“And if anyone does?”
“Eliminate.”
“Guns?”
“Knives.”
“Messy?”
“But quiet. And that’s better.”
“That way, we’re counting on the general arriving back between 2300 and midnight?”
“Not necessarily.”
“But what if the second shift of night guards turns up and their colleagues are not there, deserted, gone missing?”
“What can they do but remain on station, wait for the boss, and then tell him two men have vanished? We don’t care. The bomb will be in place.”
“Okay, what if the general then decides to search through the house, and then goes straight to bed?-and with a wife like that, who could blame him?”
Colonel Joel laughed, knowingly. “I was coming to that,” he said. “We take out the two guards at 2230, as planned, insert the big bomb. And blow the bastard up as soon as Ravi enters the house and shuts the door. That way we don’t care which room he is in.”
“No, I guess not. But it does mean we won’t have much use for the timing device.”
“Not at all, John. We wait for that door to close behind the general. We set the timer for ten minutes. And then we leave. We just bolt down the stairs, straight to the garage, and we’re gone, out of here. We’ll be about four miles away when the blast occurs. All we need to know is that Ravi’s in there.”
“Can’t fault that, boss,” said Colonel Rabin agreeably. “Shall we go out for an hour?”
“Good idea. We haven’t eaten all day. Tell Abe and Itzaak we’ll be gone for a while and we’ll bring food back.”
Two hours later, the Mossad’s hit team was in order. Everything was packed away in a couple of big mail bags, which Jerry would pick up later that night. At 2225, Itzaak and Abraham, still in Arab dress, went downstairs and walked the short distance into Bab Touma Street, which was very quiet, though not entirely deserted.
They crossed the street and walked up the steps to the front door of the Rashood stronghold. Major Itzaak Sherman rapped sharply on the door, which was instantly opened, and the Israeli found himself looking at the barrel of an AK-47.
The guard spoke in Arabic-What do you want?
Itzaak just said, “Please, sir, I need to speak to General Rashood.” The guard hesitated and stepped forward, saying, “I thought there were two of you-” But he was too late. Abraham swooped out of the shadow and rammed his combat knife straight into the man’s heart. It was a deadly blow, viciously hard and accurate. The guard gasped, tried to yell, but he was dead before he hit the floor.
From inside, there was a call of “Rami, who is it?” And the second guard stepped out onto the front porch and met with an identical fate when Abraham, using a second knife, plunged it into the man’s heart.
By this time, Colonel Ben Joel had crossed the street, carrying the bomb in a leather duffel bag. He raced up the stairs and into the room on the left. Right behind him came John Rabin. They both hit the floor and began to screw the device to the underside of the big heavy table in the center of the room.
Meanwhile, the other two were dragging the two bodies down the steps and into a small open front yard, below the main street window. This area was unkempt and overgrown, and it had a gateway but no gate. The walls around it were two feet high. It took exactly one minute for Abraham and Itzaak to dump the dead men into the far corner of the tiny yard, where they would never be discovered until it was light, and maybe not even then.
At this point, Major Rabin was working alone on the electronics of the bomb, with Abraham standing guard on the door, in case either of the sleeping second-shift guards heard something and came to investigate. But the house was deathly quiet.
Colonel Joel hurried back across the road and opened up a connection from his cell phone to that of Colonel Rabin, who was still under the table in Ravi’s house. They spoke briefly, for no more than eight seconds, and then John Rabin screwed in the last wire, set the detonation mechanism to coincide with the electronic box up in the apartment, and left.
Carefully, he made certain that the front door did not lock automatically, since they did not want Ravi and Shakira to be locked out. They just hoped the couple would return before the midnight watch change.
Meanwhile, they regrouped in their observation post and watched. The small black box that would activate the bomb was resting innocently on the window ledge.
It was 2315 now, and there was no sign of the general. But Abraham saw it first, the lights of a taxi coming around the corner from Al-Bakry Street, swinging right into Bab Touma. It pulled up directly in front of the house they watched.
