SANCTION: A Thriller (13 page)

Efran smiled at the idea and quickly dawned the robe. His was much too long. Brad held up the two remaining articles in his hands and threw him the shorter one.

“That one will have to do, it’s all I’ve got.” He said.

Brad put the last robe on himself.

Durrah watched the spectacle of the three men wearing her son’s clothing. It angered her but she wouldn’t let them know it. She didn’t want to seem effected by their actions. She had already cried in front of the vicious one.

Kingsley and Brad hid their American weapons under the layers of the robes and walked to the front door. Outside, the streets were pure bedlam. Kingsley stepped through the door and walked out several feet. He shouted in his best Arab accent, along with the crowd.

“Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar.”

Efran was right behind him, though he didn’t join in the chanting. The Mossad agent kept his head lowered. His right index finger laid flat against the trigger of a .40 caliber Sig Sauer beneath his robe. Occasionally he raised his head a few inches to survey the members of the mob, as they converged on the Israeli border. He had seen this many times, though it was a new experience on this side of the wall.

Brad barreled through the mess of the coffee table and picked Durrah Nejem up off of the ground. Riot or no riot, he wasn’t leaving without getting the information he came for. Her two daughters began shouting at him when he wrapped his hand tight around her elbow and forced her to walk toward the door. The DIA agent pulled his nine millimeter pistol out of a leg holster beneath his robe and jammed it into her ribcage. He forced her through the doorway and into the fading sunlight.

Durrah saw her neighbor immediately and she shouted his name. Brad shoved the pistol harder into her ribs and she gasped for air. She quieted but the neighbor had already seen them. The man approached Brad and Durrah. His AK-47 hung loosely from his hand at his side.

He spoke to Brad in Arabic.

“What is this, why do you have Ms. Nejem?” The man asked Brad once he got closer.

Durrah tried to speak but Brad talked over her.

“She turned Saleem over to the Israeli pigs. That is why he hasn’t been around for days. He sits and rots in a Jewish prison.” He said in a perfect Palestinian dialect. It was a gamble, to be sure. If the man knew Saleem well, he might be in on the kidnapping and therefore know that Brad was lying. However, if he only knew Saleem in passing, he might have only noticed that he hadn’t been around.

“It is not true. These are lies.” Durrah pleaded to her neighbor.

“Let me have her, I know what to do with traitors.” The neighbor said reaching for the woman. His grip on his rifle became stiff. He was prepared to use it.

“We are taking her to the very people she wants to help so badly, we are delivering her to Israel at the front.” Brad said with mock venom in his tone.

The man’s eyes lit up. He relaxed his hold on the rifle and slung it around his head so that the strap was running diagonally across his flat chest.

“Come, you will need a car to get her up to the checkpoint.” He said smiling.

Brad flagged Efran and Kingsley over. They all followed the neighbor to an old blue Mazda station wagon that was parked in an alleyway. Durrah tried to persuade her neighbor. Every time she opened her mouth though, Brad would yell over her and tell her she had no right to speak.

The five of them loaded themselves into the car. The neighbor got behind the wheel. Brad was in the seat directly behind him.

The American agent reached around the headrest in a flash and brought the top of his forearm up and under the driver’s neck. He slid his hand over his bicep on the opposite arm and pressed the back of the man’s head forward with his free hand. The neighbor struggled in his seat to get free but there was little he could do from his position. In seconds he was unconscious. Brad opened his car door and stepped into the alley. He pulled the driver out of his seat and laid him on the asphalt.

Brad got back in the car, this time in the driver’s seat. He twisted around and looked at Efran.

“Call whoever you need to. Get that border opened up for us, right now. Tell them we have a valuable prisoner on board.” He said, tossing Efran a cell phone.

Brad eased the vehicle out of the alley and drove in the direction of the border. He had to drive five miles an hour due to the hectic chaos of the shifting crowd in the streets.

Kingsley kept an eye on the alleyway, via the side view mirror. He wanted to know if the neighbor woke up suddenly.

Brad rolled down his window and stuck the barrel of the AK he had lifted from the Nejem house, into the air. He jerked back on the trigger for good show.

