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CHAPTER 15

The ride that followed had Ariel bracing his feet on the floor and hanging on to the door handgrip with all his might. Mordechai seemed to have been transformed into a Formula One driver, shifting gears rapidly, feet dancing between the three pedals, weaving around cars and the occasional pedestrian. There were blue and red lights flashing from the front of the roofline, so it gave some warning to everyone ahead of them, but there was no siren.

As he drove, Mordechai made time to further Ariel’s education.

“Pay attention for a moment. There’s a risk with the shoulder holster you should know of because we’re walking into a hostage situation…”

“We are?” Ariel jerked upright.

“Yes, now listen. Shimon never brings this up. If you draw from that holster—when you draw from that holster—just be aware of the fact that unless your target is standing to your left, when you pull your pistol and swing it around to sight on your target, you’re going to cover quite an arc of space—somewhere between ninety and one hundred eighty degrees usually—before your muzzle and sights will point at your target. If there are people in that arc, you are endangering them. This is where Shimon’s Rule 2 is very important: Do not put your finger on the trigger until the pistol is sighted on your target. Keep that very much in your mind tonight.”

“Got it.” Ariel nodded.

Mordechai tapped a switch on the console and the lights died about a block before he pulled to a stop behind a van at the side of the road. Ariel saw several figures in gray uniforms.

“Special Police?” he asked as Mordechai turned the ignition off.

“The Yamam, yes. Come on.”

Mordechai got out of the car, took off his blazer, and tossed it onto the driver’s seat. Then he opened the trunk of the car, pulled out an armored vest and tossed it to Ariel. “Put that on.” He pulled another one out for himself.

Ariel followed him toward the van. They walked past several figures in uniforms and combat harnesses with rifles.

“Oh, shit,” Ariel heard from behind them.

“What?” Another voice said, this one female.

“Shit’s about to get real,” the first one replied.

“Why?”

“Because that’s Zalman, and he only shows up when things are bad.”

Mordechai halted by the van where a burly man in uniform and a helmet was talking to a couple of other officers. He turned to them as they arrived.

“What do you have, Pakad Benyamin?” Mordechai was speaking Hebrew, but Ariel knew enough to follow that much.

The pakad pointed down the street. “South on the cross street, halfway down the block on this side of the street is a techno club called The Grey Havens. Thirty minutes ago a terrorist entered through the front door wearing an explosive jacket. Once he got inside, someone spotted it, but for some reason he didn’t explode it. Most of the crowd left in a panic, especially after someone outside started shooting at them. Two men with rifles pushed their way into the club right after that—we don’t know why, but we know there are still people in the club, including a number of women.”

Mordechai looked up. “Drone deployed?”

“Tracking four suspects outside the club. No obvious vehicles. Nothing in the air.” The captain’s voice was grim.

“Anyone on the roofs?”

“Not that we can see. No mobile heat sources, anyway.”

“People down?”

“Looks like as many as seven wounded outside, two or three bodies. Unknown inside.”

“Any demands or public notices yet?”

“Rosen?” Benyamin looked to the woman on his right.

“No, sir. Not as of yet.”

“So we don’t know who this is or what they want?”

“No, sir.”

“Something went wrong with their plan, then. At a guess, the explosives didn’t work. Do we have a plan of the interior of the club?”

“Meier?” Again Benyamin referred to one of his officers.

“They remodeled before they opened a year ago,” the third officer said, “so no, we’re not sure the plans we have match the current interior.”

“Pity.” Mordechai stared off in the distance, obviously thinking. “They have a back door?”

“Yes.”

“It’s possible they have more people inside than three. We need to contain this now. Can we shut down the power to the club?”

“Maybe,” Meier said. “If we can get to the back of the building without being seen. Depends on how the power comes in and where the main boxes are.”

“I’d prefer to shut down power at the nearest transformer,” Benyamin said. “That should black out the club and the street outside.”

“Agreed. How long?”

“Already in the works,” Benyamin said with a thin smile. “Ten minutes, Meier?”

Meier looked at his watch. “About that long.”

Mordechai looked at Benyamin. “You’re prepared to sweep the street?”

“Already staged.”

“Good man.” Mordechai pointed at a dark spot across and slightly up the street. “That the alley to the club’s back door?”

“Yes, sir,” Meier said.

Mordechai thought for a moment. “Give me a headset and a couple of Rav Shoters for backup.” Corporals, Ariel’s brain translated. “My associate and I will enter the back of the club. You sweep the street and watch the front of the club. Give us fifteen minutes to position ourselves and then cut the power.”

What? What did he just say? Ariel wasn’t sure he believed his ears.

