Cody's Army

by Jim Case

  Twenty yards.

  Still too far. He had to be sure.

  “We must do something!” Abu screamed.

  “We will in another twenty or thirty seconds,” Cody barked. “Keep your head down.”

  Kelly McConnell stared at him with a combination of admiration and bewilderment. She probably had never been in the middle of a real combat fire fight before.

  Cody risked a peek around the trash bin.

  The Jeep was ten yards away and stopped. Now!

  He lifted up, pitching the grenade with a stiff-elbowed overhand toss to get it over the dumpster.

  He dropped as soon as he let go of the grenade and edged to the outer end of the dumpster, the Uzi safety off and ready for action. He had a 32-round magazine in the chopper and another in his pocket.

  Four-point-two seconds after the arming handle sprung off the bomb, it detonated. The grenade had landed in the rear seat of the Jeep and bounced upward a foot before the time fuse ran out and the grenade exploded with a cracking, echoing roar.

  Cody sprang from around the dumpster and sent a burst of eight parabellums into the Jeep. The gunner on the chatter gun had been nearly torn in half by the explosion and lay draped over the side of the rig.

  The driver had taken a dozen shrapnel wounds but none were fatal. He furiously tried to shift the Jeep into reverse. It was the first time he had driven the stolen vehicle, and no one had told him about reverse.

  Cody chopped him into garbage with a six-round burst into his chest.

  There was an eerie silence after the sound of the Uzi’s firing faded away. Then came screams from behind the Jeep, and foot soldiers swarmed forward, firing as they came. That triggered the opposition at the far end of the alley, and the fury of the automatic weapons battle climbed to the deafening zone.

  Cody dove behind the dumpster.

  “You all right?” he shouted to Kelly.

  She nodded, afraid to show how frightened she was.

  “Where to?” Cody shouted again, this time at Abu.

  Abu was calm. He pointed to the nearby door.

  Cody lifted the Uzi and blasted four rounds at the lock, saw the door sag as it came unlatched.

  “I’ll go first and cover you two,” he instructed. “Then send Kelly, and you come last.”

  He surged the three feet across the unprotected area between the dumpster and the wall and landed in the relatively safer doorway alcove. He looked left. The men who had been firing there had retreated halfway to the street. Automatic weapons still blasted from the other way.

  The attackers were almost to the dumpster.

  “Now!” he bellowed.

  Kelly looked at him for reassurance, then stood and hurried across the opening.

  A Hezbollah partisan pushed next to the side of the dumpster and fired twice at his only target, Kelly McConnell.

  Cody shifted the Uzi upward and with four rounds turned the attacker’s face into bloody, lifeless pulp. He looked back at Kelly, who staggered the last step toward him, then fell in his arms. He saw blood on her chest. He pulled her fully into the protection.

  Abu spurted across the danger zone, kicked open the door and helped Cody with the girl.

  Inside the dimly lit room, Cody slammed the door shut and pushed a chair under the handle. He put Kelly down in a big chair, in a living room of sorts. He had not heard Kelly make a sound since she was hit.

  He pushed the shawl aside and saw blood on her blouse. He touched a carotid artery in her throat. Twice more he tried. There was no pulse. He pinched her nose, but she was not breathing.

  Kelly was dead.

  He stared at the pretty face. He had seen a lot of people die, right, but this was a shock. He had never expected it. She had been so vigorous, assertive, bright and lovely just moments ago…

  He kicked the couch, slammed his fist into the cushion, growled a string of curses.

  “She’s…gone?” Abu asked in a stunned voice.

  “Yes.” Cody picked up Kelly gently, cradled her in his arms and fisted the Uzi in his right hand. “Now get us out of here, and on the way tell me exactly how to find Majed Kaddoumi, or you’re going to be next.”

  “Yes…through here.”

  They moved through the unoccupied building, down a long hallway that led away from the fighting, out a door into the street, across it to an alley, and down that for two blocks. Then Abu stopped in a deep doorway.

