Read Online Direct Action by John Weisman - Free Book Online Page B

of those six was facing in a different direction, and yet, now that she’d blown the photo up and cropped it, she could see they were relationally connected to one another. They were, she understood instinctively, a group. First of all, they dressed similarly. Most of the other onlookers were wearing T-shirts or open-necked short-sleeved sport shirts. These six wore long-sleeved shirts, which hung over their dark trousers. One of the figure’s shirts was open, and MJ could make out something dark underneath. She keyed on the area, blew it up, and saw the top edge of what appeared to be either a low-necked T-shirt or the top of a bulletproof vest.
Now her interest was really piqued. She went back to the group shot. They were slightly older than the crowd of gawking teenagers who inhabited most of the photo. Three of the men had beards—the kinds of unkempt beards MJ had seen in pictures taken in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Afghanistan, and northern Iraq. Two others had thick, fierce, Saddam Hussein–like mustaches. The last, who was older, darker, and heavier than the others, was clean-shaven. His shirt was tucked into his trousers, which were held up by a wide black belt with a big oval metal buckle.
MJ enlarged the cropped section of the photo another 16 percent. Now she was able to see that five of the six men were carrying weapons—only the clean-shaven individual was not. But they weren’t toting the AKs common to most of the Palestinian security personnel. She enlarged one of the guns as much as she could, outlined it, right-clicked, and moved the weapon onto the weapons database icon.
Thirty-nine hundredths of a second later she learned these guys were hefting Heckler & Koch MP7A1s, three-pound, microsize machine pistols that fire a 4.6 ×30mm round capable of penetrating most body armor. Intrigued, MJ searched the BigPond database and discovered that the weapon was currently issued to some of the retired Special Air Service soldiers employed as bodyguards and drivers by the Saudi Royal family.
MJ had made herself something of a specialist on the Palestinian Authority and she knew for a fact that none of the PSS units carried MP7s. Still, she double-checked the database just to make sure, and BigPond confirmed that the gun was not in use by the PSS.
She checked further and discovered that worldwide sales of the unique, armor-piercing 4.6mm ammunition were restricted to elite military and law enforcement units. Aside from the two-plus dozen of the Saudi crown prince’s bodyguards, the MP7 was carried by only two active-duty units: Britain’s SAS, which had replaced its mini-mini Uzis with MP7s, and Germany’s elite counterterrorist Wehrmacht unit, the Kommando Spezialkräfte or KSK.
By now MJ was totally wired. She enlarged the cropped area once more to see if she could find what the six men were doing—where and how they fit in the particular instant in time frozen in the photograph. She worked as methodically as if she were examining the contents of a petri dish or a lab specimen preserved under the glass slide of a microscope. It took her half an hour or so, but she finally realized what the six men were doing.
They were bodyguards. For a seventh man. A Palestinian security officer from the look of his uniform. That was odd. PSS officers provided security, they didn’t receive it.
She hadn’t paid much interest to the guy before. But now she lavished her attention on him. Except he wasn’t entirely visible. The Palestinian’s face was partially obscured by the red-and-white checked kaffiyeh he’d wrapped around his head and shoulders.
Just under two-thirds of his face could be seen. MJ’s eyes crinkled. “Not for long, Buster Brown.” She brushed her shoulder-length, butterscotch-colored hair out of her eyes, pulled it straight back, and trussed it with a rubber band. Then she took the photo crop, saved it as a separate jpg file, opened her Adobe Photo Shop software, and started playing with the