By the Rivers of Babylon (16 page)

Dobkin followed Hausner out the door. He made a quick appraisal of their situation. They were on high ground, which was good. The area around the aircraft was flat and the ground fell away on all sides. To the east it sloped gently down to the
road. To the west it fell off sharply down to the river. He could not see the north and south extremities in the dark. As for weapons, they only had perhaps a half-dozen .22 pistols, one Uzi submachine gun, and one rifle. He knew the Arabs had a lot more than that. He looked up at the tail assembly. It was badly mangled, but that didn’t matter any longer. The rear pressure bulkhead must have been blown in because there was baggage strewn in the wake of the Concorde. Toilet kits, shoes, and pieces of clothing lay in the deep furrow like seeds waiting to be covered for the spring planting. The last of the sun died away, and the sky was filled with cold white stars. Dobkin suddenly felt a chill and realized that the
Hamseen
was blowing here. It would be a long, cold night. He wondered if any of them would see the sun rise.

Isaac Burg stood on the tilted delta wing as the other passengers jumped off. He turned and climbed up the fuselage and made his way toward the mangled tail. He braced himself against a twisted longeron and stared down toward the road about half a kilometer away. He could see truck lights bouncing across the uneven slope and the shadows of men as they ran in front of the slow-moving vehicles. He drew his pistol, an American Army Colt .45, and waited.

Jabari and Arif slid down the chute and ran clear of the aircraft, Jabari helping the big Arif as he stumbled. They fell and crawled behind a small rise in the ground. After several seconds, Jabari looked over the top of the hillock. “I don’t think it will explode.”

Arif panted heavily. He wiped his face. “I can’t believe I voted to fight.”

Jabari leaned back against the earth. “You said yourself you were doomed anyway. As doomed as Jacob Hausner. Did you hear what was being said before? Hausner slapped Rish when he was in Ramla.”

“Bad luck for Hausner. But at least he will die for a reason. I never slapped anyone except my wife, but Rish will cut my throat with as much glee as he cuts Hausner’s.”

Jabari lit a cigarette. “You are a very self-centered man, Ibrahim.”

“When it comes to
my
throat, yes.”

Jabari stood up. “Come. Let’s see where and in what manner they propose to fight. Perhaps we can help.”

Arif remained seated. “I’ll sit here. You go ahead.” He removed his checkered headdress. “Do I look Jewish now?”

Jabari laughed in spite of himself. “How is your Hebrew?”

“Better than half the members of the Knesset.”

“Well, Ibrahim, if the time comes, it’s worth a try.”

“Avraham . . . Aronson.”

Tom Richardson stood at the river side of the slope and looked down at the Euphrates. John McClure walked up behind him and put his foot on a low mound. Richardson could see a revolver in the hand resting across his knee. Richardson rubbed his cold hands together. “This was a bad move.”

McClure spit out his match and found another one. “Maybe.”

“Look, I don’t feel obligated to hang around. There doesn’t seem to be anyone on the river bank. Let’s go. We could be in Baghdad by this time tomorrow.”

McClure looked at him. “How do you know where we are?”

Richardson remained motionless.

“I asked you a question, Colonel.”

Richardson forced himself to look into McClure’s eyes and hold contact. He said nothing.

McClure let the silence drag out for a few seconds, then raised his revolver. He spun the chambers and noticed Richardson flinch. He spoke softly. “I think I’ll stick around.”

Richardson eyed the big pistol. “Well, I’m going,” he said in a calm voice.

McClure could see several flashlights moving along the river bank. Three football fields away. That was the only way he would ever estimate distance. Three hundred yards. About 270 of those ridiculous meters. “They’ve already gotten around us.” He pointed.

Richardson didn’t bother to look. “Could be civilians.”

“Could be.” McClure raised the revolver, a big Ruger .357 Magnum, with both hands and fired two shots at the lights. The shots were answered by a burst of automatic weapon fire. Both men ducked as green tracer rounds streaked up at them. McClure reloaded. “Settle back and relax. We might be here a long time.”

•    •    •

Nathan Brin rested the M-14 on a rock. He turned on the battery-powered starlight scope and looked across the landscape. The scope gave everything an eerie green color. He twirled the knobs until the image was clear. He saw that they were among the ruins of a city. It all looked very lunar to Brin. All except the twenty or so Arabs walking nonchalantly up the slope from the direction of the road. A few hundred meters behind them, the trucks had stopped at the beginning of the slope. The Arabs were about 200 meters away now. He placed the cross hairs over the heart of the man in front. The man was Ahmed Rish, but Brin didn’t recognize him. He squeezed the trigger slightly, then remembered his training and swung the rifle to the last man in the file. He squeezed back harder on the trigger. The silencer-flash suppressor spit, and the only sound was the operating rod working back and forth. The man dropped silently. The file, oblivious of the dead man lying behind them, continued up the slope.

Brin swung the rifle to the man who was now the last in line. He pulled the trigger again. Again, the only sound was the metallic slamming of the bolt and operating rod. The man fell. Brin smiled. He was enjoying himself, despite all his upbringing to the contrary. He swung the rifle and fired again. The third man fell but apparently let out a sound. Suddenly, the Arabs scattered among the rocks. Brin straightened up and moved behind the rock. He lit a cigarette. He’d done it. For better or worse, they were committed to the fight. He rather enjoyed the prospect. He heard a noise behind him and swung the rifle around. Hausner was staring at him. Brin smiled. “All right?”

Hausner nodded. “All right.”

Becker stared out into the dark night. “Where the hell are we?”

Peter Kahn had noted the coordinates on the Inertial Navigation System readout before the impact. He was reading an air chart by the lights of the emergency power system. “Good question.”

