CHAPTER THREE: FULL CIRCLE
It was the 13th of April 2003. Baghdad had fallen not two weeks ago. The day was drawing to a close, the 14th being only half an hour away. Tomorrow would be the last day of freedom for three of the world's most wanted terrorists hiding in Iraq and the last day of life for numerous others.
One third of this fugitive trio was the notorious Mohammed Zaidan, better known by the alias Abu Abbas. Abbas was the mastermind and leader of the 1985 hijacking of the Italian luxury cruiser Achille Lauro, in which prominent American Leon Klinghoffer was brutally executed on Abbas' orders. A Palestinian radical, Abbas demanded the release of fifty comrades detained by Israel.
Abbas and his four henchmen ultimately agreed to surrender in return for safe passage out of Egypt. They turned themselves in to Egyptian authorities and were allowed to flee Egypt in a plane bound for Tunisia. American fighter jets intercepted the plane, forcing it to land in Sicily, but Italian authorities released Abbas, lacking any evidence of his wrongdoing at the time.
Abbas would have been a fool not to seize this opportunity, and he was no fool. He immediately fled Italy to Tunisia, and ultimately to Iraq, where he set up the headquarters of his faction of the Palestinian Liberation Front in Baghdad. Abbas operated his terrorist camp there for years under the auspices of Saddam Hussein.
When proof of Abbas' crimes finally came to light, he was convicted in absentia by the Italian courts, which imposed five life sentences on him. It was a futile gesture, and the whole thing had been a textbook case of 'too little, too late' – until now. Nemesis was closing in on him in the form of two of Italy's avenging angels, this deadly pair comprising Henrietta and Rico.
Prior to this mission, Rico had been involved in taking the Faw oil refining and shipping facility on Iraq's southeastern coast. It was an important first-night target in the war on Baghdad – almost as important as eliminating Saddam Hussein. Capture it early and the next Iraqi government at least had a chance of getting back on its feet. Ignore it, and Saddam might blow up the facility, flooding the nearby Persian Gulf with crude, compromising Iraq's economy and shutting down critical water-desalination plants all along the Arabian Peninsula.
But veined and dotted with pipes, pumps and meters, Faw was also a delicate target, easily damaged by wayward ordnance or sabotage. So, on the first night of the war, when others were trying to destroy Iraqi targets, a small unit of the Social Welfare Agency's operatives was trying to keep one from harm. Large, specially equipped choppers flew dark, low and fast toward the refinery from just over the Kuwaiti border. Dispersing on arrival, the birds simultaneously dropped five separate teams of the deadly hit-kids each at five zones close to the huge complex. Their orders: capture Faw and hold it until relieved by a battalion of Royal Marines.
It was a mission for which they had been training for weeks. The goal was to make sure that the battle took, as Jean put it in the jargon that comes with its own camouflage, 'one cycle of darkness'. This aim was attained with ease, and the mission was an outstanding success, the operatives swiftly capturing the target (sans losses, of course) and holding it until relieved. In the battle to take the complex, among the numerous enemy casualties were a score of Iraqi troops who fell to 7.62mm bullets from Rico's Izhmash SVD Dragunov.
Henrietta, on the other hand, had found herself operating undercover in the heart of Baghdad itself. This was where she and Giuseppe as well as several other fellow teams spent most of the conflict, slipping into back alleys and sewers to eavesdrop on communications, cut fiber-optic cables, target regime leaders and build networks of informants.
On 20 March, Henrietta spotted Saddam and his two sons heading for a bunker. However, bureaucratic delays stifled a target of opportunity. By the time she got the go-ahead to laze the target and fire the first attack of the war, almost two hours had passed. The Tomahawk missiles fanned the place flat, and hostilities were on.
Ten minutes after impact, Giuseppe monitored urgent Iraqi radio traffic asking for emergency medical assistance for someone at ground zero. At first, Henrietta was ecstatic, thinking that Saddam had been blown to kingdom come. But sometime later, the sensation deflated when Saddam appeared on television alive and kicking, urging his populace to resist the Coalition infidels. As it turned out, the two-hour window had permitted him and his sons to make a last-minute change of accommodation.
