Distant Valor

by C. X. Moreau

  He had already prepared a communiqué to be given to a friendly Lebanese journalist after the bombing. He would claim a great victory for Muslims everywhere in the name of the Ayatollah Khomeini. The American people had already been conditioned by their journalists and government to believe that Iran was little more than a seething cauldron of terrorists and religious fanatics who lusted for the blood of innocent Americans. They would be more than willing to accept one more terrorist incident committed by Iranians for the Ayatollah.

  He envisioned himself returning to Damascus in triumph. There would be another promotion if he were successful. The thought occurred to him that should anyone ask him what reward he would like for having achieved such a brilliant success he would not know what to ask. He had no ambition beyond accomplishing the missions assigned to him and remaining far enough afield so as not to become one of the petty, squabbling bureaucrats that hovered around the military headquarters buildings in Damascus.

  He smiled wryly to himself. He would probably just remain in Damascus and await the assignment of another mission. He realized that he was happiest when he found himself months into a mission and far removed from Damascus and all of its intrigue. He had become, if not a loner, then self-contained in almost every aspect of his nature. He wasn’t sure if the change in his personality had been dictated by his assignment to the intelligence field or had just been a natural facet of his character.

  In any event he had no desire to return to Damascus for any longer than was necessary. After the bombing there would be a few hours of confusion in Beirut. What remained of the Lebanese Internal Security Force would make a show of throwing up roadblocks and pulling civilians from their cars under the pretext of looking for the bomber. The ISF troopers would extort a sum of money from the unfortunate drivers and if the amount was sufficient the driver would be released unharmed.

  He had no intention of being caught in any such random checkpoint. He would immediately go to ground in one of the villas he occupied in the fashionable Christian suburbs of the city. These areas would not be searched and he would wait there until the hunt was called off. At most it would last a week.

  On the day of the attack he noted with a feeling of satisfaction the inactivity of the Christian quarter where he had taken up residence the past week. Sundays were an inviolable day of rest for the Christian residents of Beirut. He had watched the American Marines enough to know that they too observed the Christian Sabbath as a day of rest. That factor had been carefully weighed in choosing this day for the attack.

  He dressed in the plain green smock that would identify him as a porter at the airport and drove quickly through a hushed city. He parked the car in an area north of the airport and walked the last few kilometers to the terminal. He had anticipated no difficulty in making his way to the terminal itself, and found to no great surprise that he was right. No one would think twice to check the identity papers of a simple janitor on his way to work.

  The Syrian stood in front of the terminal in the early morning and made a pretense of looking for litter and cigarette butts that he swept into the bag hanging from his shoulder. The sun was not yet fully over the mountains and the morning air held a chill. From where he stood he could look north up the broad boulevard and past the Marine headquarters.

  He noted with satisfaction the casual attitude displayed by the young Lebanese standing their post in front of the terminal building. He had walked past the troopers in front of the Marine barracks on his way to the terminal earlier that morning and not one of the Lebanese had so much as given him a second glance. They were all very young and obviously had little experience in the military. He had reasoned that they were recent conscripts and accordingly had been given the early morning tour of duty when little traffic could be expected.

  He had casually walked past their checkpoint in his dank smelling coveralls and eyed the Marine sentries posted along the fence separating the Marine building from the sidewalk and then the boulevard. They appeared alert and watchful, but he was confident that they would have no reason to fire on his vehicle when it drove past them in the next few minutes. It would appear to all the world as just one more construction vehicle going about its business in a city trying to rebuild after more than ten years of civil war.

  The Syrian had decided earlier that morning that the terminal offered no real position from which he could safely detonate the explosives. He would be forced to stand out front and trigger the device at the proper moment. He estimated that he was roughly five hundred meters from the point on the building where he expected the boy to place the truck. He would do his best to scramble into the lobby of the terminal at the critical moment, but he was worried about the distance between his transmitter and the receiver wired to the explosives.

  At this distance there was a greater chance that the signal would be too weak to trigger the device. If the driver failed to do it himself the Marines would kill him while he sat fastened in the seat of the truck. That would force him to close on the truck and again try the remote transmitter, hoping that none of the Marine sentries noticed him edging closer to the compound.

  He scanned the ground between the terminal and the Marine building for the hundredth time looking for a likely way to approach. All he saw was the broad boulevard stretching away to the north with its tree-lined sidewalks on either side. He would find precious little cover there. More likely a nervous sentry would shoot him before he could cover half the distance to the truck. Even if he got close enough to detonate the device, and he survived the ensuing blast, the debris falling back to earth would almost certainly kill him.

  Without thinking he shook his head and smiled at the irony. To die at the moment of his greatest victory. The irony would not have been lost on Farouck, he knew.

  He continued to sweep nonexistent bits of trash into his bin as the truck pulled slowly onto the boulevard heading due south toward the terminal. His first warning of its approach was a faint grinding of gears as the boy shifted into low and bore down on the LAF checkpoint.

