Headhunters (3 page)

Boon picked up the signal. “Is there anything I need to do?”

“You just need to be there. I’ll take care of everything else.” As he spoke, the lawyer collected his fountain pen from the table and removed the lid. A small device dropped out onto the table. It was about the size of a salad crouton. Boon saw it and covered it with his hand.

“Any questions, Mr. Boon?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

Reed stood, collected the papers from the table and slipped them into his briefcase.

Boon stood, too, his shackles rattling. “I’ve been patient. Three months is patient. But I’m still in here and
he’s
still out there.” He spat the word. “The thought of that, after what he did…” His anger scorched the rest of the words away.

“We understand, Mr. Boon, we do. Be patient. It’s in hand.” He raised his voice. “Guard!”

He walked to the door, putting his body between it and Boon. He watched, through the corner of his eye, as Boon put his hand to his mouth.

The door opened and the guard came inside.

“You done?”

“I am, thank you.” He turned back into the room. “Goodbye, Mr. Boon. Get a good night’s sleep. Big day tomorrow.”

THEY HAD two safe houses. The first was in Merrydale, north of Baton Rouge. Both properties had been rented two months earlier by a Mossad advance agent working with a local
sayan
. This house was designated Moaz, or “stronghold.” It was a nondescript property in a middle-class street. It had been chosen because it was average, and because the neighbourhood in which it was situated was known for housing transient workers. It was the sort of place where newcomers would attract little in the way of attention. Perfect for what they had in mind.

The two agents had been in the country for three days. Their papers recorded them as Mr. and Mrs. Rabin, a young couple from Tel Aviv who had come to Louisiana for a holiday. They had landed at New Orleans, checked into a hotel, stayed there for long enough to be noticed by the staff, and then made their way west.

Malakhi and Keren Rabin were two of the Mossad’s most effective
kidon
. The word meant “bayonet” in Yiddish, and the
kidon
comprised the Mossad’s assassins. The unit included forty-eight men and women. They were all in their twenties and all of them were fastidious in ensuring that they remained in the best physical condition possible. They lived and worked outside Mossad’s headquarters in Tel Aviv and in a restricted military base in the heart of the Negev desert.

The Rabins often worked together. Their status as a married couple had proven to be an excellent cover. Their last assignment had been in Paris. They had once again posed as tourists and had assassinated a prominent Iranian arms dealer who was alleged to have supplied Hezbollah with the Katyusha rockets it had been firing into northern Israel. They had carried out their orders and blended back into the background, just another couple of tourists enjoying the hospitality of the City of Light.

The house in Baton Rouge had been readied for their arrival. The equipment for the operation had been sourced and was waiting for them beneath the floorboards in the second bedroom. There were six Beretta 70s firing .22-calibre rounds. They had half-powder loads and suppressors to make them as quiet as possible. There were four Tavor assault rifles with plenty of ammunition. They would often have loaded out with Uzis, but, even though the Uzi was a great weapon, it was chambered in 9mm and a handgun round was less effective when shooting at vehicles. Glass and metal could cause round deflection, a problem that would not be encountered with the Tavor’s high-velocity 5.56mm ammunition. There was a rolled spike strip fitted with a series of two-and-a-half-inch-long metal alloy spikes. The spikes were rugged, with three sharp-cornered edges, a half-inch wide at the base. Finally, there was a small netbook that had been installed with the software to monitor the GPS beacon that had been given to the man whom they had been sent to collect.

The advance agent had also rented two cars and a van for the purposes of the operation. The van and one of the cars had been put in long-term parking at the airport. The transport for the Rabins was a 2013 Honda Accord. It had been delivered to the house overnight, the keys posted through the letterbox.

They transferred their equipment to the trunk of the car before dawn when the street was quiet. They had a large breakfast, not knowing when they would be able to eat again, and then phoned to check whether the operation was still proceeding.

It was.

They locked the house, got into the car and set off.

