Shadow Maker (28 page)

I
n the narrow crew locker between the Dagger's aft bay and its cockpit, Nick and Drake found the equipment Walker had ordered for them. Two green waterproof duffels lay on the floor in front of a long bench. There was also a rubber submersible crate, four feet square and three feet tall, propped against the bulkhead behind it. Molly came up on SATCOM to brief them.

“We sent you FN-303 nonlethal dispensers,” said the analyst as each man pulled a black polymer rifle out of his duffel.

Nick checked the seal on the air canister fixed to the side of the weapon and then eyed the large red rounds in the drum magazine. “What kind of grenades are these?”

“Eighteen-millimeter nanosecond electric pulse.”

“You're kidding.” He pulled out one of the rounds to examine it. NEP grenades were far superior to conventional Tasers and stun grenades, but they weren't supposed to be fielded yet. “I thought these were developmental only.”

“So did I,” said Molly. “But when Lighthart heard you were going to Israel, he offered them up. Those are a gift from his unit.”

“Ouch,” said Drake, clutching his chest like he'd been wounded.

Nick glanced at his teammate and nodded his agreement. Apparently Lighthart had access to ops technology that the Triple Seven Chase didn't. He was jealous.

The bags also contained a change of clothes, modified Sig Sauer P290 micro-compact pistols with suppressors, and various other mission necessities. Molly struggled through the rest of the list; it was clear she was reading off her computer, unfamiliar with the actual gear.

“Scott usually handles equipment checks,” said Nick, sensing her discomfort. “Why the switch? I thought he was back with us.”

Silence on the line. Then, “Scott's resting. That's all.”

Nick touched his earpiece and switched to an isolated line. “Don't lie to me, Molly.”

More silence.

“Molly . . .”

“He's paralyzed, Nick.” After holding it in so long, she just blurted out the revelation. “Doc Heldner says he'll never walk again.”

Nick could not respond. He had suspected something like this, but now that he knew it to be true, he could not speak. Quinn was down, Rami was dead and CJ close to it, and now Scott's life was changed forever, not to mention the dozens who died at Paternoster Square and the thousands who would die in America and Israel if he did not find Kattan. All this collateral damage from a single five-hundred-pound bomb that he called down on a tiny mud house nine years ago. How much more could he take? How much more could the world take? He gazed over at his teammate for several seconds.

Drake looked up from his inventory. “What?”

Chief Morales knocked on the wall next to the open portal. “Gentlemen, the L-T wants you up front. We're approaching the coast.”

—

From three miles out, little could be seen of the shoreline besides the lights of Tel Aviv, blazing on the northern edge of the infrared display. The two blue boxes Drake identified when they left Cyprus had multiplied into several, marking a variety of civilian ships near the coast. By two miles, the small stretch of beach that was Nick's target materialized in dull gray, dark and empty. On either side of it, green diamonds and red octagons appeared one by one, and kept appearing until there was a long line of them fixed to the shore, rising and falling with the motion of the Dagger. Each shape had a small stack of data next to it, identifying it as a piece of the extensive Israeli shore defense network—radars and optical trackers and the like. Stealth boat or not, this was not going to be easy.

Several minutes later, just inside one mile from the shore, Lighthart slowed the Dagger to a drift. Morales abruptly stood and offered his hand to his two guests. “Good luck, gentlemen, whatever your mission may be.” The chief's phrasing sounded oddly final.

Drake stared at the distant shoreline as he cautiously shook the chief's hand. “Am I missing something?”

“Didn't you see the dry suits and rebreathers hanging in the locker?”

“SEAL boat,” said Drake, gesturing all around. “We figured they were just part of the decor.”

Lighthart glanced over his shoulder. “Do you see this display?” Then he turned back to the screen and pointed to the shapes on either side of the target beach, reading off each label in turn. “Surface radar, surface radar, passive sonar. This one is an infrared motion detector designed to break out anything that isn't a fish or a wave. The Dagger is invisible to radar but not to infrared.” Even as he spoke, a new red box entered the display from the right. The SEAL lieutenant captured the box with his crosshairs and expanded it, zooming in on a long patrol boat cutting across the waves. “And then we have these guys.”

“And they are?” asked Nick, leaning in to get a closer look at the Israeli boat. He could see turret-mounted weapons fore and aft.

“You're looking at a Super Dvora Mark Three interceptor,” said Morales, as if reciting it from a manual. “There are several guarding the Israeli coast, and every boat is packing an optically guided twenty-five-millimeter cannon and the naval variant of Hellfire missiles.”

Lighthart looked back at Nick and raised his eyebrows. “I don't care who called in this favor. I'm not taking my boat any closer to that briar patch than I have to.” Then his eyes returned to his control panel. “Nice working with you. Now suit up. You're going for a swim.”

—

“That was rude.” Drake's voice sounded muted and tinny through the comm link in their full-face dive masks. “Don't you think that was rude?”

