Brad Taylor - Enemy of Mine

On the opposite side of the street, she reached the front in time to see Pike exit. She shouted his name, but was drowned out. She watched helplessly as he was viciously clubbed around his head and body, a group of men kicking and punching him on the ground until a van pulled alongside. He was unceremoniously thrown in the back, and the van raced away.

She was at a momentary loss, trying to piece together the chain of events. She pushed through the crowd and caught a glimpse of the carnage at the target table, realizing what had happened. Realizing they had been used.

She knew that Pike had very little time before he was killed, and the clock was ticking. Now. She exited the cafe, getting free of the crowds, and saw Samir across the street. She sprinted right at him.

Samir saw her coming and shouted, “Jennifer! What happened? Where’s Pike?”

Before he could react, she wrapped one arm around his waist and grabbed his elbow with the other. She rotated around, levered her hip against his groin, and whipped his body up and over hers through the air.

He thumped the ground hard, and she straddled his waist. “Where did you take him?”

When he shouted nonsense, she began striking, just like a training day, blocking his ineffectual attempts to stop her and hammering his face over and over again, each blow bouncing his head off the concrete. One of his men arrived and grabbed her forearm, halting the assault. She rotated her arm in a quick circle, breaking it free at the same time she trapped his wrist. She violently twisted against the joint, hearing a rewarding crack as the wrist shattered and the man went to his knees.

She returned to Samir, who had now put his arms across his face, shouting, “Stop, stop! I didn’t do anything!”

“Where is he?”

When he said nothing, she began striking him again, this time with less effect as his arms prevented her from direct contact. Two other Druze arrived and began to battle her. It took three before she was pulled off of Samir.

The Ghost’s ears were ringing from the blast. Having lived his entire life in Beirut, his body had reacted instantly, hitting the floor even before his conscious mind knew why.

The initial shock over, he peeked from underneath his table, seeing the carnage across the cafe. So far, nobody in the restaurant had reacted. Still shocked, they simply cowered and whimpered. He saw the briefcase the men had brought lying underneath a body, apparently intact.

When initially given the meeting location, inside the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp, he’d been happy with the choice. Reflecting on the location after he’d left the Dahiyeh , the Ghost had balked, telling the Hezbollah leadership he’d meet, but on neutral terrain. They’d come up with this cafe, but he still wasn’t completely satisfied.

He’d decided to send someone else to the meeting. Someone with the physical characteristics the men would be expecting. A tough guy with a swagger. He knew the main identification method would be the glasses his bad genetics forced on him. It had been very little effort to find someone in the camp who met the specifications and needed money. He’d given him instructions and paid him up front, sending him into the meeting wearing glasses with thick lenses.

He didn’t worry about missing out on any discussions, because he’d specified that all information was to be passed to him in hard form. Initially, before he’d come up with his doppelganger plan, it was simply because he didn’t want to spend a single second more than he had to with these men. He trusted them about as much as he would the Mossad. It looked like that mistrust had just saved his life.

He’d think about the whys of the attack later, but knew one thing: There was a leak somewhere. He was willing to bet it was with the Sunnis and not Hezbollah. In Lebanon the fragmented Palestinian groups had always tended to fire before aiming. He could well imagine how many people knew about this meeting because of their bragging.

Seeing the waitstaff starting to recover, he duckwalked over to the table, screaming for someone to help him and beginning to conduct triage on the shattered bodies in the blast. He rolled one man over, ostensibly checking for signs of life, but in reality exposing the briefcase. He waited for the crowd to gather, as he knew it would.

Seconds later, he was surrounded by a plethora of people all shouting instructions, one splashing water from an ice bucket on the small fire, another throwing chairs and tables out of the way to clear the area.

He leaned over and closed his hands on the briefcase, the handle slick with the blood from the man who had been lying on it.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder, asking if the meat he was leaning over was alive. He said no and stood up.

He pushed through the crowd and reached the street, gripping the briefcase tightly in his hands.

The men continued to pummel me inside the van, shouting in Arabic. I protested in English, demanding to know what I had done, setting my innocence as soon as possible. I knew it would matter little, and I was in serious, serious trouble.

The van careened down the narrow roads, eventually driving without swerving left and right, which meant we were out of town. There weren’t any windows to see out of, even if they’d given me a chance to look, but I knew we were headed to the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp. Once past that barrier, I knew my chances of survival would be close to zero.

One of the men began shouting into a cell phone in Arabic. Seeing me watch, another shoved a coarse burlap sack on my head, blocking out the light.

Here we go. If they bring out a video camera and a knife, it’s last-chance time.

The men weren’t professional, because they’d left me both with my watch and cell phone. That was good on the surface, but could prove deadly. No training equaled no discipline, which meant I could be killed out of rage without thinking about the consequences. I hoped these guys would want to question me at length-extending out my life, as it were-and prayed that’s what the shouting on the phone had been about. Someone with a cool head giving orders instead of leaving me to my fate with these Neanderthals.

Eventually, we stopped. I was cuffed on the head and dragged out of the van, the hood still on.

Without any concern for my well-being, we speed-walked up a flight of concrete steps. I kept slipping, banging my shins and trying to break my fall with my arms. Every time it happened, I was slapped and punched for a couple of seconds before being jerked to my feet.

I was thrown through a doorway, slamming into a wall. Two men jerked me through another door and forced me into a chair. I was rapidly tied around all of my limbs, then left alone for a minute or two.

I heard footsteps, and the hood was ripped off of my head. I faced one of the men who’d lumped me up to begin with. They still hadn’t taken my cell phone, which was good. The longer I had it, the better.

“Who do you work for?”

Here it comes.

In the movies, this is when I would spit in the guy’s face and tell him to fuck off. Because I’m so tough. In real life, I knew aggravating this man was the last thing I should do. My survival rested on my ability to convince them they’d made a mistake.

“I work for myself. I own a business. If it’s a ransom you want, my partner will pay, but we don’t have a lot of money.”

He slapped my head.

“Who do you work for in the U.S. government? The CIA? Or maybe Mossad?”

“CIA? Is that what you think? You’ve made a terrible mistake. I’m just a businessman here on vacation. I don’t work for any government, I swear. I’m not even religious, and certainly not Jewish!”