Target, page 38
The Russian waded back and for a moment stood looking down at the crippled American. Then he reached down, attempting to pull him upright onto his one good leg.
“I can’t walk,” protested Blakey.
“I’ll carry you.”
For a moment Blakey came up level with the other man, their eyes meeting, and forced the confusion from his mind. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Makovsky stooped, attempting to get the American across his shoulders. Blakey refused to bend. “I said don’t be ridiculous.”
From his crouched position Makovsky didn’t bother to speak, just drove his fist into Blakey’s groin, doubling him up to fall naturally across his back. It was a near impossible attempt. The Russian was at the very tip of exhaustion and his knees would not straighten properly under Blakey’s weight. His feet went deeper into the bed of the stream, increasing the effort needed to drag himself along. The veins corded in his head and neck. He fell, inevitably, after only a few yards, and this time there was no groaning, strained effort to rise again. Makovsky lay face down, his head just against the bank; Blakey was on his side, propped gasping with his mouth at the water-line, looking backwards. And so he saw them first.
The Africans were moving quite steadily, confident of their quarry. Blakey attempted to cry out but no sound came. He tried to crawl backwards through the stream, dragging his useless leg behind him, but the water was too deep, gushing into his mouth and nose and choking him. He snatched out to warn the Russian, but Makovsky just grunted, trying to escape the clawing fingers with a shrugging motion. The Africans stopped warily, about fifty yards away. There were a few rifles, mostly Second World War Lee Enfields and even an ornately-butted muzzle-loader which had obviously found its way down from the Sahara. There were also spears and knives. Blakey watched, fully conscious in his fear of the grunted conference. He saw some of the men break away from either side of the stream into the jungle, and then the main group edged forward again, crouched against any sudden defense from the two prostrate men.
“No, please not,” moaned Blakey. “Not me didn’t want to … please not.…”
The Africans were getting bolder as they realized that there would be no resistance. Blakey could see Ndala and Miburu and thought he recognized some of the men from the fishing village, but he couldn’t be sure. Behind, both to the left and right, there was the crash of sudden spurted movement through the jungle and Blakey knew they were surrounded.
He tensed, waiting for the first burst of pain, his eyes clenched almost closed, but nothing came and when he opened them again he saw Ndala and Miburu only feet away. Miburu’s body was smeared with unguents, but otherwise there was no indication of his being a witchdoctor.
“… I’m sorry.… so very sorry.…” said Blakey.
He shuddered at a sudden movement to his right and felt the pain at last, in his head. Then he saw something fall into the water in front of his face and realized that one of the fishermen had thrown the empty cyanide can into his face: he felt a stickiness as the salt of the blood trickled into his mouth. Around him there was a burst of Chadic dialect, and then someone whom Blakey could not see began prodding the Russian with a spear-point. When there was no reaction, he drove the point firmly into Makovsky’s shoulder, until the pain slowly turned the Russian over onto his back. Makovsky lay there, staring up unseeingly. There was another brief discussion and then the Africans were upon them. Blakey screamed out, in advance of the pain, but initially there was none. He felt his body being moved and turned, and then a spurt of agony as hands gripped his injured ankle. He just managed to snatch some air before he was submerged and became aware that the Africans had strapped their legs to the shaft of a spear and were hauling them face down, through the water. It was a terrifying torture. Their faces grated and thumped over the stream bed and hidden stumps and branches and every time they tried to support themselves from the water on their arms, to catch fresh breath, they were pulled forward with their mouths open, so that the choking started all over again. They were both semi-conscious when it stopped, and so they were unaware of the other preparations for a long time. Blakey recovered, vomiting from his mouth and nose. They were in a small clearing with a ring of Africans around them; others were lopping branches from two of the more firmly established trees, clearing an area about twelve feet from the ground. Some were crouched over the detritus, selecting branches and then slashing at them with their knives. It was the shape that was being created from the trees that gave Blakey the first warning and at first he couldn’t believe it, his mind refusing the comprehension. Then he saw that around the men selecting the branches there was a growing pile of stakes, and he reached out, warningly, for Makovsky. A deep groan came from the Russian and Blakey knew the realization had come to him, too. So deep was their terror that they did not see that Miburu and Ndala were standing before them. The headman who had first befriended them said sneeringly, “You came as men of God.”
“No,” babbled Blakey. “Not priests … really not priests …”
“Priests of the devil,” insisted Mibiru.
“No!” wailed Makovsky, as the Africans reached down for them. “No!”
Blakey tried to brace his feet against the ground, to prevent himself being dragged towards the cross-shape that had been fashioned from the trees. The pain from his damaged ankle burst through him. He still attempted to force his foot against the ground, to prevent it happening, but there were too many and they dragged him easily, laughing when his bowels gave out in fear. Makovsky tried to fight and they laughed at him, too, jeering as they brushed aside his feeble blows.
