by Ken Follett
Dickstein knew their mood, knew they had caught it from him. He had felt it before with men before a fight. They were afraid, and--paradoxically--the fear made them eager to get started, for the waiting was the worst part, the battle itself was anesthetic, and afterward you had either survived or you were dead and did not care anymore.
Dickstein had figured his battle plan in detail and briefed them. The Coparelli was designed like a miniature tanker, with holds forward and amidships, the main superstructure on the afterdeck, and a secondary superstructure in the stern. The main superstructure contained the bridge, the officers' quarters and the mess; below it were crew's quarters. The stern superstructure contained the galley, below that stores, and below these the engine room. The two superstructures were separate above deck, but below deck they were connected by gangways.
They were to go over in three teams. Abbas's would attack the bows. The other two, led by Bader and Gibli, would go up the port and starboard ladders at the stern.
The two stern teams were detailed to go below and work forward, flushing out the enemy amidships where they could be mown down by Abbas and his men from the prow. The strategy was likely to leave a pocket of resistance at the bridge, so Dickstein planned to take the bridge himself.
The attack would be by night; otherwise they would never get aboard--they would be picked off as they came over the rails. That left the problem of how to avoid shooting at one another as well as the enemy. For this he provided a recognition signal, the word Aliyah, and the attack plan was designed so that they were not expected to confront one another until the very end.
Now they were waiting.
They sat in a loose circle in the galley of the Stromberg, identical to the galley of the Coparelli where they would soon be fighting and dying. Dickstein was speaking to Abbas: "From the bows you'll control the foredeck, an open field of fire. Deploy your men behind cover and stay there. When the enemy on deck reveal their positions, pick them off. Your main problem is going to be hailing fire from the bridge."
Slumped in his chair, Abbas looked even more like a tank than usual. Dickstein was glad Abbas was on his side. "And we hold our fire at first."
Dickstein nodded. "Yes. You've a good chance of getting aboard unseen. No point in shooting until you know the rest of us have arrived."
Abbas nodded. "I see Porush is on my team. You know he's my brother-in-law."
"Yes. I also know he's the only married man here. I thought you might want to take care of him."
"Thanks."
Feinberg looked up from the knife he was cleaning. The lanky New Yorker was not grinning for once. "How do you figure these Arabs?"
Dickstein shook his head. "They could be regular army or Fedayeen."
Feinberg grinned. "Let's hope they're regular army--we make faces, they surrender."
It was a lousy joke, but they all laughed anyway.
Ish, always pessimistic, sitting with his feet on a table and his eyes closed, said, "Going over the rail will be the worst part. We'll be naked as babes."
Dickstein said, "Remember that they believe we're expecting to take over a deserted boat. Their ambush is supposed to be a big surprise for us. They're looking for an easy victory--but we're prepared. And it will be dark--"
The door opened and the captain came in. "We've sighted the Coparelli."
Dickstein stood up. "Let's go. Good luck, and don't take any prisoners."
Chapter Sixteen
The three boats pulled away from the Stromberg in the last few minutes before dawn.
Within seconds the ship behind them was invisible. She had no navigation lights, and deck lights and cabin lamps had been extinguished, even below the waterline, to ensure that no light escaped to warn the Coparelli.
The weather had worsened during the night. The captain of the Stromberg said it was still not bad enough to be called a storm, but the rain was torrential, the wind strong enough to blow a steel bucket clattering along the deck, the waves so high that now Dickstein was obliged to cling tightly to his bench seat in the well of the motorboat.
For a while they were in limbo, with nothing visible ahead or behind. Dickstein could not even see the faces of the four men in the boat with him. Feinberg broke the silence: "I still say we should have postponed this fishing trip until tomorrow."
Whistling past the graveyard.
Dickstein was as superstitious as the rest: underneath his oilskin and his life jacket he wore his father's old striped waistcoat with a smashed fob watch in the pocket over his heart. The watch had once stopped a German bullet.
