Thunderstrike in Syria

Chapter Eight

As the jeeps roared into camp, I knew how the early Christians in ancient Rome must have felt when they were about to be tossed to the lions. Nonetheless, my apprehension didn't interfere with my noting the various features of the base. I saw that there was another road leading from the camp, other than the main route that led to the one Miriam told me had been blocked by a landslide. This new road was smaller in width and seemed to lead off into the hills.

I didn't exactly get a cheering welcome! There was pure hatred in the eyes of everyone whose stares I met; some of the men even shook their weapons at me. I saw that most of the men and women displayed the habitual mixture in dress, many were outfitted in Western garb with the traditional forms of headgear, while others wore strictly Arab clothing. Some of the women even wore the chadri, a light black garment, part of which was used as a veil.

Some dirty-faced children yelled obscenities at me as Miriam and her gun-toting aides marched me to a huge black goatskin tent and shoved me inside.

It was easy to spot Mohammed Bashir Karameh, although I had never seen a photograph of the man. AXE and Hamosad didn't know what he looked like. Unlike many other Arab terrorist leaders, Karameh reputedly had a passion for anonymity. We suspected that his real reason was more practical: as a precaution against assassination.

I figured the man positioned so confidently at the head of the large circle of men sitting on cushions must be Karameh. But I did recognize the man seated to al-Huriya's right — Ahmed Kamel, Miriam's brother.

Miriam went over to a table and placed Wilhelmina and Hugo in a wooden chest; then she hurried to Karameh and her brother and sat down on a cushion between the two men and began whispering to the SLA leader. Several of my guards shoved me roughly to my knees in the center of the circle, one remaining behind me, the muzzle of his assault rifle pressed against the back of my neck.

Karameh motioned to the man. "It is not necessary that you keep your weapon on him," he said in a well-modulated voice. "He's not in any condition to cause us trouble."

"My leader, this swine is extremely dangerous!" protested the guard. "He killed two of our comrades. Another man died before we could get him to camp. This man" — he poked me with the assault rifle — "is a devil."

Karameh stared at me for a moment, then turned to Miriam Kamel.

"It's true," she admitted. "He's Nick Carter, but he's not superhuman. As you can see, he's handcuffed, and I doubt that he can snap steel."

"In my opinion, he should have been killed on the spot," Ahmed Kamel growled. A roundish man with blotched skin, he was as ugly as his sister was good looking.

Karameh waved the guard away and looked at me with serious eyes. Dressed in dark green fatigues and wearing two pistols on his belt, he was muscular, with an intelligent, yet slightly-cruel looking, face. Well groomed, he had dark wavy hair, long sideburns and a neatly trimmed mustache. But instantly I spotted his weakness — vanity! It shone from his eyes and was evident in the tilt of his chin, held a bit too high.

"You are Nick Carter," he said, his voice crisp but not unfriendly.

"He'll deny it," Miriam snapped. "But he can't deny he's an agent of AXE. The AXE tattoo is on his inner right elbow."

I saw no reason to play games. "I'm Carter," I said in Arabic, smiling slightly at Karameh who sat ten feet in front of me. "And you are Mohammed Karameh, better known as the Hawk. Personally, I think chicken would be a much better appellation. You seem to be terrified of letting the world know what you look like."

There was an angry muttering from many of the men in the circle, one of them, short and stocky with traces of a black beard and deep-set eyes, warning me in a snarling voice, "Careful, pig. We will not tolerate any of your insolence!"

I assumed the man was Khalil Marras, since he was sitting next to Karameh. As for the Hawk, if I had insulted him, he didn't show it. His face remained pleasant and he only laughed a soft, long sound.

"Have patience, Khalil," he said, looking straight at me. "Mr. Carter thinks that by using foolish insults he can impress us with his bravery. Pay no attention to his braying. The camel does not bow before the jackass."

He smiled without amusement and when he spoke to me his voice carried more than a slight trace of annoyance.

