Cody's Army (29 page)

The Marines and their basic room-to-room combat techniques took over as they cleared a room, covered the next man who moved
into the upcoming room, and worked quickly down the hall. They found only one Arab, who had a broken leg, with the white bone
showing through his calf. He cried quietly on a bunk. After searching him and the room, they left him there for cleanup time.

Sharon waved Cody forward. “Up here!” she yelled.

He hurried to the room and found what had to be the head man’s office. It had a map on the wall with marker pins, a logbook,
another list of what could be members or units.

“The most interesting part is back here,” she said.

At the side of the room they found Abdel Khaled’s body.

“He was number two in command, the one who murdered Captain Ward on that cross.”

“If the other terrorists aren’t here,” Caine wondered aloud from the doorway, “where the bleeding hell are they?”

Daylight. Farouk looked out the window from the central wing of the mansion and knew that his cause was lost. The support
buildings were all in rubble and burning, his transport was destroyed, most of his fighting men had been murdered in their
beds by the barracks blast.

Now the passengers and crew, with some outside help, had taken over the second floor and released all the prisoners. It was
only a matter of time. At least he could get away with Tahia to live to fight another day.

Tahia had tears in her eyes as she fired her automatic rifle at the machine gunner in the tower. How had they been able to
take over the whole camp, blow up the buildings? Who had done it?

“We must fight until every one of us is dead!” Tahia barked. “We can hold out in here for days. Help will arrive for us. These
people only want to get away. We let them go and they will stop attacking us.”

Farouk shook his head sadly. “We are beaten this time Tahia. A strange combination of factors we did not, or could not, control.
Come, we must go. There’s a back door here, and a sheltered path downhill. We must hurry.”

A grenade went off fifty feet down the hallway.

Tahia knew then that Farouk was right. She took two more clips for a lighter-weight SMG she picked up and followed him to
the door.

He opened it slowly and looked out. All clear. He had taken only a dozen steps down a path that led along the back of the
center wing, when a rifle round slammed into the stonework over his head.

He caught Tahia and dragged her down.

They crawled toward the base of a raised planter, working slowly along behind that to a small patch of cedars that had been
planted but never watered enough, having grown into a stunted hedgerow barely a head high.

For the moment they were safe. They ran slowly in back of the cedar hedge to the far end of the mansion, then turned downhill.
Ahead of him, Farouk found three of his soldiers cowering behind some trees.

“Men, move forward, down the hill,” he ordered. “You three will lead the way to a victory for our cause!”

Two of the men raised their rifles and hurried forward. The third soldier threw down his rifle.

Farouk shot him in the face.

The machine gun, so intelligently placed, stuttered out a welcome as the two PLGF militiamen tried to cross an open space
beyond where the generator shed still burned. The buzzing lead slugs drove them back to the protection of a pair of tall cedars.

Farouk lay where he had dived into the dirt to safety behind the big trees. Tahia sat down beside him.

“We are doomed,” she said quietly. “It is over, Farouk. It was over in Athens when Najib informed, when Ali was killed, only
we didn’t know it. Why has Allah betrayed us?”

Farouk sighed. He rubbed his hand across his tanned and wrinkled face. “They are learning, these Americans.”

“And we made mistakes, many mistakes, but we have left our mark. Nations know us now.”

“But who are we? Just you and I? If so, then Ali died in vain back in Athens.”

“No! Never even think that! We will escape from here and we will rise again. We will build a new army of supporters and we
will make certain the Palestinian cause will triumph!”

Six sleek, U.S.-made jet fighters slashed over the top of the ridgeline at fifteen hundred miles an hour, only a blur as they
blasted through the sky. Then they made a long, easy turn and came back much slower.

“Israeli fighters,” Farouk snarled. He watched them. “Now it will be harder than ever to get away.”

“Where can we go?” Tahia asked. “It is too far to walk back to Beirut.”

“Child, I have a surprise that not even Abdel knew about. Quickly now, follow me!”

TWENTY-FIVE

R
ufe Murphy came in at fence-top height with the captured YZ-24 chopper, took one round in the tail section and lifted up to
three hundred feet, where he could get the overall view. He had tried twice to get Cody on the radio but the sarge probably
had his receiver turned off.

Caine had done good work with his C-5, Rufe could see by the blackened and still-burning piles of rubble. The main building
looked much as it had yesterday. Cody had not wanted it blasted, or it would have been in ruins already. Rufe could see no
targets. Disappointed, he tried the radio again.

“Big man, this is the Rufe, on-site.”

“Hear you, buddy. Just wait and watch, we’re doing some mopping up here. Shouldn’t be too long.”

Rufe held the chopper in a low hover and checked the grounds around the house again, but he wasn’t sure who was who.

The radio rattled again.

He refined the frequency setting and the signal came in clearer.

“Chopper near the deck, do you need assistance? This is flight seven out of the Fox den doing a bit of recreational flying
this morning, several thousand above you.”

“You’d be them jet jockeys from down south. Looks like our team is winning. Too chopped up to know which is the good guys
just yet. Where are your slow cousins?”

“ETA is about four minutes. You be ready for them?”

“Double-check, Seven.”

Rufe worked the small radio on his lap.

“Groundlings, this is Rufe. Got your ears on down there? Jet set upstairs says the choppers will be here in about three and
a half minutes. Where you want them?”

“Rufe, you might not believe this,” crackled Cody’s dry response, “but the area is not secure yet. We need another ten. Coordinate
for me, will you, buddy? Out.”

Cody put down the radio. He stood in the main doorway of the mansion and checked the terrain. They had cleared the big palace.
The Marines who had been passengers were doing the clean sweep through brush and gardens inside the wall. So far they had
smoked out six healthy Arabs who had thrown away their weapons.

