The Pirate (43 page)

Ben Ezra turned and looked back at the soldiers. They were professionals, all of them highly trained. There was really none that he could spare; he had work for each of them. His eyes fell on Jabir. The man was not young but he had an air of quiet competence. He caught his eye and gestured to him.

“Hamid needs one man to help with the plastiques,” Ben Ezra said. “Will you volunteer?”

Jabir glanced back at Baydr. “I will be honored, if you will guard my master in my absence.”

Ben Ezra nodded. “I will guard him as my own.” Later the thought of what he had said would come back to him. He was his own.

He called the Israeli corporal in charge of that group. “Set the rocket launchers and aim them at the walls below the machine guns. After that the target will be the command cabin.”

The Israeli saluted and went away.

He motioned to the Yemeni captain. “I have selected your soldiers to lead the assault. At the first detonation of the plastiques, you will pick off as many of the men on the machine guns as you can. Then, without waiting for results, you will follow me through the gate and deploy your men around the soldiers’ cabins while we seek out the captives.”

The captain saluted. “We are grateful for the honor you have given us. We shall fulfill our duty unto death.”

Ben Ezra returned the salute. “I thank you, captain.”

He turned and looked back at the walls of the camp. They gleamed ghostly white in the faint moonlight. He turned back. Already the men were scattering, taking up their positions, preparing for the attack. He walked slowly back to Baydr and Carriage and sank down on his haunches beside them.

“How is it going?” Baydr asked.

Ben Ezra looked at his son. How strange, he thought. There is so much we might have been to one another. And yet, the ways of the Lord were beyond human understanding. After so many years to be brought together in an alien world, to reach across the borders of hatred, to answer in each other a common need.

The old man seemed lost in thought. “How is it going?” Baydr repeated.

Ben Ezra’s eyes cleared. He nodded his head slowly. “It goes,” he said. “From this moment on we are in the hands of God.”

“What time do we attack?”

“At two hundred hours.” His voice grew stern. “And I don’t want you to get in our way. You are not a soldier and I don’t want you getting yourself killed. You wait out here until I send for you.”

“It’s my family in there,” Baydr said.

“You will do them no good if you are dead.”

Baydr leaned back against the tree trunk. The general was a remarkable old man. In two nights of long and arduous march over the worst terrain Baydr had ever seen, the general had moved as agilely and rapidly as any of them. Not once had Baydr seen him weary. What was it the Israelis called him? The Lion of the Desert? It was a name truly given.

***

Ben Ezra turned to the Israeli corporal. “Fifteen minutes to zero hour. Pass the word.”

The soldier immediately ran off. The general looked worried. “Hamid and Jabir had not yet returned.”

Baydr got to his feet. He looked toward the camp. All was quiet.

There was a rustle from the trees to one side. A moment later, Hamid and Jabir appeared.

“What took you so long?” the general asked angrily.

“We had to work around the guards,” Hamid said. “They’re crawling around the place like flies. I think my estimate may have been low. There are maybe a hundred and fifty men in there.”

“It changes nothing,” Ben Ezra said. “You stay close to me when we go in. As soon as the rockets are gone, the Israelis are coming in to help us with the captives.”

“Yes, sir.” Hamid looked around. Baydr was out of earshot. “I saw his daughter. She was in the command cabin. There were two men with her. I recognize one of them as Ali Yasfir. I didn’t know the other.”

Ben Ezra made a face. Like it or not she was his grandchild. “Pass the word not to harm the girl if possible,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” Hamid ran off and disappeared among the trees.

Ten minutes to zero. Ben Ezra reached under his jellaba and unfastened his sword belt. Swiftly he buckled it outside his flowing robe. Reaching across his waist, he drew the scimitar from its scabbard. The gracefully curved steel glinted in the light from the moon. Ben Ezra felt himself grow young once more. The sword without which he had never gone into battle was at his side. All was right with the world.

***

Leila took a fresh bottle of Coca-Cola and brought it back to the table. “When are you going back?” she asked Ali Yasfir.

“In the morning.”

