eighteen, swings a stout walking stick at my head. I sidestep his lunge and club him to the ground with the stock of my gun. This is madness, they’re nothing but kids. But there Roni is on the ground, blood streaming from his neck as he fights to keep control of his gun. Children swarm him, clawing at his rifle and his sidearm, tearing at his helmet, trying to pull it off, swinging sticks and crutches at his body. Half a dozen rush at me too. I try to call for help-other soldiers from our unit are no more than a hundred yards away-but saliva pools at the back of my throat and I have to keep swallowing. Words won’t form. I kick at the children to back them off and raise my M-16, fire a burst of three. Hebrew voices crackle over my radio. Other patrols converge from both ends of the alley, their boots thudding on ancient stone. I yell at the children to get away from Roni. The boy who looks like Sal Mineo swings a crutch at my gun barrel, trying to knock it from my hands. I kick him in the stomach and send him crashing to the ground. Suddenly men come spilling out of adjacent doorways. Hard men, unshaven, holding knives, machetes and hatchets. They don’t seem to care that I have an M-gun levelled at them. I shout “Halt” in Arabic. The young Mineo gets up and throws himself at me again, grabbing my gun barrel. I head-butt him with my helmet, shattering his nose, and he falls to the ground choking on blood. As the first assailant raises his hatchet I fire a three-shot burst into his midsection and he goes down. The others pause and I back away fast, breathing hard, my finger depressing the trigger halfway. I hear running footsteps behind me, and I turn to see four soldiers coming up fast behind me. As I turn back I see a man hack at Roni’s body with a machete. Trying to sever his head. I don’t even shout a warning. I point my Mikutzrar and pull the trigger. The first burst slams him against the wall of the alley; the second keeps him dancing herky-jerky. I hold the trigger and keep firing. I can’t kill him any more than I already have but I can’t stop. He falls to the ground and the last few bursts tear into the wall behind him, blasting chips of stone into the air. One child screams and clutches her face and blood pours out over her knuckles and down the backs of her hands. A woman runs out from a doorway and gathers up the child, wailing as loudly as the child herself. Roni Galil lies on the ground, a dark blood stain spreading over his shoulder and chest. His neck is cut completely open. His vest didn’t protect him there. There’s pink froth on his lips. I hear a voice, moaning and crying as if in terrible pain.
I can’t tell if it’s him or me.
“You okay?”
“Wha-?”
“Are you okay?” Dante Ryan asked. I blinked and focused on the image before me: Ryan with a tea towel draped over one shoulder, offering me a cup of coffee.
I sat up, got a sharp pain in my side for my trouble, and looked at my bedside clock: 5:54 a.m.
“I been up a while,” he said. “Tidying a little.”
“Knock yourself out.”
Ryan left the coffee with me and went down the hall to the kitchen. I shuddered, trying to shake off the last vestiges of the dream. It was the closest I had ever come to reliving what really happened in that brutally hot alley, how we had almost been overwhelmed by children sent to fight us. Like Ryan, I felt the threat against the Silvers was dredging up feelings and images faster than I could tamp them back down: Roni’s savage death; young Mineo with the broken nose; the girl hit by debris or a ricochet from my gun; Dalia’s naked body glistening in a moonlit orchard after making love; Dalia’s leg-bloody, dusty, bones exposed-nearly sheared off by a concrete missile.
I made it into the bathroom before the crying started. Grieving for Roni and Dalia. Raging at men who used children to fight their war without end. I ran water to drown out the sound as I leaned sobbing against the cool tile wall. Tears spilled down my face into the sink, where they mixed with water and swirled down the drain.
When the crying was done, I blew my nose and washed my face. If Ryan made one smart remark, he was going off the balcony, guns and all.
CHAPTER 34
Believing one should never commit one’s first premeditated murder without a nutritious breakfast, I took Ryan to the Family Restaurant. He had bacon and eggs and I had the same heart-stopping ham-and-eggs special I’d had the day before.
At a quarter to eight, I dropped him at the long-term parking lot at Pearson International Airport, then parked his Volvo in the short-term lot and waited. Eighteen minutes later he pulled up in a black late-model Altima. He got out and handed me a pair of thin leather driving gloves. “Don’t touch anything in or on the car without these on,” he said. “Case we have to ditch it unexpectedly.”
He transferred his metal photographer’s case from the trunk of the Volvo to the Altima, along with a brown canvas sports bag.
“A long gun,” I said.
“Not just a long gun. A Remington 700 PSS. The weapon of choice of better police services everywhere. If it’s good enough for an FBI sniper, it’s good enough for me. Accurate, reliable, comes with a scope and takes a suppressor if you need one. Plus the recoil is manageable if you stay away from magnum rounds.”
“And we need this because…?”
“In your haste to rid yourself of Marco Di Pietra, and the burden he has become, you fail to consider one important factor.”
“Yes, Professor?”
“Call it the carnage factor. Unless we can find Marco alone, we have to take out whoever we find him with, be it a bodyguard, a hooker or anyone else. How many people you prepared to kill?”
He was right. Shit. My focus had been on eliminating the threat Marco posed to me and everyone around me. I had to start seeing the bigger picture.
“You want to keep casualties to a minimum?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“The closer we have to get, the messier it’s going to be. The long gun gives us a chance, understand?”
God help me, I did.
We left the airport via a narrow road where a work crew was regrading a roadbed in the fierce heat, images of the men rippling above the hot asphalt like waves in a mirage.
“Where are we likely to find Marco?” I asked.
“He’s no nine-to-fiver but he has a few regular stops.”
“Where’s his house?”
“The new part of Woodbridge. A big pile his father-in-law built him, all floodlit pink brick inside a ten-foot fence.”
“I thought he lived in Hamilton.”
“His father does, him and the other old-timers,” Ryan said. “The guys who wanted to run Toronto without actually having to live in it. But our generation prefers Woodbridge or maybe Guelph if you want something more rural. Cara’s-my house-is in Woodbridge, and I got to your place last night in under thirty minutes, Highway 7 to 404 and down the DVP. It’s the best of both worlds. Close to downtown but the houses are new and you get space for your money. Anyway, hitting Marco in his house is out of the question. There’s always people around, including his wife and kids and his mother-in-law, plus the usual armed entourage.”
“Marco has children?”
“Unfortunately.”
“And he could still have Lucas Silver killed? How many children?”
“Three with the wife, two boys and a girl. Couple more outside the friendly confines.”
“Five kids. The bastard doesn’t deserve a single one.”
“Hey, for all I know he likes dogs too.”
“Where else does he go?”
“There’s places he eats, drinks, goes to get laid, watch people get beat up. Again, you’re always going to have too many witnesses.”
“So what’s left?”
“One of his so-called businesses is a trucking company just off Highway 7, a few minutes from here.”
“The one where the Ensign smokes were headed?”