“Allah Akbar.” He screamed.

The men around the car were too caught up in the frenzy of the moment to even notice the car.

A young Palestinian boy crossed in front of the car causing Brad to tap the brakes. Efran was on the phone, Kingsley was keeping his chin buried in his chest but his eyes peeled on the alleyway. Durrah Nejem had slumped so low in her seat that Brad had to sit up higher in his, to get a glimpse of her in the rear view mirror.

“Ok, probably ten to fifteen minutes. Ok.” Efran said into the receiver. He hung up and passed the phone back over Brad’s shoulder. Brad took it and stuffed it into his shirt pocket under the neck line of his robe.

“Well?” He asked, as Efran stared out of the window at the mayhem that was transpiring around them. They were deep in the lion’s den. If the men around them knew who they were, they would all end up on the nightly news.

“They are going to call me back when they are sure we can get through. They are communicating. It will take some time I think.” He looked worried.

“Do you think they will be able to do it?” Kingsley asked.

“Under normal circumstances, communication between the guard stations and the chain of command is excellent. But whenever this happens, it’s…well…so so.” He replied holding a flat hand out and twisting it in a back and forth motion.

Brad stopped the car at the top of a gradual incline.

“What are you doing?” Efran asked; the trepidation in his voice impossible to mask.

“Take a look at that tower over there.” Brad said, pointing to an observation tower six hundred yards away to the North East of them.

“A good sniper would make mincemeat out of us at this distance.”

Kingsley nodded.

“So we’re going to have to wait for Efran’s friends to come through.” Brad said looking at Efran in the rearview mirror.

Kingsley spotted the owner of the car staggering out of the alley. His face was contorted with confusion and bright red. The Special Forces veteran jumped out of the vehicle and ran the short distance to the man. As he got closer to him, Kingsley shouted out.

“Are you okay brother?”

The man nodded while holding the side of his head. He looked around for his car and the attackers. Most of the mob was further up the embankment in front of them. It was just the two of them. It wasn’t until Tom Kingsley got right up on the man that the Palestinian recognized him as one of the three men that had just robbed him. Kingsley produced the Colt rifle he had been hiding under his robe and stroked the bottom of the butt stock into the man’s nose. Blood squirted out of both nostrils and the man fell to his rear, grabbing at his damaged face with his hands. Kingsley kept moving until he was behind the neighbor. He reached down and grabbed the man by his shirt. He quickly drug him back into the alley, constantly looking around to ensure that no one witnessed the event. In the alley, Kingsley pulled two zip ties out of his back pocket and secured the man’s hands and feet. He then hoisted him up onto his shoulder in an improvised fireman’s carry and threw him into a nearby dumpster. The man hit the metal bottom of the can and began to shout but it was impossible to hear him over the out of control crowd. Kingsley ran back to the car.

Brad’s cell phone chimed. He pulled it out of his shirt pocket and handed the device to Efran.

Efran took the phone and answered it.

“You think we’re gonna get out of this one?” Kingsley asked Brad as he slid back into the passenger seat.

“You worried about a couple of kids with guns?” Brad asked as he looked to his longtime friend.

Kingsley hesitated to answer but when he did, Brad could see it in his eyes.

“You know most of the guys in this line of work are either divorced or headed for it. Charlotte has stood by me all this time. I owe it to her. Besides, eventually you run out of luck out here.”

“Yeah, maybe it is time for you to retire.” Brad said with a mock chuckle. Tom wasn’t laughing.

“Yeah, I know what you mean. And to answer your question, I don’t know what I think.” He said.

Efran handed the phone back to Brad one last time.

“We can enter at the North Eastern border. The attacks are much less concentrated there and they have armored trucks they are preparing to breach the barrier with.”

There was something in Efran’s voice that wasn’t quite right. Brad picked up on it but it was Kingsley who said something.

“And?” Kingsley asked.

He stammered with his words for a few seconds and then just spit it out.

“Durrah Nejem will not be admitted into the country. We will not be interrogating her.”

