End of Days (Pike Logan #16)(3)
He pumped his legs as hard as he could, dragging Gideon along, and then the canopy caught the air, lifting them off the ground. For a split second, Mustafa couldn’t believe it, dangling in the harness like a child in a bouncy chair. As the land fell farther away, he realized they were flying, and reached up for the toggles to gain control.
He swerved out over the valley, and his target said, “This is so beautiful. I never get tired of looking at it.”
Completely embroiled in controlling the canopy, Mustafa said nothing. Eventually, he calmed down, realizing that flying with a passenger wasn’t that different than flying alone. It just took a little longer for the controls to react. He began soaring over the valley, looking for his landing spot.
High over Lake Thune, he could see Interlaken to his left, but found the winds more than he expected. Try as he might, he couldn’t get back over the town. He realized that he should have started turning as soon as he was off the mountain, but didn’t have the experience to know better.
He completed a circle in the air, finding a thermal, and went higher. The target thought it was for his benefit, saying, “Yes, yes. Ulrich never does this.”
Consumed with his task and fearing failure, Mustafa thought about bringing out the hook knife right then, but that wouldn’t accomplish what his masters wanted. For one, they might actually remain alive after hitting the water. With the canopy still above them after the riser was cut, they would fall rapidly, but it would still slow the descent. For another, the letter in his reserve parachute pouch would be destroyed. The entire point of the mission gone.
He began to panic.
And then the wind died, falling away as if it had grown tired of the fight, allowing him to drive the canopy forward, over Interlaken itself. He saw the field smack in the center of town where he’d landed on his many individual training flights and steered toward it.
Gideon said, “So soon. So soon. I’d like to stay up here forever.”
Mustafa didn’t even hear him, entering another plane of existence. Knowing what was coming. He gritted his teeth and steeled himself, turning on the final leg of what would be the last controlled flight pattern he would ever do. His eyes closed, he withdrew a hook knife from his vest, similar to ones first responders use to cut seat belts. He opened his eyes and said, “Alluha Akbar.”
Gideon whipped his head around at the words, saw the knife, and began to rotate in his harness, trying to fight. Mustafa knocked his hands away, reached up, and sliced the nylon strap running from his harness to the carabiner of the left riser.
Gideon screamed, and they slipped to the left, the right riser still having some lift, the fall much slower than Mustafa expected. It wasn’t like jumping off a roof. The canopy lost air in slow motion, but eventually, they picked up speed, reaching terminal velocity at five hundred feet, both barreling straight to earth with the disabled sheet of nylon fluttering over them like a macabre flag celebrating the fall.
Mustafa screamed, “Alluha Akbar!”
And they hit the ground right where they were supposed to, only a lot harder than Gideon was used to, both bodies splattering open like watermelons tossed off a building.
Chapter 3
Aaron Bergman picked up the Guinness beers at the bar, paid the tab, and turned back to the table, ignoring the fact that the bartender recoiled at his mere presence. He’d seen that before. He did his best to hide it, but short of wearing a burka, there was no way to camouflage what he was. People just instinctively recognized him as a threat, like a pit bull growling at a visitor.
He saw his partner staring intently at the door, waiting on someone to enter. He unconsciously shook his head, hoping the man who came in didn’t have a problem for them to solve.
Anytime the Mossad asked for their help, it was because they didn’t want to risk actual assets. It was painful to admit, but they were expendable. But that did give them options. If they weren’t officially Mossad, they could solve the problem like they wanted, without the oversight.
Small blessings.
He went back to the table, set a beer in front of his partner, and said, “Irish bar. Irish beer.”
She scrunched up her nose and said, “Seriously? They don’t have any rum?”
He smiled at the inside joke. A good friend of theirs only drank rum and Cokes, and she’d taken to the drink to prove she had something to hold on to as a human being. Using his normalcy to prove she was normal. Which she was decidedly not.
“They have it, but the beer is the near side signal.”
She took the drink and said, “What’s taking so long? The meet time has come and gone.”
Aaron took a sip and said, “Calm down, dark angel. He’ll be here.”
They were in a place called the Temple Bar, an Irish watering hole that was one of several such franchises in Tel Aviv, Israel. This one was unique, in that it was within spitting distance of the headquarters of the Mossad. If one looked on Google Maps, one would see a hundred different stores or restaurants surrounding a large field of grass with nothing. Roads going in and out, but nothing to say why. Go to satellite, and one would find a large building in that field, with once again no representation of why that building was there.
Because that’s the way the Mossad wanted it.
His partner took a sip of the beer, winced, then said, “You think they have a mission for us? Is that why the call came in?”