“I wish I were going with you. I’m going crazy up here. There’s nothing to do.”

“The only girl with one hundred and forty men and you’re bored?”

“You know what I mean,” Leila said angrily.

“Soon it will be over. Then you can come back to Beirut.”

“What happens to them when it’s over?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Do we have to? Even if my father gives us everything we’ve asked for?”

“There are too many of them. They can always identify us.”

“But the children, do they have to die also?”

“What’s come over you? I thought you hated them. They stole your heritage.”

“Not the children. Jordana and my father, yes. But not the children.”

“Children can identify us also.”

She sat silently for a moment, then got to her feet. “I think I’ll go outside for some air,” she said.

After the door had closed behind her, Yasfir turned to Ramadan. “If I don’t get back in time you have your orders.”

“Yes,” Ramadan replied.

“She must go first,” Yasfir said. “She, more than any of them, can get us hanged. She knows too much about us.”

The night air was cool and it felt good against her face. Leila walked slowly in the direction of her own cabin. So much had happened that she hadn’t anticipated. There was none of the glamour and excitement that she had envisioned. Mostly it was just boredom. Boredom and empty days and nights.

And there was none of the feeling of participating in the cause of freedom. She had long given up trying to connect what was taking place here with the struggle to free the Palestinians. All the soldiers were mercenaries. And very well paid too. Not one of them seemed to care about the cause. Only about their monthly pay. It was not at all what the boys and girls in school had talked about. Here, freedom was just another word.

She remembered that Hamid had once tried to explain that to her. But she refused to understand it then. It seemed so long ago, but it had been only six months. Why was it that she had felt so young then and so old now?

She paused at the entrance to her cabin and looked out at the camp. It was quiet. Something disturbed her but she didn’t know what it was. Her eyes caught a glimpse of motion on the wall. One of the machine gunners had straightened up to stretch. Against the pale moonlight, she could see his hands reach toward the sky. Then, suddenly, he pitched forward head-first into the camp. A moment later there was the crack of a rifle shot. Even as she froze in surprise, the skies seemed to open up and the fires of hell to pour down on them.

The thought flashed crazily through her mind even as she began to run. Now she knew what had disturbed her. The quiet. It had been much too quiet.

CHAPTER 16

The children came awake screaming with terror. The tiny cabin reverberated with the concussions coming from the explosions that seemed to be taking place all around them. Jordana leaped from her cot, ran to them and held them close to her.

She heard one of the women in the other room screaming but she could not tell who it was. Through the cracks in the boarded-up windows, she could see flashes of red and orange light. The whole cabin seemed to shudder convulsively as another explosion tore the night.

Oddly enough she wasn’t frightened. For the first time since the hijacking, she felt secure.

“What’s happening, Mommy?” Muhammad asked, between tears.

“Daddy’s come for us, darling. Don’t be frightened.”

“Where is he?” Samir asked. “I want to see him.”

“You will,” she said soothingly. “In just a few minutes now.”

Anne, the nanny, appeared in the doorway. “Are you all right, madame?” she called.

“We’re fine,” Jordana shouted back over the noise. “And you?”

“Magda’s got a splinter of wood in her arm but otherwise we’re all right.” She paused as another violent concussion rocked the cabin. “Do you need any help with the children?”

“No, we’re fine,” Jordana said. She remembered something from a war movie she had once seen. “Tell the girls to lie down on the floor with their hands over their heads. They’ll be safer that way.”

“Yes, madame,” Anne answered, her Scottish imperturbability unruffled. She disappeared from the doorway.

“On the floor, boys,” Jordana said, pulling them down with her. They stretched out, one on either side, and she placed her arms over them, sheltering their heads under her shoulders.

The noise from the explosions was diminishing. Now more and more she heard the sounds of rifle fire mixed with the noises of men running about and shouting. She held the children tightly and waited.

***

Leila ran through the camp, which was filled with men running back and forth in confusion. The attack seemed to be coming from all sides.

Only one man seemed to have a purpose. She saw Ramadan, his rifle in his hand, running toward the women’s cabin.

