create two? On the other hand, if you're reluctant to take and use the sons to loosen their mother's tongue, at least let us kill the lot of them.'
Fernandez inclined his head toward Sada. 'Adnan is quite right, Patricio. Moreover, what's the difference between that and an air strike that takes out a whole family to get one terrorist? There isn't any and you know there isn't.' Fernandez's voice and face grew desperate. 'Patricio, for God's sake they created you by killing your family and leaving you alive. They have brought out the very worst in me. This is not different.'
Carrera thought about that. He'd done some terrible things, let innocent people be killed to get at the guilty. But this was just… wrong somehow. He couldn't deliberately order the deaths of the two boys on the mere chance that they might someday become a threat.
'No. Kill the woman, fine. Leave her family alone.'
'Well,' Sada said, acquiescing, 'if it's to be a simple assassination then there's no sense in using my own boys for it. Can we afford to hire a hit team?'
Fernandez, still shaking his head in disgust at Carrera's squeamishness, asked, 'Of course we can afford it. A hit team from whom?'
'Possibly the Anti-Zionist People's Liberation Front; they're strong in Bekaa and never liked the fact that Arguello, a woman, garnered so many headlines. Or maybe the ZII, the Zion Intelligence Institute, could suggest someone. Maybe they'd be willing to do it themselves. Give me a week to work it out.'
'You have contacts with the ZII?' Fernandez asked incredulously.
'Just one good one,' Sada answered and then refused to say more.
Akka, Bekaa, 9/2/462 AC
As it turned out, ZII wouldn't touch it. The head of the organization, Mickey Zvi Maor, who knew Sada from school in Anglia, was firm on that. Oh, they wished the woman dead, one thousand times over dead. But they were such an obvious candidate for the hit that Maor begged off. He did suggest contacting one of the religiously affiliated parties in Bekaa, all of whom distrusted women in positions of power.
Sada sent one of his more trusted lieutenants, Major Qabaash, to Bekaa to do the negotiations.
' Qef halak, ya sheik, ' Qabaash began at the audience he had secured with the leader of the Monotheism Party in a suburb of Akka. The sheik lived simply enough, in a rambling adobe house with a fountained central courtyard. The fountain was not ostentation. In the fierce heat of the Bekaa desert the fountain served to cool the courtyard without the pollution of the infidel's electricity.
Serene and dignified, the sheik-his given name was Ghalebreturned the greetings and swept his hand down, inviting Qabaash to sit near him on some cushions placed where they would receive the most benefit of the fountain's cooling effect.
Serving women, some the sheik's wives and concubines, others his daughters, brought in trays ostentatiously laden with more food than two men could hope to eat. Besides the usual lamb, there were bowls of red maize paste, flavored with native 'holy shit peppers.'
Holy shit peppers were at the low end of piquancy compared to some of Terra Nova's natural spices. Above them were Joan of Arc peppers, only for the very daring or masochistic. At the very high end were the plants known as 'Satan Triumphant.' No one had ever managed to eat these, whole, though they had found a use during the Great Global War when distilled into a potent chemical agent similar in its power and effects to phosgene oxime. Highly diluted, they could have been used for food preservation. Unfortunately, STs were so vile that the slightest underdilution would have preserved the food indefinitely as no human being could have hoped to eat it. Mixed in minute proportion in shoug, a fiery popular paste, was about as useful as 'Satan Triumphant' peppers ever got.
Besides the red maize paste were pitas made from the flour of the chorley. There were half a dozen Terra Novan 'olives' on the trays, as well. These had little resemblance to Old Earth olives, being roughly the size of plums and gray in color. They grew in clumps of three on a plant that looked like a stunted, anemic palm, except that unlike the palms of Old Earth this one's trunk was green while its fronds were gray. The taste was said to be similar to normal olives, though slightly more astringent.
One did not get right down to business when dealing with the sheik or, indeed, with nearly any Arab; there were the niceties to observe first. A full two hours of mostly meaningless pleasantries followed. Mostly, however, does not mean entirely. By the end of the two hours, from hints and suggestions, Ghaleb had learned that the heretic woman, Layla Arguello, needed to die and Qabaash had learned that the price of her death, her husband's and her sons would be fifty thousand FSD, half payable up front and half on confirmation that she was truly dead. Two of Terra Nova's three moons, Eris and Bellona, had risen by the time the two reached this point.
'It would be better,' observed the sheik, getting down to business, 'if her sons did not grow up to avenge her.'
'I could not agree more, O Wise One,' Qabaash answered. 'Yet those are our limitations. The people I represent will not countenance the killing of the sons.'
Ghaleb's smiled slightly as his fingers pulled at one ear. 'Easterners, eh? It never ceases to amaze me how little they understand us and how completely they insist on trying to fit us into their own mold. For the woman and the sons I would charge fifty thousand. For the woman alone, the price is one hundred thousand, for I will have to recompense families when the sons grow up to exact their revenge.'
'It is fair, O Sheik, and the amount in within my discretion.'
To himself Qabaash mused, If this were the FSC, they would, at a cost many times greater, drop a large and expensive guided bomb from an aircraft costing more than this country earns every year. The bomb would kill Arguello, and the FSC would congratulate itself for its discretion and humanity. The bomb would also kill fifty genuine innocents and probably miss her sons. For a mere fifty thousand I could get rid of the lot and kill no true innocents if only I were permitted. Life is strange and the Almighty's sense of humor unfathomable.
Akka, 17/2/462 AC
Ordinarily, the sheik would have merely given a sermon in the mosque on the subject of female iniquity and mentioned Layla's name as an example. Several of his followers would have read between the lines, hunted her down to her home and killed her and her family. Word would have leaked so that the sheikh could reward his diligent followers properly, but only within the close confines of the clan, so that the police could pretend bafflement. Because of the absurd requirement that her family not be hurt, more direct and less subtle methods were required.
A team of Ghaleb's followers was thus handpicked and given its marching orders. They were experienced and bright men; they had no real difficulty finding Layla's residence and office. They did find it suspicious that she changed her routes between the two more than daily. This meant that the killing would have to take place either in or in front of either her office or her home. Given that they were, unaccountably, forbidden from killing her family it would have to be the office.
Purchasing weapons and explosives in the market in Akka was like buying dates and figs. Finding Layla's residence and office was equally easy, reconning them not much more difficult.
Unfortunately, what the hit team did not count on was the woman herself. Layla Arguello was not some untrained, innocent Kosmo journalist or humanitarian aid worker. She was, herself, a trained and experienced terrorist. Moreover, her long career should have told the team she was a smart trained terrorist. Smart and trained terrorists, in the circumstances of Akka, Bekaa, did not go about unarmed.
What should have been an easy hit turned into a somewhat lengthy firefight. With six men with rifles engaging one woman with a pistol the result would normally been foreordained. Not so with Layla.
Near her office, her car was suddenly cut off by another that swerved in front and forced her driver to crash into a parked car by the curb. The car following Layla's smashed into the rear of her own to further shock the occupants. Her driver and the guard sitting in the front seat were thrown forward-the use of seatbelts indicating a certain lack of piety among their people-and stunned.
Layla, however, was not shocked. She had the door open and was crouching outside, digging in her purse for a pistol and her trademark hand grenade, even before the men in the assaulting cars had their feet to the pavement. Her hand closed on the grenade first. This she donated to the following car. It went off on the asphalt, laying out two just emerging assassins with multiple shrapnel wounds. Red pools began to spread across the pavement.
The remaining four assassins were momentarily shocked. This gave Layla enough time to dig out her pistol, a
