Alexa - Legionnaire : Training an Assassin: Prequel to Alexa - The Series (3 page)

Perreira slammed the palm of his hand onto the table. “We’ve had to stop our work for four months now. We cannot trust nobody. Now I’m starting to feel poor. And I don’t like to feel poor.”

Zach frowned up at Callahan. “Could you please tell me who the hell this guy is?”

Callahan shrugged. “His name is Miguel Perreira. My agent in Cuba, employed by the CIA. He is my contact with Castro, and he also helps out in Southern Africa.”

Perreira frowned and sucked his teeth. “Your agent?”

Callahan smiled coldly and patted Perreira on the shoulder. “Sorry, my business partner.”
 

Pereirra smiled then nodded. “Better.” He strolled towards Zach and put his foot onto the chair’s edge, between Zach’s legs. He rested his arms on his knee and leaned forward. “Your pretty wife is dead. Your daughter is next.”

Zachary closed his eyes, his head slumped on his chest. Shit, Rebecca. Bruce would be close. He made up his mind. “OK, I'll tell you. Leave Rebecca out of this. This will take a while.”

Bruce had better arrive soon.

Callahan and Perreira pulled some chairs closer and sat.

“Who was the mole?” Callahan asked for the fourth time.

June 16, 1992.

Jaffa, Israel

19:35

Zach glanced up at Callahan. “You want to know who the mole was?”

Callahan nodded, leaning forward in his chair.

Zachary smiled faintly. “You were. You had your own special agent assigned to watch over you. Bruce Bryden."

Callahan's eyes widened. “Bryden? Why?”

“To keep an eye on you, Callahan,” Zach said and licked his chafed lips. “You behaved erratically, missing check-ins and disappearing off the radar for extended periods of time.”

“So I was red-flagged by Shabak?"
 

Zachary nodded slowly. “No department is better equipped to root out rogue agents.”
 

Callahan stood up stiffly and held his back with both hands. “You sent a rookie agent after me, a greenhorn who couldn't complete the job?”
 

Zachary shrugged but said nothing.

“How old is Bryden anyway?”

“Twenty-eight. But he’s special.”
 

“Special?”

Zach leaned back in his chair. “The first time we met, I found him to be an enigma; I couldn't place him. He spoke Hebrew with a funny accent. A big guy. He was gentle and laid-back, but there was a sense of danger about the man. I couldn't put my finger on it,” Zachary said and licked his lip again. “Could I have some water?”

Perreira filled a glass and held it to Zach's lips. He gulped it down, spilling some on his chest.
 

“Go on,” Callahan said, tapping his foot.

“I drew his military records and found out he had been referred from the reconnaissance unit in the South African National Defence Force. He had breezed through the Mossad training, graduating at the top of his class.”

Callahan checked his watch. “Let us hurry this along. I need to know who I’m dealing with.”

"According to Bruce’s DISC profile, he is a high ‘D’ and ‘C’ personality type. Independent, dominant, and meticulous.”

Perreira whistled. “Those are bad. In Cuba they call them the accountants of death.”
 

Callahan cast Perreira a worried glance. “Where do you fit in?”

Zachary leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. “I was born in the States. Mom is a housewife, Dad is a doctor, Orthodox Jew. His folks passed away in the Holocaust, and he instilled a strong spirit of Jewish patriotism in me. It had always been my desire to give something back to the Jewish Nation. Graduated at Caltech with a masters in information systems. Came back to Israel to complete my military service and later recruited by Shin Bet due to my particular set of skills.”

Callahan raised an eyebrow and exchanged glances with Perreira. “Why target me?”

“Well, your GLD would go silent for hours at a time. Which meant you went underground, physically.”

“GLD?” Callahan asked.

“Yes, the beeper we issued you with. I developed the Geolocation Device. It uses multiple satellite signals to locate the person it's tracking.”

Callahan removed the device from his pocket, threw it on the ground, and stomped it to pieces with the heel of his shoe. “You made this beeper?”

“GLD,” Zach corrected him. “It cost millions of dollars to develop. The core unit is made from titanium, virtually indestructible.”

Callahan scratched through the pieces of plastic on the floor, then he picked up a silver piece of metal that looked like a pill. “So when my signal went off the grid, as you say, some red flags were raised?”

“That and something else.”

“What?” Callahan asked, glancing from the pill to Zachary.

He shrugged. “Well, you told us.”
 

“Bullshit.”

Zachary closed his eyes and sucked in a raspy breath. “I fitted a larger storage unit to your GLD. It would record everything and send us the recordings in thirty minute intervals or whenever there would be satellite coverage.”

Callahan nodded. “OK, so what?”

“In one of the conversations, you mentioned a secret mission the Israeli Defense Force was planning on the PLO Headquarters in Ramallah.”
 

Callahan had a blank look on his face.

“A conversation you had with the Palestinian terrorist, Salah Safouri.”

Callahan nodded slowly. “The target was Abu Musa, codename Fatah al-Intifada.”
 

“That's the one.”

“You heard that?”

Zachary said nothing.

Callahan turned to Perreira and slapped his shoulder. “How's that for implicating yourself?”
 

Perreira frowned. He didn’t say anything.

June 16, 1992

Jaffa, Israel

19:40

Bruce ducked behind the black Impala. The hood was cool. Zachary’s GLD signal had pointed to this location. He surveyed the surroundings. A large two-story building stretched across a sprawling parking lot. The place was rundown: it had broken windows and dirty white paint peeled from the cracked walls. The blacktop crumbled beneath his boots. A rickety sign hung above two solid-looking wooden doors. It said, “Imperial Palace.”

