screaming start.
Tires screeched, smoking, burning rubber. The cab took the corner on two wheels, zooming into the distance.
Stanton hurried over to Hawk. "You okay, sir?"
"Yes."
He helped Hawk to his feet. "You're bleeding."
"Just cuts. I'm all right. Are they all dead?"
"Jeez, I don't know. Wait — there's Griff!"
Griff was a cautious man. Gun in hand, he warily circled the two Hawk had taken down. They were dead. Ulli, too.
"Looks like it's all over but the postmortems," Griff said.
The innocent bystanders shakily picked themselves up, not quite believing they had come through it alive.
A woman shrieked, raw and piercing. The mother Hawk had seen earlier. One of her children had been hit.
"Holy hell," Stanton whispered. "What a mess!"
Lemniak was still alive. He'd been mortally wounded, but he was holding on as long as he could.
Hawk, kneeling beside him, gently asked, "Who?"
Lemniak's hands shot up, grabbed Hawk's shirt front, pulled his head down. His mouth worked, laboring to form a word, the name.
Hawk tried again. "Who?"
"Reguiba," Lemniak wheezed. Then he died.
Six
Israeli intelligence has a twin-chambered heart. Mossad handles foreign operations. Internal security is the province of Sherut Habitachon, known as the Shin Bet, or SB.
SB personnel refer to their outfit as "the Institute." Heading the Institute's Counterforce Antiterrorism unit was Dr. Chaim Bar-Zohar. Bar-Zohar looked like an intellectual jazz musician.
"You're a very naughty fellow, Hawk," he said.
It was the middle of the afternoon following the café Etrog bloodbath. Bar-Zohar brought Hawk not to Institute headquarters, but to one of his unit's safe houses, an underground module located below an antiquarian bookseller's shop. The not overly large shelter maintained a permanent party of five, not including visitors and special guests.
Bar-Zohar went on, "Here we are, working together on a joint action, and then you elude my men to strike off on your own. Not very neighborly, I'd say."
"It wasn't very neighborly of you to have me followed in the first place," Hawk said.
"You didn't have much trouble shaking the tail. Besides, you know that when they're not spying on their enemies, friends spy on friends."
"How true."
"It's not that I object to your unauthorized sortie in my bailiwick. But imagine the consequences if you had been wounded or worse, God forbid. How would I have explained that to the Prime Minister? To your President?"
"He'd understand," Hawk said. "He likes initiative."
"So we've noticed," Bar-Zohar said dryly. "Well, you came out of it all right. It's too bad about Lemniak, though. We very much wanted to question him about his friend Avram Maltz."
"Who's he?" Hawk asked.
"Every organization has a key man, the fellow who really gets all the work done. In the Ministry of Maritime Trade, Maltz was that man. Unfortunately, he was working for someone besides the department.
"He abused his influence to fake a manifest for the Melina, allowing it to come right up to the coast. It looks like Maltz was the inside man for the ring which has been smuggling vast quantities of weapons and explosives into the country."
"From your use of the past tense, I assume Maltz is history," Hawk said.
"You're right. The most bizarre thing about his life was the way he left it." Bar-Zohar paused, savoring the suspense. "He was killed by a raptor."
"A what?"
"A raptor," Bar-Zohar repeated. "A bird of prey, such as an eagle, a falcon, or — a hawk. I'm surprised you didn't know that, considering your name."
"I was merely expressing astonishment at such a grotesque cause of death."
"It is grotesque, isn't it," Bar-Zohar said with a slight shudder. "Most unusual. Our specialists are still narrowing it down, but they're inclined to believe it was a peregrine falcon. A falcon trained to kill humans. Now, what do you make of that?"
"It might tie in with something Lemniak told me," Hawk said.
"Yes? Do go on."
"I'll tell you later."
"All right, be mysterious. Pity Lemniak didn't come to us. We could have protected him."
"I'm not so sure," Hawk said. "That fits in with something else Lemniak told me."
"Sounds like you two had quite a little chat."
"We did, until it was interrupted. I'll give you all the particulars…"
"Later. I'm sure you have your reasons for being so cryptic. As it happens, I have a surprise of my own for you. Come right this way, please," Bar-Zohar directed.
Hawk followed Bar-Zohar down a narrow hall to a door. Opening it, Bar-Zohar said, "This is our lost and found department. We have something that belongs to you."
Hawk looked quizzically at the Israeli.
"Go right in."
Bar-Zohar stepped aside, holding the door so Hawk could enter first. Hawk crossed the threshold, stopping dead in his tracks when he saw the room's occupant.
"Nick!"
Carter wore clean clothes and had a warm meal in his belly. He was refreshed and ready to take on the world. He stood up and said, "Good afternoon, sir."
"It is now. It's good to see you, Nick. Damned good." Hawk shook Carter's hand.
Hawk's shining eyes betrayed his pleasure at the unexpected reunion, but he remembered himself in time to recover his mask of steely sardonicism.
"Some folks had just about given you up for lost."
"But not you, sir."
"I knew better. I said you were probably off on some desert isle with a lovely lady, enjoying yourself at the outfit's expense."
"Actually, that's not too far off the mark, sir," Carter said. "I've been taking a sea cruise — but most definitely not for pleasure. And it turned out to be no fun at all for my shipmates. I'll tell you all about it."
Hawk held up a hand. "Save it for later, Nick." He addressed Bar-Zohar. "I want my aides to hear this too. Also, do you have a secure conference room?"