Ray smiled. 'What are their names?'
'This is Irena. My son is Ravi.'
Ray's heart missed about three beats. He was grateful for the noise of the battle, because it gave him time to gather his thoughts.
'You stay here for a few moments and pray with the children. I'll go up and find a way to get us all out of here.'
With that, Major Kerman evacuated the cellar and bolted back up the stairs. Through the open door to the street, he could see running figures, Israeli troops heading back toward the wasteland. Then there was another mighty explosion, maybe forty or fifty yards away, deeper into Palestinian territory.
Christ, he thought, these crazy bastards will knock down the whole city.
He headed back to the cellar door and yelled, 'Shakira! Get up here! You have to get out. This place could get hit again, any moment.'
They climbed the stairs, both children crying, Shakira trying hopelessly to comfort them. The body of their father, still holding a submachine gun, hung grotesquely from the ceiling, headfirst, the unseeing eyes gazing upward. Ray shepherded them into a corner, from where they would not see the corpse.
He knew the Israelis were now systematically clearing the buildings, throwing grenades before entering.
'Is there a rear entrance?' he asked Shakira.
'Yes, there is a small yard, then an alley that leads into another street. There's a way out into the city from there, and it will be quieter. There's no way from that street to the waste ground.'
Ray nodded. 'Where will you go?'
'I don't know. My parents are both in Saudi Arabia, but Mohammed's parents are in Bethlehem. We might be able to get there. Our car is parked out in the alley.'
'That sounds good… But I want you to hide for the rest of the day, away from the fighting. There's an army cordon around Hebron and Bethlehem.'
Before she could reply, there was a tremendous flurry of gunfire outside, two men screamed, and then the massive figure of Sergeant Fred O'Hara came barreling through the open door, followed by Sergeant Charlie Morgan.
Both SAS men looked up in astonishment at Ray.
'Christ, sir,' said Fred. 'We've been looking all over for you. I was beginning to think some fucking towelhead had shot you.'
'Not me, Fred,' said Ray. 'I'm supposed to be in charge.'
'You're telling me, sir. Things have been getting right out of hand. These bastards want to kill each other. I've never seen anything like it. Officers, men, maniacs. They're all at it. Fucking guns, bombs, grenades, and Christ knows what. If we don't get the hell outta here, they'll be wheeling up heavy artillery. This is no place for us, sir. We have to get the fuck out. There's no rhyme or reason in this place.'
Fred's own reasoning was close to flawless. But Ray now had the added responsibility of Shakira and the children. There was of course no reason why he should have that responsibility. He and the two SAS NCOs could have left and no one would have been any the wiser.
But there are times in the life of almost every soldier when there is a summons to obey the heart, not the brain, or the training, or the experience. And Ray Kerman knew he faced one of those right now.
He gestured to the little Arab family, and Sergeant O'Hara swung around, reacting instantly to the movement. Little Ravi held up his toy spaceship and stepped forward, and the big SAS man, who had been shot at too many times in the past hour, flinched away from the sudden move and hit the trigger of his MP5. In about one hundredth of a second there was a line of five neat holes clean across the forehead of Ray Kerman's namesake.
Irena screamed and ran toward her brother holding in her right hand her teddy bear. Charlie could see only hand grenades in his mind right now, and he gunned her down in cold blood, fearing yet another explosion.
For a split second there was silence in the room, and then Shakira screamed and ran at Fred O'Hara, her hands raised like claws at his face. Charlie swung to his right. In a lightning movement he whipped his machine gun toward her face. At that precise moment Major Ray Kerman blew the entire front of Charlie's head off with a savage burst of fire. No one could kill an SAS man quite like that. Except for another one.
Charlie's MP5 had fired two shells in the instant of his death. A measure of Ray's speed was that both bullets headed downward, one of them cutting a deep groove on the outside of Ray's left thigh, which immediately started to bleed like hell.
For a few heartbeats, nothing happened. Then Sergeant O'Hara, eyes wide, turned to his CO. 'Sir, did you just kill Charlie?' he asked, blankly.
Ray's brain raced. The word 'murder' flew through his mind. Then 'court martial.' Then 'jail.' Then 'firing squad.'
Then he looked again at the two lifeless bodies on the floor, Shakira, whimpering, cradling Ravi's head while the blood spilled down her robe, reaching out with her right hand to Irena. But the little girl was unreachable.
Fred stepped forward, anxious to ensure she carried no weapons. 'GET UP!' he shouted. Those two rough and heartless words ended his life.
Ray Kerman wheeled left, picked up a small rock, and slammed it into the space between Fred's eyes, breaking that part of the skull like a walnut. Then he crashed the butt of his gloved right hand with all of his strength right into the nostril end of Fred's nose. The force rammed the nose bone deep into Fred's brain, and he was dead before he hit the floor, felled by the classic SAS unarmed combat blow.
Two dead children. Two dead SAS men. It was a biblical conclusion, in a biblical city, to a vicious two minutes. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.
Ray turned to Shakira, who was plainly in shock. Her tears had stopped, as if she had nothing left, except a broken heart.
'Did you just save my life, sir?' she asked, softly.
'I think so,' replied Ray.
'Then I just wish you hadn't.'
Nonetheless, Shakira appreciated the situation with near-military coldness. With her family dead, in the dust and rubble of her home, her own situation remained desperate, especially with the bodies of two SAS men both in Israeli uniforms lying on the floor of her living room.
She had been a fleeting second away from death herself, and, through her devastation, she knew somehow she had to save herself. She had to get away, and she had to get this British officer away for several obvious reasons.
But first she went to a cupboard and pulled out a soft rug, and laid it over her two children.
Ray found himself saying, almost automatically, as if the words must be someone else's: 'They are both in… in the arms of Allah now.'
The words of the North London mullah came rushing back, and he remembered the stories of paradise, and the promises to the martyrs who die in the name of Allah.
Finally, Shakira stood up and faced him. 'Where will you go?' she asked, aware of the impossibility of his position.
He glanced down at the dead bodies of Sergeant O'Hara and Sergeant Morgan. 'I'm not quite sure what to do right now. But I can't return to the IDF.'
'Would they find out it was you?'
'I don't know. They might. But my problem is greater than that,' Ray said. How could he explain it? Ever since he had arrived here he felt a surprising sympathy for the Palestinians. With his family's deep roots in the Middle East, it was clear something in him had changed. To rampage among innocent people, killing and destroying families, how could he be a part of that?
He looked at little Irena and Ravi, just children, gunned down by his soldiers. What if they had been his children? My God, he thought, how could I do this anymore?
Shakira could see his tears now, streaming down the Major's face, this stranger who had saved her life. She walked across to him, put her arms around him, and held him closely. The blood of little Ravi stained his uniform, and the blood from his own thigh ran onto her chador, and their tears mingled together.
Outside the blasts continued, and Ray sensed the Israeli tanks were finding their range, shelling the street. Shakira went to the downstairs cupboard and came back with a full-length white robe (hobe), and a white-and-