Becker unstrapped his seat belt and pulled himself out of his seat. He took Hess’s head in his hands. His skull had been crushed by a large brick that lay now in his lap. There was no sign of life. He let the head fall gently and wiped his bloody
hands on his white shirt. He turned to Kahn. “He’s dead, Peter.”

Kahn nodded.

Becker wiped his sweating face. “Well, get back to work. Where the hell are we?”

Kahn looked down at the chart again and made a mark along a protractor. He looked up. “Babylon. We are by the rivers of Babylon.”

Becker placed his hand on Kahn’s shoulder and leaned over the map. He nodded. “‘Yea,’” he said, “‘yea, we wept when we remembered Zion.’”

BABYLON

THE WATCHTOWERS

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down,

yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song;

and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying,

Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,

let my right hand forget her cunning.

If I do not remember thee,

let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth;

if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

Psalms 137:1–6

And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms,

the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency,

shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.

It shall never be inhabited,

neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation;

neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there;

neither shall the shepherds make their fold there
.

But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there;

and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures;

and owls shall dwell there,

and satyrs shall dance there.

And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses,

and dragons in their pleasant palaces:

and her time is near to come,

and her days shall not be prolonged.

Isaiah 13:19–25

There was a stillness on the hilltop, broken only by the ticking sounds made by the cooling of the four Rolls-Royce Olympus engines. The great white aircraft, with its front landing gear collapsed and its nose in the dirt, resembled some sort of proud creature brought to its knees. For a moment time seemed to falter, then a nightbird chirped tentatively, and all the other nocturnal creatures resumed their sounds.

Jacob Hausner knew that everything—their lives, their futures, and perhaps the future of their nation—depended on what happened in the next few minutes. A determined assault by the Palestinians right then would carry the hill, and that would be the end of all their brave talk of defense. He looked around. In the weak light he could see people moving aimlessly around the Concorde. Some, he suspected, were still in shock from the crash. Now that the time had come, no one knew what to do. The actors were willing, but they lacked a script. Hausner decided to write one on the spot, but he wished he had Dobkin and Burg nearby to coauthor it with him.

Hausner took the M-14 from Brin and looked down the slope through the telescopic lens. The three Arabs lay among the rocks where they had fallen. Hausner could see at least two AK-47 automatic rifles on the ground. If he could get those, it would put more substance behind their bluff.

He turned to Brin. “I’m going down there to retrieve those weapons. Keep me covered.” He handed him the M-14 and drew his Smith & Wesson .22.

One of Hausner’s other security men, Moshe Kaplan, saw him start down the hill and caught up with him. “Deserting already?”

Hausner whispered. “If you’re coming along, keep low and keep quiet.” He noticed that Kaplan’s .22 had a silencer on it.

They made their way in short rushes from rock to rock. One man would cover and the other would move. Hausner noticed that what he took to he rocks were actually huge pieces of dried clay and earth that had apparently broken off and fallen from the face of the hill. His movements caused other hardened slabs to break loose and slide downward. It would be difficult for an enemy to attack upward if they had to duck bullets as they moved through shifting clay and sand.

From the crest of the hill, Brin watched through the starlight scope. A half-kilometer farther down the hill, he could see the Palestinians regrouping near the trucks. As he watched, he could tell by their motions that they were working themselves into a frenzy. Brin knew their style. If they were surprised, as this group had been, they would generally flee. Then would come the embarrassment and the recriminations. Then the working up of rage and courage that he was observing now. When they were sufficiently aroused, they would act, and they could be very resolute when they did. In fact, as he watched, a group of about twenty started up the hill again. Someone took something from a truck. Three rolled up litters. They were coming back for the bodies.

Hausner could not see much in the dark. He tried to maintain a straight line from where he had started. The bodies should be near a geological formation that looked like a ship’s sail. He scanned the outlines of the land, but he knew it must look different from down here. He used the approved method of night vision—looking sideways out of the corners of the eyes as the head moved in short motions. He was becoming disoriented in the strange terrain.

As he moved down the slope, he wondered what they were doing back at the airplane. He hoped Brin had let everyone with guns know he was downhill. He thought about what kind of firepower they could muster. There were his five men still on the hill. They each had their own Smith & Wesson .22. In addition, Brin had the M-14 and someone else, probably Joshua Rubin, had the 9mm Uzi submachine gun. He suspected that there were a lot of other handguns on board as well. But handguns were not accurate beyond twenty meters or so. The Uzi and the M-14 were their only hope, but once the ammunition ran out, that would be it. The key lay in recovering those AK-47’s. If there was enough ammunition, they could hold out for a day or so on the hill. But Hausner doubted now if he could find the bodies among these jagged, eroded earth formations.

Hausner heard a sound and stopped in his tracks. Kaplan froze against a rock. They heard it again. A low wailing voice, calling in Arabic. “I am over here,” said the voice. “Over here.”

Hausner responded in whispered Arabic that he hoped wouldn’t betray his accent. “I’m coming,” he said. “Coming.”

“I am
here,
” said the voice. “I am hurt.”

“I’m coming,” repeated Hausner.

He crawled through a shallow gully, then looked up across an open space dominated by the formation that looked like the sail of a ship. Three bodies lay in the light of the newly risen moon. One of them had an AK-47 cradled in his arms. Hausner cursed under his breath.

Kaplan came up beside him and whispered in his ear. “Let me take him. I’ve got a silencer.”

Hausner shook his head. “Too far.” If Kaplan didn’t kill him with the first round, the bullet might make a sound as it struck, and then there would be AK-47 rounds splattering all over the place. “I’ll take him.”

Hausner removed his tie and suit jacket. He pulled his blue shirt out from his pants and opened a few buttons at the top. He ripped the white silk lining out of the jacket and tied it on his head in what he hoped would pass for a
kheffiyah.
He began to crawl out to the wounded Arab.