Free Fear the Survivors by Stephen Moss Page A

sprinting away from it. Lord Mantil watched the rockets flame from the chopper toward him and then past him into the car. Their brilliant blue flames lighting up the ground and their smoke trails in the flash before they smothered the buggy in bright orange flame. Thud, thud, came the quick impacts and the car was gone, obliterated, not even a hulk.
    Even as the missiles’ smoke trails wafted in the wind, Lord Mantil was bolting back along their path toward the helicopter, his cold machine body invisible to their infrared sensors and his movements but a blur in the twilight. The two men never knew what hit them, a weight suddenly landed bodily on the front of the helicopter and a moment later a fist came through the window with blinding power. They were both dead before their bodies hit the ground below.
    - - -
    “Jesus,” whispered Barrett at the sight. He couldn’t make out exactly what had happened but the results were clear. The image was grey and faded with the passing of the day, but he had seen the inhumanly fast figure from the huts leap onto the unsuspecting buggy, had seen two men fly from it a moment later. Then he had watched as the car tore bloody murder down through the ranks of the coming forces as they approached the huts Barrett knew harbored his friends.
    He had then seen the first of the two attack helicopters in the squadron engage the man he knew was Lord Mantil and seen as it destroyed the car that had born Shahim down on his prey. But a moment later the chopper had visibly faltered in the evening air. Then it had become a slaughter. Barrett assumed the original pilots of the chopper were no longer onboard because he had watched as it turned its guns on the rest of the squadron. The next few minutes were ugly, the remainders of the squadron dying quickly as what was clearly now Lord Mantil piloting the chopper wielded the agile machine’s guns and missiles like a samurai.
    - - -
    Shahim watched his radar as the last of the terrified soldiers eventually fled. Shahim let them go, turning the helicopter back toward the huts. He landed in the deserted settlement and barely hesitated. In a matter of moments he had taken his two charges aboard and was on his way, flying hard for the border.
     

Chapter 6: Ghazzat
     
    A deep heat lay on the city of Gaza. A dry, dusty heat that desiccates the bones and forces you to squint. It had been a long, long time since Saul had been outside his homeland of Israel. Indeed in some ways he still wasn’t. But though the Palestinian National Authority was hypothetically part of the nation of Israel, Saul Moskowitz could not have been farther from home.
    It was not the first time he had been in Palestinian territory, but the last time he was here it had been under the orders of the feared and respected Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad. Plus he had been thirty years younger. He had been fitter and at the peak of his trade.
    Since then he had gone into a form of retirement. He had reached a point when he had felt his sharpness fading, his skills dulling, and he had been faced with three choices: take a desk job in analysis, stay in the field until the day he finally met his match, or turn his long experience to the aid and guidance of the next generation. He had chosen the third. And so for two decades he had handled a wide variety of agents as they worked their way into the plethora of political and militia bodies that wished Israel harm. Even this job had faded with time, his age leading him to manage fewer and fewer assets in the field. Attrition had slowly whittled down that list, either through retirement or death, typically the latter. Eventually, inevitably, he had been left with none.
    Until one had reemerged. The day Ayala had called him he had been stunned, but his long training had kept his voice steady. You can train yourself not to show surprise. To remain placid even during the most shocking of events. It takes a long time, and a lot of practice, but