above the screams of his victims.
Before he could release the grenade, David hit him with a full burst, a
dozen bullets that smashed into his chest and belly, and the Arab
dropped both grenades at his feet and doubled over clutching at his
broken body, trying to stem the flood of his life blood with his bare
hands.
The grenades were short fused and they exploded almost immediately,
engulfing the dying man in a net of fire and shredding his body from the
waist down. The same explosion knocked down the third assassin at the
end of the terrace, and David came to his feet and charged up the steps.
The third and last Arab was mortally wounded, his head and chest torn by
grenade fragments, but he was still alive, thrashing about weakly as he
groped for the machine pistol that lay beside him in a puddle of his own
blood.
David was consumed by a terrible rage. He found that he was screaming
and raging like a maniac, and he crouched at the head of the stairs and
aimed at the dying Arab.
The Arab had the machine pistol and was lifting it with the grim
concentration of a drunken man. David fired, a single shot that slapped
into the Arab's body without apparent effect, and then suddenly the Uzzi
in David's hands was empty, the pin falling with a hollow click on an
empty chamber.
Across the terrace, beyond range of a quick rush, the Arab's face was
streaked with sweat and blood as he frowned heavily, trying to aim the
machine pistol as it wavered. He was dying swiftly, the flame
fluttering towards extinction, but he was using the last of his
strength.
David stood frozen with the empty weapon in his hand, and the blank eye
of the pistol sought him out, and fastened upon him. He watched the
Arab's eyes narrow, and his sudden murderous grin of achievement as he
saw David in his sights, and his finger tightening on the trigger.
At that range the bullets would hit like the solid stream of a fire
hose. He began to move, to throw himself down the stairs, but he knew
it was too late. The Arab was at the instant of firing, and at the same
instant a revolver shot crashed out at David's side.
Half the Arab's head was cut away by the heavy lead slug, and he was
flung backwards with the yellow custard contents of his skull
splattering the white-washed wall behind him and his death grip on the
trigger emptied the machine pistol with a shattering roar harmlessly
into the grape vines above him.
Dazedly David turned to find the Brig beside him, the dead security
guard's pistol in his fist. For a moment they stared at each other, and
then the Brig stepped past him and walked to the fallen bodies of the
other two Arabs. Standing over each in turn he fired a single pistol
shot into their heads.
David turned away and let the Uzzi drop from his hands. He went down
the stairs into the garden.
The dead and the wounded lay singly and in piles, pitiful fragments of
humanity. The soft cries and the groans of the wounded, the bitter
weeping of a child, the voice of a mother, were sounds more chilling
