Thunderstrike in Syria

Chapter Fourteen

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.

Now Karameh and his people got into action. I waited for two or three seconds to make sure that Elovitz and Risenberg would do their job. They did! A terrorist stepped up on the gun platform of the carrier, tried to swing the armored shield into place and was instantly slammed into the next world by a stream of slugs from either Elovitz or Risenberg.

Another chain of projectiles raked across the front of the driver's compartment, the numerous ricochets sounding almost like some kind of animal screaming in pain. The two Israelis were taking no chances that any enemy might fire through the two vision slots of the compartment.

It was now or never. I picked up the package of grenades by the strap, stood up, measured the distance and threw the bundle as hard as I could, watching it arc in the moonlight as I dropped back to the ground and picked up my rifle.

The package hit the rocks six feet to one side of the vehicle, toward the front. I didn't hesitate. I fired a short burst into the canvas bundle and the eight grenades exploded with an earthshaking roar. A flash of flame, the sound of last minute shrapnel hitting ground, and it was all over. I stared at the carrier through the clearing smoke while Risenberg and Elovitz flooded the front of the cab with another wave of slugs, killing two more terrorists.

I sighed with relief; the eight grenades had done their job. The explosion had wrecked the carrier's left front wheel, twisting it on its mounting so that the vehicle was tilted heavily to the left. It would never move again. Neither would I or the two Israelis if we didn't change positions and get off the rocks. Elovitz and Risenberg had to take time to reload, which enabled two Syrians to reach the machine gun mounted to the rear roof of the cab, one pulling down the shield, the other grabbing the guide handle.

Just before the man opened fire, I wriggled back from the edge of the slab and saw that the guerrillas had piled out of the rear hatchway and were running to the rocks from both the left and the right sides. I felt a knot grow in the pit of my stomach. How could there be that many of the enemy in the carrier? Only one answer made sense: Pierre had not killed anyone. There hadn't been any guerillas in the mouth of the cave; they had all gone back to the carrier with Karameh. Furthermore, there wasn't any way to tell how many there were down below. If they had doubled up in the carrier, we could be facing as many as thirty-five or forty.

After shoving a full magazine into the StG assault rifle, I slid all the way back from the rock and began my descent to level ground. As I reached the bottom, I started to dodge and weave to my right. My present goal was to link up with Elovitz and Risenberg so that the three of us could form an internal sphere of defense. I heard the snarling of submachines sixty feet to the north of me — the two Israelis. There was more roaring in a wide arc to the west — the damned SLA.

They had spotted me! A bullet cut through my pants at the rear of my left thigh but it barely grazed the flesh. Another slug cut over the top of my head, jerking my hair in its hot passage. A third projectile tugged at the back of my collar, hit a rock several feet to one side of me and ricocheted off, missing my right cheek by only inches.

I dove into a small crater and slithered across on my belly, ending up twenty feet to the right of my original position.

High velocity projectiles splattered against the two chunks of granite, that were my cover, the advancing gunmen thinking they had me pinned down. I peeked out from behind the rock and saw six or seven of them running to one side, then to the other, pausing now and then to trigger off short bursts. I twisted my mouth into a smile. They were running straight into their own open air funerals.

Thrusting the barrel of the StG over the top of a rock, I fired in a swinging back and forth motion. Caught with their caution down, the terrorists didn't have time to turn their weapons toward me. My stream of swaged slugs ripped into them, the hollow-pointed lead tearing off tiny patches of cloth, then striking flesh. One of my slugs struck a grenade hanging on a man's chest, and he exploded.

Trusting that Risenberg and Elovitz were holding the area to the north, I took two of the stick grenades from my belt, pulled the pin from one and threw it west of me. I flung the second grenade twenty feet to the right of the first explosion, and again dropped flat, listening to the sound of stray shrapnel striking the granite. Screams and moans floated back to me from the west. One Syrian, his hands pressed tightly over his mutilated face, staggered toward me. Several other guerrillas, dazed by concussion, weaved drunkenly, not realizing they were totally exposed to my fire.

