A Mossad Takeout in Beirut. A Jordan Kline story

The Jordan Kline Series by Stephen W. Ayers

  Mossad Beirut Takeout

  A Jordan Kline short story.

  Beirut.

  It was not the fact that the terrorists were about to be handed the fate that they deserved that disturbed Jordan. They surely deserved to die. They had deserved to die a long time ago but it had taken even the Mossad a great deal of time and energy to find them.

  Each of the terrorists had a long and bloody file of deadly crimes that had killed scores of innocent Israelis. Said Nasra, apart from being related to the head of the Hamas, has sent the suicide bomber who had blown himself up outside a discotheque in Tel Aviv, killing twenty six teenagers out on the town for a good time. The nails and ball bearings in the suicide belt had torn through bone and flesh, leaving the teens no chance.

  Abu Hamseh had taught a whole generation how to make the suicide belts, and now his students were teaching the next batch of eager learners. His time to die was also long past due, mused Jordan.

  The last of the terrorists who were going to hell today was Ali Nantisi, a particularly cruel individual who had practiced his craft of torture on three Israeli and one American operatives that had been captured during an operation in Lebanon. He had literally taken them apart over two days until they finally died in excruciating agony. One of the Israelis was an old friend and colleague and this made his execution personal to Jordan.

  They certainly deserved to die, all three of the bastards. But this was not what bothered Jordan. Sure, he would kill them without feeling remorse, but the whole thing was getting to him, like an emerging headache.

  He thought back to his childhood in Willowdale, the predominantly Jewish suburb of Toronto Canada. It was there that he learned of the holocaust, of the suffering and extermination of six million Jews. He heard of the emerging young state of Israel and became intensely proud of his family roots in Europe. He had decided early on in his teens that he would immigrate to Israel and complete military service. His parents had tried to dissuade him from taking this step but he had remained adamant. He had gone on alone at first but when accepted into the famed Golani brigade they had decided to follow him to Israel. They could not bear the thought that he would not have a warm and loving home to come back to on his army leaves.

  He grew to love army service and had excelled, assimilating readily and he fast became as Israeli as he was Canadian. He mastered the language and was one of those people that looked Israeli when speaking Hebrew and very much Canadian when conversing in his native English.

  Decorated for bravery during his regular service for saving a fellow officer under fire in Gaza on one of the incursions to capture a terrorist, he had been a willing recruit into the most famous spy agency in the world, the Mossad.

  He had embraced life in the agency, was proud of being a part of famous organization and followed orders to the letter. He relished the thought that he could contribute to the defense of his adopted country and do something not many people could, dish out revenge for the continuously deadly attacks perpetrated in the cities of Israel.

  He became a trained killer for the state, fulfilling mission upon mission with an eagerness that surprised even veterans within the Mossad. He had killed in cold blood so many times that he could not remember the count, and enjoyed the reputation as the foremost and most efficient operative in the agency. The prime minister had even taken to requesting his services on delicate missions that he wanted undertaken.

  His life could not have been more rewarding, he had thought, until it all started to disturb him. He believed, as did many Israelis, that land for peace was not really viable, and yet they had returned the Sinai to the Egyptians. It had brought them closer to the border, and although not one soldier had died since peace was signed, it still was an ever present danger on the doorstep.

  They had withdrawn from Gaza and now the Hamas was in power and missiles rained down incessantly on the southern communities, some with deadly consequences.

  He realized that he was becoming tired and disillusioned with the continuous killing, with the vicious circle that saw suicide bombings followed by targeted assassinations either from armed drones or from the ground, on missions led by the Mossad agents.

  He had friends that were in the hospitality business, and on the occasions that he visited them at the hotels they worked in he had begun to think of life after the agency. He liked the idea of becoming an hotelier and contributing in other, more peaceful ways to his adopted homeland.

  Perhaps these thoughts had contributed to his present state of mind, though he was hesitant to take the step of leaving the Mossad. He knew that he was tapped to take over one day, and the thought was exciting. Someone had to do this work, and it had fallen upon him as part of the agency, his fate. He would wait a few months and see how things played out.

