By the Rivers of Babylon

  At fifty meters the 106mm recoilless rifle fired again through the front door, and again the round exploded in the lobby, this time with a CS tear gas canister.

  The façade was a mass of bullet scars, and the wooden louvers were splintered and burning. Smoke billowed from every window, and the smell of cordite was heavy. Screams could he heard from inside the building.

  The jeep rolled over the struck tents, up the front steps, over the rubble of the verandas, and into the lobby. The driver turned his headlights on. Each of the commandos picked a window and dove through.

  Inside the ruined guest house, dead and dying lay among heaps of rubble and plaster. Part of the floor above the lobby had fallen through, and burning beds and patients lay in a heap in the corner. The Israelis donned gas masks and threw canisters of CS into the doors that came off the lobby. Two commandos fired their grenade launchers with CS rounds up the stairwell and through the hole in the ceiling. Two other commandos ran out the back door onto the terrace in time to see about a dozen men and women in robes and in uniform disappear into the grey dawn. They let them go.

  In the lobby, the sounds of screaming and moaning could be heard from overhead. Men and women, in shock, wearing burned and bloodstained night clothes, came marching down the stairs with their hands on their heads, coughing, blinded, and vomiting from the gas.

  Lieutenant Giddel burst into the manager’s office. It was undamaged expect for the expected cracks in the plaster. Calcimine dust lay over everything and some of it still sifted down from the ceiling. Giddel spotted the girl first, and as he ran toward her he stumbled over a body on the floor. It was a man lying face down with his hands and legs tied. He recognized General Dobkin from his bulk and height. He turned him over carefully. There was blood smeared over his face and one eye had been gouged out. It was hanging by the optic nerve, resting on his cheek. Lieutenant Giddel had to steady himself and turned away for a second. He took a deep breath and looked back. Apparently his torturer had been in the middle of his work when the first 106mm round hit. He still couldn’t tell if the man was alive or not until he saw blood-tinted bubbles forming around his broken nose and puffed lips.

  The squad medic ran in and went straight to the girl. “She’s alive. In shock.” He turned and knelt down beside Dobkin. He examined him quickly. “The General’s fading.” He looked at his bloody, tattered clothes. “God knows what his injuries are. Let’s get them both in the jeep and back to the C-130.”

  “Right.” Giddel called out the window to the jeep driver. “Instruct C-130 to prepare to receive two casualties. Shock and hemorrhaging. Have them radio Jerusalem. We’ve got our first two Babylonian captives . . . alive. . . .” He turned to the medic. “But I hope to hell the others are in better shape than this.” He looked at the miserable men and women being marched outside. He called to the driver. “And report that we have some Babylonians, too.”

  36

  The two surviving Ashbals at the base of the glacis saw the Israeli force coming upriver in their rubber rafts. There were at least thirty Israelis, but the clear target was irresistable to trained infantrymen. The two Ashbals took cover behind an earth mound and fired on the exposed craft with automatic weapons. Water splashed up all around the rafts. Three rubber rafts were immediately hit and several men wounded. The Israelis quickly returned the fire, but they were in the worst tactical position possible. Major Bartok ordered the craft to beach on the east bank.

  The Israeli commandos came ashore and began moving in single file along the flood bank. They were still a half-kilometer from the place where the steep glacis started, and Major Bartok doubted if he could dislodge the Ashbals, who were still firing at them, in less than ten minutes. To save time he would have to cut inland and bypass the Ashbals, then head up the narrow-backed southern approach to the old citadel, traveling atop what was once the river wall. If everything went well, he could be in sight of the Concorde in fifteen minutes. As Bartok ran along with his long file of men, he took the radiophone from his operator. He called Major Arnon. “East Bank 6, this is West Bank 6. How are you making out there, Yoni?”

  Major Arnon sounded out of breath, and Bartok could tell he was also running. Arnon spoke in short, choppy sentences. “Passed the outer wall of city—Found one friendly KIA— Mutilated—Thirteen enemy KIA—Apparent ambush—Heading direction of east slope—Half a klick to top—Wait.” He paused and stopped running. “I can hear something that sounds like jet engines. Is it possible that they started the Concorde?”

