Headhunters (4 page)

MALAKHI RABIN was soaked to the skin. The skies had opened, the deluge slamming onto the asphalt and quickly turning the baked mud on the margin into a quagmire. It was unpleasant, but, he reminded himself, fortuitous. The storm was so heavy that visibility was going to be drastically reduced. He could see only a short distance ahead of his position. The driver of the prison transport would be similarly disadvantaged.

Malakhi ducked down in the scrub that bordered the margin. The road bent around on a long and gentle curve as it switched from its previous easterly direction and emerged onto the southward stretch of road that was known as Tunica Trace. The terrain hereabouts was characterised by rugged hills, bluffs and ravines. The road dropped down a steep slope to the north and was heavily forested with dense stands of holly and beech to the south. The undergrowth included oak leaf, hydrangea and silverbell.

He was hiding inside a thicket of switchcane that stretched right down to the gravel at the edge of the road. It offered no protection from the downpour, but he put that out of his mind as he saw the glow of headlights as a car negotiated the turn onto the Trace. A large, dark-painted van followed behind it.

Two vehicles, just as they had anticipated.

He took a breath.

Malakhi turned back to the south. The Honda Accord was parked out of sight on an access road that ran into the forest. Keren was in the driver’s seat, the engine running and the lights off. The Chevy Express was hidden on the apex of a switchback turn that led north to Pinckneyville.

Rabin couldn’t see the van.

The drivers of the approaching car and van wouldn’t be able to see it, either.

The car was a sedan, painted white, with a red and blue stripe on the door. The kind of car that a sheriff’s deputy would drive. Malakhi saw the shapes of two men in the front seats. He couldn’t see into the back. He estimated its speed as it approached, and guessed at a steady fifty miles an hour.

The sedan passed him, throwing up parabolas of spray against the switchcane.

Malakhi only had a narrow margin to act and he had to move quickly.

He reached down for the handle of the stinger strip.

The van was five car lengths behind the sedan.

He hopped out of the cane and deployed the strip across the road with a smooth bowling motion. It was articulated, and each segment sprang out with a click and a clack, the strip reaching all the way across the road. The van rolled right over it. The spikes pierced the rubber and detached from the strip. They were hollow, allowing for a controlled deflation that minimised the possibility of a sudden loss of control. He heard the pop of the tyres and then the screech of the wheels running on their rims. The van immediately slowed.

If the driver of the sedan noticed what had happened behind him, it didn’t matter. The car was thirty feet farther down the road from Malakhi when Levy and Peretz stepped forward out of the clumped dogwood and sweetleaf that had been hiding them. They raised their Tavors and, as the car passed them, they opened fire. The rifles could fire nine hundred rounds a minute, and the agents were firing fully automatic. The windows were blown inwards as a storm of bullets sliced through the cabin. The officers were hit multiple times. They were wearing soft body armour and, although it might have protected them against handgun ammunition, it was no use against 5.56mm rounds. The driver suddenly and involuntarily yanked the wheel to the side and the car veered sharply to the left. It crashed through a thicket of blackberry, accelerated down the steep bank and slammed into the trunk of a big ironwood.

Biton stepped out of cover and fired into the windshield of the van.

Malakhi yanked the spike strip back, clearing it from the road, and drew his Beretta as he sprinted in the direction of the crippled van.

BOON FELT the van run over the spike strip. The front tyres deflated first, the van tilting forward as it ran along on its rims. The rear tyres followed, and then the van decelerated with a suddenness that slid him forwards hard enough that he thumped up against the metal partition.

He heard the sound of panicked cursing from the driver’s compartment.

And then he heard automatic gunfire and the sound of the windshield as it detonated. Five holes were punched through the metal partition, right at the top at the junction where it met with the roof.

He brought his knees up and pressed his chin against his sternum, wishing that he could cover his head with his arms.

MALAKHI RABIN SPRINTED HARD.

The van had rolled directly to the spot where Biton had been hiding and he had emptied almost all of his magazine into the cabin. He had aimed carefully, choosing his angle of fire so that the rounds sliced up through the cabin and passed through the roof, cautious to avoid the possibility of stray shots injuring anyone in the back of the truck. It would not do to injure the man that they had been sent to liberate.

