Thunderstrike in Syria (12 page)

Slipping into the gunner's chair, I felt the tank shudder and the powerful V5–600-hp diesel roar into life. A moment later, I heard Risenberg shift gears and move the tank out, its track links clanking, the rollers and sprockets creaking.

To my right, Lev Wymann pushed down the cam-lever, pulled open the breech and shoved a 140mm armor-piercing shell into the chamber of the big gun. He then closed the breech and locked the cam-Fever. The gun now was ready to be fired electrically. All I had to do was press the button.

I was about to peer through the gunner's periscope when a red light began flashing on the control panel. I flipped the switch that turned on the intercom and heard Risenberg's voice come through the tiny speaker, "Who's the gunner?"

"It's me, Carter," I said.

"I'm going to move us about ninety feet from the other tank. Then you can blast it. Do you know how?"

"I know how. I've fought in a tank before," I said, realizing that I was not only annoyed but afraid that I might never see Wilhelmina or Hugo again.

Far to the left we all heard a huge explosion with ten times the force of a dozen grenades. Solomon, turning the commander's periscope, gleefully explained the explosion. "It's Lomsky and Nierman. They've moved out in the armored car and have just lobbed a shell into the Tower." His voice was suddenly worried. "We'd better hurry. Syrians are getting into the other tank."

At this close range, I knew I wouldn't have to do much aiming. I looked through the gunner's periscope which was synchronized with the range finder. One hand on the wheel that elevated the gun in the manlet, my feet on the turret-turn pedals, I dropped the barrel and moved the turret until the reticle pattern in the scope was where I wanted it and the «V» of the sight was centered on the mark. The driver of the other tank was just starting the engine as I pushed the firing button and the gun roared.

My AP shell had hit low in the rear of the turret, had bored through the armor and had exploded. Enormous tongues of flame burst out on all sides of the enemy tank and the shells in the ammo bin exploded with a gigantic roar. The 140mm gun and parts of the turret were flung thirty feet into the air while the rest of the tank became a huge ball of red-yellow fire and dissolved into hundreds of pieces of burning metal. Jagged bits of junk rained down harmlessly on our own tank at the same time that the barrel and part of the manlet clanked loudly to the ground. I couldn't see a trace of the Syrians who had been inside the T-54.

I rotated the gunner's scope and saw Lomsky and Nierman in their L-59 Gronshiv doing their best to blow the base apart with the armored car's 50mm cannon. There were four large holes, made by explosions, in the Tower of Lions. Men and women terrorists were running back-and-forth in panic. To the west of the Tower, Lomsky and Nierman's shell had exploded the fuel dump and flames, wrapped in oily black smoke, were shooting a hundred feet into the early evening sky, spoiling what would have been a beautiful sunset.

But Lomsky and Nierman were far from safe. The SLA were using the other armored cars to stop them, even a few personnel carriers tried to run them down. There was suddenly a tremendous crashing sound against one side of the tank, one that momentarily made our senses reel and made me feel that I was inside a steel drum and that someone had pounded on it with a sledge hammer.

Lev Wymann, who had extracted the empty shell casing from the gun and had thrust in a fresh shell, slammed shut the breech and locked the cam-lever. "Some idiot in one of the armored cars hit us with a fifty millimeter shell. The fool should know that a fifty mil job can't even scratch us. A T-54's pannier plates are two hundred mils thick. The turret and glacis plates armor is two hundred thirty mils. Nothing less than a one hundred forty mil shell could stop us."

I felt the big tank turning to the northwest as Risenberg's voice came through the intercom, "Carter, I'm going to move forward. Try to get the armored cars and the carriers."

"That's what I had in mind," I said. I looked through the scope and listened to the bogie wheels turning and the tracks clanking. I caught the armored car in the «V» and pressed the firing button. The big gun roared and the L-59 Gronshiv became a ball of burning metal tossed up and down on jets of air as hot as the inside of a blast furnace.

There was a loud clanking to my right. Wymann had jerked open the hot breech and the used shell casing had fallen to the floor. Another clank as he shoved in a new shell and locked the breech. There wasn't any need for him to tell me when there was a shell in the chamber. The gun would not fire without the cam-lever being locked.

