John Weisman - Direct Action

5:57:30. The truck was still there all right-complete with the pallets of wine and olives just as they’d been less than three minutes before. But the sidewalk in front of the storefront was deserted. And Yahia Hamzi and his gold-plated Mercedes were nowhere to be seen.

“MERDE.” Tom ripped the gauze off and slammed the dash.

“Got an idea.” Reuven gunned the Audi, swerved right at the corner, then took his first right again. “If he’s going back into town, this is the shortest way.”

“And if he’s not?”

“Then we’re screwed. But he’s not carrying any olives. The two pallets were still wrapped securely. I don’t think he’s making the drop.”

“Are you sure?”

The Israeli snorted. “I’m a trained observer, remember?”

Tom was in no mood for jokes and said so.

“Take it easy, boychik.” Reuven took a reassuring tone. He handled the big car smoothly. Reuven swung left onto a busy avenue, chockablock with brightly lit stores and sidewalks crowded now that the Ramadan fast had ended. Tom caught a glimpse of the street sign. It read AV. J. LOLIVE.

“There!” Reuven said. “Look. That’s him.” Quickly, the Israeli pulled the car over to the curb. “About half a block ahead-he double-parked on the right.”

Tom rummaged for his binoculars. The car was Hamzi’s all right. Stopped on a block of cafés, newspaper stands, and small supermarkets. The Moroccan had double-parked outside a greasy spoon, leaving his flashers on.

Tom started to lift the field glasses to his eyes but Reuven slapped them back onto his lap. “No,” the Israeli said in Arabic. “Don’t.”

“Sorry.” Tom had gotten so excited he’d forgotten his tradecraft. He checked the pedestrian traffic. Pairs of bearded men in skullcaps walked arm in arm, their wives in burkas trailing behind carrying the grocery bags. The refrigerated display window of a halal butcher opposite Tom flaunted whole goats and half lambs, their entrails hanging from the partially skinned corpses. Somewhere close by, banlieue gangbangers were playing Rai rap on a boom box. Reuven was right: they’d crossed into an alternative Islamic universe.

Tom squinted at the steamy window and read the Arabic aloud. “Abu Ali Café.” He started to exit the Audi, but Reuven grabbed his arm. “Stay put.”

Tom shook off the Israeli’s hand. “I want to see what he’s doing,” he said in French.

Reuven shook his head and continued in Arabic. “It doesn’t matter what he’s doing-he’ll get back in the car in a minute-the flashers are going.” The Israeli’s tone was rebuking. “C’mon, man-take a look at the people in the street. It’s like we turned the corner and suddenly we’re in Beirut, or Oran. Look at yourself. You put your gringo ass anywhere near that place, you’ll blow us.”

“What if he’s meeting Ben Said there? Or phoning him?”

“If he is,” Reuven said, “we’ll find out about it soon enough.” The Israeli rubbed his hands together. “Wait him out, Tom. Time is on our side-not his.”

Tom wasn’t entirely convinced. Then he saw Hamzi come out the door of the café juggling a pair of oversize brown plastic bags. The Moroccan opened the car door, leaned inside, and dropped his cargo on the floor of the front passenger seat. Then he climbed in, closed the door on the driver’s side, checked his side mirror, pulled into the rush-hour traffic, and accelerated away.

“Food for the troops.” Reuven let Hamzi get past the metro sign at avenue Hoche, two hundred meters ahead, only then nosing the Audi forward. “He’ll veer left before the périphérique . That’ll take him back to rue du Congo.” He followed Hamzi’s trail but turned right at the metro stop, paused long enough to allow a burka-clad woman to cross against the light, then steered onto a one-way street. “This’ll take us back where we began this little diversion.” He looked at Tom’s worried expression and spoke in English. “We’ll get there before he does. Trust me.”

7:22P.M. Tom stared through the night-vision device and watched the last of the wine disappear into the cellar. All that remained now were the two pallets of olives. The heavy traffic flow on rue du Congo had dwindled to a trickle-a vehicle only every seventy, eighty seconds. Hamzi’s Mercedes sat on the sidewalk behind the truck. Hamzi himself had disappeared inside his storefront with the two bags of takeout and hadn’t reappeared in more than an hour.

“So?” His eyes still on Boissons Maghreb, Tom nudged Reuven. “How do we activate the Algerians?”

Reuven tapped the cell phone in his hand. “One call.”

“Are they close?”

Reuven remained silent.

“How does it all work, Reuven? What happens if there’s a hitch?”

“If there’s a hitch we work around it.”

“And?”

“And what? We take this one step at a time, Tom. One step at a time.” He looked analytically at the American. “This is your first, isn’t it?”

“My first.”

“What you people call direct action.”

Tom swallowed hard. Then his head bobbed up and down once. “Affirmative.”

“Listen to me: it’s all right to be nervous. You’re jumpy. That’s natural, too-so long as it’s just the two of us. But you can’t ever show it. Not to outsiders.”

“I know, Reuven.”

“Listen to me,” the Israeli continued. “Direct action is different from everything else you’ve ever done. It’s more than mind games, or exploiting vulnerabilities, or spot, assess, develop, recruit, and run-all the agent stuff you’re so very good at.” He paused. “Direct action is full contact, Tom. It’s life-and-death. It’s the soldiering part of what we do.”

“But…”

The Israeli looked at Tom. “You’re ambivalent.”

Tom shrugged, his hand inadvertently brushing the black gauze affixed between them and the windshield.

“You were never in the Army.”

“No.”

“Me, I’m a big believer in universal service. It’s a great leveler. In Israel, we form friendships in the Army that last a lifetime. One reason is that we stay in the same reserve unit for years and years. Train with the same people. Fight with the same people.”

“What’s your point?”

“My particular unit,” Reuven said, “honed very special skills. We were trained to observe our enemies for long periods of time without attracting attention, and then kill them quickly. Not by the hundreds, either. But by ones and twos, or sixes and sevens. Sometimes during hostage rescue situations-up close, with great speed, surprise, and violence of action. Sometimes looking them in the eyes as they died. Sometimes sniping them from great distances, and sometimes executing them asleep in their beds.”

He gave Tom a quick glance, gauging his reaction. “Killing,” Reuven said, “is a skill-a craft, if you will. Your man McGee had it. He was no murderer, no sociopath. But he understood what had to be done-and when it was necessary he took the proper action.”

He gave Tom another fleeting look, and Tom saw the sadness in the Israeli’s eyes. Then he realized it wasn’t sadness at all. It was weariness. It was the bone-tiring fatigue that came from so many years of shadow warfare, so many years of intensity, passion, and rage.

Reuven continued: “There is no joy in taking life. But there are people in this world who need to be killed. Removed permanently, because of the threat they present.”

The Israeli paused. “That may sound cold. But Israel has been at war a long time, Tom. Every day is life-and-death for us. And so we are used to making hard decisions about taking human lives. You can use any term you like: direct action, lethal finding, targeted killing, assassination. The nomenclature is simply a bureaucratic determination. The goal is the same: to forever remove a specific threat; a threat so severe that if we let that threat persist, our citizens will die. So we do what we have to do-and we suffer the consequences on the world stage with our eyes open.”