paratroopers behind him at point-blank range. The clattering thunder of
automatic fire was deafening in the walled garden, and the stream of
bullets slashed through the bellies of the two guards like a monstrous
cleaver, almost cutting them in half.
The waiter on David's left was a wizened monkeyfaced man, with bright
black berries for eyes. He, too, lifted a machine pistol from his
salver, and he crouched over it and fired a burst at the paratrooper by
the gate.
They were going for the guards, taking them out first.
The pistol shook and roared in his fists, and the bullets socked into
human flesh with a rubbery thumping sound.
The guard had cleared his Uzzi, and was trying to aim as a bullet hit
him in the mouth and snapped his head back, his paratrooper beret
spinning high into the air.
The machine-gun flew from his arms as he fell, and it slid across the
tiles towards David. David dropped flat below the stone steps of the
terrace as the Arab gunners turned their pistols on the wedding crowd,
hosing the courtyard with a triple stream of bullets, and unleashing a
hurricane of screams and shouts and desperate cries to join the roar of
the guns.
Across the yard, a security agent had the pistol out of his shoulder
holster and he dropped into the marksman crouch, holding the pistol with
both arms extended as he aimed. He fired twice and hit the monkey-faced
gunman, sending him reeling back against the wall, but he stayed on his
feet and returned the agent's fire with the machine pistol, knocking him
down and rolling him IJ across the paving stones.
The yard was filled with a panic-stricken mob, a struggling mass of
humanity, that screamed and fell and crawled and died beneath the flail
of the guns.
Two bullets caught Hannah in the chest, smashing her backwards over a
table of glasses and bottles that shattered about her. The bright blood
spurted from the wounds, drenching the front of her white wedding gown.
The centre gunman dropped his pistol as it emptied, and he stooped
quickly over the copper salver and came up with a grenade in each hand.
He hurled them into the struggling, screaming throng and the double
blast was devastating, twin bursts of brightest white flame and the
terrible sweep of shrapnel. The screams of the women rose louder,
seeming as deafening as the gunfire - and the gunman stooped once more
and his hands held another load of grenades.
All this had taken only seconds, but a fleeting moment of time to turn
festivity into shocking carnage and torn flesh.
David left the shelter of the stone steps. He rolled swiftly across the
flags towards the abandoned Uzzi, and he came up on his knees, holding
it at the hip. His paratrooper training made his actions automatic.
The wounded gunman saw him, and turned towards him, staggering slightly,
pushing himself weakly away from the wall. His one arm was shattered
and hung loosely in the tattered, blood-soaked sleeve of his jacket, but
he lifted the machine pistol and aimed at David.
David fired first, the bullets struck bursts of plaster from the wall
behind the Arab and David corrected his aim. The bullets drove the
gunman backwards, pinning him to the wall, while his body jumped and
shook and twitched. He slumped down leaving a glistening wet smear of
blood down the white plaster.
David swivelled the gun on to the Arab beside the kitchen door. He was
poised to throw his next grenade, right arm extended behind him, both
fists filled with the deadly steel balls. He was shouting something, a
challenge or a war cry, a harsh triumphant screech that carried clearly
above the screams of his victims.
Before he could release the grenade, David hit him with a full burst, a
dozen bullets that smashed into his chest and belly, and the Arab
dropped both grenades at his feet and doubled over clutching at his
broken body, trying to stem the flood of his life blood with his bare
hands.
The grenades were short fused and they exploded almost immediately,
engulfing the dying man in a net of fire and shredding his body from the
waist down. The same explosion knocked down the third assassin at the
end of the terrace, and David came to his feet and charged up the steps.
The third and last Arab was mortally wounded, his head and chest torn by
grenade fragments, but he was still alive, thrashing about weakly as he
groped for the machine pistol that lay beside him in a puddle of his own
blood.
David was consumed by a terrible rage. He found that he was screaming
and raging like a maniac, and he crouched at the head of the stairs and
aimed at the dying Arab.
The Arab had the machine pistol and was lifting it with the grim
concentration of a drunken man. David fired, a single shot that slapped
into the Arab's body without apparent effect, and then suddenly the Uzzi
in David's hands was empty, the pin falling with a hollow click on an
empty chamber.
Across the terrace, beyond range of a quick rush, the Arab's face was
streaked with sweat and blood as he frowned heavily, trying to aim the
machine pistol as it wavered. He was dying swiftly, the flame
fluttering towards extinction, but he was using the last of his
strength.
David stood frozen with the empty weapon in his hand, and the blank eye
of the pistol sought him out, and fastened upon him. He watched the
Arab's eyes narrow, and his sudden murderous grin of achievement as he
saw David in his sights, and his finger tightening on the trigger.
At that range the bullets would hit like the solid stream of a fire
hose. He began to move, to throw himself down the stairs, but he knew
it was too late. The Arab was at the instant of firing, and at the same
instant a revolver shot crashed out at David's side.
Half the Arab's head was cut away by the heavy lead slug, and he was
flung backwards with the yellow custard contents of his skull
splattering the white-washed wall behind him and his death grip on the
trigger emptied the machine pistol with a shattering roar harmlessly
into the grape vines above him.
Dazedly David turned to find the Brig beside him, the dead security
guard's pistol in his fist. For a moment they stared at each other, and
then the Brig stepped past him and walked to the fallen bodies of the
other two Arabs. Standing over each in turn he fired a single pistol
shot into their heads.
David turned away and let the Uzzi drop from his hands. He went down
the stairs into the garden.
The dead and the wounded lay singly and in piles, pitiful fragments of
humanity. The soft cries and the groans of the wounded, the bitter
weeping of a child, the voice of a mother, were sounds more chilling
than the screaming and the shouting.
The garden was drenched and painted with blood.
There were splashes and gouts of it upon the white walls, there were
puddles and snakes of it spreading and crawling across the paving, dark
slicks of it sinking into the dust, ropes of it dribbling and pattering
like rain from the body of a musician as he hung over the rail of the
bandstand. The sickly sweetish reek of it mingled with the smell of
spiced food and spilled wine, with the floury taste of plaster dust and
the bitter stench of burned explosive.
The veils of smoke and dust that still drifted across the garden could
not hide the terrible carnage. The bark of the olive trees was torn in