My hands spinning the azimuth wheel and the traverse control, I stared through the periscope which also served as the ranging scope sight. For the moment. I didn't have to swing the turret because there was a fourteen-inch left and right traverse to the gun, the movements independent of the turret.

This time I demolished a personnel carrier. The 140 mm cannon roared; there was a loud noise, and the carrier flew apart. Huge chunks of ripped metal, and parts of bodies burnt black soared upward and came down over a wide radius, much of it falling on other tanks.

I saw through the scope that two carriers and three armored cars had succeeded in surrounding Lomsky and Nierman's L-59 Gronshiv. Hurriedly, I zeroed in on one of the armored cars and pressed the firing button at the same time the three enemy Gronshivs, their cannons lined up on Lomsky and Nierman, fired in unison. The three shells hit the side of the vehicle only seconds apart from each other; this time, under the concentrated power of the three shells, the armor of Lomsky and Nierman's fortress on wheels caved in. The vehicle exploded with a monstrous roar, steel plates, engine and rubber tires flying in every direction. I saw the bodies of Martin Lomsky and Karl Nierman kicked up into the air, then fall like broken dolls to the burning rubble scattered below.

Bennie Solomon called out from the commander's chair, "Carter, one of the armored cars is headed for the building we were imprisoned in. Do you see it?"

I didn't, but, as I moved the 140mm cannon, I did see very clearly the two personnel carriers that had helped to execute Lomsky and Nierman. Very quickly I spun the elevation wheel, waited for the reticle pattern, got it and pressed the button. The big gun thundered, the AP shell leaving the barrel on a flat trajectory and slamming midcenter into the carrier. A moment later there was an enormous blast that became a giant burst of fire and force which flung bodies and slabs of armor tumbling to the heavens. The rear of the carrier must have been filled with a full compliment of men because several dozen bodies hit the ground, their tattered clothes blazing.

The other carrier rolled quickly to the east before I could swing the muzzle of the gun on it. I was about to rotate the turret and look for a new target when suddenly the tank tilted slightly upward, the bogie wheels going up and down on their concentric springs. We were moving over something, rolling over something large. The tank then dipped and came down heavily, bouncing ever so slightly on its torsion bar springs.

I yelled into the intercom, "Risenberg, what the hell are you doing? Can't you see where you're going?"

"Sure, I have twenty-twenty vision," he said easily. "I'm going to wreck their camp. I'm going to roll right through the tents and demolish their ant-hill houses. It's easier with a tank than using shells — faster, too."

I smiled to myself. "I'll see what I can do about the carriers and the ACs that are left. But listen: Do you know what that big goatskin tent is?"

"Al-Huriya's
headquarters. I'm going to flatten it."

"No, you're not. I'm saving that tent for myself. You leave it alone."

"Ok, my American friend. But you're doing it the hard way."

Risenberg crashed the tank into the black goatskin tents. The extra-wide tracks, supporting ninety-five tons of steel, became a giant press which crushed anything unlucky enough to find itself under the links, including men, women and children who had thought they would be safe inside their simple dwellings.

As I moved the muzzle of the gun to the northwest, Hawk popped into my mind, a twinge of resentment coloring my thoughts. No doubt he was somewhere in Tel Aviv, in an air-conditioned room, calmly waiting for my report and smoking one of those cheap cigars he habitually carried. When his time came to die, he'd drop into hell with one jammed in his mouth. Would he miss me if I caught a fatal slug? Maybe as long as a few days. I didn't blame him; it was the nature of the trade we were in.

Rotating the telescope, I found the two Gronshiv armored cars parked close to the southeast end of the stone building in which the Israelis and I had been held captive. I couldn't be sure, but it looked like several men were carrying a recoilless RCL bazooka from the building to one of the tanks. Conceivably a modern-day bazooka could disable us, if not piercing the armor, at least wrecking the road wheels and the tracks.

Solomon, also seeing the Syrians, said nervously, "That's a.3.7 incher. If they have AP shells, they could wreck us."