Benyamin barked something into the van, and a few seconds later someone stepped out to hand a headset to Mordechai. He settled it on his head and put the earpiece in his ear. “Test,” he said, nodding at the response he heard. A moment later, two police joined up with them, one male, one female, both carrying short-barreled automatic weapons. They nodded to Zalman, he nodded back, beckoned to Ariel, and moved across the street. Ariel shook his head, but followed after. A few feet down the alleyway, Mordechai stopped and wrapped his hand around the microphone of his headset.

“Are you crazy?” Ariel hissed before he could say anything.

“No,” Mordechai said in an almost whisper. Ariel could see his sharp grin on his face. “With only three in the building, I could take them all myself, and probably will. You stand back and watch. Once I clear the back, stay there and watch and listen. No gun. No shooting. This will give you a taste for what this is all about. Think of it as either an initiation or as a last chance to change your mind. Just move quietly from here on, and stay right behind me until we get there.”

With that, Mordechai released the microphone and turned to move down the alley, staying in the pools of shadow from the few lights burning on the backs of the buildings. Ariel did his best to follow him, but he was sure he wasn’t moving as smoothly or as unobtrusively as the older vampire was. On the other hand, he was at least as quiet as their escorts were.

It didn’t take long to arrive at the back of the club. Mordechai stopped some distance back in the last big shadow pool and spent some time looking around, looking up, examining the walls and protrusions. Finally he slipped to the door, Ariel in his wake. The two police followed a few feet behind, spreading out a little bit.

Ariel looked at the graphic painted on the back door, all flowing lines and what looked sort of like a tree and flowing letters that didn’t resemble any alphabet he knew anything about. “What is that?” he whispered.

Mordechai chuckled and whispered back, “Didn’t you read The Lord of the Rings? That’s right out of The Fellowship of the Ring.”

“No, just saw the movies.”

Mordechai turned and stared at him. “You poor, deprived child. You must not have gotten the import of the club’s name. We shall have to remedy that—but later.” He looked back at the wall. “Ah, there it is. Come here.” Ariel stepped up as Mordechai pulled a very slim light from a pocket—not much more that a long wire with a small knob on one end and a small hooded LED on the other. The light was surprisingly bright, and he shined it across a numeric keypad box on the wall next to the door. “Tell me what you see on the keys.” He was still whispering.

Ariel focused on the box. The light was shining from the side, washing across the keys. It took a moment, but he did see something different about them. “3, 4, 6, 7, and the hash key are silver and dull. The rest are silver and shiny.”

“Right. First piece of data: even though almost all security systems allow the creation of multiple individual passcodes, over ninety percent of the homes and businesses that install them only create one code which they give to everyone to use.”

It didn’t take long for Ariel to reach a conclusion. “That’s dumb.”

“Indeed. Second piece of data: when they create that passcode, between forty and sixty percent of the time it will have four to seven digits, and it will be in low to high sequence.”

Ariel thought about it, and whispered, “So if we know what keys they hit…”

“We have about a one-in-three chance of knowing what their passcode is.”

“But where does the hash key go?”

“That depends on the system software, but almost always at the end.”

Mordechai shifted the light to his left hand and reached out his right index finger. “3, 4, 6, 7, hash.” He flicked the light off as he pressed the last key. Nothing. No sound from the lock, no movement of the door.

Scheiße!” Mordechai muttered as he turned the flashlight on again. “Maybe they ran in high-to-low sequence. Let’s try 7, 6, 4, 3, hash,” he said, pressing the keys as he spoke.

Nothing. No sound from the lock or door.

“Maybe they used random order or used keys more than once.”

“Obviously,” Mordechai hissed. “But we don’t have time to think of all the variations. No, they must have done something they thought was clever. But what?”

Mordechai looked around the alley, then turned back to the club’s rear wall, looking at the utilities and the door frame. Suddenly he froze. After a moment, he lifted a hand and traced part of the graphic of the tree with a finger. “Surely they didn’t,” he murmured.

“What?” Ariel was confused.

Mordechai didn’t respond but bent over the keypad again. “3, 7, 3, 4, 6, 3, hash,” he whispered as he tapped the keys. There was a click from the door.

“Those silly bastards.” Mordechai smiled broadly as he grasped the door handle and pulled the door open just enough to prevent the door locks from reengaging.

“What?” Ariel whispered insistently.

“Later.” Mordechai lifted his left hand and looked at his watch, then lifted his index finger and cocked his head as if waiting. At almost that moment the lights in the alley went off.

“Do a slow ten-count, then follow me,” Mordechai whispered.

“What about them?” Ariel jerked a thumb at their escorts.

“They get to watch our backs out here. Start counting.”

