Thunderstrike in Syria (13 page)

I grabbed the guide handle of the DShK and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Either I was out of ammo or the damned thing had jammed. I thought for a moment. Not a single shot had been fired from the tent. Was it empty? I was about to climb all the way out of the hatch and slide down the back of the turret when, feeling a tug on my left leg, I looked down and saw Ben Solomon looking up at me.

"Hold on. Carter. I'm going with you. There's no sense in your doing it alone."

Grateful for the help, I wasn't about to argue with him. I crawled out of the hatch and Solomon followed, a Mauser «Red-9» machine pistol in his hand. We eased down the rear of the turret, crawled hurriedly across the hot transmission and engine louvres and dropped to the ground.

"I think we're attacking empty space," Solomon said. "No one's in that tent.
Al-Huriya
would be crazy to stay in there and wait for us. He's a psycho but he's not a fool."

"We'll know in a moment. Are you ready?"

Solomon nodded.

"Then let's do it."

Solomon and I charged the tent. We zigzagged through the wide main entrance, moved to the left and jumped behind a crate that was large enough to have held a refrigerator. For several moments we waited for our eyes to adjust to the gloom. Outside it was twilight; inside the tent it was almost dark. By the time we realized that we had jumped into a nest of terrorists, it was too late to turn back. They came at us from all sides, and we could only assume that they had hidden under rugs and had prepared themselves when they had heard the tank approach. Damn Karameh. He had planned it this way. He had assumed I would come back to the tent looking for him.

I killed two of the terrorists with the H&K, and Solomon gunned downed two more — one of his victims a woman — before they were all around us. Seven or eight, maybe nine or ten, one of them hissing,
"al-Huriya
wants them alive."

The two Syrians closest to me, young and built like barrels, rushed in from the front, both swinging hamlike fists. I gave one man a knuckle strike between the eyes; he was unconscious and falling before he had time to blink. I let the second attacker have
apa-ko-hsia,
my thumb and index finger jabbing into his throat, the terrible stab crushing both the left and the right jugular veins. I was certain of the damage because I know what I can do with
Goju-Ryu
karate.

From the corner of my eye, I could see that three men had rushed Solomon, coming at him from the front and from either side. He kicked one in the balls, chopped the second across the throat with a sword-ridge hand and ducked in time to avoid being hit in the head by the third man's pistol butt.

I had my own problems. I let a man coming in from the rear have an elbow smash that must have ruptured his stomach wall. Then I ducked in time to avoid a fist that would have shattered my jaw had it landed. It wasn't the fist that worried me but the brass knuckles covering the fist. I leaped high, spun and speared "Brass Knuckles" in the throat with a
Nukite
chop, aiming for his carotid artery and confident that I had smashed it.

I detected from the way the terrorists were beginning to act that they were about to give up the idea of capturing Solomon and me alive. A man pointing a Walther automatic in my direction proved I was right. I jackknifed to one side just as the man pulled the trigger and the Walther boomed like a cannon, vomiting out a 9mm slug. Before the big nosed Syrian could get off a second shot, I dove across the space with a flying drop-kick, my feet like two anvils as they crashed into the man's chest and face.

But I also saw that more terrorists were joining the fight. Either they had crawled in underneath the rear of the tent or else they had been hidden in that part of the tent that was on the ground. As they rushed us, I could see that Solomon was following up an elbow smash with a straight four-fingered rapier jab aimed at one man's big belly. The man jumped back and stumbled against me. I snaked my left arm around his neck, pulled hard and hit the back of his head with the palm-heel of my right hand. The man's neck snapped and he sagged. I spun around and used a
Cho uke
butterfly block to stop a slashing hand, knocking the man down with a sword-foot kick to his abdomen and finishing him off with a single piercing finger strike to his Adam's apple.

I glanced at Solomon and surmised that his attackers thought he would be an easy victory because of his average size. He was about five feet ten inches and weighed not more than one hundred sixty-five pounds. How the Israeli fooled them! One Arab rushed in and tried to grab Solomon's neck. Sol ducked, snatched the hood of the man's burnoose, jerked down his head and kneed him with such force underneath the chin that the man's teeth flew out in a spray of blood.

