By the Rivers of Babylon (56 page)

Spurred on by the half-crazed shouts of Ahmed Rish, the remaining Ashbals doggedly continued their pursuit of the aircraft as it thrashed across the ground like a great wounded bird. There was only some light fire from the aircraft, coming from one or two portholes. There was, however, a man braced in the mangled tail section. He had not gone inside with everyone else and he was delivering accurate fire from his perch. Rish ordered all guns turned on him, and tracer rounds streaked through the half-light, up toward the high-raised tail. The man seemed to have taken many hits, but he continued to fire.

The Ashbals called on their last reserves of energy, and in a burst of speed, led by Salem Hamadi, they closed in on the tottering aircraft. Ahmed Rish ran behind them, alternately firing his rifle into the dust at their feet and using the butt to strike their backs and buttocks. Led by a near madman and pursued by a certified one, fewer than twenty wretched young men and women ran, stumbled, and crawled forward.

To anyone who was familiar with the myth, it must have looked like the scene of Charon, the ferryman of Hell, beating the damned souls with an oar as he took them across the River Styx. And it had all started so well, too. A proud fighting unit of over one hundred fifty men and women, reduced now to fewer than two dozen terrified, humiliated, and miserable human beings who looked and sounded more like jackals than tiger cubs.

Rish shot a man who fell and could not get up fast enough. Behind him, as he pursued the Concorde, he heard the firing of the approaching Israeli commandos as they pursued
him
.

•    •    •

Laskov watched from overhead. He wanted to try to take out the Ashbals who were intermittently visible now, but they were clinging too close to the Concorde and he was unable to get an accurate fix on the approaching commandos. The stall speed of the F-14 was too high to make it very effective for close-in support. It was because of their speed and range that the F-14’s had been chosen for this mission. To try to put a bomb or rocket accurately on the racetrack-sized hilltop, in the dawn light, with high buffeting winds and obscuring dust, traveling at a minimum speed of 195 kilometers per hour, was out of the question with so many friendlies in the area. He considered asking the commandos to pull back, but in the final analysis, it was they who had to effect the rescue. Again, he settled for buzzing the area at low levels and setting up strafing patterns that would not come near the Concorde on the west side of the hill or the commandos approaching from the south and east. He led his six Tomcats in on a last strafing run that exhausted the remainder of their 200mm cannon rounds.

Hausner lay in a shallow depression, covered with dust, and listened to the small cannon rounds exploding around him. The Ashbals had not seen him fall in the dust and had run past him.

As he took cover he heard the whining down of the Concorde’s engines as they died one by one. He looked up cautiously. The Concorde hung precariously at the edge of the slope. In the weak light of dawn he could see the fire dying in its huge engines. The Ashbals were closing in on the aircraft. From the east he could hear the random firing of the commandos as they worked their way up the slope. He got up on one knee and checked the mechanism on his AK-47. As he reloaded, he looked around him and realized that he was kneeling in the same hole where he and Miriam had made love. He ran his hand through the warm dust that had been their bed.

He looked up again at the Concorde as he finished reloading. His plan had been to kill Rish although he knew he himself would die whether he succeeded or not. But now it appeared that he would survive and that everyone else would die, because even if Rish did not reach them and massacre them or take them hostage, then this foolhardy attempt to slide into the river would surely kill them. All Hausner had to do now was to wait until the commandos reached him and he could go home. But he couldn’t
do that and he knew it. He rose to his feet and made off in the direction of the Concorde.

Becker couldn’t decide if he wanted to go over the side or not. The longer he looked at the river, the farther away it seemed. But what were his options?

Burg had come into the flight deck and was strapping Kahn into the flight engineer’s seat. Kahn was breathing, but a sucking chest wound was making that increasingly more difficult. Burg looked around, found a map, and stuffed it into the foaming hole. The sucking sounds quieted.

Becker watched for a second, then yelled to Burg. “Get a dozen people in the forward galley!”

Burg nodded and ran out the cockpit door and barked an order.

A dozen unwounded and ambulatory wounded got up quickly and crowded into the small forward galley. The Concorde tipped further and slid forward. Burg ran into the flight deck and strapped himself into the copilot’s chair.

