Hard Target (5 page)

As soon as they were out of earshot, Uzi spoke. “Shep, I can’t guarantee we’ll be any closer to solving this thing in nine weeks, let alone nine days.”

“When the director tells you he wants something done, you do it, Uzi. No excuses, just answers. Answers.”

Uzi frowned and turned away.

“You need something, let me know. More agents, just tell me how many. That’s how this is going to work.” When he didn’t get a reply, Shepard put a reassuring arm around his friend’s shoulders. “Hey, someone tried to kill the president-elect of the United States, Uzi. That’s never happened before. This is major shit. And you get to be the guy in the middle of it all.”

“Somehow that doesn’t make me feel better, Shep.” Uzi held up a hand before Shepard could respond. “I won’t let you down.”

“I know you won’t.” He tightened his large paw around Uzi’s shoulder, then turned and headed off toward the director.

Uzi rolled his head back, ran his hands across his face...and wondered how he was going to deliver.

DAY ONE

3:06 AM

Uzi brought his fist up to his mouth as the yawn stretched his lips wide. Fatigue was not just announcing its arrival, it was propping up the pillows and begging him to find a bed. He needed a Turkish coffee—but at this time of night, in the middle of the countryside, that was not going to happen. He hugged his body tight as a shiver rippled through his shoulders.

He hadn’t wanted to call his old contact. There were issues such a meeting would bring up, things he didn’t want to discuss. But he needed information his former colleague might be able to provide; the man was dialed in, always was, and with a nine-day deadline, Uzi needed something to set him in the right direction, intel that could streamline his efforts and spark his investigation. If there was anyone who could do that, like jumper cables to a dead car battery, it was Nuri Peled.

Uzi sat beneath a grove of trees on a metal mesh bench in Pershing Park, an unexpected slice of suburbia two blocks from the White House. To his right and across the street stood the regal centenarian Willard InterContinental Hotel, the “crown jewel” of Pennsylvania Avenue. Uzi remembered reading that the term “lobbyist” had been coined in the Willard’s grand lobby and that writers Mark Twain and Walt Whitman had once chosen it as a place to gather and socialize.

The dense tree canopy filtered what little moonlight trickled down amidst the weary glow of streetlamps dotting the park’s multiple levels. Uzi checked his watch, then fought off another yawn. A welcome teeth-chattering breeze blew across his face and woke him a bit. He wished Peled would arrive soon.

Fifteen minutes past the hour, the stocky form of a man in a running suit sauntered up to the reflecting pond set into granite banks near the center of the park. Uzi nonchalantly gazed in the man’s direction, positively identified his friend, and then pulled himself off the bench, headed toward the large bronze statue of General James Pershing, the park’s namesake. Marbled charcoal granite walls surrounded the figure; historical World War I blurbs and battle tales etched the smooth rock face.

The patter from the pond’s fountain masked surrounding noises—so well that Peled was able to make a silent approach. Uzi turned and took in the man’s face. More lines creased the eyes and a few scraggly gray hairs sprouted beneath his knit cap, but otherwise Nuri Peled looked the same as the last time Uzi had seen him.

“I didn’t think I’d hear from you again,” Peled said, his voice as rough as a nail file.

Uzi looked away. “I’m with the Bureau now.”

“We know.” Peled rocked back and forth on his heels. “How have you been? Since, well...since you left.”

“Fine. I’ve been fine.”

To this Peled looked at Uzi for the first time, his clear, appraising eyes doing a quick calculation. “You’re lying.”

“I need some info,” Uzi said. He glanced over his left shoulder and scanned the park’s crevices. He faced the statue again, the high walls behind it effectively shielding their mouths from anyone attempting to lip-read from a distance. The fountain noise would foil parabolic microphones and other high-tech listening tactics. “Intel,” Uzi said, “on hostiles back home.”

A short chuckle blurted from Peled’s throat. “That’s a bit open-ended, my friend. Can you be more specific?”

“Relative to the US, anything major being planned the past few months?”

“There’s always chatter.”

“I’m not interested in chatter. Reliable intel, Nuri. You know what happened tonight. You know what I’m asking.”

“I’m no longer with our former employer. A friendly ally, though. Not to worry.” Now it was Peled’s turn to check their surroundings. After a scouring look around, he turned back to Uzi and said, “Possibly some activity involving a radical Islamic group. A whisper on the wind that one of them has set up shop here. Haven’t been able to verify any of that yet.”

“This whisper. Related to the chopper bombing?”

“Can’t say. But if they are here, they’re quite good, very quiet. Unaffiliated with mosques or imams. Independent funding. At least, no known connections with traditional money sources.”