THE RABINS arrived at the waiting area near the Tunica Hills State Wildlife Park at half past seven. It was a wide space that offered parking for a dozen automobiles. The lot was empty this morning save for their Accord. There were picnic tables, an information board that had been bleached by the elements, and a trail that led away into the trees.

Malakhi Rabin opened the driver’s side door and stepped out. It was already hot, despite the early hour. He could see the buildings of a refinery in the distance, the smokestacks wavering in the hazy, polluted air. They called this part of Louisiana “Cancer Alley.” The landscape was baked dry, the vegetation as brittle as tinder. Cicadas buzzed and birds, already addled by the heat, murmured their songs.

Malakhi was six feet tall and obviously muscular beneath the linen shirt that was already damp with his sweat. He reached into the car, took his sunglasses from the dash and put them on. He gazed at the horizon and the thick bank of black clouds that was gathering there.

His wife got out of the car. Keren Rabin was five eight and slender, her toned bare arms suggesting that she spent a lot of time in the gym. That was true, but she also owed her physique to hours of gruelling training on the wrestling mat. She was a skilful Krav Maga fighter. Many of the men that she had eliminated had taken one look at her striking appearance and assumed that she was just another pretty face. She came onto them, flirted with them, and they let their guards down. They took her somewhere quiet, somewhere they wouldn’t be disturbed. And that was the last mistake that they made.

“Storm coming,” Malakhi said.

Keren looked down at her cell phone. “They’re saying it’ll be here in half an hour.”

“Going to get wet, then.”

“Better wet than this. It’s hotter than Hell.”

Malakhi nodded his agreement. “Storm might be a good distraction, too.”

Keren glanced at the road. A van was approaching. It was an off-white Chevrolet Express. The Rabins watched as the van slowed and pulled off the road. Dust billowed from the wheels as it bounced across the uneven ground and drew to a halt alongside the Accord. There were four people inside the van: three men and one woman.

This was the second team. They were codenamed Mural. The four agents had been in the country for a week. They had arrived under the cover of students visiting Louisiana State University as part of an exchange programme. Their pseudonyms were Levy, Peretz, Biton and Dahan.

Malakhi went over to the van and opened the driver’s side door. “Morning,” he said.

Dahan stepped down. “We have a green light?”

“We do.”

“How long?”

“Thirty minutes.”

“Just in time for the storm.”

“We were just saying that.”

“It’ll reduce the vis. That’s no bad thing.”

“We were saying that, too.”

The female agent, Peretz, came around the van to the car. She nodded a greeting. “Do you have the gear?”

“In the trunk.”

She reached into the Accord to pop the lid and then went around the back to open it. She took out the Tavors and the Berettas and distributed them to the other members of the team.

Dahan checked the mechanism on the submachine gun. “Same deal?” he asked.

Malakhi nodded. “I don’t see any reason to change it.”

“We know what we’re looking at?”

“Not for sure. They think a van and an escort vehicle. Probably a sedan.”

“And guards?”

“They’ll take him seriously. At least two, possibly four.”

Peretz racked the slide of her Beretta. “Rules of engagement?”

“As we discussed. The priority is getting him out. Anything you have to do to accomplish that is fine. We have carte blanche.”

“Including lethal force?”

“If necessary.”

“And that’s from the top?”

“That’s right.”

She whistled her surprise. All of them shared the sentiment. This was an unusual assignment. Not the scope of it—that was routine—but the country in which it was taking place.

“It’s not for us to ask why,” Keren reminded them.

Dahan looked up at the sky. The clouds were closer now, a rolling shroud that was throwing shadow over the landscape.

Keren went back to the car. The netbook was open on the dash and an alert bleeped.

“Target is moving,” she called out. “Ten minutes out.”

It was eight o’clock.

“Move,” Malakhi said.

CLAUDE BOON was taken from his cell at seven that morning. He was transferred to a room by two guards. They were big men, both well over six feet tall and fifty pounds heavier than he was, yet they were visibly bothered by the prospect of being in a confined space with him. His reputation was well known. They all knew what he was capable of doing.

