Thunderstrike in Syria (3 page)

With Wilhelmina all set to fire, I picked up the chair to my left, crept forward along the wall and then tossed the chair through the doorway, its momentum tearing off the green curtain. I dove into the room, right behind the chair, at the same instant that a man fired a couple of Military Mauser slugs at the chair, the 7.63mm bullets ripping through the seat.

I threw myself to one side, my eyes making an instant survey of what appeared to be a storage room. There were two SLA gunmen in the room, the one with the Spanish-type Mauser dressed in burnoose and
kaffiyeh,
the second man wearing a gaudily colored sports shirt and yellow pants.

The Arab dressed in Western clothes was sitting on a packing crate, his Finger furiously working a Cytex code key. On top of the crate was a shortwave set. But the man stopped clicking the key and reached for a pistol when he saw me.

In that half a second, the Arab who had hit the chair, spun around and fired as I ducked to one side. The bullet sizzled a foot to my left and slammed into a crate standing against the wall. The blob of copper-coated lead must have hit a nailhead because it ricocheted with a screaming whine, stabbed across the room and buried itself in the opposite wall.

I dodged once more and twice pulled the Luger's trigger. The Arab in burnoose and
kaffiyeh
jumped and jerked, an expression of shock freezing on his dark face. A small dark hole appeared in the center of his chest; the SLA terrorist was dead before he crashed to the floor.

Worried about the man dressed in Western clothes by the code key — he still hadn't fired — I started to drop flat, firing at him by sheer instinct. Frantically he snapped off a shot with an Italian Glisenti automatic. The bullet burned high through the left side of my suit coat, tore through my shirt and left a graze on the skin of my left shoulder, a momentary streak of agony that interfered with my own aim. Instead of Wilhelmina's 9mm hitting the Arab in the chest, it plowed into his mouth, moved upward at an angle and tore off the top of his skull. The Glisenti automatic fell from his dead fingers and he dropped to the floor, the corpse sitting down flat, leaning against a packing case, the mouth cavern-like in a silent scream.

I jumped to my feet and listened to the terrible silence. Silence? Not quite a full and complete silence. There was another sound, a familiar one that made me shiver. It was a loud ticking, similar to the ticking of an alarm clock, and it could mean only one thing: the SLA fanatics had booby-trapped the place. I could think of only one question: How soon before the big bang?

I ran to the doorway and yelled, "I've cleaned them out back here. But stay back. They've triggered a time bomb. I've got to find it and do a disconnect."

Personally, I had a lot of respect for the Syrian Liberation Army members. Even in the midst of dying they still had been able to contact their main base — I assumed that was what the Arab at the short wave had been doing — and put a destruct device into operation. Dedicated men and women like that are always extremely dangerous. People willing to die for a cause must always be handled with extreme caution.

With my heart pounding, I began a frantic search for the source of the loud ticking, of the timing-detonator that was connected to explosives. I wondered what kind and how much.

The ticking led me to the detonator which had been placed behind the shortwave set. The timer-detonator was of the KLX type and had an hour's maximum running time. I held up the timer and stared at the dial.
Only four minutes were left.
And there wasn't any way I could reverse the timer knob of the KLX device. My only choice was to yank out the wires. But suppose the timer had a feedback circuit? If it did, I would never know it. The instant I pulled the wires, the back-feed spark would automatically detonate the explosive.

I jerked the four wires from the timing device and prayed. There was no explosion. My head remained on my neck. I still had my two arms and two legs.

Perspiration pouring down my face, I quickly began to trace the wires that had been connected to the timer. They curled across the top of the packing case, ran over its edge and down to a two-foot square box on the floor. Judging from the red markings on the box, there must have been fifty to sixty pounds of nitrocellulose in the small crate, more than enough explosive to blow up the building. In fact, more than enough to blow up half the block!

I jerked the four wires from the box and heaved a sigh of relief as Leah and half a dozen Shin Bet security men came into the room.

"Thank God you're all right," Leah breathed, resting her dark head against my chest. "You look like you've been through hell."

