She saw it coming and covered up, but the boot still connected with her left shoulder. Pain radiated from the impact. She knew that the correct move for now was not to waste his time on another kick, but to drop a knee into her back, breaking her ribs and disabling her. He knew it too and executed it perfectly.
Yael rolled and his knee hit the stone floor. She continued rolling, and laid out flat on her back, her arms stretched out and her Glock in her right hand. The bullet was chambered. The commando stood, spun, and raised his foot to stomp. She shot him three times. They weren’t her best shots. Two hit him in the thighs, but one hit him in the sternum, just below his ribs. He was a big man with a big heart. The bullet found it and reduced it to pulp. The man who had captured Yael, choked her, and humiliated her, fell backwards as blood spurted from the wound in his chest.
Yael was on her feet, slowly and painfully by her standards, but instantly by Hameni’s. He remained jammed against the wall. She walked towards him with the Glock in her right hand, blood seeping down her side, and a bruise spreading across her shoulder.
Hameni looked at his men, two piles of flesh settling into rigor mortis. He looked past Yael. The door to the warehouse was behind her. He looked around for a weapon, but he was standing among his paintings. Finally he looked into Yael’s grey eyes. She met his gaze and there was a jolt of understanding between them.
Hameni dropped to his knees and interlaced his fingers behind his head. He said, “Take me to the police!”
Yael said nothing. She aimed the pistol.
“Take me!” Hameni said again. “You can have your justice. Turn me in. I won’t fight you.”
Yael looked around the warehouse and thought about her friend Janet Baker. Janet had been killed by cancer run amok in her body. Her son Ryan was in her hospital room when she passed. It was his room as well. The hospice people had recommended that they be placed together as a final comfort. Ryan watched his mother die, then lasted another week before joining her.
Yael had sat in that room. She watched the little boy gasping, his eyes fixed on an empty spot in the ceiling. His hands turned blue and his skin grew cold as the blood retreated to his core in a final attempt to keep him alive. Just before the breath sighed out of him, his eyes opened wide and he whispered, “Mommy.” Yael had wondered if it was a plea or a greeting.
Meanwhile Hameni had gotten rich. The money from Ryan’s medicine had funneled through Hameni’s businesses, skipped through stock trades and wire transfers, and finally landed in this pile of art. It would take lawyers and accountants years to unravel a mess that they would never be able to explain to a jury.
Yael’s silence panicked Hameni. He began shouting.
“You have to let them arrest me! You have to show me mercy. You are a Jew. It is your law. It is in your Torah. The Torah says it. The Torah requires that you show me mercy!”
“The Torah requires many things,” said Yael, then she shot Hameni in the spine.
She aimed low, hoping to miss his aorta and femoral arteries. She shot him just below his navel. The bullet shattered the spinal column and Hameni pitched forward, his legs twitching from injury-related impulses.
Hameni lay on his face and screamed. But, even though they were within a town, nobody could hear him. He cried out in Farsi, pushed on his arms and flopped onto his back. He screeched and cried, but became background noise as Yael bent to her task.
She limped along the stash, picking up art and making a large pile of kindling against the warehouse wall. She found two suitcases full of cash and emptied them onto the canvases. She found antique furniture and threw it on. Hameni had stopped screaming and instead watched Yael with feverish eyes. He realized what she was about to do.
Yael took the can of lighter fluid off the table, broke the plastic cap, and dumped the fluid throughout the kindling. She looked at the dead men who had tried to rape her and considered whether or not she could drag them. She decided that she could not. But, she could drag Hameni.
She walked to him, and grabbed the small man by the collar of his shirt and began dragging him towards the pile. He began keening, “No! No!” and trying to slap at her with his hands, but he was helpless to stop her. His useless legs bumped and caught as she dragged him to the wall and heaved him on top of the pyre, cramming him into his stash so that he couldn’t roll off. She climbed down and stood for a moment while Hameni pled for his life.
She had to catch her breath, her shoulder hurt and she had lost more blood than was healthy. She walked back to the small table. It was an antique. She refilled her purse with her wallet, cell phone, keys, and pictures. She tossed the table on top of the murderer.
Hameni was shouting something about mercy, about justice, about the love of God, about Hell, about Israel, about Iran. Yael ignored his buzzing. Instead, she struck a match and threw it into the lighter fluid.
The pile caught immediately and began to burn. The pigments in the art created odd flames that lit the smoke. There were blues and greens, deep oranges, and at one point a purple light flared, lighting the smoke from within. Hameni’s screams and cries stopped. He never felt the flames. The smoke had killed him quickly as Yael knew it would. It was best she could do in the way of mercy.
Yael took a step back and inspected her cut. The blood flow was slowing and would respond to pressure. Then she saw her foot. A hundred dollar bill from Hameni’s stash had gotten stuck to her shoe when she had climbed the pile. She pulled the bill off and inspected herself to make sure that none of Hameni’s treasure remained on her. Then she threw the bill into the fire, and rubbed her fingers on her pants to cleanse them.
Yael emerged from the door of the warehouse and looked into the sky. It was a clear night, full of stars. She walked away from the building. Behind her, the flames grew. They lit the ground in front of her in reds, greens, and blues. Yael kept walking. She never looked back as the strange fire engulfed the warehouse, consuming it and erasing it from her thoughts.
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