Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (121 page)

'Tamara,' he said calmly, 'don't get yourself so worked up.
Stress isn't good for you right now.'

'Dammit, why do you insist on avoiding the issue?'

'I'm not avoiding it. I'll keep in mind what you've said,' he
told her mildly. 'At any rate, today's only Friday. The weather
has predicted calm and clear skies through the entire weekend.
The
Philadelphie
's not going to try until there's either fog or
rain to use as cover for sneaking in.' He smiled. 'So you see,
it's not a matter requiring an immediate decision. We'll sleep
on it, all right? Who knows what might happen between now
and the time the ship runs the blockade?'

Chapter 30

The Arabs came without warning, in the hour preceding false
dawn, when sleep is the deepest. By the time the alarm was
sounded, they had already fanned out deep into the heart of
the kibbutz. 'Arbs!' Asa shrieked from the other room as
the warning bell tolled simultaneously with the first cracks of
gunfire. Asa's terror condensed the two syllables into one.

In the master bedroom, Tamara jerked upright out of her sleep. Before the second burst of gunfire cracked nearby, she
was already wide-awake. Instinctively she flung the covers
aside and groped to switch on the bedside lamp.

The bulb glowed reassuringly.

'Turn it off!' Dani yelled. With his honed reflexes, he was
already halfway to the boys' room.

Startled, she fumbled with the switch and knocked the lamp
over. She reached out to catch it, but it rolled away on its
shade and went crashing to the floor. The bulb shattered and
the room was cast back into blackness.

'I'm getting the boys,' Dani yelled from the other room.
'Get out of bed, and for God's sake stay down!'

She did as told, crawling over the edge of the bed and letting herself drop to the floor. She landed with a clumsy thump and
let out a cry. She had misjudged the extra weight of the baby and a sharp pain knifed through her left kneecap. Her hands went down on crunching shards of curved thin glass.

She sucked in her breath and cursed. The bulb. She'd embedded glass from the shattered bulb in the palms of her
hands.

Damn.

Dani called out to her, 'Are you dressed?'

'No.'

'What are you waiting for! Put something on!'

She struggled in the dark with her voluminous maternity
dress, got tangled up in the sleeves, forced herself to slow
down, and finally managed to slip it over her head. She groped
desperately around for her shoes and embedded more bulb
shards in her hand before she found them.

Now all hell was breaking loose outside. A woman's high-
pitched scream from somewhere nearby was abruptly cut off.
Then suddenly there was an explosion and the room brightened, the wall flickering. She glanced up. The window was a
roaring sheet of bright orange; the house next door was on
fire.

Dani crawled noisily on his belly toward her, the boys slith
ering behind him. 'You're dressed?'

'Yes.' She looked at him. She could make out his face clearly
now; it was grim and, like everything else in the room, tinged
orange. Orange and pulsating.

'Mama!' Asa said, scooting over next to Tamara. 'I'm
afraid.' His blue eyes were huge with fear and he was shaking.
'Are you afraid?'

'Yes,' Tamara said softly, touching his face. 'I'm afraid too,
darling. But everything's going to be all right. Your papa's
here, and he'll take care of us.' She forced herself to smile
reassuringly.

Asa turned to Dani. 'You'll take care of us, won't you,
Papa? You'll see that the Arabs won't hurt us?'

'That's enough!' Dani said harshly. 'We're wasting time.
You'll all do exactly as we've rehearsed countless times
already.' He nodded to Tamara. 'Here.'

He thrust something into her hand. It felt heavy and cold and oily. She looked down. It was the American revolver, the
.44 with the inordinately long, evil barrel.

She looked at him speechlessly.

'Now follow me,' he ordered. 'We have to get out of here
before we're all trapped.'

Like crabs in a speeded-up film, he and the boys scuttled
effortlessly into the next room on their bellies, but with her
own giant belly in the way, and being careful so as not to jar
the unborn baby, Tamara could only crawl on her hands and
knees, and at half-speed at that. At the front door Dani waited
for her to catch up. Then, signalling for her and the boys to keep down, he leaped up, flattened himself against the wall
beside the door, and gingerly reached for the door handle. He
flung the door wide and it banged against the opposite side of the wall. The air smelled acrid now, heavy with smoke and
cordite.

