Why not, indeed. Looking at Slick, like a hunting dog straining at the leash, knowing the grouse were out there, Ashmead couldn’t think of a single reason why not. His covert action team was the best America had; maybe there was one Saiyeret team as good in the Middle East. They knew what was going to happen; he’d known they’d been talking things over. When Slick came to him, he’d half expected it to be with a fond farewell and an apology because they wanted to go home, spend the last of it with their families.
That had been what he was about to tell them to do; he didn’t want to sit in Haifa watching them drop, one by one, mooning around until they did, pretending it mattered if they ran through the killing house one more time, or spent as much time as they could in the basement, or scrubbed down when they came in from outside, or sprayed their flash hoods and double-thick uniforms to minimize porosity, or kept their gear in shape, or wrote readable after-action reports.
So they’d kicked butt out of Cyprus before the shit hit the fan, straight as the turbojet flies, and begun operating.
Schvantz was number three of seven, and the seventh was the impossible dream—the head motherfucker in Libya, the crazy who could only be gotten by someone willing to die in the attempt: part seven was the suicide mission. Schvantz was just a warm-up: Ashmead’s. They’d decided on one apiece before Libya, and Schvantz was Ashmead’s personal pick.
With his yams in his bag, Ashmead wandered a crooked path toward Schvantz’s table near the curb, stopping again to buy some lamb grill (from an open stall—no one on the streets in Abu Dhabi seemed to understand that exposed food could kill you; the old ways would die with them) and thus having a reason to get out his knife and squat down, his bag beside him.
Slick, on a BMW motorcycle, puttered up the street and stopped opposite him, helmet on his head, booted foot on the kickstand, while Ashmead used his knife and a previously prepared paper circle the diameter of the Tokagypt’s muzzle to dig an appropriate hole in the yam and channel a slot for the front sight to hold it in place.
Yael, her butt swinging provocatively under a mass of honey-colored hair that ensured no Arab on the street would be looking at anything else, got up from Shvantz’s coffee bar and straddled the bike behind Slick. With a macho revving of the BMW’s engine, the pair of lovers roared away, altogether too fast for the confines of the twisting, littered street and the Arabs on it, who jumped out of the way, cursing and gesturing obscenely.
Meanwhile, Ashmead eased across the street, lamb in the dirt behind him, yam and Tokagypt mated in the bag he held in one hand, the other gloved hand inside, on the gun, easing off the safety as he got a shooting grip on its plastic handgrips.
Schvantz was gazing after the pair on the BMW, indolent and stupid: this was the third day in a row he’d come here, waiting for a contact he didn’t know to be dead. Routine kills people in the Great Game. His Libyan trainers had neglected to impress this lesson upon Schvantz strongly enough, or Schvantz assumed that his privileged status among Allah’s chosen youth would protect him.
It wouldn’t; not from Ashmead. Between the coffee stall and the bolt-cloth vendor to its right was an alleyway; right now the BMW was stopping at its far end, Yael hopping off and disappearing into a cheap hotel where she had a rented room in which to change her clothes and hair color while Slick waited, playing with his throttle, not for her but for Ashmed to come running down the alley and climb aboard. Three streets away, a nondescript Mercedes idled, ready to take them to the Hilton, its windows smoked so that Ashmead could change clothes in the car.
Two more of his team were riding shotgun in case something went wrong: one at one end of the street in a Ford with reinforced bumpers and bul letproof glass; the other, a sharpshooter named Jesse, on foot a hundred yards behind Ashmead, a machine pistol under his djellaba.
Schvantz was looking at his huge gold wristwatch; his second coffee came. This close, Ashmead could see the acne scars on his face, the thick lashes around almond eyes. Another few steps and he could pull the Tokagypt casually up with the bag as he sidled past Schvantz’s table toward the alley, shoot the kid in the brainpan, and be on his way.
“Rafic! Hey, Rafic! ”
The sound of an American voice calling his workname—his god-fucked workname!—was like coitus interruptus; unexpected, unwelcome, and maddening.
Worse, he turned his head to look back—to see who the hell was bawling his name.
Worst, Schvantz, in a clatter of crockery, cutlery, and furniture, was bolting as if he were late for prayer: the target, almond eyes wide in recognition and terror, stumbling over outstretched legs of fellow customers as he went, was already in the street, running and looking back over his shoulder and howling to Allah to protect him.
There was a long moment in which Ashmead considered taking down the kid despite the fact that his name would be forever linked with the killing. During this interval, he ignored the American hand outstretched to him in greeting. His eyes were locked with those of the backup in the hooded djellaba: Jesse wanted to know if he should swing up his machine pistol and riddle Schvantz, who was running toward him at breakneck speed.
Ashmead watched and considered, the Tokagypt loose in the string bag now, his shooting hand on his hip. Then he gave the abort signal—he wanted Schvantz to be DX’d by a Palestinian, that was the damn point—and turned his attention to the American who had blown four days of intensive preparations by six devoted professionals.
Before him stood the State Department’s boy wonder, Beck, wearing sunglasses, a radiation badge, and a baseball cap, his Ivy League grin and his innocence intact, gloved hand out to greet him: “Rafic, let’s get out of the open, have a talk somewhere clean. I’ve been looking for you for a week. You sure can be hard to find when you want to be.”
“Not hard enough. What the fuck are you doing here, Beck? Somebody forgot to lock you in your crib last night?” He was seriously considering shooting Beck, and his voice reflected his mood.
Beck withdrew his hand; he wiped it on his brand-new Levi’s; his smile faded, to be replaced by tardy comprehension: “I’ve interrupted something? I’m terribly sorry… but this is urgent.”
“It fucking well better be, Beck. You’ve ruined my whole day. And a lot of other people’s.” He looked Beck over more critically: the buckle-knife Ashmead had given him fastened Beck’s belt; the belt was a one-and-one-half-incher and it had the telltale sag to its right side that meant Beck was carrying, probably behind the hip with his weapon’s holster tucked into his hip pocket; otherwise, there’d be no need for the windbreaker tonight.
His net bag in hand and Beck beside him, Ashmead sauntered down the alley without more than one backward and openly quizzical look at the Iranian who was now careening around the corner while Jesse slouched against the wall in disgust. Plan B, folks, Ashmead thought, and shrugged his disappointment away.
He had other things to worry about. Beck, in particular.
The INR man was pacing him obediently; Ashmead had handled Beck’s “orientation”—meaning he’d tried to instill enough tradecraft in somebody who’d always been able to get by on his brains to ensure that Beck would survive his tour. Tradecraft, in this venue, meant defensive driving, weaponry drills, and a quick course in kitchen ballistics that none of the gentlemen who’d prepared this walking computer beside him for the field had thought he’d need.