  “Majed is in his palace, his fortress, to the south, nearly out of the city, in an area called Furn El Chebbak, off the Rue De Damas near the Beirut River. The exact address is 1194 Rue Hassanein. You’ll need help to find it.”

  “I have plenty of help. Don’t get any ideas about telling Majed that I’m coming. If he knows, I’ll come back here and slit your throat, Abu, even if you were a friend of Kelly’s. Now, how do we get back to Kelly’s car? We parked it on the street north of that tunnel under the Green Line, in the alley.”

  “It will take time, but I can bring the car here. Do you have the keys?”

  Cody took out the keys and held them. He could feel Kelly beginning to turn cold in his arms. He put her down on the steps, arranged the black shawl over her blonde hair and adjusted the veil.

  “I think I’d better go with you. You could get lost in all of these streets and alleys. Wouldn’t want there to be any foul-ups. And I’m running out of time.”

  An automatic rifle chattered two streets over, answered by a small-caliber pistol of some kind, and then a grenade went off before things quieted again.

  “Don’t you people ever give up and try to live together?” Cody asked.

  “As you would say, American, it is a matter of principal. These are fanatics. All of them believe they will live forever if they die fighting for Allah.”

  “Spare me the details.” Cody picked up Kelly, cradling her in his arms. “Let’s get to that car the quickest possible way, without getting killed.”

  It took twenty minutes. They had to go around one combat zone in which three men with automatic rifles were engaged in a death struggle with two other armed men in a ruined building.

  They came to a street that had been devastated, nearly every building on both sides blasted, bombed, or shot up. They saw no one in the street, heard no one.

  “That is the Green Line, my new friend,” Abu said. “No one in his right mind tries to cross it during daylight. There is one quick passage through a storm drain if I can remember where it is.”

  They backtracked half a block, and a shadow stepped from a doorway and spoke to Abu. For a moment there was an argument, then the other man nodded.

  “This way. An old friend will help us. He believes that the dead should be treated properly. He will help not you, but he will help the dead woman back across the line. You may come if you wish.”

  They entered a building to the left, went down steep steps to a basement and along a partially finished hallway for twenty yards, then turned sharply to the left to face a tunnel that was only three feet high.

  “An old escape route for a rich man,” Abu said.

  The man who led them there brought a large cardboard box. He indicated that Cody should put Kelly in the box.

  “We crawl and drag the box,” Abu said. “It is the only way to get across here without waiting until dark.”

  It took them a half hour to crawl through the thirty yards of the narrow tunnel. There was not room enough to pull the box efficiently.

  Once on the far side, Cody brushed off his clothes and picked up Kelly. Her body was starting to stiffen and cool.

  When they came to the street, the red Fiat was gone, but Kelly’s bug was in place, undamaged. Cody laid Kelly tenderly in the backseat, then looked up at Abu.

  “The information about Majed better be right, my new friend, or I’ll be coming back for you.”

  “It is right. But the great man is not always there, remember. Let us hope you get lucky.”

  “Luck, yeah. Watch your backside, new friend.”


  Cody started the bug, shifted into first, then drove back to the U.S. Embassy entrance. He showed his ID and went through a telephone check before he was allowed to drive through the maze of road blocks and gates and concrete barricades to the embassy building. They were taking no more chances with a dynamite loaded truck and a kamikazee driver.

  He told the Marine guard about Kelly, then gently picked up her remains and carried them up the front steps.

  A senior aide showed him where to take her, a room to one side, with a couch. The aide said he would handle the rest. Cody hurried away from there, submerging emotions that cut deeply into him.

  He looked at his watch.

  14:28 hours.

  And he didn’t have a solid lead yet. Those forty-eight hours, and hopes for survival for 130 hostages, were melting away too damn fast.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  Sharon Adamson sat beside the window and looked out at the lovely green of the trees. They were cedars, the cedars of Lebanon. An Arab with an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder passed the window every two minutes. He looked and waved but she ignored him.