It takes a very long time for a sacrificed man to die. Before death, most of the bones are disjointed and, to prevent the stakes tearing away from the hands and feet, the arms have to be roped to the cross. Before they finally became still, both Blakey and Makovsky had gone insane.
Petrov had learned of the Dakhilah staging post from his carefully implanted Israeli spies and had managed to position a satellite monitor over the area, so he knew immediately when the C-130s began arriving in Egypt. He alerted Peterson, who managed a direct telephone link from the Gulf of Guinea to the Mossad chief in Jerusalem, at first pleading as his deputy had done, and then demanding that no incursion be made.
“Can you guarantee the launch won’t happen?” demanded Levy.
Peterson hesitated. “I’m sending an assault group in, within hours.”
“So everything else you’ve attempted has failed?”
There was another hesitation from the American. “Yes,” he conceded, finally.
“I thought I made it clear to you in Washington that Israel had no intention of letting this thing be positioned anywhere over its territory,” said Levy. “You fouled up; now it’s our turn.”
The Russian monitor detected the midnight take-off and within an hour, Peterson was in radio contact with Bradley. The attack instruction had already been given and the Russian and American soldiers were grouped at the forest edge, faces blackened for night assault, all their weaponry checked and greased.
“You’ve no idea where they’ll drop?” queried Bradley.
“No.”
“They could come down miles from where we are.”
“If they do, then it’s not a problem.”
“If we locate them, we’re to intercept and eliminate?”
“You’re the last chance,” said the CIA Director. “Nothing must get in the way of you destroying that rocket.”
Bradley disconnected the transmission and looked across at Sharakov.
“I told you we would be needed,” reminded the Russian.
35
The assault had been timed for the first light, around four-thirty. They heard the sound of the aircraft two hours before, droning in on a low, steady drop run. It seemed very far away.
“Shit,” said Bradley softly.
“Several miles,” judged Sharakov expertly.
“No chance of interception then,” agreed the American. So close to positive action, his animosity towards the Russian appeared to be lessening.
“Not if we’re to keep to time.”
“And we’ve got to,” insisted Bradley. “We’ve got three miles to go beyond that perimeter.”
Sharakov settled against a tree, attempting to assess the situation. “The plane was throttling up, so the drop is over,” he said. “Let’s say they’ve been on the ground an hour: that doesn’t give them much time to assemble into a very cohesive unit.”
“They would have been that before they left Israel,” argued Bradley. “In Entebee it took them thirty minutes.”
“On an open airfield, the plans of which they knew. The planes brought them to within yards of the target. This is altogether different.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Around them the commandos were shifting and stirring with that nervousness that comes so close to an action, even from men as highly trained and professional as these were; there was an eager readiness to smile at things barely amusing and an anxiousness to help with each other’s equipment. As with the commanders, the reserve between the American and Russian soldiers had lessened.
Bradley sat crouched forward, his arm against his knee so that he could count off the time. At three-fifteen he looked across at Sharakov again. Sharakov nodded and together they gestured their men up. Sure of the protection devices, they went swifly through the scrub and then the savannah, careless of the tracks. They moved in a wedge-shape, lightly armed men on the fringe around those carrying the heavy equipment with which they hoped to immobilize the silo and make the rocket launch impossible. There were four bazookas very near the apex of the wedge, because the control towers had to be brought down very quickly. On either side were two flame throwers, included more for the psychological terror they would create among any opposition than for the practical damage they might cause. Behind this line came the rocket launchers, wire-controlled to ensure accuracy, and then the mortars which would establish a line at the grass edge and lob the shells over the heads of the main force. Each man had been issued with six grenades, both percussion and shard-fragmented, the anti-personnel type which spewed out hundreds of metal darts upon explosion. Bradley and Sharakov were in the center from which they had maximum command. Logan, who had carried out the first reconnaissance, was at the very tip of the group and, obeying the orders that had been issued before they set out, he halted them about twenty yards from the sensors at the commencement of the no man’s land to avoid their advance being detected. The perimeter was perfectly targetted in the floodlights installed for its own protection. Bradley silently checked the group’s mine-field maps, one between two men. He and Sharakov moved up to lead the attack. The Russian was already stooped facing the installation, counting off the minutes. The two commanders brought their arms down together in perfect unified command, and they swept forward as a coordinated fighting unit. The immediate need, once they had activated the sensors, was for speed, because they could only move through the mine-field single file, with no attack formation. Sharakov was first, Bradley following; they were about twenty yards in, moving well, when the American thought he heard some sort of distant alarm bell ahead. Behind them came the recognizable chink of metal assembling as the mortars were set up. Bradley snatched a look over his shoulder, smiling at the tight, zig-zag conformity of the men moving through the explosives.