“Best guess.”

“Best guess is that I can’t guess yet. If you don’t mind some friendly advice, this one smells domestic. But that’s just my gut. Other than the whisper—which may or may not be related—I’m not seeing anything that puts a foreign terrorist anywhere near your case. But I just started poking around. If they’re here, I’ll find them. I’ll have to dig a little faster in light of tonight’s...events.”

“I appreciate that.”

“You know me well enough to know I’m not doing it for you.”

Uzi nodded contritely. “Of course.”

“I miss working with you, Uzi.”

“Yeah, well, things don’t always turn out the way we expect them to, you know?”

Peled kicked at a pebble by his shoe, then said, “I’ll contact you if I find anything.”

Uzi stood there, considering the inadequacy of his own words, thinking how life can change from white to black in the tick of a second hand. He knew this meeting would refresh unpleasant memories, memories he could ill afford to sort through right now. He needed to focus on the task at hand. Directly in front of him stood General Pershing, hero of a war nearly a hundred years earlier. And now a different war in a different world, a war fought against an elusive enemy, without masses of troops or land, tanks or submarines. Brutal and deadly nonetheless.

Uzi turned to shake Peled’s hand, but the man was gone. Only the empty cement plaza stared back at him, the white noise rush of the pond’s fountain the lone sound of the sleeping city. A brisk breeze reminded him how tired he was. He turned and lifted heavy feet toward his car.

7:00 AM

Long murky shadows stretched across the sidewalk like tendrils from a hideous monster. The dark night stank of death, of destruction and terror. Uzi moved amidst the darkness, through Jerusalem’s myriad alleys and hidden spots only he knew...scores of stray cats sensing his urgency and scurrying away as he approached.

His nerves were like rotten teeth, ready to crumble at the slightest hint of pressure.

The phone call from Nuri Peled had been short and laced with warning. “Go home, Uzi. Now.” Peled then hung up and Uzi took off on foot. Driving a car this close to home was too risky. The chances of being followed were great, the ability to lose your pursuer difficult.

Uzi moved anonymously through the bustling Ben Yehuda with speed and efficiency, weaving among the raucous youth, musicians, and tourists. He cut across the dark Independence Park and emerged on Agron, the urgency in Peled’s voice pushing him, driving him faster than was safe.

Go home, Uzi. Now.

What could possibly await him at home that would warrant Peled’s attention? Had he discovered a bug buried in a wall of his apartment? Papers hidden away in his floorboards? He had no hidden papers.

Dena... Had Dena discovered something and called Gideon? Had something startled her? With Uzi having gone dark—officially an “important business trip” to his wife, while in reality a covert mission in Syria and then Gaza—Dena knew the protocol: call the private security line, and whoever answered would alert Gideon. Gideon would then dispatch someone to look in on his wife and daughter. Dena, of course, did not know who Gideon was, or who manned the private line...only that she was to call it at the slightest hint of trouble.

Trouble. Had something happened to Dena and Maya? It was a possibility too painful to even consider. Besides, it was highly unlikely. “They’ve got the best security anyone could have,” Gideon Aksel had told Uzi when he signed on. “Your family will be safe. We live and die by procedure, my friend. Follow it to the letter and everything will be fine.” Uzi had branded the rules into his brain like a technogeek embeds an encryption algorithm on a computer chip. And until yesterday’s mission, he had always followed procedure. Always.

But now, as he turned the corner to his apartment building and took in the scene before him, his heart skipped and jumped and his stomach pumped his throat full of bile. Police cars—fire engine—ambulance. Living room window missing. No, not missing, blown out—

“Uzi!” Emerging from the front entrance of the building was Nuri Peled, his face as long and dark as the night’s shadows.

Uzi moved toward his friend, though he didn’t remember covering the distance. They stood toe to toe, Uzi searching his mentor’s face for information. Peled only looked up toward the stairs. Uzi turned and flew up the steps, floating, an apparition navigating the air currents as he headed toward his apartment. Through the open front door—no, it was blown off its hinges—he saw a large figure, its back to him.

Gideon Aksel turned. His stout body was rigid, the lines in his leathered face deep. Thick arms wrapped across his chest. He took in Uzi’s face, then turned back toward the kitchen.

Rubble lay scattered about the floor of Uzi’s small apartment. His home.

Gideon’s feet were firmly planted amongst the debris. But he was not looking into the kitchen. He was looking out the window at something below.

Intense fear exploded through Uzi’s body like a jolt of electricity.

Dena. Uzi shouted it this time. “Dena!”

