By the Rivers of Babylon

by Nelson DeMille

  Rish and Hamadi spurred their remaining troops on. They converged on the Concorde as the Israelis fell back toward it. The last few Molotov cocktails were ignited and thrown. The Israelis began using the last reserves of their ammunition that they had hoarded for the final face-to-face confrontations, and their rate of fire picked up.

  The Ashbals, who had suffered so many dead and wounded already, had been moving ahead reluctantly. Each new Ashbal casualty brought general cursing and wailing. They had been caught in an understandable conflict between wanting to go in and finish the job, and lying back and hoping it would resolve itself without their having to become casualties and miss out on the inevitable rape and massacre. Now the arrival of the Israeli Air Force had suddenly altered the situation. They had to capture at least some Israelis alive, and they had to do it fast if they were to have hostages to use as bargaining points.

  They fired at the Concorde when the landing lights went on, but Rish did not want a fuel explosion to kill the Israelis, and he ordered the firing on the Concorde to be directed only at the flight deck. In the first illumination of the early dawn light, the outline of the long craft could be discerned whenever the wind dropped.

  After the explosion overhead, a few pieces of the Lear had fallen to the ground, and the Ashbals knew they had not much more time. Ironically, the safest place to be when the jets came was as close to the Israelis as possible. Preferably right in the Concorde with them as hostages. It was going to be a close race. A matter of minutes either way would decide it.

  The Foreign Minister led his group back to the Concorde. They carried the body of Colonel Thomas Richardson, United States Air Force. They had looked for McClure but could not find him. The Foreign Minister spoke with Rabbi Levin, who reported what had happened in the hut. They both decided that the only proper course of action was to place the remaining men and women from the hut under restraint and the seven unwounded ones, including Leiber, were ordered into the rear baggage compartment.

  Uri Rubin’s body was carried out of the hut by the two men of the Masada Defense League and placed in a trench that had been dug for that purpose.

  Ibrahim Arif carried the body of Abdel Jabari cradled in his arms like a child. He staggered under the weight and wove around with tears blinding his eyes. He refused to let anyone bury the body.

  Miriam Bernstein crouched on the wing and saw the body of her friend in Arif’s arms. Tears welled up in her eyes. She stood watching as the men argued over the fate of the corpse. “Arif,” she shouted.

  The big man looked up. “Arif, I loved him as you loved him. But he is dead and he must he put in the ground. Both our religions make that imperative. Please understand. Time is running out. Please do as they say.”

  Arif looked up and tried to speak but could not get his voice under control. Finally, he took a deep breath and called out. “He loved you—” He turned quickly and ran as best he could under the weight. He reached the slit trench and looked at Uri Rubin lying at the bottom of it. He looked into Jabari’s open eyes. Well, good-bye, old friend. He gently lowered his friend atop the body of Uri Rubin and pushed some dirt over them both. Just then, two Israelis with rifles ran up and squeezed into the narrow trench. They felt, then saw the bodies under their feet but did not want to give up the only cover for some distance around because of it. They began firing out into the dust. One of them turned to Arif. “If you don’t have a weapon, you’d better fall back. They’re closing in.”

  Arif nodded and turned his steps back toward the Concorde. Life, he reflected, was made up of equal parts of idiocy, fear, irony, and pain. He envied Abdel his cool gardens, flowing wine, and virgins.

  Laskov’s copilot, Danny Lavon, spotted the kerosene fires first. The small points of light formed a more or less oblong shape around the points of the Concorde’s landing lights. Streams of green tracer rounds streaked in from east to west toward the Concorde. A very few tracer rounds moved the opposite way. From time to time, a particularly large billow of dust would obscure the light sources below. From his altitude, Lavon could see the sun above the peaks of the Zagros Mountains, but the direct rays had not yet touched Babylon. The refracted rays would have brought on first light by now, but the sand and dust looked too thick to be penetrated. He called Laskov on the intercom. “Fires at one o’clock, skipper. At the small bend in the river. We’re almost overhead.”

  “Roger. I see it.” Laskov ordered the squadron to make a close dry run at the target.