As soon as the buildings were secured, Sharon went to the rooms, where she had told the passengers to remain, and made a final
count. She had a hundred and twenty three. There were six U.S. Marines fighting with Cody. She had them all!

Near the back of the group of women someone screamed.

“It’s Mrs. Vereen!” a man shouted. “Come quickly!”

Damn, damn, damn! Sharon raged at herself as she ran. The passenger who was a nurse was beside Mrs. Vereen, who had fallen
and lay on the floor. Her head nestled in the nurse’s lap as both sat on the floor.

Mrs. Vereen gasped for breath and held her chest a moment, then she saw Sharon and smiled.

“Sharon, most interesting flight I ever took. You are wonderful.”

“Don’t talk, Mrs. Vereen. We have military helicopters coming here from Israel; they should be landing in ten minutes. Then
it’s only seventy-five miles to a good hospital in Haifa. You hang on!”

“Sounds like you’re giving me an order,” Mrs. Vereen smiled.

“I am, and don’t you dare disappoint me. We’ll have you out in the first chopper and I’ll send the nurse with you and they
will just get you fixed up in no time. Your color is looking better.”

Mrs. Vereen reached out and took Sharon’s hand. “Thank you, Sharon, for what you did for all of us.”

“Now you just hush. We’re going to have a party tonight. We’ll all come to your room at the hospital and make noise and be
obnoxious and everything, and you’ll be laughing and remembering all of this.”

The nurse put her hand on Sharon’s shoulder. Sharon looked over. The nurse shook her head sadly.

“Mrs. Vereen won’t be able to make it to the party, Sharon. I’m sorry.”

Sharon looked at her. The elderly face seemed the same, the lips slightly parted, a faint smile. But something had left the
eyes, that wonderful spark of life they had known only a few seconds before.

She lowered her head and cried.

The nurse had put a jacket over Mrs. Vereen’s face, and the people around her had unconsciously pulled back from her body.

Sharon turned from the scene. Her eyes found the co-pilot, and she scowled at him.

“Nobody said you had to be a hero, Jenks, but the danger is past, this is strictly routine business. I need you to divide
all of the people here into groups of ten. Let men and women be together if they want to be. Groups of ten and bring them
all down to the first floor, ten at a time, so we can get ready to load the choppers.”

She had checked with Cody. The plan was to bring in one of the Israeli Chinooks at a time and land right in front of the entrance
where a parking lot once had been planned. There would be eight or ten Israeli soldiers on board and they would deplane and
serve as security around the aircraft. When thirty former hostages were loaded on the craft, the security would pull back
inside the chopper and it would lift off.

She still carried the Uzi machine gun. She gripped it tightly, then fastened it across her back on the sling. She wasn’t about
to give it up to anybody.

She saw the small chopper swing over the compound again, drop down and investigate something on the ground, then swing up.
That would be Rufe, from what Cody had said; one of Cody’s Army. She heard other choppers then, and in the distance she saw
five big twin-top rotor Chinook helicopters swinging around and around in a holding pattern, about a half mile out.

Now all she needed was Cody’s go-ahead to bring in the big birds. She ran out the front door of the mansion looking for him.
One of the Marines on the steps said he last saw Cody and two of his Marine buddies running toward the far side of the estate.

She started that way, then heard the firing and ducked down and pulled the Uzi around where she could fire it. No hurry bringing
in those birds. The entire area had to be cleared and checked, safe for civilians.

Cody had been at the far end of the mansion when he saw movement to the left of the old generator shack. Something didn’t
seem right.

He saw two of the Marines and yelled at them to follow him, then he ran to the fringe of trees and looked down the slope.
At the back side it leveled out more and there had been a try at putting in a golf course below, but it never worked out.

There was a vehicle of some kind under effective camouflage netting at the bottom of the slope, almost to the outer wall.

He scanned the territory between the hidden vehicle and where he thought he saw movement. A man lifted up and darted past
an open spot to a stunted row of cedar trees that marched its way almost to the bottom of the hill.

Cody fired six shots into the row of trees where the figures had vanished. He had seen three more dash to the same place.
He ran forward to a better firing position, found his spot and dropped down in a prone firing position, looking down to see
a man already at the hidden rig, pulling off the protective covering: it was a four-man chopper!

Cody dropped to one knee and brought up the Uzi without the silencer, tracing a pattern of slugs around the bird’s engine.
Another man ripped off the last of the coverings. Two people ran from the end of the cedars. One looked like a woman. Before
he could lift his weapon to fire, Hawkeye’s machine gun chattered out a ten-round welcome.

The woman went down.

For a moment the man hesitated, then he dodged down beside her, behind a small hump that hid them both.

Tahia looked at the blood on her blouse.

“I am not hit! As Allah is my witness I am strong and can continue!” She felt hot tears in her eyes. She could not keep up
the lie. “Yes, Farouk, I am hit. Badly, I fear. I—I can’t get to the helicopter, but you must. Go! Go now while there is still
time!”

“How can I leave you, Tahia? They will capture you, humiliate you.”

“Go, Farouk! You had sense enough to leave your own brother behind in Athens when he would have compromised the mission. You
must do the same thing now. I’m hit too bad to get to the helicopter, let alone live long enough to get to a doctor. Go, now!”
She could barely force out the words, the pain hurt so.

Farouk looked at her, then nodded, saying nothing. He left her an SMG he had carried and two extra clips. Then he turned and
darted toward the chopper.

One of the men he had sent ahead had the engine started and the rotors spinning.

Tahia watched as he dodged, darted, and stumbled his way to the copier. He got through the rifle fire, dove in the chopper
door, moved over to the pilots seat and gunned the engine. He had to wait for the engine to become fully warmed up before
he could lift off.