  “Wait one.” Bartok switched frequencies and monitored Becker and Laskov, speaking on the El Al frequency. He switched back. “Roger. They say the Concorde is started, I don’t know what the hell they plan, but keep your head up.”

  “Roger. Out.”

  Laskov had been called back on station over the Concorde by one of his pilots. He spoke angrily into his mouthpiece. “What do you think you’re doing, 02?”

  Becker had put his uniform cap on, and it felt good. He spoke into his microphone. “We’re getting the hell out of here!”

  “Don’t do it! You’ll kill everyone!”

  “I just asked my marvelous computer about that, and it said, ‘Do whatever the hell you want, stupid. Just leave me out of it.’ So I’m taking its advice. Sorry, Gabriel.”

  “You’ll kill everyone, damn you!” Laskov almost lost control of himself. He lowered his voice. “David . . . listen—” Becker broke squelch and cut him off. Laskov released his talk button.

  Becker’s voice came on. “We’re all dead anyway. Can’t you understand that? You’re too late to help us. Too late.”

  “No. I absolutely—” The squelch cut him off again, and again he released his talk button.

  Becker spoke softly. “Sorry, General. You did a marvelous job. Really. Wish us poor sons-of-bitches luck. Out.”

  “Luck. Out.”

  David Becker released the brakes and waited. Nothing. He watched the instruments for signs of an engine explosion, but outside of that there was nothing he could do. It was out of his hands. The aircraft seemed to strain forward and it began vibrating ominously. He shot a look at Kahn over his shoulder.

  Kahn looked up from the flight engineer’s console. “Don’t shut it down, David. Just wait.”

  Becker nodded. One way or the other the aircraft was going to fall apart. Even if they were able to taxi it to the east slope by the sheer thrust of the three remaining engines, the slide down would probably cause it to break up on the way or it would crash when it hit the base of the slope. Even the stationary vibrations now wracking the abused aircraft could cause structural failure before they went even one centimeter. The worst—or maybe the best—that could happen was that the leaking fuel would ignite and blow them all up. In a way he hoped that the fuel would either ignite or run out, and he could not understand why it didn’t do either.

  With a strange calm, he looked out the windshield. He could actually see men and women firing at the Concorde. Bullets passed into the flight deck and a sharp electrical crackling sound told him that the instrument console was hit.

  The Concorde did not move.

  Kahn tried to read a message in the flight engineer’s instruments, but there was too much damage, and he couldn’t tell if it was to the instruments or to the systems.

  The two outboard engines were producing near maximum thrust, but the starboard inboard was operating at barely half its capacity. Kahn tried everything he could think of to get more power out of it. If only they could overcome that initial inertia. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest. Once the aircraft began to move, it should be all right. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Come on, you son-of-a-bitch. Kahn suddenly called to Becker. “Pull off power on the outboard port.”

  Becker understood. If the aircraft wouldn’t go forward, then maybe they could swivel it to the left. He pulled back on the port engine throttle. The two starboard engines whined. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the right wing began moving forward
.

  The Concorde began turning left, its nose moving through the dust in a sweeping motion. The right wing skimmed the top of the shepherds’ hut, taking off the roof as it came around. The right main carriage assembly hit the earth ramp. The aircraft nearly came to a halt, but the forward motion continued, and the carriage cleaved through the corner of the ramp.

  With the initial inerita overcome, Becker now opened up the left port engine. The aircraft moved forward slightly but continued to slide left as it moved. Instinctively, Becker began operating the rudder pedals and nose wheel to steer the aircraft, but then remembered with some chagrin that he had neither tail nor nose wheel.

  Kahn saw him and called out. “Nice trick if you can do it, David.”

  Becker forced a smile. “I’ll have to give it its head and see where it takes us. Listen, if I don’t get a chance later let me congratulate you now.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “No matter what—” Kahn’s body was all the way forward in his chair, his face against the instrument panel in front of him. His white shirt was soaked with blood. “Oh, God!”