Now was the time to move. Trying to stay close to the larger boulders of granite, I crawled on my hands and knees for six or seven yards, then jumped up and started running a crooked course to the north. Behind me, several grenades exploded in the vicinity of my previous position, the detonations ringing up and down the ridge.

I spotted Elovitz dodging to my left, thirty feet in front of me, and yelled loudly in Hebrew, "Cham! I'm in front of you."

I knew I was taking a chance by calling out. Proof came a few moments after I snuggled down into a rounded out depression close to a clearing which was actually the top of a mammoth slab of limestone. I estimated that a hundred enemy slugs stabbed into the rocks around me, the racket of ricochets a crescendo of screeching whines.

I looked for a more secure position, but saw none. There was, however, a ditchlike fissure that ran parallel to me. As far as I could detect in the half-darkness, it changed to a diagonal route ten feet to the south. I edged closer to the large crack in the rock and looked down. I could see by the moonlight striking one side that the ditch was less than five feet deep. Perfect for an escape route. Dropping into the crevice feet first I moved toward the north and hoped that if Risenberg and Elovitz heard me, they wouldn't shoot before they looked. The sound of feet on loose stone just around a bend in the ditch startled me. I stopped and listened. The noise stopped.

"Carter? Is that you?" Elovitz whispered loudly.

"I'm ahead of you," I said relieved. "I'll be there in a minute."

"Hold it," Elovitz ordered. "Give our names."

I smiled at their common-sense caution. "Josef Risenberg and Cham Elovitz — the two jokers suffering through this with me."

"Come on," Risenberg called back with a half-laugh.

I hurried forward, rounded the bend and soon had made contact with the two Israelis, who were as dirty and sweat-soaked as I.

"The two of you took a chance calling out that way," I admonished. "I could have been the enemy, but I'm glad you did. How many have you neutralized?"

"More than a dozen that we know of," Risenberg whispered. "The damned fools charged right at us. Fanatics, everyone of them." He gave a cynical snort. "How about you?"

"At least that many. Have you seen anything of Karameh or the Kamels?"

The two Israelis shook their heads to the negative.

"We didn't have time to look at faces," Elovitz said. "I think a few of them were women, but we didn't check. What's our next move?"

"We can't cross the open space without exposing ourselves to enemy gunfire," I said. "Let's try to get behind whoever is left and finish them off. And watch out for slugs from the carrier. There still might be someone manning the heavy machine gun."

We moved along the inside of the ditch for another thirty or forty feet, then stopped and listened, all three of us worried about the silence. What small animals were on the hilltop had been frightened by the gunfire, and the unnatural stillness was unnerving. The SLA had lost us. But neither did we know where they were.

Discreetly I poked my head over the top of the ditch and looked around. On one side, all I saw were rocks of various sizes and shapes. On the other side was a large open area. What would the SLA expect us to do? They knew we wouldn't be stupid enough to try to cross the open space. They could only guess. They had to realize that we were in the general vicinity. All right. They'd try to encircle us. We had to get behind them before they succeeded.

"Let's try for those rocks, " I suggested.

The three of us crawled out of the ditch and began to creep along the scattered stones, keeping as low as possible. I pulled up short at the sight of the three bodies ahead, lying to one side of a slab rock.

"Careful," I whispered. "It could be a trap."

"I think they're three of the pigs we killed," Elovitz whispered. "I recognize the Safari hat one of them is wearing."

With our weapons pointed downward, we approached the corpses. We soon discovered that one of the bodies was that of a young woman in her early twenties, her dead, dark eyes staring up at the stars. There was a holster around her waist and a Stechkin machine pistol in the bloody leather. I pulled out the gun, stuffed it into my own belt and glanced at Elovitz who was searching the other two bodies while Risenberg kept watch.

Elovitz held up the wrist of one slain terrorist and whispered, "Look, this one is wearing a Seiko chronograph!"

"Take it," I said. "It may come in handy."

We continued forward, came to an enormous boulder, and started to edge around it, our hearts pounding with tension. It happened so very quickly that the four Syrians, coming from the other side, were as surprised as we were. The seven of us had practically collided with each other.

