SANCTION: A Thriller (11 page)

“Of course, I had hoped that the Israeli Prime Minister would contact me. Since that didn’t happen, I can only assume that the worse will occur. I have exerted every ounce of authority with Hamas and the Palestinian people to maintain this ceasefire. I cannot be expected to do more.”

Nazari looked at the ground, there was an awkward moment of silence as neither the interviewer nor the cleric spoke.

“That is why I am lifting the ceasefire, effective immediately.”

T
racy Peters blinked. A shower of tears soaked her cheeks as she began sobbing in a loud raspy rattle. There was no shot; no hot chunk of lead had entered her body. The gun had jammed. Her would be assassin stared in disbelief at the end of his rifle.

The door flew open and Saleem entered shouting in Arabic. His men moved quickly behind him carrying Matt and the professor on their shoulders. The men shuffled over to a corner of the room and dropped the two Americans onto a group of students. Some of the hostages gasped when they saw Matt and the professor. They looked like they’d been hit by a train. Their faces were swollen and checkered with gashes and deep bruising.

Rhinefeld fought the urge to wince as he landed roughly on the students. He still felt the need to fill the role of the strong father figure. He knew they needed it. But his body hurt like never before.

“It’s not as bad as it looks Jason.” Rhinefeld said to a gawking student.

Jason Parrens had joined Rhinefeld’s class from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He was studying theology in the hopes of attaining a Pastorate in the mission field. He couldn’t resist the lure to study in the ‘Promised Land’, though he had never had an interest in archaeology itself.

Once the men each unloaded their hundred and eighty pound burdens, they scurried out of the room before their leader could evaluate them.

Saleem looked at the man he had left in charge. The Arab had the business end of his AK-47 trained on one of the females. Saleem casually walked over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. He whispered something which none of them could hear and the man slowly lowered his rifle. Tracy exhaled but was still unable to control the river of salty tears that flowed down her face. Saleem looked at her. She was clearly distraught and confused.

‘It would do no good to kill her,’ he thought. As he looked at her frightened face, Saleem found no compassion for her in his heart. But he did want to keep as many of the students alive, for as long as he could. The more students he had alive, the more emotion it would evoke from the World. They were of no use to him dead.

Saleem took the guard with him when he left the room and the hostages were alone.

Rhinefeld waited a good minute before he spoke. He turned his head toward Jason.

“How is everybody holding up?” He asked.

“I guess…okay. Nothing else has happened since the two of you were carted off. Well, except this thing.” he said, pointing to Tracy Peters, who had taken her seat next to Jerry Smith again.

“And what’s that?” the professor asked as he looked at Tracy from across the room. Rhinefeld propped himself up on his elbows and slid back to brace against a wall.

“I’m not sure to tell you the truth. It all happened quickly. I was starting to doze off then Tracy began sobbing uncontrollably and that guy started yelling. People were crying, I think someone may have screamed. The gunman pulled the trigger; at least I think he pulled it. There was a loud click but maybe that’s not what I heard. Nothing happened. There was no shot. That’s when you guys showed up.” Jason said. He looked like he felt guilty. “Like I said though, it all happened really quickly. It may not have happened exactly like that.” He said as he stared at professor Rhinefeld’s blood stained shirt.

The professor looked at Matt, who appeared on the verge of passing out.

“You okay?” He asked.

Fatigue, blood loss and a touch of dehydration had a severe headache gnawing at Matt but he was glad to be back with the students. At least he knew that they were safe and accounted for. When Saleem’s men had drug him and the professor in, Matt had seen the gunman’s rifle in Tracy Peters face. He’d instantly wanted to lash out and attack the man. But deep down, Matt knew it would have only been suicide. He had no strength or weapon to speak of. Now, with their captors gone, the room began to quiet down and Matt’s body began to remind him of the injuries he’d sustained in the last twenty four hours.

“I’m fine.” He lied.

