Don Pendleton: Mind Bomb

“She denied all knowledge of the crime. She begged us to tell her who we were, what was going on and where Hamdi was.”

Cal saw where this was going. “And the men from Mossad were not amused.”

“They got rough with her again.”

“How did she react?”

“React? She was like a hothouse flower suddenly thrown into the desert. They could have broken her just by yelling at her. They overrode my objections and turned off her morphine. She confessed. She confessed to everything.”

James mimicked Lyons. “But if you hadn’t seen the security camera footage from the nightclub?”

“I would have believed her story before her confession.”

“You don’t believe her confession?”

“I believe she would have confessed to anything, including the Kennedy assassination, to stop the pain. But they got their confession and their case tied up neatly in ribbons and bows. They were satisfied.”

“And Miss Labaki went into a coma and died,” James concluded.

“Miss Labaki is currently in a persistent vegetative state.”

McCarter sat straighter. “She’s alive?”

“She’s alive,” Rabovskya confirmed. “But I would not call it living. I use the term vegetative state loosely. I was so alarmed by what I saw that before my medical team was taken off the case I ordered both functional magnetic resonance imaging and arterial spin labeling scans.”

McCarter blinked.

The doctor smiled sympathetically. “These scans rely on the paramagnetic properties of oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin.”

McCarter looked to James for a lifeline.

The Phoenix Force medic smiled smugly. “It means you can see images of changing blood flow in the brain associated with neural activity.”

Rabovskya nodded. “I see you have had some training. I also ordered a magnetoencephalogram.”

“How many letters are in that word?” McCarter asked.

“Twenty. In layman’s terms it is an imaging technique used to measure the magnetic fields produced by the electrical activity in the brain.”

James leaned forward. “What were the results?”

“Before Miss Labaki went brain-dead? Her brain was like Fallujah on a Friday night. Or in American terms—the Fourth of July. I was ordering a positron emission tomography when I was suddenly thanked for my work and informed my services were no longer required.

“I do not know what the interrogators did to her after that, but I can tell you I do not believe it could have made any difference. I can only describe it as a cascading series of brain malfunctions. Machines currently breathe for her, keep her heart beating, clean her blood and feed and hydrate her. The only reason she is being kept alive is that she is such a medical anomaly.”

McCarter shook his head. “Hate that word.”

The kitchen went silent as they all brooded.

The landline phone on the wall rang and the doctor rose. “Excuse me.”

James considered what he had heard. “I am definitely putting it in the wheelhouse.”

“Definitely,” McCarter agreed.

Dr. Rabovskya answered the phone and her face went blank. Her expression grim, she covered the receiver with her hand. “It is for you.”

The two soldiers looked at each other. “Who is it?” McCarter asked.

“A woman, asking for the American in charge. She has a European accent.”

McCarter looked at his partner. The spook factor was at 4 percent and rising. James smiled and shrugged. “Doesn’t know you’re English.”

McCarter stood and took the phone. He had long ago learned to mask his accent when needed. “Hello?”

A woman spoke. McCarter tried to place her accent and couldn’t. “You are inquiring after the Labaki woman?”

“I am.”

“Give me your cell. I will contact you. You will need to come to Beirut.”

McCarter gave her his cell number. The phone went dead in his hand.

“And?” James asked.

“We’re going to Lebanon,” McCarter announced. “And we’re going to need guns. But I don’t want to raid the US Embassy armory here or across the border. Someone knows we’re here and they’ll be watching.”

Rabovskya smirked over her coffee cup. “I might be able to help you with that.”

Nahariya, Israel

AS PHOENIX FORCE drove along the coast, McCarter looked left from the driver’s seat out into the Mediterranean.

An Israeli Navy Sa’ar 5-Class warship patrolled close to shore. Tensions were high. Hezbollah rocket attacks out of Lebanon had hit Israel just seventy-two hours ago and the idyllic Mediterranean beach community of Nahariya was only six miles from the border. Tanks, APCs and military vehicles were everywhere. Armed IDF soldiers loitered on every street corner. Israeli F-16 fighter jets in ground-attack configuration screamed low overhead with monotonous regularity. Smoke from their guided bomb and missile strikes rose into the sky over the border like the output of Industrial Age smokestacks.

McCarter left the strip and headed inland. He happily worked the gears. The Škoda Yeti was a VW-owned, Czech-manufactured SUV and technically a five-seater. However, none of the five members of Phoenix Force could be described as lithe or dainty. It was a little crowded for Manning, Encizo and Hawkins in the back.

The Yeti was a four-cylinder but it came loaded with a variable geometry turbocharger, a direct-shift, seven-speed gearbox and had torque on loan from God. It had a sunroof and decent windows to shoot from. That was if they could get guns. Trying to smuggle guns into Israel was mildly suicidal.

Buying them on the thriving internal Israeli black market was a more viable option but only slightly less dangerous.

McCarter pulled up to what could only be described as an automotive stalag camp. Three Quonset huts squatted behind a twelve-foot-high, chain-link fence topped with razor wire. A fourth hut, looking like a twisted and blackened beer can, appeared to have been hit by a rocket.

A sixteen-foot scaffold stood behind the pair of connected trailers that formed the office. The scaffold had a satellite dish and a ham radio antenna on top, but it sure smelled to McCarter like a currently unoccupied machine gun tower. McCarter drove beneath a weathered sign covered with strings of Christmas lights that read Corkie’s Autohaus in Hebrew, Arabic and English.

Maan Korkaz stepped out of a trailer.

McCarter and James shot each other a look. The Druze auto mechanic and reputed arms dealer bore an extremely disturbing resemblance to the bearded, evil, mirror-universe Spock from the original Star Trek series, save that he didn’t have pointed ears and he wore a blue mechanic’s boiler suit. Unlike Spock, he also smoked unfiltered Turkish cigarettes. McCarter and James climbed out of their SUV.

McCarter tipped his cap. “Morning, guv.”

Korkaz snorted. He spoke with a British accent. “I know someone who has spoken for you.”

“Then sell me some guns, mate.”

Korkaz eyed McCarter astutely. “Brighton Beach lad?”

“You are a gentleman of discernment. This is my friend Cal.”

“Pleased to meet you. Your friends can stay in the car. Follow me.” McCarter and James shot each other another look. The Middle East was a barter culture. Usually tea and hospitality and a feeling-out process preceded deals. Manning, Encizo and Hawkins gave WTF looks from the backseat. McCarter and James rolled the dice and followed as Korkaz led them behind the covered car bays to a small, weed-choked automotive graveyard of rusting hulks. “I don’t know what you have heard, Mer—?”

“David.”

“Call me Corkie. But things are a bit crazy around here of late.”

“Aren’t they always?”

“More than usual.”

“Even for around here?”