Hausner lay in a shallow depression, covered with dust, and listened to the small cannon rounds exploding around him. The Ashbals had not seen him fall in the dust and had run past him.
As he took cover he heard the whining down of the Concorde’s engines as they died one by one. He looked up cautiously. The Concorde hung precariously at the edge of the slope. In the weak light of dawn he could see the fire dying in its huge engines. The Ashbals were closing in on the aircraft. From the east he could hear the random firing of the commandos as they worked their way up the slope. He got up on one knee and checked the mechanism on his AK-47. As he reloaded, he looked around him and realized that he was kneeling in the same hole where he and Miriam had made love. He ran his hand through the warm dust that had been their bed.
He looked up again at the Concorde as he finished reloading. His plan had been to kill Rish although he knew he himself would die whether he succeeded or not. But now it appeared that he would survive and that everyone else would die, because even if Rish did not reach them and massacre them or take them hostage, then this foolhardy attempt to slide into the river would surely kill them. All Hausner had to do now was to wait until the commandos reached him and he could go home. But he couldn’t do that and he knew it. He rose to his feet and made off in the direction of the Concorde.
Becker couldn’t decide if he wanted to go over the side or not. The longer he looked at the river, the farther away it seemed. But what were his options?
Burg had come into the flight deck and was strapping Kahn into the flight engineer’s seat. Kahn was breathing, but a sucking chest wound was making that increasingly more difficult. Burg looked around, found a map, and stuffed it into the foaming hole. The sucking sounds quieted.
Becker watched for a second, then yelled to Burg. “Get a dozen people in the forward galley!”
Burg nodded and ran out the cockpit door and barked an order.
A dozen unwounded and ambulatory wounded got up quickly and crowded into the small forward galley. The Concorde tipped further and slid forward. Burg ran into the flight deck and strapped himself into the copilot’s chair.
Salem Hamadi, well in the lead of the straggling Ashbals, ran at an angle alongside the leading edge of the upturned starboard wing until he reached the point where it came within two meters of the edge of the glacis. A second before he would have run off the side, Hamadi slung his rifle over his shoulder and leaped into the air.
Hamadi landed flat on the wing with his arms and legs spread out. At that moment, the ground that the underside of the flight deck was resting on gave way. The Concorde pitched further down and slid a few meters forward. Hamadi scrambled upward and tried to find some purchase on the sleek supersonic wing. His foot found a tear that had been made by a burst of bullets, and he vaulted toward the open emergency door and grabbed the door frame. No one seemed to be looking out the windows or the door. He pulled himself toward the opening.
More ground gave way under the aircraft, and the Concorde seemed to spring over the crumbling edge. It careened down the steep gracis toward the Euphrates. It looked very graceful to the fighter pilots in the air.
Salem Hamadi saw through the open door that everyone was in the crash position with their heads between their legs and pillows and blankets in front of their faces. He dropped into the dark cabin and let go of the door frame. The steeply pitched aircraft propelled him toward the flight deck door and he smashed into it. He put his back to the steel door and waited for the crash. Hamadi could not imagine what kind of fate awaited him—drowning, shooting, capture, maiming—but he knew he did not want to be around Ahmed Rish when the end came.
Becker saw the line of burnt castor oil bushes come up very fast. He saw two badly wounded Ashbals running off in opposite directions along the river bank. He felt the main wheel assembly collapse, and the Concorde slid faster on its belly. The nose cleaved through the high bank and the belly slid over it, lifting the aircraft slightly like a sled going over a bump. The Concorde belly-dived into the Euphrates, and Becker heard the thump of the impact at the same time he felt it hit. He saw the river come up to his windshield and pour through, sending shards of glass and sheets of water over him and Burg. Then everything went black.
Great billows of steam rose as the hot Olympus engines vaporized thousands of liters of the Euphrates. There was a rushing sound inside the aircraft as the belly filled with water and it settled into the river, then a stillness as it reached a level at which it could float. The passengers began to look up.
