By the Rivers of Babylon (34 page)

Murad saw him in his scope. He called out to the nine-man infantry squad that was moving toward the rifle, but they could not see Hausner.

Hausner picked up the rifle, rolled to another position, and raised it. He saw the squad less than thirty meters off and fired five rounds in quick succession. He hit one or two men, and the rest scattered. They were no match for the starlight scope in the dark and knew it.

Murad drew a bead on Hausner. He had had his heart set on owning that scope. Now this madman might get it damaged when Murad shot him. He fired.

Hausner was already moving. He heard the round kick up dirt near his feet. He flattened himself on the sloping hill and scanned the terrain to his front. The Arab knew where he was, but Hausner didn’t know where the Arab was. If he couldn’t spot him in the next few seconds, he would be dead.

Murad had Hausner directly in his cross hairs. He squeezed the trigger. It was an impossible shot to miss.

The Ashbal infantry squad directly behind Murad began firing blindly at the scope, their streams of green tracer rounds making crisscross patterns in the blackness. Burning tracers lodged in the earth and glowed like dying fireflies while ricochets shot off at all angles.

Murad squeezed the trigger as the picture in his infrared scope began disappearing. The major disadvantage of the scope in battle was that it whited-out when it was aimed at burning phosphorus. The tracers of his backup squad arched across his red picture and left white streaks that thickened and bled into each other. That was why he had wanted the starlight scope. He cursed loudly and fired blindly. “Stop, you fools! Stop!” He fired blindly again and again. His teammate, Safar, shouted over the sound of the AK-47’s, and the squad ceased fire.

Hausner knew what had happened. Another man would have said that God was with him again. But Hausner felt that he was being toyed with. The bomb. The crash. The recovering of the AK-47’s. Now this. He wasn’t charmed, he decided. He was cursed. Why wouldn’t it end?

Murad’s picture returned, and he scanned the spot where Hausner had been but saw nothing.

Hausner had found a very shallow depression in the slope, under the steep rise of the promontory—the watchtower—and had fallen into it. Like infantrymen everywhere, he knew how to shrink. Every muscle contracted, the air left his lungs, and he seemed to deflate into his pitiful hole. His chest, thighs, and even his loins collapsed in some metaphysical way known only to men under fire, and the bottom of the depression seemed to drop a few more precious centimeters.

Murad suddenly became frightened. He felt naked, exposed. He, too, found a cavity in the earth and burrowed into it.

The sounds of battle along the ridge filled the air, but in that spot, there seemed to be silence. Hausner and Murad waited for
each other. The two night scopes. Two flash suppressors. Two silencers and two fine rifles. Silent, invisible, and deadly.

The main body of the Ashbals was within a hundred meters of the perimeter, but a few squads of trained sappers, infiltrators, had penetrated to positions directly beneath the breastworks and abatis. They lay there, silent and frozen, armed only with knives and pistols, every inch of their exposed skin blackened, waiting for the main group to make the final assault. Had they had hand grenades, bangalor torpedoes, or satchel charges, as sappers are supposed to have, they could have wreaked havoc on the Israeli lines. But no one had expected that they would have to storm a hill to take these hostages. They felt ill used in this attack. They were professionals, the elite of any infantry unit. It was a suicide mission to crawl up to the enemy lines in front of the main advance. And here they were, but they could do nothing until the main body got within final assault range. Then they would jump into the Israeli trenches and kill with knife and pistol. But if only they had those explosives to send in first . . .

Dobkin leaped and flew past the two astonished Arabs. They swiveled and lay with their backs on the slope, and their heels dug into the shifting clay and sand. They pointed their AK-47’s downward and fired. The reports from the automatic weapons shook their bodies and they slid down the glacis, breaking off the crust of age and exposing the original brickwork.

Dobkin literally flew forward. He heard the pop and zip of the bullets as they went by him. His feet came down again and he sprang off again. His heels crashed through the castor oil bushes and his feet hit the flood bank. He leaped again like a high diver and sailed into the air.