Sweat pouring down my face, I consulted the graduation scale to the left of the scope and adjusted the calibration knob. We were about nine hundred feet from the armored cars and the stone building. At such a short distance, there was little need for me to judge range because my sight would be adjusted in line with the bore of the gun. The R-pattern appeared. The inverted «V» touched the right center side of the second armored car. I pressed the firing button, heard the 140mm cannon boom and watched the L-59 Gronshiv disappear in fire and smoke. The men who had been carrying the bazooka were on the ground, their bodies covered with orange and red flames.

Wymann pulled out an empty casing, inserted a fresh shell and closed the breech. Then that familiar sliding sound as he locked the lever. I hardly noticed, though, because I was too busy moving my gun to the left. I pressed the firing button and watched as the entire northwest side of the building exploded with a roar that seemed to shake the entire plateau, the force overturning the last armored car.

But where was Mohammed Bashir Karameh? And Miriam Kamel? Ahmed Kamel, and the rest of the top SLA trash? They could be dead. But my intuition told me that they were alive and not too far away.

The Tower of Lions? Miriam had told me that the lower part was used to store arms and ammunition. Had she lied? I'd soon find out. First I'd finish the job on the stone building. Within the next few minutes, I placed two more 140mm shells into what was left, and when the smoke had cleared only a part of the foundation remained.

"Carter, do you want to go to
al-Huriya's
tent?" Risenberg's voice came through the small speaker. I thought for a moment, listening to Cham Elovitz firing the Tokevski machine gun in the front hull.

"Yeah, after I put four or five shells in the bottom part of the Tower," I said.

"Why the Tower? It's only a pile of ruins."

"Miriam Kamel told me the place was full of arms and ammo."

"She lied," Risenberg said. "There's nothing in the Tower but rubble and memories."

"We'll see," I said. I then proceeded to lob four shells into the east wall of the Tower, the explosions partially crumbling the wall. But there wasn't any gigantic blast, no tremendous explosion that would have occurred had there have been cases of arms and ammo, especially grenades, stacked in the lower floor.

"Take us to the front of the Hawk's tent," I said in disgust to Risenberg. "Park us so that I can rake the tent with the topside gun."

"As good as done," Risenberg said.

The tank rumbled toward the huge black tent, the only one left standing. I got up from the gunner's chair and motioned for Ben Solomon to take over.

"Carter, you'd better take this," Lev Wymann said and handed me a 9 millimeter Heckler and Koch pistol that he had taken earlier from a dead terrorist. "It's fully loaded."

I shoved the H&K into my belt, climbed the short ladder fastened to the brace of the platform and pushed inward on the lever that opened the hatch over the commander's cupola, on the right side of the turret. The hatch popped open and I got a whiff of burning cloth, goatskin and human flesh.

Gingerly, I poked my head above the hatch rim and looked around. In spite of the destruction, I could see men and women darting back-and-forth, running from one pile of wreckage to another. Risenberg continued to guide the tank toward the headquarters' tent, not that I expected the Hawk and the others to be there waiting for me.

I stepped up higher on the platform, pulled the DShK closer to me and opened fire, the big machine gun roaring. Now and then there were screaming ricochets when slugs hit close to me on the turret, proof that I had become a target.

Suddenly, two SLA guerrillas — one a woman — popped up only thirty feet to the right of the lank, both at such an angle that none of our machine gun slugs could reach them. Instinctively I ducked down as the man lobbed a stick grenade and the woman, her long black hair flying, triggered off a burst of AK-47 fire. The grenade fell short and exploded against the right panier plates. Bits of shrapnel rained down, a few chunks stinging my cheek. Otherwise I was unhurt. I pulled the H&K from my belt, switched off the safety catch and leaned over the right side hatch rim. The man and woman had dropped to the ground as soon as the man had thrown the grenade. Now they were scrambling to their feet, both easy targets for the H&K. The man, his chest decorated with three holes, cried out and fell backward. The woman, stark terror on her face, did her best to raise the submachine gun, but she caught a slug between her breasts and another one in her throat, and she fell beside the man.

Risenberg turned the tank and within several minutes brought the T-54 twenty-five feet from the front of Karameh's tent. The poles to the right had been torn loose and the goatskin hides were lying on the ground. The rest of the tent was intact and, as far as I could see, unmarred by bullet holes.