“No, Harry, we are leaving this house,” Moshe replied while his prisoner strapped on his leg and began to dress.
Excitement tickled the back of Harry’s brain. He’d thought that if they ever moved him again, and they didn’t drug him as they’d done the last time, he might find a way to escape. He kept his voice neutral. “Where we headed?”
Moshe gave a small laugh. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He finished with his shirt and reached into the bundle of blankets to retrieve the gin still cached there. “Can I at least bring this along? Nothing makes time pass quicker than a drop or two of liquor.”
Moshe’s expression brightened. “We will share it on the drive. We’ll have a few hours together. But you must cooperate with us when we walk to a vehicle we have waiting.”
“Come on, my boy, look at me,” Harry chuckled. “Does it look as if I have a choice?”
Moshe laughed. Harry was as threatening as a toothless tomcat.
Their driver, David, called twenty minutes later. He was waiting at the Dormition Abbey just outside the Zion Gate. Lev and Jacob left the safe house immediately, their Uzis hidden under long dark coats.
“All right, people, get ready. They should be in position in a couple minutes. As soon as we hear the gunfire, I want us moving,” Rachel ordered.
The wait was only seven minutes.
The sound of gunfire was muted by the distance. Still it echoed throughout the old city. Rachel’s face remained impassive as they paused at the door. Seconds later, the night was filled with running feet and police whistles. She could imagine the people in the neighborhood cowering in their beds, quietly asking each other what was happening.
“Okay, let’s go.”
There were only four of them including Harry White. Moshe kept a tight grip on the old man’s arm as they eased out the door. Rachel took the lead, an automatic pistol held discreetly against her thigh. They had to cover about three-quarters of a mile through the Jewish Quarter to reach the waiting van, and while she didn’t like the exposure, she had no choice.
Harry’s mind worked furiously. He tried to recognize any landmark that might look familiar as they moved, but nothing came to him. He was in the Middle East, of that he was sure, but had no idea where. The one clue he had — Moshe drinking the gin with him — gave him nothing. And then he realized that a woman was now leading the team. A woman! Not in an Arab country. In a rush everything came clear. His kidnappers were Jewish! Some Israeli extremist group, no doubt.
He should have seen it all along. Moshe was a Jewish name, the name of a former Israeli leader. “Shit,” he cursed himself under his breath.
But how to make this work to his advantage? This was his best opportunity to escape, and still he had no ideas. Muslim or Jew, it didn’t matter as long as they were armed. He did sense the group’s tension and wisely decided not to delay them by intentionally slowing his pace. He could tell they were all in danger.
Rachel stiffened when she heard a group of men running toward them. She hid the pistol behind her leg just as a dozen soldiers rounded a corner a half block away, their equipment slapping against their uniforms. As soon as the security patrol spotted the four people breaking the curfew order, their weapons came up, twelve fingers tightening on the triggers.
“No, please, wait!” Rachel cried in Hebrew. “We are Israeli citizens!”
“What are you doing on the street?” the ranking soldier called back, his weapon centered on Rachel’s head.
“There was a shooting close to our apartment, my grandfather was frightened,” Rachel improvised, pointing at Harry. “He demanded we leave immediately. He is very ill. The strain is bad for his heart.”
“Return to your home at once,” the soldier ordered. “You should not be out here.”
“I know, but we cannot calm him.” She lowered her voice to draw on the soldier’s natural compassion. “His wife, my grandmother, was killed in the bombing at the Wall. He has not been himself.”
At that revelation, the leader of the patrol lowered his weapon, and his troops followed suit. The soldier looked at the group critically, deciding that a woman, two boys barely out of their teens, and a man who looked as though he would die at any moment did not pose a threat. The radio on his belt squawked, and he shifted his attention from Rachel to it.
“A patrol has made contact,” he said to his group. “Two men armed with automatic weapons. They’ve split up. I think one of the bastards is heading our way.” He looked at Rachel again, but already his concentration was on the hunt for the renegades. “Clear the street as quickly as you can. There are two of them out here tonight.”
Harry watched the exchange, realized that the patrol was about to leave, and got a sickening inspiration. It was now or never.
His shocking outburst had the desired effect. The patrol swung back toward the group of kidnappers, and in the split second of indecision, one of the young Israelis with Rachel was startled and drew his weapon. Harry dropped to the ground as the patrol’s Galil assault rifles chattered, the street dancing with the fire of the muzzle flashes. Rachel dove out of the way, bringing her pistol up. She dropped one of the soldiers with a double tap, the trooper’s throat exploding with the impact of the two rounds. Another soldier was taken out before the patrol managed to direct their aim with more accuracy. Moshe was dead from a dozen bullet wounds before his corpse hit the ground.
Rolling on the cobbled street, Harry maneuvered himself around a corner and out of the battle as gunfire whined over his head. In the gloom ahead, he saw a dark figure running toward him, a machine pistol at the ready. He guessed that it was one of Rachel’s diversionary troops, and he slunk into a darkened store entrance to let the kidnapper pass, knowing he would add to the confusion behind him.
Lev’s Uzi had a sharper sound than the patrol’s Galils, and a full magazine exploded into the ranks of soldiers, scything down four of them and wounding three more. His burst gave Rachel the covering fire she needed to race from the confined street, firing behind her as she managed her escape, limping badly from a bullet lodged in her upper thigh.
Harry didn’t wait to listen for the patrol’s return fire. He got to his feet and started running, keeping to the shadows, cutting through any alley he came to in an effort to lose himself in the ancient city.
The only thing that saved him from being picked up was the patrol’s diminished number and the fact that they tracked the fleeing kidnappers slowly, fearing an ambush. In ten minutes, Harry felt he had put enough distance between himself and the firefight to rest for a few minutes and consider his next move. Savoring freedom for the first time in weeks, he was still cut off and alone. He realized that a curfew must be in effect and he would have to wait before trying to find help.
He had to find Americans, embassy staffers or someone, if he hoped to get out of the country alive. That would be his best option. But how? Where could he find countrymen in a nation he knew virtually nothing about? Harry looked around and saw a church across the street. In the milky glow of spotlights washing up the building’s facade he saw that there was an English translation to the announcements on their bulletin board. Reading the list of regular services the church provided, Harry saw his opportunity and smiled.
David was waiting exactly as planned, the engine of the windowless van idling quietly. Rachel ran up to the vehicle, her face tight with the pain in her leg. Without a word she threw open the passenger door and eased herself into the seat. “Drive.”
“What about the others?”
“No one else made it. We were hit by a security patrol. Everyone else is dead.” Her voice was weak and exhausted.
Her cell phone chirped.
“Rachel, it’s Yosef.”
“We were hit, Yosef. The team was wiped out, and White’s gone.”
“At the safe house?”
“We ran into a patrol while leaving the city, and Harry White managed to escape in the confusion. Levine said he couldn’t compromise himself by giving us a military escort or ordering troops to let us break curfew. He left us on our own, and it turned into a massacre.”