Dickstein was thinking logically, but in a way he knew he had gone a little crazy. His affair with Suza, and her betrayal, had turned him upside down: his old values and motivations had been jolted, and the new ones he had acquired with her had turned to dust in his hands. He still cared for some things: he wanted to win this battle, he wanted Israel to have the uranium, and he wanted to kill Yasif Hassan; the one thing he did not care about was himself. He had no fear, suddenly, of bullets and pain and death. Suza had betrayed him, and he had no burning desire to live a long life with that in his past. So long as Israel got its bomb, Esther would die peacefully, Mottie would finish Treasure Island, and Yigael would look after the grapes.
He gripped the barrel of the machine gun beneath his oilskin.
They crested a wave and suddenly, there in the next trough, was the Coparelli.
Switching from forward to reverse several times in rapid succession Levi Abbas edged his boat closer to the bows of the Coparelli. The white light above them enabled him to see quite clearly, while the outward-curving hull shielded his boat from the sight of anyone on deck or on the bridge. When the boat was close enough to the ladder Abbas took a rope and tied it around his waist under the oilskin. He hesitated a moment, then shucked off the oilskin, unwrapped his gun and slung the gun over his neck. He stood with one foot in the boat and one on the gunwale, waited for his moment, and jumped.
He hit the ladder with both feet and both hands. He untied the rope around his waist and secured it to a rung of the ladder. He went up the ladder almost to the top, then stopped. They should go over the rail as close together as possible.
He looked back down. Sharrett and Sapir were already on the ladder below him. As he looked, Porush made his jump, landed awkwardly and missed his grip, and for a moment Abbas's breath caught in his throat; but Porush slipped down only one rung before he managed to hook an arm around the side of the ladder and arrest his descent.
Abbas waited for Porush to come up close behind Sapir, then he went over the rail. He landed softly on all fours and crouched low beside the gunwale. The others followed swiftly: one, two, three. The white light was above them and they were very exposed.
Abbas looked about. Sharrett was the smallest and he could wriggle like a snake. Abbas touched his shoulder and pointed across the deck. "Take cover on the port side."
Sharrett bellied across two yards of open deck, then he was partly concealed by the raised edge of the for'ard hatch. He inched forward.
Abbas looked up and down the deck. At any moment they could be spotted; they would know nothing until a hail of bullets tore into them. Quick, quick! Up in the stem was the winding gear for the anchor, with a large pile of slack chain. "Sapir." Abbas pointed, and Sapir crawled along the deck to the position.
"I like the crane," Porush said.
Abbas looked at the derrick towering over them, dominating the whole of the foredeck. The control cabin was some ten feet above deck level. It would be a dangerous position, but it made good tactical sense. "Go," he said.
Porush crawled forward, following Sharrett's route. Watching, Abbas thought: He's got a fat ass--my sister feeds him too well. Porush gained the foot of the crane and began to climb the ladder. Abbas held his breath--if one of the enemy should happen to look this way now, while Porush was on the ladder--then he reached the cabin.
Behind Abbas, in the prow, was a companion head over a short
flight of steps leading down to a door. The area was not big enough to be called a fo'c'sle, and there was almost certainly no proper accommodation in there--it was simply a for'ard store. He crawled to it, crouched at the foot of the steps in the little well, and gently cracked the door. It was dark inside. He closed the door and turned around, resting his gun on the head of the steps, satisfied that he was alone.
There was very little light at the stern end, and Dickstein's boat had to get very close to the Coparelli's starboard ladder. Gibli, the team leader, found it difficult to keep the boat in position. Dickstein found a boat hook in the well of the launch and used it to hold the boat steady, pulling toward the Coparelli when the sea tried to part them and pushing away when the boat and the ship threatened to collide broadside.
Gibli, who was ex-army, insisted on adhering to the Israeli tradition that the officers lead their men from in front, not from behind: he had to go first. He always wore a hat to conceal his receding hairline, and now he sported a beret. He crouched at the edge of the boat while it slid down a wave; then, in the trough when boat and ship moved closer together, he jumped. He landed well and moved upward.