Salem Hamadi, well in the lead of the straggling Ashbals, ran at an angle alongside the leading edge of the upturned starboard wing until he reached the point where it came within two meters of the edge of the glacis. A second before he would have run off the side, Hamadi slung his rifle over his shoulder and leaped into the air.

Hamadi landed flat on the wing with his arms and legs spread out. At that moment, the ground that the underside of the flight deck was resting on gave way. The Concorde pitched further down and slid a few meters forward. Hamadi scrambled upward and tried to find some purchase on the sleek supersonic wing. His foot found a tear that had been made by a burst of bullets, and he vaulted toward the open emergency door and grabbed the door frame. No one seemed to be looking out the windows or the door. He pulled himself toward the opening.

More ground gave way under the aircraft, and the Concorde seemed to spring over the crumbling edge. It careened down the steep gracis toward the Euphrates. It looked very graceful to the fighter pilots in the air.

Salem Hamadi saw through the open door that everyone was in the crash position with their heads between their legs and pillows and blankets in front of their faces. He dropped into the
dark cabin and let go of the door frame. The steeply pitched aircraft propelled him toward the flight deck door and he smashed into it. He put his back to the steel door and waited for the crash. Hamadi could not imagine what kind of fate awaited him—drowning, shooting, capture, maiming—but he knew he did not want to be around Ahmed Rish when the end came.

Becker saw the line of burnt castor oil bushes come up very fast. He saw two badly wounded Ashbals running off in opposite directions along the river bank. He felt the main wheel assembly collapse, and the Concorde slid faster on its belly. The nose cleaved through the high bank and the belly slid over it, lifting the aircraft slightly like a sled going over a bump. The Concorde belly-dived into the Euphrates, and Becker heard the thump of the impact at the same time he felt it hit. He saw the river come up to his windshield and pour through, sending shards of glass and sheets of water over him and Burg. Then everything went black.

Great billows of steam rose as the hot Olympus engines vaporized thousands of liters of the Euphrates. There was a rushing sound inside the aircraft as the belly filled with water and it settled into the river, then a stillness as it reached a level at which it could float. The passengers began to look up.

Salem Hamadi slid quickly through the door into the half-lit flight deck. He saw first a crewman strapped into the flight engineer’s seat. He was bleeding and his blood colored the water sloshing on the deck. There was also a crewman sitting in the pilot’s seat, slumped over the control column. Next to him in the copilot’s seat was a man in civilian clothes who also seemed to be unconscious. There was sparkling plexiglas lying over everything. As he watched, the instrument lights began to fade, then the overhead lights went out. Hamadi pulled out his long knife. He knew instinctively that the man in civilian clothes was important and went for him first.

Jacob Hausner stopped short of the line of Ashbals. He watched them as they began firing down into the river at the Concorde as it began floating slowly downstream. He raised his rifle and tried to pick out Rish among them, but they all looked the same with their layer of whitish dust.

Overhead, Laskov’s F-14 circled lazily over the mud flats, then suddenly came streaking in toward the crest of the hill, directly at the Ashbals. Laskov had instructed Major Arnon’s force to stop their advance and take cover until further notice. Major Bartok’s force had changed direction and was heading at top speed back down the ridge line toward their rafts in an attempt to intercept the Concorde.

The sky was brightening noticeably and the wind was dropping. The Ashbals, who had traveled clothed in the dust and the darkness for so long, suddenly realized that they were naked. The F-14 released his last four rockets and pulled up sharply. The line of Ashbals on the crest disappeared in an inferno of orange flame and shrapnel.

The concussion knocked Hausner down, and when he looked
up, he saw Ahmed Rish standing by himself well back of the crest where the dismembered bodies of his last soldiers lay smoldering. A smell of burning hair and flesh hung around the crest until the wind blew it away.

Hausner rose and looked around him. He and Rish were the only men left standing on the hill as far as he could see. Rish appeared to be contemplating the safest line of retreat. He had his back to Hausner as Hausner walked casually over to him. “Hello, Ahmed.”

Rish did not turn. “Hello, Jacob Hausner.”

