Barracuda 945 am-6

by Patrick Robinson

  Fred's own reasoning was close to flawless. But Ray now had the added responsibility of Shakira and the children. There was of course no reason why he should have that responsibility. He and the two SAS NCOs could have left and no one would have been any the wiser.

  But there are times in the life of almost every soldier when there is a summons to obey the heart, not the brain, or the training, or the experience. And Ray Kerman knew he faced one of those right now.

  He gestured to the little Arab family, and Sergeant O'Hara swung around, reacting instantly to the movement. Little Ravi held up his toy spaceship and stepped forward, and the big SAS man, who had been shot at too many times in the past hour, flinched away from the sudden move and hit the trigger of his MP5. In about one hundredth of a second there was a line of five neat holes clean across the forehead of Ray Kerman's namesake.

  Irena screamed and ran toward her brother holding in her right hand her teddy bear. Charlie could see only hand grenades in his mind right now, and he gunned her down in cold blood, fearing yet another explosion.

  For a split second there was silence in the room, and then Shakira screamed and ran at Fred O'Hara, her hands raised like claws at his face. Charlie swung to his right. In a lightning movement he whipped his machine gun toward her face. At that precise moment Major Ray Kerman blew the entire front of Charlie's head off with a savage burst of fire. No one could kill an SAS man quite like that. Except for another one.

  Charlie's MP5 had fired two shells in the instant of his death. A measure of Ray's speed was that both bullets headed downward, one of them cutting a deep groove on the outside of Ray's left thigh, which immediately started to bleed like hell.

  For a few heartbeats, nothing happened. Then Sergeant O'Hara, eyes wide, turned to his CO. "Sir, did you just kill Charlie?" he asked, blankly.

  Ray's brain raced. The word "murder" flew through his mind. Then "court martial." Then "jail." Then "firing squad."

  Then he looked again at the two lifeless bodies on the floor, Shakira, whimpering, cradling Ravi's head while the blood spilled down her robe, reaching out with her right hand to Irena. But the little girl was unreachable.

  Fred stepped forward, anxious to ensure she carried no weapons. "GET UP!" he shouted. Those two rough and heartless words ended his life.

  Ray Kerman wheeled left, picked up a small rock, and slammed it into the space between Fred's eyes, breaking that part of the skull like a walnut. Then he crashed the butt of his gloved right hand with all of his strength right into the nostril end of Fred's nose. The force rammed the nose bone deep into Fred's brain, and he was dead before he hit the floor, felled by the classic SAS unarmed combat blow.

  Two dead children. Two dead SAS men. It was a biblical conclusion, in a biblical city, to a vicious two minutes. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.

  Ray turned to Shakira, who was plainly in shock. Her tears had stopped, as if she had nothing left, except a broken heart.

  "Did you just save my life, sir?" she asked, softly.

  "I think so," replied Ray.

  "Then I just wish you hadn't."

  Nonetheless, Shakira appreciated the situation with near-military coldness. With her family dead, in the dust and rubble of her home, her own situation remained desperate, especially with the bodies of two SAS men both in Israeli uniforms lying on the floor of her living room.

  She had been a fleeting second away from death herself, and, through her devastation, she knew somehow she had to save herself. She had to get away, and she had to get this British officer away for several obvious reasons.

  But first she went to a cupboard and pulled out a soft rug, and laid it over her two children.

  Ray found himself saying, almost automatically, as if the words must be someone else's: "They are both in… in the arms of Allah now."

  The words of the North London mullah came rushing back, and he remembered the stories of paradise, and the promises to the martyrs who die in the name of Allah.

  Finally, Shakira stood up and faced him. "Where will you go?" she asked, aware of the impossibility of his position.

  He glanced down at the dead bodies of Sergeant O'Hara and Sergeant Morgan. "I'm not quite sure what to do right now. But I can't return to the IDF."

  "Would they find out it was you?"

