The Scorpio Illusion
For Jeffrey, Shannon, and James
Ever a joy!
PROLOGUE
ASHKELON, ISRAEL, 2:47 A.M.
The night rain came down like sheets of silver knives, the dark sky filled with darker masses of swirling black clouds, the swells of the sea and the whipping winds murderous for the two rubber rafts lashed to each other as they approached the shoreline.
The raiding party was drenched, their blackened faces streaked with anxious sweat and rain, their eyes blinking continuously, straining to catch glimpses of the beach. The unit consisted of eight Palestinian men from the Baaka Valley, and one woman, not of their birthright, but committed to their cause, for it was an integral part of her own, inseparable from the commitment she had made years before. Muerte a toda autoridad! She was the wife of the raiding party’s leader.
«Only minutes now!» cried the large man as he knelt beside the woman. Like the others, his weapons were tightly strapped to his dark clothes; a black waterproof knapsack high on his back contained explosives. «Remember, when we get off, throw the anchor over between the boats, that’s important.»
«I understand, my husband, but I’d feel better going with you—»
«And leave us no means of getting away to fight again?» he asked. «The electrical power grids are less than three kilometers from the coast; they feed Tel Aviv, and once we blow them up, there’ll be chaos. We’ll steal a vehicle and be back within the hour, but our equipment must be here!»
«I understand.»
«Do you, my wife? Can you imagine what it will be like? Most, if not all, of Tel Aviv in darkness! And Ashkelon itself, of course. It’s perfect … and you, my love, you were the one who found the vulnerability, the perfect target!»
«I merely suggested it.» Her hand caressed his cheek. «Just come back to me, my love, for you are my love.»
«There’s no doubt of it, my Amaya of the fires… We’re close enough… Now!» The leader of the raiding party signaled his men on both rafts. All slipped over the sides into the heavy surf, their weapons held high, their bodies assaulted by the crashing waves as they lurched through the soft sand to the beach. On shore, the leader pressed his flashlight once, a single, short illumination that meant the entire unit was on enemy ground, prepared to penetrate and do its work. The wife threw the heavy anchor over the side between the two lashed rubber boats, keeping them in concert in the waves. She pulled her hand-held radio to ear and mouth; it would be used only in an emergency, as the Jews were too smart not to have the coastal frequencies monitored.
Then, suddenly, with terrible finality, all dreams of glory exploded with the savage bursts of gunfire on the flanks of the raiding party. It was a massacre, soldiers racing down in the sand, firing their weapons into the pulsating bodies of the Ashkelon Brigade, blowing heads apart, showing no mercy for the invading enemies. No prisoners! Only death!
The woman-wife in the outlying raft moved swiftly despite her torment, despite the shock that paralyzed her mind, her rapid movements failing to lessen the agony that swept through her, merely blurring it with action born of survival. She plunged her long-bladed knife into the sides and bottoms of both PVC boats, grabbed her waterproof pouch containing weapons and forged documents, and slipped over the side into the heavy sea. Fighting the surf and the undertow with all her considerable strength, she made her way south along the shore about fifty meters, where she swam diagonally over the waves into the beach. Prone in the shallow water, the harsh rain nearly blinding her, she crawled back to the killing ground. Then she heard the shouts of Israeli soldiers yelling in Hebrew; every muscle and fiber in her body froze in ice-hot fury.
«We should have taken prisoners.»
«Why, to kill our children later, as they slaughtered my two sons in the school bus?»
«We’ll be criticized—they’re all dead.»
«So are my mother and father. The bastards gunned them down in a vineyard, two old people among the grapes.»
«Let them rot in hell! The Hezbollah tortured my brother to death!»
«Take out their weapons and fire off rounds … graze our arms and our legs!»
«Jacob’s right! They fought back; we might all have been killed!»
«Then one of us should run back to the compound for reenforcements!»
«Where are their boats?»
«They’re gone now, nowhere to be seen! There were probably dozens! That’s the reason we killed the ones we saw!»
«Hurry, Jacob! We can’t give the goddamn liberal press any ammunition!»
«Wait! This one’s still alive!»
«Let him die. Remove their weapons and commence firing.»
The staccato fusillade filled the night and the rain. Then the soldiers threw the raiding party’s guns down beside the corpses and raced back up into the sand dunes filled with wild sea grass. In moments there were erratic flashes of cupped matches and cigarette lighters; the savage massacre was over, the cover-up begun.
Still, the woman moved cautiously forward on her stomach in the shallow water, the ringing echoes of the gunfire fueling the loathing that filled her—loathing and great loss. They had slaughtered the one man on earth she could love, the only man she could commit to as an equal, for none other had her strengths, her determination. He was gone, and there would never be another like him, a godlike firebrand with fierce eyes, whose voice could move crowds to both tears and laughter. And she was always there beside him, guiding him, adoring him. Their world of violence would never see a team like the two of them again.
She heard a moan, a quiet cry that pierced the rain and the surf. A body was rolling down the slope of sand to the water’s edge—only feet ahead of her. She crawled rapidly to the figure and grabbed him; his head was facedown in the sand. She turned him over, the rain washing over the blood-soaked features. It was her husband, a large part of his throat and skull a mass of scarlet-red tissue. She held him fiercely; he opened his eyes once, then closed them for the final time.
The wife looked up at the sand dunes and the cupped flares of matches and the glows of lighted cigarettes through the rain. With money and her false papers, she would cut a path through the despised Israel, leaving death in her wake. She would return to the Baaka Valley and reach the High Councils. She knew exactly what she was going to do.
Muerte a toda autoridad!
BAAKA VALLEY, LEBANON, 12:17 P.M.
The scorching noonday sun caked the dirt roads of the refugee camp, an enclave of a displaced people, many beaten into submission by events they could neither fathom nor control. Their gaits were slow, trudging, their faces set, and in their dark, downcast eyes a hollowness that bespoke the pain of fading memories, of images that would never be real again. Others, however, were defiant, submission to be reviled, acceptance of the status quo unthinkable, something to be scorned. These were the muquateen, the soldiers of Allah, the avengers of God. They walked rapidly, with purpose, their ever-present weapons strapped to their shoulders, their heads moving sharply, constantly aware, their eyes focused and filled with hatred.
It was four days since the massacre at Ashkelon. The woman clad in a green khaki uniform, its sleeves rolled up, walked out of her modest three-room structure; «house» would be misleading. Its door was covered with black cloth, the universal sign of death; passersby stared at it and raised their eyes to the sky, mumbling prayers for the departed; every now and then a wail emerged, asking Allah to avenge the dreadful death. For this was the home of the Ashkelon Brigade’s leader, and the woman striding down the dirt road had been his wife. But more than a woman, more than a wife, she was among the great muquateen in this convoluted valley of submission and rebellion, she and her husband symbols of hope for a cause all but lost.