Thunderstrike in Syria (17 page)

Now Karameh and his people got into action. I waited for two or three seconds to make sure that Elovitz and Risenberg would do their job. They did! A terrorist stepped up on the gun platform of the carrier, tried to swing the armored shield into place and was instantly slammed into the next world by a stream of slugs from either Elovitz or Risenberg.

Another chain of projectiles raked across the front of the driver's compartment, the numerous ricochets sounding almost like some kind of animal screaming in pain. The two Israelis were taking no chances that any enemy might fire through the two vision slots of the compartment.

It was now or never. I picked up the package of grenades by the strap, stood up, measured the distance and threw the bundle as hard as I could, watching it arc in the moonlight as I dropped back to the ground and picked up my rifle.

The package hit the rocks six feet to one side of the vehicle, toward the front. I didn't hesitate. I fired a short burst into the canvas bundle and the eight grenades exploded with an earthshaking roar. A flash of flame, the sound of last minute shrapnel hitting ground, and it was all over. I stared at the carrier through the clearing smoke while Risenberg and Elovitz flooded the front of the cab with another wave of slugs, killing two more terrorists.

I sighed with relief; the eight grenades had done their job. The explosion had wrecked the carrier's left front wheel, twisting it on its mounting so that the vehicle was tilted heavily to the left. It would never move again. Neither would I or the two Israelis if we didn't change positions and get off the rocks. Elovitz and Risenberg had to take time to reload, which enabled two Syrians to reach the machine gun mounted to the rear roof of the cab, one pulling down the shield, the other grabbing the guide handle.

Just before the man opened fire, I wriggled back from the edge of the slab and saw that the guerrillas had piled out of the rear hatchway and were running to the rocks from both the left and the right sides. I felt a knot grow in the pit of my stomach. How could there be that many of the enemy in the carrier? Only one answer made sense: Pierre had not killed anyone. There hadn't been any guerillas in the mouth of the cave; they had all gone back to the carrier with Karameh. Furthermore, there wasn't any way to tell how many there were down below. If they had doubled up in the carrier, we could be facing as many as thirty-five or forty.

After shoving a full magazine into the StG assault rifle, I slid all the way back from the rock and began my descent to level ground. As I reached the bottom, I started to dodge and weave to my right. My present goal was to link up with Elovitz and Risenberg so that the three of us could form an internal sphere of defense. I heard the snarling of submachines sixty feet to the north of me — the two Israelis. There was more roaring in a wide arc to the west — the damned SLA.

They had spotted me! A bullet cut through my pants at the rear of my left thigh but it barely grazed the flesh. Another slug cut over the top of my head, jerking my hair in its hot passage. A third projectile tugged at the back of my collar, hit a rock several feet to one side of me and ricocheted off, missing my right cheek by only inches.

I dove into a small crater and slithered across on my belly, ending up twenty feet to the right of my original position.

High velocity projectiles splattered against the two chunks of granite, that were my cover, the advancing gunmen thinking they had me pinned down. I peeked out from behind the rock and saw six or seven of them running to one side, then to the other, pausing now and then to trigger off short bursts. I twisted my mouth into a smile. They were running straight into their own open air funerals.

Thrusting the barrel of the StG over the top of a rock, I fired in a swinging back and forth motion. Caught with their caution down, the terrorists didn't have time to turn their weapons toward me. My stream of swaged slugs ripped into them, the hollow-pointed lead tearing off tiny patches of cloth, then striking flesh. One of my slugs struck a grenade hanging on a man's chest, and he exploded.

Trusting that Risenberg and Elovitz were holding the area to the north, I took two of the stick grenades from my belt, pulled the pin from one and threw it west of me. I flung the second grenade twenty feet to the right of the first explosion, and again dropped flat, listening to the sound of stray shrapnel striking the granite. Screams and moans floated back to me from the west. One Syrian, his hands pressed tightly over his mutilated face, staggered toward me. Several other guerrillas, dazed by concussion, weaved drunkenly, not realizing they were totally exposed to my fire.