I was the first to react; I swung up my StG and fired. The dozen hollow-pointed slugs almost cut the first killer in two, then continued on their way through empty air. Simultaneously, Elovitz and Risenberg leaped to one side and rushed forward to meet the three other SLA members before any of them could throw slugs at us. I heard a scraping sound above me, looked up and saw the surprised face of still another terrorist whose body was sliding toward me, his arms and legs moving frantically as he tried to brake his fall. Apparently he had crawled across the top of the rock and had been getting ready to spray slugs down on top of me when he slipped on the marblelike basalt. I didn't have time to duck. He came down on top of me, losing his gun, the impact of his fall forcing my own rifle from my hands.

"Dog infidel!" he snarled and, trying to keep me pinned down, pulled a Ghizu from his tangled waistcoat.

I jabbed a thumb into his left eye and somehow managed to get my hand around his wrist, succeeding in keeping the point of the knife away from my throat. Together, we rolled over on our sides, then struggled to our feet. I was worried, but not because the Syrian was half a head taller and outweighed me by fifty pounds. I feared that before we finished with this group, the rest of the terrorists would arrive. The blast from my StG had pinpointed our location.

The big Syrian, much stronger than I, jerked his knife-hand free from my grasp. He attempted a straight inward slash, at the same moment that I stepped back, twisted my wrist free and avoided the blade by sidestepping to the left rear. For a moment, my attacker was confused. A man used to brute force, he couldn't comprehend the subtler techniques of attack and defense.

As the Ghizu returned to its trajectory, my arms shot out, one going underneath his right elbow joint and pushing upward, the other catching his right wrist and pushing downward with every ounce of strength at my command. The elbow snapped. The man howled but didn't have time to put up any kind of defense. I followed the scissors break with a right lead leg shin kick and the Syrian fell flat on his face. Immediately I stomped on the back of his neck, breaking it.

Stepping away from the corpse, I spotted Cham Elovitz struggling with two of the enemy, but he didn't need any help. Cham succeeded in shoving the muzzle of his North Vietnamese MAT underneath one man's chin and pulled the trigger, the barrel spitting out half a dozen rounds of 7.62mm projectiles. With the dead man sagging, Elovitz used his left hand to stab the second Syrian in the face with the barrel of the MAT. The man screamed in pain, let go of Elovitz's right arm and stepped back. Elovitz instantly blew him away with a short burst of slugs to the chest, while Risenberg, struggling with yet another terrorist, finished off his opponent by cracking open the side of the man's head.

As I stooped to pull the StG from underneath my recent victim's body, my worst fear became cold reality. The other SLA terrorists were coming in from all sides, rushing us so fast I didn't have time to bother with the German assault rifle nor to pick up the Russian machine gun the terrorist had dropped. My hands dove to my holster; I jerked out the Stechkin and Wilhelmina and started firing. Elovitz and Risenberg, their faces grim and determined, started firing their machine guns, the three of us dodging and weaving back and forth.

But Fate was against us. There were too many of them, and quickly we were encircled. I used my last Stechkin round to kill an SLA sadist who was about to stab Elovitz in the back.

My eyes raking the area, I saw at once that we were confronting the remnants of the enemy force. Mohammed Karameh was with them! I spotted him to the southeast of me, a Soviet PPS-43 submachine gun in his hands. To his right was the fox-faced Ahmed Kamel, the back of his kaffiyeh flowing in the wind. To the left of Karameh — Miriam Kamel! She carried what looked like an AK-47. All three were running toward us. However, they couldn't fire at me or the Israelis because of the intervening Syrian SLAs.

I still had five cartridges left in Wilhelmina and put one of them into a Syrian's face at pointblank range. I then tossed the Luger to my left hand, after dropping the Stechkin, and gave a half-twist to my right arm. Hugo jumped from his case and his handle slid into my hand. I jumped to one side to avoid a string of 7.62mm bullets at about the same time that Risenberg slammed a Syrian across the face with the side of a Stechkin machine pistol. Risenberg didn't slow down. With a short burst he sprayed the two men who rushed him, then spun and fired the AKM at two more SLAs, one of whom was a woman, the flat-nosed projectiles punching the two in the stomach. The man fell back and died without a murmur, but the woman let out a high-pitched scream.

