Hostile Fire (2 page)

He turned left and strolled up Shalom Street. He had plenty of time, almost a half hour. The stores were busy, and the usual Arabs and Israelis were hard at work keeping the mundane activities of their lives in motion. All that would change soon. He walked four blocks, admiring the stores and their goods. One day every Arab nation in the world would have such luxurious merchandise. He turned and retraced his steps, going into the alley a half block down from the Twenty-First Century Hotel. Here even the alley was kept remarkably clean.

Sadoun Kamnil, eighteen years old, waited where he was supposed to, near the rear entrance to a small leather goods store. Sadoun was small for his age, the result of a restricted diet of poor food in his tiny village on the West Bank, when
there was any food at all. He came from Fouad’s village near the Jordan River. Sadoun was five feet nine inches tall and had a Western-style haircut, wore glasses, and had a round face that smiled easily and laughed at the slightest hint of humor. Now his face was stiff and his wary eyes looked at Fouad, then to the front of the alley.

“Did you see any police, any army patrols?”

“No, neither. It is as we planned it, as we talked half the night. You are a student looking for work. There always is a shortage of busboys at this restaurant. The two guards at the entrance will be pleased to show you where to go inside.”

“This padded jacket looks all right?”

“We have used them before. Yes, they will not suspect. It is starting to get chilly here in the evenings. You will walk in with confidence, but not bravado. You are a student hunting a job. Your English is almost good enough.”

Fouad watched his charge. He was wavering; Fouad had seen it before. “Sadoun, my friend. You are a hero of your people. You are on a mission of great importance. You remember the pledge that you made last night?”

“Yes, that I will gladly carry out this mission. That I will go to it with joy in my heart knowing that I am serving my people.”

“Right, Sadoun, right. You are a hero to your village, to your family, to every Palestinian.”

“And my name will be in the Holy Book in the mosque?”

“I will enter it there myself for all to see. You are striking a blow for Palestine. You are bringing the day closer when we shall have a homeland of our own, and we can spit on the Jews and send them running back to their small country. This is our destiny, to fight the criminal Israelis who stole our land and our homes and our towns. This is the way that we fight against their tanks and their helicopter gunships and their soldiers who murder countless of our finest young men with no equal response.” Fouad looked at his watch. “It is almost the peak time for the dinner crowd. We should be going.”

Tears sprang into the young man’s eyes. “Yes, yes, I know. It is just that I will be leaving so much. I understand
it is my duty, my privilege and my honor, a role that must be played.”

“Not every man is given the chance to be a hero, Sadoun. You know this. Your family knows it. All of them will be well taken care of. Hezbollah will give them thirty-five thousand dollars reward for your heroism. And your name will be written in the Holy Book as a martyr for Allah.”

“I know.” He blotted the sweat from his face and set his jaw, then wiped his face with his hands and dried them on his trousers. He reached in his right-hand pocket and took out the three-inch-long, inch-square plastic box. “The red button. First I push the black one, then the red one, correct?”

“Yes, but only when you are ready.”

Sadoun Kamnil took a deep breath, pushed the box back into his loose pocket, and nodded. “I am ready. You will not be far behind?”

“I’ll be there in case anyone tries to stop you. The army is usually not around at this time of day.”

They walked down the alley to the sidewalk. Kamnil went out first and strode resolutely toward the hotel. Fouad came thirty feet behind him. The youth walked with barely concealed impatience, as if he had made up his mind and wanted to complete his mission before he could back out. Fouad trailed him, watched him go to the door of the hotel and smile at the armed guard standing there. Fouad came close enough to hear the conversation.

“Work? You’re looking for work?”

“Busboy.”

“Always need more.” The guard frowned. “Isn’t it warm for such a heavy jacket?”

“I left early this morning; it was cold then. Do I go inside here to apply?”

The guard nodded. “Yes. Past the desk clerks and around the restaurant to the door marked ‘Personnel’ down that hall. You can’t miss it. Good luck.”

Kamnil said something in thanks and walked into the grand Twenty-First Century Hotel. He went past the desk, noticed two more guards there, and continued on toward the restaurant. It was a classy one; most of the people wore suits
and fancy clothes. He had just stepped inside when the head waiter in a tuxedo frowned at him.

