Killing for the Company

The grille was ten metres behind him. Retracing his steps, he bent down to look at it. Where did this thing lead? Could it be removed? Could you stow anything behind it?

Then something caught his eye.

It was difficult to see in the dim light of the tunnel, but Luke’s eyes were sharp. Tied round the lowermost metal bars of the grille were lengths of fishing line. Worming his fingers in through the grate, he pulled at one of the lines. Weight at the end. He pulled the line up, and what he found puzzled him. A clear plastic bag, filled with coins. Tugging on each of the other lines, he found the same thing. What the fuck was this? Some weird ritual, like chucking loose change into a fountain? Or was it something more suspicious?

A few bags of shekels weren’t going to bring down the Western Wall. But something nagged at him as he returned to the plaza and checked his watch.

23.30 hrs. Fuck, the clock was ticking.

Think, Luke told himself. Think SOPs. Think.

How had Stratton and Maya Bloom struck last?

He remembered the images he’d seen of the train bombings. The pictures of the Palestinian men who’d blown themselves up. He remembered the kid in Gaza, his body strapped with fuck knows what kind of explosive.

The Palestinians used suicide bombs. They were well known for it.

And Stratton? Stratton used the Palestinians.

Luke narrowed his eyes as a scenario formed in his mind. To bring down the Western Wall you had to get close. To get close, you had to remain unobserved. Suicide bombers would do that. And even if one was discovered, there’d be others to back him up. There were no countermeasures — you either spotted the bomber or you didn’t. And even if you did, you had to take him out before he knew you had eyes on.

But what about the security? How could you get past security — the metal detectors? Luke ran through the make-up of a suicide vest. Explosives — they’d get through the gates easily enough. It was the rest of it that would be problematic. A detonator — anything that could send a surge of voltage into the explosives. And most vests were packed with shrapnel to cause maximum collateral damage…

Shrapnel.

The bags of coins. Small, hard lumps of metal. Get one of those in the skull and you’d know about it. They’d cause just as much carnage as the usual nuts and bolts that got stuck into suicide vests…

‘Fuck,’ Luke breathed. The mist was clearing. What if the bombers had been bringing in the makeshift constituent parts of their equipment in piece by piece?

He was already moving back towards the tunnel when something else caught his eye. Two of the soldiers who had been patrolling the plaza were standing next to each other, almost exactly at the midway point between Luke and the Western Wall. They were conferring and looking very obviously in Luke’s direction.

He cursed again as several possibilities shot into his mind. Had the Regiment circulated his image to the Israeli authorities? Or were the military and police simply on high alert? Did Luke just look suspicious, standing there staking the place out? Either way, it wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have with anybody. He moved immediately, as fast as he could without running, in the direction of the security gates. His skin prickled as he went, but he resisted the temptation to look over his shoulder as he hurried out of the exit. He retraced his steps to the alleyway where he’d cached his weapon.

If he was right, and a suicide bomb attack was planned, he had to consider everything he knew, everything he’d ever learned, about such things. The bombers would be ordinary people without military training, but they’d be organised by someone who knew what they were doing. Was that where Maya Bloom came in? She’d been involved in the train bombings. She was, or had been, a Mossad agent. Somebody with a background similar to his own. If he was organising the bombers, what would he tell them to do?

It was rudimentary that they shouldn’t walk any further than necessary in a suicide belt. They’d be nervous. Sweating. Conspicuous. And with Jerusalem in a state of high alert, no one in their right mind would risk them being on the streets for any longer than necessary.

What about the bombers themselves? Would he trust them to go ahead with their suicide mission? He thought back to Gaza, to the kid with the remote detonator. Truth was, even the most idealistic nutter could bottle it at the last minute. If Luke was organising this thing, he’d give the bombers as little information as possible, and only issue their final instructions at the very last minute. He’d make sure they got as close to the target site as possible before leaving them to their own explosive devices…

His Sig was where he’d left it. Luke shouldered the Bergen and hurried from the alleyway. Slowly, he was working on a plan.