Without waiting for an acknowledgment, Mordechai opened the door enough to slip in. Ariel swallowed and started counting, “One…two…three…” When he reached the end of the slow count, he opened the door just enough to slide inside, immediately stepping to the left and putting his back against the wall, letting the door close silently while he let his vision adjust.

That didn’t take long. With the shutdown of the regular power supply, a handful of emergency lights had apparently activated. There was one in the room where they were, which appeared to be a kitchen. There was a sound. Ariel looked over at Mordechai to see him lowering a body to the floor. He swallowed again. Mordechai looked up, held up a hand to stop him where he was, and moved soundlessly out of the kitchen through the archway on the opposite wall.

The emergency lighting wasn’t blindingly bright, but Ariel could see very well with it. Whether any others could was a question he couldn’t answer yet. After several long moments of hearing nothing, he started moving around the perimeter of the kitchen’s work area, glad he had athletic shoes on for the quiet factor and hoping they wouldn’t squeak on the concrete floor.

Ariel’s fourth step didn’t go very far before it hit something soft. He looked down to see the body of a young man in dark slacks and a white T-shirt with dark blotches on it. He swallowed again, and his stomach knotted. The policeman’s comment flashed through his mind: “Shit just got real.” His hands fisted for a moment, then relaxed as he bent down and touched the man’s forehead almost in benediction before he straightened and moved on.

Three more soft steps took Ariel to the end wall, where he turned and moved along it. At the other corner there was a partially open door. Ariel pushed the door open gently, freezing when the hinges made a slight creak. After a moment, he stuck his head through the door. There was no emergency light in the room, but enough light came through from the kitchen that he could tell it was a very small office, and no one was in it.

Ariel ghosted along the far wall until he came to the central doorway. He looked through it to see a short masking wall that blocked vision of the kitchen from the rest of the club with doorways on each side of it. To the right was a server station with a couple of terminals and a drink station for coffee, tea, and soft drinks. It was unoccupied. To the left was a short hallway toward restrooms. He listened, and heard a few mutters of a language he didn’t know coming around the masking wall. He didn’t think it was Arabic. He stepped back and slid past the doorway to the club area with his face turned away from the doorway, trusting in his dark clothing and dark hair in the uncertain light to mask him from the view of anyone who might see him.

As he neared the restroom doors—three of them, for some reason—Ariel could see no light leaking under the doors or around the door frames. He paused to slightly open each door enough to reveal total darkness in each of the restrooms. Assuming that no one would willingly be in the dark, Ariel let each door close softly and moved on.

There was a doorway into the club area. Ariel peeked around the edge of it, moving slowly to pan his gaze across more and more of the club. It was mostly an open area for dancing and milling around, with a few tall tables scattered around the perimeter, a bar at one end and a DJ station on the far street side wall. The entrance door was at the north end of that wall.

There were two emergency lights in the room, one above the DJ station and one opposite it on the other side of the room. They created deep pools of shadow near the corners of the room. Ariel slipped out of the hallway and into one of them.

There were a group of people seated on the floor under the second light with a man standing near them aiming an automatic rifle in their general direction. Ariel thought it looked like an AK-47, or at least what he thought one looked like. Another man stood closer to the entrance to the club. He had stripped off his tunic and was frantically wiggling wires and connections on the belt of explosives wrapped around his body. He was the source of the muttering and occasional louder word that Ariel was hearing. Apparently Mordechai’s guess that something had gone wrong was correct.

Ariel thought about drawing his pistol. In fact, his hand was on the butt of the pistol. But given that the overwhelming majority of the people in the room were hostages, and given Mordechai’s little mini-lecture on the drive over, he decided to be prudent, and slowly withdrew his hand.

At that moment Mordechai burst out of one of the shadows. He moved so quickly Ariel could barely track him. In what seemed to be less than a second the gunman was lying on the floor, neck broken, and Mordechai was a step away from the bomber. In another second, the bomber was lying on the floor with two broken arms, and Mordechai was looking around.

* * *

Kiana Ghorbani had crouched among the infidel hostages when Majid and Aram had come in the entrance with their weapons. After they got the patrons who hadn’t escaped grouped together and seated on the floor, Majid stood guard over them while Aram went to the back rooms of the club. The plan was for her to mingle with the hostages to be a wild card if something went wrong.

Something did go wrong, obviously, when Fardin started struggling with the bomb he was wearing. That wasn’t supposed to happen. She stayed in her place, watching, eyes darting around to try and see if anyone was going to rush him, prepared to help Majid if necessary.