Biton came out of the brush, his Tavor aimed cautiously at the van.

Malakhi slowed as he reached the driver’s compartment. He raised the Beretta, holding it in a loose two-handed grip. He blanked out the rain that was pelting against his face, the water that was in his eyes and nose, held the gun out straight and approached carefully. He looked inside. The airbags had deployed, and the cabin was full of the fine blue dust that was packed with the bags to keep them pliable. There was a big splash of blood on the metal partition and the perforations of escaped 9mm rounds in the roof.

He edged around.

The driver was slumped against the deflated bag, resting against it as if he was just relaxing for a moment. His hand was pressed up against the window and, as Rabin watched, his fingers twitched against it like the legs of a crab. The glass in the window was still intact. Malakhi shattered it as he put two shots into the man’s head.

Biton went to the passenger side. “Clear,” he called.

Peretz had followed the sedan down into the ditch. The depression hid her from his view, but he heard the sound of two quick bursts of gunfire. She was making sure that the guards were out of commission. Kill shots.

Malakhi assessed. The guards were neutralised. He waved Biton to the rear of the van.

They were all wearing disposable latex gloves so as not to leave any prints. Rabin reached up to the handle, pulled it down and opened the door. The guard’s weight had been up against it and, now that the door was gone, he lolled out, only prevented from tumbling to the ground by the locked seat belt. His arm dangled free, swinging a little until the momentum was arrested. Malakhi kept the gun level, just in case, and reached up with his left hand to the ring of keys on the man’s belt. He unclipped the loop and went back to the rear.

Dahan was behind the wheel of the Chevrolet. He put the van into drive and jerked it out of its hiding place. He emerged from behind the trees that grouped around the apex of the switchback and sped forward, stopping alongside the van.

Biton had drawn his Beretta and was aiming it down the road to cover them in the event that any other traffic headed this way. The rain hissed, droplets bouncing back from the pitted asphalt.

Malakhi thumped his fist against the van’s rear door. “Bachman,” he called.

“I’m here.”

He swiped the moisture from his eyes, took the keys and selected the one that looked like the best fit. He inserted it into the lock, twisted it, and heard the mechanism click. He opened the door to reveal the second, inner door. This one was on a latch. He flicked it up and opened it.

He had never met Avi Bachman before, but he had heard plenty. The man was something of a legend within the Mossad. The agency was not short of legendary operators, but Bachman stood alone when it came to his reputation for ruthlessness. They had all heard the stories about him.

It was difficult to impress Malakhi Rabin, and he was even more difficult to daunt, but he did not mind admitting that he was nervous as Bachman carefully stepped onto the lip of the van and then hopped down to the ground.

The man held up his shackled hands. “Get these off me.”

Rabin swallowed and found that his throat was uncomfortably dry. He took the keys, found the one for the padlock on the black box, and opened it. He selected the key for the cuffs and opened those, too. Bachman rubbed his wrists as Rabin went around behind him and unlocked the belly chain. It fell free and clattered to the ground.

“We need to move,” Rabin said.

“How?”

“In the car.”

Keren Rabin had brought the Accord out of its hiding place to collect them. Bachman nodded and the two of them jogged across the road. The other agents were preparing to leave. Biton opened the back of the van so that Peretz and Levy could get inside. Biton paused on the road and looked across at Malakhi. They were done here, so he gave a nod as he pointed to the south. Biton put up his thumb, clambered into the back and pulled the door closed behind him. Dahan put the van into drive and pulled away. The plan was for Mural to go right back to their cover stories. They would go to LSU, complete the exchange, and then return to Israel.

Malakhi got into the front, next to his wife.

There were no thanks. Bachman did not even acknowledge that he had spoken. “What are your names?”

“Malakhi Rabin.”

“Keren Rabin.”

“You’re a couple?”

“Yes.”

“Cute.”

Malakhi could feel his wife tense. Bachman had the same effect on her as he had on him.

“What’s your plan?”

Malakhi glanced at the empty road behind them. “We need to get you out of the country.”

“Where are we headed?”

“You’re flying out of Monterrey.”