A black Mercedes was parked to the side of the building. Bruce dashed to the entrance of the abandoned complex and turned the doorknob, but it didn’t budge. A thumb scanner was mounted to the side of the entrance. Bruce shrugged and placed his thumb on the pad. Nothing happened.
 

On a hunch, he removed a Zippo from his pocket and heated the bottom of the scanner, rotating the lighter to get an even heat. After a minute, the door popped open.

Bruce peered inside. The foyer was deserted. A banged-up reception desk stood to the back, and a large marble stairwell led to the second floor. Rusted metal chandeliers hung from a stained, patterned ceiling. Muffled voices sounded upstairs and he sneaked his way to the top.
 

A long hallway with a scuffed red carpet led to dozens of rooms on either side. A dim light emitted from the bottom of the first door to his left.

He kicked the door open and entered, pointing his pistol left and then right, scanning the room. Three men dressed in army uniforms sat at a table, playing cards. They looked up, startled. An Israeli officer stood up from a sofa, hands held in the air.

Bruce pointed his pistol at the men. None of them were armed. They wore US military uniforms, marines. Bruce hustled over to the officer and jammed the Beretta against his temple.

“Where is he?” Bruce asked.

“Bryden, is that you? What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the officer asked, bending his neck back uncomfortably. “Lower your weapon, that is an order.”

“Where is Cohen?” Bruce asked again, grabbing the man’s neck with his dinner-plate-sized hands.

The man’s face and neck flushed red. “Bryden, let’s talk about this. Who is this guy to you?”

Colonel Aaron Weinstein.
 

Bruce had met him a couple of months ago during his graduation ceremony. He remembered he was from the Israeli Air Force, but he didn’t recognize the men with him.
 

“Why are they here?” He pointed the gun at the soldiers.

“They’re guards. Captain Cohen has been arrested for treason,” Weinstein said.

Bruce shoved the gun against Weinstein’s temple, hard. “Zachary Cohen is my commanding officer. I do not know if he is a traitor. I do know Captain Cohen has been taken forcefully, against his will.” He cocked the gun. “And someone slit his wife’s throat. So you better get him out here and explain to me what the hell—”

Weinstein moved in a flash. He jerked his head back and connected solidly on Bruce’s chin. Bruce fired blindly, but the bullet whizzed over Weinstein’s head and thumped into the wall. Weinstein turned and shoved Bruce back then rolled towards the door. Bruce fired a quick salvo of shots and Weinstein cried out, but he managed to scramble through the door.

Bruce pointed the gun at the three soldiers. They hadn’t moved.
 

“You’ll only get one of us before we’re on top of you,” one of the men said.

Bruce rolled his shoulders. “Well, decide which one it’s going to be and do it fast.”

June 16, 1992

Jaffa, Israel

19:55

Callahan lit a cigarette and offered one to Zach, who shook his head.

He took a long drag, his eyes narrowed, the smoke swirling over his face. “Where were you when all of this was going down?”

“At home. I could coordinate everything from there.”

Callahan nodded and blew some smoke through his nose. “I believe you. But you still haven’t elaborated on how Bryden infiltrated our den. That place was a fortress."

Zach lifted his shoulders. “We always knew the Dizengoff shopping center had underground tunnels, but the plans were lost so we didn’t know its extent or size.”

Callahan paced around the room, his hand on his chin. “Go on.”

“Bruce had been tailing you for a while,” he said, glancing at Callahan. “You entered the clothing store but never came out.”

Callahan nodded. “The shop’s name was Toma. I saw him on the security camera footage. When I confronted him, he told me he was shopping for some chinos.”

Zachary laughed. “Bruce doesn't wear chinos.” Bruce better damn well hurry up; he couldn’t keep this charade going on for much longer.
 

Zachary continued. “He counted how many people went in and out of the store, and the numbers didn't add up.” He straightened in his chair, trying to let the blood circulate to his hands. ”Seventy-five people entered the shop, but sixty-eight came out. We knew it had to be some secret entrance."

Callahan nodded. “So you caused a diversion.”

“Yes, we broke into the shop above Toma. We opened the taps and flooded your shop.”

“I remember. I had to access our facility through the basement because Toma was underwater. Did Bryden follow me inside?”

Zach nodded.
 

Callahan fiddled with a cufflink, deep in thought. “How did he get past the security we had in place? We had a guard patrolling the entrance of our complex in the basement parking of the Dizengoff center.”

Zach shrugged. “He created a diversion.”

“And what about the thumb scanner? How did he get past that?”

Zach chuckled. “The thumb scanner had a built-in failover mechanism; it was a piece of crap.”

Callahan looked up. “What failover?”

“You implemented a Korean-manufactured lattice security system, at least three years old. A known weakness of the system was that it is susceptible to heat. The plastic melts and a system override kicks in, automatically opening the doors when it senses temperatures above a hundred and forty degrees.”

“So what, man?” Perreira asked with irritated wave.

Zach sighed. “The product was designed as a clocking system for mines. When a fire occurred, the doors needed to open.”

“How do you know this?” Callahan asked.

“It’s my job to know everything there is to know about securing Mossad HQ. Your system failed my checks.”

Perreira grinned. “Funny you didn’t think about that at your own place.”

Zach glared at him.
 

“All right, what did you use to get in? A lighter?” Callahan asked.

Zach took a deep breath and continued. “Yes. We simply had to heat the sensors in the corners of the motherboard.”

“So you heated it and the doors opened up?” Callahan asked incredulously.

“Precisely.”

Bruce pointed his gun at the three soldiers. “C’mon then!”

The man on the left lunged at him and was rewarded with a third eye between the other two. Bruce turned towards the second soldier, but the man grabbed the nozzle of his Glock and twisted it around, breaking Bruce’s trigger finger.