black patterned headdress (ghutra), complete with the double-stranded cord (aghal).
Ray ripped off his Israeli combat jacket as she wrapped bandages around Ray's cut thigh. He pulled the robe over his head. Shakira fitted the headdress and arranged the cloth around his neck in such a way he could cover the lower half of his face if necessary.
Then she found a clean robe for herself, and said quietly, 'We must go now, before the Israelis come.' And she took his hand, murmuring 'Insh' Allah,' as God wills, leading him to the back door of her devastated home.
They ran through the yard, leaving behind them five bodies in the house. They could see smoke and rising dust in the street to the rear, but in front it was all clear.
Should we take the car?' asked Ray.
'I don't think so. We must get to the headquarters of Hamas. My brother Ahmed will be there. They will take care of you.'
'You sure they won't kill me?' said Ray, tightening his grip on his MP5, and running hard on his wounded leg to keep up with Shakira.
'Yes, I'm sure,' she said.
'How do you know?'
'Because I don't want you to die, and that will be good enough.'
A steel cordon of Israeli tanks now surrounded the entire area where the battle of the Jerusalem Road had been fought the previous Friday. With hard-eyed efficiency the DDF troops had evacuated the area, moving Arab families temporarily farther to the west while they searched the rubble for casualties and bodies.
They brought in heavy lifting equipment and bulldozers, and avoided another flare-up by announcing they were also searching for Palestinians and would provide medical treatment for anyone found alive.
This of course gave them ample opportunity to conduct a search for more weapons and bomb-making facilities. In three days the area would be as 'clean' as it could ever be; even though everyone knew the wily Arabs had been moving military materiel to safe houses on the edge of the city ever since Saturday morning.
Shakira's house had formally caved in after dark on Friday, burying all five bodies under several tons of debris. They were all unearthed on the following Tuesday afternoon and taken to the morgue in the Israeli section of the city, where thirty-eight IDF troops already lay.
The Palestinian dead, more than sixty-two men, women, and children, were later removed to a converted schoolhouse just west of the Bir Al-Saba Road.
The bodies of Sergeant O'Hara and Sergeant Morgan were the only known casualties among the SAS troops, though Major Ray Kerman was currently listed as missing in action.
As the Commanding Officer of the SAS force garrisoned in the Negev, this was regarded as a most serious matter, as indeed were the deaths of two top NCOs from the Regiment. Hereford Headquarters was immediately informed, and the response was fast.
'Transport Sergeant O'Hara and Sergeant Morgan's bodies immediately to Israeli Army HQ in Jerusalem, for initial postmortem. Inform soonest any ransom demand for Major Kerman.' The latter order was routine. Members of the Regiment rarely, if ever, are taken prisoner. They would fight to the death.
Two days later, there was still neither sight nor sound of Major Kerman, but the new SAS Commander in Israel, Acting Major Roger Hill, wore an extremely quizzical look as he read the report of the IDF pathologist.
'Sergeant Charles Morgan died as a result of five bullet wounds, fired from point-blank range into the right side of the head, a straight line of hits, stretching from a point two inches above the temple directly downward to the lower jaw, which was shattered.
All five bullets penetrated right through the brain, the upper four exiting the skull on the left side. The lower bullet was lodged in the jawbone on the left. It was consistent with a shell fired from a Heckler & Koch submachine gun, and has been sent for examination to the Israeli Army forensic laboratory in Tel Aviv.'
Major Hill knew that it would be rare for an Arab freedom fighter to aim a submachine gun so steadily and so accurately. But the report on Sergeant O'Hara was even more perplexing. Big Fred had not been shot, and neither was the cause of death attributable to the collapsed ceiling in the ruins of the house in which he was found.
Sergeant O'Hara had died after receiving a crushing blow with an uneven object to the central skull area between his eyes. The nose bone was lodged three inches into the brain, consistent with a headlong fall into the edge of a table, or an encounter with an unarmed combat expert in the Special Forces of either Great Britain or the United States. The fall possibility was of doubtful merit, since there were no other injuries to the SAS Sergeant's face.
Major Hill realized very quickly that both men could have been killed by a member, or at least a former member, of one of the world's Special Forces. And these days there were many such men. No one perhaps quite as efficient as the SAS or the U.S. Navy SEALs. But the Israelis were very good, and so were the Iraqis. The fact was, it looked as if one or more of such trained killers had turned on the two dead SAS men from Hereford, even though they were both still holding their submachine guns under the rubble.
Meanwhile, the search continued for the missing SAS Commander. Israeli investigators were in the area, examining wreckage, questioning known personnel from Hamas. No one knew anything, no one had even seen him, never mind killed him, or taken him prisoner.
The best information available was from the Israeli Forward Commander who confirmed he and Major Kerman had spoken at the height of the battle, and that he had seen the British officer reach the wall and disappear around it. He had glimpsed the Major running in a crouch, up the side street, next to the now shattered row of Palestinian houses. Israeli troops, however, had found no trace of his body.
One week later the situation was unchanged. Ray Kerman, an officer many believed was destined for the highest Command in the SAS Regiment, had essentially disappeared. Into hot, dusty, and very thin air.
2
Lieutenant Colonel Russell Makin, Commanding Officer, 22 SAS, strode through the cold Hereford rain toward his office, carrying beneath his right arm a heavy black plastic file of classified documents. The Colonel, a tall, powerful ex-combat officer in the Falkland Islands War, had, in his time, carried loaded antitank guided-missile launchers, which weighed a darned sight less.
The file had grown weekly since midsummer. On its jacket it just contained the word secret. On the first page were the words major Raymond kerman. On the remaining 560 pages was a highly detailed account of how one of the most extensive and secretive investigations of recent years had failed to find one single trace of the missing Major.
Colonel Makin reached his office, removed his rain cape, asked someone to bring him some coffee, and placed the file on the table. He'd been up for four hours, since 5:00 a.m., mostly talking to the investigating chief in the ultrasecret Shin Bet Intelligence Office, in faraway, sunlit Tel Aviv, two time zones and several light-years east of rainswept, foggy Hereford.
The two men spoke often these days, drawn together by the consuming military mystery of the SAS Commanding
Officer, who had run, crouching, through an embattled street in the middle of Hebron, and never been seen again.
The one single fact that Colonel Makin knew for certain was that the Shin Bet team, Israel's ruthless interior Intelligence equivalent of London's MI5 and Washington's FBI, had conducted the most painstaking and thorough search of the area west of the Jerusalem Road. They'd used everything from bulldozers and mechanical diggers to microscopes and forensic laboratories.
They had turned up evidence, compelling evidence. But nothing led to where it was supposed to go. The most important fact was that Sergeant O'Hara had been killed by a member of someone's Special Forces, professionally and deliberately. Sergeant Morgan had been blown away by an MP5 submachine gun of the precise type carried by Major Kerman and every combat soldier in the IDF, plus God knows how many Palestinians with smuggled
