Black Mountain (6 page)

The woman lifted the glasses from her chest and placed them on her face, then sat as immobile as the street’s surrounding bricks and mortar as she watched a young man walk quickly up the street towards a solid wooden door recessed into an old-fashioned apartment block. He looked around furtively, then knocked three times.

The woman waited for another minute after he’d disappeared inside, then she got to her feet and hobbled towards the same door.

*

Abu ibn Jbeil opened the door a crack and peered out. He looked the old woman up and down. She lifted her bag a little higher and groaned softly under its weight. The eyes behind the thick glasses were like blurred pools of oil – unreadable. She moaned again, her arm shaking from the weight of the bag.

Abu ibn Jbeil could not care less about her suffering, but she was expected and her food would be welcome. He opened the door a little wider, but as she entered he stopped her with his hand and roughly felt her sides, back and front, searching for guns, knives or explosives. She coughed wetly, and he held his breath, hurrying through his examination. How he detested being so close to the old hag, touching her body. It was probably a waste of time, but it was best to take no chances considering how close they were to their goal.

Finished, he stood back and waved her impatiently towards the kitchen, resisting the strong urge to kick her large behind as she hobbled past him.

*

The woman shuffled slowly towards the five men sitting around the table in the darkened room. All had stopped talking at her arrival, and now sat smoking their thick, pungent shisha tobacco and sipping syrupy-sweet coffee. Though her limbs were slow, her eyes darted from one man to another. She recognised Hezar-Jihadi faces and also some senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Unfurled on the table, the corners held in place by a bottle of whisky and several ashtrays, were the schematics for the new Iranian missile, the Shihab-2, the Meteor.

She stopped at the table and turned to the black-eyed young man who had let her in. ‘May I use the washroom,
edame
?’

The young man looked to one of the older men at the table, who shook his head without even looking up. ‘No,’ the young man said. ‘Leave the bag and go,
halla, halla
.’

She nodded her understanding and turned towards the kitchen. On the way, she pulled off her gloves and pushed them into a fold of her robe. If the men had been watching, they would have been surprised to see such strong and youthful hands on one so bent and infirm. She lifted the string bag onto the kitchen bench and in the same motion drew up the front of her long abaya. Strapped high between her smooth, muscular thighs was a squat black pistol. She pulled it free of the tape and secreted it in one of her long, loose sleeves. She whispered one word: ‘Installed.’

From one arm of her glasses, came the reply: ‘Proceed.’

She drew in a deep breath and turned to hobble back out to the men.

The young man who’d let her in was looking at her with ill-concealed disgust and contempt. He felt in his pocket, pulled out some crumpled Lebanese pounds, rolled them into a small ball and dropped it at his feet. The woman slowly bent to retrieve it; however, when she came back up it was not the wrinkled money she had in her hand but an unwavering black Barak pistol. There were no words needed – the gun barked once in the young man’s face, and before his body had even begun to fall she turned and fired at the men at the table.

Two went down with precision headshots; the third was taken high in the sternum, throwing a plume of blood and shattered spinal column over the wall behind him. Of the remaining two, one took up a vantage point behind some furniture and the other launched himself at her across the table. Perhaps his mind was fooling him into believing it was an old woman under the dark robes and she would easily buckle under his 200-pound frame. Maybe he realised his error when he was in the air, but by then it was too late.

The woman took up a combat stance and, with perfect balance, launched a flat-soled kick to his face. Even though the man easily outweighed her by over fifty pounds, the muscles in her thighs uncoiled with enough force to smash his nasal septum up into his brain. He was dead before his large body had hit the ground. She dropped and rolled to the left, slamming her back to the wall. She needed to reacquire the final target.

A voice sounded in the quiet from amongst the toppled furniture. ‘Bat-Tzion, you have stopped nothing. There are hundreds like us, and we will eventually bulldoze your bodies into the sea.’

The woman remained silent at the threat. Seconds passed as she quickly looked around the room, now heavy with the smell of cordite and coppery blood.

‘Bat-Tzion, if you let me leave, I will give you Nazranasha. I know you have been searching for him. He is here, you know, right now, in Beirut.’

