The Med (57 page)

“Wait, baby. Be quiet.” The guard was looking their way again. She hoped he did not understand Cook's muttered curse.

“Got to
go.
Go to the
bathroom.”

“Wait, baby. You have to hold it this time.”

“Go bad,” the child whispered again, but obediently did not say anything more. She looked in a frightened way toward the guard who had shouted at Cook.

A few minutes later the waiting was ended by the ring of boots on concrete, the jingle of metal, and the chatter of voluble men. The stairwell door slammed open and several of the terrorists came out. All were armed. One of them was the Majd. Beside him, looking angry, were the men who had come that morning.

They talked among themselves for a few minutes. Then, with an abrupt, impatient gesture, Harisah stepped out, almost within the front row of sitting hostages.

“You Americans, you British,” he said loudly, “you are being prisoner here. And now, because of the stupidity and arrogance of your governments you are in great danger. It's time for me to tell you why.

“These fighters, these men,”—he swept his arms around at the guards, who straightened—“are
mujahiddin,
fighters for the freedom of Palestine and the unity of all Arabs. They aren't paid; they fight of their free wanting because they have nothing left but guns. They fight against injustice of the invader. The Jews have taken our country and oppress our brothers. And America arms them against all of Islam.

“They are here to fight this, to regain freedom for our comrades and justice for the Palestinian people. They will do it here more surely than in the front lines.

“We fight also, shoulder to shoulder with the others who battle for freedom, against those whose puppets the Turks are; against American injustice and imperialism.”

He paused, putting his hands behind him, a little grandiloquently, Susan thought. He strolled to the window and looked out. Every eye followed him. He's had training in speaking, somewhere, she thought.

She noticed then, half-amused and half-horrified, that for a moment she had felt proud of him.

He turned, and his face had become dark. “Believe me, I do not like to shed blood. If your government had been reasonable you would all be safe. But now our friends tell us the imperialists have tricked us. They talked; and talked; and now the American marines are landing in Lebanon.”

He paused, waiting perhaps for a response from them; but none of the crouched hostages moved.

“They will not reach here, whatever they intend. We will use you to stop them, to drive them out. How? The same way we wanted to use you to release the freedom fighters they hold prisoner. It will work; we have proved this already. The Turks did not wish to talk. Now, under American pressure, they are meeting with our leadership in Yemen.

“When that is done, we go on to remove all the Jews from Palestine, the same way.”

“
All
the Israelis?” she heard Cook whisper. “That's not even PLO doctrine. These guys are some radical fucking splinter—”

“Goddammit, Mike, not now,” hissed Moira.

Harisah paced back and forth. “You may say, how will we do this? We started by taking the embassy. But now that the Americans are taking foolish risks we must go further. How? By harsh measures.”

He paused again, but no one said anything, no one gasped, no one moved. The flies buzzed sleepily above his captive audience.

“I have carried out the first execution. The Syrians have been told that there will be another at nightfall. This is for transmission to your people. Another at dawn. Another at noon tomorrow. This will continue until our demands are met. When the Americans withdraw and our men are released, executions cease. When our comrades arrive here with us, or at one of our camps, we disappear one night, and you all go free.

“Executions will be carried out in the square, in view of witnesses, among whom will be the American and Turkish ambassadors to Syria and any news persons who may wish to come.”

“This is crazy,” Cook whispered tensely. “He can't mean this. The Turks are busy in Cyprus, and a new regime isn't going to start out by knuckling under to foreign terrorists. They've got enough of their own. No way.”

“Goddammit, Cook,
shut up.
”

“To help this plan work faster,” Harisah went on, raising his eyes to them, “you are going to help me. You can save people of your group, perhaps yourself, by letting the British and Americans know that we mean what we are telling them. We have a recorder here. You will make tapes, speak to your families if you wish, or to the American authorities. We will deliver your messages at nightfall, before the second demonstration.

“And for that demonstration, I think”—he raised his arm high, pointing—“that tall young man in back, who talks while I am talking—”

“Michael! No!”

