By the Rivers of Babylon (53 page)

“Salaam,”
answered Major Bartok in Arabic.

“Shalom,”
said the old man, with emphasis.

Major Bartok was only slighty surprised. He had been told that there might be a Jewish community somewhere near Babylon. If he had had the time, he would have spoken to the old man, but he had not one minute to waste. He waved.
“Alekhem
shalom.”
By the number of mud huts, he estimated that there couldn’t be more than fifty people living in the village. He shouted over his shoulder to the radio operator as he led the squad through the village “Tell Jerusalem we have found a Jewish village.” He looked at his map. “Ummah. Ask them if we can take them home. Even if we don’t reach the Concorde in time, we can at least accomplish this.”

Captain Geis in the C-130 took the message from the radio operator and radioed Jerusalem.

The Prime Minister listened as Captain Geis relayed the message. He nodded slowly to himself. Jews of Babylon. But they were Iraqi citizens. Kidnapping Iraqi citizens was hardly a friendly gesture. And if he authorized it over the radio, Baghdad would hear and the rest of the operation might be jeopardized. Still, the Law of Return provided that any Jew who wished to come to Israel could do so. Sometimes they needed a little help getting there. There were precedents for this. He looked around at the full room. Some of the men and women nodded. Some shook their heads. Many faces revealed the agonizing dilemma they all felt. But it was his decision. There was no time for debate. He spoke into the microphone. “Do you have room?”

Captain Geis smiled. “How could we not have room for them?”

“Well . . . well, if they want to go . . . to come home, then let them come. Out.” He settled back into his chair. History in the making. Disaster in the making, perhaps. He had gone so far already that it was easy to ignore the consequences of any further perilous decisions. Once you took that initial plunge, everything else was easier. He asked for another cup of coffee.

Laskov watched as the sun spread its first rays over the mountains and the flatlands below. He caught a glimpse of Babylon as he flew by and wondered what it was like down there. He had the same sense of wanting to land as he had had when he flew over the pyramids of Egypt. But his fate was to observe the world from the aerie of his leather seat, with the smell of hydraulic oil in his nostrils. He had spent too much of his life above this teeming earth, and he was looking forward to mixing more with its inhabitants on the ground after this.

He took transmissions from the aircraft protecting the two C-130’s. “Roger. Change missions with me now and unload some of your ordnance on the hill. Be careful.” He came in low for a last strafing run. The sky was bright, but on the ground the dust storm was still keeping visibility down to a few hundred meters or less.

He pressed a button on his flight column, and the 20mm cannon ripped a path from east to west starting from the outer city wall up to the east slope. He released the button quickly as
the rounds passed through the deserted Israeli trenches. There was still not enough visibility to bring effective fire on the advancing Arabs without a risk of hitting his own people.

The Concorde suddenly loomed up in front of him and he pulled back on the stick and cleared it. He saw, in that split second, a woman on the delta wing, and he imagined that it was Miriam. She seemed to be calling for someone.

Laskov wanted very much to ask Becker about Miriam. He ached with the unasked question. But there were hundreds of other people in Israel who wanted to know about their loved ones, also. He’d have to wait and find out along with everyone else.

He banked sharply as he passed over the Euphrates and headed south with his six F-14’s to exchange assignments with the other half of his squadron. They would have a chance to lighten up on their load now. He looked as his fuel gauges. The low-level, top-speed flight had burned too much. The combat maneuvers were burning too much. They were cutting it close for the trip home. He hit the intercom button. “Isn’t there a gas station down this street?”

“Right,” said Danny Lavon. “Turn left here, go a thousand klicks to the light and stop at Lod. All major credit cards accepted.”

Laskov smiled. He had alerted Lavon to keep an eye on the gauges without saying, “Keep an eye on the gauges.” Why did pilots talk in circumlocution and bad jokes? Even the Red Air Force had practiced that idiocy. The Americans were masters at it. Invented it, probably. It must be universal now.

As he passed over the C-130 on the mud flats he saw the commandos launching their rubber rafts off the quay of a small mud village. He looked at his watch. It had been seven minutes since the C-130 came to a stop. Not bad time. He radioed Captain Geis. “Gabriel 32 overhead now. Nice landing. I still don’t see those flares. I’ll keep an eye open for foul play.”