The room watched as Rhinefeld made a painful rise to his feet by inching his way up the wall behind him. His legs felt weak beneath him and his left knee had a piercing stab in the ligaments that joined behind the bend. He wobbled and braced himself with his right forearm against the wall. Some of the students moved to stand and assist him but he waved them off. Finally, the professor took in a deep breath and lowered his head. After several long seconds, he began to pray aloud.

Katherine Boyd, the News Television reporter, had bowed her head, though it had been out of respect for the others and not because of any notion that she was praying to a god. But as she listened to Nicholas Rhinefeld pray in earnest, an aching sorrow reached up and grabbed her. Her life seemed so fragile and delicate now, so temporal.

For the first time in many years, she thought back to Jewish school and the teachings of the Rabbi in her neighborhood. She wished she had something to reassure her, something to make her feel secure like she’d felt as a child. She found herself wishing she could believe in something or someone that was in control of her situation. Someone greater than herself and her tormentors.

Immediately, Katherine opened her eyes. The mere thought that she could question her agnostic world view frightened her. She sat up straighter and refused to close her eyes again. She shrugged it off as stress. She scooted herself back against the wall and wrapped her arms around her legs, below her knees. Despite her best effort though, Katherine began to cry.

• • •

Saleem was heating
a pot of water on his propane-powered hot plate when the LED screen on his cell phone lit up. He picked it up and read the screen. In bold caps the word ‘BREACH’ stretched across the display followed by an audible alarm. He quickly removed the pot of water from the camping stove and grabbed his Kalashnikov. On his way out of the deteriorating building, he called for Azim.

“Follow me,” he shouted.

Azim scampered to his feet, knocking over the cot he had been laying on. The two men got into one of the Land Rovers and pulled out onto a deserted street. The back tires squealed as Saleem forced the accelerator down and the large, eight-cylinder engine roared to life. The intruder hadn’t set off the alarm at the other end of the city yet. That meant that they were headed right for each other. Saleem suspected that it was probably just a group of soldiers from the U.N. observer force, out on patrol. He would know soon enough.

Azim was nervous. It was written all over his face. He glanced around at the half collapsed buildings of Quneitra, more for a place to put his eyes rather than a curiosity for the city.

Saleem laughed inside. “If he’s nervous now…” he thought to himself. “What’s going to happen in the next five minutes, when his little world is turned upside down?”

The Land Rover careened down the center of the empty street. Saleem stopped six miles up the road in front of the old grocery store. He got out of the truck and ran to a nearby building with Azim close on his heels. A rusted fire escape hung low over several abandoned cars. Saleem leapt on to the roof of the nearest car and proceeded to jump from car to car, until he stood under the fire escape.

In seconds the men had scaled the building and were standing on its sun-beaten roof. Saleem put his binoculars up to his eyes and focused on the road where he had placed the sensor. A small jeep emerged through the shimmering vapors that rose from the heated asphalt. Just as he had predicted, the Jeep had the familiar U.N. lettering stamped on its passenger door. Its two olive branches cupped a graphic of the globe, declaring the United Nations mission; a World of peace. Saleem put down the binoculars. He rushed over to a corner of the roof where a long wooden crate had been staged and flipped open the lid. Inside, a Soviet made Rocket Propelled Grenade lay cradled in a soft foam cut-out. Azim’s eyes grew wide at the sight of the weapon. Saleem reached down and yanked the anti-tank round out of the box. He pointed to the foam.

“Pull it up.” He said, motioning with his eyes. Azim bent down and removed the foam insert. Below, there was a fifty-caliber machine gun and a tri-pod mount system. Azim hesitated.

“Get it out and place it over there.” Saleem yelled.

Saleem hefted the rocket onto his right shoulder. It was heavy but with all the practice he had put in, he had expected the weight. He looked through the rectangular sights and placed the approaching truck square in the front sight. The vehicle was too far away to engage, so he set it down gently on the roof and ran over to where Azim fumbled with the machine gun.

He pushed him out of the way and unfolded the heavy steel tri-pod legs.

They dropped into place with a loud thud. He looked up at the road again to gauge how much time he had. The jeep was moving slowly toward them. Its occupants, unaware of the alarm they had triggered and the fate that awaited them, drove leisurely. He had time. He busied himself with the gun again.

