Chris Ryan - Killing for the Company

The other four men stood back warily. ‘You don’t need to do anything,’ said the guy with the stubble. ‘We’ll call the numbers at eleven.’

The bombers looked at each other, then back at their point men, who were edging away now.

‘ Allahu Akbar ,’ the pregnant woman muttered.

The stubble-face man replied in kind, but he did not sound enthusiastic. Ten seconds later he was out of sight of the bombers and so were his companions.

The four of them were on their own now. The pregnant woman nervously checked her watch. 10.40 exactly.

Twenty minutes to go.

Twenty minutes to paradise.

Twenty minutes until they changed the world forever.

The bombers whispered a quiet prayer and, after one last, long look at each other, left the anteroom, split up and walked slowly, unassumingly to their positions.

Luke sprinted across the main road, causing the traffic to brake and swerve as he burned towards the Dung Gate. He passed an armed IDF man at the entrance to the gate. As he ran past, the guy shouted something at him in Hebrew. Luke didn’t stop. He could see the security gates to the Western Wall plaza fifty metres ahead. He crossed that distance in seconds but was brought to a halt by a line of men and a line of women, queuing to go in.

Somewhere nearby a bell tolled. Three strikes. 10.45 hrs. Luke was still brandishing the ceramic knife, the black handle in his right hand, the white blade pressed up against the inside of his arm. Looking behind him, he saw the IDF man making chase. He cursed under his breath and quickly slipped the blade into his trousers, covering the handle of the knife with his T-shirt.

The soldier was covering the ground quickly. Thirty metres between him and Luke. Closing.

Luke sidestepped, then barged along the length of the queue to the front. A father and his young son were the next to go through the body scanner, but Luke pushed in front of them. He heard shouts from behind, harsh instructions in Hebrew, and it didn’t take much intuition to realise it was his pursuer. As he stepped through the security gate, he almost winced, expecting the alarm to go off; but it didn’t, and a few seconds later he was running down towards the plaza.

He stopped at its edge, his heart sinking. The square was five times as crowded as it had been the night before. Scanning the crowd, he estimated that there had to be a couple of hundred Hassidim here, all dressed in the same way as the bombers; and a similar number of women were crowding round the female section of the wall.

He froze with indecision. Try to find his targets here? It was like looking for a needle in a fucking haystack.

It was noisy. The noise of a crowd. But suddenly, from somewhere near the wall, came the ancient, wavering, piercing sound of a horn being blown. Luke looked in the direction of the sound and could just make out the end of a long, gnarled animal’s horn, held up to the lips of an old man with a white beard. The sound continued for a good ten seconds before it was accompanied by another noise.

Shouting. Behind him. Luke looked over his shoulder. The IDF guy was there — only now he had three others with him and they’d spotted him.

He looked into the crowd. Could he lose himself among them in time? He had to. Luke burst forwards and seconds later he was engulfed by people. They were pushing, shoving — jostling to get towards the wall. For a couple of seconds Luke felt himself being taken along with the tide.

And then there was a tap on his shoulder. He spun round. One of the soldiers was there, glaring at him and talking quickly in Hebrew. Luke felt his knuckles clenching as he looked left and right, trying to decide on an escape plan. But then he realised the soldier had switched to English.

‘This,’ he snapped. ‘You dropped it.’ He was holding something up in his hand — a black wallet.

Luke shook his head. ‘Not mine,’ he said in a level voice.

A pause. The soldier looked rather offended that he’d chased after Luke for no reason. He sighed heavily before forcing his way back out of the crowd, barking orders as he went.

Luke checked his watch. 10.48. Sweat poured from his body as he turned and used his bulk to force his way towards the wall.

On a nearby rooftop, Maya Bloom’s eyes shot open.

The first thing she felt was pain. A stinging, burning pain across her face and a dull ache in her abdomen. She could deal with that.

The second thing she felt was anger. That she couldn’t deal with. Not one bit.

She sat up suddenly. A wave of giddiness crashed over her. It took her two seconds to realise she was tied and another two to realise she was alone.

A sound drifted through the air. A horn. The shofar, which she had heard ever since she was young girl. And it was coming from the Western Wall. It meant the people had congregated.

She looked around.

Her assailant had removed her bag. That meant she had no weapons and no blade. She closed her eyes. Breathed deeply.

And then she looked around again.

Her eyes fell upon the skylight and immediately she had a strategy. Lying down lengthwise, she rolled towards the glass before sitting up again with the lower part of her legs stretched out upon it. She inhaled deeply again and, with a sudden, violent strike, raised the heels of her boots as high as possible and brought them slamming down on the glass. There was a splintering sound and a crack webbed out from the point of impact. She raised her heels again and slammed on the glass for a second time.

As it shattered she felt a hot stinging as the sharp edge of the glass remaining round the edge cut into the skin on the back of her legs. She quickly realigned her body so that she was lying on her back diagonally across one corner of the skylight. Fumbling blindly, she manoeuvred her wrists so they were touching a jagged shard, and started to make small movements back and forth.

It was impossible to slice just the bootlaces and not her skin. As she rocked her wrists back and forth, she felt flesh tear and moisten. But she barely noticed the pain. She rubbed away at the laces and in just over a minute she felt the tension around her hands suddenly release. Rolling off the glass, she brought her hands round to the front. They were gashed and bloodied, but that didn’t slow her down at all. The knot around her ankles she couldn’t untie, so she broke a shard of glass off the remnants of the skylight. It was about the size of her palm and shaped almost like an arrow tip with an evil-looking point, which she used like a saw to hack away at the second bootlace.

Seconds later she was free.

She jumped to her feet just as she heard the shofar ring out a second time. The image of her assailant rose in her mind.

He was going to ruin everything.

She wasn’t going to let that happen.

Maya Bloom stashed the piece of glass in a pocket and rethreaded the remnants of her laces into her boots, ignoring the way the blood oozed over her hands and nails.

That done, she ran to the other side of the rooftop and started climbing down the ladder. She was at ground level in thirty seconds, and already sprinting.

10.49 hrs.

Luke pushed through the crowd. Those waiting patiently to approach the wall shouted at him in Hebrew, but he ignored them. Luke was a head taller than almost everyone else here, and a lot stronger. There was nothing anybody could do to stop him barging through.

Ten metres from the wall he halted. The strange sound of the horn had filled the air again, and for some reason it chilled him.

He scanned around. More men in traditional dress.

Stop, he told himself. Think.

He’d seen four people emerge from the van. Four bombers, he reckoned. But they wouldn’t be together. That would be a tactical fuck-up, because if one was caught, they’d all be caught. No, Luke’s targets would be spread out, along the wall. He looked forward and to the left, where he saw the entrance to the tunnels. There’d be fewer people there. Easier to spot one of his targets.