"Yes, Carter, I am Mohammed Bashir Karameh. At the moment I'm curious as to how you must feel knowing that you have failed, to realize that we have outsmarted AXE and the Hamosad. It must be terribly frustrating to know there isn't anything you can do about it."

"I don't believe there ever was a plot involving any explosion on U.S. soil." I hoped that by taunting him, his own egotism would force him to tell me what I wanted to know. "I'll admit that you fooled Hamosad, but we in AXE were always skeptical about the liquified natural gas plot. The SLA doesn't have the sophistication of organization for such a complicated scheme."

Miriam and Ahmed Kamel glared at me. Khalil Marras sneered, his thick lips going back over his teeth in a grimace. Karameh, sitting cross-legged, leaned forward, peered intently at me, and put his hands on his knees.

"I had expected more from the famous Nick Carter," he said. "But all you have shown is an amazing lack of imagination. That's the trouble with all Western intelligence agencies. They are constantly underestimating us, thinking we Arabs are still living in the Middle Ages of ignorance."

"Listen, Karameh," I said in my most sincere voice. "I've failed and I admit it. But though I'm your prisoner, don't try to insult my intelligence by telling me fairy tales. If there was an actual LNG plot, Miriam never would have leaked it to AXE."

I could tell I was getting somewhere when Karameh smiled and seemed pleased with himself.

"We might have believed the story," I continued, "if you hadn't made the mistake of saying that the home port of the supertanker was the Soviet Union. That was a bit too much for us to swallow. There isn't any way you could slip any of your people on board a single vessel in the Soviet Union much less one of their supertankers. The Soviet Union is a very closed society and the KGB is very good, almost as good as AXE!"

Karameh beamed. I added quickly, "And don't tell me that the KGB is helping you. That would be even more absurd. The Soviets are too cunning to involve themselves in such a ridiculous scheme."

"You're a fool, Carter. However, you are right about the Soviets."

I reflected that his voice had taken on a different quality; not exactly defiance, but more like pride.

"You're wasting your time," I sneered. "I'm right, too, when I say the LNG deal was a false leak to cover up something else. AXE and Hamosad suspected the same thing. Too bad I won't be able to get back to Tel Aviv to confirm their suspicions."

"That is correct! You won't be leaving this base alive."

I detected savage pleasure in Karameh's voice, a kind of revenge.

"And because you are never going to leave here alive, I'll tell you the full truth. The liquid gas plot was not a smoke screen. Miriam merely lied about the facts. The supertanker doesn't belong to the Soviet Union. It's owned by Libya and will leave from Tripoli. Three of my men will be aboard the crew. It is they who will plant the explosive devices which will explode when the tanker is in the harbor of Galveston, in your state of Texas."

Miriam placed a hand on Karameh's shoulder. "Why tell him anything? Why give him the satisfaction of knowing our real plans."

"I agree," Ahmed Kamel quickly agreed. "Let us proceed with what we must do with the dog, then kill him. He is too dangerous to let live for any extended length of time."

I saw Karameh stiffen, almost imperceptibly. You should have kept your big mouth shut, bitch! I thought. You don't tell a crackpot like him what to do!

"I made all the decisions," Karameh said arrogantly, "and I want Carter to go to his death knowing that I, al-Huriya, am twice as clever as any Zionist in Hamosad or any American imperialist."

"If you ask me," I said, "you're treating Colonel al-Qaddafi pretty dirty. I can't buy it! Qaddafi's a Moslem the same as you and his Libya is still a paradise for every crackpot terrorist on the face of the earth. Yet you expect me to believe that you're going to blow up one of his two hundred million dollar tankers in Galveston!

I enjoyed looking at Miriam. She hadn't expected her boss to rebuff her. Now she sat as if stunned, the skin around her mouth tight and pale.