“Here we go, boys,” breathed Abraham, who was apparently unaffected by the double murder he had committed less than an hour previously. “They’re back.”
And all four men saw the lovely Shakira emerge from the back left-hand passenger seat of the cab. From the other side, there emerged her escort, who took her arm and walked up the steps.
They reached the front door and knocked, but the door opened even at Shakira’s light touch. She was doubtless mystified by the absence of the two guards, but she entered the house, followed by the man, presumably Ravi, who was somewhat lost in the shadows. But at least neither of them had noticed the two hidden bodies.
Colonel Joel saw the light flood into the front room. Toward the rear he could see a male figure. Shakira was nowhere to be seen.
“That’s it, John,” snapped Ben. “That’ll do for us. Set the timer for ten minutes and let’s go.”
John Rabin turned the dial, pressed the activate button. The residents of the house on Bab Touma were on borrowed time. The four Mossad men stampeded down the stairs and out into the dark. They ran through the back street behind the apartment and reached the garage. The key fitted easily, and they pushed the door open.
And there, inside, was the converted Mercedes Benz. Colonel Joel jumped in the front passenger seat. Abraham rummaged for the key and started the motor. Major Sherman jumped in the backseat, and John Rabin waited outside to shut and lock the garage door.
The car moved forward. The last member of the team climbed into the rear seat, and Ben Joel hit the button to inform the field agent Jerry that they were on their way. Abraham drove swiftly to the Bab Touma Gate and swung right onto the road that would take them down to the airport perimeter road.
But before they reached that crossroad, John Rabin’s bomb went off with a crash that ripped into the night sky. It was so powerful that it blew the roof thirty feet into the air. The entire building went up with a stupendous blast, exploding the ancient cement and brickwork into the street, outward and upward. Flames leapt into the air. Rubble, glass, and stonework rained down from the sky. The world’s oldest continuously occupied city shuddered on its sandy foundations.
“Holy shit!” yelled Abraham. “We just did it. Tel Aviv, here we come.”
Ten minutes later, as Abraham gunned his supercharged wreck down the airport highway, Ravi Rashood arrived back from dinner with the wife of his close friend Abdul Khan, one of Shakira’s half-brothers.
The scene of pure devastation was beyond belief. The entire street was blocked with rubble. Two police cars were already there; a fire engine was trying to get in from the wrong end of the street. Sirens were blaring, blue lights flashing, women screaming.
Ravi raced to what was left of the front of his house. But that was simply pointless. There was no front to his house. Rudy Khan was hysterical, but Ravi had no thought for anyone except Shakira, and he ran with a helpless desperation around to the back of his former home.
He reached the padlocked green gate, and, from behind it, he could hear a woman screaming, incoherently, plaintively. He spotted the white truck, and with one bound was on the hood, and then the roof, staring down into his own backyard. He could see that the inside door to the yard was open, and there, crouched on the ground, was Shakira, terrified, covered in blood, but alive.
Abdul, who had brought her home to make coffee, was not with her. Instinctively, Ravi knew he was dead. He also knew if he jumped over the wall, he and his injured wife would both be trapped. There was no way out through the collapsed house.
He jumped down to the street, and ran back around to the front of the house and yelled for help. The police and the ambulance crew were only too glad at least to save someone’s life. Six of them arrived at the gate and the cops blew the lock away with a submachine gun, taking care not to allow bullets to penetrate the green gate.
Twenty minutes later, Shakira and Ravi were on their way to the President Hassad General Hospital, where fifteen stitches were required to repair a cut on her head, sustained in the basement-level kitchen when a part of the ceiling had caved in.
She was also in severe shock, and the surgeon decided she should stay overnight. Ravi remained with her, and most people in the drama were happy. The Hamas terrorists were merely thankful that Shakira lived.
And the Mossad men boarding the Learjet were in self-congratulatory mood. Mission accomplished. Nearly.