  The sound of sand grating on the rubber bottom of the Zodiac boat jolted him back to reality. They had reached the shoreline and went into well practiced mode of concealing the craft in one of the dunes so as to be ready to use again to rendezvous with the Israeli Navy Hornet out to sea once the mission was accomplished.

  They peeled off their rubber suits and put on the torn and dirty clothes that would go unnoticed in the streets of Beirut. They picked up the waterproof canvas bag containing their guns and walked toward the flashing light on the road overlooking the beach.

  A battered dark grey Mercedes was idling at the side of the narrow road. Doron, one of the Sephardic operatives from the agency who spoke and looked like an Arab, and was embedded in Beirut, greeted them as the came up the sandy embankment.

  They climbed into the stolen vehicle silently and Doron guided the creaking vehicle back onto the road into the Lebanese capital. They drove through darkened streets and past buildings still pockmarked with bullet marks, some buildings still in ruins and not yet taken down to make way for new ones.

  The opened the bag and distributed the arms among them silently as the wreck of a car progressed towards the destination. Many of the cars in Beirut were similar to this one, and many were stolen on a daily basis by the various factions fighting to control the city.

  Finally Doron pulled up outside a hotel that was situated in the central district, on the corner of Foch and Bab Idriss streets. It was near the port but being in the centre of town the hit would have to be very quick, in and out in a matter of one minute, perhaps less, from the time of execution.

  The hotel was not a luxury property and they went unnoticed as they entered in two’s. They rode separate elevators to the third floor. Once together on the floor, they congregated in the emergency stairwell and took out the guns, fitting silencers on them in well practiced motion.

  The exited the stairwell and approached room 316, the room Intel had informed them the terrorists were hiding in.

  Ziv, the big man in the crew, kicked the door in and they flowed into the suite like running water. What they saw inside shocked them for an instant but did not stop their deadly work. The terrorists were there, but so were three prostitutes in various stages of undress, one riding on and giving pleasure to Said Nasra. The terrorists were enjoying the last good time in their lives, but were not going down easily.

  The grabbed the women and shielded themselves against the threatening Israelis. Jordan recognized Ali Nantisi’s face behind one of the women in front of him and pumped three bullets straight through the woman and into Ali. Both went down in a spray of blood and brain matter as they hit the floor, dead before they got there.

  Dvir and Ziv took care of the other terrorists, killing both of them and the other two whores with
efficient shots to the heads. They quickly ensured death by pumping another round into each head and left the room silently, closing the door and jamming it shut as best they could with the broken lock.

  They had gotten cleanly away but the takedown had been the final straw for Jordan. Throughout the trip back on the Navy Hornet and through the night he could not get the picture of the utter look of surprise on the prostitute’s face as he pressed the trigger ending her miserable life. The women had all the same look of dazed amazement in the final seconds of their existence. They seemed to be accusing the Israelis, accusing them of the needless killing of innocents, accusing them of murder, not assassinations. Israelis were not indiscriminate killers, they seemed to be pleading, even as the bullets tore into their heads and bodies. They did not have time to react, going to their deaths with mouths open in silent screams.

  The takeouts played themselves endlessly through the night in Jordan’s head like a horror video, rewinding to play over and over again in a never-ending movie. He saw the dead, accusing look on the face of the whore he had shot, her eyes never leaving his face even as she lay stone dead on the floor, the blood pooling below her and spreading out from under her warm body.

  It had been a long and agonizing night, a night Jordan knew he did not want to experience ever again. It was his time to pass the torch. He had his fill of killings, someone else could do it now, someone not disillusioned with the business of bloody revenge for the state.

  The following morning he had gone into the office and resigned. Following his resignation he had registered to study hotel management, as if to make turning his back on the agency final.

  The short story about Jordan Kline took place before the beginning of The Taba Convention, a Middle East political conspiracy thriller.

  The Taba Convention by Stephen W. Ayers, the 1st. Book in the Jordan Kline Series, is an 87,000 word thriller covering 320 pages, with a free preview of the Prologue and opening sections now at this Wattpad link:

  https://www.wattpad.com/2792692-the-taba-convention-prologue-and-1st-17-pages-book

  More information on the Jordan Kline Trilogy at:

  www.stephenwayers.com