He started down the hallway to his right, his legs moving slowly, as though trudging through knee-deep mud.

“Maya?” His mind started to come around, adding things up, taking in the scene. Police. Fire. Bombed out window and door. Nuri Peled at the front, Gideon Aksel inside his apartment.

But his brain wouldn’t put it together. Couldn’t put it together. His vision mentally fogged like a roadblock to comprehension. And then, in front of him, tucked away in his bed—his own bed, goddamn it!—the bodies of his wife and three year old daughter, bound at the ankles and wrists, blood all over. Blood. Blood in the bed, their throats slashed, eyes still open, staring at—

Staring at him.

He turned away. Through the window, a young woman slithered off in the shadows. The scene was too emotionally painful to process. He wanted to touch his wife and daughter, to kiss them, to whisper “Open your eyes, you’re dreaming—” But in that split second, the fog lifted. He knew. It struck him like a sharp blow to the throat. He needed another look, to be sure his optic nerves were telling the truth.

He forced himself to turn back toward their bodies. A glimpse and then his knees went weak and it all came flooding into him. Everything suddenly adding up, making frightening sense. A moan escaped his lips and he realized he was on the floor, knees drawn up to his chest, intense sorrow shuddering up his spine as if death itself had made the journey.

No tears flowed.

Emptiness. Pain...anger.

The pressure of a gentle hand against his shoulder. In the background, voices.

Nuri Peled: I’m sorry, Uzi, I’m so sorry.

Gideon Aksel: It’s your own damn fault... Your own fault...

AIR SHOT INTO HIS LUNGS, a sudden gasp of terror as he jolted awake in bed, perspiration oiling his skin slick and shiny. Uzi’s alarm was normally tuned to a smooth jazz station, but he must have hit the wrong button when setting it, because this morning the blaring buzzer—which would’ve awoken an entire battalion—jarred him from sleep.

And just as well. He needed something to shake him awake. To purge the pain from his memory, if only for a little while.

Uzi got out of bed, showered, and dressed for work. As he knotted his tie, he fought off the familiar, gnawing sense of sadness. He moved slowly, feeling as if he’d hardly slept. He had gotten home from his meeting with Nuri Peled at 4
AM
, but couldn’t fall asleep till some time later. Then the nightmare. It wasn’t the first—and after six years of recurring dreams, he was sure it wouldn’t be the last.

He punched the Power button on the remote and saw the words “MSNBC News Special Report” fade from the TV, replaced by a full-screen view of President Jonathan Whitehall seated behind his Oval Office desk, hands folded, intense resolve hardening his brow.

“It’s with a heavy heart that I come before you this morning,” Whitehall began, “on the dawn of another chapter of terrorism that has struck our nation. In our war on terror, we’ve been relentless in our pursuit of those perpetrating these crimes against freedom and democracy. And we’ve seen a number of flawlessly executed successes. But as I’ve repeatedly stated, despite our best efforts to be vigilant, the likelihood existed that we’d not seen the last attack on American soil. That statement has unfortunately proven true.

“I must stress that we do not yet know the identities of those responsible for this latest assault. We must all show restraint while our various agencies conduct their investigations. But know one thing: as we’ve done in the past, we will find out who committed this horrific act of murder. And then we will bring them to justice—”

Uzi powered down the TV. He had heard the speech before—not word for word, but the sentiments, the tone, the rally-the-troops show of confidence that leaders worldwide had displayed so many times in the past. Bombs, death...terror. There never seemed to be a shortage of terror.

He shoved his Glock-22 .40 handgun into its holster in the small of his back, secured his knives, then grabbed his leather overcoat. As Marshall Shepard had not so gently ordered, he had an appointment with a psychologist. Though he would have loved to skip it—and use Douglas Knox’s nine-day deadline as an excuse—it would merely be prolonging the inevitable. He would keep his appointment, but make it a brief meet-and-greet. If there was one thing Uzi didn’t want to do, it was break a promise to Shepard.

The man had saved Uzi’s skin a number of times, and had single-handedly vouched for him when the Bureau was considering his application to the Academy. Uzi’s stint with Israel’s Shin Bet General Security Services gave the Bureau pause—as did any applicant’s prior work history with a foreign police force or intelligence group. But Shepard stressed the positives: Uzi’s exceptional investigative prowess, his knowledge of, and firsthand experience with, terrorism—as well as his fluency in Arabic. In the end, Shepard’s pitch made the difference. The Bureau desperately needed someone with Uzi’s skill set. And Uzi needed the job, not just to support himself financially, but for the diversion it provided from his personal issues.