  The Syrian tensed and felt a current of fear stab through his intestines as the young guard stepped into the roadway and prepared to wave the boy to a stop. The big truck’s engine compressed as the boy lowered the transmission another gear and the brakes emitted a dry scraping sound that was audible to the Syrian almost a full kilometer distant.

  He silently hoped that the boy wouldn’t lose his nerve and attempt to run the checkpoint. The Lebanese soldiers on duty weren’t much older than the driver and certainly would not think to wake one of the older more experienced sergeants in order to check a single vehicle. His breath caught in his throat as another soldier emerged from the sandbagged shack that served as a guardhouse and stared in the direction of the truck.

  He watched intently as the second man regarded the truck, apparently curious at its appearance so early on a Sunday morning. Ultimately success or failure rested on just such unpredictable moments of chance. Months of planning would be wasted if the guard decided to stop the vehicle and its inexperienced driver. The Syrian tensed, knowing that the guard had only seconds left in which to decide to let the truck pass unchallenged. He stood motionless. Recalling his last conversation with Ahmud, he heard himself breath the word “Inshallah” as he felt for the transmitter with his left hand. Before he could locate the trigger on the device the guard raised the red-and-white striped beam that served as a barricade and the truck glided past the checkpoint. The truck continued smoothly past the target building with its perimeter of Marine guards who watched it go by.

  Inside the Marine compound Griffin turned his head as the big diesel approached, the straining of its motor breaking the quiet of the morning. He held up a hand to stop Slocum from speaking and said, “Just a second, Bobby.” Slocum stopped eating his breakfast and followed Griffin’s gaze as he focused his attention on the broad boulevard beyond the iron fence which surrounded the Marine compound.

  “Where do you suppose he’s going so early on
a Sunday morning, Bobby?” asked Griffin, nodding to indicate the big Mercedes diesel that was grinding its way south on the boulevard.

  Slocum looked up briefly from his eggs and cast a casual glance in the direction of the truck. “Probably just over by the terminal. The Lesbos got some kind of construction going on over there. Rebuilding one of the runways or something. They use those big trucks to haul away the concrete they’re breaking up.”

  Griffin continued to stare at the truck as the driver shifted gears. He noted the strain of the engine to take the load and the heavy black cloud of smoke emitted by the exhaust stack. Griffin had spent enough time around the docks to know that this truck was fully loaded and the driver was struggling to accelerate. “Bobby, something ain’t right here. That guy is loaded and he’s headed into the construction zone. Besides, it’s Sunday. Why is he here anyway? He should be off today.”

  Slocum again looked toward the big truck. “Maybe he’s a Muslim. Don’t they have a different holy day from us?”

  “I don’t know,” said Griffin, his instincts telling him something was wrong, “but he’s the only son of a bitch at work today. Nobody else is down at the construction site. There’s nobody to unload this guy when he gets where he’s going.” Griffin moved from under the eaves of the building and stood on the bench seat of one of the tables to get a better look at the driver. He could tell that the driver was very young, probably still in his teens. He sat stiffly in the seat of the big truck and stared straight ahead.

  Something in the demeanor of the driver triggered an alert in Griffin. He didn’t have the casual manner affected by every other truck driver Griffin had ever known. Griffin could clearly see, even at this distance, that the driver had both hands on the wheel in the classic position of the novice driver. The thought immediately struck him that no novice belonged behind the wheel of a truck that size.

  The vehicle began to draw abreast of their position as Griffin ran toward the fence hoping to get a better look at the truck and its driver. As he vaulted to the top of the low retaining wall and sprinted toward the fence the truck drew even with him and he stopped and stared at the boy. The machine gunner on duty had already noticed the truck and as it passed he slowly tracked it with his weapon.

  With a mounting sense of dread Griffin concentrated on the young driver. He could now plainly see that he was a boy in his teens. His mind searched for a plausible explanation. The thought occurred to him that maybe the boy was driving the truck for his father. He glanced quickly again toward the construction site farther south and confirmed that it was devoid of any activity.

  In an unconscious motion he took his rifle from his shoulder and loaded a magazine into the well. As he charged the weapon he saw the driver looking nervously in his direction. For a brief moment Griffin thought the driver was going to smile. Then he saw through the smile and detected the deadly purpose behind it. Griffin knew then that the driver wasn’t smiling. He was laughing.

  By the time Griffin brought the weapon into his shoulder the truck had accelerated toward the terminal and he no longer had a line of sight to the driver. He yelled for the lance corporal manning the machine gun to charge his weapon and follow. With relief he noticed that the man didn’t hesitate to abandon his post and followed him at a sprint across the compound.

  Griffin estimated it was forty yards back to the building and another twenty to a place where he would have an angle of fire on the truck if it pulled into the lot south of the Marine compound. As he ran he yelled for Slocum and the cooks to get their rifles and fire at the truck. He heard one of the cooks screaming for the sergeant of the guard as he cleared the corner of the building and saw to his horror that a series of plywood buildings erected by the battalion engineers to serve as foul weather chow halls now blocked his line of sight across the parking lot.