  The twelve F-14’s came down in tandem. They swooped out of the sky like the big birds of prey that they were. They came screaming in at low level out of the western desert and banked sharply right. Laskov came in first. He let his computer make the first run to make sure he didn’t lead his squadron into an obscured piece of terrain. He cleared the hilltop by less than twenty meters and the Concorde by even less than that. The thunder of the twelve F-14’s as they came in, one after the other, was deafening and frightening. The already unsettled dust rose up in huge clouds, and the earth beneath the Concorde shook.

  Each fighter came down in the same fashion, its computer and sensing devices following the terrain of the ground, keeping the awesome jets close to the earth. Instinctively, everyone on the hill threw themselves down or ducked as the big fighters blotted out all visual and auditory senses.

  After the pass, Laskov ordered half of his squadron south to stand by and be prepared to protect the C-130’s and the intended landing strips with fire if neeessary. He doubted if there were any Ashbals there, but that was the procedure.

  Hausner knelt on one knee and helped Burg up. “They almost took the pipe out of your mouth, Isaac. All right, this is where we part company, my friend. You go back and take charge of the aircraft and the people on it. I’m going to take charge of the delaying action.”

  “If I thought I had the time to argue with you, I would. Good-bye, Jacob. Good luck.” He slapped Hausner on the back and ran off.

  Hausner could hear the Ashbals approaching his command post knoll from the east. There were also noises coming from the south as the Ashbal line swung around in an arc. Hausner took a .22 pistol, knelt, and waited.

  Out of the dust came Marcus and Alpern. Hausner called out to them, and they ran over to him. “Give me one AK-47 and all of your ammunition. I’ll be able to delay them from the cover of this knoll. You get back to the Concorde on the double and help organize a defense there. Use the armor mesh and make the earth ramp and the hut your strongpoints. We should have dug secondary defenses around the craft, but there’s no use thinking about that now. All right, you’ll take your orders from Burg. No arguing. Do it.”

  They passed him one rifle and two half-filled magazines. Hausner pulled the bent standard from the ground with the T-shirt that showed the Tel Aviv waterfront and passed it to Alpern. “A souvenir, Sam. Always wear it when you’re telling your grandchildren this story. They’ll think you’re a real moron.”

  Alpern smiled and took the banner. Both men moved off with only a half wave as a good-bye.

  Hausner got himself into position behind the knoll. He fired a few tentative rounds and drew a few rounds of return fire.

  Hausner was as happy to see Laskov and his F-14’s as he had been to see anything else in his life. But the reality of the situation was that it was too late. Jaffe had reported to him about the C-130’s and the commandos on the way, but even if they landed right then, it would he too late. They would have to land on the mud flats, unload, inflate rafts, and cross the Euphrates. If, instead, they landed on the road and their rollout ended where the Concorde had gone off the road, then they would still be almost a kilometer away. And as yet he didn’t hear the heavy droning of the four-engine propeller craft.

  Paratroopers might have saved them, but that was suicidal in this darkness and dust; the terrain was terrible, and half of them would land in the river. No, it was a good show of force, but it didn’t change much. In fact, it made it worse. Before, the Ashbals were intent on mass
acre, and that at least would have ended the whole affair. Now they would have to take hostages in order to save themselves. After they got hostages, the whole affair would just be beginning. Hausner hoped that Laskov would foresee this and know when they were finished and would not hesitate to napalm the entire hill. If nothing else worthwhile came out of this, at least they would get Rish—and Hamadi, who Hausner thought might be a far more cunning adversary in the future.

  In his mind, Hausner made up a long good-bye to Miriam. He was torn between going back to the Concorde to deliver it or staying there, where at least his emotions, if nothing else, were safe.

  From his position under the front nose wheel, Peter Kahn had listened to everything that was happening as he worked on the APU. He heard the shouting and the hurried footsteps running toward the aircraft. He saw some people without weapons climbing the earth ramp up to the Concorde’s wing. In the distance he could see others kneeling and firing at muzzle flashes. Firing holes had been knocked into the walls of the mud hut. A few men and women took up shooting positions around the earth ramp, and one girl took cover behind his little earth platform. The end was coming one way or the other, but still he continued to labor on the APU.