“Roger, 32. Nice performance in Babylon. How are they doing on the ground?”

“Touch and go. Out.”

One of the F-14’s peeled off and circled the C-130. Two others took up a pattern around the rafts.

Laskov was on the east bank of the river now. He passed over the C-130 on the Hillah road. Great gusts of wind buffeted the big cargo craft, and Laskov could see that the pilot had left the
engines running in order to control it on the ground.

Laskov picked out the guest house and museum and the towers of the Ishtar Gate. His impulse was to put his last SMART bomb into the guest house, but Jerusalem had vetoed that. They had the idea that Dobkin might still be alive in there. Laskov doubted that very much. There was also some speculation based on one of Becker’s transmissions, and Dobkin’s report, that there might also be a female prisoner alive there. He doubted that, too. But they would find out soon enough. He could see the line of commandos and the jeeps approaching the area. Laskov knew there would be a fight there, and if the commandos were held up for more than ten minutes and couldn’t bypass the area, then he had permission to take out the guest house and the museum, if necessary. If there were Israeli prisoners in there, he knew they would understand. He knew he would if the situation were reversed. He wouldn’t like it but he would understand. So would Dobkin. Dobkin was a soldier.

David Becker hit the auxiliary power unit switch again. It began to turn over—more slowly this time. The batteries were weakening rapidly—but still no ignition and temperature rise. He looked over at Kahn in the copilot’s seat. “Sorry, Peter.”

A bullet passed into the flight deck and they both ducked. Becker could smell kerosene and he knew that some of the fuel tanks or the feeder lines had been hit

“Try again,” said Kahn. “Try again, David. We’ve nothing to lose.”

Becker shouted over the noise. “Everything to lose. Can’t you smell the kerosene?”

“I don’t smell anything but hot lead. Hit it!”

“I need the last of the batteries to transmit!”

“For God’s sake, try again!”

Becker wasn’t used to Kahn being anything but polite and laconic, and he was surprised. He looked down at the APU switch, then up out of the shattered windshield. Three or four Ashbals were moving across the hilltop less than a hundred meters away. Someone, it looked like Marcus, took a single shot at them with his AK-47, and they fell to the ground, scratching for cover and concealment in the flat terrain. The first light was trying to penetrate the sandstorm, and visibility was somewhat better now. Becker could actually see shadowy figures moving in
the distance through the grey and dusty dawn. He wondered who they were.

An F-14 came in so low that the Concorde shook, and tremendous clouds of sand pelted the craft and wrapped it in a shroud of dust. Without any conscious thought, Becker hit the APU switch. He looked slowly at Kahn. “Am I hearing things?”

Kahn heard nothing but felt it in the seat of his pants. He shouted above the noise of an exploding rocket. “We have ignition! I fixed the fucking thing with a wrench and a screw driver! I fixed it! Fuck Hausner!”

It flashed through Becker’s mind that Kahn didn’t care what happened next. He had fixed it, and that was the end of it. It was Becker’s show now. He let the APU run for a minute, all the while waiting for it to ignite the thick kerosene fumes and blow them all into next week. But the wind was apparently carrying the fumes away. He relaxed a bit. The emergency power had gone off as the generator charged the batteries, and the primary system took over again. The cabin lights became brighter, and gauges and instrument lights came alive in the flight deck.

Becker wiped his face, then ran his hands over the front of his shirt. He hurried through the starting sequence for the outboard starboard engine. It ignited as easily as if it just come out of the El Al maintenance shop. He glanced over at Kahn, and Kahn gave him a thumbs-up. Becker looked down at the fuel gauges. The indicators weren’t even bouncing. They just lay in the red, hard against the zero mark. The single engine was burning tremendous quantities of the nonexistent fuel. Becker couldn’t understand it. It had to have something to do with a malfunctioning sensor. Somewhere in this craft, he was certain, one of the thirteen fuel tanks was sloshing with kerosene. He hit the switch for the outboard port engine; it began turning over quickly, hesitating to ignite for only a few seconds. Then, after one puff of white smoke from its exhaust, it began spooling up normally. He hit the inboard starboard switch and the engine balked. He played with it and coaxed it.

