Triple Jeopardy

*

"Because they know you could ID him," Uncle Mike explained as we drove home. "There're twelve hundred students in your school, they couldn't grab a kid at random."

" 'Kay, but how did they know I could ID him? In fact, how did a different Company even know he's here?"

"They had a wire tap on a certain phone in Tel Aviv when I talked with a friend of mine. After that, they only needed a phone call to activate the unit."

"And I've been in the parish paper," I concluded. "Did you use his name and mine?" I growled.

Mike shook his head. "Only his code name. Sorry. Knowing your record to get into trouble, I should've had a code name for you prepared long in advance."

"Just tell me who the hell is Sheridan. He's been out of commission for twenty-seven years. Why would anyone hunt him down after that time?"

"It's seventeen years, not twenty-seven—he made up the number—and they've got so many reasons to come after Barak, it's not even close to funny."

This was the late 1990s, years before anyone would hear of a Senator named Obama, so I only had two frames of reference. "Barak is the Prime Minister of Israel. It means lightning in Hebrew."

"Barak is Sheridan's code name; no relation," Uncle Mike explained. "He struck so fast, Barak was an obvious handle. After he told the Air Force where to take out Saddam's reactor in '82—"

"—a year later," I interrupted, "17 years ago, Hussein puts a contract out on him."

"No," Mike corrected me, "he added number twenty. Pressure got too high, and Barak had to get out. He'd worked for ten solid years, driving the Middle East crazy, Mossad could afford to be grateful to him. He retired as Captain Joseph Dayan, and went underground."

"There's no relation to Moshe Dayan, hero of the '48 war of Independence?"

"There is. It's another reason they're out to get him. That region of the world has a long memory, and symbols mean a lot. Killing a blood descendant of Moshe Dayan would be a morale boost to all those terrorists Mossad has been taking out lately."

"So you called Tel Aviv to warn them that Sheridan—Barak—had written about the bad old days, worried he had nostalgia. You told them where he worked, that I read the manuscript...you didn't tell them about Miss Bell in that tapped phone call, did you?"

"DAMNIT!" he bellowed as the HUMVEE made a one-eighty.

*

We got to school in time to see the fireworks begin. The idiots were stupid enough to go after Miss Bell. Unfortunately for them, Sheridan was escorting her to her car, which had been parked in front of the school on the other side of the street since construction had eliminated her parking space in the lot. Since I left, another two vans had parked on either side of her car. The short yellow bus that Sheridan and Bell hid behind was already riddled with bullets when our HUMVEE smashed into the back of it. We leapt out of the passenger's side door to join them on the sidewalk.

"Hi," I said as I crouched behind the HUMVEE, while Mike waved them over. It took more than a tank to total a HUMVEE, especially a Company car.

"Have any weapons, Captain?" Mike asked when they joined us, pulling out his .45.

Sheridan nodded, as I asked, "Can't we just wait for the cops?" over the gunshots.

"AK-47's would shred police body armor like tissue paper," Sheridan said, opening his briefcase, revealing an Israeli weapon known as the Uzi.

This is getting ridiculous.

"How many clips have you got for that?" Uncle Mike asked, chambering a round.

"Three, plus my .45," Barak answered. "There's only eight of them, but they have more artillery. I have some more weaponry in my classroom; but we need two people to lay down cover fire."

I looked at Bell and said, "How fast can you run?"

"The HUMVEE would cover them for most of the way," Mike said, nodding at Bell and me, "but it takes too long to unlock those doors. They'd be in the open."

After Sheridan fired a burst at the lock through his targeting sight, we ran for it.

The last thing I needed that afternoon found us as I slammed the door close. It was TA Frankenstein, the type of thing that bounced his head off the tops of doorframes. I didn't have the time to waste explaining in monosyllables what was happening. I sidestepped and ran around him. He grabbed me, only to have Bell's foot meet his arm. I thought I heard it snap; he let go in any event. I jumped the stairs three at a time, speeding for Sheridan's room before panic set in. Miraculously, after months of construction, everyone had learned to ignore sounds like drills and machine guns.

