Keepers of the Gate - [Kamal & Barnea 04]

by By Jon Land

  “You’ve got to draw the Gatekeepers’ fire, try to draw them out into the open,” Ben told Russett.

  Russett looked at him, as bullets clanged off the loader’s steel skin. “What about you?”

  “Let me have one of those,” Ben said, gesturing toward the second assault rifle Russett wore over his shoulder.

  Russett gave it to Ben and watched him handle it uneasily, trying to gauge its weight and balance.

  “Ever fire one of those before?” Russett asked.

  “On the police range once.”

  “I’ll go up there instead of you,” Mundt offered, reaching for the assault rifle.

  Ben pulled it back. “No,” he said, then smiled slightly. “We need someone who’s a better shot than I am to draw their fire.”

  Ben waited for Mundt and Russett to rush from the cover of the loader to the castle wall before he followed the path of Russett’s four remaining guards up the stone steps to the ancient battlements. Mundt and Russett clacked off shots as they ran, drawing all the enemy fire to themselves and clearing Ben’s path.

  He stumbled twice on the steps and fell the second time. Ended up crawling to the top of the wall on all fours. Once there, Ben chose a slot in the battlement five yards from the nearest man and studied the way that guard had extended his rifle barrel through the opening in the castle wall. Ben balanced the weight of his weapon comfortably on the sill and considered the effects of the gun’s kick once he began firing. But he seemed to remember the M-16 he had fired on a police range in Detroit had barely no kick at all.

  Lowering himself to more easily peer through the foot-square slat, Ben waited for the enemy to begin their attack.

  * * * *

  D

  on’t move,” Paul Hessler whispered, trying to hold Danielle still.

  “We’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to help you escape.” She tried to sit up and something that felt like jagged teeth sank into her midsection. The pain stole her breath-and sent a flash exploding before her eyes.

  “Easy,” Paul Hessler soothed. “Easy now.”

  Danielle now felt a warmth spreading through her shirt and soaking her pants. “I’ve been ... shot.”

  “You’re going to be all right.”

  “Got to, got to get you out of here.”

  “Hand me your gun.”

  Danielle dropped it. The old man picked it up, held it taut.

  “You’re going to have to kill them,” she managed, trying to swallow.

  Paul Hessler cradled her against him, recalling how Danielle’s father had carried him out of the Sinai Desert. He remembered confessing the truth, wanting to die as Piotr Dudek, the man he really was.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “I’ve done it before.”

  * * * *

  F

  rom his position high on the castle wall, Ben had a bird’s-eye view of all the territory in front of him through the night. Though he could not see Mundt and Russett from this vantage point, he heard their fire resume as soon as the Gatekeepers—he counted eight of them— began their deliberate advance on the castle. Although Mundt and Russett’s bullets scored no hits, they accomplished the desired effect of concentrating the enemy’s efforts on them for now, providing Ben and the other riflemen with what they needed: a clear field of fire from the battlements.

  He waited for Russett’s professionals to start shooting before he followed suit, the attackers almost to the fence fifty feet from the castle wall. Ben squeezed one eye closed, aimed as best as he could through the barrel-mounted sight, and began firing one shot after another. The sounds stung his ears, quickly lost amidst the cadence of the other shots reverberating around him.

  Ben watched the attackers being cut down in their tracks, crumbling or twisting to the ground. A few scrambled for cover until more bullets pummeled them.

  Ben kept firing at the attackers who had escaped the initial surprise barrage. The farther away they drew, the more random and less focused his aim became. He wished he had taken Colonel al-Asi up on his offer of a lesson at the shooting range. Ben knew he was running dangerously low on ammo and began to take more disciplined shots.

  He heard the spent jackets clacking metallically against the rebuilt wall, spilling off the ledge and pooling on the level below. His mind flashed back to the same sound clicking in his ears eight years ago when he pumped round after round into the madman who had just slain his family. Standing there in the upstairs hall of his home as the shells clamored down the stairs, he couldn’t save his wife and children.

  But he could save Danielle and their baby here tonight.

  Ben snapped a fresh clip home and fell into a strange, easy rhythm. His targets seemed to brighten before him as he tightened his gaze upon them. He barely felt himself pull the trigger, the slight recoil greeted with a reassurance of another bullet launched on line. Alongside him, bursts from the rest of Russett’s guards came nonstop, leaving a tinny echo bouncing about the pit of his skull. Ben’s neck ached, but he refused to relax his aim through the rifle’s bore-mounted sight.

  We can do this, We can win. ...

  Then he heard a whoooosh like the sound of a firecracker jetting into the air. A streak of light flashed out of the treeline for the castle, surging over the steel security fence.

  A rocket! It had to be a rocket!

  Ben ducked an instant before impact well down the wall to his right. The ancient stone and mortar blew inward, collapsing the entire section of the wall.

