SANCTION: A Thriller (16 page)

“There is no more Hamas, Hezbollah, and Ansar Al-Islam. No more Mujahedeen, Palestinian Liberation Organization, Palestinian Liberation Front, Al-Qaida…” Nazari went down an exhaustive list of terrorist organizations, all of whom had at least dozens of representatives present.

“We are going to return to a simpler time.” Nazari added.

One of the men in the audience stood up and shouted an obscenity at Nazari, apparently too disturbed by Nazari’s suggestion to care about the value of his own life.

Nazari had been prepared for such an event. He actually had been surprised he had gotten so far through his speech before a dissenter threw down the gauntlet. But more important than Nazari being prepared, was Hassan Bishara’s quick response. The young Syrian had been standing in the back of the auditorium, listening to his boss’s speech; waiting for just such an outburst.

Hassan recognized the man as being from “Islamic Jihad”. He squeezed himself between dozens of bent knees as he walked down the aisle, toward the man. The man was yelling now, shouting about being Islamic Jihad. He screamed that he would never join Nazari or the Palestinians. He would never forsake his organization.

Hassan reached the renegade in short time. The man was somewhat startled when he noticed Bishara. He looked into his eyes, knowing what was coming next, and turned back to Nazari.

“This will never stand.” He said finally. He turned toward Bishara who was offering his hand. The man followed Bishara down the aisle and out of the side entrance of the auditorium.

Nazari continued.

“There is no time t…” The sound of Nazari’s voice was joined by a lone muffled gunshot from just outside the center’s walls. Nazari paused and lowered his head. He decided to take the opportunity to address the violence of the day.

“My brothers, we do not want to extinguish our own people.” He said, a genuine crack in his tone, testifying to his sincerity.

“But as you will see over time, the only way for our collective cause to succeed is for absolute unity. We can have no conflict or division among us.”

Ben noticed that several of the reporters weren’t really looking at Nazari. One man’s lips were moving but nothing was coming out. Another was tracing an unseen image with his fingertip on the rounded wooden railing of the balcony, over and over again. Shock had settled firmly into their minds. The Israeli agent doubted he would be able to get any of them out alive. They would be nothing but dead weight.

Emily spoke frankly with Ben, whispering quietly so the others couldn’t hear.

“We’re not going to get out of here are we?” She asked.

Ben hesitated to give her the most straightforward answer that he could. It wasn’t his style to exaggerate or sugarcoat. But if she panicked, there was certainly no way of her surviving the ordeal and their chances were severely limited as it was.

“I don’t know.” He said.

“
T
oday, we return to tradition.” Nazari said as his words picked up in tempo and excitement filled his chest.

“Nearly one hundred years ago, the Ikwhan, our true brothers, desired to return the hearts of our people to the rightful place, Islam. They succeeded in gaining collective authority under King Abdulaziz. But the Western powers came in after the discovery of their precious oil and corrupted the heart of the King.” Nazari said, emotion ebbing and flowing as he talked.

There began to be cheers from the audience. This too, Nazari had planned and expected. Once the group thought as one, he would have complete dominion over them.

Ben returned to the body of the first guard. He drug the dead man to a spot closer to the balcony and positioned it in the front row of seats. He then secured the other guard on the stairwell and hoisted him onto his shoulder. He set the body on top of the previous and took the man’s AK. He slung the weapon over his shoulder and told Ms. Stansborough to go through the man’s pockets and look for a cell phone.

She pulled a phone from out of her own pocket and handed it to Ben.

In the end, whether he got off the island or not, he needed to make contact with Avner. He turned the device on and found no signal.

Ben walked back to the top of one of the staircases and stood on the landing. He needed to scope out their surroundings and quickly. He hugged the far side of the staircase wall and descended. He found the light switch halfway down and turned it off. The stairwell went dark behind him. Just beyond the base of the stairs the room opened up into a massive anti-chamber that served as the foyer to the auditorium. Ben stayed in the shadows and peered around the wall. Spaced along the walls in the foyer were plush chairs and sofas in a variety of tropical patterns and colors dressed with half-moon shaped tables and great wall length mirrors.

