Steve Martini - Trader of secrets

The loader raced to get another round into the rifle as tracers began to snap and streak over their heads. Adin sensed that they had but seconds before the Jeep would be nailed by the heavy twenty-millimeter rounds. He had to move or the Jeep and its vital recoilless rifle would be destroyed.

Adin punched the accelerator and took a sharp turn to the left. The loader hung on for his life as centrifugal force nearly flung him from the back of the vehicle.

They headed for cover behind the plane, hoping for another shot. Adin couldn’t risk losing the recoilless rifle until he used it to take out the two satellite dishes, his primary goal of the mission.

Heavy fire poured in on the C-130. With the Jeep gone as a target, the twenty-millimeter tracers zeroed in on the outboard starboard engine of the plane. The heavy rounds blew the spinning prop apart, sending the massive blades into the air. Seconds later the engine exploded. Fire erupted all along the wing as the inboard engine went up.

The heat of the explosions drove Herman and Sarah back away from the airplane. Herman dragged the wounded commando out onto the open tarmac away from the left wing and the violently gyrating propellers of the two remaining engines. It was only a question of time before the massive fuel tank inside the plane exploded. Herman tried as best he could to maintain cover as the dense black smoke of the burning plane began to billow over the field.

We could hear the crack of gunfire punctuated by the bass thump of occasional larger explosions. Suddenly, as we came around a bend, we saw smoke.

“Slow down,” says Harry.

“I want to see what’s happening,” I tell him. I hit the accelerator and he hangs on.

“Be careful,” says Joselyn.

Just as she says the words, I round another bend and find myself staring at a brick guard kiosk in the middle of the road. The heavy iron drop gate is down, but no one appears to be in the hut.

“Hang on!” I pull forward and do a sweeping turn in front of the hut in case we have to pull away in a hurry. The guardhouse is empty. I turn off the engine and grab the binoculars.

A few seconds later Harry and I are out of the car. I am standing perched with my toes on the threshold of the open driver’s-side door looking over the roof of the vehicle through the hundred-power field glasses.

“What do you see?” asks Joselyn.

“It’s a plane. It’s on fire,” I tell them. “Sons of bitches are shooting at it. Oh shit!”

“What is it?” says Harry.

“Lift the barrier!” I tell him.

“What? Where are you going?”

“Just do it!” I toss the binoculars to Joselyn, jump behind the wheel, and start the engine.

Before Harry can lift the gate, the car is spitting gravel from the back tires swinging around in a full turn. He lifts the balanced metal pipe. I pull forward and he jumps back in the car. Before his door is closed we’re moving again.

Adin saw the three of them huddled like orphans on the naked tarmac, Sarah, Herman, and the wounded squad machine gunner. He wondered where the dog was, worried that he might have gotten left on the plane. But it was too late now.

“Ready?” He yelled to the loader on the back of the Jeep.

“Do it!” said the man.

Adin spun the Jeep around one more time and headed back toward the twenty-millimeter gun. If he could knock out their last big weapon, Ben Rabin and his men might have a chance to advance on the building even under the withering small-arms fire.

The two remaining props spinning in reverse blew a wall of thick black smoke across the runway ahead of the plane. Adin used it as a screen to close the distance on the twenty-millimeter gun.

By the time the front of the flying Jeep emerged from the wall of dense black smoke, they were less than sixty meters from the sandbagged gun emplacement.

Adin swerved to the left and hit the brakes as the gunner swiveled the barrel of the recoilless rifle and took aim.

The gunner sitting on the back of the twenty-millimeter tripod saw them at the last second. He tried to bring the muzzle of the gun to bear, his thumb over the trigger as the flash of the explosion blew him out of the chair. Boxes of twenty-millimeter cannon rounds exploded inside the ring of sandbags.

The loader on the recoilless rifle was yelling and screaming, hanging on with one hand as small-arms fire tattooed the metal on the rear of the Jeep. Before Adin could hit the accelerator, two AK rounds ripped into the man’s chest, blowing him off the back of the vehicle.

Adin turned. One look and he knew the man was dead. He hit the accelerator and raced toward the screen of the smoke as bullets flicked off the concrete, chasing him across the runway. One of them snapped past his ear and hit the windscreen in front of him. The bullet shattered, sending shrapnel from the copper cladding into his forehead and cheek. Adin turned the wheel just a little. He changed course to force the shooters to reacquire their target. The adjustment gave him the time he needed to blow through the wall of smoke. Once behind it he jogged again, this time to prevent a late shot from tracking him blindly through the screen.

The massive shock wave rocked the Jeep as the fuel tank inside the plane exploded. Shards of aluminum and steel were blown into the air. A mushrooming black cloud roiled upward and rolled open in a ball of orange flame three hundred feet in the sky.

Adin saw the three of them pulling back from the flaming wreck, Herman pulling the wounded SAW gunner away from the spreading fuel-driven fire as Sarah struggled under the weight of the machine gun and the heavy ammo bag to keep them both out of the flames.

Under the end of the burning plane, Adin could see Ben Rabin and his men fighting to right the ammo trailer before the massive tail section collapsed onto it.

He turned the Jeep toward Sarah and Herman and raced across the concrete runway. The vehicle skidded to a stop right next to the three of them.

Adin set the brake and jumped out. He grabbed the wounded soldier by the feet. Together he and Herman loaded the man into the back of the Jeep under the barrel of the recoilless rifle. Adin took the machine gun from Sarah and handed it to the wounded commando and asked him if he could still shoot.

The man smiled and nodded. He set his back against the bolted rifle mount and steadied the machine gun over the left rear wheel well of the Jeep.

Adin put Sarah in the back behind the right seat, told her to lie flat and keep her head down. “Can you drive?” He looked at Herman.

Herman glanced at the stick shift, standard four-speed ahead with a fifth gear for overdrive. “Sure. What are you gonna do?”

“I’m going to be working the rifle,” said Adin. “We need to take out the two big dishes,” he told Herman.

“Let’s do it.” Herman jumped behind the wheel, released the brake, and started feeling the controls to get used to them. “Tell me when you’re ready.”

Hirst climbed on the back and loaded one of the self-propelled rounds into the recoilless rifle, then closed the breach. There were only three more recoilless rounds left in the Jeep. The rest were in the ammo trailer. Adin tried to peer through the smoke but couldn’t see what was happening under the tail of the plane. “We’ll take the big dish first.” Then he told Herman to hit it. “Go!”

Ben Rabin struggled with the heavy metal trailer, trying to tip it back onto its wheels as the flames burned from the plane’s tail section over their heads. The Israelis desperately needed the two mortars stored inside the trailer. They couldn’t get at them because the compartment where they were stored was buried under the trailer.

Ben Rabin had been hit twice in the upper body, through-and-through flesh wounds that hurt and bled. But there was no time to worry about them. Four of his men were already dead. Three more were wounded. There were only a dozen of them left including himself.