Looking cold-eyed at me, Karameh said scornfully, "Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi is a traitor to the entire Moslem world. He has billions of dollars from oil at his disposal; yet he has done nothing all these years but talk and make empty threats. He could have invaded Egypt but didn't. He could have killed Sadat, who is even a worse traitor. He wants to make peace with the Zion imperialists in Israel!"

"Why complain about peace if the Palestinians get their state in the deal?"

"The hell with the dumb Palestinians!" Karameh said mercilessly. "Those fellahin never had a state at any time. Why should they have one now? All the talk about a state for the Palestinians is nothing but propaganda put out by that idiot Arafat and his PLO fools. They machine gun to death a bus load of women and children and call it a 'victory! I spit on that pig Arafat. Everytime he makes a move, he does Israel a favor by invoking world sympathy for the Zionists! My goal is more glorious and honorable. I intend to destroy Israel completely! I intend to push every damned Zionist into the Mediterranean! He laughed obscenely. "Those who can't swim, we'll cut their throats."

"I rather think that the Israelis will have something to say about that," I said drily.

"Not without America supplying them arms they won't!" he snapped. "It's impossible for the Israelis to fight a long war without their destroyed equipment being replaced immediately by the American government!"

There was no way around it: Mohammed Karameh was nuttier than the man who insisted he could make a fortune by operating a cemetery for pet rocks! But what he could do and what he thought he could were two different matters. He was deadly serious and that's what made him so very dangerous. It was not inconceivable that a fanatic like Karameh could accidentally trigger a full scale war, perhaps even World War III. My real worry was that I wouldn't be able to get to Pierre. To do so, I had to be alone. At the moment, I had to admit that my chances were zero. To compound my misery, my knees were beginning to ache, but I didn't want Karameh, and especially Miriam, to know it.

"You're using corkscrew logic, Karameh," I said. "Killing a million Americans with liquefied natural gas isn't going to make Uncle Sam stop supplying Israel with arms. The only thing you'll accomplish is to make the American people hate the entire Arab world. You might even cause Washington to drop an H-bomb on Damascus!"

"Your government of weaklings wouldn't dare!" sneered Karameh, thrusting his head forward. "Your leaders are midgets and cowards!"

"You might find that those 'cowards' are really Samsons," I countered, stalling for time while I tried to think of some solution.

"No matter," said Karameh, spreading his hands. "You will not be around to see it. I will tell you another reason why we leaked the gas project to AXE: to test their effectiveness. That is also why Comrade Miriam led you here and why you were not killed in Damascus. You are going to tell us everything you know about AXE Control, how its worldwide network operates."

"You're a dreamer, Karameh," I said.

"You are then going to contact the Hamosad Tel Aviv Control station by shortwave radio and supposedly give them the location of this base, only the coordinates will be many miles from here, across the border in Jordan."

"I would say that the Jordanians would be rather annoyed if Israeli planes blow hell out of the place," I said.

"Exactly. We're counting on that silly little nation to raise a stink in the U.N. against the Zionists. But that has nothing to do with you and your problem. I will tell you that, if you cooperate, after you tell us what we want to know, I personally will give you a bullet in the back of the neck and put you out of your misery."

The nerve of the son of a bitch! I felt like jumping up and trying to whack out Karameh with only my feet and legs. To even try would have been an exercise in futility. He was too far away, and he appeared to be a man of good reflexes, a man who was very fast. And what could I accomplish by getting myself half-beaten to death? I needed my strength for what I had to do. Provided I'd get a chance to do it.

I smiled condescendingly at Karameh. "In short, you're asking me to hurry up and die! Then again, maybe that's part of your Moslem or revolutionary philosophy?"

"Allah el Akbar!" Karameh said firmly. "I do what I must to defeat the enemies of Allah. The main enemy is world Zionism!"

"Well," I drawled, "I sort of favor that passage in the Bible that says, In my Father s house are many mansions. If I were you, I'd have second thoughts about moving day."

Within my own thoughts, I wasn't at all surprised that Karameh could combine Marxism with the religion of Islam. After all, the two murders of conscience, stupidity and fanaticism, are its best impersonators.

