“Ahead of us,” he gestured. “See there? There’s a hill and the road turns. If we can find a spot around that hill it could be perfect for us. We’ll park the truck alongside the fence and—”
“It may be electrified.”
“Could be, but I doubt it. Not right now. The generator station was one of the primary targets,” he reminded her. “It takes a lot of juice to keep—”
A jeep with a flashing red light approached from the other direction, a Russian soldier waving at them to stop. “Do it,” Steve told her. He withdrew the pistol from its holster and kept it at the ready as Tamara slowed. The Russian called to them, excitement in his voice.
“Captain!” he shouted above the engines. “Are you armed?”
Tamara hesitated and Steve nudged her. “Yes, Sergeant. What’s wrong?”
“We have reports that the Jews may be sending paratroopers,” the soldier called back. “There were some Arabs to the south of here who reported parachutes.”
Tamara went rigid but kept her voice unchanged. “The Arabs are always seeing paratroopers,” she said sarcastically. “Usually under their bed. Any excuse to hold us to protect them.”
The soldier agreed and shrugged. “But one never knows. Please be alert, Captain.” He waved and the jeep sped away.
“Close,” Steve breathed softly.
Tamara rested her head for a moment against the wheel. “One could build up a case of nerves like this,” she said after a while.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
They drove around the turn. He was right. The hill shielded them from the glow of fires still burning in all directions. “Against the fence, quickly,” he urged.
She cut off the road to the fence, killed the lights, her hands tight on the wheel. “Now what?”
He ran to the back of the truck, withdrew a length of cable, and tossed it against the fence. It fell to the ground harmlessly. “It’s not hot, anyway,” he said. “One for our side.”
“We just can’t go over the fence and leave the truck here,” she said. “It would be a dead giveaway.”
“We don’t need the truck.” He studied the road. “The ditch there is pretty steep. Drive the truck toward it. Can you get out before it goes off the road?”
“You ask that of a woman driver?” she smiled.
She climbed back into the truck cab, took off with a clashing of gears. She headed for the other side of the road. He saw the door open and she leaped from the truck, rolling over easily as she struck the ground. In a single flowing motion she was on her feet and back at his side. Behind her the truck rammed into the ditch and slowly toppled to its side, the upper wheels spinning slowly. “Let’s make it fast,” Steve urged.
“The fence,” she said, with sudden realization. “It’s at least fifteen feet with barbed wire. How—?”
“See those bushes over there? Grab as many as you can and bring them here.” He turned to the fence, knelt down, and braced himself. He hooked two fingers of his bionics hand in the thick crosswire and then jerked hard. The fence ripped open across a span of three feet. He tore loose another section, this time raking his hand downward. He pushed in to bend the fence out of the way, a form of jagged flap that cleared the way for them. He sent Tamara through the fence, went through himself, and turned to bend the wire roughly back in place. They stacked the bushes against the fence to conceal the torn wire.
“Keep moving. Alongside the runway, see? That drainage ditch. If we can get in there and stay low we can keep out of sight. Work our way closer to the—”
He froze as sirens wailed. They looked at one another. “It could be an all-clear signal,” he said.
Tamara shook her head. “Look.” In the distance, near the pilots’ quarters, lights were coming on, bright as day. They could see small figures moving quickly toward jeeps and trucks, turning on headlights.
“Move!” he snapped. They ran for the drainage ditch, dropped into its concealing space.
“Goddammit, we’re like two rabbits out here. They’ll flush us for sure. It looks like they figure that paratrooper report was true—”
She grasped his shoulder, pushing him down. Jeeps were racing down the runway, one vehicle stopping every thousand feet, the men climbing out with guns at the ready.
“Great,” Steve said, “they’ve got dogs with them.” They had the guns out, safety pins off. Within minutes one jeepload was near them, and they heard the sudden frantic barking of dogs that apparently had picked up their scent from their discovered chutes. Tamara’s gun came up slowly. Steve knocked it down. “Don’t shoot. There’s no possible way we can hold them off. And there’s more where these came from.”
She looked at him with an incredulous expression on her face. “Are you mad? Do you know what they’ll do to us? Especially to me?” She moved her eyes suddenly, then turned as the growling animals began to move in on them. “I’m Jewish and I’m a woman—their favorite combination.”
“They don’t know what you are.”
“You’re a fool,” she retorted. “Do you think they have no intelligence? What about the attack tonight? When those animals are through with me,” she gestured at the guards moving closer, “they will turn me over to the Arabs. No, thank you. I’d rather—” She screamed as a huge dog threw himself down from the embankment. At the same moment her gun sounded—three times. The animal fell, twitching and snarling at their feet. Seconds later, a German shepherd leaped, fangs bared. Steve reacted by instinct, firing from point-blank range. He staggered backward as the dog, its head blown open, crashed against him.
The animals stopped as a voice roared out a command in Russian. A searchlight blazed into the ditch. Steve could barely make out men behind the light, knew guns were trained on them.
A voice called in Russian. “Drop your weapons and come out with your hands in the air.”