  "I don't know. They might. But my problem is greater than that," Ray said. How could he explain it? Ever since he had arrived here he felt a surprising sympathy for the Palestinians. With his family's deep roots in the Middle East, it was clear something in him had changed. To rampage among innocent people, killing and destroying families, how could he be a part of that?

  He looked at little Irena and Ravi, just children, gunned down by his soldiers. What if they had been his children? My God, he thought, how could I do this anymore?

  Shakira could see his tears now, streaming down the Major's face, this stranger who had saved her life. She walked across to him, put her arms around him, and held him closely. The blood of little Ravi stained his uniform, and the blood from his own thigh ran onto her chador, and their tears mingled together.

  Outside the blasts continued, and Ray sensed the Israeli tanks were finding their range, shelling the street. Shakira went to the downstairs cupboard and came back with a full-length white robe (hobe), and a white-and-black patterned headdress (ghutra), complete with the double-stranded cord (aghal).

  Ray ripped off his Israeli combat jacket as she wrapped bandages around Ray's cut thigh. He pulled the robe over his head. Shakira fitted the headdress and arranged the cloth around his neck in such a way he could cover the lower half of his face if necessary.

  Then she found a clean robe for herself, and said quietly, "We must go now, before the Israelis come." And she took his hand, murmuring "Insh' Allah," as God wills, leading him to the back door of her devastated home.

  They ran through the yard, leaving behind them five bodies in the house. They could see smoke and rising dust in the street to the rear, but in front it was all clear.

  Should we take the car?" asked Ray.

  "I don't think so. We must get to the headquarters of Hamas. My brother Ahmed will be there. They will take care of you."

  "You sure they won't kill me?" said Ray, tightening his grip on his MP5, and running hard on his wounded leg to keep up with Shakira.

  "Yes, I'm sure," she said.

  "How do you know?"

  "Because I don't want you to die, and that will be good enough."

  Tuesday, May 18,2004

  A steel cordon of Israeli tanks now surrounded the entire area where the battle of the Jerusalem Road had been fought the previous Friday. With hard-eyed efficiency the DDF troops had evacuated the area, moving Arab families temporarily farther to the west while they searched the rubble for casualties and bodies.

  They brought in heavy lifting equipment and bulldozers, and avoided another flare-up by announcing they were also searching for Palestinians and would provide medical treatment for anyone found alive.

  This of course gave them ample opportunity to conduct a search for more weapons and bomb-making facilities. In three days the area would be as "clean" as it could ever be; even though everyone knew the wily Arabs had been moving military materiel to safe houses on the edge of the city ever since Saturday morning.

  Shakira's house had formally caved in after dark on Friday, burying all five bodies under several tons of debris. They were all unearthed on the following Tuesday afternoon and taken to the morgue in the Israeli section of the city, where thirty-eight IDF troops already lay.

  The Palestinian dead, more than sixty-two men, women, and children, were later removed to a converted schoolhouse just west of the Bir Al-Saba Road.

  The bodies of Sergeant O'Hara and Sergeant Morgan were the only known casualties among the SAS troops, though Major Ray Kerman was currently listed as missing in action.

  As the Commanding Officer of the SAS force garrisoned in the Negev, this was regarded as a most serious
matter, as indeed were the deaths of two top NCOs from the Regiment. Hereford Headquarters was immediately informed, and the response was fast.

  "Transport Sergeant O'Hara and Sergeant Morgan's bodies immediately to Israeli Army HQ in Jerusalem, for initial postmortem. Inform soonest any ransom demand for Major Kerman." The latter order was routine. Members of the Regiment rarely, if ever, are taken prisoner. They would fight to the death.

  Two days later, there was still neither sight nor sound of Major Kerman, but the new SAS Commander in Israel, Acting Major Roger Hill, wore an extremely quizzical look as he read the report of the IDF pathologist.

  "Sergeant Charles Morgan died as a result of five bullet wounds, fired from point-blank range into the right side of the head, a straight line of hits, stretching from a point two inches above the temple directly downward to the lower jaw, which was shattered.