On the edge, waiting for his moment, Feinberg said, "Now, then--I count to three, then open my parachute, right?" Then he jumped.
Katzen went next, then Raoul Dovrat. Dickstein dropped the boat hook and followed. On the ladder, he leaned back and looked up through the streaming rain to see Gibli reach the level of the gunwale then swing one leg over the rail.
Dickstein looked back over his shoulder and saw a faint band of lighter gray in the distant sky, the first sign of dawn.
Then there was a sudden shocking burst of machine-gun fire and a shout.
Dickstein looked up again to see Gibli falling slowly backward off the top of the ladder. His beret came off and was whipped away by the wind, disappearing into the darkness. Gibli fell down, down past Dickstein and into the sea.
Dickstein shouted, "Go, go, go!"
Feinberg flew over the rail. He would hit the deck rolling, Dickstein knew, then--yes, there was the sound of his gun as he gave covering fire for the others--
And Katzen was over and there were four, five, many guns crackling, and Dickstein was scampering up the ladder and pulling the pin from a grenade with his teeth and hurling it up and over the rail some thirty yards forward, where it would cause a diversion without injuring any of his men already on deck, and then Dovrat was over the rail and Dickstein saw him hit the deck rolling, gain his feet, dive for cover behind the stern superstructure and Dickstein yelled, "Here I come you fuckers" and went over in a high-jumper's roll, landed on hands and knees, bent double under a sheet of covering fire and scampered to the stern.
"Where are they?" he yelled.
Feinberg stopped shooting to answer him. "In the galley," he said, jerking a thumb toward the bulkhead beside them. "In the lifeboats, and in the doorways amidships."
"All right." Dickstein got to his feet. "We hold this position until Bader's group makes the deck. When you hear them open fire, move. Dovrat and Katzen, hit the galley door and head below. Feinberg, cover them, then work your way forward along this edge of the deck. I'll make for the first lifeboat. Meantime give them something to distract their attention from the port stern ladder and Bader's team. Fire at will."
Hassan and Mahmoud were interrogating the sailor when the shooting started. They were in the chartroom, aft of the bridge. The sailor would speak only German, but Hassan spoke German. His story was that the Coparelli had broken down and the crew had been taken off, leaving him to wait in the ship until a spare part arrived. He knew nothing of uranium or hijacks or Dickstein. Hassan did not believe him, for--as he pointed out to Mahmoud--if Dickstein could arrange for the ship to break down, he could surely arrange for one of his own men to be left aboard it. The sailor was tied to a chair, and now Mahmoud was cutting off his fingers one by one in an attempt to make him tell a different story.
They heard one quick burst of firing, then a silence, then a second burst followed by a barrage. Mahmoud sheathed his knife and went down the stairs which led from the chartroom to the officers' quarters.
Hassan tried to assess the situation. The Fedayeen were grouped in three places--the lifeboats, the galley and the main amidships superstructure. From where he was Hassan could see both port and starboard sides of the deck, and if he went forward from the chartroom to the bridge he could see the foredeck. Most of the Israelis seemed to have boarded the ship at the stern. The Fedayeen, both those immediately below Hassan and those in the lifeboats at either side, were firing toward the stern. There was no firing from the galley, which must mean the Israelis had taken it. They must have gone below, but they had left two men on deck, one on either side, to guard their rear.
Mahmoud's ambush had failed, then. The Israelis were supposed to be mown down as they came over the rail. In fact they had succeeded in reaching cover, and now the battle was even.
The fighting on deck was stalemated, with both sides shooting at each other from good cover. That was the Israelis' intention, Hassan assumed: to keep the opposition busy on deck while they made their progress below. They would attack the Fedayeen stronghold, the amidships superstructure, from below, after making their way the length of the 'tweendecks gangways.
Where was the best place to be? Right where he was, Hassan decided. To reach him the Israelis had to fight their way along the 'tweendecks, then up through the officers' quarters, then up again to the bridge and chartroom. It was a tough position to take.