“What’s that? Ten hours?”

“Thirteen.”

“Fine.”

“We’ll drive straight through. Non-stop.”

“I said it was fine.”

Malakhi turned to his wife. “Go.”

Keren put the sedan into drive and they pulled away.

Bachman looked out of the window at the devastation that they left behind them: the shot-up van with the shredded tyres, the sedan that had planted itself into the bank of the ditch at the side of the road. Four dead officers who wouldn’t have had a clue what had happened to them. The driver of the sedan must have had his foot jammed against the brake pedal, for the car’s taillights were still glowing through the murk.

“This is only part of the deal,” Bachman said in an even tone. “The easy part. What about him?”

“Who?”

“Milton!” he snapped.

“We’re looking.”

“And?”

“It’s in hand.”

The car drove on. Malakhi wondered about what the Englishman could have done to deserve Bachman’s hatred. He sat quietly in the car, staring into the rain, the abhorrence pulsing from him in waves. Malakhi found that his mouth was dry. He was still a young man, but he and his wife had already travelled all over the world, delivering Israel’s justice to those who thought that they could escape it. He was familiar with death. He had seen plenty of it. But he did not think he had ever seen a man who was as single-minded as Avi Bachman. He was not concerned with his liberty. The only thing that mattered was that it had bought him the opportunity to go after the Englishman.

Malakhi did not envy John Milton.

Whatever he had done to Bachman, the Mossad would find him and then he was going to pay.

A reckoning was coming.

IT WAS DAWN.

John Milton jumped out of the Jeep and took out his cigarettes. He had only one left. He had been surviving on nicotine and caffeine all night, but the effect was starting to wear off. He was tired. They had been driving for four hours. He took his lighter from his pocket, put the cigarette to his lips and lit it. The three other men he had been riding with jumped down, too. They looked exhausted. The dust had gathered on their boots; their work clothes were torn and dirty; their discoloured and stained parkas and duffle coats were draped around their shoulders to ward against the cool night air. They were covered in dirt, dried blood—some of it their own—and sweat. Milton glanced down at himself and realised that he looked just as bad as the rest of them. He held the cigarette between filthy fingers, the skin of his hand blackened with the detritus of a long week of work. His face was rough with stubble. He hadn’t had a chance to shave for days.

Despite all of it, the deprivations and the back-breaking work, Milton felt good.

He took a long drag on the cigarette. The sun crested the bleak horizon of One Tree Plain. The outback spread out as far as he could see, most of it red and desolate, like the surface of Mars. The Lachlan River ran through the station, encouraging a little greenery near its fast-flowing waters.

Milton reflected that you only really got a sense of the scale of Australia when you were deep in the middle of it. He knew it was big, of course. He knew that if the country was overlaid atop North America, it would stretch from Manitoba in the north to Florida in the south, and from San Francisco to New York. But being here, deep in the wilderness—that was when you got a true sense of its vastness.

Milton had visited the country before. The last time had been a babysitting assignment with an analyst from the Firm who was conducting business in Canberra. The capital was as bland and dull as Washington, D.C., a grid of clean streets, a place that emptied as soon as the legislative business was done. There had been no opportunity for him to visit the interior. Today, as he watched the sun rise, he was a thousand kilometres from the capital. He was deep in the outback.

Harry Douglas walked over to him. Douglas was the foreman. He was gruff and coarse, and Milton had known him for years. They had served in the SAS together. Milton was not in the business of having friends, and, since relationships were impractical for Group Fifteen agents, he had denuded himself of most of his attachments when he had been recruited.

Douglas had been medically discharged from the Regiment after he had broken both legs when his parachute had failed to deploy properly during a training jump. The two of them had been close, and they had commiserated about Douglas’s discharge over a long night of drinking in Hereford. He had explained to Milton that he was going to go back home to Australia and work on his father’s sheep station. They had emailed a couple of times while Milton was working in Florida, and when Douglas had suggested he come over for a visit, he had agreed. Miami had been pleasant enough, but it was a town that was full of distractions and temptations. He had been contemplating another cross-country trek to put those dangerous impulses behind him, but the promise of something completely different had been difficult to resist.