Now was the time to move. Trying to stay close to the larger boulders of granite, I crawled on my hands and knees for six or seven yards, then jumped up and started running a crooked course to the north. Behind me, several grenades exploded in the vicinity of my previous position, the detonations ringing up and down the ridge.

I spotted Elovitz dodging to my left, thirty feet in front of me, and yelled loudly in Hebrew, "Cham! I'm in front of you."

I knew I was taking a chance by calling out. Proof came a few moments after I snuggled down into a rounded out depression close to a clearing which was actually the top of a mammoth slab of limestone. I estimated that a hundred enemy slugs stabbed into the rocks around me, the racket of ricochets a crescendo of screeching whines.

I looked for a more secure position, but saw none. There was, however, a ditchlike fissure that ran parallel to me. As far as I could detect in the half-darkness, it changed to a diagonal route ten feet to the south. I edged closer to the large crack in the rock and looked down. I could see by the moonlight striking one side that the ditch was less than five feet deep. Perfect for an escape route. Dropping into the crevice feet first I moved toward the north and hoped that if Risenberg and Elovitz heard me, they wouldn't shoot before they looked. The sound of feet on loose stone just around a bend in the ditch startled me. I stopped and listened. The noise stopped.

"Carter? Is that you?" Elovitz whispered loudly.

"I'm ahead of you," I said relieved. "I'll be there in a minute."

"Hold it," Elovitz ordered. "Give our names."

I smiled at their common-sense caution. "Josef Risenberg and Cham Elovitz — the two jokers suffering through this with me."

"Come on," Risenberg called back with a half-laugh.

I hurried forward, rounded the bend and soon had made contact with the two Israelis, who were as dirty and sweat-soaked as I.

"The two of you took a chance calling out that way," I admonished. "I could have been the enemy, but I'm glad you did. How many have you neutralized?"

"More than a dozen that we know of," Risenberg whispered. "The damned fools charged right at us. Fanatics, everyone of them." He gave a cynical snort. "How about you?"

"At least that many. Have you seen anything of Karameh or the Kamels?"

The two Israelis shook their heads to the negative.

"We didn't have time to look at faces," Elovitz said. "I think a few of them were women, but we didn't check. What's our next move?"

"We can't cross the open space without exposing ourselves to enemy gunfire," I said. "Let's try to get behind whoever is left and finish them off. And watch out for slugs from the carrier. There still might be someone manning the heavy machine gun."

We moved along the inside of the ditch for another thirty or forty feet, then stopped and listened, all three of us worried about the silence. What small animals were on the hilltop had been frightened by the gunfire, and the unnatural stillness was unnerving. The SLA had lost us. But neither did we know where they were.

Discreetly I poked my head over the top of the ditch and looked around. On one side, all I saw were rocks of various sizes and shapes. On the other side was a large open area. What would the SLA expect us to do? They knew we wouldn't be stupid enough to try to cross the open space. They could only guess. They had to realize that we were in the general vicinity. All right. They'd try to encircle us. We had to get behind them before they succeeded.

"Let's try for those rocks, " I suggested.

The three of us crawled out of the ditch and began to creep along the scattered stones, keeping as low as possible. I pulled up short at the sight of the three bodies ahead, lying to one side of a slab rock.

"Careful," I whispered. "It could be a trap."

"I think they're three of the pigs we killed," Elovitz whispered. "I recognize the Safari hat one of them is wearing."

With our weapons pointed downward, we approached the corpses. We soon discovered that one of the bodies was that of a young woman in her early twenties, her dead, dark eyes staring up at the stars. There was a holster around her waist and a Stechkin machine pistol in the bloody leather. I pulled out the gun, stuffed it into my own belt and glanced at Elovitz who was searching the other two bodies while Risenberg kept watch.

Elovitz held up the wrist of one slain terrorist and whispered, "Look, this one is wearing a Seiko chronograph!"

"Take it," I said. "It may come in handy."

We continued forward, came to an enormous boulder, and started to edge around it, our hearts pounding with tension. It happened so very quickly that the four Syrians, coming from the other side, were as surprised as we were. The seven of us had practically collided with each other.