Henrietta's frustration at missing the biggest fish of them all clearly manifested itself during a brief sortie against Republican Guard positions just outside Baghdad, this skirmish taking place one day before the capital fell. In this episode, she seized a 83mm XM141 Bunker Defeat Munition rocket launcher and began to wage her own war on the enemy. For thirty minutes she ran from blockhouse to blockhouse, blasting each one in turn until sixteen emplacements fell silent and seventy-five of the enemy lay dead, opening a gap for Coalition mechanized infantry to outflank the defenses. This was one incident that Giuseppe was unable to attribute to Henrietta's habit of 'counting the bodies she made for him'.
With the advent of her current assignment, however, Henrietta scattered her anger to the four winds. She instead replaced this emotion with patience, focus and a burning determination not to let another high-priority target slip through her fingers.
Henrietta and Rico were not the only extra-normal junior operatives assigned to this mission of capture. Accompanying them was a sleek, compact lad of about their age, who, unlike the girls with their artificial tans and dyed hair, required little in the way of mufti apart from a long, checkered scarf, a gray wool pakol and a matching jibbah to pose as an Iraqi child and blend into the surroundings. His complexion was naturally olive – the features on his bronzed face sharply angled – and he wore his dark brown, almost black hair in a stiff, military-style brush cut. This boy – Aharon by name – was Hebrew to his ruthless fingertips and was one of the many wards of Childville, a clandestine goverment paramilitary outfit that posed as one of Israel's finest orphanages and was the Jewish state's answer to Italy's Social Welfare Agency.
Although Israel was officially out of the turkey shoot that was the Second Gulf War, Aharon, his brother-in-arms Meir and their respective supervisors Nadia and Kathryn had been clandestinely operating in Iraq ever since the conflict's opening shots were fired. The few Coalition officials aware of Israel's secret involvement kept a discreet quiet, for the elite team were hunting al-Qaeda terrorists – an enemy common to both Israel and its longtime ally, the United States, which was also the Coalition's senior member.
Tenaciously tracking down the masterminds behind al-Qaeda's botched 2002 bombing attack on Israeli tourists at Mombassa in East Africa, the quartet traced their quarry to Abu Abbas' terrorist training camp in Iraq. Indeed, it was thanks to their efforts that the fugitive Abbas' hitherto unknown whereabouts had come to Italy's knowledge – the Social Welfare Agency and Childville had fostered close ties with one another for some years. A discussion between the administrators of both organizations culminated in them agreeing to seize their prey in a joint operation that would take place during the early hours of 14 April 2003.
The three-day period prior to this date saw Henrietta, Rico and Aharon staying indoors at their Baghdad bolthole, meticulously planning and preparing for their assault on a compound of dwellings just outside the city, where Abbas and his cronies were lying low for fear of being rumbled by the occupying Coalition forces. Although Henrietta correctly guessed from the very beginning that Aharon was a blunt and merciless combatant who would willingly kill or die for his organization and country, she found the task of working with him not at all unpleasant. His competence made it easy, and she came to respect his candor, decisiveness and intelligence.
Of Meir she saw neither hide not hair – Aharon's comrade remained at an observation post close to the target area to map its layout and watch the enemy's movements, providing his teammates a wealth of information about both via a steady stream of coded radio transmissions. Apart from remarks that Meir was of European origin and 'nice and friendly, occasionally overly so', Aharon spoke nothing of his comrade. Knowing that a meeting with Meir was inevitable, Henrietta's inquisitiveness about him was minimal.
Not all was plain sailing for the team, though. They had a single but extremely worrying problem on their hands. It was the behavior of their third member, Rico.
