Cody's Army

by Jim Case

  “Easy, Cody, take it easy,” the Ambassador said. “If you do go in there, you’ll need to wait until dark, at least, then get a damn good guide.”

  “Ambassador, we don’t have the time. It’s 15:20 already. It won’t be dark for five hours at least. We have to move now. Do you have any Lebanese you can trust on your staff who could get us through the Green Line in the daylight?”

  “No, I won’t allow that. If they got caught they would be killed.”

  “Great, fix me up with a Gray Line tour of the Green Line then.” The other three members of his team sat around the table. They were in fatigues, with their weapons and equipment in place and ready to move and to fight. Richard Caine kept checking his favorite handgun, a Beretta 92 DA. He kept slipping the loaded ammo clip in and out until the Ambassador stared at him.

  Hawkeye kept looking at the map and grumbling. He wanted to get moving. Rufe Murphy sat on the chair, waiting patiently. Now and then his eyes closed and his breathing evened out in just under a snore.

  “Kelly got me through, maybe some of the other news people have more contacts than you do, Ambassador. It’s worth a try. What hotel do most of them use?”

  “The Royal Garden, but I don’t like the idea.”

  “Show me a better way, and I’ll grab it.”

  Someone came to the door and the Ambassador waved him inside. The man, a Lebanese, whispered to the Ambassador, who shrugged. The messenger left.

  “Cody, there’s someone at the gate to see you. The guards won’t let him in but he says he must talk to you. He’s about ten years old and his name is Dahr.”

  Cody laughed and a smile cracked his too serious a face. “Yeah, we might just have found our meal ticket. Dahr helped us get over the Green Line this morning. I bet he could do it again, even in broad daylight. Tell the guards to let Dahr in and bring him up here.”

  Five minutes later Cody finished a serious talk with Dahr. The boy had told Cody that Kelly was the first American ever to be honest and fair with him, and that he helped her whenever he could. He was angry that she had died, and now he wanted to help Kelly’s friend.

  Cody told Dahr the street address, and he knew at once where it was. He touched the map in the Najmeh section, where they had crossed the Green Line that morning.

  “Safe to cross there again, if I with you. About…oh, three kilometers to the address you need go to in the Furn El Chebbak section.”

  The ambassador shook his head. “Maybe you can get the men across the Green Line, Dahr. But how can you lead them through the heart of West Beirut for three miles?”

  “Just can,” Dahr said. “How can you be big-shot ambassador?”

  Rufe bellowed with laughter and they all joined in, even the ambassador.

  “You’re hired,” Cody growled. “Fifty dollars a day. That’s about two hundred Lebanese pounds. Now let’s get out of here. We’re wasting time.”

  Dahr looked at the four men and shook his head. “Too damn clean,” he said. “Dirty clothes. Two shirttails out. Each different hat. Look too much like real army.”

  In their supply room downstairs, the men picked up their combat ammo, grenades, all the special tools they each had ordered and got ready to move out. Caine wore a small Israeli combat pack filled with C-5 plastic explosive and his detonators, all of the timed variety.

  Dahr looked at the four men again and shook his head. “Most militia don’t have uniforms,” he said.

  Cody waved at Caine and Hawkeye. “Get out of the camous and back in pants and shirts. Nothing too new. Let’s push it!”

  They rode toward the Green Line in an older fiat. Cody drove. Before they arrived at the parking spot, Dahr told them they would be using a tunnel and that once across the Green Line he was their guide. They must do exactly what he told them.

  “If we get into a firefight, then I take over,” Cody warned him.

  “We might. Several factions in this area. None of them like the other. Oh, I not ten, I am twelve years old. I did not get all of my vitamins.”

  Getting into the buildings and then the house and to the tunnel was no problem. At the far end, Dahr talked with them before they left the building in West Beirut.

  “Keep weapons pointing down, slung,” he said, touching an Uzi. “No marching; militia don’t march. They run, scramble, and get lost. No English, point, motion. Keep quiet as possible. We stay in alleys most of time.”