Tamara clawed her way from the ditch, began to bring up her gun. Steve lunged at her, knocked the gun flying from her hand. She turned a withering look on him, tried to move forward. He remembered to use his right hand as his fist went against her jaw.
CHAPTER 23
Two of their Arab guards stood in a far corner of the room, submachine guns leveled at Steve and Tamara. Across from them, standing easily with his own submachine gun, was a burly Russian sergeant. There were four more Arabs, each loosely holding his automatic weapon, ignoring Steve and the others, suggestively eyeing a stony-faced Tamara. She bore their innuendos with a fatalistic stoicism, and a burning anger at Steve for not allowing her to choose the option of death over the known consequences of capture. The Arabs she regarded as beasts of the lowest sort; she knew first hand about their abuses. She had long been a soldier in the Israeli army. Jews had been captured before by the enemy. Far better, she felt, to die quick and clean than to suffer what she was certain must come: interrogation by the Russians. Then to be used by whatever Russians wanted her. It depended on the officers involved. Some were decent, others uncaring. And ultimately to be turned over to that wolf pack. Israeli girls had been captured before. Those who were rescued and managed to survive were usually completely out of their minds—their only means of merciful escape. And it happened not only to the women. Young Israeli males taken prisoner by the Arabs had also been subjected to perverse assaults. Uppermost in her mind was finding a means of killing herself . . .
Steve wasn’t sure, but he supposed he had reacted instinctively in deciding to surrender and hope somehow to find a way out rather than end it all for both of them by resisting. He cared very much that Tamara have that chance—and, more surprising, he obviously now had the same concern for himself. He’d come a long way since that day when he had tried to destroy himself. For all his unusual assets as a cyborg, he was very much a man, with an ordinary, overwhelming drive for survival.
Still, a man could bear only so much and Steve knew he had to try something. He decided on the needle.
“You’re supposed to be a man,” he said to the Russian. “A membe
r of the finest army in the world. A Russian soldier. If you are a man, if these characters don’t rule you, call them off the girl.”
No answer came immediately, but it was clear the Russian sergeant was embarrassed, that he had little stomach for his Arab allies. He was a young man, free from the horrors his elder generation had known from the Germans. And despite what had happened through political command in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere, Russian troops—under strict orders from their commanders—had conducted themselves with restraint. There was more involved, Steve realized. The Russian sergeant was in a room with six Arabs armed as heavily as himself. They had just taken another humiliating beating at the hands of the Israelis, and the Arabs were either convinced, or at least wanted to believe, that these two were Jewish spies. Any depravity committed against them was a justifiable measure of revenge for the attack, the results of which were still evident in huge fires and clouds of smoke, in wreckage, in intermittent explosions as fuel and warheads went off in shuddering blasts. The Arabs could just as easily turn, with provocation, on the Russian as on the two prisoners. Steve would have to prod this man to take the risk of restraining the Arabs, who now were actually so close to Tamara that they were brushing against her, laughing and clearly preparing to be even more direct in their attentions. If he clashed with them, it might also give Steve and Tamara a remote chance for escape.
The sergeant waited for his superiors to arrive. They would conduct the interrogation of the prisoners. They might do so in this room or remove them elsewhere. High command might want to get into the act, but only if the Russians believed the man and woman were something other than saboteurs dropped by parachute to finish the job started by the air strike. Well, to hell with that for the moment. What mattered was the time between now and when the officers would show up. No doubt they’d be heavily armed and might be accompanied by troops, if they believed the reports of paratroopers.
Again Steve turned to the sergeant, again he questioned his courage as a Russian soldier. It began to have its effect; not only Steve’s words but also the looks of disgust the Arabs gave the sergeant for even talking to Steve—for permitting the Jew to speak without being hammered to the floor. Slowly the Russian sergeant moved across the room, stood close to the Arabs and ordered them to move away from the woman. They turned to stare at him with open contempt. Finally the leader of the Arabs answered by putting his hand on Tamara’s breast. As he turned toward the Russian, he spat on the soldier’s boots. Steve watched the sergeant. He started to speak, to goad him further. It wasn’t necessary.
The sergeant went white. He stepped forward, and his knee came up into the groin of the other man. The Arab gasped as he doubled over. He was still falling as the Russian half turned to slam the butt end of the submachine gun into his face. They heard the bones snap. No one in the room moved. Then came a sharp metallic click as the sergeant slipped the safety from his weapon. He called to the others to drag their comrade away from the woman. Whether they understood the language or not there was no mistaking the fury on the sergeant’s face, and instant death in the muzzle of his weapon. The Arabs dragged their leader to the far wall, where they clustered in a group.
Was this his chance? Steve ran through all the moves open to him; decided against sudden action. Only one man of the seven in the room with them was disabled. Five murderous Arabs and a touchy, fast, capable Russian on the other side of the room with a submachine gun. The other Russians might show at any moment. He would have to kill, disable, or hold under a gun the six men now intently watching him—without having Tamara killed in the process.
The door opened. A Soviet colonel stood in the entrance, studying the scene. Behind him were two younger officers, likely his guard. Steve strained to see if there were more, but through the doorway he made out only a single jeep. That made sense. With the attack having torn up the base, there wouldn’t be that many men available for guard processions. Most likely many of the soldiers were also moving out from the perimeters in search of other men who’d been dropped by parachute. But that made ten men in the room with himself and Tamara. One half-dead Arab, five very live Arabs, and the four Russians.