Sheridan's door was unlocked. Obviously he only expected to be gone a short while. He had six tall black file cabinets, but only five classes. His weaponry had to be in one of them. Bell had the keys to the cabinets; we found the stash in the one closest to my desk.

"Guns, guns, guns, clips, clips, rifles," I murmured as I searched the drawers. I opened the bottom drawer. "Mother of God."

"What is it?" Bell asked.

"Do you watch Dirty Harry movies?"

I put the LAWS rocket on the window shelf, trying to figure out exactly how it worked. It was a disposable weapon, lightweight, meant to be fired and dropped. I had seen them used in the movies, but I couldn't remember how it worked. I tried pulling at several different parts before I noticed the directions on the barrel. I yanked out the pin as they told me to. The launcher extended to four feet in length. I put it to my shoulder and put my eye up to the sight, pointing it out the window. I remembered there was supposed to be a front sight. Where was it?

Once I realized I had it backwards, I swung it around. The first image that appeared in my crosshairs was Sheridan's head. I refocused it toward the guys in suits... they were Middle Eastern, of course. I knew the rocket would've taken out one car for sure, but two?

"Miss Bell, is your car insured?" I asked over my shoulder as I saw her car between the two black vans, remembering that a gallon of gasoline equaled 20 sticks of TNT.

"Yes, why?"

The resulting explosion of her car blew both black vans to both ends of the street, but Miss Bell's car would never play the violin—or any other instrument—ever again. By my watch the entire shootout took no more than three minutes. The police still hadn't shown up by the time we returned to street level.

"Mr. Sheridan," I asked, coming down the front steps, "do you usually plan for a war, or is that cache of weapons a contingency plan for the day class discussion takes a turn for the worst?"

Captain Dayan, a.k.a. Joseph Sheridan, smiled. "You thought 'Be Prepared' started with the Boy Scouts?"

"Somehow I didn't think Mossad came up with it," Ms. Bell noted.

I looked at her, my eyebrows arched. "You know?"

She smiled. "Who do you think proofreads his manuscripts?"

I shook my head to clear it, and, before I could reply, I heard the familiar sound of a gun bolt snapping home. I sighed deeply.

"If you would please be so kind as to drop your weapons and hold your hands out by your sides, this will only be a minute," came the lightly accented, deep voice from behind.

I turned around as I complied. Somehow, the sight of a man with horn rimmed glasses and a Brooks Brothers suit did not fit my image of the model terrorist hit man.

"The AK-47 simply does not go with that suit," Mike told him.

"I prefer the H&K MP5K-PDW myself," Sheridan told my uncle. "With a Brooks Brothers, you look like Secret Service."

"Are you kidding?" the terrorist asked. "Heckler and Koch is too expensive. These"—he jostled the weapon slightly—"go for a great price from the USSR going out of business sale."

I resisted the urge to rub my throbbing temples. Talking about the latest fashions in weaponry wasn't exactly what I had in mind.

"Now," the terrorist said, getting back to business, "which one of you is Dayan?"

"I am," Mike and Sheridan said at the same time.

The terrorist smiled. "This is not a remake of Sparticus, and frankly, you don't have enough supporting cast. The options are quite limited. I could shoot you both and leave it at that, or I can take the real Dayan home with me."

I smiled as I saw a head of red hair moving behind the gunman. In one move, Moira grabbed the barrel of the old Russian assault rifle, and pulled down and back, spinning the terrorist and the weapon away from us. She slammed her knee into his kidney, swept the legs out from under him, and pinned him to the ground by holding her foot on his neck.

She looked up at Mike. "What is it with your family? Matt attracts psychos. You attract these people. Is it something genetic?"

"God, I hope not," I answered. "How did you know to show up here?"

"Simple. I called your place, and you were late. Given past experience, it meant you had to be here." She looked back at Mike again. "The cops should arrive in about a minute. What do we do with your friend here?"

Mike took out his cell phone and hit the autodial. "It'll be taken care of in two or three minutes, depending on how clogged my boss's switchboard is."

I looked at Sheridan. "So, it looks like you get to stay here until they pry the chalk out of your cold dead hand. What are you going to do now? Go to Disney world?"

"I hear Belfast is nice this time of year," he replied. "After this week, it might be safer, too."