  They were a curious-looking contingent as they came out the doorway into an alley in West Beirut. The boy went first, swinging a stick he found. The four men grouped loosely, about five yards apart, heads down, caps covering obvious American features. Rufe wore a floppy white hat to help hide his big black face.

  The first four blocks went without incident, then on the next one they saw a barbed-wire barrier on the main street and expected security of some sort in the alley nearby. An Amal Shiite stepped into the alley as Dahr came midway in the slit between the one-story buildings.

  Dahr tossed a rock and tried to hit it with the stick he still carried. The militiaman guard jabbered in Arabic with Dahr, then held up his hand as Cody came within a dozen feet of him. The Shiite had just begun to swing up his automatic rifle, when Cody beat him to the punch and sent three silenced 9mm parabellums into his chest. The rounds slammed him backward and killed him before he skidded off the wall and crumpled in the dirt.

  Murphy, bringing up the rear, effortlessly picked up the dead soldier and dropped him in a nearly full trash bin. They double-timed out of that alley behind Dahr and resumed their southerly route, crossing over a wide street called Mar Maroun, and two more blocks south past Rue Huvelin.

  Dahr ducked into a safe place beside a stone building and pointed ahead.

  “From here it get little tougher. We run out of alleys. We be on small streets, but there more people. Be casual, don’t look like from out of town.”

  “Yeah, and if we get into a firefight, let’s do it with the silenced choppers,” suggested Hawkeye. “We have four of them. Let’s not alert anyone we’re on the way until we have to.”

  They moved at a good pace, but not with any kind of military precision. Usually Dahr was ahead with his stick. Often small boys trailed or led militia groups wishing they could be a member. Most could not wait until they were fourteen so they could have a real weapon and join the militia.

  Down two more blocks they passed a park that had not been watered or cared for and had turned brown. They found an alley again that led south and to the east. The Green Line slanted that way and so they had to move with it.

  They came to an area with many more shops, wider streets, and hundreds of people. It was some kind of an open-air market. They went two blocks around it, and continued south.

  Ten minutes later, Dahr bellied down at the end of an alley and motioned Cody forward. His men vanished behind doorways, and he hurried up to lie beside the young Arab boy.

  “This is the place,” Dahr said. “Thought I knew address. It is fortress. On outside many buildings, no windows. Then inside is real fort. Also courtyard. Once saw chopper fly from this courtyard. Big place, many Amal soldiers.”

  “First we watch the fort, Dahr. See what forces they show.”

  Five minutes later an old convertible came around the corner ahead. It moved slowly. There were three militiamen in the big backseat. Two had the long rocket-propelled grenade, RPG, launchers. The third a submachine gun. The driver moved slowly, cautiously along the narrow street, and down to the corner, where he turned to the left to circle the block.

  “So, they have a mounted patrol. What else?” Almost as Cody said it a pair of militiamen without uniforms but with camou fatigue shirts, came around the far corner, where they had first seen the convertible. The men were young and did not check the alley mouth, and so did not see Cody and Dahr lying there.

  Five minutes later a second pair of roving guards, with no camou fatigues at all, strolled by, chattering and then laughing at some joke.

  Cody did n
ot have to lay it all out and determine a plan of attack. He knew instinctively. He sent Caine and Murphy up the street to the first doorway that was deep enough to hide them. They were to take out the first foot patrol to show up.

  Cody figured the mounted patrol in the old Ford convertible would come past next, and it was first on the list. He brought up Hawkeye and they split up the targets.

  “I’ll take the driver and the man with the rifle,” Cody said. “You get the other two. At this twenty-yard range it will be like picking your teeth.”

  The convertible appeared next and made the same trip as before. The men were not talking among themselves this time. One actually stared into the alley, but the contrasting brilliant sunlight and deep shadows made it impossible to see far.

  When the Ford was exactly opposite them, Cody gave the signal and they both fired. Cody’s round slammed into the Shiite driver’s head, jolting him sideways, spraying the ages-old rock with blood, bone fragments, and brain cells. The dying man kept his grip on the steering wheel, and when his body was flung to the left, he turned the wheel that way as he fell.