There were loud, angry mutterings from the circle of men surrounding me and it didn't take any stretch of my imagination to know what they would have liked to do to me, and probably would, if I couldn't get to Pierre. Freeing myself from the handcuffs was only the first part of the problem. Even with my hands free, what could I do? Where could I go? I could do plenty. And when it was all over with, I'd probably be in hell!

One of the men to my left spoke up in a loud voice. "Leader, the infidel has insulted Allah. For that we should punish him with torture!"

Dressed in qamiss and burnoose, the snow-white piece of cloth across his forehead indicated that the bearded speaker was a Khatib— who leads the Moslem community in daily prayer — of the fanatical Ismaili sect.

"The holy one is right!" thundered another man in the circle. Puffing on a narghile, a water-cooled pipe with several mouthpieces, he sat to my right. "The Western child of the devil has dared to compare the god of the Christians with mighty Allah. We cannot ignore such an insult."

Ahmed Kamel was more practical. "Mohammed, Carter is only stalling for time." he said, staring in hatred at me. "Make him give us the vital information, then kill the dog."

For a man who supposedly had been in the hospital, he looked remarkably well, I thought. I didn't enjoy the private joke. I was too close to death to be amused.

My eyes went to Miriam, who looked as if she could no longer contain herself. She turned to Karameh. "Nick Carter will never divulge anything of value." Her voice was out of rhythm and there was a slight tremor in it. "I tell you, I know him. All we'll get from him are lies and more lies."

All this time, Karameh sat with his cheeks drawn in, his mouth locked tight and his hands clenched into fists; yet I could detect amusement in his eyes. I suspected that he was one clever con artist who actually didn't believe in either Allah or Marxism, any more than I did, and that he was using the SLA for his own personal self-aggrandizement.

He finally said, "We will proceed in a manner I think best. I am the Leader." The tone of his voice indicated that the matter of my being tortured was settled and closed to further discussion.

He was so sure of himself, so confident and satisfied and convinced as he looked at me. "You're a realist. Carter. I know that a man like you is not afraid of death. I also know you're not a fool. You're not anxious to be tortured. Now tell me, where is AXE Control located in Tel Aviv?"

I looked straight at the Arab terrorists.

"Go to hell!"

Karameh jumped to his feet, rushed over to me and let me have a right cross to the jaw that knocked me on my back and sent comets rocketing back and forth inside my head, not to mention my jaw which felt as if it had been hit by a sledgehammer.

Miriam and her brother jumped to their feet. So did Khalil Marras and half a dozen other men, some of them advancing on me.

Karameh held up both hands. "Wait! An unconscious man is no good to us."

"He won't be any good to us conscious either!" Miriam practically shouted. "I say burn out one of his eyes to give him a taste of what he can expect from his lies."

"We will give him a chance to think it over," Karameh snarled, glaring down at me. "Even healthy men have been known to drop dead. I don't want to take the chance of his dying under torture."

He motioned to the guards in the front of the tent and eight of them hurried forward. "Get him to his feet. We'll show him what we do to enemies of Allah."

Two of the guards reached down, hooked their hands in my armpits and pulled me to my feet. Karameh gave me a final look, then turned and started toward the entrance. Everyone followed, one of the guards giving me a vicious shove.

A solemn procession, we marched from the headquarters tent and proceeded in a northern direction. When we passed one end of the line of armored cars, personnel carriers and the two T-54 tanks, I noticed that underneath the netting was a sheet of canvas to protect the vehicles from the sun. I also saw that the hatches of the ACs and of the tanks were open, to keep the air circulating. My greatest surprise came when I saw several men passing 140 mm shells through the loader's hatch of the end tank. Why? What could the SLA attack up here? Or, could it be that Karameh and his people were afraid? Of who?

