Disappearance (51 page)

For the first time since their encounter at the Geffen Inn, when her father had stormed out of the conference room and she had cried, did he feel sorry for
her.  He knew she had kept strong throughout the ordeal by always keeping a shadow of doubt as to the odds, but now, with her sister being only an arrangement away, she could no longer control the emotion.

He realized he too was much more high-strung about everything, attributing it to the frustration of having to let other people complete what he had started, but watching Lisa, he knew he must be suffering from many of the same jitters.

"Let's go for a walk," he suggested as Lisa raised her head from the table, wiping the tears from her cheeks. "It'll do all of us some good.”

"I need to get to my apartment," she said in a quivering voice.

"Great, then we'll walk you," Mikki suggested trying to sound cheerful.

"Why don't you two go," Sarah interjected, "I'll go up to my room; there's a few things I need to do.”

"What about you Mikki?" Lisa inquired.  "You should check in and get some rest. You've been up and driving all night.”

"Nonsense Lisa.
I couldn't sleep now even if I wanted, but I might throw my stuff in Sara
h’
s room.”  He pointed to the backpack he had brought in with him. “Meanwhile, I'll see if they have a room available.”  

He got up and went to the reception, startling the weary attendant who was dozing by the counter.

"Will you be OK?"  Sarah asked gently.  "I'll join you if you want."

"Nah, Mikki's fine," Lisa said, smiling weakly.  "He and this weather ought to keep me from crying.”

"Will you call me later?"  Sarah asked. "I may have word from Yossi.”

"I'll certainly do that and… thanks for everything Sarah.  I'm sorry you had to put up with my outbursts…"

Sarah got up and circled the table, extending her hands to Lisa.  "I couldn't have done it for a more deserving person," she said as Lisa stood up and they embraced.

She was waiting by the elevators as Mikki approached with his luggage.  They went up to her room; Mikki quickly brushed his teeth, washed his face and returned to the lobby, finding Lisa waiting by the entrance, and the two of them exited into the icy New York air and its awakening streets.

They crossed Central Park, west to east, stopping for a breather in a secluded corner by a frozen little pond amidst an untarnished, snow-covered expanse.

"We must be real tired," Mikki said as they sat down, removing the accumulated snow from a coated bench, "figuring we could be going anywhere near your apartment.”

"Why not Mikki? I thought we got rid of Square Jaw and those fellows.”

"Yeah, but there may be others."

"What difference does it make now?"

"Probably not much but I'd hate to have them pick up our trail again.”

She considered it a while, her face flushed pink from the cold air, glancing at the serene backdrop of the majestic display of nature amidst the crude city walls.

"Then where should we go?" she finally said, raising the collar of her coat up against her ears.

"We could go back to the hotel or we could stay here."

"How about we stop a taxi and go help Eitan.”

"We can't do that Lisa…"

"Then tell me something we can do," she snapped, her crimson lips barely moving.  "I can't just sit here doing nothing with my sister so close," she said, demonstrating the negligible distance with her thumb and index finger.

"The thing to do is get some sleep," Mikki said levelly. "Yossi's bound to have some news later on and we’d best be rested.”

Lisa put her hands across her body rubbing her sides for circulation.

"You're right Mikki. Forgive me I'm just…"

"I know,me too," he said, turning to her, "but if there's one thing I learned from my military service is that you sometimes have to take things at face value and hope for the best.  You must keep prepared but you can never anticipate everything and there's no point worrying about things that are out of your control.  I'm just as wary of all those things that can go wrong but we've done our best and right now and ther
e’
s not much more we can do.  We need to remain positive and keep from making careless mistakes.”

She looked at him inquisitively for a moment, the chilling breeze stirring her hair around her face, then her expression turned wily and she flashed an accommodating smile.

"You know Mikki, you're pretty smart for a dumb Israeli," she remarked, scooting closer to him on the icy bench, "and if it wasn't for my sister seeing you first…"

Their lips engaged in urgent passion, their cloaked bodies clasping on to one another for a heartfelt instant, before they abruptly disengaged, remaining intimately close on the bench watching daybreak over the skyline to the east.

CHAPTER 50

Marla Wilkins was becoming frantic, no longer sure how long she could hold down the fort.  Her superiors were demanding results; even the chief had been on her case and she was still haggling for commitments.

The Indian had been stalling and now he was two hours late. The Israelis had finally come through with their guarantee and she was preparing herself for one final round.

The atmosphere at the Bureau was one of utter impatience. She knew they were ranting behind her back but so far no one had openly challenged her authority.

She had remained faithful to the blunt newspaper reporter and her daring plan, seeing no reason to alter the work put forth by the people who had managed to get them this far, preferring the careful bargaining manner to the no nonsense, brute force approach urged by her critics.

Reports from her two dispatched agents confirmed her position was so far holding true though they did report two additional people had arrived a mere twenty-four hours after Kumar's visit.

She was running out of time.  It had been three days since they had first apprehended Kumar and she was extremely concerned not only that the top brass were worried about their public image but with the story leaking to the press.  A confrontation of such magnitude was bound to attract vast attention and would put the girl at risk making it that much more difficult to carry out a deal.

