fireball. Stunned by the explosion above, everyone looked to Hauer for
instructions.
'Follow him!' Hauer shouted, pointing down at Smuts.
Even with Hess clinging to his neck, the Afrikaner.had already managed
to reach the ground floor. General Steyn and his men started after
them, but Hans and Ilse hung back.
Hans grabbed Hauer's arm. 'Come with us!' he begged.
'You'll die here!'
Hauer pointed through a narrow slit-window on the second-floor landing.
With the Vulcan out of,action, a strong Libyan force had begun charging
toward the burning house.
And more dangerous, the big howitzer was actually being towed across the
bowl under human power. Its progress was slow but steady.
'Find Stern,' Hauer told Hans. 'There's nothing you can do here.
The basement is the only safe place now. I'll buy you all the, time I
can. Hurry!'
When Hans hesitated, Hauer shoved him down the stairs.
Hauer felt a startling surge of emotion when Ilse stood up on her toes,
threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him on the cheek. She drew
back and looked into his eyes.
'Thank you for coming for us,' she said. 'You are a good father.'
She smiled once, squeezed Hauer's arm, then took Hans's hand and hurried
down the steel steps into the darkness.
Hauer smashed the narrow window with the butt of his sniper rifle and
thrust the long barrel through. He rolled his shoulders once, took a
deep, breath, and put his eye to the scope. The Libyan infantry were
the closest targets, but he ignored them. He had to slow down the
artillery piece. He lined up the reticle, laid his forefinger against
the Steyr's trigger, and squeezed.
He knocked down four men in eight seconds. Down on the ground, the big
howitzer slowed, then stopped as the men towing it scrambled for cover.
Hauer began searching out the infantry, hearing as he did a calm voice
in his head: Running target, fifty meters ... fire! Eject shell, close
bolt, fire! As he picked off the commandos one by one, he wondered how
long he had before the howitzer team pinpointed his muzzle flashes and
decided to redecorate the second level of the tower with a 105mm shell.
Alan Burton lay prone on the rim of the bowl, watching the Libyans cross
the killing zone. He had seen the howitzer destroy the rotating gun
turret, and he had almost decided to try to cross the bowl himself when
he saw the Libyans falling to Hauer's rifle. At least somebody up there
knows what he's doing, Burton thought with admiration. Clearly he would
have to find an alternate route into the house.
The renewed chatter of the bunker guns gave him the idea. He peered
through the darkness at the nearest one, a concrete pillbox dug into the
shallow slope forty meters to his right. All he could see was a narrow
horizontal slit with a flashing machine gun barrel protruding from it.
The bunkers serve the tower, he thought. They're permanent
installations. So how are they supplied? From the sur ce?...
.la No from the house. But how?
'Tunnels,' he said aloud. 'Bloody tunnels.'
Crouching low, Burton crab-walked around the rim of the bowl until he
lay directly over the concrete bunker. Then he pulled three grenades
from his web belt and laid them on
-7
sporadically, searching out targets in the gloom. Pulling the pin on
the first grenade, Burton swung himself down, lobbed it through the
narrow firing slit, and rolled back up onto the lip of the bowl.
The explosion shook the ground beneath him. The machine gun fell
silent. Gray smoke poured from the firing slit.
Grabbing the other two grenades, Burton dropped down in front of the
bunker. One meter below the slit he noticed a padlocked steel handle
set in the bunker's grass-covered face. Escape hatch, he thought.
Arming another grenade, he jammed it against the lock and hopped back
onto the roof of the bunker.
The blast tore the hatch right off its hinges. Covering his nose and
mouth with his shirtfront, Burton disappeared through the smoking hatch
like a rabbit down its hole.
Hauer's lungs were on fire. He had just flung himself down the twenty
flights of stairs to the basement complex, thanking God with every step
that he had run out of ammunition before the howitzer gunners spotted
him. Now he worked his way through almost total darkness toward the
voices he heard at the far end of the dark laboratory. When he finally
reached open space, he saw eight people standing in front of a shining
silver wall with great doors set in its face. Someone was speaking
English very loudly, but Hauer didn't recognize the voice. When he was
only five meters from the group, he finally saw what held center stage.
Lying prone on a wheeled cart like truncated guided missiles were three
bulbous, metal-finned cylinders. Ominous and black, they seemed to hold
everyone away by some invisible repulsive force. No one had noticed
Hauer yet, so he hesitated, trying to gauge exactly what was happening.
Jonas Stern stood with his back to the glinting storage vault, speaking
in low, urgent tones to General Steyn, who faced him across the bomb
cart. Gadi stood on Stern's left, an assault rifle hanging loosely in
his right hand. The two surviving South African CT soldiers, still
masked and helmeted, stood directly behind General Steyn. Smuts had
propped Hess against a nearby wall, his wasted legs splayed out before
him. Hans and Ilse stood arm in arm beside Dr.
Sabri.
Hauer slung his empty rifle over his shoulder, strode 7656 GREG ILES
through the semicircle and interposed himself between Stern and General
Steyn.
'Captain Hauer!' said General Steyn. He jabbed a finger at Stern.
'Do you know what this madman wants to do?
He's talking about detonating one of these weapons!'
Hauer had already guessed as much. What he could not understand was why
Stern had told General Steyn about his plan at all. Perhaps the South
Africans had surprised the Israelis in the process of arming the bombs.
Hauer looked at Smuts and pointed to one of,the bombs.
'Exactly what are we looking at here?'