The colonel came in slowly, his men standing behind and to the side. The colonel pointed to the Arab doubled over, a bloody mess, and asked what had happened. He glanced at Steve, believing him responsible. The sergeant stood stiffly, explaining what had happened.
“Why didn’t you kill him, then?” The colonel looked at the Arabs, spoke angrily to them in their language. Two remained, the other four left.
The colonel sat on the edge of a low table. Steve looked around the room. They’d left the door open. The two young officers were backed against a wall, observing. The two Arabs remained where they were, their guns still at the ready. The sergeant stood to the side, uninvolved now except as a further protection for the colonel. Tamara had sagged back against the wall, refusing to sit.
“What is your name?”
“Major Alexei Kazantsev, sir. From the 455th Electronics Support Detachment.” He gestured at Tamara. “She is Captain Nina Tsfasman, also of the 455th. I do not understand, sir, what this is all about.”
“We really do not have that much time to waste.” He almost sounded regretful. “If you insist on a charade . . .” He shrugged. “Either way you will not leave this”—he paused and grimaced—“beautiful country of Afsir alive. But you have a choice. We will put you both before a firing squad or we will make you available to the Arabs.” Without turning he extended his hand to the Russian sergeant. “Papers,” he said.
They were put into his hand at once. “Everything is in order here. A beautiful job, but then the Jews were always superb at forgery. Now”—his voice lost all pretense—“I will save all of us time and, hopefully, pain. It’s pure bad luck for you there is no Colonel Popovich anywhere on this base. Certainly, though, a reasonable name to use on the road guard. And the name you gave the road guard, despite these excellent documents, does not happen to be on any of our records here. More bad luck, Major Kazantsev, or whoever you are.”
He studied Steve and Tamara carefully and folded his hands in his lap. “What are your real names and where are you from?”
Steve didn’t answer. There wasn’t much use, really. Not questions like that, anyway. He’d answer those that might buy them what he needed most of all. Time.
The Russian officer waited several seconds, then turned to his two younger officers. Gloves came out of pockets. As the two Russians slipped them on, the colonel turned again to Steve. “As you must suspect, we found your chutes south of the base. A low-altitude drop, I assume.”
Stall, Steve told himself. Don’t get him too riled too quickly. Only need another ten minutes or so . . . “That’s right, Colonel.”
The colonel nodded. “Good. You have found your tongue. How many were you?”
“A small force, Colonel.”
“How many?”
“About thirty.”
“What was your purpose here?”
“That should be obvious, Colonel. The missile radar and computers.”
“Oh? Why so obvious?”
“Surely you know we’re going to have to attack across the Suez. Tonight proved we can handle your new missiles without too much trouble.”
No reaction. Steve waited.
“Then why would you need to send in people on the ground?”
“Insurance.”
“Insurance?”
“Of course. When we commit it’s got to be all the way. We’ll send in people on the ground to—Colonel, I’m not telling you a thing you haven’t figured out already. When we go across the Suez the next time we’re not stopping until we’re in Cairo. We both know that. So it’s worth the extra effort to be sure we knock out your computers. Without them the missiles are useless.”
“How did you two get into this base?”
“You mean through the guards?”
The Russian nodded.
“We b
oth seem to make mistakes—I need to learn to dig deeper holes, and our intelligence people need a better checking system for phony Russian names. On your side, you could do with better internal security.” He paused and the colonel waited, studying him carefully. So far, so good. The clock is moving. Keep it going . . . “We had a group of Arabs who work inside this base set up to meet us when we came down. We—”
“You have names, I suppose?”
“I only knew one of them by name. Hamad. He’s a truck driver. He picked us up on the road south of here. We used his papers to get through the—”
“Where are your Arab friends now?”
Steve shrugged. “I don’t know. We weren’t briefed on what they would do after we took over the truck.”
The colonel tapped the papers against the desk. “Where are your explosive supplies?”
“Our what?” Keep it casual. He’s on to you . . .
The colonel stood, his patience gone. “You are not a very convincing liar,” he said. “You, or part of your group, killed the Arabs on the truck. Our dogs found them quickly. They are good at the blood scent. Also, you did not come here to blow up any computers or radar or anything else. You were picked up on the airfield with nothing on your person. The area has been searched and you left nothing anywhere. Why are you here?”
It was time to go into his act. He asked the colonel to wait please before he did anything drastic. He clasped his hands in fear, and the Russians saw nothing unusual in the finger-clenching movement during which Steve twisted the middle finger of his left hand and locked the finger rigidly in place. He worked to release a plastiskin plug in his left wrist. When the time came he’d have to get into there quickly. He—
The larger of the two Russian officers that had come into the room with the colonel walked toward him, pulling his gloves tighter. Behind him Steve heard the colonel’s voice. “He hates Jews almost as much as the Arabs do. I’m afraid he’s going to enjoy this. Igor, don’t kill him, there are still important questions to be answered.”
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