Russell Blake - Jet

The sun baked down on her as she struggled with conflicting impulses. Two sorry-looking pigeons scurried down the gutter, dodging empty soda bottles and food wrappers, the male strutting, ruffling feathers in a mating dance as the uninterested female tried to slip past it and into the allure of the shade.

Getting out of the heat wasn’t a bad idea, she reasoned. She needed to do something. She couldn’t stand there all day.

She was just talking herself into taking another walk past the building, this time on the same side of the street so she could see the names on the battered mailbox slots, when the front of the flat disintegrated in a blast of stone and glass. The concussion from the explosion rocked her — she clutched the wall for support, ears ringing from the detonation. She shook her head, attempting to clear it as she watched smoke belch from the smoldering cavity, where moments before she’d been looking at a window.

A window with a box.

The van’s engine roared, and then it barreled down the street towards her. As it approached, she caught a glimpse of two men. Thin, both obviously natives, hair closely cropped, bearded. The van passed her vantage point, and she noted that it didn’t have plates — not unusual in a city where nobody paid anything they could avoid, but to her, a telltale.

A crowd gathered as rubberneckers emptied out of the surrounding dwellings to survey the damage and watch the show. Another woman edged next to her and asked in a soft voice what had happened. Jet shook her head, feigning ignorance.

No good would come from her remaining there. She needed to leave. Leave the street with its burning wreckage, and leave Yemen as soon as possible.

Get back to base.

The sign had been clear, there to warn whoever Rain had been working with.

Jet’s mind churned furiously, trying to remember where base had been for the Yemen operation. It had been a while ago, but the memories came back to her. Base had been a small home on the outskirts of Pardes Hanna-Karkur in Israel, near Netanya. One of a number of safe houses David had used — he’d told her that he had dozens at his disposal and moved between them depending upon what operation was active at the moment. When he didn’t have anything on the board, he simply disappeared. Nobody knew where. It was during those down times that he and Jet would rendezvous, but never in the same place twice.

After a mission went sideways, the likelihood was that he would be at the designated base house to collect the pieces and debrief anyone who made it out. Jet had no idea how large a group was now working the Yemen assignment, but after three and a half years, it had to be more than just Rain. An asset wouldn’t have been kept in place for that length of time if it wasn’t important, which meant that the intelligence he was gathering was critical. And operations rarely came apart like this, so when one imploded, David would need to know why.

Which was the opportunity she’d been hoping for.

After the cab dropped her off at her hotel, she veered down the street to an internet cafe she’d spotted the prior day. Within ten minutes, she had confirmed she could get a flight out of Yemen the following morning to Jordan, and then take a bus across the border. It was a long and circuitous route to get into Israel, but she knew from experience that it was the only practical way to avoid the facial recognition software the Mossad used at airport immigration.

With any luck, she could be at the safe house by tomorrow afternoon. Then, hopefully, she would get some answers.

Jet’s trip to Israel was long and uneventful, with the border crossing a tedious marathon — crowded and chaotic, barely controlled pandemonium as three busses arrived five minutes apart, the passengers all rushing to get to the head of the line to avoid the long wait in the heat.

When she arrived in Jerusalem, she rented a car. Once clear of the city, the trip to Pardes Hanna-Karkur took only an hour and a half. She pulled into town at four o’clock in the afternoon, the sun’s relentless roasting almost over for the day.

Jet had been to the base house only once following her insertion mission in Yemen, doing her mandatory debriefing before leaving to take a welcome three-day hiatus in nearby Netanya with David. Even though it had been three and a half years, her recollection of the area was fresh — her memory for geography a skill she’d honed in her training.

A soldier stopped her as she pulled onto the small cul-de-sac where the house was located. She rolled down the window as he peered from under the brim of his hat.

“I’m sorry. Street’s closed. You need to turn around.”

“Oh. Why? What happened?” Jet batted her eyes and tried a tentative smile on the young man.

“I really can’t say. You just can’t drive any further. I’m sorry. Those are my orders.”

“Damn. I mean, I wanted to see if my friend was home, but I suppose that’s out of the question now?” Her eyes darted to the house at the end of the little street. Two of the cars in front of it were riddled with bullet holes, and a third had burned to a husk. The entire perimeter of the lot was cordoned off with yellow tape and was swarming with police and military.

“You could try calling.”

“She doesn’t like to use the phone. Never answers it, so trying would be pointless. Are you sure I can’t just sneak by?”

The young soldier stiffened. “I think you should turn your car around and leave. This is a crime scene. The street is closed to all traffic, pedestrian or otherwise, for at least the rest of the day.”

So much for charming her way through .

“Okay, okay. I’m going.”

She’d seen enough — obvious evidence of an assault on the house. If David had been there, he wouldn’t be any more. The house was blown. But she needed to find out what had happened. Had he been inside? Had he been killed? Wounded?

Jet reversed and executed a three-point turn, then drove out of the neighborhood and kept going until she came to a market. She pulled into the lot and parked, needing time to think. This was all unraveling too quickly — and now her one lead to David was gone. All the effort, the trip to Yemen, the trek into Israel, in vain. But none of it made sense. Who would dare attack a Mossad safe house on Israeli turf? What was the objective? She couldn’t recall anything even remotely like it happening before, and a buzz of anxiety started in her stomach. This was uncharted territory, and as far as she knew, there was no precedent. Which was bad, because in her travels she’d thought there was nothing she hadn’t seen. And that meant that there could be more surprises lying in wait. Deadly ones she might not see coming.

She didn’t know too many ways she could get more information other than trying to hack into the military’s computers to get information on the attack. Even with her skills, the Mossad’s would be virtually impossible to breach unless she had weeks to spare, and the military’s wouldn’t be that much easier — which left the police. Local cops were likely to have only meager security on their servers — child’s play for someone of her abilities. Judging by the number of police at the scene, it wouldn’t be that hard to find any report that had been filed. She would just need a good system, a fast internet connection, and time.

She drove half an hour to Tel Aviv and found a large electronics store, and within twenty minutes was the proud owner of a new state-of-the-art laptop. A nearby specialty coffee shop advertised free wireless internet; she found a quiet corner away from the boisterous teenagers hanging out by the entrance and plugged in her new toy.

Forty-five minutes later, she was in the police network and reading the preliminary report on the house.