I was the first to react; I swung up my StG and fired. The dozen hollow-pointed slugs almost cut the first killer in two, then continued on their way through empty air. Simultaneously, Elovitz and Risenberg leaped to one side and rushed forward to meet the three other SLA members before any of them could throw slugs at us. I heard a scraping sound above me, looked up and saw the surprised face of still another terrorist whose body was sliding toward me, his arms and legs moving frantically as he tried to brake his fall. Apparently he had crawled across the top of the rock and had been getting ready to spray slugs down on top of me when he slipped on the marblelike basalt. I didn't have time to duck. He came down on top of me, losing his gun, the impact of his fall forcing my own rifle from my hands.

"Dog infidel!" he snarled and, trying to keep me pinned down, pulled a
Ghizu
from his tangled waistcoat.

I jabbed a thumb into his left eye and somehow managed to get my hand around his wrist, succeeding in keeping the point of the knife away from my throat. Together, we rolled over on our sides, then struggled to our feet. I was worried, but not because the Syrian was half a head taller and outweighed me by fifty pounds. I feared that before we finished with this group, the rest of the terrorists would arrive. The blast from my StG had pinpointed our location.

The big Syrian, much stronger than I, jerked his knife-hand free from my grasp. He attempted a straight inward slash, at the same moment that I stepped back, twisted my wrist free and avoided the blade by sidestepping to the left rear. For a moment, my attacker was confused. A man used to brute force, he couldn't comprehend the subtler techniques of attack and defense.

As the
Ghizu
returned to its trajectory, my arms shot out, one going underneath his right elbow joint and pushing upward, the other catching his right wrist and pushing downward with every ounce of strength at my command. The elbow snapped. The man howled but didn't have time to put up any kind of defense. I followed the scissors break with a right lead leg shin kick and the Syrian fell flat on his face. Immediately I stomped on the back of his neck, breaking it.

Stepping away from the corpse, I spotted Cham Elovitz struggling with two of the enemy, but he didn't need any help. Cham succeeded in shoving the muzzle of his North Vietnamese MAT underneath one man's chin and pulled the trigger, the barrel spitting out half a dozen rounds of 7.62mm projectiles. With the dead man sagging, Elovitz used his left hand to stab the second Syrian in the face with the barrel of the MAT. The man screamed in pain, let go of Elovitz's right arm and stepped back. Elovitz instantly blew him away with a short burst of slugs to the chest, while Risenberg, struggling with yet another terrorist, finished off his opponent by cracking open the side of the man's head.

As I stooped to pull the StG from underneath my recent victim's body, my worst fear became cold reality. The other SLA terrorists were coming in from all sides, rushing us so fast I didn't have time to bother with the German assault rifle nor to pick up the Russian machine gun the terrorist had dropped. My hands dove to my holster; I jerked out the Stechkin and Wilhelmina and started firing. Elovitz and Risenberg, their faces grim and determined, started firing their machine guns, the three of us dodging and weaving back and forth.

But Fate was against us. There were too many of them, and quickly we were encircled. I used my last Stechkin round to kill an SLA sadist who was about to stab Elovitz in the back.

My eyes raking the area, I saw at once that we were confronting the remnants of the enemy force.
Mohammed Karameh was with them!
I spotted him to the southeast of me, a Soviet PPS-43 submachine gun in his hands. To his right was the fox-faced Ahmed Kamel, the back of his
kaffiyeh
flowing in the wind. To the left of Karameh —
Miriam Kamel!
She carried what looked like an AK-47. All three were running toward us. However, they couldn't fire at me or the Israelis because of the intervening Syrian SLAs.

I still had five cartridges left in Wilhelmina and put one of them into a Syrian's face at pointblank range. I then tossed the Luger to my left hand, after dropping the Stechkin, and gave a half-twist to my right arm. Hugo jumped from his case and his handle slid into my hand. I jumped to one side to avoid a string of 7.62mm bullets at about the same time that Risenberg slammed a Syrian across the face with the side of a Stechkin machine pistol. Risenberg didn't slow down. With a short burst he sprayed the two men who rushed him, then spun and fired the AKM at two more SLAs, one of whom was a woman, the flat-nosed projectiles punching the two in the stomach. The man fell back and died without a murmur, but the woman let out a high-pitched scream.