Nazranasha was the leader of Hezar-Jihadi and the mastermind behind every assassination, bombing and cross-border raid for a decade. He was the first prize for every Israeli soldier and agent.

Tempting, but not for today
, the woman thought. She began to slide forward in the shadowy room, towards where the voice was coming from.

‘Israeli, I surrender to you. Here . . .’ A new Glock handgun clattered on the floor in the centre of the room.

A lesser agent would have been momentarily distracted and perhaps have missed the almost imperceptible sound of the flattened steel pin of a stun grenade being removed.

The man stood to throw the explosive. At the same time, the woman also stood and fired twice in quick succession. The man took two shots to the forehead and hit the ground at roughly the same time as the grenade. The woman dived behind a couch, crushed her eyes shut and held her hands over her ears. Stun grenades were designed for maximum disorientation and had little shrapnel; however, they could destroy eardrums or maim if they landed close by.

The small black cylinder exploded with an ear-shattering
whump
and a flash that would have seared the woman’s retinas for days. The impact wave blew out all the windows, and the pyrotechnic metal oxidant set fire to the rug and most of the furniture.

The woman stood, her ears still ringing even though they’d been covered. She crossed to the table where the missile schematics lay, stuffed them under her robes, then ran to the kitchen and retrieved her bag. She looked down at the black gun she still gripped; the hand that held it was as steady as a rock. In the meat between her thumb and forefinger was a small tattoo – a blue Star of David.

She quickly wiped the weapon and threw it onto the burning rug, then spoke to the dead man. ‘And there will always be thousands more like us waiting for you.’

She pulled on her gloves and slid the glasses back onto her nose. She pressed a small stud at the side of one lens and spoke softly. ‘Blue Star requesting immediate extraction.’

The emotionless voice spoke into her ear again: ‘Extraction authorised.’ And then: ‘Be advised, Blue Star, Arcadian conscious.’

She almost stumbled as her body, already awash with adrenaline, kicked up another gear.
Awake
, she thought.
At last
.

She drew in a long breath, calming her urge to rush. She bent slightly at the knees and waist before she pulled open the door. Once again, an old woman suffering from the heat shuffled down a winding street in the city of Beirut.

*

Adira Senesh couldn’t take her eyes from the figure on the bed. She found it hard to associate the mucus-covered thing staining the sheets with the strong, handsome HAWC soldier she had known. Alex Hunter had been –
was
– like no human being she had ever seen or probably ever would again. Adira’s jaw clenched and she felt her anger rise at fate’s cruel joke. She had told Alex she would take him horse riding along the shore of the Sea of Galilee; to stand on the purple cliffs of the Golan Heights. She had wanted to show him
her
Israel. Now he was here and yet he wasn’t. It wasn’t fair.

Together, they had faced horror and death, and he had saved her life. In turn she had stopped the Americans from cutting him into a thousand pieces for study. She drew in a deep breath. The man she knew was buried in there somewhere. She was sure of it.

She became aware of the scientist next to her talking.

‘Although we’d kept the specimen at extremely low temperatures, the bacterium was still active in his system – just slowed to a point of near inactivity.’

‘The specimen,’ she echoed, feeling her rage increasing further.

Weisz nodded, unaware of her reaction, and continued. ‘And then a week ago it inexplicably resumed its vigorous progress. We don’t know what triggered it, but it didn’t leave us with many options. Nothing has worked against its aggressive progress to date. In my opinion, this thing is straight from Hell. You’ve seen what it can do to flesh? We extracted and cultivated some of the bacteria immediately on the specimen’s arrival at the facility, then injected it directly into several chimpanzees. In twenty-four hours, they were liquid – muscle, hair, even bone. We had to incinerate the remains in an industrial furnace, as the residue was still active and aggressively infectious.’

Weisz nodded towards the bed. ‘With the bacterium active again, it would have been the same with this specimen. Within twenty-four to forty-eight hours we would have had nothing left to work with. So we immediately brought the body temperature back up to sixty degrees, just below room temperature, and increased the dosage for the Arcadian treatment that was brought in with him. We have no idea how his body metabolises the chemical compounds, as they’ve proved fatal to every other subject they’ve been administered to. But ever since, his body has been squeezing out the denatured Hades bacterium.’