“You can’t come in here dressed that way,” the waiter said.

“I’m meeting some friends,” Kamnil said.

“You’ll have to have a jacket and tie.”

“Not this time,” Kamnil said. He ran down two steps into the center of the large restaurant and pulled out the small box. The head waiter charged down the steps after him. Kamnil lifted the detonator and pushed the black button, then the red one.

The explosion of ten quarter-pound blocks of C-5 plastique hidden inside the padded jacket Kamnil wore disintegrated his torso, blew the far windows out, sent tables, silverware, and bodies flying into the air, and buckled the ceiling, bringing half of it crashing down on the screaming diners. A huge cloud of dust, smoke, and burning flesh gushed out the windows and into the main part of the hotel and the street.

Two fires sprang up and licked at the torn-apart timbers and furnishings in the restaurant. More than a dozen victims had been blasted through the windows into the street, most of them dead or dying. Screams of the wounded came before the smoke had blown out of the huge room. Fire sirens went off. Hotel security men rushed into the restaurant with guns out, but could only stand and gape at the destruction and death. Slowly they started to help the closest injured.

Across the street, Asrar Fouad stared at the smoke pall, as did others on the street. Some began running forward, perhaps to help the injured. Police sirens wailed and police and rifle-carrying army men rushed up. Fouad watched for a few moments, then smiled grimly and walked the other way up the street and away from the destruction.

The Fist of Allah had struck again.

Coronado, California

Gunner’s Mate First Class Miguel Fernandez stood a domino precisely at the end of the long line and looked at his daughter, Linda, seven.

“Go ahead, honey, start them. Push the first domino.”

Linda, dark-haired, and often with a serious expression, grinned now. “It’s your turn, Daddy. I did the last one.”

“Go ahead, then we’ll make a really big circle. Did you know we can make a circle out of the dominoes? Now push this line down.”

She did and squealed in delight as the dominoes fell, one striking the next and then the next, making a small turn and then hitting a tower of dominoes a foot tall and knocking it down with a crash.

“I did it, I did it. I smashed the tall fort,” Linda squealed.

From the sofa, Miguel’s wife, Maria, watched her two favorite people. She put down the newspaper and studied the pair. Linda looked up at her father.

“Daddy, what do you do?”

“What do you mean, honey?”

“This morning in school, all the kids told us what their fathers do. One is a carpenter and he builds houses. Another one works at a bank, and one drives a taxi. What do you do? I didn’t know what to tell them.”

“Well, Pumpkin, next time they do this, you tell them that your daddy is defending their country. I’m in the navy and I help keep everyone safe.”

“Oh, okay.” She sat on the floor and began setting up the dominoes on the coffee table. “You said we could make a circle?”

It hit him like an out-of-control Mack truck. Yeah, he’s in the U.S. Navy, he’s a SEAL, and his real job is killing people. Miguel frowned and looked over at Maria. She concentrated on their daughter. He was right. His main job was killing people. Sure, bad people who deserved to die, or people who were on the wrong side of this undeclared war on terror. But the fact remained that his job was killing people.

His hand jigged the wrong way and the partial circle of dominoes fell down before it was done.

“Daddy, be careful,” Linda said.

“Sorry. I’ll put it back better than ever.” He worked on the circle but his mind raced. Pictures swam in front of his eyes about the dozens, maybe hundreds of times he had “made certain” that a wounded enemy was dead. How many times had he “taken out” an enemy soldier or terrorist with
his sniper rifle? Dozens? Hundreds? He was a killer. He killed people for a living. He pushed back and sat on the floor. His knees were weak, his head spun out of control, and his whole body began to shake. A class-four headache pounded into his frontal lobe and wouldn’t stop.

Maria looked at him with a curious frown. “You okay, Miguel?”

He looked up, surprised to see her there, surprised he was still in his living room and not in some jungle or desert getting ready to “eliminate” an enemy roadblock. “Huh? Oh, yeah, fine. Just a wandering thought. I’m fine.”

But he wasn’t fine and he knew it. His work had never bothered him before. How long had he been a SEAL? Six years? How many times had he used his weapons? Why was he asking all these damned questions now?

