Chapter 1
Major Linda Shelia was pacing in a small dark room surrounded by computer monitors and analysts. Linda is an English woman in her late twenties. She joined the English military when she came of age and was recruited for the position of an intelligence officer in the J.A.T.F. (Joint Anti-Terrorist Force) when she became a captain, the youngest woman ever to become a captain in England. Now she holds the rank of a major, and is in the track becoming a colonel.
“Something is wrong.” She complains, they are monitoring a Hezbollah leader located in one of their safehouses in Lebanon named Ala Dawud.
“Our intelligence confirms that a weapon was transferred from the Al-Alam organization to the Abu-Shabaab terrorist group, and that the target is Ala Dawud” She talks while continuing to pace around the room while glimpsing the monitors that are displaying the footage taken of Ala Dawud in their safehouse across the street.
“Let them kill each other’s till none remains.” An analysts shrugs his shoulders and interjects.
“But we have a deal with Ala Dawud that in change of ensuring his family’s safety, he will name the leaders and safehouses of the Abu-Shabaab group.” Linda says and bites her lower lip. She knows that the man they are protecting now is the cause of three different terrorist strikes in middle-east that claimed the lives of 100 people of different ages.
The senior analyst named Brian Delore, who was previously C.I.A. before recruited for the J.A.T.F. interjects from his computer: “We have decrypted the files our team managed to get in Syria, there are over forty pages of documents.”
Linda walks to a computer of her own “Send them to the computers. Everyone who is not monitoring the asset, start going through them.” She orders.
She is reading a document in Arabic about the weapon that was sold. The documents belonged to the Al-Alam, but they are mainly transactions documents. The group Al-Alam was brought down just after the weapon changed hands. It was the J.A.T.F.’s, CIA’s and FSB’s joint operation.
“We got vehicles coming.” An analyst calls out. everyone stops what they are doing and focuses on the monitors that shows three cars turning to the safehouse. “Be ready to engage” Linda says over the radio but redacts that order right after the doors opened up and young girls walks out of the cars.
Disgusted, Linda looks at the girls who are guided inside the house. This has happened thrice since they started this operation. Ala Dawud has a thing for young girls, and his men bring them every now and then for his pleasure.
“Shit, they can be no older than sixteen.” A man says.
“Well it isn’t that bad considering he could have a thing for children” Brian says.
“They are children.” Other analyst interjects.
Brian looks towards the man who said that: “You know what I meant. I mean younger children, younger than teenagers” He looks at the monitor and sees that the girls are now inside the house guided towards Ala Dawud. They are young, some haven’t even hit puberty yet. He curses inside his mind that he cannot go and put a bullet in the terrorists head and that he have to watch him as he defiles the innocent looking girls.
Linda pays no mind to them, she is too focused reading through the documents. She finally finds a document that has information about the weapon called seven. It’s a list of targets that has been confirmed kills. She forwards the list to their headquarters in France, and requests information about the causes of death. There are only four names under the weapon sevens target list, none of them had a connection to Al-Alam, so she thinks that they rented the weapon to the highest bidder whose target was in range or otherwise accessible to the weapon.
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At first she feared that the weapon was a missile of sorts, so the anti-missile system surrounding the safehouse should be able to blast anything from the sky before compromising the house.
Headquarters came through and she has detailed causes of death to all of the targets. The first two were killed by a sniper, the third was killed by a pencil stabbed to his throat and the last one was found drowned near his yacht. She realizes something, that the weapon Seven isn’t a weapon but an assassin.
Startled, she jumps from her seat and looks at the monitor showing Ala Dawud. She is trying to figure out if the assassin is amongst the girls. She doesn’t believe that it is but decides to be on the safe side.
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“We brought them.” One of Ala Dawuds men calls out. They have brought the girls to the Hezbollah leader’s room and Ala Dawud is now eying them with interest. The girls are lined up in front of him as he moves to an upright position from the needlessly big bed. The room walls are covered with silken cloths, there are illustrious mats on the floor and a big chandelier hangs from the ceiling.
His eyes are stuck on the girl to the far left on the line, the only girl who has western heritage of the group. She has beautiful face, crystal blue eyes and a blond hair, going just below her shoulder blades. She is average of height for her age, her body figure has yet to develop, but is showing the signs of early puberty. She is wearing the same clothes as all of them, a long white loose silken dress that covers her everything except her face and neck.
“How old are you?” Ala Dawud asks the girl in English.
The men behind the girl shoves the girl towards their boss, while almost tripping her. She regains her balance and shyly looks down and answers in English: “fifteen”.
The man gestures the girl to come closer, and the girl obeys. She is only two steps away from him when the door is slammed open and men in combat gear starts coming in. Linda is the third person to walk through the door, and as she walks in, the fifteen year old girl standing before Ala Dawud looks lost at what to do.
“What is the meaning of this?!” Ala Dawud yells and continues: “You’ll get the names when I know for sure that my family is safe”
“There is a possible security breach, I’ll have to ask all the girls to leave” Linda answers him, as she looks at the girls. Her eyes meet with the blue eyed girl standing in front of their asset and she recognizes something in them. It was panic and urgency, she starts bringing her hand to her holster as the girl turns to look towards her latest target: Ala Dawud, 45 years old, brown eyes, black hair and beard, likes young girls and alcohol.
She is panicked and lost because she doesn’t know what to do. She was supposed to receive instruction about what to do when the target is dead and where is the extraction point, but her trainers and the organization she belongs to never contacted her and have gone completely silent.
‘Well it was only a matter of time until they leave me for death’ She thinks to herself. But if there was a plan to extract her in some way, and she has failed to kill her target, she would be in a world of pain so she decides to go through with the mission.
As Linda is raising her sidearm to the blond, petite girl, the girls jumps toward Ala Dawud and swings her right arm from left to right. Glint of the hidden blade that was concealed in her sleeve is seen. Blood sprays from Ala Dawuds throat as it’s sliced cleanly open. The blood splashes on the girl’s face, her hand still holding the blade, is straightened to her right side, blood dripping from the fifteen-centimeter knife.
“Drop the knife!!” One of the soldiers yell as Ala Dawuds men are raising their weapons. The rest of the soldiers take aim to Ala Dawuds men so that they won’t execute the girl in front of them. The room is silent as everybody is aiming at somebody. Some are aiming the girl, some the lackeys of the newly deceased man and some are aiming the soldiers. Nobody dares to move.
The girl turns around and her white dress, painted with blood is shown. She drops the knife. The knife lands on its blade, sticking to the floor. She knows she cannot win against a room full of armed men and decides to surrender to fate.
“What happens to me now?” She asks with an innocent voice.
Linda gestures two of the soldiers to take her into custody. Ala Dawuds men don’t dare to start firing as they are outnumbered. The two soldiers take the young assassin by her hands and starts escorting her outside, while Linda curses in her mind. They just lost weeks of work and persuasion with the death of Ala Dawud, but nothing can be done about that now.
The girl is escorted to outside the safehouse where she is put on a car. Linda boards the next car and they start heading to an open field some kilometers south from their location.