Blood Line by John J. Davis Page B

assassinate a Lebanese scientist working to help Palestine develop a long-range missile program. It was the summer of 1987, and the Lebanese Civil War had been ongoing since 1982. My pre-mission briefing took place in a hotel near the Wharton campus. I met with half a dozen members of the Mossad over a two-day period. The importance of drawing little or no attention at all to my mission’s objective was reinforced repeatedly. Two assassinations in Athens in 1986 had garnered too much press. I was directed to take out the target without any blowback on Israel.
    “The target was Fakald Juli. The report said he had a personal security guard of five to six men at all times, except when he slept or was visited by prostitutes, but even then he wasn’t really alone, just out of sight of the guards. It seemed that Fakald had a bad habit of liking sex outdoors, so he’d take these women out on the balcony.
    “Big mistake.
    “I was flown into the Israeli-controlled security zone and my contact drove me to an empty, bombed-out building in the heart of the Syrian section, directly across from the target. The two buildings were separated by a one square block park. Really just a few trees and shrubs, but no grass to speak of, just dirt.
    “I was left alone in the third floor apartment with a twelve hour window to do the job. The sun had set and it was dark outside. It was six p.m. local time. War was sporadic by 1987, but it was still very dangerous. I was scared of being found. I knew what opposition forces would do to me. So, I busied myself setting up my Sardius sniper rifle with suppressor and night vision scope. I knew from my intelligence report that he took a lover about every three days. If the pattern held true, he would be at it again that night. All I had to do was wait.”
    “You’re in war torn Beirut in 1987 trying to assassinate someone in the dead of night from how far away?” Leecy asked.
    “300 meters, give or take.”
    “Jesus Mom, if you’d been captured they would’ve tortured you or worse.”
    “Well, I wasn’t captured. As a matter of fact, I was never even seen. Fakald appeared naked on his balcony with his back to my position at two a.m. He was dead a second later.”
    “What about the prostitute? He wasn’t out on the balcony alone, was he?”
    “No, she was there. She was just out of my line of sight, and ran back into the room screaming for his bodyguards. I took the rifle with me when I left the room, after signaling my contact to pick me up. We were back inside the Israeli safe zone in minutes, and I was on a plane within the hour. The killing was treated as an accident, because of all the regular shooting and street fighting in that area. There was no blowback on Israel. We were in the clear.”
    “Tell me something: how far can you shoot and hit the target?” Leecy asked.
    “800 meters was my longest shot in practice, but I’ve never had to shoot that far for real. I thought my next mission was going to be a long distance shot, because of all the training they were putting me through, but it turned out to be something quite different. I was sent back to South America in the fall of 1988 to assassinate another Nazi war criminal named Mikhail Klein.
    “Klein lived in the central region of Argentina near Lake Laguna Mar Chiquita. He had this cabin near the abandoned Gran Hotel Vienna. I arrived in Cordoba, Argentina, and was met by my local contact and driven to a location northeast of the city.
    “The target was known to be an avid fisherman, taking a small boat out on Lake Laguna Mar twice a day. I thought about how to do this job, and decided that drowning would be the best way. Actually, all I had to do was separate him from his boat and let fatigue do the work for me.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, the lake isn’t very deep, but it is large. I swam behind him at a discrete distance until he reached the deepest part of the lake and began fishing. I eased up very quietly