“Daddy, can you help me with the circle?”

“Oh, yeah, Linda. Here, let me put the final few in. Maybe I can do it this time without dumping the whole thing.” He concentrated on getting the last four dominoes in standing tall and closing the circle. “Okay, sweetheart. See if it works.”

“No, Daddy, I’m supposed to share. So it’s your turn.”

He looked at Maria, who lifted one hand in her own defense. He worked up a small grin and touched one of the dominoes. It fell forward and in the best “domino” fashion smashed into the next one, and the string ended in a slightly oblong circle of fallen plastic oblongs.

“We did it, we did it,” Linda cried in delight.

That night Miguel sat on the edge of the bed staring at his pajamas. He had one foot in the leg hole and could only stare at the other half of the garment on the floor. Maria sat down beside him and rubbed his forehead.

“The headache still there?” she asked. “I can get you three ibuprofen.”

He reached over and touched her shoulder, then kissed her forehead. “No, honey, the headache is gone. It’s another problem.”

Maria watched him. All evening he had been withdrawn, moody, not his usual happy self since the big domino challenge with Linda. She knew something was bothering him,
and she hoped that she could get him to talk about it.

“Can you tell me?”

“Nothing like that. Nothing classified or secret.” He sighed and looked at her. He knew better than most of the SEALs in his platoon that it wasn’t just the men who were SEALs. The wives and families of the men were involved and affected in an extremely complicated way as well. “Nothing…no, it is something. I’m wondering maybe we should talk about my getting out of the SEALs.”

Surprise flooded Maria’s soft brown features. “Now you must be joking. You not a SEAL? You back in the black shoe navy? It would kill you in six months. What happened out there this time?”

He looked away. He tried never to worry Maria about his job. Yeah, his job of killing people. He jerked on his other pajama leg and stood up. “Lots of things happened out there, Maria. Some I can’t talk about.”

“Did you lose any men KIA?”

He looked up, surprise on his face. Usually she tried to stay detached so she wouldn’t worry. They both understood this. “No, we didn’t lose anyone. We did have four men shot up. Senior Chief Sadler was hit pretty bad. He’s over at Balboa Naval Hospital. He’ll make it, but I doubt that he’ll ever be in one of the platoons again. He almost died.”

“Who were the others who were wounded? I know most of the men except maybe the latest replacement.”

“Ching got tagged in the thigh but nothing serious. He’ll be back to active duty in another week. Jefferson is in Balboa, too, and will be there for two or three months, but should come out as one fighting machine. Howard took two rounds in his legs but nothing serious, and he’ll be back in another week. So we’re in fair shape for the shape we’re in.”

“Then why are you so depressed? You’ve been grunging around here all evening.”

“Linda got me to thinking when she asked me what I do. Actually I’m a U.S. Navy SEAL and my job is to protect our country. To do that, sometimes I have to…to shoot at people. I’ve never told you…” He stopped. “Oh, damn. Why in hell did I have to start thinking about this? We were rolling along just great…”

“Sweetheart, anytime you want to step down from the SEALs and go back to the black shoe navy, I’ll be right there in your corner rooting for you. Whatever you decide to do, you will have my wholehearted support.”

He kissed her and gave a long sigh. “Fourteen,” he said. “There have been fourteen since I started with the platoon six years ago.”

Maria frowned. She shook her head. “I don’t understand. There have been fourteen what?”

Miguel stood, paced the width of the bedroom, and came back, then paced it again. He stopped in front of Maria. “We’ve lost fourteen men killed in action since I started working with Third Platoon.”

Maria’s eyes went wide; she sucked in a quick breath. “Really? Fourteen men in the platoon have been killed? And you knew all of them?”

“I knew some better than others. Fourteen, that’s almost a whole platoon.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and grabbed her hands. “In all of those operations we’ve been on, I’ve only been wounded once. You remember that. My stay in Balboa. I took a round in my shoulder and one in my upper chest. I survived. It suddenly came to me that maybe I’m pushing the odds here. Maybe on the next mission there’s going to be a bullet with my name on it, and there won’t be one goddamned thing I can do about it.”