  The convertible turned sharply to the left and smashed into the stone building, skidding for a dozen feet before the engine stalled.

  The sudden movement of the Ford jolted the two remaining live passengers. Hawkeye’s first round had killed his target, but the second shot of both men missed when the car swerved. The two live Shiites dove over the side of the convertible and got between the vehicle and the stone wall.

  Cody and Hawkeye unleashed a sheet of hot lead from the two silenced Uzi’s, emptied 32-round magazines, and replaced them. In the quiet spell, one of the Shiites lifted up and blasted twelve rounds into the alley.

  Cody looked at the convertible, figured out where the gasoline tank was, and put six carefully aimed rounds into the area he had selected.

  Before he could fire again a small blue flame licked out from under the rear bumper, then the convertible exploded, flipping end over end twice down the street, spewing burning gasoline along the way. The two Shiites were charred beyond description in the few seconds they had after the blast.

  With all the noise and firing, Cody knew he had to move fast. Cody jumped to his feet, charged across the street to the first doorway. It had a new heavy door on it and, he figured, a good lock.

  By the time he got there Rufe and Caine joined them. Cody tried the door; locked. He fired six times at the doorknob, and just around it. When he tried the door the next time it came open.

  Cody kicked the door forward and charged on through, his Uzi down and ready for anything that lay on the other side.

  Caine, Murphy, and Hawkeye followed him in.

  “16:30 hours,” Caine noted.

  “Let’s hope this dude Kaddoumi has the poop we want on where those hostages are held,” Rufe grumbled.

  “And let’s hope we can stay alive to do something about it,” Hawkeye tacked on.

  Amen to that, thought Cody

  They pushed ahead, deeper into Hell.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  As Cody came through the door into the outer ring of buildings that formed the defense around Majed Kaddoumi’s West Beirut headquarters, he found only an empty room in front of him. It was an entranceway, with a long hall extending to the sides and a short one to a door straight ahead.

  Dahr had been left in the alley. He agreed to stay there as long as he could, and he would try to find them when they came out of the fortress. They would get back to this spot if possible. If he had not found them in an hour, he should go back to the east side.

  Rufe took the door ahead, kicked it open, lumbered into the room and swept it with his Uzi chattering softly in its silenced mode. There was no return fire. He came to the door and motioned and the three men darted into the room. It had been a dayroom for off-duty troops. Three dead Shiites sprawled on the floor. Each had an AK-47 Russian-made rifle with the 30-round curved magazine loaded with the 7.62mm NATO cartridges.

  Cody ran to the small window that looked on a courtyard. The building next door extended deeply into the open space, so from here Cody could see little. What he did see did not make him happy. A cadre of twenty men was being screamed at by an officer twenty feet in front of the window.

  Cody had heard that many of these ‘soldiers’ received two hours of political diatribe which made up their complete training. Then they were given a rifle and expected to be expert fighting men.

  “Put a charge near the window,” Cody snapped at Caine. “Thirty-second timer. We stay together. They’ve got too much firepower for solo.”

  By the time Cody was through talking, Caine had pulled a quarter-pound of C-5 from his backpack, sliced it in half and inserted a timer. He pressed the plastic explosive at the side of the window and set the detonator/timer for thirty minutes. He pushed the start button.

  Cody led the way into the hall and almost stumbled into an Arab man backing out of another room. When the door closed and the man looked up, he started to scream, but Hawkeye put two silent rounds into his mouth, removing a chunk of his skull four-inches-square and most of his brains with it. Cody caught the body and lowered it soundlessly to the wooden floor.

  The four men ran lightly down the hallway to where Cody figured the longer building was located. He found a hallway that led away to the left. Somewhere a woman screamed. Cody shook his head and pointed down the hall.

  They made it safely to the end room. Rufe kicked in the door and charged into the room. There was no one there. They were now on the second floor, since the land had fallen away downhill.

