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 wesle, 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 tamed around, resting his gun on the head of the steps, satisfied that he was alone.
There was very little light at the stem 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 Copareftl 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, rightr, 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 darknes& Gibli fell down, down past Dickstein and into the sea. Dickstein shouted, 'Go, go, got' 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 other&-- And Katzen was over and there were four, five, many gum 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 stem. 'Where are they?' he yelled. Feinberg stopped shooting to answer him. 'In the galley,' be 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 Badees 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 stem ladder and Badees team. Fire at will.
Hassan and Mabmoud were interrogating the sailor when the shooting started. They were in the chartroom, aft of the bridge. Ile sailor would speak only German, but Hassan spoke German. His story was that the Coparell! 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 dock. 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 chartroorn. It was a tough position to take.
'Mere was a huge explosion from the bridge. The heavy door separating bridge and chartroorn rattled, sagged on its hinges and fen slowly inward. Hassan looked through. A grenade had landed in the bridge. The bodies of three Fedayeen were spread across the bulkheads. Ali 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 foeard crane. Hassan picked up a submachine gun from the floor, rested ft 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 Sharreft 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 inaocurate-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 fail like a dead weight to the deck. Abbas thought: And how will I tell my sister? The guriman 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 searn 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 sapies covering fire in his ears. He made the foot of the ladder and started firing before the sniper on the bridge saw him. Tlien 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 foeard store opened slightly and a wideeyed, 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
