Thunderstrike in Syria (9 page)

"Why complain about peace if the Palestinians get their state in the deal?"

"The hell with the dumb Palestinians!" Karameh said mercilessly. "Those
fellahin
never had a state at any time. Why should they have one now? All the talk about a state for the Palestinians is nothing but propaganda put out by that idiot Arafat and his PLO fools. They machine gun to death a bus load of women and children and call it a 'victory! I spit on that pig Arafat. Everytime he makes a move, he does Israel a favor by invoking world sympathy for the Zionists! My goal is more glorious and honorable. I intend to destroy Israel completely! I intend to push every damned Zionist into the Mediterranean! He laughed obscenely. "Those who can't swim, we'll cut their throats."

"I rather think that the Israelis will have something to say about that," I said drily.

"Not without America supplying them arms they won't!" he snapped. "It's impossible for the Israelis to fight a long war without their destroyed equipment being replaced immediately by the American government!"

There was no way around it: Mohammed Karameh was nuttier than the man who insisted he could make a fortune by operating a cemetery for pet rocks! But what he could do and what he thought he could were two different matters. He was deadly serious and that's what made him so very dangerous. It was not inconceivable that a fanatic like Karameh could accidentally trigger a full scale war, perhaps even World War III. My real worry was that I wouldn't be able to get to Pierre. To do so, I had to be alone. At the moment, I had to admit that my chances were zero. To compound my misery, my knees were beginning to ache, but I didn't want Karameh, and especially Miriam, to know it.

"You're using corkscrew logic, Karameh," I said. "Killing a million Americans with liquefied natural gas isn't going to make Uncle Sam stop supplying Israel with arms. The only thing you'll accomplish is to make the American people hate the entire Arab world. You might even cause Washington to drop an H-bomb on Damascus!"

"Your government of weaklings wouldn't dare!" sneered Karameh, thrusting his head forward. "Your leaders are midgets and cowards!"

"You might find that those 'cowards' are really Samsons," I countered, stalling for time while I tried to think of some solution.

"No matter," said Karameh, spreading his hands. "You will not be around to see it. I will tell you another reason why we leaked the gas project to AXE: to test their effectiveness. That is also why Comrade Miriam led you here and why you were not killed in Damascus. You are going to tell us everything you know about AXE Control, how its worldwide network operates."

"You're a dreamer, Karameh," I said.

"You are then going to contact the Hamosad Tel Aviv Control station by shortwave radio and supposedly give them the location of this base, only the coordinates will be many miles from here, across the border in Jordan."

"I would say that the Jordanians would be rather annoyed if Israeli planes blow hell out of the place," I said.

"Exactly. We're counting on that silly little nation to raise a stink in the U.N. against the Zionists. But that has nothing to do with you and your problem. I will tell you that, if you cooperate, after you tell us what we want to know, I personally will give you a bullet in the back of the neck and put you out of your misery."

The nerve of the son of a bitch!
I felt like jumping up and trying to whack out Karameh with only my feet and legs. To even try would have been an exercise in futility. He was too far away, and he appeared to be a man of good reflexes, a man who was very fast. And what could I accomplish by getting myself half-beaten to death? I needed my strength for what I had to do. Provided I'd get a chance to do it.

I smiled condescendingly at Karameh. "In short, you're asking me to hurry up and die! Then again, maybe that's part of your Moslem or revolutionary philosophy?"

"Allah el Akbar!"
Karameh said firmly. "I do what I must to defeat the enemies of Allah. The main enemy is world Zionism!"

"Well," I drawled, "I sort of favor that passage in the Bible that says,
In my Father s house are many mansions.
If I were you, I'd have second thoughts about moving day."

Within my own thoughts, I wasn't at all surprised that Karameh could combine Marxism with the religion of Islam. After all, the two murders of conscience, stupidity and fanaticism, are its best impersonators.

