Authors: Gary Haynes
As he got to the second floor he saw a lump of polystyrene on the rubble-strewn ground. He bent down, picked it up and used the knife that the CIA paramilitary had given to him to cut a groove in it, just wide enough to insert the smartphone. Before he shoved it in, he set the alarm for three minutes’ time.
Reaching a few stairs from the top of the third floor, with sweat dampening his temples and breaking out in patches on his shirt, he considered again whether the sniper had moved. He saw that there was a corridor leading off to the right. He eased up the last stairs and, squatting down, peered around the wall.
The answer to his internal question came roughly two seconds later, the time that it took the sniper to adjust his aim and fire, he figured. A high-velocity round took a chunk out of the brick wall about the size of a child’s fist, and ricocheted off the metal panel on a door opposite. Rubbing the dust from his eyes Tom controlled his breathing as the white cloud subsided. He guessed that from the rough trajectory of the round the sniper was to his right at approximately two o’clock.
Before the sniper had a chance to reload, Tom glanced around the wall again. At a distance of about three yards there was a pillar that would just about shield his frame, although the plaster was flaking off and there was a slight bulge in it at about twelve feet up. He just hoped there was steel support underneath the plaster, otherwise it would afford as much cover as a helmet made of balsa wood.
Without venturing out, he fired his SIG around the wall at two o’clock in rapid succession, the brass casings somersaulting to the dusty floor. After the fourth shot, he dived out, and, still firing, both to the left and right just in case, he zigzagged towards the pillar.
As he sank down behind it, he released the clip and put in a fresh magazine, chambering a round. He thought he’d actually felt a bullet pass within an inch of his face, but put it down to a combination of an adrenalin dump and imagination, although the sniper had undoubtedly fired at him as he’d run.
But now he had a fifty-fifty chance of killing or badly wounding his enemy, and that was a helluva lot more than he’d had on the wasteland. From the direction of the second muzzle blast, the sniper had moved from the window opening to behind a stack of concrete blocks to the right, which Tom figured had been placed there intentionally as cover if someone came from the rear.
He let off five rounds to keep the sniper’s head down, and he slid the polystyrene over the floor with his free hand so that it was to the right of the sniper, hoping the deafening sound had masked its passage.
He waited.
The loud alarm went off forty seconds later and, as it did, Tom risked darting out to the left. He ran forwards, firing with his arm outstretched in front of him. Hoping the alarm had caused the sniper to shift his vision, he kept running. Vaguely, he saw the small eruptions of concrete dust above the blocks, but nothing else. In the short time it had taken him to reach the blocks, he’d emptied the clip.
The sniper was lying on his side, blood gurgling from the jugular vein in the side of his neck. Another entry wound was in his visible shoulder, the black fatigues already bloodstained. The man looked about thirty, his face clean shaven. His left leg was moving as a dog’s does when dreaming. He was wide-eyed, the whites rendered scarlet.
With a ghostly moan, the sniper died.
Two seconds later, Tom heard a sound coming from somewhere beneath him. He gritted his teeth and shook his head. He was out of ammo, and a knife was as useful a weapon in Beirut as a rolled-up newspaper.
He saw them as he got halfway down the concrete steps. They were shadows at first, wraith-like, and then fully formed, as they moved into the space between the stairwell and the doorway, the moonlight pooling there. They were boys really, probably aged between fourteen and eighteen, dressed in sweatpants and soccer shirts. He knew they had heard the discharges but they had not run, which meant that they were well accustomed to violence, at least the violence of firearms.
They had grouped together in a sort of protective huddle but were moving apart now, giving themselves enough room to fight, and yet they still retained a symbiotic nature, he knew, the crowd mentality, likely willingly surrendering it. If he fought one, he might have to fight all of them, and there were eight in number. He knew he only had one option. He walked down confidently to meet them, to do battle with them, if necessary.
“You killed him,” one said in Arabic. “He was my cousin.”