Salem Hamadi slid quickly through the door into the half-lit flight deck. He saw first a crewman strapped into the flight engineer’s seat. He was bleeding and his blood colored the water sloshing on the deck. There was also a crewman sitting in the pilot’s seat, slumped over the control column. Next to him in the copilot’s seat was a man in civilian clothes who also seemed to be unconscious. There was sparkling plexiglas lying over everything. As he watched, the instrument lights began to fade, then the overhead lights went out. Hamadi pulled out his long knife. He knew instinctively that the man in civilian clothes was important and went for him first.
37
Jacob Hausner stopped short of the line of Ashbals. He watched them as they began firing down into the river at the Concorde as it began floating slowly downstream. He raised his rifle and tried to pick out Rish among them, but they all looked the same with their layer of whitish dust.
Overhead, Laskov’s F-14 circled lazily over the mud flats, then suddenly came streaking in toward the crest of the hill, directly at the Ashbals. Laskov had instructed Major Arnon’s force to stop their advance and take cover until further notice. Major Bartok’s force had changed direction and was heading at top speed back down the ridge line toward their rafts in an attempt to intercept the Concorde.
The sky was brightening noticeably and the wind was dropping. The Ashbals, who had traveled clothed in the dust and the darkness for so long, suddenly realized that they were naked. The F-14 released his last four rockets and pulled up sharply. The line of Ashbals on the crest disappeared in an inferno of orange flame and shrapnel.
The concussion knocked Hausner down, and when he looked up, he saw Ahmed Rish standing by himself well back of the crest where the dismembered bodies of his last soldiers lay smoldering. A smell of burning hair and flesh hung around the crest until the wind blew it away.
Hausner rose and looked around him. He and Rish were the only men left standing on the hill as far as he could see. Rish appeared to be contemplating the safest line of retreat. He had his back to Hausner as Hausner walked casually over to him. “Hello, Ahmed.”
Rish did not turn. “Hello, Jacob Hausner.”
“We won, Rish.”
Rish shook his head. “Not completely. Hamadi is on that aircraft. Also, it may sink yet. And I’m sure the Peace Conference is finished. And please don’t forget all your dead and wounded. Shall we call it a draw?”
Hausner tightened his grip on the AK-47. “Drop the rifle and your pistol. Turn slowly around, you son-of-a-bitch. Hands on your head.”
Rish did as he was told. He smiled at Hausner. “You look terrible. Would you like a drink?” He inclined his head toward a canteen on his web belt.
“Shut your goddamn mouth.” Hausner’s hands were shaking, and the muzzle of the rifle moved with short, quick movements. He couldn’t seem to make up his mind what to do next.
Rish smiled at Hausner, “This was all your fault, you know. None of this would have been possible without your incompetence. You don’t know how many nights over the past year I’ve awakened in a sweat dreaming that Jacob Hausner would think of making a complete nose-to-tail search of his Concordes. Jacob Hausner. Legendary genius of El Al Security. Jacob Hausner. You don’t know how we worried about the overrated Jacob Hausner.” He laughed. “No one told us that Jacob Hausner was just a creation of Israeli public relations. The real Jacob Hausner has no more brains than a camel.” He spit on the ground. “You may live
and I may die, but I wouldn’t change places with you.” He laughed.
Hausner wiped the dust from his mouth and eyes. He knew Rish was trying to goad him into pulling the trigger. “Are you through?”
“Yes. I have said what I wanted to say to you. Now kill me quickly.”
“I’m afraid that’s not what I had in mind.” He thought he could see Rish turn pale under his layer of dust. “Did you capture General Dobkin? How about the girl that was on the outpost? Do you have them? Come on, Rish. Answer me truthfully, and I’ll put a bullet into your head, clean and quick. Otherwise . . .”