Some moments passed, until she caught a hint of movement out of the corner of her right eye. She turned her head and watched in horror from where she crouched as Majid was killed before her eyes. His killer had come from the back corner, so he must have come in through the back, which meant that Aram was already dead. Her hand was already drawing the tempered glass knife from the sheath strapped under her left sleeve as she thought that, and she reached out to grab the heavily pregnant infidel woman she had sheltered behind, dragging her up as she stood up.

“Stop!” she shouted in English as she nestled the edge of the blade against the side of the woman’s throat. The killer paused as he was reaching down to grab Fardin where he lay on the floor groaning in pain. The killer’s head and eyes tracked toward her.

“I’ll—”

Before she could utter another syllable of her threat, she felt the bones of her hand and wrist shatter and the knife begin to drop as they were suddenly crushed. She felt someone yank her away from her hostage, and she came face to face with a scrawny bony infidel whose teeth were longer than normal. He had a bit of a grin on his face as she thumped up against his chest.

Her left hand dipped into her pocket, and she returned his grin through the curtain of pain as she pulled out the grenade, feeling the tug as the pin was pulled out because it was safety-pinned to the inside of her pocket. Her grin broadened and she showed teeth of her own as the spoon flew off.

* * *

Ariel had moved into motion with the intent of taking the woman prisoner, but he abandoned that idea as soon as he saw the grenade, blurring into motion to slam her to the floor and trap her arm under her body with his weight holding her down. A moment later there was a muffled whoomp!, and her body surged against his as a spray of blood flew out from under her.

He raised to his hands and knees and shook his head, then slowly climbed to his feet. He started to brush his chest off, but after looking down decided not to. His armor was speckled with blood, and a couple of fragments had somehow made it around or through the woman’s body and were lodged in the armor.

“You all right?” Mordechai said as he approached.

“Yeah.” Ariel looked around. “I think so.”

“Okay.” Mordechai reached up and adjusted his headset microphone. “Yamam, Zalman. Inside terrorists are neutralized. We have…” Mordechai’s eyes shifted around quickly. “Looks like fourteen civilians in here, and one wounded terrorist. Please call for the explosives unit to come take care of this bomb. Also, come escort the civilians out.” He listened for a moment. “No, what you heard was not the bomb, it was a grenade. The bomb is still here, so we need the bomb disposal people immediately. Right. And turn the lights back on.”

A few moments later, just as the entrance door opened to admit several of the gray-uniformed Special Police, the main power came back on and the emergency lights shut down. Ariel blinked a few times, as the emergency lights were actually a bit brighter than the main lights, but they weren’t spread as evenly.

Ariel took a deep breath, then stepped over to where the pregnant woman was standing, shaking, hands at her mouth. “Let me help you out,” he said gently, placing his arm around her shoulder and guiding her toward the entrance. A policewoman met him there and took over getting the woman outside. He turned and went back to stand beside Mordechai by the moaning bomber.

“How many dead and wounded outside?” Mordechai was saying into his microphone. “Terrorists, four dead. Good. Civilians? Two dead, seven wounded. All right. Inside, three terrorists dead, one of which ate her own grenade and will need to be cleaned up with a shovel and a sponge, one terrorist wounded. He’s the one wearing the bomb, so where are the explosives people? Well, tell them to hurry.” There was a pause, then Mordechai resumed. “Civilians dead inside, one cook in the kitchen.”

Ariel held up two fingers. “Two cooks.”

“Correction, two cooks dead in the kitchen. One of the terrorists is in the kitchen as well. All the hostages seem to have survived this time, praise haShem. Right. Done.”

While Mordechai continued his conversation, Ariel walked over and toed the glass knife with his shoe. So clean, so clear, so hard, so deadly.

“Leave that,” Mordechai said behind him. “Evidence. You sure you’re all right?”

Ariel continued to look at the knife. “Yeah, I think so.” He looked up with a tilt to his head. “You ever had to kill a woman? Like this, I mean?”

“Not with a grenade, no, but a terrorist? Yes. They’re becoming more common, I’m afraid. Their leaders appear to be running out of gullible young men. Darwinian selection in operation, perhaps.”

“I expected to have to deal with…taking someone down. But…”

“But not a woman.”

“No.”

Mordechai sighed. “Welcome to the twenty-first century and true equal rights.” He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “You did a good job, even though you disobeyed me. That grenade probably wouldn’t have killed you, but it certainly would have hurt or killed some of the hostages, especially the pregnant woman who was close. Good job,” he repeated.

Pakad Benyamin came in the entrance then, and Mordechai stepped over to talk to him. Ariel shifted his gaze to where the female terrorist lay facedown in a broad pool of her own blood. It struck him as somewhat ironic and even a bit darkly humorous that although he was a vampire, and he was due to feed very soon, he wasn’t even tempted to taste her blood. He wasn’t sure if that said more about him or about her.


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