He slid his head around the doorframe for the merest frac
tion of a second and then flattened himself against the wall
again. He was holding his rifle upright with one hand. The
crackling of the flames was loud and hellish.

'Now!' he screamed. 'Asa, Ari—
go!'

The boys went out just as they'd practised it during the
weekly drills. On their bellies, their elbows flapping like seals'
fins, they dashed for the stoop, dived and went flying while
Dani covered them with bursts of gunfire. When they hit the
ground, they rolled over twice and waited.

Dani peered around the door again, got off two more shots, and brought his free hand slashing down. 'Tamara—
go!'

She clenched her teeth and crawled like mad. The three
steps were concrete and murderous on her bleeding hands and
knees. When she reached the boys, she looked back at the
house. Dani was coming out in a running crouch, the carbine
blazing. He dived to the ground beside her. 'Keep down,' he
whispered fiercely between clenched teeth.

'I'm trying,' she hissed, 'but I can't squash the baby!'

'Now, listen carefully, all of you,' he said, his words quick but his voice calm. 'Don't panic. Pretend this is a drill. Head for the community hall and stay there. You'll be safe; it's the
best-protected building we have. Now, go! All of you!'

The boys wiggled away like tadpoles, digging their elbows
into the hard ground and pulling themselves along while fling
ing themselves from side to side as they gained extra speed
with their knees. Tamara hesitated. 'What are you going to
do?'

'Forget about me!' Dani hissed harshly, his eyes flashing. 'I'll stay behind to cover you. Get moving!' He gave her such
a painful shove that she cried out. Then she lifted her head to
get her bearings. Bullets whined so close by that she swore she
could feel their wind. The dirt beside her exploded into a cloud
of dust.

That got her crawling. Scampering on her hands and knees,
her heavy belly nearly grazing the ground, she zigzagged her
way, trying to minimize herself as a target. There was chaos
all around.

It was like a scene out of Armageddon. Bullets whistled in
every direction. Explosions rocked the ground and blasted
soil sky-high. She could hear the high-pitched screaming of
children somewhere in the distance and prayed to God that
they were not her own. Like shadow puppets gone wild, sil
houettes darted madly back and forth in front of the burning
house next door, the orange flames licking and leaping out of the windows and casting shadows of enormous malevolent
demons. Then someone threw something through one of the
windows and there was a
whooosh!
as the frenzy of flames was
fed. A screaming man, his blazing clothes turning him into a human torch, staggered out of the front door, turned three
slow-motion circles, and then fell facedown in silence, not
eight feet from Tamara.

Her nose caught the stench of burning flesh and she almost
retched.

It's like pork, she thought hysterically. Human flesh smells
like roasting pork.

She scuttled away, past one house and then another, head
ing toward the centre of the kibbutz. The buildings were built
closer together now, affording more protection. She staggered to her feet and, keeping her torso bent forward, scrambled for
the safety of the nearest thick stone wall. She slid around it
and straightened. She was gasping for breath, and inside her
she could feel the baby kicking. She put her hands on her belly
and massaged gently. Despite the chill of the night, she was
hot and drenched with sweat.

Finally she began to breathe more easily. She peered cautiously around the corner of the wall, back the way she had
come.

It was too late to wish she hadn't.

Dark, long-robed figures were leaping in dervish dances.
Knife blades caught the sheen of the fire and reflected orange slivers. She could hear cries of
'Allahu Akbar!'
as they rushed
forward. A machine gun atop the blazing house mowed down
a row of them, as though cutting their legs out from under
them. There was a chorus of screams as they fell forward, their
rifles catapulting in midair. Arabs.

She watched, frozen with morbid fascination, as one of the figures leapt up and an arm arced gracefully, as if lobbing a
football. Instinctively she drew her head back and flattened
herself against the wall. The ground shook mightily and
the night seemed to explode in a split-second fireball. The
machine-gun chatter stopped abruptly. Her ears were ringing.

She peered around the corner again. The Arabs had gained.
They were closer now. Much closer. And then, suddenly, men
without robes jumped out in front of them. Rifle bursts flashed
and exploded. One of the Arabs shrieked and fell to his knees,
clutching his belly before he fell headfirst to the ground. Arabs
and Jews were face-to-face now. Bayonets stabbed; rifle
stocks became clubs.