An arch of green tracers followed him. He seemed to somersault around and through the long, deadly green fingers. He hung in mid-air for what seemed like an eternity. Above him was the starry black sky of Mesopotamia. Then the ridge line sped past in a blur, then below was the luminescent Euphrates, then, as his body spun again, the mud flats flashed past his eyes, and then again the sky. Out of the corner of his eye, those green phosphorus streaks, like death rays in a science fiction movie, came closer and closer, following him, and those hollow
staccato sounds grew louder as more and more guns joined in. He wondered why he wasn’t falling, why he seemed to be suspended above the river. Then a sharp green light hit him with searing pain and everything resumed normal speed as if he had just awakened from a dream. He heard a splash and the muddy Euphrates closed over him.

Hausner decided he was not going to make it back to the Israeli lines. It was too open, and the Arab sniper had his position fixed now. Yet from where Hausner lay, he could not deliver effective fire anywhere except to his front. The scope was not being utilized to its fullest advantage, and in any case, he was almost out of ammunition.

A round knocked off the heel of his shoe, and his leg jerked spasmodically. He cursed as he stuck his head up. He took aim, but the Arab was invisible in his hole. The infantry squad had switched to non-tracer rounds and began firing in his general direction. He spotted the sniper’s teammate traversing the terrain toward the infantry squad—bringing them a definite fix on his position. Hausner fired, and the man, Safar, went down holding his side.

Murad fired, and Hausner felt a sting on his ear. He swung toward the sniper and fired at his form as it disappeared into the hole. He felt a warm wetness on his ear as he settled back in his shallow concavity. He thought, briefly, irrationally, of Miriam.

Hausner had had enough. He wasn’t accomplishing anything, and he could sense that the Ashbals on both sides of him were approaching the crest. He called out behind him, above the sound of the shooting. “Haber!”

There was no answer.

He called again. “Haber!”

She looked up. Brin’s bloody and brain-splattered head still lay in her lap. She remembered that Hausner was there a few minutes before, but didn’t know what had become of him. She heard him shout again, but didn’t answer.

Hausner ripped off his shirt and wrapped it around the starlight scope. He reversed the rifle and gripped its red-hot silencer/flash suppressor. He stood and swung the rifle around his head and released it into the air. It sailed upward and over the top of the ruined watchtower above his head. It fell into the soft dust some distance from Naomi Haber. She heard it fall and
knew instinctively what it was and what she was supposed to do. She lowered her head and placed a kiss on Nathan Brin’s shattered forehead.

The order for the final protective defenses had gone up and down the perimeter, and the carefully rehearsed operations began to be set in motion. All the ruses and all the makeshift weaponry that looked so clever and inspired in the daylight were about to be put to the test, and there were many doubts now in the dark.

An Arab voice shouted loudly a hundred meters to the north of the promontory. “Here! There is a hole in the lines here! Here! Follow me!”

Two Ashbal squads, eighteen men, converged on the voice. They charged upward, following the commanding voice. No one fired at them. They came within fifty meters of the apparently deserted breastworks. Another few seconds and they would be inside and the fight would be virtually over.

The voice called again. “Here! Quickly! Over the top!”

If the Ashbals noticed in the din of the firing that the voice had a slightly metallic quality, or that the Palestinian accent was not quite right, they did not act on that knowledge. One of their commanders must be using a bullhorn. They kept coming on toward the voice which was so close to the Israeli defenses.

Ibrahim Arif lay in back of the breastworks in a small dugout and shouted into the PA microphone again. “
NOW, UP AND OVER!
”

The PA speaker box, thirty meters in front of the breastworks, beckoned the Ashbals forward. “
NOW, UP AND OVER! SHOUT! SHOUT! DEATH TO ISRAEL!
”

The Ashbals stood straight, ran forward, and shouted: “
DEATH TO ISRAEL!
”

Kaplan, who had checked himself out of the infirmary, Marcus, and Rebecca Livni, a young stenographer who had just acquired an AK-47, opened fire. They each poured two thirty-round magazines into the Ashbal ranks.

The Ashbals stood in the glare of the muzzle flashes, paralyzed and bewildered. The 7.62mm rounds ripped into them. They collapsed on top of one another like a pile of jackstraws. It was their single biggest loss so far, and it left a sizable gap in their frontal attack.