"I'll settle for purgatory," I replied, then patted her hair and looked at the young, clean-cut Israeli with a square chin and thick eyebrows. From the way he acted, I assumed he was in command of the Shin Bet raiding party.

"There's a crate of explosives over there," I said, looking at him. "You'd better have your boys get it out of here."

Nodding, the Shin Bet officer motioned to a couple of his men and they moved toward the box of nitrocellulose.

"You should have waited for us, Mr. Heines, or whatever your name is!" the Shin Bet officer said angrily. "If you hadn't rushed the situation, we might have taken more of the scum alive. Mr. Ben-Zvi won't be pleased when I make my report about your hasty activities."

"In that case, Mr. Ben-Zvi will have to be sad." I said calmly. "If I hadn't charged the back room, you wouldn't have captured any of the SLA alive. They had the entire place set to blow up with at least fifty pounds of plastic stuff. There was precious little time left when I disconnected the timer. Be sure to put
that
in your report to Mr. Ben-Zvi."

A stunned look flashed over the face of the Shin Bet officer.

"I see, he said stiffly and hooked his thumbs over his belt.

I shoved Wilhelmina back into her shoulder holster and took Leah by the arm. "Let's go see what's happening out front."

Leah and I left the room, walked across the small open space and paused at the back of the long shop. The Shin Bet officer followed us but said nothing as we watched two of his men carrying out the corpse of the SLA woman on a stretcher. Two other Shin Bet agents were holding the arms of the young clerk whom I had knocked out. He was still dazed, and his hands were handcuffed behind his back.

The Shin Bet officer in charge began to talk to Leah in Hebrew. He talked just as much with his hands, moving them all over the place, and I got the impression that if someone tied his hands, he wouldn't have been able to recite his own name.

Finally, Leah turned to me and said, "Captain Stein wants us to ride back to Tel Aviv with him."

"I heard him perfectly," I growled, cutting her short and glaring at Stein. "Captain, our driver is waiting only two blocks away, and we're going to return to Tel Aviv with him. Hamosad can contact us in the usual manner. Shalom."

I turned to go. Stein placed a hand lightly on my arm. "But you two can't return to your hotel looking as you do!" he protested.

I brushed aside Stein's hand and took Leah by an elbow.

"We don't intend to return to the Samuel looking like this. We're first going to the safe house on Derech Hagevura to get rid of this makeup and change into regular clothes."

I didn't wait for Stein to reply. I steered Leah to the back door of the House of Medals. Once we were in the alley and past a dozen Shin Bet guards, I said to Leah, "You did a fine job back there. You acted like a professional."

"But you didn't think I would, did you?" Smoking a cigarette, she regarded me with cool eyes. She tilted her chin but there was no resentment in her words.

I felt I owed her the truth. "I was wrong about you and I'm sorry. You were terrific."

I could tell by the flicker of surprise in her eyes and by the way she smiled that she hadn't expected an apology from me.

"Perhaps you'll be able to think of some nice way to make it up to me after we return to the hotel," she said throatily.

"I already have," I said.

Both Leah and I felt much better after the layers of makeup had been removed from our faces and hands and after we had changed into more comfortable clothes. Our mood changed to intense curiosity when we returned to our suite in the Samuel and found David Hawk and Jacob Ben-Zvi waiting for us. Hawk skirting on a sofa, Ben-Zvi on a cushioned chair. As usual, Hawk was smoking a cigar that smelted like a by-product of an experiment in gas warfare.

The two men only nodded as Leah and I looked at them in surprise. Leah sat down next to Hawk on the sofa and I ambled over to the small bar, knowing why the two Intelligence chiefs had come to us: because Leah and I didn't dare be seen going to Hamosad headquarters. The question was why were they here in the first place, especially Hawk. As the chief of the United States Special Espionage Agency, he wasn't in the habit of going out into the field. Something damned important had to be in the wind.

"The operation of the House of Medals was a success," Ben-Zvi said in a low voice. "The two of you are to be congratulated, especially you, Carter, since you originated the basic plan. Good work."

