by Jim Case
Jenks saw her, recognized the short-haired blonde stew, but ducked under the blanket.
“Go away!” he hissed at her. “1 don’t want anything to do with any escape!”
She sat there puzzled and furious for a moment. Then a hand touched her shoulder.
One of the young men on the flight, who she figured had been in the military, grinned at her.
“Lady, those are words of music to my ears. You must have wiped out the guard to get in here. He still have this Russian rifle? Come on, Willy is here! We’re going to have all the help we need!”
Willy checked the guard in the hall, pushed him down a little more so his bloody throat wouldn’t show, then took his AK-47 and his two extra clips and even found a hand grenade in his pocket. Willy hurried back in the room and woke four of his buddies who were traveling on civilian passports but were with the peacekeeping force in the Sinai peninsula.
He organized them, and they quickly slipped away to find and kill any more guards on doors and to alert the other men who were in a big area two doors down.
It was nearly 03:30 hours when Willy and two others huddled with Sharon, who would not give up her thirty-eight, but she did give the derringer to one of the men.
“If we could find all of the passengers, we could get them to the first floor and out windows and into the trees back there,” Sharon said.
Willy shook his head. “Sharon, you’re our general, but the terrain out there is a bleak, barren desert of hills. The guards would pick us off one at a time or capture us. What we need to do is capture this whole complex and then use the transport and blast our way back over the Green Line into East Beirut.”
“Dreaming, man,” another soldier from the Sinai said. “They must have forty men down there. We’ve eliminated three or four, and they have all the firepower. I’ve been in combat before, in Nam. We’ve got to know what the hell we’re doing or we could be shooting each other.”
“We get more weapons,” Willy said. “We need to shake down every room in this whole place until we find all the rifles and pistols we can use. A few SMGs would help, too.”
“How much time do we have?” Sharon asked.
“Until somebody finds the first dead guard. Then the roof is going to blow off this place. Then we have to be ready to stand and fight.”
“Wake up all the men,” Sharon ordered. “We at least can be ready to escape when we make our chance. Everyone who wants to help us fight, get them in one room and we’ll start collecting weapons. The biggest problem is we don’t know how much time we have left.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
Abdel Khaled turned over again. Damn the bed, damn the mattress! Nothing was right up here in the hills. Almost nothing. He and the team had taken over the plane; they had generated more publicity and mass media notice for their small band than ever before. Even the powerful Kaddoumi could not stop them.
But that didn’t help him sleep any better. He went to the bathroom, had a drink of water, but nothing helped. An idea came to him slowly and it made him smile. He pulled on a robe and looked into the dimly lit hallway. Four doors down was Hallah’s room.
The girl, the stewardess, she might still be there.
He hurried down the hall, saw no one, and used his master key, which would open any lock in the place. One light was still on in Hallah’s room. He turned and closed the door quietly, then locked it before he looked into the luxuriously large bedroom. The bed was empty! It had not been slept in.
He took another two steps into the room. He saw a man’s hand extending past the sofa. The large room seemed to crash in on him in the few seconds it took him to rush around the couch.
Hallah lay on his back on the floor. He was fully clothed, his arm thrown out, and his chest a mass of blood. Quickly Abdel beat down his anger, his fury, and touched the man for a pulse.
There was no need. Hallah’s body was cold already. He had been killed two hours ago, three, perhaps five or six! Who had done it? The hostages? The woman? The stewardess? Where were the killers now? Was it a threat to their mission here?
Slowly, Abdel slumped on the couch. He felt drained, totally exhausted. How had it happened? Hallah gone in a second. Abdel remembered the wonderful weekend in Damascus and shivered. Never had he felt such understanding, such perfection in another human being. Hallah was young, but quick to learn, ready to give fully of himself.
He stood and stormed back to his bedroom. He checked the clock. It was a little after 4 A.M. He would rouse the troops and start questioning the hostages one by one. He would shoot each one after questioning. That way he would get rid of the killer!
He pulled on his clothes, strapped on his prize .45 Colt automatic and slung a submachine gun around his neck. In his fatigue-jacket pockets he stuffed ten extra loaded magazines for the SMG.
Abdel ran to the control room, where they had set up a radio and a siren. He sounded the siren to wake up everyone.
The siren wailed through the bleak hills.
Farouk charged into the room, turned off the switch on the siren and picked up a loudspeaker microphone.
“Attention; disregard the siren. There is no emergency. Continue with your normal duties. I repeat, there is no emergency.”
Farouk put down the heavy mike and stared at Abdel. “Have you lost your mind? We are not going out of our way to attract attention here. We are not trying to tell everyone in northern Lebanon where we are hiding the hostages. How can you live and be as stupid as you are, Abdel?”
“Someone killed Hallah!” Abdel shouted. “I just found him, his room’s door was open. Somebody used a knife.”
“And so you were so furious that your lover was dead that you are now going to wake up the troops and have them slaughter the hostages?”
“I want only to question them. We need a complete inspection. There may be others missing. Some guards may be killed. Someone has Hallah’s weapons!”