  All five bullets penetrated right through the brain, the upper four exiting the skull on the left side. The lower bullet was lodged in the jawbone on the left. It was consistent with a shell fired from a Heckler & Koch submachine gun, and has been sent for examination to the Israeli Army forensic laboratory in Tel Aviv."

  Major Hill knew that it would be rare for an Arab freedom fighter to aim a submachine gun so steadily and so accurately. But the report on Sergeant O'Hara was even more perplexing. Big Fred had not been shot, and neither was the cause of death attributable to the collapsed ceiling in the ruins of the house in which he was found.

  Sergeant O'Hara had died after receiving a crushing blow with an uneven object to the central skull area between his eyes. The nose bone was lodged three inches into the brain, consistent with a headlong fall into the edge of a table, or an encounter with an unarmed combat expert in the Special Forces of either Great Britain or the United States. The fall possibility was of doubtful merit, since there were no other injuries to the SAS Sergeant's face.

  Major Hill realized very quickly that both men could have been killed by a member, or at least a former member, of one of the world's Special Forces. And these days there were many such men. No one perhaps quite as efficient as the SAS or the U.S. Navy SEALs. But the Israelis were very good, and so were the Iraqis. The fact was, it looked as if one or more of such trained killers had turned on the two dead SAS men from Hereford, even though they were both still holding their submachine guns under the rubble.

  Meanwhile, the search continued for the missing SAS Commander. Israeli investigators were in the area, examining wreckage, questioning known personnel from Hamas. No one knew anything, no one had even seen him, never mind killed him, or taken him prisoner.

  The best information available was from the Israeli Forward Commander who confirmed he and Major Kerman had spoken at the height of the battle, and that he had seen the British officer reach the wall and disappear around it. He had glimpsed the Major running in a crouch, up the side street, next to the now shattered row of Palestinian houses. Israeli troops, however, had found no trace of his body.

  One week later the situation was unchanged. Ray Kerman, an officer many believed was destined for the highest Command in the SAS Regiment, had essentially disappeared. Into hot, dusty, and very thin air.

  2

  Eight Months Later Monday, February 14,2005

  Lieutenant Colonel Russell Makin, Commanding Officer, 22 SAS, strode through the cold Hereford rain toward his office, carrying beneath his right arm a heavy black plastic file of classified documents. The Colonel, a tall, powerful ex-combat officer in the Falkland Islands War, had, in his time, carried loaded antitank guided-missile launchers, which weighed a darned sight less.

  The file had grown weekly since midsummer. On its jacket it just contained the word secret. On the first page were the words major Raymond kerman. On the remaining 560 pages was a highly detailed account of how one of the most extensive and secretive investigations of recent years had failed to find one single trace of the missing Major.

  Colonel Makin reached his office, removed his rain cape, asked someone to bring him some coffee, and placed the file on the table. He'd been up for four hours, since 5:00 a.m., mostly talking to the investigating chief in the ultrasecret Shin Bet Intelligence Office, in faraway, sunlit Tel Aviv, two time zones and several light-years east of rainswept, foggy Hereford.

  The two men spoke often these days, drawn together by the consuming military mystery of the SAS Commanding

  Officer, who had run, crouching, through an embattled street in the middle of Hebron, and never been seen again.

  The one single fact that Colonel Makin knew for certain was that the Shin Bet team, Israel's ruthless interior Intelligence equivalent of London's MI5 and Washington's FBI, had conducted the most painstaking and thorough search of the area west of the Jerusalem Road. They'd used everything from bulldozers and mechanical diggers to microscopes and forensic laboratories.

  They had turned up evidence, compelling evidence. But nothing led to where it was supposed to go. The most important fact was that Sergeant O'Hara had been killed by a member of someone's Special Forces, professionally and deliberately. Sergeant Morgan had been blown away by an MP5 submachine gun of the precise type carried by Major Kerman and every combat soldier in the IDF, plus God knows how many Palestinians with smuggled weapons.