The two of them kicked toward the shore at a steady pace, dragging their waterproof bags and pushing the big submersible crate ahead of them. Thanks to the infrared motion detectors and the patrol boats, Nick had to set the crate's buoyancy for five meters below the surface, making it all the harder to push through the water. The SEALs had warned them not to break the surface outside a hundred meters from the beach.

“Lighthart did what he had to. Now pipe down. We don't know how good their passive sonar is.”

Halfway to the beach, Nick heard an undulating hum in his ear. At first he thought it was the comm link, then he realized that it was engine noise. He checked to his right and left, but he didn't see the lights or the disturbance of a Dvora on the surface.

“You hear that?” asked Drake.

They brought the crate to a stop and hovered in the water, listening as the hum grew louder until it became a throbbing metallic pound. Suddenly a twenty-foot-tall leviathan materialized out of the murk to their left. “Move!” Nick yelled into his mask.

Nick and Drake pushed together, kicking with everything they had to get the crate out of the submarine's way. It passed so close behind them that Drake's fin smacked the dive plane. Even then, they didn't slow down. Neither of them had any desire to get tumbled by the black beast's monstrous prop wash.

Despite the slap from Drake's fin, the sub continued south on its patrol. As far as Nick could tell, the two swimmers and their rubber crate had been dismissed as a biological by its sonar filters.

They surfaced fifty meters out from the beach and removed their dive masks. Dawn was still more than an hour away, but a quick scan with a night-vision monocle told Nick the three-mile stretch of sand wasn't as empty as he hoped. “Two-man foot patrol,” he whispered. “Eleven o'clock.”

Drake nodded, silently lifting his FN-303 out of the water. He paused to dip the fat barrel and let the seawater spill out, and then raised the holographic sight to his eye and fired a single NEP grenade with a resounding
foomp
. The two Israelis stopped and looked out across the water, searching for the source of the sound. They never saw it.

Activated by a proximity sensor, the grenade opened a few meters from the foot patrol and released a net of ten barbs, all connected to its power source by micro-thin wires.

Nick heard two surprised yelps from the beach and watched the Israelis drop like stones. The high-voltage pulse instantly knocked them out. Conventional Tasers were painful, exposing targets to long duration shock and only immobilizing them for a few seconds. The NEP grenade pulses lasted a billionth of a second, but they carried much higher voltage. The effect was significantly less damage and significantly higher downtime.

“How long will it last?” whispered Drake.

Nick stared at his teammate for a moment and then turned to look at the Israelis lying on the beach. “I have no idea.”

The final stretch took them less than a minute; they were kicking hard and pushing the crate along the surface through the waves. Nick kept raising his head to make sure the patrol was still down. When they reached the shore, he ran over to the unconscious Israelis and carefully dosed each one with a sedative.

“We should take their uniforms,” grunted Drake, dragging the crate onto the beach. “They might come in handy down the road.”

Nick surveyed his victims. “That'll work for me, but I don't think you can squeeze into the other one's pants.”

“Is he short?”

“He's a she. And I doubt she weighs more than a buck fifteen with her boots on.”

Nick found the Israeli's pickup parked on an overgrown asphalt pad a short distance away. He and Drake loaded up the equipment and the unconscious patrol and followed a gravel road inland until they found a long low concrete bunker half-buried in the weeds. They laid the patrol inside and bound them hand and foot. Nick took the male's uniform, but they left the girl dressed, taking only her boots and socks to limit her mobility.

When Drake stripped out of his dry suit, he was already wearing a set of khaki pants, but his chest was bare. He dug in his duffel for a few seconds and emerged with the blue and white Hawaiian shirt from the Coptic church.

“You can't be serious,” said Nick.

Drake slipped the shirt over his head. “No time to argue. We've got a nuke to find.”

The big operative started for the bunker door, but Nick stopped him with a hand to his chest. “I don't want you to come.”

“Look, boss, the shirt stays. Deal with it.”

Nick shook his head. “No. You don't understand. You got me this far. Now I go it alone. As far as Kattan is concerned, you're just another chess piece.” He pointed to the east. “Somewhere out there is a bullet with your name on it, for no other reason than to torture me. If I let you come, I'm giving Kattan exactly what he wants.”

Drake frowned at his teammate. “Don't be ridiculous.
This
is what he wants. He wants you isolated. Alone.” He pushed by Nick and headed for the truck, calling to him over his shoulder. “And as long as I'm still breathing, boss, that's not going to happen.”

T
he Israeli Defense Forces pickup had a light bar and a siren, and Nick used them both liberally to cut through the traffic as he sped southeast through Jerusalem, doing his best to beat the rising sun. The most likely targets for the nuke were those within the walls of the Old City—more than a dozen churches, synagogues, and Biblical sites that would make definitive spiritual and political statements as epicenters for the final blast—but when Nick came to a sign that said
OLD CITY: DAMASCUS GATE
with an arrow pointing due south, he took the road southwest instead.

“Wrong way, boss,” said Drake, turning to watch the sign pass behind them.