The teenager who’d spoken had a strong neck, with a little paunch above his sweatpants. He looked the toughest, and that meant Tom would have to take him out. Do that and contrary to popular belief, the others wouldn’t take revenge, they’d be paralyzed into inaction. But he didn’t underestimate his opponents. He never did. Lebanese kids, he knew, were tough urbanites, their limbs forged in great suffering and desire for revenge.
“He tried to kill me,” Tom said. “He shot my friend.”
“Are you filthy Shia dog?” another asked.
“No,” Tom replied. “I am a Palestinian.”
He saw them looking at the handgun. All of them asking the same question – how many rounds did he have left in the clip? Tom knew there were none. But he had to get back to Crane quickly. He stepped forwards.
A fist came from the side, just visible in his peripheral vision, an amateurish but potentially devastating hook. He swivelled, ducked down under it and, stepping forwards, shoved his shoulder into the assailant’s armpit. He lifted him slightly, put his right leg behind the other’s calf, and shoved him backwards. The young man toppled over, a startled gaze on his hollow face.
Tom leapt over the body and tore into the teenager behind. He refused to use the SIG’s butt, but, after punching the kid in the eye, he slapped him so hard across the face that the others were shocked into temporary inaction. Stepping back, Tom saw the blood trickling from the corner of the kid’s mouth.
He turned as the tough one came for him, his punch telegraphed as he drew his clenched fist back to his shoulder. Tom moved with disconcerting speed, springing forwards and hitting him in the ribs with his extended knee. The force made the teenager bend double at the waist, winded and in obvious pain. Immediately afterwards Tom punched down into the guy’s kidney. He yelped before sinking to the rubble-strewn ground.
Tom stepped back and looked at the others. As he’d hoped, their desire to fight had been sapped by the speed and intensity of the violence, their sense of self-preservation spiking, no doubt. He raised the SIG and scanned about with it before moving forwards authoritatively, passing between them. No one so much as shoulder-clipped him.
He didn’t look back, knowing that if they’d all attacked him with vigour and at once, they would have been able to take him down and overpower him. But psychology was as important as martial skill in this type of scenario, and both had played their part.
A minute later, Tom was standing on the edge of the bank where he’d left an injured Crane, his face dripping sweat after his exertions and the sprint across the wasteland. He clenched his jaw and bent over at the waist, cursing.
Crane had disappeared. It was all bad.
When Crane had first heard the noise from beyond the point where the stream had silted up he’d thought it was a rat. When he’d been held captive by Hezbollah in the eighties he’d gotten used to their close proximity and had often woken up with half a dozen of them sniffing around him. At first it had freaked him out, but after weeks of solitary they had become friends, or at least acceptable acquaintances, who’d managed somehow to keep him just on the right side of sane, despite the daily torture.
But by the time he’d realized that the shuffling sound, which had switched to behind him, wasn’t being made by a rodent, it’d been too late for him to draw his favoured Kimber Eclipse II handgun, even if he’d been in a fit state to aim and fire.
Now, he felt the cold steel of what he knew to be the muzzle of an assault rifle or submachine gun prodding into the back of his neck. Part of him hoped they’d get it over with.
But, presumably satisfied that he wasn’t about to resist, the muzzle was removed. He felt arms manoeuvring his own arms up so that the unseen man’s hands interlocked over his chest, and he was hauled up from the armpits. Before he had a chance to see any faces a hessian bag was put over his head and a string was drawn tight around his neck. Then his legs were raised and he almost gagged with pain.
After about a minute of being carried over uneven ground, he was lowered, he figured, onto the bed of a pickup truck. He’d been lifted up and placed down onto a hard surface, but no hood or door had been shut, and he’d smelt the faint aroma of pomegranates. A rough cover had been put over him, with the odour and texture of a musty tarp.
Now the bed of the truck lowered as two, maybe three, of his captors got up and sat beside him. He could hear their breathing. But no one had spoken, nor did speak as the vehicle pulled away.
Oh, Jesus, he thought, not again. He began to quiver and whimper. He knew this time his mind would fracture beyond the point that he could function in the world. He fought the feeling with all of his intelligence and will power, but the memories overwhelmed him.
