Thunderstrike in Syria (16 page)

"Then what's the point?" Risenberg asked.

"There's a tiny bomb in here. It's…"

"A bomb!" Wymann cut me off. "A bomb that size couldn't be more than a giant firecracker."

"Shut up and listen," I growled. "This isn't an explosive device. It's compressed hydrochlorsarsomasine, a very potent nerve gas that kills within seconds."

The Israelis looked disbelievingly at me. "So you get to the side of the cave and manage to toss the gas inside," Risenberg said. "One sniff and we're dead, too!"

"I think that some of the SLA will remain at this end while others go back for the carrier," I said. "The gas can't affect me. Before I left Tel Aviv, I was injected with a two-week long lasting antidote, a combination of atropine and tetrathiazide.

"That's just dandy!" Solomon's voice was next to venomous, but he didn't turn away from the Czech light machine gun. "What about the man who goes with you? What about the rest of us in the carrier?"

"The gas has a short life of only ten seconds," I explained. "The breeze is blowing away from us. The men in the carrier won't be harmed. But within the confines of a cave, with men grouped together just inside the entrance, they'd die within half a short breath."

I held up my hand for silence, seeing that Wymann was getting ready to interrupt again. "Whoever goes with me wouldn't stay by the side of the cave. He'd be forty feet up the slope before I tossed in the gas. I'd join him and we'd go across the top and drop grenades on the carrier. The rest we'd have to play by ear."

The four Israelis were skeptical of the plan. Down on his haunches, Wymann said, "What makes you think we can climb the side, get across the top and lob grenades into the carrier before Karameh reaches it? He's not exactly turtle-slow about such things."

"The fact that we beat him here tells me that the tunnel is a series of long twists and turns," I said.

"Yes, but they were on foot," Risenberg said. "We rode."

"Yet they were a thousand feet ahead of us," I said. "It's all academic. As I see it, our best bet right now is Pierre. Then we go across the top and attack."

I picked up a sack of stick grenades and put the strap over my shoulder. "Who wants to play hero with me?"

Risenberg picked up the Belgian CAL submachine gun and a long pouch of spare magazines. "I might as well tag along with you. Carter. I'd rather be on the move than sit here and wonder what was happening."

When I saw the pouch of eight extra magazines for the MP43, I strapped the pouch to my cartridge belt and picked up a West German
Sturm Gewehr
assault rifle. The StG was a superior weapon, not only because it was unlikely to jam, but because its long magazine held fifty-four 7.92 millimeter cartridges and could be fired either on full or semi-automatic.

I said to Solomon, "When you hear me give the world, rake both sides, but not more than a foot to either side. We'll go to the right of the front of the carrier. Do you understand?"

"I understand," Solomon said.

I glanced briefly at Risenberg; then, hunched over, I moved to the rear of the carrier. Risenberg moved behind me, carrying the CAL chatter box.

My hand was on the latch to the hatch in the rear of the carrier when Cham Elovitz said matter-of-factly, "Count me in, too. Three can do a better job than two. Ben and Lev can handle things here."

"We can hold them," Lev Wymann said, "but sooner or later the gun will run out of ammunition. If the three of you haven't done your job by then, Ben and I won't be around to see the sunrise."

The SLA on this side will be dead in less than ten minutes," I said. I shoved open the perpendicular hatch, eased myself through the opening, dropped to the ground and slung the StG across my back by its sling-strap.

I took out tiny Pierre, pulled the small red tab and very carefully returned him to his container. Now, any severe jar would cause the little devil to pop and release the deadly nerve gas.

Elovitz and Risenberg, who had crawled out behind me, watched with fascination, each man holding an automatic weapon. In addition to the two submachine guns, each man had a Russian Stechkin machine pistol in his belt.

"Any time you're ready, Carter," Risenberg said.

"Remember, to the right. Move to the right," I reminded him and Elovitz. Keep nine or ten feet away from me. When you reach the slope, start climbing. I'll catch up."

Both men nodded. I called out, "Get the show on the road, Solomon."