Some time before her deployment to the Gulf, and all throughout the campaign, an odd change had come over Rico. Normally a sunny little girl, she was now quiet and withdrawn. She went for days without saying anything unless spoken to first, and even then she displayed a marked reluctance to talk. She ate little and slept less. Aharon had even noticed her weeping at night, in her painfully light and brief slumbers.
"Something's bothering your friend," Aharon had voiced his concern to Henrietta. "This emotional disturbance will affect her combat performance."
"You're right about Rico being distressed," admitted Henrietta. "She's been like that for a while lately. We've all tried comforting her and coaxing her to tell us her troubles, but she just won't open up. I'm not sure about your second point, though – whatever it is doesn't seem to have affected her combat performance so far. But then again, considering how important this gig is… I'm relegating Rico to backup, and I, too, will be in that capacity so I can keep an eye on her."
"Wise choice," agreed Aharon. "That'll prevent her from jeopardizing the mission and keep her out of trouble until we find a way to help her." After a moment's thought, he continued: "It also means that Meir and I will be in the forefront of things once the bash begins." He parted his thin lips in a mirthless smile and fingered his signature weapon – an Israeli Military Industries Galil ARM – meaningfully. "Excellent. I haven't written anything on this typewriter for months… and I sure do love expressing myself."
Aharon knew better than anyone else that he was a forceful and, at times, insensitive sort, and he also knew that he would probably worsen the situation if he tried to pry anything out of Rico, hence his decision not to approach her about her problem. But he had a suspicion as to what the whole business was about, having noticed Rico looking particularly heartbroken when a song playing on the radio of a passing Coalition Humvee reached her ears.
Sitting in my room, staring at the wall, I can't believe it's happening
Once so wonderful, now, life's a twisted kind of reality, a fantasy
Don't know where to begin
Saw your love for me vanish in a single moment of stupidity
Nightmare this may be, but it is not a dream, oh
I want to scream; a broken heart still bleeds
Never ever talk, never ever smile
Knowing that my life won't be the same
Never ever touch, never ever feel
I will never hear you call my name... again
In my dreams I see, see you come to me; a memory of times of old
Waking up, I realize Hell's as cool as ice and the touch of sin did get me in
Nothing burns like the cold
Never ever talk; never ever smile
Knowing that my life won't be the same
Never ever touch; never ever feel
I will never hear you call my name
As we sin, so do we suffer
I've fallen from grace, want to turn back time and make it undone
Never ever talk, never ever smile
Knowing that my life won't be the same
Never ever touch; never ever feel
I will never hear you call my name
Never ever talk, never ever smile
All I see: a future full of fear
Never ever touch; never ever feel
I can never whisper in your ear: "I'm sorry..."
666
D-Day was but a minute old when Henrietta, Rico and Aharon entered the target area, the three children leading a mule laden with two saddlebags. Some distance behind them, their supporting force of two hundred Coalition Special Forces personnel lay hidden, ready and waiting to seal off the locale the moment the operation commenced.
The neighborhood was a scruffy one. A third of the buildings were boarded up and burned-out cars rested on crates beside the curbs. The dominating feature of the vicinity was Abbas' hideout – three long, low buildings and spacious grounds surrounded on four sides by high walls.
The little group entered a particularly isolated and dark alley, where Aharon removed his stripped-down assault rifle from his rucksack, assembling and readying the weapon as Henrietta produced a fully loaded and primed Brugger and Thomet MP9 machine pistol from under her burqa. Rico hefted the saddlebags off the mule and sent the animal trotting back the way they came.
"Meir's still out here, watching the compound," said Aharon. "We'll get into position and wait for his go. Being the best-placed of us, he'll spearhead the attack."
"Roger that," replied Henrietta, and the girls parted company with Aharon, who assumed a point behind a dumpster.
Rico's eyes stared inwards on herself. She was as remote and removed as the Celestial Plane. She seemed to be detached from human experience; it was as though she had gone through pain and had come out on the other side. It hurt Henrietta to have to trouble her friend in light of her condition, but she had no choice. Her voice was gentle as she called upon Rico to concentrate on the mission and give it her all.