Moira punched wildly at the first guard to reach them, but the man simply pushed her over; off-balance, she fell into the other hostages. There was a tangle of arms and legs, shouting and crying. Cook did not struggle; he stood up, face paling, but not fighting the men who beat him out from the crowd with their rifle butts. The others shrank back as his guards pushed him forward. Harisah waited, looking grim, and then turned his head to speak briefly to the two men.

Susan sat rigid, unable to believe what was happening. She could not move, could not speak. She held Nan tight, and wondered that she did not whimper. She felt like whimpering herself.

“Goddammit—let me up. Mike! Mike!”

And then Moira was on her feet, running through the still-cleared path behind the guards. Cook turned at her shout. He started to wave her back, and then his arms were twisted behind him and he was pushed toward the stairwell.

Harisah nodded, and two men stepped in behind Moira. And at that Susan was up too, holding Nan tight and screaming: “Majd! Hanna! Not her, too!”

Harisah looked in her direction. As they caught hers his eyes became opaque, the gaze of a stranger.

“Of course,” he said, “the Jewish woman may also die if she wishes.”

And Susan sat, slowly, unable to think or speak. She lowered her eyes. Fear and guilt rose in her throat. She had thought, somehow, that her sacrifice would protect them. But it had not been a bargain. What had Moira said—you can't bargain with a terrorist—

She did not want to look at him again, ever.

Harisah looked around, at all of them. “There; you see I mean this business. Now you can go back to your rooms. Do not open the windows. Do not leave rooms. The guards will bring the recorder to you there.”

He paused, looking toward the stairwell. From the open door a shout floated up, but so faint that she could not tell whether it was Michael or Moira, or even a man or a woman. The Majd's scowl deepened. He turned from the stairwell to them.

“You should know me well enough by now to know that the Majd does not lie, he does not bluff. Make your messages convincing. It is the only way any of you will escape death.”

30

Northern Lebanon

The way to Ash Shummari was a storm of noise, sunlight, heat, and dust.

From the high safety of outcroppings of white limestone an occasional lone figure—a shepherd, perhaps—could be seen looking down on the narrow, winding road, clinging to the hills like a snake to its prey, that had made its way from village to village across this ancient land since Hellenic times, since Cretan times, since before there was a Bible.

The marines in the van of the raid saw Lebanon that morning in an hours-long, jolting blur of speed and heat. They saw it with the clarity of fear at twenty-five miles an hour, more on the downhills; saw it with the hollowness in the belly that comes expecting attack at any moment. They did not talk. They did not watch the road. They watched the hills that marched with their progress, watched ceaselessly the white-shuttered windows of the villages they sped through in a clatter of treads, a howl of engines.

Will Givens saw it holding desperately tight to the welded manholds on top of an amtrac, so sun-hot he could barely close one hand on them. In the other he gripped his M-16, empty, but with a magazine ready in the unbuttoned pocket of his blouse. His boots dangled over the edge of the rolling tank, over the terrifying squeal of bogies. Beneath him, beneath the other riflemen (for that was all he and the rest of the mortar squad were now, riflemen) who clung to the top of the amphibious tank, the engine roared as if designed to deafen them, and steel treads clawed sparks from the stone. Behind them came a jeep, then another amtrac, and then a long string of them.

Three-two MAU was on its way to battle.

The squad had waited out dawn dug in at the LZ. Some time after sunrise the rumble of artillery to the south brought a renewed tension to their breakfast of cold rations. As they waited, since no one had any clear idea of what was happening, they began to invent scuttlebutt. The Syrians were good soldiers; no, they were bums; the Israelis had chewed them up a dozen times. The Russians would be waiting for them across the border; no, they would pull out and leave the terrorists to face the music; no, the Soviet Navy would sink the amphibs behind them and cut them off here in a blazing Chosin. At first they passed the rumors as a joke, but some gained the sound of truth. Will had listened to them with a hollow feeling, gripping his rifle and wishing again he had been able to zero it.