  Suddenly, he rolled off his earth mound under the wheel well, stepped over the prone girl with the rifle, and wiped his hands and face. He walked quickly to the ramp and climbed it, along with a few other fatigued and tattered-looking people. On the wing, Miriam Bernstein took his arm. “Have you seen Jacob Hausner?”

  “No, Mrs. Bernstein. I’ve been under the front wheel. Actually, I’m looking for him myself.” He could see that some of the armor mesh that had been on the perimeter was being taken into the aircraft. It was being pressed against the inside of the hull and windows. He liked to see resourcefulness and good thinking right up until the last minute. It was a damned good try if nothing else. “Look, Mrs. Bernstein, you’d better get inside the craft. We’re drawing fire here.” He disengaged himself from her and walked over to Burg, who was standing at the farthest point of the starboard wing tip. A half-dozen men and women were lying prone on the wing near him and firing out into the darkness.

  It had become apparent to Burg and others that the Ashbals did not want to fire at the wings and take a chance on blowing up the aircraft and their potential hostages. The wings had become a relatively safe perch from which to deliver fire.

  Kahn tapped Burg on the shoulder. “Excuse me.”

  Burg spun around. “Oh. Hello, Kahn. Nice try with the APU son.”

  “Right, sir. That’s what I want to talk to you . . . or Mr. Hausner . . . about.”

  “Talk to me, son. Hausner’s still out there.” He pointed.

  “Yes, sir. Well, I think I’ve fixed it.”

  “Fixed . . .?” Burg suddenly burst out with an involuntary laugh. “What? Who gives a damn, son? Get inside the aircraft and keep your head down.”

  Kahn stood fast. “I don’t think you understand, sir. They’re not going to reach us in time. We can—”

  A loud explosion shook them off their feet. An F-14 streaked by overhead. Another F-14 came in with its 20mm cannon blazing. A third came in off the Euphrates and released air-to-surface rockets over the top of the Concorde. The rockets left a fiery trail overhead and crashed out by the old trenches. Another F-14 released a laser-guided SMART bomb which crashed into the west slope and blew apart the millennia-old crust of earth, sending ancient brick flying into the air and tons of earth careening down the steep glacis, over the bank, and into the river, taking a few Ashbals with it.

  The F-14’s went through their repertory. The earth shook and quaked, and shock waves filled the air as tons of ordnance detonated on the old citadel that, for over a thousand years, had guarded the northern approaches to Babylon, and for over two thousand years had guarded nothing at all.

  The earth split and heaved and threw up sand and clay hundreds of meters into the air. Orange billows burned up the dust and man-made shock waves collided with the ancient Sherji. Rockets’ red trails slashed across the sky like the shooting stars that had so fascinated the ancient Babylonian astrologers. The F-14’s put on a show the likes of which Babylon had never seen. But it was just that. A show. Laskov did not dare deliver any of the ordnance close enough to he effective. Still, it kept heads down and slowed the pace of the ground action. The idea was to buy time. Time for the commandos to arrive. Time.

  Burg lay where he had fallen. “What?” he shouted over the explosions. “What?”

  “I think we can start the APU and turn over the engines,” shouted Kahn.

  “So what? What the hell difference does that make? We don’t want to run the air conditioning, Kahn.”

  “We can get the hell out of here! That’s so what!”

  “Are you crazy?”

  A rocket fell short and plowed into the earth near the tail and blew up, sending clods of earth and shrapnel into the Concorde.

  Kahn picked up his head. “No, I’m not. We can move this big bird.”

  “Move it where?”

  “Who gives a damn where? Just move it the hell out of here. Any place.”

  Burg looked behind him. He hoped to see Hausner coming up the earth ramp with that by now famous mixture of nonchalance and menace. But only Miriam Bernstein was there, looking out into the fiery night. He wanted to shout to her, but she would not have heard. He turned back to Kahn. “Tell the captain to try to start his engines.”

  Kahn jumped up before Burg could add any restrictions to his order and dashed for the emergency door. He barreled into the aircraft and fought his way to the flight deck. “David!”

  Becker was speaking to Laskov on the radio and waved to Kahn to be quiet.