  She had no idea where they were. She had recovered from the blow to the jaw she received on the plane. It was the first time she had ever been unconscious. For a while she was in a fuzzy haze, but when the terrorists insisted that they all leave the plane to board the buses, she had hustled back to her job of taking care of her passengers.

  She had made sure that the older people were given time to move along the aisle and that they were not harmed. She had felt a strong responsibility for the passengers. That was simply her job; she had to take care of them.

  There had been little problem on the bus. She had talked with everyone on the big airport bus, and kept them calm. She was surprised when they left Beirut and moved into the countryside, and then she realized they were heading south along the coast highway. Abruptly they took another road that doubled back north, then turned inland toward the low-lying hills behind the city.

  The road was not as good as the first one. Now and then a Jeep filled with armed men would speed ahead, then stop and watch them pass, and then follow them again. There had been no orders to blindfold the passengers.

  Sharon tried to keep track of their position, but she spent more time comforting some of the elder passengers. She did see a sign that said they were twelve kilometers from Choueifete. Shortly after that, they turned due east and climbed into the low-lying hills.

  They passed several settlements, and she saw a sign that said they were approaching Quadi Chahrour. But they never arrived at the town. They turned off at the top of a long grade and drove through barren hills to a high gate that now had riflemen perched on top of it.

  Sharon figured that this place had once been an estate of a tremendously rich man, but now was used by the terrorists who had taken over the plane. The long drive ended when they went through a second, higher, wall, which had gun emplacements on the top. She was certain she saw some mounted machine guns.

  She had been surprised at the amount of plants and flowers that were on the grounds. It was a virtual forest in places with many cedar trees, hardwoods, and plots of flowers. To one side she saw a swimming pool, but it had not been taken care of and now was fouled and empty.

  Sharon left the window and went quickly down the big room to talk to a woman passenger who had a heart condition. It was about noon, the day after the capture.

  Mrs. Vereen was worse. Sharon took her pulse and knew it was too fast. Her blood pressure was probably far, far too high as well. Sharon knew the woman had to have medical attention. She went to the door and pleaded with the guard to let her talk to Farouk Hassan. The guard merely grinned.

  Down the hallway in the large, palace-like structure that had three wings, Captain Tom Ward pounded on the door until the guard came. This one could speak some English. Ward was far past being afraid by now. He was furious at the way the passengers were being treated. He felt that the surviving 123 ticket buyers and the crew of seven were still his responsibility.

  The guard leveled a strange-looking automatic rifle at Ward as he pushed the door open.

  “So, talk,” the guard said in English.

  “I want to see Farouk Hassan, the man in charge. I demand to see him. We have a lot of things to discuss. You go tell him what I said.”

  “I tell, but do no good,” the guard said and slammed the door.

  Ward was on the second floor in a room with sixteen other men. There were eight cots there. The younger men slept on the floor the night before. The windows were barred, had been made that way years ago to keep people out. Now they worked very well to keep the hostages inside the rooms.

  Five minutes later the guard opened the door.

  “Ward, come.”

  Ward grinned. “Men, we must be getting some action. We can at least have decent living conditions while we’re being held here. I’ll be right back.”

  A minute later his hands were tied behind his back and he was marched down a hall, up steps to the third floor, and into a luxuriously decorated room in which Farouk Hassan had just finished a seven-course meal.

  Ward had decided on the civil approach. His hands tied with twine behind his back dented his resolve, but he continued.

  “Mr. Hassan, I am Captain Ward, the pilot of the aircraft.”

  “I know who you are. What do you want?” Farouk said in a British-accented English.

  “I want only humane treatment for my passengers and crew. We have not been fed since we left the plane almost twenty-four hours ago. There are not enough beds and no bedding. We must have these necessities, or we will be no good as hostages for you.”