  Another rocket exploded out from the woods, and Ben dropped back from the wall and curled into a ball. The explosion stung his ears, left them ringing as dust and debris rained down upon him. He plopped down to the next level and heard himself screaming until the third rocket drowned the sound out, ripping apart the battlement directly over him. He looked up to see Russett’s guards all gone, lost to the hot smoking debris. Ben started to raise his head and fresh automatic fire chewed up what little cover remained above him.

  His primary instructor at the police academy had been a marine combat vet who droned on in a southern drawl about what it was like to be caught in a firefight. Something that couldn’t be taught, had to be lived through to understand.

  Ben understood now, and the truth was even the marine vet’s painful remembrances hadn’t done this dread feeling justice. Ben felt his very insides were coming unglued, his guts spasming and seizing up into a tight, twisted mass. He clamped his hands over his ears as chunks of Paul Hessler’s reconstructed castle wall smacked and stung him. Covered his head with his elbows and felt arrowhead-sized shards spear his flesh. He could smell his own blood, but clung to his sanity with the realization that he hadn’t been hit badly yet.

  Not that it mattered, because Ben realized that there was no way now to stop the Gatekeepers’ advance on the castle, or their pursuit of the man they believed to be Karl Mundt. He thought of Danielle and pried a hand from his head to feel beneath him for his rifle. Fire the bullets he had left and buy her as much time as he could, if nothing else.

  The rifle was gone. He must have knocked it aside off the ledge where it had tumbled to the dark chalky ground below. Still pressed tight against the stone ledge, Ben looked back down into the courtyard in search of his rifle.

  His eyes locked instead on a target halfway between the wall and the castle. His mind worked fast, clinging to hope, calculating his chances. If he could reach it, maybe, just maybe he could turn the battle in their favor. He knew he might die in the process but felt strangely resigned to that; death was so close now the fear of it had been stripped away.

  Ben saw both Mundt and Russett lurch into the opening in the center of the castle wall, firing wildly at the latest wave of attackers as they burst through the security fence’s gate. Russett was hit in the leg and crumpled. Mundt took bullet after bullet, clinging incredibly to his feet until his pistol clicked empty and he keeled over, still trying to reload.

  But the two men had bought Ben the time he needed to low
er himself to the next ledge on the castle wall and then drop to the ground where Russett was making a desperate effort to drag Mundt to safety.

  Ben scrambled past them and rushed toward the one thing he believed might save all their lives.

  * * * *

  A

  nna Krieger had anticipated everything perfectly except the enemy’s use of the battlements. That was a surprise, and a clever one at that. But she still had three men with her—four including the sniper who reported the real Paul Hessler was pinned down at the rear of the castle. The sniper also reported a hit on a woman Anna believed could only be Danielle Barnea! Alive! And since Barnea was here, Mundt must be here too. Obviously they had tricked her in Poland, and now both of them would die.

  Like father, like son, Anna thought, finding justice in that.

  Once inside the fence, she signalled her men to stop just short of the Suburbans and steadied her rifle on a stocky man who was hovering over another he had just dragged to safety. Before she could pull the trigger, though, Anna heard the roar of a heavy engine split the night and looked up to see a huge yellow loading machine barreling straight toward them.

  * * * *

  B

  en pushed the loader on, grinding its gears and fighting the pedals all the way to gain maximum speed. It had been twenty years since he’d driven one like it as part of a summer construction job in Dearborn, Michigan. But that had been a much smaller version, and he’d merely worked the shovel under the commands of his boss, rather than actually maneuvering the entire machine without someone telling him exactly what to do.

  The cab was a good dozen feet off the ground and barely resembled the smaller one he remembered. The loader had switched on quickly, though, and responded with almost truck-like handling once Ben shoved it into gear.

  His vantage point from the cab gave him a clear view of his targets ahead. The engine buckled, but the huge steel machine lumbered on, gathering speed.

  * * * *

  P

  aul Hessler kept pressing the balled-up strips of his shirt tightly into Danielle’s wound. The blood had slowed, but not stopped and even in the darkness she looked terribly pale. He watched her wet her lips to speak a few times and lowered his ear to listen to words that didn’t come.

  He had to save her, no matter what it took, save her just as her father had saved him.

  Paul Hessler...

  That’s who Danielle’s father had saved and that’s who he was. If Piotr Dudek hadn’t died that night in the castle, he had assuredly died that day in the Sinai. A man was more than a name. Hessler had dedicated so much of his life to Israel because he loved it with the devotion of any Jew. He had been there at the beginning, would help see things through as long as he lived.

  His identity lay in his deeds and his accomplishments. He realized he had been wrong to think his life as Paul Hessler had begun the night he had murdered Karl Mundt in the castle. Instead, it had begun the moment he set foot in Palestine and became the man he was today.