Instantly the light machine gun began throwing out slugs, each 7.92mm projectile a tiny rocket of death that hit the granite around the mouth of the cave's opening which was wide but low.

The three of us moved out from behind the rear end of the personnel carrier, I slightly in the lead, Risenberg and Elovitz to my right. Legs pumping, I shot straight across the moonlit space, my two companions racing at an angle that, by the time the three of us reached the face of the rock, would put them twenty feet to the right of me.

All the while the ZB30 roared, the rim of the entrance ahead screaming with ricochets. Darting to a point that would put me eight feet from the right side of the entrance, I hoped Solomon would stop firing the moment I reached the rock.

I doubt if the wild sprint took more than fifteen seconds. Suddenly I was against rough rock, panting, and the cave entrance was only seven to eight feet to the side of me. I pulled Wilhelmina from her holster, switching off the safety lever, then put my left hand into my pocket and let Pierre roll from the tube into my palm. A short distance behind me, I could hear Risenberg and Elovitz climbing up the slope, loose rocks tumbling beneath their feet.

I moved closer. Solomon had stopped chipping each side with slugs, but now and then he sent a three and four round burst directly into the mouth of the cave. Several feet from the right edge of the cave, I flipped Pierre around the rock and through the black opening. He must have soared twenty-five feet before falling and striking the ground. I heard the faint pop and knew that Pierre was spewing out the deadly nerve gas. Strangely, I didn't hear any sounds of panic, not a single gasp.

Was it possible that we had been tricked, that all of the SLA terrorists had already departed for the other entrance and at this very moment might be getting into their carrier?

Frustrated because I didn't dare poke my head into the cave, I moved ten feet to the right and began to climb the slope.

My only concern at the moment was that if I got smeared with slugs, I might die before I could take Mohammed Karameh with me.

With the hot northeasterly wind blowing against us, Elovitz, Risenberg, and I moved across the top of the ridge. The route was a chaotic mess of loose ground rock and grotesquely shaped sandstone structures sculptured by windblown sand. The surface itself resembled some Normandy battlefield, the terrain a patchwork of ruts, crooked channels and ribbed craters. But a personnel carrier could cross the top at this point. Ten to twelve yards to our right it was possible to drive a large vehicle forward by moving it carefully between boulders and enormous masses of granite, slabs arranged into natural stepping stones.

Another danger we had to face was the possibility that Karameh, if he and his people were returning to their carrier, might have anticipated our strategy and sent scouts ahead on foot. Consequently, the three of us proceeded with the utmost caution. We watched each big rock, our eyes probing the black shadows, our ears tuned to the slightest noise.

"You can't be sure that your gas bomb got any of them?" Risenberg asked again. "No sounds of strangling, nothing?"

"Five minutes from now my answer will be the same," I replied. "No, I didn't hear anything. I…"

I jerked up short, cocked my head to one side and held up my hand for silence. Elovitz and Risenberg stopped, a frozen expression on their faces.

We could hear the faint sound of an engine up ahead, the noise growing louder with each second. Karameh had reached his personnel carrier and, judging from the deep throbbing of the engine, the armored vehicle was slowly moving up the slope. We couldn't be positive, but we estimated the top of the slope to be three hundred and fifty feet ahead. From the sound of the engine, the carrier would come over the edge at about a hundred feet to our right.

"I think we have a big problem!" Risenberg muttered. When he saw that neither Elovitz or I was amused at his attempt at humor, he added coldly, "We'll have to gauge the route of the carrier and plan accordingly."

"God help us," Elovitz muttered resignedly.

I swung to the right. "Come on. We have to move in a hurry."

"Where?" asked Elovitz.

I didn't bother to answer. We hurried past boulders, jumped over crooked cracks and ran around the side of craters, at times stumbling on loose gravel. When the sound of the engine was immediately in front of us, we stopped and looked around. Other than boulders, there were monumental basalt and granite slabs all tumbled into each other, some forming tremendous stepping-stones to a height of thirty feet. Between these structures there was ample space for a carrier to proceed forward, the ground itself being fairly level.

Elovitz and Risenberg turned and looked at me, their stares asking.
Now what?

