Jerusalem Spy 02: Bullets of Palestine by Howard Kaplan

Author:Howard Kaplan [Kaplan, Howard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 2_read, Thriller_VariousAuthors, -new
Publisher: Howard Kaplan
Published: 2014-11-30T22:00:00+00:00

OPPOSITE THE SEMICIRCULAR Kuwaiti embassy in south Beirut, Ramzy entered the Shatilla refugee camp through the main dirt road. He stood motionless and stared at the destruction. The acrid smell of the fires still hung in the air despite the sea breezes. Every building over one story was pockmarked or crumbling. Windows had been blown out, boarded over, then reboarded. Life existed only at ground level. The camp had endured seven years of devastating civil war with the Christians, with no incentive to rebuild. A hundred thousand had died on both sides–and then the Israelis had bombed them.

The anger and frustration built quietly inside Ramzy. He continued into the noisy, dirty camp. The main road was filled with women, children and old men. Occasional stray goats picked at the garbage. Bomb craters dotted the dirt. Women with large tin containers on their heads walked to the communal water taps as apparently the running water was out again. As he moved farther into Shatilla, to his puzzlement, Ramzy passed only a few armed Fedayeen, usually walking with teenaged boys carrying AK-47s.

Ramzy quickened his pace. He would have to find Farouq al-Hout and somehow convince him, while all was quiet here, to play dead for several days or more–until he could eliminate Abu Nidal.

Suddenly Israeli F-15s and Skyhawks thundered overhead. He heard the thud of shelling coming from the gunboats offshore, the whistle, then the explosion. To the north and east, smoke rose. They were striking just this side of the green line. These shells seemed to be aimed below the port where the leftist Mourabitoun militia had taken up positions previously held by the withdrawn Palestinians. Abruptly there was shelling behind him, near the airport. Ramzy felt the ground shake, saw the smoke billowing nearby from the Bourj el Barajneh camp between Sabra and Shatilla and the runways. Shells shrieked, hitting the southern end of Shatilla. Explosions rocked the camp.

Ramzy ran through the warren of dirt alleys, flanked by heavily damaged cinder-block structures. He had to reach Farouq al-Hout’s headquarters. This was not a massive punishing attack as the camps had suffered before, but a layer of exploding protection for their tank columns. There was no other possible reason for this bombing now. Israelis would be sweeping northward from their positions in the hills. Ramzy was furious. They were taking West Beirut.

He reached the two-story building that had been Farouq al-Hout’s headquarters. It had been bombed apart, sandbags sprayed in all directions. The damage did not appear recent. A shell suddenly exploded behind him, deafening. He turned. The roof of a small building slid into the dirt alley. Another explosion shook the earth, horrifyingly close, almost pitching him to the ground. A shard of concrete sliced his cheek, stinging. He felt a trickle of blood.

“Here, quickly.” A young boy was motioning from the entrance of a partially standing cinder-block home. He heard the sounds of firing from the southern extremities of the camp.

Ramzy instinctively wiped his cheek with the back of his hand, saw the blood, then darted toward the boy, who closed the wooden door behind him.

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