At 0730 the lead amtracs had rumbled up from seaward and the squad had clambered aboard with the rest, leaving their dug-in positions with a feeling already of regret.

Will clamped the rifle, still unaccustomed to it, in the crook of his arm. His hand came away from his face gray-white with caked dust and sweat. He could not believe how much dust there was. It came up like smoke from the 'tracks in front of the column, mixed with diesel fumes in an oily stink that overlay the warm smell of the land. He grabbed hastily at the weapon as it started to slide; they were jolting over a particularly atrocious section of road, nearing a town. People … there must have been thousands of them along here, he thought, not long before. But now the invading marines looked fleetingly down alleys where golden heaps of oranges lay in rotting piles, where laundry flapped sun-dried but forgotten. Stores gaped blank-fronted, their windows empty, those that had not been shuttered or barred. There were no cars, there were no people, there weren't even any dogs. As he blinked past Cutford's shadowed bulk he saw that the buildings they were passing now—taller, the city center—were hulks, shattered by shellfire.…

He stared around from the 'track, forgetting fear, seeing what war had done to Lebanon.

It might have been any of the resort towns along the coasts of the blue Mediterranean. Towns the ships had sailed by, or dropped anchor at briefly, not permitting the men ashore. It might have been downtown Palermo, the better section. It looked most like Greece, though.

Or must have once. The buildings had been new, in light colors. But now the modern fronts stared empty and the terraces were filled with smashed brick and glittering shards from the empty windows. The black stains of fires stood above them like eyebrows. The streets had been wide here, lined at ground level with shops and offices. Now piles of shattered masonry leaned outward, closing half the road, and the windows were blank and the shops were empty and the cars, those that were left, lay like the husks of long-dead insects: burnt, overturned, flattened by fallen walls. The very air was disquieting, heavy with smoke and the cave-smell of shattered plaster and the chemical stink of recent explosive.

It was the smell of ambush. He shivered and craned round, maintaining his deathgrip on the hot metal, to look for the others. Hernandez; Harner, looking sleepy, stretched out against the gunner's cupola on the opposite side of the vehicle; Silky, seated facing aft, his helmet pulled low to screen his eyes from the sun; Cutford, sleeves rolled over heavy muscle, his face lifted toward the upper windows of a four-story apartment block as they rolled by. Washman wasn't aboard, but Will could make out his pale face, open mouth, through the dust, on the next 'track back.

And Dippy Liebo. Where was he?

He decided not to think about that right now. It was too freaking hot; he felt sick from the motion and the jolting, and he had to stay alert. With that thought he realized suddenly what Cutford was looking for, and the knowledge, coupled with the slow thunder early that morning, made him sit up straighter and try to blink the dust and sun from his eyes. Maybe you'll see some action today, Will, he thought. Somehow the prospect was less appealing than it had seemed in boot camp. Or even that morning, on the ship.

Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God; and not that he should return from his ways, and live?

Above them, between the building-fronts that walled off the road, a plume of smoke blinked from the hillside. He tightened his grip on the rifle, staring upward; it was dust, not smoke, streaming behind a single vehicle that paralleled their progress along the lower road. A flank guard, most likely. He craned left to look past Cutford's shoulder down into the valley and saw, yes, a left flank of two jeeps and a 'track below on the dry bed of a river. They stopped as he watched, and men leaped out to clear something from the path; then they rolled on again, the 'track taking the lead, tiny as a green bug from his height.

The lights on the tank ahead glowed red as it slowed for a curve so sharp the vehicle ahead of it had disappeared. He opened his mouth, but the pause of thought made speech too late, even if the driver could have heard him. He got his legs up just in time. Inertia jerked him forward, almost tearing his arm off, and the hull of the 'track bonged as its snout collided with the rear of the one in front. Glass shattered above the diesels, and when they moved again he saw that their headlights had been crushed flat. Too much noise for communication, even in a shout, but when he glanced back his eyes met Hernandez'; that was enough, to share it with someone else.