Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (122 page)

She had to get to the centre of the kibbutz. To safety.

Ducking, she zigzagged from house to house, trying to put
as many walls between herself and the bullets as possible. She
cursed her belly. It was slowing her down. Without it, she
could have crawled off as swiftly as the boys.

Suddenly she sucked in her breath. An Arab had leapt from
around the corner of the next house, his carbine levelled at
her.

She froze in her tracks, time ceased to exist. The world
slowed to half-speed, like a film in slow motion. Curiously,
she felt no fear, only surprise. She could see the fanatical eyes flashing wild hatred; she could sense him lining her up in his
sights and squeezing the trigger. Even the shot, when it came,
seemed to happen in slow motion.

And then Dani came racing toward her, and everything
sped up once again. 'Tamara!' he bellowed, leaping to tackle
her in order to shove her to safety while his own carbine
blasted the Arab off his feet.

But the Arab had already fired, and Dani was too late.

Tamara's mouth gaped open and her eyes widened as some
thing exploded in her abdomen. She found herself flying back
ward, off her feet, as if a massive gust of wind had sent her sprawling. Then she crumpled and fell heavily on her back,
rocked forward on her buttocks, and fell back one last time,
her arms spreading out as though she'd been crucified.

Dani didn't bother crawling to her; he dived six feet to
where she'd fallen.

She tried to raise her head, but it wouldn't lift. She stared
up at him, her eyes wide and confused. 'Dani,' she whispered,
'what's happened?'

'You were shot, darling. Shushhhh . . .' His voice was muf
fled, as if her ears were filled with cotton.

'The baby,' she whispered, her words slurred. One arm
moved and she gripped Dani's shirt so fiercely he nearly
choked. 'Our baby!' Tears formed in her eyes. 'The
baaabbbyyy . . .' Her hand loosened from his collar and fell,
and then she was still.

Chapter 31

There was no moon to light their way, but it was a blessing in
disguise; neither was there a moon to give them away.

Now that the time was nearing, the men began to prepare
their weapons. They had slept all day, hidden in the shadows of the sawtooth mountains, which had soaked up the heat of
the sun and trapped the simmering air, and then, when the
temperature had plunged, they had waited patiently through
most of the chilly night. The desert was eerily disturbing in its
intense and utter silence.

The oasis was less silent, but no less disturbing: overhead,
date palms scratched frond against frond; below, the herd of goats rustled uneasily in sleep and a single dog growled every
now and then, its nose sniffing the air. Three times Dani had
left his men to slip silently into the night, invisible in the dark
ness, and reconnoitred the perimeter of the oasis, the last
time, an hour ago, actually slipping unnoticed into its very
heart. What he found did not gladden him, but eased his ten
sion. There were three men on guard; two were asleep and
the third was smoking carelessly.

He nodded to himself: retaliation was not seriously
expected, or else the guards would have been more aware.

He returned to his group of handpicked men and materi
alized out of the darkness. 'We wait until after morning prayers,' he said softly with the patience of the hunter.

The men understood. They were going to wait for the dawn,
when the muezzin would call the Muslim faithful to morning prayer. Dani was bitter and there was no mercy in his heart, just as there was none in theirs. The attack would begin after
the prayers were said: the people of al-Najaf would need the
opportunity to make peace with God.

When dawn lightened the sky in the east, Dani gathered the
men around him. 'An eye for an eye,' he said grimly. 'One
house burned, three dead, and six wounded. No more, no
less.' He looked at Schmarya.

'So be it,' Schmarya pronounced.

They fanned out soundlessly, surrounding the oasis and
moving into their predetermined positions. There they waited,
hidden and silent, while the oasis was coming awake. Doors
opened, and people came outside, going about their morning
business. Women fetched pitchers of water. Smoke began to
curl from chimneys. Then the muezzin climbed the steps to the
minaret of the tiny stone mosque and called them to morning prayer, his singsong words echoing monotonously. Everyone,
the guards included, stopped what he was doing, cleansed
himself ritually, and turned southeast toward Mecca. Every
one dropped to their knees and prayed. All was peaceful at
al-Najaf. All was well.