“
A
nd why does Nazari need our help?” The Ayatollah asked his subordinate council members. None of the men in the room were quick to respond. They had all been on the receiving end of abject humiliation by the ‘Supreme Leader’ before; not one of them was anxious to be there again.

After some time, the Minister of Defense answered.

“It is not so much that Imam Nazari needs our ‘help’ Supreme Leader. It is more of an opportunity for our people to place themselves in a position of strength in the coming new world.” Anwar Al-Ajlani stated plainly.

He secretly hoped that the Ayatollah would not support the Palestinian cleric. It wasn’t that he wished Nazari to lose, quite the opposite, he wanted him to succeed. He could safely assume that anyone who had not been loyal to Nazari and his cause before his plans were implemented would be removed from power. This would almost certainly secure Al-Ajlani a high position of authority as the only ranking Iranian to stand by the Hamas Commander. Anwar believed that Nazari’s plan was sure to succeed and under such conviction, defied the Ayatollah’s counsel and the Ayatollah himself; though respectfully.

“All men talk of ‘new worlds’ when they are on the bottom. What have we to do with Nazari’s struggle?” The Ayatollah asked.

Hassan Bishara squirmed in his seat. No matter what the Ayatollah said, good or bad, Bishara would not be refuting anything in this meeting. The Supreme Leader of Iran was untouchable. Bishara was actually surprised that he had been allowed to attend in the first place. Al-Ajlani had pulled a few strings and got the Ayatollah’s main handler to okay the outsider.

“I cannot see involving my people or our military in this. Not as aggressors.” The Ayatollah said, pursing his lips together.

Anwar knew the politics of the room well. Once it was evident that the Ayatollah was done speaking, the counsel was expected to deliberate on the issue. The next person to speak would be the Minister of the Interior, then the Minister of the Treasury, followed by the rest of the counsel according to the favor they each held with the leader. Things had been happening in that order for thirty years. If, as often was the case, they didn’t have an opinion, they would simply give the one that they believed would best lineup with the Ayatollah’s but made to sound like their own. Meetings with the Ayatollah and his counsel always ran very long.

Bishara struggled to stay awake through the rest of it, which was another three hours. At the end, Ayatollah Al-Balawi called for his Minister of Defense and guest and dismissed the rest of the counsel. Bishara stood and headed for the front of the room, passing angry disapproving faces as they shuffled out.

“I will help Nazari.” Al-Balawi said from behind a trendy pair of wire rim glasses.

“But I cannot do so until after he institutes his full plan, which I do not know.” He said, waiting for Bishara to fill in the gaps.

When Bishara finished, the Ayatollah was silent for a long time. As with all the predecessors before him, the Supreme Leader had a flowing white beard which he currently busied his free hand with. His other hand held on to the arm of his illustrious leather chair. He used the arm to steady his nerves, Al-Balawi was in the beginning stages of Parkinson’s disease.

“How long will it take to have our forces in Quneitra, assuming this works?” He asked, turning to his Minister of Defense.

Al-Ajlani took time to look as if he was pondering the thought, even though he had known the answer before being asked.

“Twelve to fourteen hours.” He answered.

Edmond Bailey climbed the steps to the second floor of his quaint suburban home. The dark, hand scraped wooden treads clacked as he hit them with the heel of his shoe. The shotgun style security envelope in his left hand was thick, probably an inch. His wife Candice was holding his right.

“I just need to look a few things over sweetie.” He said as they reached the first of two landings. She kissed him on the cheek and finished the trek up the stairs to their bedroom.

“Don’t be too long, I haven’t seen you in years.” She teased.

Edmond mumbled out the usual response. His thoughts were lost on a picture that rested on a shelf halfway up the stairwell wall.

The picture was from fifteen years earlier. The National Security Advisor had just been appointed deputy director of The Central Intelligence Agency. That was when his life really got complicated. He had been in the intelligence sector for all of his adult life. He had known what pressure was about. But it wasn’t until the Deputy seat that the gears of the grind really began to crush from all sides. Of course, that had been nothing next to being sixth in line to the highest position in the free World. It was odd but he definitely looked back on the pressure of that time as ‘the Good Old Days.’