Rico gave Henrietta a sad little smile and a nod that did much to dispel her friend's doubts. Leaving Henrietta at her position near a cluster of parked motorcycles, Rico entered a derelict building situated a stone's throw away. With her load still slung over her shoulders, she ascended the stairs to the top floor. There, she chose a spot by a window that provided a beautiful view of the compound's only point of egress or ingress – a large gateway in its south wall.
Once by the window, Rico sank to the level of the sill and removed an object from the first sack. It appeared to be a stick, but as she laid it down upon the floor, it gave a metallic clang. Then she drew a bulkier item from the second sack and busied herself in some task that ended with a loud, sharp click, as if some spring or bolt had fallen into place.
Still kneeling upon the floor, she bent forward and threw all her weight and strength upon some lever, with the result that there came a long, whirling, grinding noise, which ended once more in a powerful click. Upon completing her labor, Rico straightened herself, cradling the fruit of her labor – an Objective Sniper Weapon – in her hands.
The Objective Sniper Weapon – OSW for short – is essentially a Barrett M82A1 sniper rifle fitted with a shorter barrel of 25mm caliber, and fires low-velocity explosive shells originally developed for grenade launchers. It is a monstrous gun by anybody's standards, and any hit it scores on a target brings about very obvious – and very dire – results.
The huge weapon's fearsome lines radiated brute force, pure malevolence and utter destructiveness. Rico could almost hear it baying for blood as she rested the behemoth's bipod on the ledge of the open window, primed the weapon, cuddled the butt into her shoulder and turned on the night-vision scope. She knew that its thirst would be quenched today.
The signal the trio had been waiting for then came – a low whisper of "Rock the house" that reverberated through their intercoms. Henrietta and Rico tensed as they watched a diminutive figure dressed from head to toe in black and clutching an Israeli Military Industries Micro-Tavor TAR-21 – the previously unseen fourth member of their team – run over to the five-meter wall of the compound and leap over it in a single bound, followed closely by Aharon.
Nothing happened for a while. Then, gunfire erupted from the compound. The girls' enhanced hearing could make out the distinctive reports of Aharon's Galil and Meir's Tavor, as well as the clatter of numerous al-Qaeda standard-issue weapons – Izhmash AKR Krinkovs, Ceska Zbrojovka vz.61 Scorpions and Izhmekh Makarov PMs. In the span of several seconds, approximately half of the latter three firearm types fell silent, while the Galil and Tavor continued firing in short, sharp bursts. Henrietta and Rico then heard the residual terrorist gunfire slacken and the sound of two motor vehicles starting up.
"We've got our men, but yours gave us the slip by using a flash grenade," hissed Aharon over the intercom. "He's heading for the gate."
"He won't get far," grated Henrietta, "not on my watch. Heads-up, Rico – the enemy are coming our way."
As Henrietta ran for the compound, gun held at hip level, a car burst out of the gateway and halted broadside in the street. It was a beat-up Toyota sedan, windows open, two shooters sitting Cheyenne-style in the offside windows firing over the top and a third blasting away from the backseat. Flame and smoke issuing from the muzzles of three Krinkovs, bullets skidding off Henrietta's head and body and slamming the air around her. Behind her, auto glass powdered and clanged in the road and a tire exploded as the shots that missed her found their mark on cars parked nearby.
A second vehicle – an old Chevrolet station wagon – appeared behind the Toyota. Two shooters were sitting up in the windows firing Scorpions across the car roof and the driver was firing a Makarov with his free hand. They were letting rip in the direction of the compound's central building at Aharon and Meir, who did not return fire for fear of hitting the girls' quarry. A fourth man in the backseat had the door open and was pulling Abbas in. Smoke came from both vehicles' back tires and they began to roll.
Fifteen feet was as far as the Toyota got before Rico took it in her sights and squeezed the trigger. The OSW bucked and roared. Its shell whooshed into the fray like a bolt from the blue, hit the Toyota fair and square smack in the center of its front grille, sliced its way through steel, penetrated to the car's vitals, exploded and touched off the engine, which, in turn, touched off the fuel tank.