There were loud, angry mutterings from the circle of men surrounding me and it didn't take any stretch of my imagination to know what they would have liked to do to me, and probably would, if I couldn't get to Pierre. Freeing myself from the handcuffs was only the first part of the problem. Even with my hands free, what could I do? Where could I go? I could do plenty. And when it was all over with, I'd probably be in hell!

One of the men to my left spoke up in a loud voice. "Leader, the infidel has insulted Allah. For that we should punish him with torture!"

Dressed in
qamiss
and burnoose, the snow-white piece of cloth across his forehead indicated that the bearded speaker was a
Khatib
— who leads the Moslem community in daily prayer — of the fanatical Ismaili sect.

"The holy one is right!" thundered another man in the circle. Puffing on a narghile, a water-cooled pipe with several mouthpieces, he sat to my right. "The Western child of the devil has dared to compare the god of the Christians with mighty Allah. We cannot ignore such an insult."

Ahmed Kamel was more practical. "Mohammed, Carter is only stalling for time." he said, staring in hatred at me. "Make him give us the vital information, then kill the dog."

For a man who supposedly had been in the hospital, he looked remarkably well, I thought. I didn't enjoy the private joke. I was too close to death to be amused.

My eyes went to Miriam, who looked as if she could no longer contain herself. She turned to Karameh. "Nick Carter will never divulge anything of value." Her voice was out of rhythm and there was a slight tremor in it. "I tell you, I know him. All we'll get from him are lies and more lies."

All this time, Karameh sat with his cheeks drawn in, his mouth locked tight and his hands clenched into fists; yet I could detect amusement in his eyes. I suspected that he was one clever con artist who actually didn't believe in either Allah or Marxism, any more than I did, and that he was using the SLA for his own personal self-aggrandizement.

He finally said, "We will proceed in a manner I think best. I am the Leader." The tone of his voice indicated that the matter of my being tortured was settled and closed to further discussion.

He was so sure of himself, so confident and satisfied and convinced as he looked at me. "You're a realist. Carter. I know that a man like you is not afraid of death. I also know you're not a fool. You're not anxious to be tortured. Now tell me, where is AXE Control located in Tel Aviv?"

I looked straight at the Arab terrorists.

"Go to hell!"

Karameh jumped to his feet, rushed over to me and let me have a right cross to the jaw that knocked me on my back and sent comets rocketing back and forth inside my head, not to mention my jaw which felt as if it had been hit by a sledgehammer.

Miriam and her brother jumped to their feet. So did Khalil Marras and half a dozen other men, some of them advancing on me.

Karameh held up both hands. "Wait! An unconscious man is no good to us."

"He won't be any good to us conscious either!" Miriam practically shouted. "I say burn out one of his eyes to give him a taste of what he can expect from his lies."

"We will give him a chance to think it over," Karameh snarled, glaring down at me. "Even healthy men have been known to drop dead. I don't want to take the chance of his dying under torture."

He motioned to the guards in the front of the tent and eight of them hurried forward. "Get him to his feet. We'll show him what we do to enemies of Allah."

Two of the guards reached down, hooked their hands in my armpits and pulled me to my feet. Karameh gave me a final look, then turned and started toward the entrance. Everyone followed, one of the guards giving me a vicious shove.

A solemn procession, we marched from the headquarters tent and proceeded in a northern direction. When we passed one end of the line of armored cars, personnel carriers and the two T-54 tanks, I noticed that underneath the netting was a sheet of canvas to protect the vehicles from the sun. I also saw that the hatches of the ACs and of the tanks were open, to keep the air circulating. My greatest surprise came when I saw several men passing 140 mm shells through the loader's hatch of the end tank. Why? What could the SLA attack up here? Or, could it be that Karameh and his people were afraid? Of who?

As we neared the Tower of Lions, I saw that the ruins were tremendous, much larger than they had appeared earlier, than each wall was at least one hundred fifty feet long and that the stones, very large, were covered with
kliyiq,
a kind of moss found in the As-Suwayda hills region.