"I'll get up on the rocks to the left," I told them. "The two of you take the right side. Hopefully the carrier will pass between us. I'll lob down grenades. You two machine gun anyone who might escape the grenades."

Elovitz came right to the point. "What about the
scouts? AI-Huriya
would be a moron not to have four or five men on recon ahead of the carrier."

Risenberg thrust in, his voice sharp, "We don't dare let the scouts get behind us. If we get sandwiched between them and the carrier, we'll have had it."

"Yeah, and there'll be a man on the machine gun on the cab," Elovitz said. "I wasn't sure, but it looked like a SDhK job."

"In that case, you two take care of the scouts and the man on the DShK," I said. "I'll use grenades against the carrier. Four or five of them should blow off one of the front wheels.

Risenberg sighed. "Yes, if our luck holds."

In position, the three of us waited. I lay flat to one side of a chunk of jagged-edged granite. Forty feet away from me, across the gap, Elovitz and Risenberg were concealed in boulders at the top of an enormous pile of stepping-stones. In the bright white moonlight we could see everything clearly.

We waited. We watched. We stared ahead in the direction of the engine noise. The driver of the carrier would logically take the path that offered the least difficulty. And the route below, between me and the two Israelis, was the only passable course at this end of the ridge.

I blinked. Had I seen a figure dash into the deep shadow of a rock a few hundred feet ahead? I wasn't sure. I stared at the shadow, not even daring to blink. I had been right the first time. A figure darted from the inky blackness and ran to the side of another rock, a man carrying either a submachine gun or an assault rifle. I hoped that Elovitz and Risenberg had also spotted the lone enemy.

Ten feet behind the first SLA guerrilla, I spotted two more men, their white
kaffiyehs
stark in the moonlight. Behind the first three terrorists came a fourth and a fifth, the last gunman hard to follow because he was wearing the dark robe of a Syrian Bedouin.

I watched the five Arabs run from rock to rock, their weapons at hip level. Suddenly the carrier loomed seventy-five to eighty feet behind them, its lights turned off. Right away I saw that my two friends and I were in trouble. If we waited until the carrier was close enough, the scouts would be behind us and we wouldn't be able to see them.

There was no way for me to contact Elovitz and Risenberg. I could only hope that they would spray the scouts with slugs at the very last moment and that when they did, the carrier would be close enough for me to use a makeshift explosive pack.

Glancing every now and then at the approaching scouts, I took three grenades from the bag on my shoulder and clipped them to my cartridge belt. I then proceeded to wrap the canvas tightly around the remaining eight grenades in the big, cut the strap in two on a sharp edge of a rock and tied the two lengths securely around the bulky package, leaving a foot of one strap dangle. The package was ready. I hoped to God that Risenberg and Elovitz were.

I picked up my German assault rifle and pushed the selector to automatic fire. Twenty feet below and in front of me was the first of the scouts, the Arab gunsel taking the point. Damn it, I thought. When the scouts stopped slugs, the personnel carrier would be one hundred feet out front. That was one helluva long distance. But there wasn't any other way. My high swing would have to carry the package of grenades close enough to get the job done. If not…

I couldn't wait any longer. I caught the first scout in my sights and my finger moved closer to the trigger. Elovitz, Risenberg and I could have been mentally wired on the same circuit because the instant my StG assault rifle shattered the stillness, their machine guns started to roar.

The Syrian who had taken the point was ripped apart by my dead center burst of 7.92mm slugs, the impact knocking him back a dozen feet before he sagged to the ground. The Israelis proved that they were old pros in the ways of a firefight. They ignored the first scout, assuming I had seen him, and directed their shots at the other four. I heard short cries of pain and deduced that the Israelis' slugs had killed the two Syrians I had lost in the shadows. My own muzzle flashed fire as I raked the darkness to the left of the rock. One of the two men must have moved because he fired back. A dozen high impact projectiles screamed all around me, one striking so close that several chips of rock struck me on the right cheek. I returned the fire during the man's lag time between bursts, the flashing from his own muzzle, etched in my memory, serving as my target. A very short shriek informed me that I hadn't missed.