There was a deafening bang and the front of the car disappeared in a huge plume of smoke and flame that looked like a sinister black Christmas tree lit up by hundreds of motes of light. As the dark vapor welled upwards and outwards, bits and pieces of the Toyota could be seen flying through the air – first a rear-view mirror, then fragments of headlight, then half the bumper. The grand finale came when the entire front right wheel whirled up suddenly, a shade of black darker than the night sky, and sailed musically over three rooftops to fall slowly and heavily into the desert behind.
What remained of the car then skidded and turned turtle, ejecting its horribly burned occupants as it did so. Their dreadful screams rent the air. One of the terrorists, charging around with his clothes on fire, abruptly disappeared as the ammunition he was carrying detonated. The other flaming human forms, rolling madly on the ground, gave quick jerks for two whole minutes as their bandoliers exploded, and then finally lay still.
The driver of the Chevy swerved his mount wildly in a desperate attempt to avoid the burning wreck of the sedan. Although he succeeded, his stunt culminated in the vehicle speeding towards the spot where Henrietta was standing. It was a classic state of 'out of the frying pan and into the fire'.
Henrietta swung with the station wagon as it passed and fired a single round into the side of the driver's head. She pumped two short bursts at the shooters sitting up in the windows and they went over backward in fountains of blood, the slugs having pierced their hearts and punctured their lungs. She dropped the magazine out of the MP9 and slammed another one in before the empty hit the ground, all the time never taking her eyes off the Chevy, which hurtled across the street, sideswiped a line of cars and came to a grinding stop against them.
Henrietta advanced on the Chevy. Empty hands appeared out the back window. Abbas' sole surviving fellow passenger stumbled out, hands above his head, and took to his heels. Henrietta ignored him, focusing instead on Abbas, who lay motionless in the backseat, having being rendered unconscious by the crash. Pulling the rear hatch off its hinges, she dragged the terrorist out. She pocketed Abbas' Makarov and combat knife, removed two poison capsules from the lapels of his shirt to prevent him from taking his own life, slapped a large piece of duct tape over his mouth and firmly flex-cuffed his wrists and ankles together.
A shot rang out from Henrietta's right and the aforementioned escaping terrorist pitched forward on his face with a fatal bullet wound through the throat. He lapsed into ghastly death throes, choking on his own blood. Aharon, who had appeared as if from nowhere, stepped over the dying man, rifle shouldered and smoking sidearm – a Magnum Research Desert Eagle chambered for .50-caliber – in hand. Over his shoulders were the senseless and securely bound forms of the two men whom his team had been after.
"I guess I was wrong about Rico," Aharon said apologetically as he saw what remained of the Cadillac. "She performed admirably. So did you, for that matter. Nice work."
"Right back at you," grinned Henrietta.
Needless to say, the neighborhood descended into an uproar the moment the shooting began. Iraqi civilians ran from all directions; windows were thrown open; the doors of houses were flung aside as their inhabitants poured out. However, these folk were successfully prevented from satisfying their curiosity or getting themselves hurt by the timely arrival of the aforementioned support teams, who herded the crowd back into their homes at gunpoint. A Special Forces armored car arrived at the scene once the firefight had ceased, lingering only long enough for Henrietta and Aharon to load the three captured terrorists into it.
In the confusion, no one noticed Rico leave her post and head for the compound, drawn to it by an inexplicable compulsion. As ethereal as a little wraith, she glided across the grounds, skirting the bodies of eight other terrorists killed by the Israeli operatives. She walked through the doorway of the largest building, entered a room strewn with broken furniture and abruptly came face-to-face with Meir. Carbine slung and Israeli Military Industries Barak SP-21 pistol drawn, he had just finished the act of ensuring that the twentieth and final terrorist was truly dead, and was hunting for souvenirs among the enemy weapons and equipment.
