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The American knew the Kaibiles were the Guatemalan Armed Forces special operations wing, and he confirmed his understanding by asking, “How long since active duty?”
Bernadino spoke in Spanish to the pair up front, and after they answered him, he said, “I’ve been out a year. Chico, the driver, four years. Alfredo has been out about two years.”
“You’ve all been working since?”
To this Bernadino flashed a smile. “Every day, señor.”
The American didn’t ask what they’d been doing. He could deduce they worked for organized crime, most likely in Guatemala City.
“Weapons?” Lancer next asked.
Bernadino said something else in Spanish, and the man in the front passenger seat reached into a duffel between his feet and pulled out a squat Heckler & Koch MP5 9-millimeter submachine gun with a collapsed stock. He handed it back to the foreigner, and Lancer looked it over. It had simple iron sights instead of a more advanced red dot optic, but the weapon appeared to be in decent condition.
Bernadino said, “We each have one of these. We were told you’d have your own gun.”
“I do,” Lancer said as he continued inspecting the HK in his hand. He ejected the magazine, looked over the ammo. It was full metal jacket, a relatively cheap brand, but the gun would fire and the bullets would kill, so he handed the weapon back up front to Antonio before looking again at Bernadino.
“You three are my ground support element. We’ll have ISR support, as well.” With a hard look, he said, “I will prosecute the assassinations of Zakharova and Genrich myself.”
The Guatemalan relayed this to the others, and the Tahoe drove through the rain, closing steadily on their target.
SEVEN
Shvedya Street snakes through the posh Denia neighborhood in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, a hilly and high-dollar area three miles inland from the Mediterranean. The homes were ornate, the lawns and gardens well kept, and the cars winding through the tree-lined streets were Mercedes, BMWs, Maseratis, and Range Rovers.
A modern split-level home rested on a hill on Shvedya, its front garden walled and dotted with eucalyptus, juniper, and palm trees growing out of the ground between tiers of ornamental stone. Belying the placid landscaping in the front yard, however, inside the home was the hustle and bustle of a family of four cleaning up after dinner on a Saturday evening.
This family was wealthy, even for Denia, but otherwise typical. Tomer Basch was forty-six years old, a former Israeli Defense Force captain in the Intelligence Corps before moving to the United States, where he attended MIT to obtain a master’s of science in intelligent information systems.
After college he’d been immediately snatched up by the robotics division of Boston Dynamics, and he eventually started his own lab with partners back in Tel Aviv. Specializing in military robotics software, Basch and his team of coders and engineers were considered pioneers in the field of creating artificial intelligence for prototype military combat platforms.
After more than a decade, Basch sold his company, and he now worked as the director of intelligent systems at the Israel Institute of Technology here in Haifa, where he continued to advance programs involving artificial intelligence to be used in all types of military equipment, from armed drones to autonomous sentry guns.
Tomer sipped a glass of Netofa Tel Qasser, a crisp white from a popular Israeli winery, and he poured another glass for his wife before they both headed out of the kitchen and into the den to turn on a movie with the kids.
Halfway to his sofa, however, Tomer’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket.
He put the bottle down on the coffee table, then checked the phone. It was a name he recognized, but someone who never called on a Saturday night, so Tomer quickly excused himself and stepped back into the kitchen.
“Evening, Ami. Everything okay?”
Ami Madar was the director of security at the Israel Institute of Technology, a former Mossad officer, and a good friend of Basch’s, because the work Basch and his team did at the institute was government classified, and therefore Ami was intimately involved with the lab’s security.
Ami was always serious, but he seemed even more urgently so this evening. “Everything okay with you, Tomer? No issues?”
“Everything’s fine. What’s going on?”
“Richard Watt was killed this morning in America. Murdered.”
Tomer put his wineglass down on the kitchen island. “Rick? My God. By who?”
“Unknown. A sniper got him on a golf course. The shooter got away.”
Tomer Basch cocked his head now. He knew Watt, but not closely, so he didn’t understand what this had to do with him. “And you think…you think what?”
“Dr. Kotana Ishikawa was killed six hours ago in Osaka. She was run over in a parking lot after leaving her mother’s retirement home. A witness said it was no accident.”
“That’s terrible.”