“We won, Rish.”

Rish shook his head. “Not completely. Hamadi is on that aircraft. Also, it may sink yet. And I’m sure the Peace Conference is finished. And please don’t forget all your dead and wounded. Shall we call it a draw?”

Hausner tightened his grip on the AK-47. “Drop the rifle and your pistol. Turn slowly around, you son-of-a-bitch. Hands on your head.”

Rish did as he was told. He smiled at Hausner. “You look terrible. Would you like a drink?” He inclined his head toward a canteen on his web belt.

“Shut your goddamn mouth.” Hausner’s hands were shaking, and the muzzle of the rifle moved with short, quick movements. He couldn’t seem to make up his mind what to do next.

Rish smiled at Hausner, “This was all your fault, you know. None of this would have been possible without your incompetence. You don’t know how many nights over the past year I’ve awakened in a sweat dreaming that Jacob Hausner would think of making a complete nose-to-tail search of his Concordes. Jacob Hausner. Legendary genius of El Al Security. Jacob Hausner. You don’t know how we worried about the overrated Jacob Hausner.” He laughed. “No one told us that Jacob Hausner was just a creation of Israeli public relations. The real Jacob Hausner has no more brains than a camel.” He spit on the ground. “You may live and I may die, but I wouldn’t change places with you.” He laughed.

Hausner wiped the dust from his mouth and eyes. He knew Rish was trying to goad him into pulling the trigger. “Are you through?”

“Yes. I have said what I wanted to say to you. Now kill me quickly.”

“I’m afraid that’s not what I had in mind.” He thought he could see Rish turn pale under his layer of dust. “Did you capture General Dobkin? How about the girl that was on the outpost? Do you have them? Come on, Rish. Answer me truthfully, and I’ll put a bullet into your head, clean and quick. Otherwise . . .”

Rish shrugged. “Yes, we captured both of them. They were both alive the last I saw them. However, I received a radio transmission from the guest house where they were kept saying that your soldiers were blowing it up and machine-gunning the wounded.” He shrugged again. “So, who can say if they are still alive?”

“Hospitals and headquarters don’t mix, Rish, so don’t give me that shit.” He coughed and spit up some dust.

“Some water?”

“Shut up.” Rish would be the intelligence prize of the decade. Rationally, he should take him alive. Rish would answer a lot of questions that had been bothering Israeli Intelligence for some time. Hausner wanted to know a few things himself. “Who passed on the flight information to you?”

“Colonel Richardson.”

Hausner nodded. He asked suddenly, “Miriam Bernstein’s husband? The others? What of them?”

Rish smiled.

“Answer me, you son-of-a-bitch.”

“I think I’ll take that information with me to the grave.”

Hausner’s finger tensed on the trigger. If he took Rish alive, he would spend the rest of his life staring through the barbed wire at Ramla. Life imprisonment was harsher justice than a bullet in the head and oblivion. But on a more primitive level Hausner wanted an eye for an eye. He was filled with all the primal passions and hate of mankind and wanted to see Rish’s blood run. Rish was an unspeakable evil, and even barbed wire was no guarantee that his malevolence would be contained. While he lived and breathed, he was as dangerous and threatening as a contagion. “We killed your lover, didn’t we? And it was a double blow to you because she was your sister, wasn’t she?” The psychological profile had been vague on that point, but he knew now that it was so.

Rish did not answer, but his lips drew back in a feral grin that sent a shiver up Hausner’s spine. Standing there in the dawn wind with his hands spread out, his face and clothes the color of the dead earth, and the rising sun showing a malignant gleam in
his eyes, Hausner saw Pazuzu, the East Wind, harbinger of plague and death. Hausner’s whole body began to shake with exhaustion and emotion. He lowered the barrel of the rifle and fired.

Rish’s kneecap shattered and he fell in the dust. He howled with pain. “A quick bullet! You promised!”

Hausner was inexplicably relieved to see blood coming from Rish, to see the shattered bone splinters and marrow, and to hear the howling. Irrationally, he had thought there would be no blood and no pain.

“You promised!”

“When have we ever kept promises to each other?” He fired again and blew off the other kneecap.