As I was preoccupied with the three terrorists in front of me, yet another jumped me from the rear. He applied a full nelson to my neck and shoulders and jammed his knee into the small of my back, the quick action pushing my midsection forward.

"Smash him in the stomach, Ghazi!" the man holding me cried out. "I have the dog!"

An evil-faced man in front of me, grinned, showed his blackened teeth and charged in. I grinned back and made his eyes roll in his head with a high snap-kick that caved in his face. Blood flowing out of his mouth, he sank to his knees, making himself a perfect target for my foot which crashed against his forehead and drove the frontal bones of his skull into his brain.

Arching upward as much as I could, I hooked my feet behind my captor's ankles and jerked. The man's feet flew out from under him and he fell backward, trying to let go of me in order to catch himself. He failed. He crashed to the ground on his back. I fell on top of him.

I bounced to my feet and noticed from the corner of my eye that Solomon had jerked a thick-bladed Syrian knife from a felled terrorist and was slashing left and right, a look of maniacal rage on his dirty face.

My ex-captor was now trying desperately to get to his feet. He intended to make a full turnover, then scramble backward away from me. He never got the chance. In a flash, when he was halfway through the roll, I jumped on his back, reached down, grabbed both his legs by the ankles and pulled violently, up and backward. I heard a loud cracking sound and a scream cut short. The man's spine had snapped.

I jumped to my feet in time to avoid a straight left fist jab thrown by a huge bearded man who had a face like a bull and was snorting in rage and hate. I ducked, grabbed the man's wrist and flipped him upside down and over, while still retaining my hold on his arm.

He tried to pull back, but I jerked him to his feet, slammed him in the bridge of the nose, then slipped an arm through the V of his legs and threw him headlong into another terrorist who was trying to draw a pistol from a holster on his hip. Both men went down in a tangle of arms, legs and curses, falling to the side of another man who had stumbled and was now attempting to pull a Magnum revolver from a shoulder holster.

Knowing I had to move fast or die, I streaked across the short distance to the three men. The one with the Magnum was my first concern. I kicked him hard in the forearm, hoping I had broken the bone. He howled and tried to draw back. I slammed my heel into his forehead at the same time that the other man, who had been drawing an automatic, succeeded in pulling the pistol from its holster and managed to twist it upward toward me. I jumped sideways, he pulled the trigger and the bullet struck another Syrian who had been trying to come in at Solomon from the left. I leaped forward, kicked the pistol from the man and mashed in his face with my heel.

Too late I realized that I had been careless; I felt a silken sash fall over the front
of
my head and slide over my throat. For a moment, panic exploded in my brain. Whoever had crept up behind me put a knee into the small of my back and started to tighten the sash. I kicked backward, my right heel slamming into the side of the man's left kneecap. The Arab guerrilla yelled in pain, relaxed his crossover stranglehold and reflexively dropped his knee from my back, his movements enabling me to step back closer to him. I was about to give him a terrible elbow jab when he gasped, arched forward and fell on his face. Solomon had thrown the
Ghizu,
the blade buried in the man's back to the hilt.

There were still a few men left, but Solomon and I didn't get the chance to tangle with them. A submachine gun roared from the front opening of the tent and the remaining terrorists dropped one by one.

Lev Wymann stood in the entrance, smoke curling from the muzzle of an SFR-10 Israeli Galil in his hands. "I sort of figured that the two of you might need some help." He looked around at the bodies on the ground. "But from the looks of things, I guess you were doing all right on your own."

"Don't kid yourself," Solomon panted. "We couldn't have lasted much longer." He looked at me. "That bastard Karameh figured we'd come here. It was a neat trap. But I wonder where he is?"

I moved to one side, my eyes searching for the table and the chest.

"What are you looking for, Carter?" Wymann asked.

"A couple of good friends of mine!"

The two Israelis glanced at each other.

"Not among the Syrians, surely!" exclaimed Solomon.