Farouk calmed. “Yes. The weapons. They could be trouble.”
A guard rushed into the room.
“Three guards in the hallways! All have been knifed to death!”
“The hostages, are they still in their rooms?”
The guard unslung his SMG and raced up the steps to check.
A handgun fired and the guard stumbled back down the steps, his hands holding his chest, which was splotched with bright red. He looked at Farouk for a second, then fell down the last three steps, dead on the landing.
Tahia rushed up to the steps. She had just dressed and thrown a holster and belt over her shoulder.
“Trouble?”
“Yes. Hallah is dead, also some guards. We’re not sure where the hostages are or how long they have been free. We think the stewardess is responsible—Sharon Adamson.”
“We must kill them all!” Abdel screamed. “Don’t you see? We must kill them all so we can destroy the evil ones who killed Hallah and our guards. None must escape. All of our men will be issued submachine guns. We will kill the hostages wherever they hide, in the mansion, on the grounds, in the garden. They all must die!”
Farouk slapped Abdel sharply on the face. Abdel leaped back, the forty-five coming into his hand quickly. He pointed it at Farouk and then Tahia.
“They all must die! 1 command it. I am now the leader of the Guerrillas! My word will be obeyed.”
“Will you kill us, too, Abdel?” Farouk asked softly. He wore a long robe and slippers. Abdel did not answer him.
“They all must die! It must be done. They killed Hallah! We must maintain our authority. We must exterminate these infidels and do it before the sun comes up so they do not despoil another of Allah’s perfect days!”
Tahia moved toward him. He swung the gun, pointing it at her.
“Abdel, we all liked Hallah, but he is a casualty. The war goes on. We must fight and strive and move forward.”
“Don’t try to trick me!” Abdel screamed. He moved the weapon’s aim back and forth between them.
> A guard ran into the room. He began talking before he saw the situation.
“We have just found two more guards killed outside….”
Abdel shot the guard once in the chest. Farouk lifted his robe. His hands were still in the pockets. A pistol barked twice, and the robe smoked a bit around the pocket.
Abdel took one round in his chest and the second through his heart. He fell.
“Check all guards, all prisoners,” Farouk commanded. “Check the grounds. I want Sharon Adamson found and brought to me. She had to be the one who killed Hallah. She told me her father was in the U.S. Army. Hurry, hurry! We have much to do.”
“Do it!” Cody told Caine.
The explosives expert touched a button on his radio detonation board and the barracks/dayroom on the grounds went up in a splintering, quaking roar that showered wood, shingles and chunks of rocks all over the compound. Twenty-two militiamen sworn to fight to the death for the Palestine Liberation Guerrilla Forces did just that. Most died in their beds.
A few militiamen staggered out of the rubble, backlit by the resulting fire, when they were picked off by rifle shots from the second floor of the right wing.
Before the defenders could draw a breath, Caine exploded the motor pool building, the office building and the shack where the generator purred away contentedly until it burned itself out in the roaring diesel-fed blaze that billowed up, feeding on six barrels of fuel.
Below, flames raced through the four structures. A few confused militiamen staggered about, only to be picked off either by the sharpshooters on the second floor or the heavy machine gun which suddenly opened up from the guard tower manned by Hawkeye. The Texan chopped up anything that moved in the big yard in front of the mansion.
Cody and Caine peered through some light brush from their concealed position above the end of the huge country house. Cody figured the friendly fire from the second-floor window meant some of the hostages had escaped, got weapons, and now were trying to fight their way out.
“We can do the most good inside this end of the mansion,” Cody said. “Let’s see if we can make contact with the Americans up there.”
They came up to the rear entryway of the right wing of the mansion, and found a guard on duty. He aimed his weapon at Cody immediately, but before he could pull the trigger Caine sent three Uzi parabellum rounds into his chest and neck, jolting him backward, his life’s blood spilling over his rifle. Cody grabbed the weapon and rushed into the building.
A guard fifty feet down a long hallway vanished to the side, and Cody and Caine ran halfway up the stairs.
“Ahoy, you on the second floor!” Cody bellowed. Nothing happened. They rushed up the rest of the way to the second floor, but found only another long hall, with five doors leading off each side. The downslope rooms faced the courtyard. They were the important ones.
Cody covered Caine as he checked the first two doors. They were locked. Caine shot the lock off the first door and kicked it in. One militiaman inside cowered in the corner. He looked no more than thirteen years old.
The Brit grabbed his weapon and his spare magazines and pushed him back in the corner.
“How can they let kids go fight their wars for them?” he asked. The next room was empty. Cody knocked on the third. They could hear shooting from inside. When a lull came, Cody stood at the side of the door, knocked and bellowed. “Americans out here, damn it!”
After a pause a strong male voice came through the door.
“What sport did Babe Ruth play?”
“Baseball, idiot, we’re here to help you. Open up.”
A lock clicked open and something was pushed away from the door, then it opened inward. A woman’s face looked out. She saw Cody.
“Are you for real?” she asked.
“Real enough. How did you get away? Where did you get your weapons?”