Suddenly she remembered the automatic in her belt and pulled it out. The cold steel weight was comforting in her hand. Now she did not feel as alone and unprotected. “Ramadan!” she yelled after him.

He didn’t hear her and kept going, disappearing from sight around the corner of the women’s cabin. Without knowing why, she ran after him.

The door of the cabin was open when she got there. She ran inside and suddenly stopped in shock. Huddled against the wall of the backroom, the women had gathered in a group around Jordana and the boys. Ramadan, standing in the narrow doorway between the rooms, his back to her, was bringing his automatic rifle up to firing position.

“Leila!” Jordana screamed, “They’re your brothers!”

Ramadan wheeled, the rifle turning toward Leila.

It wasn’t until Leila saw the cold absence of expression on Ramadan’s face that she realized the truth. She meant no more to Al-Ikhwah than her brothers. They recognized the ties of blood even if she hadn’t. To them, she was only a tool to be used and discarded when their need of her no longer existed.

She held the heavy automatic in front of her with both hands. By reflex, her fingers tightened on the trigger. It wasn’t until the clip had emptied itself and Ramadan had pitched violently onto the floor that she realized she had pulled the trigger.

Looking across his body, she saw Jordana quickly turn the faces of the boys away from the sight of the blood welling from Ramadan’s body.

Suddenly she felt a strong pair of arms seize her from behind, pinning her own arms against her body. Violently she struggled to free herself.

“Leila! Stop it!” a familiar voice snapped in her ear.

She twisted her head to see who it was. “Hamid!” she exclaimed in surprise. “Where did you come from?”

“Time for that later.” He pulled her backward through the doorway. Loosening his grip but holding on to one arm, he dragged her after him through an opening that had been blasted in the camp wall.

When they got to the edge of the forest, he pushed her down flat against the earth. She raised her head to look at him. “What are you doing here?”

He pushed her head down again. “Don’t you remember the first thing I taught you?” he said harshly. “Keep your head down!”

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said, her voice muffled.

“I came to get you.”

“Why, Hamid, why?”

“Because I didn’t want you to get yourself killed, that’s why,” he said huskily. “You always were a lousy soldier.”

“Hamid, you love me,” she said, a note of wonder coming into her voice.

He didn’t answer.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

He turned to look at her. “What right have I to love a girl like you?”

***

Ben Ezra strode about, directing his soldiers, his scimitar flashing over his head.

He glanced around fiercely. The resistance seemed to be slowing down. He looked around for Hamid, but he was nowhere to be seen. Aloud he cursed him. He hated soldiers who became too involved in the battle to remember their orders. He had told him to stay near him.

He signaled the Israeli corporal. “Gather your men!” A moment later he caught Jabir’s eye. “Fetch you master,” he shouted. “We’re bringing out the captives!”

There was a burst of gunfire on the other side of the camp. He saw several of the Yemenis run toward it. He nodded to himself grimly. He had made the right choice. They were magnificent fighting men.

***

Baydr was the first to enter the cabin. He felt his heart leap as he saw his sons. He dropped to one knee to bring them in his arms as they ran to him, screaming. “Daddy! Daddy!”

He kissed one then the other, and felt the salt of his own tears on his lips.

“We weren’t frightened, honest, Father,” Muhammad said. “We knew you would come for us.”

“Yes,” Samir piped up. “Mommy told us that every day.”

He looked up at her. His vision was blurred with tears. Slowly he rose to his feet.

Jordana didn’t move; her eyes were fixed upon him.

Silently, he held out his hand to her.

Slowly, almost tentatively, she took it.

He looked into her eyes for a long moment. His voice was husky. “We almost didn’t make it.”

She smiled tremulously. “I never for a moment doubted.”

“Can you forgive me?” he asked.

“That’s easy. I love you,” she said. “But can you forgive me?”

He grinned. Suddenly he was the Baydr she had first known and loved. “Easy,” he said. “I love you too.”

“Move out,” the Israeli corporal yelled from the door behind them. “We haven’t got all night!”

***

Ben Ezra was standing near the camp entrance. “Anyone else?” the general asked.