  “David!”

  Becker had taken an American Air Force course in calling and adjusting air strikes, and it was proving very profitable at the moment. He could not see much from the flight deck, but he was trying to make himself useful. And, he had to admit, he was having a pretty good time. “All right, Gabriel. If you have any SMART bombs left, now’s the time to bring them in. Make one run along the river bank at the base of the slope in case we missed anyone down there. We may still try to make a run for it that way, and I want the bank cleared. Put another to my right front, about two hundred meters out. I’m going to start blinking my taxi lights now.”

  “Roger the river, 02, but negative outside your window. Too close.”

  Kahn was shaking Becker by the shoulder. He was shouting in English, their native tongue. “Didn’t you hear me, goddamn it? The fucking APU is fixed.” He liked the American idiom and couldn’t reproduce it in Hebrew. “Get this big-assed mother-fucking bird fired up and let’s haul ass out of this shithole!”

  Becker was speechless for only a split second. “Fixed?”

  “Fixed. Fixed.” Maybe, thought Kahn.

  Becker’s fingers went to the APU ignition switch. He didn’t believe there was enough battery charge left to turn the APU over, but it didn’t hurt to try. He hit the switch and looked at the instruments. He tried to listen above the wind and explosions that poured into the cockpit through the shattered plexiglas. The APU was definitely turning over, but it wouldn’t ignite. Becker turned off the aircraft lights. Did the batteries have enough remaining power to keep motorizing the APU until the fuel ignited? Without a word between them, Becker and Kahn watched the APU temperature gauge. Their eyes searched for any hint of motion from the needle that would indicate the beginnings of a successful start. The white needle continued to sit rigidly on the bottom mark of the temperature gauge. Becker tried the familiar “Just this once, God. Just this once.” But nothing happened.

  34

  The two huge C-130 cargo craft came in low over the western desert. They had left Israel well before the F-14’s, but at a top speed of only 585 kilometers per hour, the flight had taken nearly two hours.

  The King of Jordan had quickly given permission to use Jordan’s northern air corridor to the Iraq border. It was not u
ntil the Baghdad government was presented with the fait accompli of the F-14’s already in Iraq and the C-130’s approaching their border that they reluctantly agreed to let the unarmed cargo craft in. The alternative was to refuse the C-130’s entry and to order the F-14’s out, which would have necessitated an embarrassing explanation of how they had reached so deep into Iraq in the first place.

  After a lot of ominous pronouncements had traveled over the circuitous telephone lines, Baghdad had agreed with Jerusalem that it was a joint operation, and the Israeli Prime Minister and the Iraqi President had prepared a joint news release to that effect. To give credibility to that news release, Baghdad sent a small river unit of the Iraqi Army from Hashimiyah up the Euphrates and ordered the Hillah garrison to stand by, although both governments knew that the unreliable troops were in fact not standing by but standing down. It was felt that many of the troops were in the pay of Ahmed Rish, and their Iraqi officers kept a very close watch over them. Both governments knew that the river unit from Hashimiyah would not make it to Babylon in time to participate in the operation, but the gesture of support was important.

  Other Iraqi Army officers from Hillah, plus civil servants and personnel from the small Hillah airstrip, went by motor vehicle north toward Babylon. At a spot somewhat south of where the Concorde had touched down, they secured the Hillah-Baghdad road and set out flares to mark it in the dust-swept dawn. Another contingent crossed the Euphrates by motor launch to mark off a landing strip with flares on the mud flats. Neither action was absolutely necessary to land the C-130’s, but it cut down considerably on the risks involved in the procedure.

  The Iraqis had made their contribution and the Baghdad government settled back to watch the outcome. An Israeli military disaster wouldn’t be viewed as a tragedy in some Iraqi circles, while a successful operation would obviously be the result of the Iraqi participation. Baghdad could not lose. They might come in for a lot of censure from Palestinian groups and perhaps some Arab governments, but the times were such that many Arab governments would officially applaud the move on humanitarian grounds, and Baghdad would reap some goodwill from the West—goodwill that could be turned into something more concrete at a later date. On balance, it seemed the thing to do—especially since Israel had already done so much that was irreversible.