•    •    •

Esther Aronson had been pleading with everyone she ran into in the dark to listen to her. Burg said to beg, borrow, or steal. And begging wasn’t working. Everyone was too involved with his own survival to worry about the strategic problems of an attack from the rear. Everyone who listened to her sympathized, but that was all she got. She searched desperately for Hausner. Hausner could give a simple order, and she would have what she wanted. But no one knew where he was. Missing, presumed dead.

She saw and heard the ruse of the PA box and knew that the last desperate tricks and defenses were beginning. On the west slope there was hardly anything of that sort. She needed arms. She ran over to where Marcus and Rebecca Livni were cautiously making their way through the breastworks and abatis to recover the rifles of the slain squads. Kaplan was covering them. Esther Aronson ran past Kaplan, vaulted over the trench and over the top of the breastworks, and slid through the stakes of the abatis past a surprised Marcus and Livni. “Sorry,” she yelled. “I need guns for the west slope. They’re attacking.” She stepped quickly among the carnage, among the dead and still living, and quickly and expertly stripped off bandoliers and web gear that were loaded down with ammunition pouches. She grabbed at the AK-47’s in the dark, more often than not finding their hot barrels instead of their stocks. Her hands and body burned as she slung them one after the other over her shoulders.

Marcus and Livni had run to Aronson and were helping her. Marcus kept shouting to watch out for live men, but Esther Aronson didn’t seem to care or hear. Marcus shot a man who appeared to reach for his rifle as it was being pulled away.

Aronson yelled, “Thank you,” and disappeared over the breastworks under that incredible load.

Marcus and Livni quickly gathered up the remaining rifles under cover of Kaplan’s AK-47. The PA box was screaming, “
BACK! BACK! STAY AWAY, COMRADES! THE JEWS ARE WELL ARMED OVER HERE.
” The Ashbals kept their distance.

Naomi Haber put a fresh magazine into the M-14 and sighted. The entire slope was covered with crawling, crouching figures. She scanned the area directly below her perch. She
spotted Hausner lying very still in his hole. Had he been hit? She couldn’t tell. He must have stood up to throw the rifle that distance. The Arab sniper would certainly have gotten him.

A bullet brushed the knuckles of her right hand and she let out a scream and almost lost the rifle. She crouched below the earth wall until the shock wore off. She licked at the wound like an animal, and this seemed to have a calming effect on her. She knew that the man who had almost killed her was the same man who had killed her lover. And she knew that for that reason, more than any other, he must die. She got up slowly and peeked over the earth wall.

Murad realized by now that Safar was dead. Safar, his childhood friend. His only real friend. His lover. And that Jew had killed him. Had he hit the Jew when he threw the rifle up? And the rifle and scope were gone. Who had it? He scanned between Hausner’s hole and the sniper’s promontory. The danger was on the promontory now, but his emotions wouldn’t let him take his eyes off the last place he had seen the cursed Jew.

Haber sighted slowly as she took a breath. She could see the sniper’s full body lying prone below her about eighty meters away. A shot toward the head area would, with luck, destroy the scope as well as the head, but a shot at the back was more certain. She put the cross hairs over the small of his back and fired twice.

Along the perimeter, the Israelis were setting up the dummies that had taken so long to construct. As they were set up, they drew fire, were knocked down and set up again.

A dozen unarmed men and women held up aerosol spray cans and ignited their vapor mists in short spurts, simulating muzzle flashes. The Arabs fired at these flashes, which they could see all along the ridge. Their estimation of the number of weapons captured by the Israelis went up considerably.

Meanwhile, the real AK-47’s, newly captured with sufficient ammunition, were beginning to operate.

Two unarmed women, who had spent the last half hour tape-recording the sounds of battle on the peace mission’s two dozen cassette tape recorders, now began placing those recorders at various points and pushing the playback buttons. The volume of fire from the Israeli lines seemed to increase.

Things were beginning to function again. Runners were coming to the CP/OP and reporting to Burg and asking for
orders. Burg gave orders as though he had been doing it all his life. The final protective defenses were apparently working and morale was going up. But Burg knew that it was still a very close thing.