Killing for the Company

The first person he saw was Maya Bloom. She was standing above him, and from inside her jacket she removed the shard of glass — as sharp as the knife Luke was carrying and just as red from the blood that was oozing from her wrists. He prepared to push himself back up to his feet, but in that instant the soldiers were there. Two of them had their rifles pointing directly at him. The third — bigger than the others — bent down quickly, pulled Luke up to his feet and slammed him hard against the wall.

The knife slipped from his hands.

His head cracked against the stone.

Like a photographic snapshot he saw the crowds teeming with panic; he saw the barrels of the soldiers’ rifles; and he saw Maya Bloom, who was standing just two metres from his location, turn quickly away. In the same instant, a helicopter appeared above the Western Wall plaza: a Black Hawk, dark olive green, no doors fitted and no markings; a side gunner was manning a Minigun and panning across the crowd, and a fast-rope arm protruded a metre from the chopper. It had all the features of an SF aircraft. Half the crowd hit the ground and all of them, or it so it seemed, were now screaming.

‘There’s a suicide bomber,’ Luke roared at the three soldiers, but he could barely be heard above the noise of the chopper and the screaming. ‘A pregnant woman! THERE’S A FUCKING

SUICIDE BOMBER! CLEAR THE AREA! ’

The troops remained in position, their clothes flapping in the wind from the downdraught of the heli — which was no more than fifteen metres above the crowd — staring dumbly at him. Luke shook his head. This was it. The screaming was growing louder, and across the roofs of Jerusalem a church bell sounded.

Eleven o’clock. Eleven o’fucking clock… He’d failed. He wouldn’t even survive to see the consequences.

From his pocket came a ringing sound as someone, somewhere, tried to remote-detonate one of the bombers he’d neutralised; five seconds later the second phone he had confiscated joined in.

And it was from this position, unable to move, unable to do anything more, that he witnessed it all happening.

Maya Bloom scanned the wall, blocking out the sound of screaming, ignoring the air currents of the chopper and the chaos and alarm it was causing; ignoring the shouts of the idiot British soldier. It didn’t take more than a couple of seconds to locate her. She was approximately six metres further towards the south end of the wall, also dressed in a black robe, with a headscarf and a shawl, her face slightly fattened by pregnancy; and she was the only woman in the vicinity, with the exception of Maya herself, who was not crazed with panic.

Far from it. She appeared calm and resolute.

Not as resolute, however, as Maya Bloom.

She knocked two children out of the way and now there was open ground between her and this second pregnant woman. It took less than a second to cross it. And in that brief window of time, a scene flashed before her eyes. She was a child, standing on the streets of Tel Aviv. Her brother stood beside her and together they looked upon a sight of indescribable carnage. Their mother was there, lying on the ground. The clothes had been burned from her torso; the skin was charred, filling the air with the stink of smoking flesh; both arms had been ripped from her body. The young Maya was screaming and she continued to scream even when Amit put his arms around her and pressed her face against his chest so that she would not have to look upon the aftermath of the Palestinian bomb that had just torn their parents — and their lives — apart.

The pregnant woman had a mobile phone in one hand and as she saw Maya Bloom coming towards her she was gripping it firmly. The Israeli threw herself at the woman. As they tumbled to the ground, she thumped the woman’s right wrist against the stones of the Western Wall. Her grip loosened and Maya Bloom tugged the phone from her. The device became disconnected from the lead to which it was attached.

A fraction of a second later it started to ring.

Maya Bloom threw the detonator to the ground and raised the shard of glass up above her head, gripping it hard even though its sharp edges cut into her palms. A second later she brought it slamming down into the exposed neck of the pregnant woman. The point of the glass sank into the flesh like a knife into dough. Once it was a couple of inches in, she rotated it clockwise through ninety degrees. Then back again. She repeated this twisting motion three times and with each turn the river of blood that gushed from the wound grew stronger. A harsh gargling sound escaped the victim’s lungs and her limbs started to shake. It took her no more than twenty seconds to die, but even when her body was still, Maya Bloom didn’t stop. She raised the shard again and brought it stabbing down on the woman’s face. Piercing, puncturing, as all the hate she felt spilled out.