“Come inside quickly, we’re trying to figure out where you guys came from,” she said. Cody and Caine slipped in the door, and they shut it and pushed back the barricade.
“Sharon Adamson, head stewardess from the flight,” she said holding out her hand.
“I’m John Cody and this is Richard Caine. We’ve come to get you out of here.”
“Just two of you?”
“We have help. The outside is pretty well under control. How many more of the terrorist militiamen inside?”
“No idea. We were going to try to get to the buses and get back to East Beirut.”
“Can’t happen. Farouk and his men have probably killed the buses by now. How many rifles you have up here?”
“Seven, and one thirty-eight-caliber revolver.”
“I’m going to give you two more recently acquired rifles. I’ll need to take six armed men who have had military training if possible. Three will go with Caine and three with me, so we can start clearing this mansion. We need positive control.”
“Be light in another half hour,” Caine said.
“I’m going with you,” Sharon blurted. “I want to go, to help. I feel responsible for these people.”
Cody nodded. She seemed to be the leader, even though five or six of the men with the rifles had to be military men.
“Keep two armed men here, we’ll divide the rest. We’ll clear the second floor first, all three wings, then work down.”
They cleared rooms each way down the second floor corridor. Cody kicked in doors that were locked. They found no one in the first seven rooms. Then two big rooms had women hostages in them, and beyond that they found two militiamen just waking up.
They quickly surrendered.
“We have no way to handle prisoners,” Cody said.
Sharon was already tying them up with their own belts and bootlaces. “There has been enough killing. Let these men live.”
It came out strongly, not as an order, but as a statement that brooked no rebuttal.
Down the hall two Arabs ran into the corridor, fired two shots and were blasted apart by silent Uzi rounds from Cody’s chopper.
He and Sharon stormed down to the next room. Cody heard voices inside. He kicked the door open and covered the room. There were six more women from the plane there. They cried when they saw Sharon.
“It won’t be long now, ladies,” she told them. “We’re going to take care of you. Please stay back from the windows, and lie on the floor until the shooting stops.”
Then she was gone into the hall, rushing to catch up with Cody, who had just kicked in the next door.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
Cody, Sharon Adamson, and their team of three Marine Corps infantrymen worked down the rest of the second-floor corridor to the end. They found three more Shiite militiamen and quickly dispatched them. But not before one of the Marines had taken a round in the meat of his shoulder.
Cody stared down at the sweep of the yard and the gardens in front of the mansion. The four outbuildings were still burning. Half a dozen dead men lay on the ground in front of him. One of the buses had both front tires flattened.
Dawn was only minutes away.
He took out the radio, lifted his antenna and called to Rufe.
“Rufe, you awake?”
There was a pause.
“Am now. Time to move?”
“Soon. Like to have some of those Israeli jets overhead in about twenty minutes. Then move in the slow birds in another twenty minutes. Our work here going well.”
“That’s a copy, Mr. C. I’ll be there in ten. Over and out.”
Cody waited a few moments by the window. Caine and his team were supposed to come back to this end when they finished clearing the second floor all the way to the far end. He took another look at Sharon.
“You seem to be the kingpin here. How did you get it all started?”
“One of the terrorists tried to rape me. I got lucky and killed him and took his weapons. Then I found where the men were and we started working at getting ourselves free. It’s downright scary what a person can do when she has to, Mr. Cod
y. That was the first time I’ve ever hurt anybody, let alone kill someone. I still shudder when I think about it.”
“Forget about it for now.”
Caine came a minute later and they sent two men who turned out to be Marine embassy guards down the steps first for their point. When the Marines had a room cleared and safe on the ground floor, the rest of them charged into it and began moving forward to clear the twenty rooms on the ground floor.
They had just left the fourth room and darted into the hall, when a door opened ahead of them and two Arabs jumped out, snapping off shots from handguns.
“Trouble!” Sharon shouted. She dove for the floor, rolled once and came up with the submachine gun she had liberated from a dead Palestinian chattering on full auto. She held the bucking weapon on target for eighteen rounds and the two attackers went down.
Cody tilted his soft cap back on his head and watched the woman in her airline hostess skirt stand, and, without looking at the weapon, eject the spent magazine and slam another one into place. She charged the handle to get a fresh round in the chamber, then looked over at him.
Two Marines began hopscotching from room to room. Most were vacant on this right wing. At the center of the mansion, they held up and waited for a conference.
“Could be trouble ahead, sir,” one Marine said. “There’s a whole big pile of furniture set up in front of the far door through the little anteroom. Come take a look.”
Cody heard the machine gun outside chattering again. Four bursts of five rounds, then one of ten. Hawkeye must be finding some new targets and living up to his nickname.
He edged up to the hall doorway and looked into the next room. It was twenty feet across, and on the far side big wooden desks had been pushed up against a door leading the other way into the central section of the mansion.
“Have we accounted for all of our passengers and crew?” he asked Sharon.
She had been counting as they moved and had a Marine on the other fire team also keep count.
“All except two. They may have been moved somewhere.”