  They had found the bodies of two children in the same house, one boy, one girl, both killed by bursts of fire from an MP5, and ballistics showed they had been shot by the SAS Sergeants, though neither the IDF nor the SAS would ever reveal this. The time of death, of all four, was approximately identical. Another body in the house had been killed by the blast of a shell that had crashed right through the top floor of the house. The man had been the father of both children.

  The wife, Shakira Sabah, was found living with her brother, a deeply suspected but unproven member of Hamas, and his family, a half mile southeast of her former home, deep in H-l territory. She had been at a neighbor's house when her own home was hit, and she was unable to regain entry through the rubble. She knew nothing of any British officer, had seen nothing, cared nothing, and was too upset at the slaughter of her family to be of any further help to anyone. Shin Bet did not believe her.

  None of this brought anyone any nearer to the whereabouts of Ray Kerman. In point of fact, Shin Bet thought they may have found his combat jacket buried in the debris of the house, but it contained nothing, and was unmarked, and, of course, Israeli. It was also ruined, under the dust and cement of the building.

  It had much in common with the other evidence. The Major could have killed both his colleagues, and it could have been his jacket, and he could be on the run. But from what? And where?

  This was no ordinary SAS soldier, this was Ray Kerman, a decorated officer of impeccable character, training, and background. If he had been killed in the battle, where was his body? If Hamas had him prisoner or hostage, why had they not contacted anyone, either for reward or hostage exchange? Like they always did. No answers. No Major.

  Russ Makin, at the age of thirty-eight, a career Officer since Sandhurst, had never encountered anything quite like it. In his twenty years as a Serving Officer he had never even heard of anyone going missing from the SAS. Certainly no one on the order of Major Kerman, who was a very important person, privy to many, many secrets in Great Britain's most secretive combat regiment.

  In a quiet, irritated way, the Ministry of Defence had been pressuring him for months. He had been obliged to deal with the Legal Department, the Public Relations Department, the Pensions Department. There had been endless questions from the Next-of-Kin officials, from the Compensation Department. Did he consider the file should be closed under the heading "Missing in Action"?

  But was the Major really missing? And above all, was there anything about Major Kerman that no one knew?

  This last question, Colonel Makin understood, may be answered in the next hour. At half past ten, a special courier was due to arrive from the MOD in Whitehall, bringing with him a classified report, the result of
an exhaustive investigation conducted in tandem by the Ministry and by MI5.

  The SAS Chief knew there would be no courier if there was nothing of any interest. And when the document finally arrived, on time, he read it with a sense of real disquiet.

  The parents of Ray Kerman, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Kerman of North London, revealed, with very little prompting, that they were formerly Mr. and Mrs. Reza Rashood, lately of the city of Kerman in the southeast of Iran, where Ravi Rashood had been born.

  "Ravi Rashood! Holy shit!" Colonel Makin muttered. "I had no idea."

  Of course there was nothing illegal about any of it. Thousands of Middle Eastern families had immigrated to England and changed their names to fit in better with the locals. Neither Richard Kerman nor his wife seemed to be hiding anything. They produced Ray's birth certificate, and the family's immigration documents, including the official change-of-name papers issued just before Ray's fourth birthday. This included the boy's British citizenship conferred upon him when he was five.

  They produced his school records, and even made arrangements, through Harrow's headmaster, for the men from the Ministry to go to the school and conduct whatever further investigations they wished.

  The result of these further interviews were contained in a secondary document, which demonstrated how thoroughly concerned Whitehall was at the loss of the SAS Major. They had located two Old Harrovians who had shared studies with Ray during their school years. One of them, now a practicing barrister in London, recalled nothing of note.

  The other, a struggling poet in North Wales, recalled that he had once seen a copy of the Koran on Ray's bookshelf. He remembered having asked his roommate about it, and he even remembered the reply. Ray said it had belonged to his mother and that there were some very beautiful passages in its pages. The poet, named Reggie Carrington, had been interested and in later years purchased a copy he found in a secondhand bookshop. He was pleased to show it to the man from MI5.