Except for the furniture, the room was empty. Ben ventured out of the hallway, staying pressed against the wall. He only got a few paces when he heard footsteps and slid himself back to the stairwell. A single Arab man entered the room and walked across its breadth to sit on one of the sofas. He produced a cigar from somewhere within his robe and lit the end of it with a slim gold lighter. Ben watched as the man puffed and pulled on the smoke until the tip glowed a bright reddish orange. Ben retrieved the phone. The words, ‘no signal’ were still spread across the screen. He tucked it back into his pocket and returned to the balcony.

“I’m going with you.” Emily blurted out. Her voice trembled.

“Going with me may not be any safer for you than staying here but it’s up to you.” He said, doing his best to sound neutral.

“Leave whatever you have. We’re going right now.” He said handing her one of the sub-machine guns.

She held up a notepad she had removed from one of the guards. On it were scribbled a few lines in Arabic, followed by a couple of international numbers. It said, “North shore, 2PM, Saturday.” Below that were the words “Sea Wind”. Ben felt he had seen the name somewhere before but he couldn’t quite place it. Neither the location reference nor the phone numbers meant anything to him.

“Forget it, it’s useless to us.” He said quietly. He took the weapon out of Emily’s hands and slowly pulled back on the bolt. He let the loading mechanism run forward, keeping his other hand out in front of it to ensure that it didn’t slam into position and alert anyone.

“Let’s go.” He said as he handed it back to her.

Emily hesitated. She looked back at her fellow reporters. Ben wasn’t indifferent to their plight but he had a mission that required him to put the safety of others behind him. She stared at him, her eyes pleading on behalf of her colleagues.

“If you can get them away from the balcony without causing a disturbance, I can probably get them up into this attic. With any luck they might not be discovered up there.” He said, pointing to a small square patch in the ceiling overhead.

Emily crept over to the balcony. She stayed low enough that no one below could see her. She saw the men’s faces and her heart broke. They were scared, terrified. They had seen their own deaths coming and it had spiraled them into a collective state of shock.

“Don’t look down here. Keep looking at the podium and just listen. We have a way to hide you.” She was more afraid for them than she was for herself. For all intents and purposes they had become mindless robots.

“I need you to pick the right opportunity to step away from the balcony. You can’t let anyone who might be looking up here see you. If you understand what I am saying blink twice but do not look down at me.” She whispered. All except one of them blinked. She hoped that the lone reporter would get the point after he saw that the others had moved. She backed away from the balcony and got back to where Ben stood next to a metal folding chair he had staged beneath the attic access.

“Well?” He asked anxiously. The veteran Mossad agent would have left the other reporters there and forced himself to be okay with it, if it hadn’t have been for Emily Stanborough’s intervention. Now he was breaking his most important survival rule. A rule that had kept him focused and alive for more than a decade in some of the world’s most dangerous regions.

“They either have to start coming, or I have to go. Nazari’s speech could be over at any minute. We can’t wait for them.” He said.

One of the reporters nonchalantly peeled himself away from the rest of the group and came to Emily and Ben. The Israeli wasted no time.

“Put your foot in my hand and reach for the edge of the access. The slightest disturbance will echo through the hall, so don’t make any noise.” Just as the reporter heaved himself up over the edge and disappeared into the attic, another one of the group stepped back from the balcony and took his place on the chair. Ben gave him the same spiel and hoisted the man into position. One by one, the men entered the attic.

Ben stood on the seat of the chair. “Okay, close her up. I don’t know when or if we will be back to get you. My suggestion is to wait at least a day and if you don’t hear anything come down. But be very cautious. There will probably be guards all over the island. Good luck.”

The reporter replaced the access door. Ben got down off the chair and leaned it up against the wall. He and Emily filed back down the unlit stairway. The man that had been on the sofa smoking his cigar was now up and walking the room. He carved an invisible outline of the room’s perimeter with his steps as he puffed away.