The floor was damp, hard and cold, probably bare concrete, Crane thought. He guessed he was in a lockup because the men who’d carried him here hadn’t gone up or down stairs and had only carried him a few steps from the pickup truck once it had stopped. He’d heard a door bang shut and what had sounded like plastic rollers overhead.
He didn’t felt the breeze about him, either, so he’d figured he had to be inside. The stench of the stream had been replaced by the faint wafts from nearby orange groves, and salt from the sea.
But kidnappers didn’t keep victims in lockups or garages unless they were drugged and put underground. Whether it was a temporary stop, or, he forced himself to consider, a place of execution, he wasn’t sure. But both of those options seemed preferable to being put in the ground alive. He’d heard stories from the Middle East of kidnapped victims waking up in the dark in a box six feet beneath the earth after their abductors had been killed or a building had collapsed on top of them. He shuddered.
Then he heard those around him talking in Arabic about who he might be. An operative didn’t carry ID on a mission, except of the fake variety. They
’
d taken his from him en route in the pickup, together with his handgun. It said that he was a businessman, and he wouldn’t be the only businessman to carry a piece in Lebanon, even an unusual piece like the Kimber Eclipse II, with its elongated barrel.
The hessian sack was lifted and he winced, seeing that he was in a small space as he had figured, with concrete walls and a corrugated-iron roof, the darkness lit dimly by a kerosene lamp. The ache in his leg was making his eyes well with tears, and he forced himself to blink them away. The men who were standing around him were wearing woollen ski masks and green fatigues.
“Hezbollah?” Crane said. In truth, he didn’t know what else to say.
He heard them laughing and repeating what he’d said in mocking tones.
“Secret police?”
“Forget who we are,” a man said. “Who are you? Maybe you are a Syrian spy, huh?
Crane could tell that this got a few of the men more than a little excited. Apart from the car-bomb attacks that were being blamed on the Islamic State group coming over the Syrian border, the Syrian army had occupied Lebanon in 1975 as a result of the civil war and had only left in 2005 due to a popular uprising of the Lebanese known as the Cedar Revolution. That had been sparked by the murder of the former Lebanese premier, and had been blamed on the occupiers. Syrians, at least of the jihadist or official variety, weren’t welcome in Lebanon.
One of them drew what looked like a military combat knife and Crane could almost smell the desire for violence. He had to act quickly. He didn’t want to give up his CIA status just yet, because he wasn’t sure if these guys were a criminal gang who could sell him to another group, who could sell him on again, a process that often happened with Western kidnap victims in the Middle East. It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that he would in fact end up in the hands of Hezbollah, or maybe even taken over the border to Syria.
The guy with the knife moved forwards and bent down. He put the blade flat against Crane’s ear. “You won’t feel anything but the blood trickling down your neck,” he said.
“Wait,” another said. “You are not from Beirut. I do not think you are Lebanese, either. Tell us the truth. It is the only thing that will keep you alive.”
Crane had been trained in counterinterrogation techniques as a CIA overseas operative in his younger days to the point that he could recite them in his sleep, but he didn’t know who they were, and they knew he wasn’t Lebanese. Saying the wrong thing could get him killed in an instant. Maybe it was the pain rising in waves through his body, or his age, or the sense that he was too tired to play a potentially lethal game, but the CIA motto came into his mind at that moment:
The Truth Will Set You Free
.
He’d always thought that it was indecently ironic, but he couldn’t think of a better way just now, and if he was going to die he might as well die with that in mind. Despite the self-deprecation and his unwillingness to adopt modern traits, he loved the agency. It had been his life’s work, his family.
“I’m CIA.”
No one moved or spoke.
“I’m looking for a terrorist,” he said, deciding that under no circumstances would he mention Tom, even if it meant that he’d end up with nowhere to position his reading eyeglasses.
“The CIA think everyone who isn’t an American is a terrorist,” the man without the knife said.
“A Sunni Muslim protected by Hamas,” Crane said.
“He lies,” the knife man said, positioning the blade at Crane’s throat.
Crane felt oddly relaxed now. Like the CIA motto there was a great irony to dying in Lebanon. The thought had given him a semblance of peace, a skewed sense of belonging.