I dove to the side of a slab of granite resembling a tombstone that had sunk to one side, aware that Mohammed Karameh and the two Kamels were only twenty-five feet ahead of me. I reasoned that if I knew they were there, they had to know that I was here. Quickly I shoved Hugo into my belt, reloaded Wilhelmina and forced myself to wait. To be on the safe side, I glanced around me and made another dive a few seconds before the chain of UZI projectiles cut into the side of the tombstone-rock. Slugs zinged off and chips flew. The man who had fired had reared up from behind a chunk of sandstone to my right, almost parallel to my own position. I had seen the man's face only very briefly and now felt pure hatred flooding up within me. That jet black beard! Those deep-set eyes! That long, crooked nose. The gunman was Khalil Marras, one of Karameh's top aides.

Hurriedly, I crawled for my life, inching between two long slabs of granite just as Marras reared up again to fire. No doubt he thought he had me cold. It was a fatal mistake on his part.

Marras' slugs hit only bare rock. From my new position, I pulled Wilhelmina's trigger in unison with Elovitz who, having somehow gotten hold of an enemy's Soviet-made PPS43, cut loose with a long burst. My two 9mm bullets hit Marras high in the chest and knocked him back while Elovitz's stream of slugs stitched Marras in the left side.

I'll never know whether it was Mohammed Karameh or one of the Kamels who killed Elovitz. All I know is that there was a roaring to the front of me, and to my right, a long burst of slugs that ripped into the Israeli from neck to navel and knocked him backward. He must have died with twenty tunnels bored through his body.

There was a second burst of firing, this blast at Risenberg, who ducked down and let out a yell, a howl of pain. Was he dead or only wounded? I didn't know. I didn't dare call out to him.

I was certain that Karameh and Miriam and Ahmed Kamel were ahead of me, hidden down somewhere in the rocks. I strained my eyes in the bright moonlight. Could there by any SLAs hiding behind me? If there were, I didn't see them. If there were, they didn't see me, or else they would have fired. Could it be that there were only four of us left alive — just me and Karameh and the two Kamels?

With only Wilhelmina and Hugo left, I began to crawl, following the route along the slab of granite which gradually curved in the general direction of my prey.

Slowly and carefully, so as not to disturb loose gravel, I continued forward another twenty feet, wondering if the other three were moving in the opposite direction. I stopped and listened. I couldn't be sure, but thought I heard loose rock falling to my right. I glanced behind me. Nothing.

I reared up slightly and looked to the right. Fifteen feet away were Mohammed Karameh, Ahmed Kamel and Miriam Kamel… their backs toward me, all three crawling forward on their hands and knees.

I could have fired from behind the tiny wall of granite. But I didn't want to take the chance that, during those few seconds, one of them might crawl behind a rock and away from my line of fire. Wilhelmina was very efficient, but she wasn't a match for the automatic weapons they had.

I jumped up and around the end of the ridge and raised Wilhelmina. Hearing me, the three swung around, alarm flashing all over their faces. I snapped off two shots, aiming at Karameh, who reacted with amazing speed, as did Ahmed Kamel. I knew how their minds were working because, under similar conditions, I would have used the same stay-alive logic. Knowing that they didn't have time to fire within that slight shave of a second, they jerked to one side. Only Miriam tried to swing around.

Stupidly, she jumped to her feet and tried to level the AK-47 assault rifle at me. I didn't take time to move Wilhelmina's muzzle toward her. Instead, I used Hugo in a snap-throw, tossing him by his handle. Miriam screamed, dropped the AK-47, stared at me for a moment, and her two hands fluttered to Hugo's handle protruding just above her belt buckle. She sank to her knees, then fell backward, her body jerking slightly.

I knew that I couldn't risk shooting it out with Mohammed Karameh and Ahmed Kamel; not with their having submachine guns. Reacting from pure instinct, I made a long dive for the two men as they jumped up and tried to zero in on me.

Having a slight edge, I used a roundhouse kick against a snarling Ahmed Kamel. My foot connected with the underneath side of his PPS-46 sub-gun and sent it flying backward over his head. With the same quick motion, I pulled Wilhelmina's trigger, put a 9mm hollow point into Kamel's chest, and grabbed the long barrel of Karameh's Soviet PPS-44 submachine gun. Knowing I couldn't do the job with one hand, I let Wilhelmina fall to the ground and attempted to knee him in the groin.