  Griffin sprinted along the face of the building for a glimpse of the truck. As he drew even with the guard shacks some two hundred meters south he noticed the Marines on duty step outside the small sandbag bunkers and stare in the direction of the truck, obviously attempting to get a better look at the vehicle. Griffin guessed that the two young Marines now watching the big truck circle the lot and gain speed were puzzled by the appearance of the vehicle on a quiet Sunday morning.

  He began screaming for them to fire at the truck and he noticed one of them turn to look in his direction. The sentry raised his radio above his head, obviously wanting to communicate with Griffin but puzzled as to why there was no response from him over the small radio. Realizing that the man would not be able to understand him at this distance Griffin settled his rifle in his shoulder and began tracking the vehicle.

  He cursed as the driver took a course parallel to his own position and moved in and out of his line of sight. As he squinted into the iron sights of his rifle Griffin heard Slocum moving into place with the machine gun and the sentry he had ordered away from his post on the west end of the compound. He struggled to steady his breathing in order to level the sights on the truck. In the same instant he acquired the cab of the big truck he realized that once he fired the sentries on post would follow his example and begin firing.

  He fired his first round and saw the windshield of the Mercedes diesel shatter. In a brief instant Griffin saw the driver reflexively duck, then recover and swing the truck in a steady arc toward the battalion headquarters. He settled his sights on the driver’s chest and waited for his moment. As he waited for Slocum and the cooks to begin firing he fired his second round. Griffin briefly looked over the sights of the M-16 and saw that he had hit the driver high in the shoulder.

  He again began tracking the truck with his rifle as the driver struggled to regain control over the vehicle and bring it back on a course that would roll it into the building. To his relief he heard the others begin to fire, the machine gun walking its rounds toward the big truck as it advanced on the Marine compound.

  To his horror he realized that the machine gunner had quit firing almost as soon as he had begun. Griffin correctly surmised that the gunner was afraid the rounds would go wide and strike the sentries in the parking lot. Without taking his eyes from his sights Griffin screamed for Slocum to get the gun up. In his peripheral vision he saw Slocum advance on the gun and shove the gunner out of the way. As he fired his third shot Griffin distinctly heard the splatter of lead against the denser metal of the truck’s grill and saw chips of paint fly from the front of the truck as Slocum’s fire began to strike the vehicle.

  The truck continued to swing wildly from side to side as it advanced on the headquarters building. Griffin was able to discern that the driver was seriously hurt by the fire of the Marines. As the truck drew to within fifty meters of the compound the boy was slumped over the wheel, his left arm hanging limply at his side.

  Griffin estimated that he would have time for one more shot before the truck would strike the gate and roll the final few meters into the building. He had no doubt as to what the truck was carrying. He sighted carefully on the top of the boy’s head, which rested on the large cream-colored steering wheel. Through his sights he could see the boy was still attempting to steer the vehicle through the gate. Griffin held his breath and began squeezing the trigger of his rifle.

  An instant before the rifle went off Griffin saw the boy raise his head off the steering wheel and look in the direction of the building. He knew the boy was checking his heading and would attempt to make a course correction with his remaining good arm. A moment later the round from Griffin’s rifle caught the boy at the base of his neck and flung him backward against the rear wall of the cab. The boy’s body slammed into the metal skin of the cab, then rebounded forward onto the steering wheel.

  The force of the body hitting the wheel altered the course of the truck slightly to the west, throwing it off its course for the center of the building. A mere fifty yards away Griffin was now sure that the driver of the vehicle was dead. He shifted the aim of his rifle for an instant toward the trailer, his mind rapidly
rejecting the idea of firing into the load of explosives. Griffin knew that a detonation this close to the building would result in a terrific explosion that would probably destroy the battle-damaged building.

  Realizing that his rifle would be useless against the truck he decided to take cover, screaming for Slocum and the others to do the same. As he ran east along the face of the building his eye caught the entrance to the building’s basement.

  Griffin turned in time to see Slocum and the others head west toward the boulevard and the sandbagged positions occupied by the sentries. He watched helplessly as the truck slammed into the iron fence some fifty meters from the headquarters building. The driver’s side wheel caught the low stone footing of the fence and the truck jumped wildly over the low wall, tearing through the fence with a screech of metal. As first the cab and then the trailer cleared the fence Griffin saw the body of the driver being tossed limply from side to side. He ran for the shelter of the basement as the truck continued toward the Marines with only a slight loss of momentum.

  CHAPTER

  27

  The truck cleared the fence and rolled across the compound, striking the building near its center and wedging itself under the concrete eaves. The driver’s compartment of the cab sheared off on impact and allowed the vehicle to penetrate to the heavy metal bulkhead at the front of the trailer. The forward motion of the truck was arrested as this bulkhead struck the concrete that formed the roof of the first story and the floor of the mezzanine level.

  The tremendous noise of the impact echoed heavily across the runway and Marines inside the building woke thinking the headquarters had suffered a direct hit from an incoming artillery round. A split second later the Syrian detonated the load of explosives, and the resulting blast vaporized the bulk of the vehicle instantaneously.