Cody's Army (28 page)

“Don’t try to trick me!” Abdel screamed. He moved the weapon’s aim back and forth between them.

A guard ran into the room. He began talking before he saw the situation.

“We have just found two more guards killed outside….”

Abdel shot the guard once in the chest. Farouk lifted his robe. His hands were still in the pockets. A pistol barked twice,
and the robe smoked a bit around the pocket.

Abdel took one round in his chest and the second through his heart. He fell.

“Check all guards, all prisoners,” Farouk commanded. “Check the grounds. I want Sharon Adamson found and brought to me. She
had to be the one who killed Hallah. She told me her father was in the U.S. Army. Hurry, hurry! We have much to do.”

“
Do it
!” Cody told Caine.

The explosives expert touched a button on his radio detonation board and the barracks/dayroom on the grounds went up in a
splintering, quaking roar that showered wood, shingles and chunks of rocks all over the compound. Twenty-two militiamen sworn
to fight to the death for the Palestine Liberation Guerrilla Forces did just that. Most died in their beds.

A few militiamen staggered out of the rubble, backlit by the resulting fire, when they were picked off by rifle shots from
the second floor of the right wing.

Before the defenders could draw a breath, Caine exploded the motor pool building, the office building and the shack where
the generator purred away contentedly until it burned itself out in the roaring diesel-fed blaze that billowed up, feeding
on six barrels of fuel.

Below, flames raced through the four structures. A few confused militiamen staggered about, only to be picked off either by
the sharpshooters on the second floor or the heavy machine gun which suddenly opened up from the guard tower manned by Hawkeye.
The Texan chopped up anything that moved in the big yard in front of the mansion.

Cody and Caine peered through some light brush from their concealed position above the end of the huge country house. Cody
figured the friendly fire from the second-floor window meant some of the hostages had escaped, got weapons, and now were trying
to fight their way out.

“We can do the most good inside this end of the mansion,” Cody said. “Let’s see if we can make contact with the Americans
up there.”

They came up to the rear entryway of the right wing of the mansion, and found a guard on duty. He aimed his weapon at Cody
immediately, but before he could pull the trigger Caine sent three Uzi parabellum rounds into his chest and neck, jolting
him backward, his life’s blood spilling over his rifle. Cody grabbed the weapon and rushed into the building.

A guard fifty feet down a long hallway vanished to the side, and Cody and Caine ran halfway up the stairs.

“Ahoy, you on the second floor!” Cody bellowed. Nothing happened. They rushed up the rest of the way to the second floor,
but found only another long hall, with five doors leading off each side. The downslope rooms faced the courtyard. They were
the important ones.

Cody covered Caine as he checked the first two doors. They were locked. Caine shot the lock off the first door and kicked
it in. One militiaman inside cowered in the corner. He looked no more than thirteen years old.

The Brit grabbed his weapon and his spare magazines and pushed him back in the corner.

“How can they let kids go fight their wars for them?” he asked. The next room was empty. Cody knocked on the third. They could
hear shooting from inside. When a lull came, Cody stood at the side of the door, knocked and bellowed. “Americans out here,
damn it!”

After a pause a strong male voice came through the door.

“What sport did Babe Ruth play?”

“Baseball, idiot, we’re here to help you. Open up.”

A lock clicked open and something was pushed away from the door, then it opened inward. A woman’s face looked out. She saw
Cody.

“Are you for real?” she asked.

“Real enough. How did you get away? Where did you get your weapons?”

“Come inside quickly, we’re trying to figure out where you guys came from,” she said. Cody and Caine slipped in the door,
and they shut it and pushed back the barricade.

“Sharon Adamson, head stewardess from the flight,” she said holding out her hand.

“I’m John Cody and this is Richard Caine. We’ve come to get you out of here.”

“Just two of you?”

“We have help. The outside is pretty well under control. How many more of the terrorist militiamen inside?”

“No idea. We were going to try to get to the buses and get back to East Beirut.”

“Can’t happen. Farouk and his men have probably killed the buses by now. How many rifles you have up here?”

“Seven, and one thirty-eight-caliber revolver.”

“I’m going to give you two more recently acquired rifles. I’ll need to take six armed men who have had military training if
possible. Three will go with Caine and three with me, so we can start clearing this mansion. We need positive control.”

“Be light in another half hour,” Caine said.

“I’m going with you,” Sharon blurted. “I want to go, to help. I feel responsible for these people.”

Cody nodded. She seemed to be the leader, even though five or six of the men with the rifles had to be military men.

“Keep two armed men here, we’ll divide the rest. We’ll clear the second floor first, all three wings, then work down.”

They cleared rooms each way down the second floor corridor. Cody kicked in doors that were locked. They found no one in the
first seven rooms. Then two big rooms had women hostages in them, and beyond that they found two militiamen just waking up.

They quickly surrendered.

“We have no way to handle prisoners,” Cody said.

Sharon was already tying them up with their own belts and bootlaces. “There has been enough killing. Let these men live.”

It came out strongly, not as an order, but as a statement that brooked no rebuttal.

Down the hall two Arabs ran into the corridor, fired two shots and were blasted apart by silent Uzi rounds from Cody’s chopper.

He and Sharon stormed down to the next room. Cody heard voices inside. He kicked the door open and covered the room. There
were six more women from the plane there. They cried when they saw Sharon.

“It won’t be long now, ladies,” she told them. “We’re going to take care of you. Please stay back from the windows, and lie
on the floor until the shooting stops.”

Then she was gone into the hall, rushing to catch up with Cody, who had just kicked in the next door.