  Paul Hessler pressed himself against Danielle and kept repeating words of encouragement. “You and your baby are going to live! Do you hear me! You’re both going to live!”

  * * * *

  T

  he rest of her surviving Gatekeepers scattered at the sight of the huge yellow loader surging toward them. But Anna Krieger held her ground, firing a spray of bullets which clanged and flared off the huge shovel. She knew a few had made it into the cab and was certain she’d hit the driver. Anna fully expected the loader to veer harmlessly off, but instead it crashed into the Suburbans, tumbled them over, and kept coming.

  * * * *

  C

  rimped low in the loader’s cab, Ben glimpsed Franklin Russett crawling desperately aside, dragging the form of Hans Mundt along with him. Then a barrage of bullets struck the machine. Shattered glass sprayed over him, stinging his face and scratching one of his eyes. Ben bit down the pain, but the eye closed, useless now.

  He remembered his marine vet police academy instructor opening up one day about how he had won the Medal of Honor by charging directly into a firefight and dropping grenades into a series of Vietcong forward position machine gun nests; four in all, three men in each.

  Continuing the loader on through the pain and his ruined vision, Ben realized he was doing the same thing now. His closed eye made it a challenge just to keep the loader heading straight. He hadn’t intended to crash dead-on into the Suburbans, and the effect of impact surprised him. The huge vehicles, essentially weightless against the loader’s massive power, tumbled not just once, but several times, picking up speed with each roll until they slammed into the fence, buckling it.

  Ben’s good eye caught a tall woman with a strangely pale face backing off at the last instant, tossing her rifle aside and trying to run. But the thudding roll of one of the Suburbans swiftly caught up and crushed her beneath it, as it came to a stop.

  * * * *

  A

  nna tried to move, but abandoned the effort when she realized she couldn’t breathe. Something pressed against her chest, trapping her. She tried to raise her arm, couldn’t. Her chest felt as if she had been caved in, and she realized with a terrible fear that she could feel nothing below her waist.

  The numbness was spreading upward now, leaving Anna powerless to do anything but wait for death to claim her.

  * * * *

  T

  he three surviving Gatekeepers, had scattered toward a trio of Ford Explorers parked out of view from the castle. They piled into the lead one, opening fire on the loader as Ben crashed through the security fence and bore down on them.

  He couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop, realizing these men were the last thing standing between Danielle and safety. He uncoiled himself and rose up fully in the cab, no longer caring if they shot him.

  More glass shattered, pricking him, but he pressed the loader onward and struck the Explorer broadside. The loader’s teeth chewed through the steel of the door and sank into fabric. It lifted the Explorer slightly up and then dropped it back down again, freeing Ben to ride up and over it, the loader’s massive tundra tires crushing the steel frame beneath them. It felt as though he was doing it with his own feet, pressed down hard against the loader’s floor that felt sizzling hot.

  There might have been screams; the wrenching and screeching of steel made it difficult to tell. His toes tensed and cramps locked up his calves, as the back wheels followed the front ones up and over what was left of the Explorer.

  It took Ben a moment to realize the battle was over. He managed to stop the loader and pop open the cab door. Then he climbed down the ladder, collapsing the moment his feet hit the ground.

  Danielle!

  The thought of her was enough to spur Ben back to his feet, and he staggered off into the night to find her.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 90

  T

  hey were in the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center emergency room, twelve blocks from the George Washington Bridge, rather than the Hessler Institute. Instead of being given her first injections of Lot 461, Danielle’s blood was being typed and matched. An army of doctors hovered over the gurney on which she lay. Ben hung back by the drawn curtain, no one seeming to pay any attention to him. It didn’t feel like he was really there. He tried to blink himself back awake, turning the trauma room into a series of frozen still shots. The wrong button hit on the remote control for his vision, as hands and instruments moved in jumpy gaps over Danielle’s body.

  “Jesus Christ, this is a bad one.”

  “Get an OR ready and page Dr. Cantrell.”

  “Forget the OR,” another doctor said, his gloves and greens already red with Danielle’s blood. “Whatever we’re going to do, we’ve got to do it here.”

  “Blood pressure dropping, Doctor!” a nurse announced.

  “Shit, we’re losing her! Get a crash cart in here!”

  “Where’s that goddamn blood?”

  Ben stepped forw
ard, almost surprised when a nurse’s gaze acknowledged his presence. “She’s pregnant.”

  A few of the trauma team members turned toward him, saw his half-closed, bloodied eye. “Jesus,” someone said, “this one needs help too.”

  “Never mind me. You need to know that the woman’s pregnant.”

  “Who are you?” the lead doctor asked him, applying firm pressure to Danielle’s wound.

  “The father.”

  “Blood pressure steady, Doctor.”