  Jacob Hausner ran along close behind the slow, lumbering Concorde, firing short bursts all around him as he moved, hidden in the dust blown up by the engines. He had not been able to get to Rish from the latrine trench. Rish was no fool. Rish traveled in the middle of a diamond-shaped formation of seven or eight men, and even if Hausner had let him go by, he would not have been able to come up behind him. He could have taken out Hamadi if he had wanted to, but he didn’t want to throw away his life on a second-stringer. He had been forced to retreat to the next place of cover and concealment, the shepherds’ hut, but that almost cost him his life when they nearly surrounded it. Now he was running again, covering the Concorde and looking for a place to slip into until he could get close enough to Ahmed Rish to fill his guts with hot, searing lead.

  As the Concorde gathered momentum and bounced over the terrain, a dozen men and women fired wildly from the trailing edge of the wings. Alpern clung to the mangled braces of the tail and fired down at the Ashbals through the tremendous billows of dust the aircraft left in its wake.

  Several of the people on the wing shouted to Hausner to hurry before the plane picked up speed, but Hausner seemed not to hear. They tied shirts together and hung them over the trailing edge for him to grab, but he did not seem interested.

  In the rear baggage compartment, the men and women who had tried to commit suicide were still bunched together, more for convenience than as a punishment. Miriam Bernstein had been placed, nearly hysterical, among them. Beth Abrams was trying to calm her and was holding on to her arm as the tail bounced and shook.

  Ibrahim Arif was pressed against the gaping opening of the split pressure bulkhead. As he watched the ground sliding by below the highpitched tail, he saw a man running through the billows of dust behind the aircraft. He yelled to the young interpreter, Ezekiel Rabbath, who was assigned to watch them. Rabbath forced his way to the bulkhead, put his head through, and stuck his AK-47 out and pointed it so that it wouldn’t hit any of the aluminum braces. As he was about to fire, he recognized the tattered, shoeless, dust-covered figure. “It’s Jacob Hausner!”

  Miriam Bernstein pushed her way through the closely packed bodies and squeezed by Arif and Rabbath. With incredible speed, she began crawling through the open bulkhead before anyone could react. Arif caught one ankle and Rabbath the other. She almost kicked free, but Yaakov Leiber got hold of her leg, and between the three of them they began pulling her in. Beth Abrams fell on them from behind and screamed, “Let her go! Let her go if she wants to go!”

  There was a great deal of confusion as Beth Abrams was pulled away.

  Miriam got hold of two cross braces out in the tail section that had supported the number eleven trim tank and held on to them. She shouted and kicked wildly as they held her legs. They could not pull her in, but neither could she get out.

  Miriam shouted herself hoarse, and tears ran down her face. “Jacob! Jacob!”

  The Concorde began to gather speed, and it pulled away from Hausner. Hausner fell as he turned to fire at an approaching figure. He lay in the dust and looked back at the blue and white Concorde disappearing through the wind-blown sand. He gave a parting wave to the aircraft. Miriam Bernstein believed that he saw her, and she waved back. “Jacob! Jacob!” She sobbed his name over and over again.

  Every time Becker tried to control the aircraft by pulling off power on one engine or another, the aircraft slowed threateningly, and he had to open the throttles again. The result was that the Concorde half-spun and half-sideslipped to the left. Becker wondered if the main carriage wheel would snap off, moving like that. Every few seconds, he would glance over his shoulder at Kahn and look for some sign of life, but he saw none.

  Occasionally he could see an Arab appear briefly out of the dust, then disappear again from his view as the aircraft spun slowly while it moved generally westward away from the slope that he wanted to reach.

  Becker knew that a few more people had been hit in the cabin. He had the feeling that by the time the aircraft came to rest, it might be full of corpses. He had a mental picture of blood running from holes in the aluminum skin. Then, for some reason, he had a picture of everyone staggering down an earth ramp from the main boarding door. Everyone was covered with blood and their eyes were black and hollow. They were . . . brain-damaged. He felt the sweat run down his collar, and his hands shook. He had to get the damned thing over the edge someplace. Dying at the bottom of the mound was better than this.

