him as he hopped the curb to complete the U-turn.
“Retro, give me a lock-on.”
“Two blocks back. He’s on a one-lane road right now. Take a left, and we’ll intersect his line of march behind him. What’s the play?”
Knuckles thought for a moment, driving like a madman, then said, “Push his ass over with the van. If anyone’s on the road, let him go.”
“Vehicles aren’t the only threat. You can’t predict who’ll see this from the buildings. You sure?”
“No. But he’s running, which means we’ve been blown somehow. We need to get his ass for that as much as anything else.”
They made the left and entered a narrow one-way road with barely enough room for the van, the uneven cobblestone surface rattling Knuckles’ teeth. In front of them was a moped, the man on it having a bald top with a ring of ragged hair blowing in the wind, a Bluetooth headset in his ear.
Knuckles looked down the street and saw nothing but the occasional garbage bin. No vehicles or pedestrians. He inched the van forward, saying, “Check our six. Anything?”
Retro said, “Nothing I can see, but that don’t mean shit.”
“Good enough for government work.”
Knuckles floored the van, closing in behind the moped. He brought the nose adjacent to its rear tire, then gently swung the bumper over, just enough to kiss the rubber. The contact caused Crusty to panic, jerking the handlebars in an overreaction. The moped skipped onto a pile of trash, he hammered the front brake, and the front wheel locked up. The moped swung sideways, launching the terrorist out of the saddle. They both skittered to a halt twenty feet in front of the van.
Retro was already out of the door before the bike stopped its slide, Taser at the ready. He hit the juice as Knuckles pulled abreast, the door of the vehicle open and waiting.
Retro threw him in the van, slamming the door shut and giving Knuckles a look of utter amazement. Knuckles floored the gas, getting out of the area, feeling physically sick.
He called Blaine in the Ops Center.
“We took down the moped. But it isn’t Crusty.”
6
His true name was Abdul Rahman, but he had not heard it uttered aloud in years. Sometimes, lying on his crude pallet adjacent to the remains of the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, surrounded in darkness feebly attacked by a lone candle, he would say the name over and over, as if to prove it still existed.
He was known by many, many different names. So many that even he had trouble remembering which one to use for a given mission. He took pleasure in knowing that the Lebanese authorities, along with the Zionist dogs in Israel, believed they were tracking four or five different men.
Another time, another place, and he would have been an educated man. A scholar, perhaps. Or an engineer. He certainly looked the part. He was only five feet four inches tall, and slight of build. His vision was so weak that he was forced to wear glasses with lenses thick enough to distort his eyes when seen from the front.
Although bordering on physical frailty, he’d been blessed with one thing that had allowed him to survive in the refugee camps as a child, and to thrive as a soldier of God: His intelligence outmatched just about anyone he came across. He had never been formally evaluated, but even as a child he knew that he was smarter than everyone else. Not in a smug or superior way. It was just a fact, like the boys who were stronger. Truth be told, he used to play stupid as a child so as to better fit in with the other boys in the camp, and had found this talent to be helpful when he wanted to be underestimated as a grown man.
His intelligence had facilitated many successes in the long struggle, but it was his strength of will that set him apart from the average fighter, no matter their skills. He simply would not quit.
In 2007, the Lebanese Armed Forces captured him in a massive sweep when they invaded the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp to root out the Palestinian terrorist group Fatah al-Islam. He was not a member of that group, and considered it to be just one of many with more brawn and rage than brains. He went to prison anyway, with a dozen others, and was beaten for weeks, but he never gave up any of the aliases he had used in the past. Names that would have sealed his death. Eventually convinced they held a nobody, he was released, and he returned to the camp only to find it had been utterly destroyed in the fighting. A wasteland of shattered concrete and bent metal.
Infuriated at what had become of his home, he had finished the job of the LAF. Using his Palestinian connections, he hunted down the remaining Fatah al-Islam members who had evaded the Lebanese net. In his mind, they did not understand the struggle, and had brought untold suffering on the Palestinian people in the camp for nothing more than a bank robbery. A simple crime that garnered nothing.
His actions spawned a plethora of myths: Hezbollah assassins had infiltrated the camps to blunt the growth of Sunni extremism; Israeli Mossad agents were using a secret weapon that killed from a distance; or a Jack the Ripper-type bogeyman was on the loose. The last was closest to the truth, with Palestinian mothers using his acts to keep rowdy children in line. He didn’t bother to correct them. He became known as
He didn’t associate himself with any specific group, but he’d worked for them all at one time or another. The Palestinian Liberation Organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and many more. At the least, even with the politics and infighting, they’d all been driven by the same desires he had: pushing Israel into the sea and reclaiming Palestinian land. Recent history around the Middle East had changed that equation, frightening him to his core.
Libya was gone as a supporter, and Syria, once a staunch ally in the struggle, providing funding, equipment, and protection, was now struggling with its own survival. Osama bin Laden was dead. And the once vaunted Palestinian Liberation Organization, which had evolved into the Palestinian Authority, was on the slippery slope of capitulation, eschewing terrorism and even discussing whether to overtly affirm Israel’s right to exist.
It made him physically ill, and forced him into bed with organizations whose goals he did not embrace and to whom he never would have given the time of day. Which was why he was searching for a coffee shop in south Beirut, in the heart of Hezbollah territory. Far from the protection of his Palestinian brethren.
It was only a two-hour journey by time, but seemed much further as he left the area controlled by his people and entered Beirut, a free-for-all of sectarian feelings. The civil war had ended over ten years ago, but the scars from it still existed. It was a risk just entering Hezbollah’s domain, regardless of the fact that they’d asked him to come.
He traveled through the city proper, following the old green line from the war. Reaching the south of the city, he began traveling west, toward the suburb officially known as Haret Hreik, but called the
The Beirut he knew was left behind. More and more propaganda began littering the streets, with images of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, plastered everywhere, along with pictures of suicide bomber “martyrs.” Green-and-yellow flags with a fist holding an AK-47 emblazoned on them fluttered in the breeze. Sullen men were on every street corner, armed with assault rifles, glaring at him. Begging him to do something that would allow them to stop him.
He had believed that Hezbollah was but one militia among many, and that the Sunni groups were just as powerful. He now saw he was wrong. There would be no Lebanese incursion here, like his home had suffered in 2007, because of one crucial fact that made all the difference: Hezbollah was armed better than anyone else in the country, including the military. And men on the street corners were proud to show that off.
It aggravated him to see it, because no other group or sect was allowed to bear arms in Lebanon. Actually, by a United Nations resolution, neither was Hezbollah, but nobody seemed to question this fact. Nobody but the Zionists, that is.
He parked his car on a side street and got out to walk. He knew he was close, and circling the block was getting him nowhere.