TWENTY-FOUR

C
ody, Sharon Adamson, and their team of three Marine Corps infantrymen worked down the rest of the second-floor corridor to
the end. They found three more Shiite militiamen and quickly dispatched them. But not before one of the Marines had taken
a round in the meat of his shoulder.

Cody stared down at the sweep of the yard and the gardens in front of the mansion. The four outbuildings were still burning.
Half a dozen dead men lay on the ground in front of him. One of the buses had both front tires flattened.

Dawn was only minutes away.

He took out the radio, lifted his antenna and called to Rufe.

“Rufe, you awake?”

There was a pause.

“Am now. Time to move?”

“Soon. Like to have some of those Israeli jets overhead in about twenty minutes. Then move in the slow birds in another twenty
minutes. Our work here going well.”

“That’s a copy, Mr. C. I’ll be there in ten. Over and out.”

Cody waited a few moments by the window. Caine and his team were supposed to come back to this end when they finished clearing
the second floor all the way to the far end. He took another look at Sharon.

“You seem to be the kingpin here. How did you get it all started?”

“One of the terrorists tried to rape me. I got lucky and killed him and took his weapons. Then I found where the men were
and we started working at getting ourselves free. It’s downright scary what a person can do when she has to, Mr. Cody. That
was the first time I’ve ever hurt anybody, let alone kill someone. I still shudder when I think about it.”

“Forget about it for now.”

Caine came a minute later and they sent two men who turned out to be Marine embassy guards down the steps first for their
point. When the Marines had a room cleared and safe on the ground floor, the rest of them charged into it and began moving
forward to clear the twenty rooms on the ground floor.

They had just left the fourth room and darted into the hall, when a door opened ahead of them and two Arabs jumped out, snapping
off shots from handguns.

“Trouble!” Sharon shouted. She dove for the floor, rolled once and came up with the submachine gun she had liberated from
a dead Palestinian chattering on full auto. She held the bucking weapon on target for eighteen rounds and the two attackers
went down.

Cody tilted his soft cap back on his head and watched the woman in her airline hostess skirt stand, and, without looking at
the weapon, eject the spent magazine and slam another one into place. She charged the handle to get a fresh round in the chamber,
then looked over at him.

Two Marines began hopscotching from room to room. Most were vacant on this right wing. At the center of the mansion, they
held up and waited for a conference.

“Could be trouble ahead, sir,” one Marine said. “There’s a whole big pile of furniture set up in front of the far door through
the little anteroom. Come take a look.”

Cody heard the machine gun outside chattering again. Four bursts of five rounds, then one of ten. Hawkeye must be finding
some new targets and living up to his nickname.

He edged up to the hall doorway and looked into the next room. It was twenty feet across, and on the far side big wooden desks
had been pushed up against a door leading the other way into the central section of the mansion.

“Have we accounted for all of our passengers and crew?” he asked Sharon.

She had been counting as they moved and had a Marine on the other fire team also keep count.

“All except two. They may have been moved somewhere.”

He picked one of the smaller Marines and they darted out a rear door to the back of the mansion, keeping close to the wall
as they slid forward toward a window.

“This should be the first room past the barricade,” he whispered to the Marine. The window stood five feet off the ground.
“I’ll give you a leg up and you take a look through the bottom of the window and see what or who is inside.”

He laced his fingers together, forming a step, and the Marine lifted himself to the window. A moment later he jumped down.

“Two Arabs in there loading magazines. Whole pot full of ammo.”

Cody would have used a grenade, but he wanted it to be a surprise visit when they went through the doorway of this room and
into the hall beyond the barricade. He unslung the Uzi, pushed it to full auto and motioned for the Marine to give him a hand-step
upward.

He edged up slowly until he could see through the window, then pushed the Uzi against the glass and sprayed a dozen silent
rounds into the two men working over ammo cartons.

At once he found the window lock, opened it where the glass was broken in, and lifted the window. He squirmed through, then
told the Marine to go bring the others.

In the room, he pushed the bodies to one side, found a fully loaded Uzi and four freshly filled magazines. He put the new
Uzi over his shoulder and pocketed the heavy magazines.

Then he went to the window and helped Sharon climb through.

She looked at the ammo, found two more magazines for her SMG and waited. When all nine of them were in the room, Cody checked
the door. He turned the knob silently and eased open the panel.

The hallway stretched out a hundred feet, but twenty feet down he saw a machine gun on a tripod aimed in his direction, with
heavy sandbags holding it in place.

“Any more grenades?” Cody asked Caine.

The Britisher tossed him two, one at a time. Cody had considered trying to pick off the gunners with the silenced Uzi, but
the odds were bad. He jerked the safety pin from the grenade, held it in his right hand and eased open the door. His arm was
a blur as it snaked out the door and whipped the grenade down the hallway in a throw and roll that should get the required
distance. At once he shut the door and waited the 4.2 seconds.

When the concussion of air hit the door from the blast of the grenade, Cody let it swing open. Ten seconds later, when all
the shrapnel had landed, he jumped into the hall and hosed down the gun emplacement with twenty rounds from the unsilenced
Uzi.

The grenade had detonated just behind the emplacement, shredded the gunner into an early grave, blasted one MG mount off its
spot, and tilted the gun at the ceiling.

He heard shouts beyond, and doors slamming. Two men rushed into the hall, but his Uzi riddled them before they could get off
a shot. The unsilenced Uzi had more range and impact, since part of the force normally used to expel the slug out the bore
was not being swallowed up by a suppressor.