The twelve men from Ein Shmona double-checked their
weapons. Dani peered out from behind a rock, waiting to fire
off the first shot, which would sound the signal for the attack
to begin twenty seconds later. Moishe Karavan, who was positioned nearest the houses, transferred gasoline from a can into
a bottle, stuffed a gasoline-soaked rag into its neck, and held
matches at the ready. Schmarya, catching sight of Naemuddin,
felt a wave of guilt and anguish and bent his head in silent prayer. He was glad that Dani had decided to wait until after
morning prayer to attack. The families of those who would die
would at least be assured that their loved ones would enter
Paradise.

Prayers over, the people of al-Najaf went about their daily affairs, happily ignorant of the attack in store for them. The three guards shouldered their rifles, smoking and chattering
in a group, unknowingly calling attention to themselves as
easy targets.

'
They have prayed,' Dani told himself through clenched
teeth. 'Now we shall see if they are ready to die.' He fired once
into the air to give fair warning for the women and children to
seek safety, and then he counted to twenty. Shrieks of terror
rent the quiet as mothers snatched up their children and scat
tered in panic while the men dashed indoors to fetch weapons.
Caught by surprise, the three guards fired blindly, foolishly
staying together in a tight group. They were felled instantly by a fusillade of shots that hit true. Dani nodded to himself with satisfaction. It was going exactly as planned: the dead
guards were the revenge for the dead of Ein Shmona; that left
one house to destroy and four men to wound.

He covered Moishe while his friend made a mad dash with the flaming bottle. Moishe had kept his eye peeled for a house
into which none of the women and children had fled, presum
ing it to be empty. Reaching it, he chucked the bottle inside, and there was an immediate explosion. An orange fireball burst out the door as if to chase him away, and the house
became a roaring inferno.

Dani covered Moishe with a spray of bullets, aiming to wound, not kill. The shrieks and screams coming from the
women and children were cries of terror, not pain, of that
Dani was certain. He had given the men explicit instructions: harming women and children was to be avoided at all costs.

By this time the men of al-Najaf had had time to snatch
their weapons, and there was heated return fire, puffballs
marking the positions of resistance. Moishe let out a scream
as a bullet felled him, but it was a minor injury and he painfully
crawled to safety.

There were no firearms in the house of peace-loving
Naemuddin and Jehan, his wife, and so they returned no fire. At the sound of the first shot, Naemuddin had pulled his wife
down to the floor and instructed her to stay put. His face
was contorted with anguish and his voice was filled with rage.
'Abdullah has brought this upon us!' he roared, and then hur
ried outside to try to put a stop to the madness. Moments
later a stray bullet smashed into his shoulder and whirled him
around. He fell heavily. Jehan, hearing his cry of pain, dis
regarded his instructions and ran outside to pull him to safety.
She offered up a prayer of thanks that it was only a flesh
wound, not fatal, and immediately put water on the stove to
boil.

Abdullah was enraged. He had been hoping for a retaliatory
attack, knowing that nothing would fuel the fires of hatred
quite as powerfully as the deaths of innocents. Armed as
always, he had been prepared and had dived for shelter behind
a low wall, and had been the first to return fire. He had warned
the guards to be alert, but they had failed. Seeing them fall,
he cursed them: they deserved to die. They had been lax, and
he hoped they went straight to hell.

But the retaliatory attack was not going as Abdullah had hoped. The Jews were careful shots. From what he could see,
not one woman or child had been hit. He cursed again.
Already the sounds of gunfire were slowing.

It was then that he caught sight of little Iffat, his half-niece.
She was crouched behind a stone wall not twenty-five feet in
front of him. He looked around furtively. No one could see;
everyone was hiding or busy shooting. She would be a worthy sacrifice, a sacrifice necessary to catapult the mourning of the
dead men and the hatred of the Jews to extreme, fever pitch.

He trained his sights on her and pulled the trigger.

He lowered his rifle and smiled, satisfied. Her death would
be blamed on the Jews.

Dani had kept tabs; the moment he counted three killing
shots, four wounded men, and the fire, he gave the signal for
his men to retreat. Two of them grabbed Moishe under his
armpits and dragged him with them. They left as suddenly as
they had come.

The attack had taken less than two minutes.

Schmarya had not fired a single shot.

Chapter 32

The moment the men returned from the retaliatory raid, Dani
headed straight for the infirmary.

'She's stable,' Dr. Saperstein told him.

'Can I see her now?'

'Against my better judgment, I will give you five minutes
with her.' The doctor wagged an admonishing finger. 'Not one
minute longer. I don't want you to tire her.'