  He saw the edge of the west slope through his left windshield. What would happen, he wondered, if he went down that steep slope into the river? Would the aircraft break up in the fall? Would it sink quickly in the river and drown everyone? There was only one sure way of finding out. He took a chance and chopped the power off the port engine. The starboard wing swung around quickly; then he gave the port engine full power and at the same time chopped the power off the damaged inboard starboard. Both wings had equal thrust now, and the maneuver had pointed the Concorde directly toward the edge of the slope. The craft’s momentum carried it forward. Both running engines sounded as though they had all the sand they could digest and they began making sickening, rattling noises.

  The Concorde approached the edge of the glacis a few meters from where McClure and Richardson had dug their position. Becker prayed that a wheel strut wouldn’t get stuck in a foxhole as the Concorde moved over the old positions. To his right he saw the small mound that was Moses Hess’s resting place. The place that he had chosen for him, overlooking the Euphrates. Becker shouted back into the cabin. “Everybody inside! Crash positions! Pillows! On the floor! Heads down!”

  The men and women on the wings had already begun moving inside the craft. In the cabin everyone faced rearward and sat or lay on the floor. Pillows and blankets were stuffed against the hull and bulkheads. Everyone tried to hold the wounded as best they could.

  The long, damaged nose of the Concorde poked over the edge of the glacis. Becker imagined the aircraft must have looked like some creature from a fantasy—or nightmare— kneeling at the edge of a precipice, its wings—or cape—spread out, ready to spring up and jump into the sky.

  Becker opened up the malfunctioning engine for an extra measure of thrust. The Concorde seemed to hang as though it were unable to make the decision—and perhaps reflected the ambivalence of its pilot. Becker looked out over the nose and watched the wide Euphrates below. The grey dawn light brought out highlights on the river’s restless, wind-driven ripples.

  Becker looked down at his console. His instruments showed the outboard starboard engine spooling down, and, in fact, he heard it dying. Whether it was out of fuel or filled with sand was irrelevant—it was dying. Then the outboard port flamed out suddenly and the inboard starboard, never operating at more than half power, began to cough black smoke. The Concorde hung halfway out into space.

  Spurred on by the half-crazed shouts of Ahmed Rish, the re
maining Ashbals doggedly continued their pursuit of the aircraft as it thrashed across the ground like a great wounded bird. There was only some light fire from the aircraft, coming from one or two portholes. There was, however, a man braced in the mangled tail section. He had not gone inside with everyone else and he was delivering accurate fire from his perch. Rish ordered all guns turned on him, and tracer rounds streaked through the half-light, up toward the high-raised tail. The man seemed to have taken many hits, but he continued to fire.

  The Ashbals called on their last reserves of energy, and in a burst of speed, led by Salem Hamadi, they closed in on the tottering aircraft. Ahmed Rish ran behind them, alternately firing his rifle into the dust at their feet and using the butt to strike their backs and buttocks. Led by a near madman and pursued by a certified one, fewer than twenty wretched young men and women ran, stumbled, and crawled forward.

  To anyone who was familiar with the myth, it must have looked like the scene of Charon, the ferryman of Hell, beating the damned souls with an oar as he took them across the River Styx. And it had all started so well, too. A proud fighting unit of over one hundred fifty men and women, reduced now to fewer than two dozen terrified, humiliated, and miserable human beings who looked and sounded more like jackals than tiger cubs.

  Rish shot a man who fell and could not get up fast enough. Behind him, as he pursued the Concorde, he heard the firing of the approaching Israeli commandos as they pursued him.

  * * *

  Laskov watched from overhead. He wanted to try to take out the Ashbals who were intermittently visible now, but they were clinging too close to the Concorde and he was unable to get an accurate fix on the approaching commandos. The stall speed of the F-14 was too high to make it very effective for close-in support. It was because of their speed and range that the F-14’s had been chosen for this mission. To try to put a bomb or rocket accurately on the racetrack-sized hilltop, in the dawn light, with high buffeting winds and obscuring dust, traveling at a minimum speed of 195 kilometers per hour, was out of the question with so many friendlies in the area. He considered asking the commandos to pull back, but in the final analysis, it was they who had to effect the rescue. Again, he settled for buzzing the area at low levels and setting up strafing patterns that would not come near the Concorde on the west side of the hill or the commandos approaching from the south and east. He led his six Tomcats in on a last strafing run that exhausted the remainder of their 200mm cannon rounds.