Rish shrugged. “Yes, we captured both of them. They were both alive the last I saw them. However, I received a radio transmission from the guest house where they were kept saying that your soldiers were blowing it up and machine-gunning the wounded.” He shrugged again. “So, who can say if they are still alive?”
“Hospitals and headquarters don’t mix, Rish, so don’t give me that shit.” He coughed and spit up some dust.
“Some water?”
“Shut up.” Rish would be the intelligence prize of the decade. Rationally, he should take him alive. Rish would answer a lot of questions that had been bothering Israeli Intelligence for some time. Hausner wanted to know a few things himself. “Who passed on the flight information to you?”
“Colonel Richardson.”
Hausner nodded. He asked suddenly, “Miriam Bernstein’s husband? The others? What of them?”
Rish smiled.
“Answer me, you son-of-a-bitch.”
“I think I’ll take that information with me to the grave.”
Hausner’s finger tensed on the trigger. If he took Rish alive, he would spend the rest of his life staring through the barbed wire at Ramla. Life imprisonment was harsher justice than a bullet in the head and oblivion. But on a more primitive level Hausner wanted an eye for an eye. He was filled with all the primal passions and hate of mankind and wanted to see Rish’s blood run. Rish was an unspeakable evil, and even barbed wire was no guarantee that his malevolence would be contained. While he lived and breathed, he was as dangerous and threatening as a contagion. “We killed your lover, didn’t we? And it was a double blow to you because she was your sister, wasn’t she?” The psychological profile had been vague on that point, but he knew now that it was so.
Rish did not answer, but his lips drew back in a feral grin that sent a shiver up Hausner’s spine. Standing there in the dawn wind with his hands spread out, his face and clothes the color of the dead earth, and the rising sun showing a malignant gleam in his eyes, Hausner saw Pazuzu, the East Wind, harbinger of plague and death. Hausner’s whole body began to shake with exhaustion and emotion. He lowered the barrel of the rifle and fired.
Rish’s kneecap shattered and he fell in the dust. He howled with pain. “A quick bullet! You promised!”
Hausner was inexplicably relieved to see blood coming from Rish, to see the shattered bone splinters and marrow, and to hear the howling. Irrationally, he had thought there would be no blood and no pain.
“You promised!”
“When have we ever kept promises to each other?” He fired again and blew off the other kneecap.
Rish howled like an animal. He pounded his fists into the dust and bit his tongue and lips so hard they gushed blood. “For the love of Allah! For the love of God, Hausner!”
“Were your ancestors Babylonian, Rish? Were mine a part of the Captivity? Is that why we’re here in the dust all these centuries later? Was that your purpose?” He fired twice and splintered Rish’s right wrist and right elbow.
Rish collapsed with his face in the dust and sobbed “Mercy! Mercy. Please.”
“Mercy? We Semites have never shown mercy to each other. Did you show mercy to Moshe Kaplan? Did he show mercy to you, for that matter? Our people have slaughtered each other without mercy since the Flood receded and probably before. The land between the Tigris and the Mediterranean is the biggest graveyard on this earth, and we made it that way. If the dead rise up on Judgment Day, there won’t be room to stand.” He fired a full burst and the rounds caught Rish on his left forearm and partially severed it.
Rish fainted, and Hausner walked up to him, reloaded a fresh magazine, and fired a bullet into the base of his head.
Hausner gave the lifeless body a violent kick. It rolled over the crest, slid down the steep glacis, and dropped into the Euphrates.
As he watched the body sinking, he noticed that there were still two Ashbals at the base of the glacis. They were firing at the floating Concorde, and by the look of their tracers they were scoring hits. Hausner aimed his rifle down at them and moved the selector switch back to automatic fire. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the F-14 diving straight down at him out of the brightening sky. He thought that if he dropped his rifle and waved his arms, the pilot might not fire at him. He hesitated, then fired down at the two Ashbals with a long, unrelenting burst.