She opened the car door and swung her legs to the curbstone noticing the stares as her short skirt was stretched upward exposing her thighs.  The crew had assembled around her unmarked patrol car, Yossi among them, stepping around from the passenger seat.  A nagging bitter wind whirled about as she stood up to address them.

The surveillance team at the hotel had yet to report the subject leaving and Marla felt something had to be amiss with such delay, so she called everyone in to report a change in plan.

"I'm driving up to check on the hotel," she said in the huddle. "Yossi, you stay here with Coleman. Jerome, you guys take
Coleman's place and back me up. And guys, in case he does show up, don't stick around.  Call me on dispatch and we'll arrange an alternative rendezvous. Any questions?"

There were exchanges of nods and murmurs of approval as she looked around to make sure everyone was in tune then she scooted her slender frame into the car and drove away.

She took Houston to the Bowery then shot all the way up Third Avenue to Fifty Second where one of the two surveillance cars was already waiting.  Agent Evans got in with her and they carefully drove to the corner of Lexington for a look at the scene.

It was half past midnight. He was almost three hours late. Traffic was light at that midweek hour, mostly yellow cabs with pedestrian traffic even scarcer.  The hotel entrance was deserted.

"He couldn't just slip out without you seeing him, could he?" she addressed the agent.

Evans, a reliable young agent with straight blonde hair and lively bright eyes, whose quick perception already had some people taking notice, answered without hesitation. 

"Not a chance, Marla.  We had all exits double covered since early evening. I don't see how he could have slipped by us.”

"When was the last time he went out?"

"He made a surprise exit and went for a late lunch at that Indian place on First.  He ate alone and came straight back; nothing out of the ordinary.”

Marla sighed, turning off the motor and leaning back in her seat.

"We’ll give him a half hour. If he's not out by then, we're going up to his room," she decided, reaching for the handheld radio.

As he heard her converse on the horn, Agent Evans smiled to
himself in the dark, grateful to finally be seeing some action, but he became less confident as the hour drew near and the teams began to assemble.  They withdrew back to Third Ave and met with Cooper, Evans's partner and a second car with Jerome and three more agents.

The two teams made their way to the hotel.

Twenty minutes later they burst into the hotel crowding the deserted reception area, flashing their shields.  The startled receptionist handed the spare key to suite 1706 with little resistance.

Following the set plan, Jerome remained in the lobby, while the others swarmed into the elevator, Evans quickly pressing floors 16 and 17.

The two agents forming the second team disembarked on the sixteenth floor drawing their revolvers, each heading for a stairway at opposite ends of the hallway.

Evans and Cooper remained with Marla and traveled up one
more floor. Suite 1706 was to the far left as they exited the elevator, Marla in the lead.  Firearms drawn, they silently advanced along the carpeted hall covering one another.

They took positions straddling the wall on both sides of the door as Marla firmly knocked, identifying herself and her purpose out loud, but not a sound could be heard from within.  She knocked twice more then tried the lock.   The door slipped open and they charged inside.

The scene they encountered was both eerie and gruesome.

The man sat on a reclining sofa facing them, casting a blank stare, a symmetrical round hole in the middle of his forehead marking a bullet point of entry. The large caliber bullet had scalped the entire back of his head leaving an entanglement of clotting blood and brain tissue dripping down his back.

Evans felt nauseous at the sight of the undisturbed corpse who almost looked ready to stir, but forced himself to continue, darting with Cooper to secure the rest of the suite.

Marla ran for the phone with a sickening sense of foreboding thinking that whoever was responsible for this was now going after the girl.

-------

Eitan kept a trained eye on the van as it drove by the house, stopping a half mile away to linger motionless by the side of the highway, silhouetted against the ivory backdrop of the snow covered terrain.

The night was exceptionally crisp and clear, a half-moon brightening up the reflective domain allowing him to scrutinize trivial details.

Eitan raised the binoculars and focused on the shadowy form which had turned off its headlights and was waiting perfectly still.  It stood there for nearly ten minutes before it quietly sprung back to life and proceeded to drive away, disappearing from view behind a curve in the road.

He was at the parking lot by the pier, his favorite spot.  From there he could see a mile in each direction and he had the house well in his sights.  He reached for the thermos in the passenger seat and began pouring his fourth coffee of the night, wondering about the suspicious van, when it reappeared from beyond the curve.  Gingerly driving in his direction, it suddenly shut off its headlights and veered left at about the place it had originally stopped, disappearing behind the piles of removed snow into the fish restaurant turnoff.

Throwing a quick glance at Agent Moorehouse, comfortably asleep in the back seat, her revolver out of its holster, resting in back
underneath the rear window, he tensed waiting for the van to appear on the access road.  When a minute passed and it didn't, he went back to the binoculars and began scanning both access and main roads.  There was no movement on either road.

Having a fair idea where the van has stopped, he now had to make a quick assessment whether he should leave the car on foot and go investigate, wake Moorehouse and alert Sheridan, or stay put and do nothing.

