Chapter 56
Khalil saw the woman embrace a rough-looking man, then kiss him on the lips. Maybe he was wrong, and he was growing paranoid—but
that weird alert in the van had been real. Either way, he decided to test his theory. He’d walk deeper into the park and see
what they did. If they followed, he’d know for sure.
He felt his phone vibrate and saw it was Omar. He stood up and answered, glancing back at the couple, relieved to see they
were paying no attention to him. He started walking, saying, “Hello?”
He saw a wooden causeway split off from the concrete path, going out over the lake before circling back to the path in the
wooded area again. It was the perfect way to see if the two people behind him were following him.
Omar said, “I’m ready for pickup. Everything’s complete here.”
Khalil said, “I might have a tail. I’m checking now.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“There’s a woman here who resembles someone I saw in Iguazú, first at the falls and then later, at the Islamic center when
you guys arrived. They’re both tourist sites, so I put it down to coincidence, but if she’s now here, in Buenos Aires, it
could be trouble.”
“Are you sure about this? Why would they be following you instead of arresting you? They can’t know who you are, or you wouldn’t
be walking around.”
He kept walking, quickly turning around to see behind him. The couple was no longer visible on the walkway, but they also weren’t walking behind him on the wooden path. He said, “Didn’t the Ghost tell you that the people who attacked the drug dealer’s men were women? Women skilled in fighting?”
“He did, but we don’t know what’s actually true. If the women were so skilled in fighting, how did he escape, and why did
the police come raid the hotel? Why wasn’t it a bunch of killer females?”
Khalil thought, That’s true. It was the police who came for them, wearing uniforms, not secret Mossad agents wearing skirts.
He reached the apex of the causeway and started heading back towards land, saying, “You’re probably right, but the screen
in the van did some weird stuff right before she appeared. Its computer did some initialization I haven’t seen before. Look,
just hold what you have there for a little bit. Eat the free food they provide like an expensive businessman. I’ll circle
the park and come get you.”
He exited the glade, leaving the foliage behind. He turned on the path and saw two uniformed policemen standing not more than
twenty feet away, both staring at him. Into the phone he said, “They’re here. The police!”
Omar shouted, “What? The police are where?”
Khalil dropped the phone and threw back his jacket, grabbing the grip of his pistol.
Shoshana said, “He’s on the wooden walkway, headed away from us and still talking on the phone.”
I let her go and turned around, seeing his back disappear around the apex of the causeway, heading back towards land. I said,
“Come on. We can catch up to him on the brick path. Let him get off the causeway and see what he does.”
We started moving as fast as we could without causing any undue scrutiny from other passersby, following the path deeper into a grove of trees and losing sight of the causeway.
We reached what I judged to be close to where the causeway met land again, and I slowed, putting my hand on Shoshana’s arm.
I said, “Careful now. We don’t want to run him over.”
I heard a woman scream something in Spanish, then saw a couple running towards us with fear on their faces. They reached us
and the man pointed behind him, blathering something I didn’t understand. I heard a gunshot split the air, the sound like
a crack of a whip. Another came, and I started running, Shoshana right beside me. We rounded a bend and saw the target crouched
over aiming a pistol, a policeman on the ground and another one hiding behind a tree, his own gun out.
They both began firing, a rapid string of bullets, and Shoshana dove into the earth. I followed her to get out of the crossfire,
each man shooting wildly. I saw the other policeman’s head snap back and his body collapse to the ground. I drew my pistol
and rolled over, firing a double tap from the prone.
Both rounds struck the target in the chest, and I knew they were killing shots. He screamed, staggered back, and tried to
turn towards me. Shoshana broke her trigger and his head snapped back, his body falling like a tree to the earth.
The glade grew silent, the smell of gunpowder wafting through the air like a child had set off firecrackers. I scanned for
other targets, then leapt up, rushing to the downed men. I shouted to Shoshana, “Search him! Get what you can!”
I checked the first policeman and found no pulse. I ran to the second, took one look at the crack in his skull, his eyes open,
and didn’t even bother with the pulse check. Shoshana reached me, saying, “I have a hotel key card, his passport, and the
cell.”
I said, “We need to go, right now.”
We took off running back the way we’d come, hopefully acting like the other scared tourists, and she said, “The phone was
still connected when I picked it up. Whoever was on the other end heard the fight.”
We reached the tip of the lake and I saw two police cars stop outside the entrance, men in uniform spilling out. I stopped running, saying, “Call Aaron. Tell him to come by and pick us up. Give me the hotel key card. I’m going to call Knuckles.”
We let the policemen run by us and exited the stone portal just as Aaron pulled up. We piled in the back, and I dialed Knuckles.
Jennifer said, “What happened?”
I held up a finger, telling her to wait. Shoshana said, “Drive, drive.”
Knuckles answered and I said, “Fierro Hotel. Find it and go stage. Clandestine assault. I’ll give you the rooms as soon as
I can, but get over there and get ready.”
To his credit, all he said was, “On it. We’re rolling now. Standing by for the rooms.”
By the time I’d hung up, Shoshana had given the bare bones of what had happened. Jennifer said, “So are we blown? Did anyone
see you shooting?”
I said, “No. Everyone near there ran off at the first shot. Without a complete forensics examination, it’ll look like the
cops got in a shoot-out and both sides lost.”
Aaron said, “Why did he do this? Was it a premeditated attack? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Shoshana said, “I think he panicked. I saw his aura change when he laid eyes on me. He recognized me from our operations before.
We pushed it too hard at the Islamic center after following him through the Iguazú Falls. He thought he was being followed.
I think those two policemen were just patrolling the park and when he saw them, he thought they were there for him. He panicked.
The first one didn’t even get his pistol out of his holster.”
I said, “Get back to our hotel. I’m calling Creed.”
It took a couple of minutes to get him on the line, and by the time I did I felt our chances of wrapping this up beginning
to slip away. I cut short his pleasantries and said, “I’m about to put your skills to the test, no fucking around. Don’t worry
about being sneaky, I don’t give a shit if the target computer system knows they’ve been penetrated. Use brute force or whatever
you need to do, but I need this information immediately.”
He said, “What is it? That all depends on the security they have. If you want some government database, that’s going to be a lot harder than a convenience store.”
“It’s a hotel. I’m going to pass the phone to Shoshana and she’s going to give you the name and some information from a Brazilian
passport, just like the ones that rented the other rooms. I need to know the rooms that the passport has rented, and I need
it within the next ten minutes.”
He said, “Will do. Are you tied into the Argentinian police down there now, or do you want Wolffe to alert them like last
time?”
I said, “Fuck no, I’m not alerting any Argentinian police. All that got us was a dry hole last time. Don’t say a damn word
to Wolffe. We’ll do this on our own.”