There was a huge explosion from the bridge. The heavy door separating bridge and chartroom rattled, sagged on its hinges and fell slowly inward. Hassan looked through.
A grenade had landed in the bridge. The bodies of three Fedayeen were spread across the bulkheads. All the glass of the bridge was smashed. The grenade must have come from the foredeck, which meant that there was another group of Israelis in the prow. As if to confirm his supposition, a burst of gunfire came from the for'ard crane.
Hassan picked up a submachine gun from the floor, rested it on the window frame, and began to shoot back.
Levi Abbas watched Porush's grenade sail through the air and into the bridge, then saw the explosion shatter what remained of the glass. The guns from that quarter were briefly silenced, and then a new one started up. For a minute Abbas could not figure out what the new gun was shooting at, for none of the bullets landed near him. He looked at either side. Sapir and Sharrett were both shooting at the bridge, and neither seemed to be under fire. Abbas looked up at the crane. Porush--it was Porush who was under fire. There was a burst from the cabin of the crane as Porush fired back.
The shooting from the bridge was amateurish, wild and inaccurate--the man was just spraying bullets. But he had a good position. He was high, and well protected by the walls of the bridge. He would hit something sooner or later. Abbas took out a grenade and lobbed it, but it fell short. Only Porush was close enough to throw into the bridge, and he had used all his grenades--only the fourth had landed on target.
Abbas fired again, then looked up at the control cabin of the crane. As he looked, he saw Porush come toppling backward out of the control cabin, turn over in the air, and fall like a dead weight to the deck.
Abbas thought: And how will I tell my sister?
The gunman in the bridge stopped firing, then resumed with a burst in Sharrett's direction. Unlike Abbas and Sapir, Sharrett had very little cover: he was squeezed between a capstan and the gunwale. Abbas and Sapir both shot at the bridge. The unseen sniper was improving: bullets stitched a seam in the deck toward Sharrett's capstan; then Sharrett screamed, jumped sideways, and jerked as if electrocuted while more bullets thudded into his body, until at last he lay still and the screaming stopped.
The situation was bad. Abbas's team was supposed to command the foredeck, but at the moment the man on the bridge was doing that. Abbas had to take him out.
He threw another grenade. It landed short of the bridge
and exploded; the flash might dazzle the sniper for a second or two. When the bang came Abbas was on his feet and running for the crane, the crash of Sapir's covering fire in his ears. He made the foot of the ladder and started firing before the sniper on the bridge saw him. Then bullets were clanging on the girders all around him. It seemed to take him an age to climb each step. Some lunatic part of his mind began to count the steps: seven-eight-nine-ten--
He was hit by a ricochet. The bullet entered his thigh just below the hip bone. It did not kill him, but the shock of it seemed to paralyze the muscles in the lower half of his body. His feet slipped from the rungs of the ladder. He had a moment of confused panic as he discovered that his legs would not work. Instinctively he grabbed for the ladder with his hands, but he missed and fell. He turned partly over and landed awkwardly, breaking his neck; and he died.
The door to the for'ard store opened slightly and a wide-eyed, frightened Russian face looked out; but nobody saw it, and it went back inside; and the door closed.
As Katzen and Dovrat rushed the galley, Dickstein took advantage of Feinberg's covering fire to move forward. He ran, bent double, past the point at which they had boarded the ship and past the galley door, to throw himself behind the first of the lifeboats, one that had already been grenaded. From there, in the faint but increasing light, he could make out the lines of the amidships superstructure, shaped like a flight of three steps rising forward. At the main deck level was the officers' mess, the officers' dayroom, the sick bay and a passenger cabin used as a dry store. On the next level up were officers' cabins, heads, and the captain's quarters. On the top deck was the bridge with adjoining chartroom and radio booth.
Most of the enemy would now be at deck level in the mess and the dayroom. He could bypass them by climbing a ladder alongside the funnel to the walkway around the second deck, but the only way to the bridge was through the second deck. He would have to take out any soldiers in the cabins on his own.