Kahn got up and stood in front of the flight engineer’s panels where he could be more help. He scanned the gauges and noted the multiple systems malfunctions. Concorde 02 would never fly again, but with any luck it would make its last taxi. “Come on, you old buzzard!”

The inboard starboard engine ignited, but sounded bad. Becker hit the inboard port engine switch. Nothing happened.
He hit it again. Absolutely nothing. Like turning an ignition key in a car without a battery.

Kahn called out. “There’s no power going to that engine. The wires must be severed. Forget it.”

“Right.” Becker locked the brakes and ran up the three functioning engines. The sand that they were ingesting might kill all three of them in a matter of seconds, or they might run out of fuel any moment, but Becker didn’t want to release the brakes prematurely—not until he coaxed every last gram of thrust out of them. He shouted to Kahn, “Get everyone inside the aircraft!”

Kahn threw open the door of the flight deck. In the cabin, the wounded lay in the places where the seats had been removed, or sat up if they were able and held sections of the nylon armor mesh against the hull. The people who were caring for them crouched as they moved around the cabin. A few men and women with rifles pointed them through shattered portholes and waited for the expected final Ashbal assault.

Kahn ran out of the emergency door and onto the wing. The huge delta was throbbing with the pulse of the two starboard engines. At least a dozen men and women were kneeling or lying on the huge aluminum surface and firing out into the dust. A few people on the ground were using the desperate infantryman’s trick of dry firing their empty rifles and simulating a recoil in order to keep the approaching Ashbals ducking. A few cassette tape recorders were still turning out the sounds of firing, but that and the dry firing were the only ruses still being used. Kahn saw Burg where he had left him on the wing tip and rushed toward him, shouting as he ran. “We’re going to move it! Get everyone on the aircraft!”

Burg waved in acknowledgement. He bad been trying to keep a tally of everyone. The Foreign Minister’s group was accounted for, and the survivors of the group that had tried to commit suicide were safely under guard in the baggage compartment. All the wounded were on board, and he was fairly certain that everyone else was either on the wing, under the craft, or firing from the shepherds’ hut. Everyone except Hausner and John McClure, neither of whom had been seen for some time. Burg shouted from the wing but he needn’t have bothered. Everyone, including the Ashbals, knew what was happening by now.

The last of the armed men and women on the ground came up the earth ramp. Some climbed over the fuselage and took up positions on the port wing. Others lay prone on the edges of the
starboard wing, and two men positioned themselves on top of the fuselage. Alpern came running up the earth ramp carrying the lifeless body of Marcus. The five other men and women of the delaying force followed close behind. Burg looked quickly at his list of names again. It seemed correct. The commandos would exhume the buried dead. They would also find Kaplan’s body, he was sure, and perhaps Deborah Gideon and Ben Dobkin as well. Everyone except Hausner and McClure seemed to be accounted for, yet he couldn’t be certain. He made a few quick notes in the small book, removed his shoe, stuffed the book into it, and threw the shoe away from the aircraft. If the Concorde burned, at least the commandos would find his notes when they combed the hill, and they would have an idea of how to begin accounting for the dead.

Burg ran over to Alpern who was pulling Marcus’s body through the emergency door. “Hausner?”

Alpern shrugged as he drew Marcus inside the craft. “You know he’s not coming.”

Burg nodded. He caught Miriam Bernstein’s eye. She had heard Alpern.

She ran toward the edge of the wing and started to jump. Burg caught her arm and pulled her back. She kicked and flailed her arms out at him, but he held her firm. She shouted at him to let her go, but he dragged her, with the help of another woman, toward the emergency door.

The Ashbals knew that the Israeli commandos were closing in on their rear. They were at the limits of their bravery, and for many the limits had already been exceeded. They were so fatigued that they were numb and barely aware of their surroundings, and every step forward became torturous. Their mouths, nostrils, and ears were clogged with dust, and their eyes were blinded by the sand. They began to think not of the Israelis in front of them but of the Israelis behind them. Each man and woman began plotting an escape route for himself in the event they could not capture hostages before the commandos overtook them.