Very fast for a big man, he arched himself back, evading my knee, and tried to trip me and jerk the barrel of the machine gun from my hand. I put my left hand on the weapon, my fingers closing over the top rib of the steel-frame stock, and kicked him hard.

He let out a half-cry of rage and pain, and for a brief moment we stared at each other. Karameh was no longer the well-groomed leader of the Syrian Liberation Army. His mustache and long sideburns were grimy; his oily black hair looked like a bird's nest and his cheeks were caked with dried blood from where rock chips had hit. His eyes, very much alive, glowed with the hatred of hell itself.

I was damned worried. He was stronger than I and didn't seem to be weakening. If anything, his desperation and his hatred of me were giving him extra strength. I didn't even dream of having the power to literally twist the submachine gun from his hands. My only chance was to use superior know-how — or die.

Karameh gave me the opportunity when he moved his left foot forward slightly.

I had him! Still hanging onto the PPS-44 with both hands, I pivoted slightly until my left side was facing Karameh's front. I released my hold on the PPS-44, grabbed his right arm and jerked it forward and out, causing him to lean to the right of his line of gravity. Caught unaware, he didn't have time to jerk his arm back, to try to swing the machine gun toward me.

I lifted my right foot, placed it against his right knee as a fulcrum and again grabbed the submachine gun and pushed it upward to my right, knowing that he wouldn't dare let go. As he made one last desperate effort to turn the muzzle in my direction, I grabbed his right arm with both hands and completed the throw. With a wild cry of rage and surprise, Karameh went spinning, landing with a thud on his back.

I was behind him as he started to sit up and tried to raise the Russian submachine gun. I was faster. With all my might. I chopped down on both sides of his neck with two sword-hand Shuto cuts. Karameh cried out in excruciating agony and dropped the machine gun, his collar bone broken.

Karameh was as helpless as a brand new baby! I dropped to my knees behind him, threw my left around his throat, placed my right arm on the back of his neck, locked the fingers of my left hand on my right elbow and the fingers of my right hand on the upper muscle of my left arm and began to apply a Chibku strangling clutch. Karameh struggled violently but only for a moment.

Suddenly he went as limp as a piece of wet tissue paper. I released my hold, pushed him forward on his face and stood up. I took one last look at the body, went over to where I had dropped Wilhelmina, picked her up and walked leisurely to where Miriam Karameh was lying on her back, Hugo still sticking out of her stomach. She was conscious.

I got down on one knee, Wilhelmina dangling loosely in my right hand. Miriam's eyes, shiny mirrors of pain and fear, moved up to me. Her mouth worked but no words came out.

"Your brother's dead," I said. "Karameh, too."

She managed to speak, her words weak, "Nick… I d-don't want to d-die like this. Help me… I'll tell you anything you want to know about us."

"I don't need to know anything about the SLA. You're all dead."

"I… I don't want to d-die like this, Nick…"

"You're not going to." I said and raised Wilhelmina.

Miriam didn't have time to speak. I pulled the trigger. Wilhelmina roared, and a hole appeared suddenly in the middle of her forehead. Her mouth went slack.

I pulled Hugo from Miriam's stomach, wiped the sides of the blade carefully on her shirt and shoved him into the sheath on my right arm, then reloaded Wilhelmina.

I looked for Risenberg and found him leaning against a rock, sitting butt-flat on the ground.

"How bad is it?" I asked.

"Did we get them?" he countered.

"They're all dead, including Karameh. I got him, and Miriam and her brother. What about your wound?"

Risenberg struggled to his feet, his right arm hanging limp. "One slug," he said, gritting his teeth in pain. "My right shoulder. I think the bone's broken, but the bleeding has stopped."

I put out a hand to help him but he shook his head.

"We have to climb down the slope," I said. "Think you can do it?"

"Watch me!"

Together we moved in the direction of the slope. He and I and the two other Israelis had a date with a helicopter.

We'd be in Jordan within an hour…