They were going for the guards, taking them out first.
The pistol shook and roared in his fists, and the bullets socked into
human flesh with a rubbery thumping sound.
The guard had cleared his Uzzi, and was trying to aim as a bullet hit
him in the mouth and snapped his head back, his paratrooper beret
spinning high into the air.
The machine-gun flew from his arms as he fell, and it slid across the
tiles towards David. David dropped flat below the stone steps of the
terrace as the Arab gunners turned their pistols on the wedding crowd,
hosing the courtyard with a triple stream of bullets, and unleashing a
hurricane of screams and shouts and desperate cries to join the roar of
the guns.
Across the yard, a security agent had the pistol out of his shoulder
holster and he dropped into the marksman crouch, holding the pistol with
both arms extended as he aimed. He fired twice and hit the monkey-faced
gunman, sending him reeling back against the wall, but he stayed on his
feet and returned the agent's fire with the machine pistol, knocking him
down and rolling him IJ across the paving stones.
The yard was filled with a panic-stricken mob, a struggling mass of
humanity, that screamed and fell and crawled and died beneath the flail
of the guns.
Two bullets caught Hannah in the chest, smashing her backwards over a
table of glasses and bottles that shattered about her. The bright blood
spurted from the wounds, drenching the front of her white wedding gown.
The centre gunman dropped his pistol as it emptied, and he stooped
quickly over the copper salver and came up with a grenade in each hand.
He hurled them into the struggling, screaming throng and the double
blast was devastating, twin bursts of brightest white flame and the
terrible sweep of shrapnel. The screams of the women rose louder,
seeming as deafening as the gunfire - and the gunman stooped once more
and his hands held another load of grenades.
All this had taken only seconds, but a fleeting moment of time to turn
festivity into shocking carnage and torn flesh.
David left the shelter of the stone steps. He rolled swiftly across the
flags towards the abandoned Uzzi, and he came up on his knees, holding
it at the hip. His paratrooper training made his actions automatic.
The wounded gunman saw him, and turned towards him, staggering slightly,
pushing himself weakly away from the wall. His one arm was shattered
and hung loosely in the tattered, blood-soaked sleeve of his jacket, but
he lifted the machine pistol and aimed at David.
David fired first, the bullets struck bursts of plaster from the wall
behind the Arab and David corrected his aim. The bullets drove the
gunman backwards, pinning him to the wall, while his body jumped and
shook and twitched. He slumped down leaving a glistening wet smear of
blood down the white plaster.
David swivelled the gun on to the Arab beside the kitchen door. He was
poised to throw his next grenade, right arm extended behind him, both
fists filled with the deadly steel balls. He was shouting something, a
challenge or a war cry, a harsh triumphant screech that carried clearly