Nick flipped on the lights again and swerved around the car ahead of them. “Got to make a stop first. We have to get my family.”

“No. Not a good tactical plan.”

“Says the guy in the gaudy Hawaiian shirt.”

Drake's voice grew deadly serious. “Listen. I know your family comes before everyone else, but we don't have time. It won't do your dad or your wife and kid any good if you find them the moment the nuke goes off.”

“Who's driving the truck?”

Drake frowned. “You are.”

“Are you planning on Tasing me or shooting me or something?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then shut up.”

A few minutes later, Nick parked the truck on the street outside the King David Hotel. He looked ahead at the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the road east toward the Old City. “Have Molly order me a cab for three to Ben Gurion International,” he said, jumping out of the driver's seat. “Then get the equipment ready. We walk from here.”

Inside the hotel, Nick raced across gold and purple marble tiles to the back of the lobby. He bypassed the elevators and took the stairs two and three at a time up to the fourth floor. Finally, breathing hard, he banged on the door to his wife's room. “Katy!”

There was no response.

He tried one more time, but as he pounded, Katy stuck her head out of the room next door. “Nick?”

Nick checked the room numbers. “I thought you were—”

Katy waved her hand and shook her head. “Your dad and I switched rooms. The hotel put the crib in the wrong one. What are you doing here?”

He pushed past her, heading straight for the phone by the bed. “Don't you and Dad check your messages?”

The little orange light on the phone wasn't blinking. He picked up the receiver and pressed the retrieve button.

“You have no messages,” declared a cheerful recorded voice, and then it repeated the statement in Hebrew and French. It appeared Kattan had tampered with the lines to head off Nick's warnings, which meant he had these rooms under surveillance.

Nick slammed the handset into its cradle. “We have to get you out of here.” He went to the drawers beneath the TV and started pulling out clothes, throwing them at her suitcase a few feet away. “You and Dad are leaving Jerusalem. Now. Get Luke ready.”

When Katy started to argue, Nick lost what calm he had left. He whipped around with a shirt and a pair of her jeans clenched in his fists. “Just do as I say for once!”

That was enough to subdue her, although the look in Katy's eyes told Nick he would pay for the outburst later. He hoped so. He hoped they would have a later. When he finished, he zipped up her rolling suitcase and yanked it off the rack. “You have cash?”

“Plenty.”

Nick snapped his fingers and motioned with an open palm. “Give me a fifty. Where's Dad?”

“He had an early meeting with Avi.”

“Did he say where?”

“Only that it was one of their old haunts, something about a garden.”

By the time they reached the shaded drive out front, the cab was waiting. Nick hurried Katy into the back, tossed the child seat in beside her, and set Luke in her lap. “You have to go.”

“Luke isn't buckled in.”

“Buckle him in on the way. Get the next flight out, even if you have to pay for a whole new ticket.” He kissed her hard and then kissed his son's hand. Luke giggled and smiled at his daddy.

Katy stared up at him, fighting back tears. “Nick, what is going on? What is this about?”

Nick didn't answer. He closed her door and tossed the fifty through the front window. “That's the first half of your tip,” he told the cabby. “She'll give you the rest when you get there.” He pounded the top of the car. “Tel Aviv. Ben Gurion Airport. Go!”

—

Kurt Baron sat alone in the lush courtyard at the American Colony Hotel, sipping a cup of English tea and listening to the water trickling down from a jade fountain. He pulled his fleece jacket close around him. The garden was still chilly and dark, the varied greens of its vines all muted gray by the shadows.

This hotel had offered visitors and expats a refuge from the turmoil of Jerusalem for more than a century, since the days of the British protectorate. Kurt remembered sitting here during his postgraduate studies, waiting for the first golden rays of morning to break over the eastern wall and spread across the bleached flagstone, bit by bit revealing the glory of this small Eden. In those days, he usually shared the experience with his fellow student, Avi. He had expected to share it with his old friend once more, but Avi had not yet arrived.

Kurt jumped as his phone buzzed with a text message. The thing hadn't made a peep since the day before. He checked the screen. Avi made his apologies. The Israeli professor had been called to an early faculty meeting. He suggested rescheduling tea for an hour and a half later on the Temple Mount Plaza, another one of their favorite spots from the old days.
I'll bring the tea
, said the text.
You bring the pastries.

Kurt smiled at the notion of the pastries. These days, Avi's wife placed very stringent restrictions on his diet. She did not allow him such pleasures. Kurt started typing his response.

—

On a dead end street, a block away from the American Colony, Avi Bendayan sat behind the wheel of his car. Masih Kattan sat next to him.

When Kurt Baron's response came through, Kattan picked up the phone and patted Avi on the arm, causing the dead professor's head to slump to one side, stretching out the deep, bloody gash in his throat.

Kattan checked the message.
Avi, I'll be there with the pastries. What Panina doesn't know won't hurt her.

The terrorist smiled. What a silly thing to say.