The guards told him to strip, and he did.

“Bend over,” one of the men ordered.

“Seriously?”

“Just do it, Boon.”

It was an imposition, and one for which he would not normally have stood, but he was happy to play along. There wouldn’t be much more of this to put up with. He smiled at them both, a cold expression that left them in no doubt as to the length of his memory, but he did as he was told. They conducted a cursory body search and, quickly satisfied, tossed him a clean set of orange prison scrubs.

“Put them on,” the man said.

He did. When he was finished, they cuffed his hands in front of him and then fastened a chain around his waist. The cuffs were looped through the chain to prevent him from moving his hands too far. The black box, with a padlock, was applied last. It prevented access to the keyholes of the handcuffs.

“When are we leaving?”

“Shut up, Boon.”

He was taken to a loading facility. It was a large garage space, with several vehicles slotted side by side. One side was open, and Boon gazed out as rain slammed down against the asphalt. He could see a sliver of the horizon between the concrete ceiling and the wall that delineated the enclosed courtyard outside, and the sky was as black as pitch. Thunder boomed as the guards impelled him down a flight of steps to the floor of the garage.

He was to be transported to the courthouse in a van. There was a sedan waiting ahead of the van, the engine running and exhaust fumes drifting upwards. Boon counted four sheriff’s deputies. They were all armed with handguns. He expected that they would also have at least one long gun per vehicle, either a shotgun or a rifle.

The two big corrections officers manoeuvred Boon around to the back of the van and helped him climb up inside it. He had wondered whether he might be transported with other prisoners, but it appeared that his status had won him the luxury of travelling alone. There were two doors to the rear: the main door and, inside that, a further metal door. The interior was simple, with a metal bench running along each side of the vehicle. The deputies up front were protected by a metal shield that divided the van into two portions. There was a grille in the shield that allowed light to enter.

Both rear doors were closed and locked.

Boon sat on the metal bench.

He heard one of the corrections officers speaking. “What do you know about him?”

“That he’s a badass.”

“Wouldn’t guess from looking at him.”

“I know, but he is. Killed an inmate the week he got here.”

“We’ll be careful.”

Boon heard a third voice. “There’s four of us and one of him.”

“Believe me, you don’t wanna take him lightly, buddy.”

“Sure, but dude ain’t Hannibal Lecter, is he?”

Nervous laughter followed that.

“You wanna know how he killed the man? Shanked him in the throat. Straight up. Did it like he was shelling peas. No emotion. No nothing. So when I say you need to take him seriously, that’s what I mean. Don’t give him a chance. He’ll kill you just as soon as look at you.”

The deputy laughed. “Relax, man. It’s gonna be fine. A nice little drive, that’s all. We’ll have him back here again before you know it.”

BOON SAT with his back against the wall of the truck. He closed his eyes and concentrated on what he could hear: the sound of the engine, the rain battering against the metal roof, the muffled conversation of the driver and the officer who was riding up front with him, a radio playing country and western music. The truck was new and provided a smooth and comfortable ride, even with the cold, hard metal bench that he was sitting on. He opened his eyes again and looked down at the shackles. He raised his arms until the tether that connected the cuffs to the chain around his waist went taut. The bonds were solid. Boon was strong, but he knew that he would be unable to escape from them.

Boon had paid attention during his previous trips between Angola and the courthouse in Baton Rouge. He knew the route that the guards would probably take to get him there: southeast on LA-66, south on US-61 and the I-110. There was another way, but this was the most direct. He figured, this early in the morning, that it would take them between an hour and an hour and a half.

He knew the convoy would be hit close to the jail or close to the courthouse, but not too close to either. There was a good reason for that assumption. Being close to either the point of departure or the destination meant that the choices for varying the route diminished greatly.

The van crossed a railroad track, bumping and swaying side to side, and Boon planted his feet against the floor to steady himself. If he was planning the operation, he would do it sooner rather than later. He would do it round about now.