‘
‘You stupid squaddie, you’ve got it all wrong… ’
‘Listen to me, you bitch. You think I’m not going to kill you? I want to kill you. Does the name Chet Freeman mean anything?’
Her eyes narrowed.
‘Friend of mine,’ Luke said.
‘You’re going to fuck everything up…’ She painfully, defiantly started to stand.
He lunged forward and, with brutal force, brought his knee up into her stomach. She doubled over and Luke slammed his gun down on the back of her head with all the strength he had.
The woman collapsed. A limp, silent heap on the floor.
Luke stood there for a moment, sweat pouring from his body, breathing heavily. A number of gulls landed back on the perimeter walls.
Bending down, he put two fingers to her jugular. A faint pulse. He knew how hard he’d knocked her. She wasn’t waking up any time soon.
Time check: 10.36 hrs. Twenty-four minutes to go. No time to get information out of her. Too dangerous to risk her waking up and becoming active again. He looked her up and down. He bent down and started to remove the laces from her boots. Rolling her on to her front, he yanked her arms behind her back and tied her wrists together, binding one of the laces several times round and finishing it off with a sturdy sledge knot — impossible to untie. With the other lace he bound her legs together. Tied up like that, the only way she was getting off the roof was by jumping.
With Maya Bloom immobilised, Luke turned his attention to her weaponry. The sniper rifle was still lying in its position. To its right was a black rucksack. Luke emptied the contents on to the roof. There were rounds for the snubnose and the sniper rifle; a set of binoculars; and a knife. Its handle was black, its blade white. Luke picked it up. It was light.
Ceramic. Which meant no metal.
He looked over his shoulder at the woman as she lay there out cold. Why would she have a ceramic knife unless she intended to pass through metal detectors with it? Luke felt a brief, grudging measure of professional respect. She knew her trade.
Suddenly he became aware of something from the corner of his eye. He looked over the edge of the rooftop, back towards the Dung Gate. A white van had pulled up on the side of the road nearest the building. Even from this distance Luke could tell it wasn’t a tourist bus. Nor did it have the yellow and white paintwork of a shared taxi. He got down on all fours and took Maya Bloom’s earlier position at the sniper rifle, closing his left eye and examining the scene through the scope with his right.
The scope was powerful, with fine, calibrated cross hairs. Luke moved the sights so they were focused on the palm trees by the gate. He was looking for movement of the leaves, anything that would tell him which direction the wind was blowing. The rifle might not have been zeroed in for him, but he could increase the accuracy of his shots, if it came to that, by taking account of the conditions.
No movement. The wind was still. He redirected the rifle to the white van.
His heart was thumping. What if he did see suspicious individuals? He had no way of making a positive ID. No way of knowing whether he was shooting terrorists or innocents.
A minute passed.
Two.
No movement from the white van. That in itself was suspicious.
A second vehicle approached. A bus. It passed behind the white van before parking up immediately adjacent to it. Luke trained his scope on the side of this second vehicle. He saw Hebrew lettering along the side, and then, underneath, in English, ‘scheiber elementary school’.
‘Shit,’ he muttered.
There was another thirty-second pause before anything happened.
The side door of the van slid open. Luke concentrated on the interior of the vehicle. He could see movement, but there was insufficient light in there for it to be distinct. On the periphery of his vision, he could see the front passenger door of the school bus opening and was aware of a figure stepping out.
Back to the van. Two men climbed out. They were wearing traditional Hassidic garments and, once they had emerged, they stepped back from the vehicle to allow two more figures to exit. One of these was a man. He was dressed like the other two; the second figure, however, was female. She wore a black headscarf and rather dowdy shawl. But the most noticeable thing about her was her swollen belly. She looked heavily pregnant and waddled awkwardly.
As soon as she was clear of the van, a shadowy figure closed the side door from the inside. The van pulled out into the road and drove away.
Every instinct Luke had told him that these were his people. Every ounce of experience screamed this at him. They’d arrived when Maya Bloom was keeping stag and minutes before the atrocity was planned to kick off. If she was there to cause a diversion, she needed to know they’d arrived. They’d stayed in the vehicle for longer than he’d have expected. Were they receiving a final briefing?
Luke aimed the cross hairs at the head of one of the three men. His finger twitched on the trigger. He didn’t have any more time to delay. The decision had to be made.
Now.
He had to go with his gut…
‘
His line of sight was blocked. Four little girls had appeared, all plaits and ponytails, holding hands in pairs and walking across the scope’s field of view. Behind them was a tall woman with dark, curly hair, and then more kids. The woman turned and appeared to announce something to the girls and they congregated in a group in the precise vicinity of Luke’s four targets. Ten seconds later, as one, they all started to cross the road.
He tried to pick out the targets, but they were just part of a crowd now. A crowd that was heading through the Dung Gate and into the Old Town.
Towards the wall.
He jumped to his feet. Maya Bloom was still lying motionless. He had to leave her there. But first he clicked the mag release catch between the magazine and the trigger guard and removed the mag from the sniper rifle. The remaining hardware — including her snubnose and his Sig — he stashed in the Bergen. The ceramic knife he kept in his hand. Without hesitating for another second, he ran across the roof, past the skylight and back down the ladder, gripping the knife between his teeth.
At the base of the building, he dumped the rucksack in one of the bins. He took a moment to collect his thoughts. To gather his breath. To steady his nerve.
And then he ran towards the Dung Gate.
Alistair Stratton’s study at Albany Manor was dark.
He had closed the curtains and locked the door. The only source of light was the television against the wall, set to BBC News 24. The sound was down low, but the image showed an aerial view of an American warship ploughing through the waves. The text banner along the bottom of the screen rolled continuously: ‘american troops continue to mobilise in the middle east… president states he will stand “shoulder to shoulder with our israeli allies in the fight against terror”… middle east peace envoy alistair stratton’s negotiations with hamas administration “inconclusive”… unconfirmed reports of anti-western riots in the gazan capital…’
Stratton sat perfectly still in an armchair. His clothes were still torn and dirty. His face was still bruised and his broken nose had started to bleed again. He ignored the moistness that dripped from his right nostril, over his lips and on to his chin. He hadn’t showered, changed or received medical attention since Gaza.
He didn’t care.
To his right was an occasional table with a powered-up laptop on it. He had directed the browser to a live webcam image of the Western Wall. It was grainy and juddering, refreshing only every few seconds, but it was sufficient for him to see the exposed section and the crowds around it. Sufficient for him to witness his work, even though he was many miles away.
The picture on the TV changed, to show footage of the current Prime Minister shaking hands with his Israeli