Ben watched and waited for the man to make a complete loop and begin the trek along the auditorium wall toward himself and Ms. Stansborough. When he was close enough, Ben reached out from the shadows of the stairwell and locked his arm around the man’s neck from behind, being sure to wedge the guys arm up against the open side of his neck. The man struggled but succumbed to the lack of oxygen within seconds. Ben drug him back up the stairs. Ben didn’t bother to hide the man’s body once he got to the top of the stairs, something he would probably regret. But he was running out of time. Nazari’s speech could be over at any moment and then the men in the audience were likely to be crawling all over the facility.

When he got back down the stairs, he found Emily wandering around in the anti-chamber. He was a breath away from calling after her when he heard someone shout in Arabic.

“Hey, what are you doing down here?”

It was another of Nazari’s guards.

Ben had two choices; he could leave her and use the guard’s distraction to sneak off in the opposite direction or he could rescue her and deal with the consequences. Ben burst from the shadows with long strides toward the guard. The Mossad agent already had his right foot in the air by the time the man started to turn to investigate the noise of Ben’s approach. Schweitzer caught him square in the hip with a severe thrusting kick. There was an audible crack and the man cried out in pain. As he fell to the floor Ben followed up by launching his other leg forward, just a few inches off of the ground. The tip of his dress shoe connected with the man’s throat and he was instantly silent.

Emily Stansborough recoiled at the scene. She had been a war correspondent at the beginning of the Iraq war in 2004 but she hadn’t been this close to the action. She was grateful that there were men who had such courage in such times but it made her stomach turn nonetheless.

Ben grabbed her by the arm. He didn’t bother scolding her for exploring without him and attracting the guard’s attention, there was no time. They had to move, fast.

There was a side door at the end of the anti-chamber. As Ben and Emily approached, it swung open and a man in a black suit and tie appeared. He was holding a silver tray of tiny crystal shot glasses that were filled with Arabian coffee. The man stepped aside and let them pass. Ben grabbed the open door to the auditorium’s kitchen, just as a group of men entered the foyer from the auditorium behind them through a doorway at the opposite end of the room. Ben looked back briefly. They were shouting in Arabic and pointing their way. Then one of the men spotted the body on the ground near the stairwell and raised an AK-47.

Ben also raised his weapon. Unlike the wild-eyed gunmen however, Ben was well trained. He dropped to a knee, as the man pulled the trigger and returned fire. The man’s rounds sank deep into the plaster of the wall several feet over Ben’s head while all but a few rounds from Ben’s gun landed in the other man’s torso. The terrorist dropped to the floor, clutching at his chest, unable to breathe because of the peanut sized holes in his lungs. The ringing of gunfire echoed through the entire hall. It was like the sound of a fire alarm. Ben closed the door behind him and entered the kitchen. The cooks and wait staff looked puzzled and scared as they ducked down behind stainless steel prep tables and industrial appliances.

S
aleem placed the last of a charge of plastic explosives at the base of a large column. The three story building in the center of town had originally hosted a bundle of private offices before the destruction of the city, in 1974. Saleem stared approvingly at the mangled United Nations vehicle that he and Azim had hauled in from the street via a ratchet strap they had secured to the Land Rover’s rear hitch.

He pushed a blasting cap into the clay-like block and rolled a Primacord fuse out into the street. Saleem ducked down behind a steel dumpster and depressed the primer trigger. The fuse exploded at such a high rate of speed that it appeared to be instantaneous across its length. The columns that supported the abandoned building gave at their base and the structure collapsed in a thunderous heap. A plum of dust and rubble shot high into the air. Saleem stood up to admire his work. The building had caved in on itself. Now, no evidence of the peacekeepers patrol existed.

Saleem got back into the SUV and drove down the road to where he had set up the first sensor. The landscape was desolate. A sense of fear and doom, brought on by the apocalyptic appearance along the highway, settled into the pit of Azim’s stomach. An empty feeling came over him as he thought about dying in the forgotten city. He thought of all the Syrians that had sacrificed their lives in Quneitra during the six day war. They were not remembered. No one cared about who they had been or what they had been after. Their memories had vanished long before the buildings of the city had begun to decay. He regretted that he would become a statistic in the place. But there was nothing to be done about it. He was trapped, forever a part of Saleem’s world. It was depressing and made him even less eager to fight.