  Caine closed the door as far as it would go, while Cody looked out the window. Now he could see the open area. It was at least forty yards wide, with no trees, a few shrubs, and no grass. A misshapen child’s swing set had been tipped over on one side. A squad of six men made a pitiful attempt at close-order drill near the center of the cleared space.

  On the far side of the courtyard the appearance of the inner buildings changed. They had bars on the windows. There were guards outside some of the doors leading to the interior. Then, at the far side, but detached from the square of buildings on the rim, Cody saw a structure that had to be Majed’s headquarters. It had windows, so it couldn’t be that tough.

  He had to work his way around to that spot, then find a way to breach the more heavily defended GHQ, and he had less than half an hour before the first blast went off.

  Cody looked over the area again, more slowly this time. At the far side he saw something under a canvas camouflage.

  “Rufe, take a look at this. Is that a bird over there under that camou?”

  Rufe checked it out and nodded. “Yeah, Yugoslavian make, a copy of something. Looks a lot like a YZ-24. I can fly it if we can get to it.”

  “Just checking. Caine, set another present for them, here,” Cody instructed. “Give it twenty-eight minutes and let’s move.”

  Caine planted the bomb so it would blow out the wall of the room into the courtyard and cause a lot of excitement—and, he hoped, confusion.

  They came out of the second room on the run, charging down the hall to the outer rim, then to the left again to get closer to the building that almost certainly was Majed’s headquarters.

  Twenty feet after getting back to the rim corridor, they ran head-on into three militiamen. Hawkeye was on the point. He sprayed them with half a dozen silent rounds before they could get a shot off, and Cody finished one of them, who had only been wounded. They charged on past, sure now that the dead men would be noticed behind them at any time and an alarm sounded.

  Before that happened they came to the last turn. Somewhere ahead would be an exit they could use to get to the headquarters.

  Fifty feet down the hallway, a sandbagged position erupted with hot lead. Cody’s men dove into doorways and splintered one door on their way inside.

  “Casualties?” Cody shouted. All were intact except Rufe, who took a hot slug through half an inch of his upper
left arm. It would bother him about as much as a mosquito bite.

  Hawkeye was closest to the enemy position, still about forty-five feet down the hallway. He pulled a grenade pin and heaved the bomb, hoping on lots of roll. The grenade went off with a shattering roar, echoing and with the sound building as it raced down the hallway.

  A hole in the floor showed where the hand bomb had been short. Firing came again from the sandbagged position and now from Shiite men at the other end of the hall.

  “Give them a Caine special,” Cody snarled.

  Caine had it almost ready. He used the half a cube of C-5 explosive and formed the plastic around a hand grenade, but left room for the arming spoon to fly off. Then he pulled the pin, and exposed himself for two seconds as he threw the bomb with all his power down the hill.

  He ducked back inside the door and clamped his hands over his ears. After the 4.2 second delay, the grenade and C-5 went off in one tumultuous sympathetic explosion.

  Cody looked out his door and saw the sandbags leveled, the position behind it only splatters of human flesh and blood on the walls, and one wall on the inside of the courtyard, blown into the room it had been forming.

  “Let’s go do it!” Cody yelled. The four men came out of the rooms firing. Two gave covering fire to the rear, the other two used assault fire to the front as they charged down the hallway to take the territory their bomb had just won for them.

  They leaped over parts of bodies, blasted sandbags, and twisted remains of a tripod-mounted machine gun, and continued down the hall.

  Two militiamen in civilian clothes jumped into the hall firing automatic rifles, but the spraying Uzi’s jolted them out of their socks and drove them into the floor and straight into Allah’s waiting arms.

  For a moment there was no firing in front or behind them so Cody kicked in a door, motioning them inside the room. It had been an office at one time. A desk remained, but mattresses had been scattered on the floor for some of the troops to sleep on.

  Cody looked out the window cautiously, saw the headquarters not more than thirty yards away. From there it looked more imposing than it had before. It was two stories, made of stone and plaster, and had heavy bars on all the windows and guards on the two doors he could see.