"I try," I said, glancing across the room at the Hamosad chief as I poured a generous amount of brandy into a glass. He was a short, stocky man with a square, blunt head topped with an enormous mass of gray-white hair. He had deep creases from his nose to his mouth, which turned heavily downward. His eyebrows were very busy, his hands bony and his skin burnt brown-tough from the hot Israeli sun. He was either in his late forties or early fifties.

"Nick is one of our best agents," Hawk said, then turned his shaggy head to Leah. "And Mr. Ben-Zvi has been telling me of your resourcefulness and daring. You are a very brave young woman, my dear."

Leah smiled and said, "Thank you, sir." I dropped several ice cubes into the glass, put down the tongs and leaned over on the bar, watching Hawk. Several years past sixty, he was a solid chunk of a man who, in spite of his advanced years, still had the strength of a bull. If he was ten or fifteen years younger, I wouldn't want to tangle with him.

Hawk gave me one of his hard looks. "If you keep wondering why I'm here in Israel, you're going to throw your brain out of gear," he growled. "I'm here to make sure our intelligence about the SLA dovetails with what the Hamosad has learned about the terrorist organization. The situation is worse than we thought previously."

For a moment I stared at Hawk, then took a swallow of brandy. Leah and Ben-Zvi remained silent. I could detect that they had that sharp sense of here and now — a keen awareness of the moment, a feeling of excitement and at the same time of dread.

"So what's the new development?" I looked directly at Hawk and put the glass on the bar.

"It's the overall seriousness of the SLA plot that poses such an extreme threat," Hawk said gruffly. He leaned forward and tapped his cigar into an ashtray on the low cocktail table. "We still don't know how the bombs are to be planted on board the supertanker, or the names of the terrorists assigned to do the job. We don't even know the name of the tanker." He chomped down on his cigar and spoke around it. "There are more than a hundred liquified natural gas installations in the world and eighty of them are in the U. S. Carter, you've been in this business long enough to know the other factors involved."

"Yeah, the SLA could have deliberately used disinformation," I said. "They could be planning to blow up a supertanker in some harbor other than in New York City." I picked up the brandy and swirled the ice cubes in the glass. "For that matter, the whole deal might be a cover-up for some other plot. As I see it, we're going to have to capture the top leaders to get the real truth."

Leah spoke up. "Let's hope the SLA member we captured will give us a solid lead. We must find Mohammed Karameh."

"The terrorist is being questioned at this very moment," Ben-Zvi said grimly. "We have our ways of getting the truth from even the most stubborn of fanatics." Folding his hands, he squeezed one set of knuckles, then the other. "But frankly, I doubt if he can tell us anything of vital importance. He's only a lower echelon member."

"Surely he must have some important information!" Leah protested, brushing a strand of raven hair from her forehead. "Otherwise we're right back where we started."

"Not quite," Hawk countered, only he looked at me as he spoke. He continued to hold me with his stare as he said, "For the last four months, AXE has had two Syrian nationals working for us in Damascus. A brother and sister team, who are members of the SLA, but who are also supplying us with important information — for a heavy price, of course. In fact, it was Ahmed Kamel and his sister, Miriam, who tipped us off to the supertanker plot."

Leah looked surprised, and I figured her thoughts were similar to mine. If the two Syrians knew so damn much, why didn't they know the location of SLA headquarters? I was angry as hell but kept a straight face out of respect for Hawk and because I knew a display of anger wouldn't have helped. The Second Coming of Christ wouldn't have fazed Hawk. I had a more diplomatic way of letting him know I didn't like being used.

"Sir, if Ahmed Kamel and his sister knew about the LNG scheme, why didn't we obtain the location of SLA headquarters from them."

"We didn't, because the Kamels didn't know the location of the main SLA base," Hawk said, taking the stub of the cigar from his mouth. "They weren't trusted members of the SLA — trusted to the extent that they knew the SLA's main base — until a week ago."

I finished my drink, put down the empty glass and looked at Hawk.

"You're saying that you and Mr. Ben-Zvi now know the location?"

Hawk nodded. "The Kamels managed to get word to us through a Control Officer in Damascus."