Cody's Army (27 page)

“Foxy, what’s happening? The hunter is in position, working into site. Except a call around 04:00. Out, I will relay it on
to you. Confirm. Out.”

“Confirm, Fox; out,” the Israeli colonel said.

Gorman was not convinced. “Yeah, sure, it sounds good. But Murphy is laying back a mile or two with the bird.

He’s not even with Cody right now. How do we know Cody’s making progress? And the damn time is winding down. We’re well into
the second twenty-four-hours now. So help me if that bastard Cody fucks up again, I’m gonna kill him for sure!”

The colonel went to the small refrigerator in his office on the air base and took out two cold beers. “Once we get Murphy’s
or Cody’s call for assistance, we can have jet fighters overhead in or around Beirut in six minutes, from scramble to first
flyby. The choppers will take a little more time to get there, but it’s only seventy-five miles. Closer if the terrorists
brought the hostages to the south somewhere.”

“Yeah, I know, I know. Why did it have to be Cody leading the operation? I just plain don’t trust that sucker.” He snapped
on a TV set in the office. “Guess I’ll have to live with it until I can take care of the matter personally.”

“From what I’ve heard, he’s almost a one-man army himself when he gets charged up. He’ll probably go through those Palestine
Liberation Guerrilla Force fighters like a saber through marshmallow cream.”

“Sure,” Gorman snarled. “And I’m sitting here with my bare ass hanging out, and the hell of it is, I lose either way!”

Cody and Caine kept well away from the stream light the Shiite guard carried to the shed. Soon they heard the generator fire
over and chug along before the doors to the building were closed. Two of the guards remained on the generator, and the big
shot marched back to the mansion and went inside. He hadn’t noticed any missing guards.

Waiting is often the hardest part of any operation. Caine and Cody stood it until it was a little after 3
A.M.
Then they each made a sweep around the area where the exterior guards should have been posted.

Cody found the first leaning against a tree, sleeping. His razor slashed, and the PLG Force soldier would sleep forever.

He met Caine at the arranged spot just beyond the motor pool. They retreated to their observation post behind the mansion.

“Found only one sentry out there, sleeping like a baby,” the Brit reported. “I dispatched the chap with extreme prejudice.”

“You have your keyboard for the C-5? I think we’ll introduce these bums to real war before they know we’re here. Sun should
be up about five or so. At four-thirty we start the show by detonating the charges. The barracks first, so we can close out
the dance card on half of Farouk’s troops. Then blow the office and then the others.”

“How do we liberate the mansion? I’d guess you don’t want to blow the place apart.”

“We eliminate all opposition outside the house, then we figure out how to get inside and rescue our people.”

Sharon stepped into the hallway of the second floor of what she figured was the central part of the mansion. She locked the
door behind her, since that could slow down anyone finding Hallah’s body. She moved down the hallway slowly, but at a normal-appearing
walk. She had waited until nearly 3
A.M.
to start her move.

Most of the guards should be sleeping by now. She took the knife from her skirt pocket. She would use it if she could. It
would do no good to be discovered before she could get to the men’s rooms.

She changed tactics and ran lightly down the second-floor hall. Most of the men were in the west wing, the women in the east.
She came to the west wing and began trying the doors. All were locked here. Ahead she saw a man sitting in a chair and leaning
on a table. His back was to her.

Guard! She moved slower now, making no noise at all on the soft carpet runner.

Directly in back of the man she paused. By the sound of his breathing, she knew he was sleeping. She changed her grip on the
knife. It had to be done. She reached her hand around the man’s face, lowered the gleaming blade and sliced it twice across
his throat.

She felt the steel bite into flesh. On the second stroke, blood spurted onto her hand and she pulled the blade back quickly
as the man fell facedown on the table.

She jerked her hand back, saw the hot blood on her hand and gagged. She steeled herself, would not allow herself to throw
up. She leaned against the wall while a sudden lightheadedness washed over her. She had killed another human being! Twice!
She trembled so she almost dropped the knife.

Slowly she reached back toward the dead man and wiped the blood off the knife and her hand on his shirt. She shuddered again,
moved away without looking at him and tried the door. Locked. Her key would not work. She got a key from the dead man’s pocket
without looking at him. It worked to open the door.

She pushed the door inward quietly and stepped inside. Men lay on the floor, some slept sitting against the wall. Only eight
of the older men were on cots. She looked for Jenks the co-pilot. When she found him she shook him awake.

“I have guns! We can get more! We have a chance to break out of here!”

Jenks saw her, recognized the short-haired blonde stew, but ducked under the blanket.

“Go away!” he hissed at her. “1 don’t want anything to do with any escape!”

She sat there puzzled and furious for a moment. Then a hand touched her shoulder.

One of the young men on the flight, who she figured had been in the military, grinned at her.

“Lady, those are words of music to my ears. You must have wiped out the guard to get in here. He still have this Russian rifle?
Come on, Willy is here! We’re going to have all the help we need!”

Willy checked the guard in the hall, pushed him down a little more so his bloody throat wouldn’t show, then took his AK-47
and his two extra clips and even found a hand grenade in his pocket. Willy hurried back in the room and woke four of his buddies
who were traveling on civilian passports but were with the peacekeeping force in the Sinai peninsula.

He organized them, and they quickly slipped away to find and kill any more guards on doors and to alert the other men who
were in a big area two doors down.

It was nearly 03:30 hours when Willy and two others huddled with Sharon, who would not give up her thirty-eight, but she did
give the derringer to one of the men.

“If we could find all of the passengers, we could get them to the first floor and out windows and into the trees back there,”
Sharon said.