As we neared the Tower of Lions, I saw that the ruins were tremendous, much larger than they had appeared earlier, than each wall was at least one hundred fifty feet long and that the stones, very large, were covered with kliyiq, a kind of moss found in the As-Suwayda hills region.

We went to the north side of the tower, and I knew immediately that this was our destination. The north side was shaded — at least for now it was — and contained an arbor made of stout wooden poles. A group of Arabs were gathered around it, some standing, others squatting, but all of them enjoying the suffering of the three victims. No women were present, no doubt because the victims were naked.

Mohammed Karameh went underneath one end of the arbor and turned and nodded to the guards surrounding me. Two of them grabbed me by the arms and pulled me up to him. He was heavier and an inch or two taller than I; but even if he had been only three feet tail, I was at a hundred percent disadvantage. On one side of Karameh was Khalil Marras, his eyes glazed from the qat he was chewing. To the right of Karameh were Miriam and Ahmed Kamel. Miriam didn't seem at all embarrassed by the nakedness of the victims.

"Carter, what you see is a mild taste of what we will do to you, if you do not cooperate," Karameh said cynically, waving his hand toward the three victims and looking at me.

What I saw now I had seen before, in Vietnam…methods of torture that the South Viets had used against the Vietcong. Blindfolded, his ankles tied together, one man hung by his hands which were tied above his head and suspended from one of the cross poles. Several men were smearing his body with some substance — no doubt some kind of sweet syrup.

I don't know what name the Arabs gave to this form of torture, but in South Vietnam it was called "The Bath of Flies." In the right climate, where flying insects are prevalent, the victim will be covered with thousands of buzzing insects within minutes and will begin to scream hideously. As far as I knew, no one had ever died from the Bath of Flies; however, if allowed to hang for two or three hours, the victim could be overcome by irreparable insanity.

The second man was being tortured by "The Ghruka Scissors," a method often employed by the Indian Secret Service. He sat on his butt, his arms securely bound behind his back, his legs locked around a three foot high pole, the torture consisting in how his legs were fixed around the post. The right foot was placed in the crook of the opposite knee, while the post, forward of the left foot, was between the arch and the crook of the right knee. This awkward and inescapable position causes excruciating pain in the knee and pelvic joints. From the look of extreme agony on the man's face, it was plain that he had been held this way for several hours.

The third man, bearded like the other two, was groaning loudly. He had good reason to. Being tortured in "The Stork" position, he was suspended from a horizontal pole by his hands which were bound behind him and had to support almost all of his weight, since his feet were barely touching the ground.

"Ah-ha!" Karameh said merrily. He glanced at me, then at the poor devil suffering the Bath of Flies. "Soon the fun will begin."

There was a loud buzzing sound in the air, generated by the thousands of insects crawling over the man's body. Then a cry of intolerable torment came from his mouth, his body jerking with such violence that the entire arbor shook.

Karameh turned suddenly and slapped me hard across the face, a backhanded blow that stung like fire and rattled my teeth.

"I will give you exactly one hour to think it over. Carter." he said venomously. "At the end of that time, you will tell me what I want to know, or I personally will go to work on you. I'll keep you alive and screaming for months!"

"And I'll help him!" hissed Miriam. All the while she glared at me her face twisted with cruelty and hatred.

"Throw him in with the other pigs," ordered Karameh.

The guards — two in front of me, two behind and one on each side — hurried me across the hundred foot space, toward the end of the south side of the long stone building. One of the Arabs jerked open the thick door, two others shoved me inside, and I found that we were in a short, narrow passage. There was a door across from me, in the wall, and a door at each end of the passage. The door at the west end was ordinary, but the one at the opposite end was covered with a steel bar placed horizontally across it.

One of the machine gun carrying Arabs removed the round bar from the door and jerked it open. Two other SLA terrorists shoved me through the doorway into the room. The door slammed shut and, as I looked around in the half-dark room, I heard the bar being replaced over the front of the door.

Ten men, sitting against the walls, stared back at me.