  Abdel Khaled came up behind Ward and slammed his fist into the pilot’s left kidney. Ward screeched in surprise, slowly dropped to his knees and fell to the floor, his knees drawn up to relieve the pain.

  “You were saying?” Farouk asked softly.

  Ward struggled to get to his knees; then, with good balance, he stood. “Dead hostages will not help you. Sick and dying hostages will only enflame the civilized world against you. The press will paint you as savages—”

  Abdel slammed his fist into Ward’s kidney again, just over his belt and slightly to the rear. Ward went down, retched violently, then threw up on the floor. Abdel kicked him in the stomach and the shoulder.

  “Filthy pig!” Abdel screamed. He kicked Ward twice more, in the stomach, before Farouk waved him off.

  “Captain Ward, it seems there is some problem with your complaint. We’ll consider it and see what we can do. Clean up this mess before you leave. Abdel, cut him free.”

  Abdel’s knife slashed the cord binding his wrists and put a three-inch-long slice up his forearm. Abdel laughed at him as he tried to stop the bleeding.

  “Now you have more of a mess to mop up, Mr. Ward. Be quick about it!” Farouk snarled.

  Abdel threw him a towel and Ward slowly wiped up his vomit, mostly bile and water. When he had it done he tried to stand. At last, he had to crawl to a chair and boost himself up with his arms.

  “Get out of here,” Farouk said with disgust. “You’re what I hate most about Western people and their countries; your arrogance, your phony superiority. You’re trash. Get out of here!”

  The armed guard caught Ward by one arm and led him out of the room. He stumbled and dragged one foot, and his final look at Farouk was one of hatred.

  When the door closed, Abdel smiled. “It looks like we have found our next sacrifice candidate to the United States government.”

  Farouk nodded slowly. “Yes, you may be right. He could be a troublemaker. We don’t want any of the passengers causing complications at this point.”

  “That’s why we will feed them only once a day, and provide them with no blankets. If they are worried about staying alive and getting some sleep, they won’t have the strength to plot against us in any way.”

  Farouk saluted Abdel with a mug of black coffee. “It’s
settled, then, about our next victim. Now all we need to decide is when we must give the United States and Israel another reminder that we are serious about our plans to kill the prisoners.”

  Abdel grinned, and for a moment Farouk saw there again the expression of a man who loved to kill, who had slipped over the line from loyalist to fanatic, from a soldier willing to kill for the cause, to a madman who killed now for the thrill of saying yea or nay to the life or death of another human being.

  The expression passed and Farouk breathed a little easier. No one person was more important than their cause, not the loyal guards in the hallways and around the estate, not himself, and certainly not Abdel. He hoped he would not have to make a tough decision about Abdel before this was over.

  Back in the big room, Ward lay on one of the cots for half an hour, recovering from the kidney punches. At last he sat up and called over his co-pilot, Peter Jenks, a big man at six-foot-four who had played tight end on the football team in college but was not sharp enough to make the pros. He had joined the Air Force instead and become a transport pilot.

  “How you doing, Tom?”

  “Making it. How are our people?”

  “Hurting, some of them. Lots are unhappy and one or two are near to going over the edge. I haven’t seen the rest of them since we got here, but we talk.”

  “The next room?”

  “Right. There’s a kind of pass-through up near the center of the room. Sharon is on the other side. She’s really taking good care of those people with her.”

  “Good, help me get up there; we need to see what kind of plans we can work out, what strategy. Reasoning with these animals doesn’t work. I found that out the hard way.”

  At the center of the room’s long inner wall was a serving counter with a sink and cabinets under it. On the wall itself were panels that could be pushed open. When they were opened on both sides they created a foot-high pass-through to the next room. Jenks opened it and knocked softly on the opposite panel. A moment later it opened. Sharon looked through.

  “Captain! Thank God you’re all right. I heard they had taken you away.” Sharon’s look of concern emphasized the dramatic change that had taken place in her during the past twenty-four hours.