They were almost in the very center of the mine-field, Sharakov about 150 yards from the perimeter wire and the last man in the line 100 yards clear of the grass when the first shot came. As if it were a signal to commence the assault, there was an immediate flurry of firing and then, from their left, a sudden staggering explosion as something, probably a rocket, fell into the no man’s land and set off first one and then another mine. Bradley’s first impression was that someone in the mortar line had fired prematurely and short. He jerked around, bringing the radio to his face and he saw the movement, far to his left, and then with sickening awareness, soldiers grouped much closer. As he watched there was a flash of further rocket launchings. One burst just beyond the wire and two more fell short: one activated another mine and, from somewhere within their own group, Bradley heard a scream as shrapnel scythed into them.
“The Israelis,” Bradley shouted, to Sharakov.
From the complex behind, the klaxons blared out and there was the hurried scurry of half-dressed figures from the barrack area. Bradley was on one knee, operating the radio now, ordering the mortar unit to direct their fire sideways into the Israeli group. He passed the order along the line: those at the very rear were to turn and fire at will.
“We can’t fight from here: not in the very center of a mine-field,” yelled Sharakov.
“We haven’t got a choice,” Bradley bellowed back.
Firing began from the complex, bullets wasping about them. Bradley tried to ease the men past him, to create a firing line. He gestured for the bazooka unit to spread out and they moved obediently. The furthermost man almost immediately trod onto a mine and was thrown screaming and maimed into the air, the explosion injuring another man, directly behind. It was Promulka, Bradley saw. The bazooka operator was writhing about legless, twenty feet away and exploded another mine, which killed him.
The Israelis were responding to the attack, firing not into the complex but at the American and Russian soldiers, who were pinned like funfair targets in the middle of a completely open, brilliantly lit area. Two bazookas hissed away close behind Bradley, but both fell harmlessly short of the control towers. Their rifle and machine-gun fire was scrappy and without coordination, and Bradley knew from its lightness that a lot of the men had been hit.
“It’s no good,” Sharakov called. “We haven’t got the surprise: we couldn’t possibly get into the installation.” The Russian was prostrate and had dragged an AK-47 from one of his dead soldiers, firing carefully into the complex. Two of the guided rockets burst into the Israeli advance, illuminating them momentarily in a flash of stark whiteness. Someone at the rear of their line lost control, leaping up in an attempt to throw a grenade, and was cut down at the moment of hurling it, so that it exploded for short of the second assault group, bursting another mine.
“Retreat,” commanded Bradley, loudly.
The firing from the complex was now far more accurate, machine-gun fire sweeping across the cleared ground. As they grunted past each unmoving soldier, first Bradley and then Sharakov tried to check to insure they were dead. It was not possible to detect Sergeant Banks’ wounds, but he’d died in staring-eyed shock. Sweetman had a gaping hole in his chest and Gribanov a massive wound to the head. Bradley paused, once, glancing over his shoulder: the installation guards were against the wire, free-firing at them. He shouted an order to the mortar bank and within minutes a shell landed close to the guards, scattering them: there were a lot of dead and injured, Bradley saw.
There were only two mortar men still alive when they got to the savannah. Logan ran from the no man’s land just ahead and only Sharakov came behind him.
“Disaster,” said the Russian bitterly. “Because of the Israelis it’s been a disaster.”
He gazed back into the mine-field. The dead men of the combined group lay like a wavering, accusing finger.
“No damage,” agreed Bradley, as if he couldn’t comprehend the failure. “We caused no damage at all.”
“Let’s get the bastards,” decided Sharakov, rising in the direction from which the Israelis were now directing their fire towards the complex. They were hopelessly short of range and causing little damage.
“No!”
The Russian jerked around, staring down at the M-16 rifle that Bradley was directing at him.
“Our attack has failed,” said Bradley. “And so has the Israelis’. They outnumber us, enormously. And if we’re not killed in some futile attack, then we stand a chance of being captured by men from the complex. And that might mean some sort of show trial: neither your people nor mine want that sort of smear in Africa.”
Sharakov remained tensed, as if still expecting Bradley to shoot. “They’ve got the proof, from the bodies out there,” he said at last, moving his head towards their dead soldiers.
“Not if we destroy them.”
“Holy Christ,” said Logan softly, from the protection of the grass.
Sharakov slowly sank to the ground. “You’re right,” he said.
They set up a mortar barrage against both the Israelis and the complex, and beneath its cover Bradley and Sharakov carefully hurled the grenades among the men they had an hour before led into battle, attempting to confuse identification as much as possible. It was fifteen minutes before they were satisfied and then, doubled up below the screen of the grasses, they fled back towards the jungle. They were almost at once out of range of the complex and encountered none of the Israeli commandos. They had established a base and supply camp well beyond the jungle edge and did not stop until they reached it. There they halted, panting. Bradley heard the sound of someone being sick. He saw it was Logan and wondered why, suddenly, he was unconcerned that one of his men was showing such emotion in front of the Russian. They stopped only long enough for sufficient provisions to be assembled for the march back through the jungle to the Cameroons border. As they moved out, they heard the sound of helicopters.