Time seemed to stand still as their eyes met, Meir regarding Rico with curiosity, Rico regarding Meir with a sense of déjà vu. His looks – slim build belying his strength, naturally brown hair worn in a short, boyish cut, fair complexion disguised by a tan, just like hers, and his open, friendly face with its warm brown eyes, which held not a hint of guile or deceit – where had Rico seen them before?
The hippopotamus of her memory wallowed… Then, it finally dawned on Rico who she was looking at. Her face went white and she gave a faint cry. Then she clutched her throat, swayed and fainted for the first time in her life.
It was the most impressive collapse Meir had ever seen. Rico fell backwards slowly, like a tree. There was no sissy sagging of the legs, no cop-out bouncing off a table on the way down. She simply went from vertical to partially horizontal in one marvelous geometric sweep. Meir rushed over and caught her in his arms before she hit the floor.
666
When Rico woke up, she found herself lying on a couch on the second floor of her team's Baghdad bolthole, her eyes staring into Meir's anxious face and her hands in his. The boy's concerned expression melted into a dazzling smile of relief as soon as he saw her rise.
"Thank God you're awake," he exclaimed. "Wow, was I startled when you passed out back there! The expression you had on your face prior to swooning – I thought people only looked that way in the cheesy so-called horror movies Kathryn loves to watch! It looked as though you'd seen a ghost!"
"You can say that again," murmured Rico, in a daze.
"How's that?"
"N- nothing. It's nothing." With a superhuman effort, Rico returned Meir's smile – albeit a trifle crookedly – and squeezed his hand reassuringly. "Please don't worry, I'm perfectly alright - it must have just been the heat. Thanks for fussing over me, anyway."
"You're most welcome, Rico," said Meir, helping her sit upright. "It is 'Rico', isn't it?"
"It sure is."
"Glad to have your acquaintance, Rico. I'm Meir; you may have already heard something of me from Henrietta or Aharon. Just wanted to be certain I got your name right – being away from base for so long and unable to meet you from first go sure is irksome."
"Hey, that's okay… duty comes first, doesn't it?"
"Couldn't have put it better," laughed Meir. He paused for a while, contemplating Rico. "It's an atypical name for a girl, to be sure, but not at all inappropriate. The androgynous beauty of it eventually grows on you, and, like its owner, the name's kind of cute."
"Thanks again," Rico blushed.
Silence reigned for some time before Meir rose to leave. "I think I should go downstairs and tell the others that you're up, or they'll continue to be worried sick." Seeing Rico looking a little reluctant to let him leave, he continued: "Don't you fret, we can talk again afterwards. Now that both our mission and the war are over and done with, we'll have plenty of time on our hands."
"I guess you're right," said Rico. "We could use that time to get to know each other a little bit more, couldn't we?"
"Why, of course! That's something I'm absolutely looking forward to, believe me. See you around, then."
"Bye, Meir," said Rico, a tad breathlessly.
As soon as Meir made his exit, Rico got to her feet. With her teeth clenched, she hurried to her room and flung herself face downwards on her bed, laughing and sobbing in turn. She did not hear the door open inaudibly to admit Henrietta with tea and cakes on a tray, who, when her startled eyes fell on her friend, withdrew swiftly and returned downstairs.
When Henrietta broke it to the others that Rico had apparently flipped, the bewildered Meir wondered: "Was something I said?" But all that the trio found when they ventured upstairs was their teammate sleeping deeply and looking as serene as an angel in Heaven. They left her to catch up on all the rest she had missed, Henrietta thanking an even more astounded Meir for doing whatever he did that led to Rico being seemingly freed of her anguish.
Later that night, it passed Henrietta's mind that 14 April was also the first anniversary of one of Rico's earliest jobs, a mission in which she assassinated a congressman of the Cesare Catholic Radicals at a Rome luxury hotel called the Villa Gatti. But she did not know what both you and I know, dear reader, and dismissed the thought as a useless fact that just happened to pop into her head.
END OF CHAPTER THREE