I soon found the chest, lying on its side. I knelt down, put it upright and opened the rounded lid. There was Wilhelmina and Hugo. I shoved Wilhelmina into her holster on my hip and strapped Hugo to the inside of my right forearm.

Lev Wymann smiled. "Some 'friends! he said with a laugh.

"You'd better believe it," I said. I stepped toward the entrance. "Let's get back to the tank. I have a hunch that the Hawk and his lieutenants are hiding where they think we'd never dream of looking."

"Where's that?" Wymann asked.

"The tower ruins."

Once the three of us were outside the tent, we saw that Cham Elovitz had opened the hatch above his head and was standing up and looking at us.

"It's about time," he said, his eyes going to me. "If the SLA had killed you and Ben, we were going to run over the tent and flatten them like pancakes. What's our next move?"

"The Tower ruins," I said. "I think that's where the Hawk is hiding. There isn't any place else he could be, unless he's somewhere among the bodies."

Solomon, Wymann and I climbed the rear glacis plate deck and entered the T-54 through the commander's cupola hatch.

The tank rolled across the wreckage and headed for the Tower of Lions. Through the wide-angle periscope, I stared at the monstrous pile of stones, the structure looking even more forbidding in the deep twilight.

I didn't expect what happened next. I don't think any of us did.

A BTR-40 personnel carrier seemed to jump out at full throttle from behind the north side of the ruins, its engine roaring. I estimated its speed at roughly forty m.p.h. Right behind it came an L-59Gronshiv armored car, the gunner rotating the forward turret and its 50mm cannon toward us.

"Carter! Do you see them!" shouted Solomon, who was watching through the commander's scope. "Blast that carrier! Blast it!"

I lowered the 140mm gun, my fingers slippery on the handle of the wheel, and pressed down on the right pedal, rotating the turret slightly. There was a loud crash from the front of the tank. The armored car had sent a 50mm shell at us. The enemy gunner knew he couldn't hurt us because of the T-54's massive armor plate, but I assumed he was trying to distract us just enough to give the Hawk time to escape.

My ears ringing, I turned the calibration knob and double-checked the reticle pattern. I pressed the firing button and the 140mm gun thundered. Several hundred feet ahead, there was a big bang and the gray vehicle turned into a brief but violent burst of red and orange, the explosion sending huge chunks of the car flying out in all directions.

"Damn it. Carter!" Solomon yelled in disgust. "You should have aimed at the carrier!"

I swung the turret to the right while Lev Wymann jerked out the used shell casing, shoved another AP shell into the gun, closed the breech and locked the cam-lever.

I was too late. By the time I started to zero in the gun, the personnel carrier had raced behind a low mound of granite.

Risenberg's deep voice, coming from the driver's compartment, was full of puzzlement. "Carter, why in hell didn't you fire that round at the carrier? Karameh wouldn't be in an armored car! He knows we'd try to destroy the car first because of its fifty mil gun."

"Turn us around and get us to one of the personnel carriers," I said. "We're ditching the tank. I didn't fire at the carrier because I knew that if I missed, I wouldn't have a chance to fire at the armored car. It would have moved behind the ridge before I could have smacked it. We…"

"The hell with the armored car!" Risenberg cut in angrily. "We've lost the Hawk. He's the one we want dead."

"Shut up and think for a moment," I snapped. "The main road out of camp is to the north. Karameh and his people took the narrow road to the east. I don't know what he has in mind, but this tank can t outrun a personnel carrier. We've got to use a carrier. I didn't want that armored car and its fifty millimeter job banging away at us in a carrier. We wouldn't have had a chance."

"On that basis, I suppose you're right." Risenberg's voice had softened. "But how do you propose we find Karameh — take the same route he's taken?"

"It's the only way, and the sooner you get us to one of the carriers that's left, the sooner we can catch him."

Risenberg spun the tank on its axis and headed it back to the two personnel carriers, the only vehicles left. I thought of Mohammed Karameh, admiring his cautiousness. He had hidden an armored car and a carrier in the ruins for just such an emergency as this. We had no assurance that we could catch up with him. I was counting on his carrier containing a full load, at least twenty people. There were only five of us. With less weight, our carrier would have the edge on speed.