That decision was quickly made for him as he suddenly noticed a figure racing across the main road into the line of bushes separating the house from the neighboring house in back.  Soon after, three more figures did the same and the group was now swiftly making their way toward the house moving from the bushes to the line of trees, skillfully using the trees as a shield, lunging from one tree to another.

A quick glance with the binoculars at the prowling figures froze the blood in his veins, and without thinking he leaned over the sleeping federal agent, seizing her revolver then lunged outside, racing for the ditch below the main road.  Another quick glance around and he saw them springing for the house, guns clearly at the ready.  Frantically he cocked his gun and leapt to his feet, racing across the road in a tight circle toward the back entrance he knew existed from a preliminary scouting expedition.

Flushed and short of breath from the sudden burst of energy, he came upon the rear bushes ready to make the short leg toward the house when he noticed a figure crouched underneath the small window by the back door.  Abruptly halting a few feet from the bushes, steam rising from his mouth as his warm breath mixed with frozen air he fell down in the wet snow and crawled the last few yards reaching underneath the bushes.

He watched the figure fiddling around the lock, the dark shape of a silencer slightly raised and clearly outlined against the white stucco walls.  He could discern the figure dressed in a pale overall of some kind, a white raincoat covering his top side blending with the white backdrop.  Not likely FBI, he thought, knowing they operated with identifying emblems.

Suddenly the man stood.  Aiming the silencer at the lock, he pulled the trigger and Eitan could hear the metallic click as the bullet scraped the door. Unsuccessful forcing the handle the first time, he aimed and fired a second time, managing to force open the door.

He charged in but was immediately driven out by an invisible force, landing flat on his back, his firearm flying from his grip, raising his hands to protect himself from a blitzing giant of a man
who came after him with a knife. The giant lunged at the fallen man, raising his knife high over his head and bringing it down but the man nimbly managed to roll sideways avoiding the blow, causing the giant to lose balance and roll in the snow.

The two stood up facing each other before the giant lunged again with the knife aiming a blow to the midsection which his opponent evaded using the giant's momentum to hurl him away, then leaping to retrieve his silencer.  But the giant, showing surprising quickness, was on him before he fully had possession of the gun, ramming the knife into his back with great force and at the same time sending the gun hurling with a solid blow to the man's elbow.

The man dropped to his knees then silently fell on his face, spurts of blood gushing from the wound.  The giant retrieved the silencer and fired a bullet into the back of the man's head ceasing all movement, then trotted back into the house.

The clash had taken but a few seconds, but Eitan lay dumbfounded by its brutality, snapping out of his reverie by the sound of gunfire that seemed to come from inside the house.  Scrambling on his stomach he crawled for the house, reached the open back entrance and slithered in.

Inside was pitch dark.  He remained low, probing blindly with his hands, bumping into loose objects rolling on the floor. Suddenly the lights came on accompanied by another burst of rapid gun fire, then several single shots ending with a heavy thump and the lights being killed once again.

The momentary flash of light was enough to point him to a second door which stood partly ajar.  He waited carefully, opened it and noticed the sickening but familiar scent of gunpowder and death.  He crawled through the opening and could finally see the outline of another door and to his left, a table and some chairs.  Looking up, his eyes now more adapted to the darkness, he recognized the shape of a refrigerator. He was in the kitchen.

Then, before he could lunge for the door, it burst open and a figure fell through it, rolling on the floor shooting from the hip in the general direction of the door which remained open just enough for an invisible hand to shoot the rolling man down, several of the bullets thumping into the wall next to Eitan.

Eitan retreated behind the wall waiting for the exchange to subside. The barrel of an automatic machine gun was thrust into the room and began spraying it with bullets.  Eitan extended his revolver behind the wall and shot blindly at the attacker from point blank range.  The spray of bullets jerked toward the ceiling before the figure
fell head first into the room.

Peeking from behind the wall he saw the path clear and without wasting a second jumped over the two bodies to the kitchen door.  He flung it open and quickly peeked out straddling the inside wall, gun following his every move.

The quick survey revealed another, larger room with a hall to the left, an entrance right across, and a stairway to the right, but another peek drew gun fire, bullets hitting the wall behind him.  Eitan did not return fire with only one magazine at his disposal, but instead kicked the kitchen door with a force that sent it reeling from its hinges, falling flat on the floor. Another burst of gunfire acknowledged his feat, rattling the walls from both sides of the now gaping kitchen entrance forcing him to crouch to the floor.

From his crouched position he could now see up the stairs, suddenly noting a flash of single fire, not in his direction but towards the hall to the far left or the opposite entrance.

He fell on his stomach extending out his gun, firing a single shot in the direction of the hall, when a sharp explosion brought down part of the wall above him, a mixture of smoke and debris enveloping him, choking his senses.   Looking up through the haze he thought he saw a figure shoot up the stairs, gun ablaze and another follow suit.  Taking quick aim he shot at the second figure who seemed to falter somewhat but continued up.