We went to the north side of the tower, and I knew immediately that this was our destination. The north side was shaded — at least for now it was — and contained an arbor made of stout wooden poles. A group of Arabs were gathered around it, some standing, others squatting, but all of them enjoying the suffering of the three victims. No women were present, no doubt because the victims were naked.

Mohammed Karameh went underneath one end of the arbor and turned and nodded to the guards surrounding me. Two of them grabbed me by the arms and pulled me up to him. He was heavier and an inch or two taller than I; but even if he had been only three feet tail, I was at a hundred percent disadvantage. On one side of Karameh was Khalil Marras, his eyes glazed from the
qat
he was chewing. To the right of Karameh were Miriam and Ahmed Kamel. Miriam didn't seem at all embarrassed by the nakedness of the victims.

"Carter, what you see is a mild taste of what we will do to you, if you do not cooperate," Karameh said cynically, waving his hand toward the three victims and looking at me.

What I saw now I had seen before, in Vietnam…methods of torture that the South Viets had used against the Vietcong. Blindfolded, his ankles tied together, one man hung by his hands which were tied above his head and suspended from one of the cross poles. Several men were smearing his body with some substance — no doubt some kind of sweet syrup.

I don't know what name the Arabs gave to this form of torture, but in South Vietnam it was called "The Bath of Flies." In the right climate, where flying insects are prevalent, the victim will be covered with thousands of buzzing insects within minutes and will begin to scream hideously. As far as I knew, no one had ever died from the Bath of Flies; however, if allowed to hang for two or three hours, the victim could be overcome by irreparable insanity.

The second man was being tortured by "The Ghruka Scissors," a method often employed by the Indian Secret Service. He sat on his butt, his arms securely bound behind his back, his legs locked around a three foot high pole, the torture consisting in how his legs were fixed around the post. The right foot was placed in the crook of the opposite knee, while the post, forward of the left foot, was between the arch and the crook of the right knee. This awkward and inescapable position causes excruciating pain in the knee and pelvic joints. From the look of extreme agony on the man's face, it was plain that he had been held this way for several hours.

The third man, bearded like the other two, was groaning loudly. He had good reason to. Being tortured in "The Stork" position, he was suspended from a horizontal pole by his hands which were bound behind him and had to support almost all of his weight, since his feet were barely touching the ground.

"Ah-ha!" Karameh said merrily. He glanced at me, then at the poor devil suffering the Bath of Flies. "Soon the fun will begin."

There was a loud buzzing sound in the air, generated by the thousands of insects crawling over the man's body. Then a cry of intolerable torment came from his mouth, his body jerking with such violence that the entire arbor shook.

Karameh turned suddenly and slapped me hard across the face, a backhanded blow that stung like fire and rattled my teeth.

"I will give you exactly one hour to think it over. Carter." he said venomously. "At the end of that time, you will tell me what I want to know, or I personally will go to work on you. I'll keep you alive and screaming for months!"

"And I'll help him!" hissed Miriam. All the while she glared at me her face twisted with cruelty and hatred.

"Throw him in with the other pigs," ordered Karameh.

The guards — two in front of me, two behind and one on each side — hurried me across the hundred foot space, toward the end of the south side of the long stone building. One of the Arabs jerked open the thick door, two others shoved me inside, and I found that we were in a short, narrow passage. There was a door across from me, in the wall, and a door at each end of the passage. The door at the west end was ordinary, but the one at the opposite end was covered with a steel bar placed horizontally across it.

One of the machine gun carrying Arabs removed the round bar from the door and jerked it open. Two other SLA terrorists shoved me through the doorway into the room. The door slammed shut and, as I looked around in the half-dark room, I heard the bar being replaced over the front of the door.

Ten men, sitting against the walls, stared back at me.

Although I've seen a lot of misery in almost every nation on earth, the men in the makeshift jail were ten of the most pathetic human beings I had ever cast my eyes on. Their clothes, so caked with dirt it was impossible to tell their original color, hung in tatters from bodies that were equally as filthy. Oddly enough, the majority of the men didn't seem to be undernourished. I couldn't be sure in the dim light.