Willy shook his head. “Sharon, you’re our general, but the terrain out there is a bleak, barren desert of hills. The guards
would pick us off one at a time or capture us. What we need to do is capture this whole complex and then use the transport
and blast our way back over the Green Line into East Beirut.”

“Dreaming, man,” another soldier from the Sinai said. “They must have forty men down there. We’ve eliminated three or four,
and they have all the firepower. I’ve been in combat before, in Nam. We’ve got to know what the hell we’re doing or we could
be shooting each other.”

“We get more weapons,” Willy said. “We need to shake down every room in this whole place until we find all the rifles and
pistols we can use. A few SMGs would help, too.”

“How much time do we have?” Sharon asked.

“Until somebody finds the first dead guard. Then the roof is going to blow off this place. Then we have to be ready to stand
and fight.”

“Wake up all the men,” Sharon ordered. “We at least can be ready to escape when we make our chance. Everyone who wants to
help us fight, get them in one room and we’ll start collecting weapons. The biggest problem is we don’t know how much time
we have left.”

TWENTY-THREE

A
bdel Khaled turned over again. Damn the bed, damn the mattress! Nothing was right up here in the hills. Almost nothing. He
and the team had taken over the plane; they had generated more publicity and mass media notice for their small band than ever
before. Even the powerful Kaddoumi could not stop them.

But that didn’t help him sleep any better. He went to the bathroom, had a drink of water, but nothing helped. An idea came
to him slowly and it made him smile. He pulled on a robe and looked into the dimly lit hallway. Four doors down was Hallah’s
room.

The girl, the stewardess, she might still be there.

He hurried down the hall, saw no one, and used his master key, which would open any lock in the place. One light was still
on in Hallah’s room. He turned and closed the door quietly, then locked it before he looked into the luxuriously large bedroom.
The bed was empty! It had not been slept in.

He took another two steps into the room. He saw a man’s hand extending past the sofa. The large room seemed to crash in on
him in the few seconds it took him to rush around the couch.

Hallah lay on his back on the floor. He was fully clothed, his arm thrown out, and his chest a mass of blood. Quickly Abdel
beat down his anger, his fury, and touched the man for a pulse.

There was no need. Hallah’s body was cold already. He had been killed two hours ago, three, perhaps five or six! Who had done
it? The hostages? The woman? The stewardess? Where were the killers now? Was it a threat to their mission here?

Slowly, Abdel slumped on the couch. He felt drained, totally exhausted. How had it happened? Hallah gone in a second. Abdel
remembered the wonderful weekend in Damascus and shivered. Never had he felt such understanding, such perfection in another
human being. Hallah was young, but quick to learn, ready to give fully of himself.

He stood and stormed back to his bedroom. He checked the clock. It was a little after 4
A.M.
He would rouse the troops and start questioning the hostages one by one. He would shoot each one after questioning. That
way he would get rid of the killer!

He pulled on his clothes, strapped on his prize .45 Colt automatic and slung a submachine gun around his neck. In his fatigue-jacket
pockets he stuffed ten extra loaded magazines for the SMG.

Abdel ran to the control room, where they had set up a radio and a siren. He sounded the siren to wake up everyone.

The siren wailed through the bleak hills.

Farouk charged into the room, turned off the switch on the siren and picked up a loudspeaker microphone.

“Attention; disregard the siren. There is no emergency. Continue with your normal duties. I repeat, there is no emergency.”

Farouk put down the heavy mike and stared at Abdel. “Have you lost your mind? We are not going out of our way to attract attention
here. We are not trying to tell everyone in northern Lebanon where we are hiding the hostages. How can you live and be as
stupid as you are, Abdel?”

“Someone killed Hallah!” Abdel shouted. “I just found him, his room’s door was open. Somebody used a knife.”

“And so you were so furious that your lover was dead that you are now going to wake up the troops and have them slaughter
the hostages?”

“I want only to question them. We need a complete inspection. There may be others missing. Some guards may be killed. Someone
has Hallah’s weapons!”

Farouk calmed. “Yes. The weapons. They could be trouble.”

A guard rushed into the room.

“Three guards in the hallways! All have been knifed to death!”

“The hostages, are they still in their rooms?”

The guard unslung his SMG and raced up the steps to check.

A handgun fired and the guard stumbled back down the steps, his hands holding his chest, which was splotched with bright red.
He looked at Farouk for a second, then fell down the last three steps, dead on the landing.

Tahia rushed up to the steps. She had just dressed and thrown a holster and belt over her shoulder.

“Trouble?”

“Yes. Hallah is dead, also some guards. We’re not sure where the hostages are or how long they have been free. We think the
stewardess is responsible—Sharon Adamson.”

“We must kill them all!” Abdel screamed. “Don’t you see? We must kill them all so we can destroy the evil ones who killed
Hallah and our guards. None must escape. All of our men will be issued submachine guns. We will kill the hostages wherever
they hide, in the mansion, on the grounds, in the garden. They all must die!”

Farouk slapped Abdel sharply on the face. Abdel leaped back, the forty-five coming into his hand quickly. He pointed it at
Farouk and then Tahia.

“They all must die! 1 command it. I am now the leader of the Guerrillas! My word will be obeyed.”

“Will you kill us, too, Abdel?” Farouk asked softly. He wore a long robe and slippers. Abdel did not answer him.

“They all must die! It must be done. They killed Hallah! We must maintain our authority. We must exterminate these infidels
and do it before the sun comes up so they do not despoil another of Allah’s perfect days!”

Tahia moved toward him. He swung the gun, pointing it at her.

“Abdel, we all liked Hallah, but he is a casualty. The war goes on. We must fight and strive and move forward.”