Weisz looked like he was about to touch the man’s face, but instead let his gloved fingers hover just above the slimy flesh. ‘The microorganism is now fully degraded; the tertiary and secondary structures, the bonding interactions, are all fully disrupted. Seems the treatment, and the specimen’s unique metabolism, are the only systems that can mount a defence to overwhelm the invaders.’ He shrugged. ‘If only we knew how they do it.’ He straightened. ‘Every now and then he wakes, yells a few garbled sentences, then lapses back into unconsciousness.’

Adira pushed past the scientist and leaned slightly towards the figure on the bed. When she saw the leather and canvas cuff restraints on his hands and feet, she felt her heart rate start to lift. Anger bloomed in her belly and her lips compressed in displeasure.

Weisz chortled, probably interpreting her expression as disgust at the smell or the man’s physical appearance. ‘Go ahead, it’s safe to be close. Just won’t be very pleasant until the body’s finished excreting the microorganism’s protein shell. The suit I’m wearing is regulation for this level, not specifically for protection from this oily, oversized
goyim
.’ He smiled and used his pen to prod Alex’s body through a clean section of the sheet. ‘I, personally, have taken several slices from the subject and I can guarantee there is no viable infectious agent remaining.’

Adira felt a charge go through her body. It was the same feeling she had before she killed an enemy agent. She steeled herself, closing her eyes momentarily. When she opened them, she turned to face the scientist, using all her will to keep her voice even. She failed, her voice increasing in intensity on each word. ‘You are anatomising? Who authorised this?’

The force of her voice and gaze seemed to make Weisz suddenly unsure of himself.

‘Uh, the general, General Shavit. He authorised the increase in temperature on the basis that the subject was useless to us in a nexus between life and death – too alive to dissect, too dead to consciously assist us in our testing. We hoped the raised temperature and dosage would retrieve him to a state we could work with. And it worked.’

Adira felt her mouth go dry. ‘You are not working
with
him. You are working
on
him!’

The scientist stepped back as her glare turned volcanic. He must have realised she was no simple functionary sent by the ministry. Adira moved closer to the scientist, not sure what she was intending to do to him. Before she could act, the figure on the bed reached out and grabbed her around the wrist. The thick straps of the heavy leather restraints hung from his wrist like tattered streamers.

Adira grunted, first from shock, then from pain. Alex still hadn’t opened his eyes, but he hadn’t reached out blindly; he’d seemed to know where she was. She gritted her teeth at the excruciating pain as his grip compressed the bones in her forearm.

Weisz dropped his clipboard and moved to a panel of buttons on the wall, obviously intending to call in security.

‘Stay where you are!’ Adira’s voice froze his hand in midair.

Weisz stood rigid for a few seconds, before edging towards the door.

Adira groaned as Alex dragged her towards the bed. ‘Alex, do you know me? Do you know who I am?’ She brought her other hand around to try to dislodge his fingers, but she might as well have been working on steel. ‘Alex, please.’

His eyes opened and she saw spidery red and black veins ringing the once grey-green pupils.

‘It’s coming!’ he shouted and his grip tightened even more. ‘She’s scared. She needs me! I need to go.’

He released her wrist and sat up, the restraint on his other arm parting like paper. Blobs of dark jelly slid from his face and torso. He coughed, spraying more black mucus onto the bed. He slowly brought a hand up to the side of his head and groaned deeply. ‘It hurts.’ He looked at her, and his eyes seemed to register recognition for the first time. ‘You.’

The first dart took him in the shoulder, the second directly over the heart. The following four went in anywhere the security detail could hit. His hands dropped, and he looked down at the darts piercing his body in confusion before he slumped back on the bed.

Adira screamed in horror and leaped at Alex to pull one of the hypodermic darts from his chest. Before she could grab another, she was seized from behind – one hand on her arm, one on her hair – and pulled roughly backwards. In her volatile frame of mind, it was a mistake – she reacted violently, spinning quickly to strike the first man under the chin with the flat of her hand. His head shot back on his bull-like neck and he fell backwards like a plank of wood.