Teddy Laskov held back for a split second, then hit the switch for his last rocket.
Hausner’s rifle clicked empty. There was no more movement as the base of the glacis, and there were no more tracer rounds following the Concorde. He heard the rocket coming at him over his shoulder, then saw the F-14 as it pulled up over the Euphrates. He knew that all his actions, not only over the past days, but over the past years, had been self-destructive. God—the Perverse One, not the Benevolent One—had only waited until Hausner imagined that he had something to live for before he pulled the rug from under him. Hausner knew it would happen that way and was neither bitter nor sorry. If he felt any sorrow at all, it was for Miriam.
The last thing Hausner saw was Laskov’s tail number. Gabriel 32. A blinding light enveloped him, then he was suffused with a golden warmth, and an image of Miriam, looking very serene and eating dinner in a sunlit room, passed through his consciousness.
Laskov looked back and saw the top of the western crest erupt in orange flame.
Salem Hamadi moved forward quickly. The high-backed bucket seats did not show much target, and he wondered for a moment about the best way to proceed. He came up behind Burg and grabbed his thin white hair, pulled his head back, and exposed his throat. He looked down at the man and recognized the chief of the hated Mivtzan Elohim. His hands shook. It was like having Satan himself at the mercy of his long knife. His blade came across and cut into the side of Burg’s neck. He was about to draw the knife across the jugular and windpipe when he saw a movement to his left. He looked at Becker, who had regained consciousness and was staring at him. All he could see in Becker’s eyes was contempt and disgust. Not one bit of fear. Hamadi’s hands began to shake and his eyes and lips twitched. He looked down at Burg. It occurred to him that killing this man was not going to make any real difference in the outcome of events. Not killing him might make a difference at least in regard to his own life. It would be the first time he had not killed an enemy when he had the chance. He wondered if he could do that. He took the knife away from Burg’s neck.
Becker pointed to the shattered windshield.
Hamadi nodded. He spoke in slow Hebrew. “Tell them in Israel that Salem Hamadi spared a life. Tell Isaac Burg that he is in my debt for one favor.” Perhaps he could collect on that someday. You never knew. Most agents on both sides carried these favors around with them as life insurance. “Salem Hamadi. One favor.” He slid between Becker and Burg, over the instrument panels and squeezed through the shattered windshield and onto the nose cone. He rolled off and disappeared into the water.
Becker was fully awake now. He knew it wasn’t a dream because he could see the gash on Burg’s neck. It was too strange to dwell on. A strange incident in a strange land. Hamadi. Salem Hamadi. He’d report that, if he ever saw Jerusalem again.
Becker shouted over his shoulder into the cabin. He looked at Kahn and called to him. “Peter!” There was no answer. He could not see the foaming at the chest, which meant that either the hole was sealed or he was dead.
The C
oncorde was floating mostly as a result of the tremendous surface area of its wings, but Becker knew that the wings wouldn’t keep them afloat much longer. Even as he looked back out of his side window, small waves broke over the big deltas. The water in the compartments below deck was pulling the craft down, and the heavy engines were causing the broken tail to sit low in the water. Becker felt the nose beginning to rise as the tail sat deeper in the water.
The door from the cabin was thrown open. Yaakov Leiber rushed in. “Captain, the rear baggage—” He saw Kahn and Burg slumped in their seats.
Becker noticed that Leiber seemed to be in full control of his faculties now that he was needed in his professional capacity again. “Go on, Steward. Make your report.”
“Yes, sir. The rear baggage compartment and galley are swamped, and I’ve evacuated the—the potential suicides, and I can see water through the floor in the compartments below. Also, we can’t account for Alpern. I think he was on the tail when we went over.”
Becker nodded. “All right. Please get Beth Abrams and someone else in here to take care of Mr. Kahn and Mr. Burg. Then instruct everyone to put on the life jackets that are still available, if they haven’t done so already. And get a more complete damage report for me.”