Thunderstrike in Syria

Chapter Thirteen

The distance between the two personnel carriers grew less and less. On both sides of us were small hummocks of various sizes, some long and sloping, others short and rounded at the top, or almost square, the entire conglomeration a laminate of sandstone mixed with granite, basalt and some shale. At all levels were the dark maws of cave openings.

We were about three hundred yards behind Karameh's carrier when it pulled up to a stop. The side hatches of the cab and the rear hatch of the personnel section were thrown open and men jumped out and began running toward a cave to the left.

Risenberg and I saw why the carrier had come to a halt. The road had ended against a pile of slab rock at the base of a large hillock. It was a reasonable conclusion that the cave had been Karameh's final destination. To me, it was damned ridiculous.

"What do you make of it, Carter?" Risenberg's voice was one big question mark. "For Karameh to come all this way to take refuge in a cave doesn't make sense!"

The answer suddenly hit me with the force of a bullet in the back!

"Quickly," I said. "Head up the left side of one of the slopes. I have a hunch the cave is nothing but a tunnel."

Risenberg glanced to the left. The slopes on that side weren't half as steep as the one we had descended several miles back. From bottom to top maybe a hundred feet. However, the summit didn't look very inviting, some of the rocks half the size of a small house.

Without any hesitation, Risenberg turned the carrier to the left and gunned the motor. I yelled to the men in back, "Hang on. We're going up the side of a hill."

Risenberg said, "Suppose they are going through a tunnel! Do you think…?" He let his voice dangle off and grinned from ear to ear.

"A helicopter! That's it!" I almost yelled.

"Let's hope the tunnel is a long one," he added. Risenberg headed the personnel carrier up the incline, moving the vehicle as fast as the rocky terrain would permit. Soon we reached the top of the hill and were rolling and bouncing toward the slope on the other side. The journey was not a smooth one. In places there were titanic stepping stones, smoothed by rain and windblown sand, and the carrier had to be guided between them.

Neither of us had forgotten that Karameh and his people were one thousand feet ahead of us. It would have been to our advantage if Joe had been able to drive the carrier at an angle that would have put us in the vicinity of the tunnel's mouth. Such a maneuver was not possible; picking our way through the rocks would have cost us too much time. Better to head straight across the top and take the risk that, once we had reached the bottom of the other slope, we'd be able to drive forward and be in time to cut off the Hawk.

Risenberg chose the route that offered the least resistance; it was unfortunate that it was also the widest area of the top, slightly more than a quarter of a mile. When we finally reached the edge, Risenberg left the engine idling and got out of the cab, to take a look.

I was more impatient than a new bride as he climbed through the side hatch and sat back down. "What's it look like? Did you see any sign of a chopper?"

"The slope will be easy," he replied, shifting gears. "It's like the other side: steep but not too steep. At the bottom, it all looks like sand. No doubt an ancient riverbed. I think there's a canopy in the distance. I'm not sure."

"If there is a canopy, then there has to.be an eggbeater underneath it," I said. "We'll soon know."

We didn't have any difficulty going down the slope, the slant being rather gentle, although there were some jagged rocks which Risenberg carefully avoided. At the bottom, Risenberg turned to the right and pressed down on the gas. We both felt that we had just won a million dollar lottery, for now that we were on more or less level ground we could see that underneath the canopy were two helicopters. But we were still too far away to make out their size and passenger capacity.

"Listen. I'm going back and let the others know exactly what is happening," I said. "Karameh and his people are still in the tunnel or they'd be yanking the canopy off the choppers. Their best protection was the armored car and we blew it to hell and back."

"None of us know how to fly a helicopter," Risenberg said. "How about you. Carter? I don't suppose you can!"

"You suppose wrong." I got out of the co-driver's seat and began moving to the oval opening in the rear of the cab. "We'll fly to Jordan. But first things first. You park in front of the choppers, with the front of the carrier pointed toward the entrance of the tunnel."

Risenberg looked wonderingly at me. "In front! That will put us over ninety feet from the cave. Why so far away?"

I went to the hatch, paused and turned to him. "We can keep them bottled up in the tunnel with the Czech ZB30. At that distance we can cut them down if they try to rush us from the cave and use grenades. Neither of us need a crystal ball to know what Karameh will do once we bottle him up at this end!"

He swung around and stared knowingly at me and for a moment our eyes locked. "They can use their carrier to climb the slope the same as we did. They can stay up there and fire down on us or else come down and battle it out. We'd end up with — what is your American expression?"

"A Mexican standoff," I said, smiling. "But I don't intend to let that happen."

Risenberg didn't reply. He only pushed down harder on the gas.