The gun was a post World War l model. With its massive fifty caliber shells and a cyclic rate of between four hundred and fifty and five hundred and twenty-five rounds a minute, the Browning M2 was a devastating weapon. Saleem had very little experience firing the M2. Its ammunition was quite expensive. But he had trained with many other, smaller gun systems. Azim however had no experience. But with the butterfly trigger and the veritable wall of lead that it sent out in front of it, it was pretty hard to render it ineffective.

Saleem opened the feed tray cover on top of the machine gun and placed the end of a belt of ammunition down inside. He closed the cover and jerked back on the bolt before releasing it. It made a loud metallic click as the bolt forced itself to the rear of the gun’s upper receiver and then slid a round into the chamber.

Azim looked very unsure of himself.

“After I fire the rocket, you need to shoot the jeep, it’s that simple.” He said.

Azim nodded his head that he understood, but Saleem had his doubts.

“Place your two thumbs here on the trigger and press down to fire. It will be much louder than anything you have ever fired and the recoil will scare you at first. You will get used to it.”

Azim nodded again but made no attempt to speak.

Saleem looked back to the road. The jeep was almost in range now. He shuffled back over to the RPG and picked it up. Placing one foot on the lip of the roof’s raised edge, he knelt down. It wasn’t the most comfortable position but it stabilized his whole body and braced him for the recoil of the back blast.

He waited until the Jeep was so close to them that he would only have one shot. The men in the open top vehicle were not alert at all. Two were dozing off while another and the driver mindlessly sang a song that was playing through the speakers.

Saleem placed the Jeep in the center of the rocket’s sights again and pulled back on the crescent shaped trigger. There was a two second lag. Then, all of a sudden, his head felt like it was being compressed to the size of an Ataif (Arab pancake), as the rocket ignited inside the shaft and exited the barrel. A dense cloud of smoke engulfed Saleem, temporarily blinding him from the scene on the ground. There was a loud roar as the warhead burned its propellant on the way to the target. The rocket impacted with the grill of the vehicle and exploded. The resulting sound was a thunderous clap as metal crashed into metal and the truck burst into a fireball of shrapnel. The passenger side tire blew, penetrated by the flying debris, and the Jeep flipped over onto its side. Saleem looked at the mess below and then to Azim. The man was staring down the length of the .50 cal through the sights but the gun was silent. He was frozen. Saleem ran back over and shoved Azim out of the way. He crouched down low and pressed the tips of his two thumbs against the butterfly trigger and squeezed. The rounds made a deep rhythmic pop as they impacted the truck. The belt of ammunition shrunk in size as the weapon gracefully pulled each bullet into the feed tray and then discarded the empty shell casings and belt retaining clip on the opposite side of the receiver.

When the one hundred round belt was depleted, Saleem released the trigger. A thick cord of white smoke coiled up toward the sky from the end of the barrel. The potent smell of gunpowder filled his nostrils. Except for a dull pinging sound in his ears, the space between the road and the roof was dead quiet.

He stared at the wreckage of the vehicle and waited. After he was sure that there were no survivors, he started packing up the equipment. He couldn’t even look at the coward Azim. He hoped that not all of his men would respond like this when the enemy sent real troops in, which he was sure they would eventually do. If so, then it was going to be a bloodbath for Saleem and his men.

Once back on the ground, Saleem surveyed the damaged Jeep. What the RPG hadn’t mangled or obliterated, the fifty cal had severed and torn. Men were strewn about the interior of the vehicle, their bodies broken and bashed. It was gruesome. Azim began to dry heave loudly. The radio had been smashed to a million pieces; they’d had no time to contact their headquarters. Chunks of foam from inside the ripped seats littered the jeep’s interior. Azim tried to speak to Saleem, feeling the tension between him and his leader but all that came out was his breakfast.

The President had ordered a medium-rare, eight ounce steak and roasted russet potatoes with asparagus. He hadn’t taken a bite.

Kenneth Paine, on the other hand, was smearing his last piece of swordfish in a white wine cream sauce.