I squeezed my way through the hatch and hurriedly explained the situation to Wymann, Solomon and Elovitz, the four of us hanging onto the metal benches to keep from being tumbled about the boxlike section.

"Flying out of here sounds good," Wymann said equably, "but what can we gain by keeping Karameh and his killers bottled up in this end of the tunnel?"

Elovitz nodded pensively. "I say fly to Jordan and be done with this entire business. We've been through enough."

Ben Solomon glanced at me and shook his head, a smile of superior amusement twisting the corners of his mouth. "We can't escape to Jordan until Mohammed Bashir Karameh is dead. Our friend Carter is an American intelligence agent and has a job to do. Isn't that right, Carter?"

This was one of those times when a half-truth could serve better than a full lie. "Hamosad wants the SLA destroyed at all costs," I said. "You are Israelis, aren't you? You don't have any choice. You must help — or stop calling yourselves men."

"You're with Hamosad?" Elovitz's tone and manner indicated that he didn't believe I was.

"If you want to know about Israeli intelligence, ask Risenberg," I snapped. "But you'll do it later. We don't have time at the moment for a round table discussion."

"We'll help," Solomon said quickly. "It's only that I don't see what the five of us can do against all of them. It was different when we had the tank. Then we had the firepower and were protected by armor."

"I've a plan," I said, "and I think the odds are with us."

Elovitz chuckled. "If you were Jewish, there are many in Israel who would call you a Lamedvovnik."

I didn't know whether I was being complimented or insulted. "And what is Lamedvovnik?"

A lilt to his raspy voice, Elovitz explained that a Lamedvovnik was a secret saint. "Ultra-Orthodox Jews believe that the very existence of the world depends on the righteousness of such men," he said, "and that their personal virtue stays God's hands from destroying the world."

I didn't have time to tell Elovitz that I was not a likely candidate for secret sainthood in any religion. Risenberg's voice bellowed back to us from the cab, "The SLA! They're coming out of the tunnel!"

I jumped to the platform on the left side of the hatch and pulled back the cocking knob of the Czech ZB30. I saw that five Syrians had run from the mouth of the cave and were halfway to the two helicopters, three of them swinging assault rifles around toward the carrier. I didn't even bother to line up my eyes with the ball sight in the center of the ring at the end of the barrel. I squeezed the trigger, the roar of the machine gun a fatal symphony, the last sound heard by the five terrorists who were knocked off their feet by the high velocity 7.92mm. Other SLA guerrillas, who were about to come out of the cave, jumped back inside, only seconds before I swung the ZB30 and chopped the sides and the entrance with a few hundred more slugs.

We were close to the two helicopters now. One was a Russian L-15, a twenty passenger job; the other, an L-17, was a gunship with rocket pods on each side and heavy machine guns mounted on both port and starboard. Maybe this was how Karameh had intended to finish us off. We couldn't have mounted any defense against rockets.

The four of us hung on for dear life as Risenberg turned the carrier sharply to the right. He stopped, then backed up and braked again. We were fifty feet in front of the helicopters and a hundred and twenty-five feet directly in front of the ragged mouth of the cave.

I saw a few heads pop out from one side of the entrance and fired a short burst, the big slugs striking the rock and throwing up clouds of chips and dust.

Risenberg came through the driver's rear hatch, wiping his face. I motioned for Solomon to take over the Czech ZB30. I stepped down from the platform and he took my place, careful to keep his head and torso behind the square armored shield mounted to the machine gun.

"We have that Mexican standoff," Risenberg said to me, tight-lipped. "We can't get to them and they can't reach us, at least not until Karameh wises up and goes back to get his carrier."

Wymann's voice was wistful. "It would be easy to throw off the canvas covering and fly out." His eyes, on me, were stern. "We heard you say you could pilot a helicopter."

"We'd never make it." I said. "They'd fill us full of slugs while we were lifting off. What we have to do is eliminate as many of them as possible before they have a chance to go back through the tunnel and get their carrier."

"There isn't any way we can go in after them," Risenberg said, "at either end of the tunnel. They'd cut us down before we could take a step."

"Solomon could keep them down inside with bursts of slugs," I said. "In the meantime, several of us can dash to one side of the cave."

The four Israelis stared at me as if I had grown a second head.

"That's no strategy, Carter!" Elovitz said angrily. "That's suicide! They'd put so much lead in us it would take a crane to lift our bodies. There's no way we can get inside that cave."

I didn't blame the Israelis for thinking I wasn't playing with a full deck. Charging the cave would have been an idiot method; it would have meant certain death.

"You're absolutely right," I agreed. "But I didn't say anything about going inside." I reached into my pocket and took out the tube containing Pierre.

"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.

Him and Miriam Kamel…