Several minutes later, the handcuffs were on the floor and my wrists were free. I quickly screwed the tube together again, and dropped it into my pocket. I looked over at Risenberg, who nodded slowly, telling me that none of the guards were in sight.
"All right, Carter. So you're free," a man said in a low voice. "But we're still a long way from getting out of here. By the way, my name is Cham Elovitz."
The other young men introduced themselves — Benjamin Sahl, John Ivinmetz, Lev Wymann… and other names, all Jewish. I assumed that the two blonds, Karl Nierman and Jacob Keifer, had been immigrants from West Germany to Israel.
"Each time the guards come in they're heavily armed," Lev Wymann said, "and they watch to make sure we don't try anything."
"They might not feed us tonight until after they take Carter out," Benjamin Sahl offered.
"What's the procedure when they bring you food?" I asked. "Do they make you line up against the wall or take some other kind of precautionary measure?"
"Four of them come in," Sahl said. "Two guards and two other men. One man carries the pot or a sack. The other guy has tin plates and spoons. The two guards stand by the door while the other two pass out the slop. Grabbing for the gun-carrying guards would be impossible.
"That's right," sighed Karl Nierman, "and they're not going to be any less careful tonight."
"How far inside the door do the guards stand?" I asked.
"Six, seven… maybe eight feet," Nierman replied. "It depends where we're sitting when they come in. What's the difference? They have guns. We're still at a disadvantage."
I looked at the handcuffs in my right hand. "We have one advantage. They believe I'm cuffed. I'll tell you how we'll do it. Eight of you sit against the east wall. Sahl, you and I and Risenberg will sit by the south wall, near the center. Do any of you have training in karate?"
Sahl Soloman chuckled. "Sure, we know Gobat, the Israeli version of karate. It's a blending of all the oriental variants."
"Let's get into position," I said. Ben Sahl and I hurried to the south wall. The other Israelis moved to the east side of the room and sat down. Sitting toward the center of the wall, I put one cuff around my right wrist and pushed the prong slightly into the locking section, making sure that the prong's first notch did not move past the lock catch. Putting my hands behind my back, I used the same method on my left wrist. All I had to do was move my hands slightly and the cuffs would fall off.
With Sahl sitting to my right and Risenberg watching through the small opening of the door, the ten Israelis and I waited.
Five o'clock came.
The guards did not bring the evening meal.
I watched the end of the one shaft of light as it moved ever so very slowly to the southeast corner of the room. I judged it was about five-thirty when we heard the door to the outside open. Risenberg didn't have to tell us that the guards were entering the building. A strained, anxious look on his face, he hurried over to me and Sahl and sat down to my left.
Moments later, we heard the iron bar being removed from across the door to the prison room. Then the door was pulled open and five Arabs stormed into the room, two carrying AK-47 assault rifles slung across their shoulders, the other three holding Russian PPsH submachine guns. From where we sat, Risenberg, Sahl and I could see a sixth Arab waiting out in the corridor. He was holding a 9mm UZI submachine gun. Much to our chagrin, we saw that several other Arabs were standing in the open door of the guard room, at the west end of the corridor, and were smirking.
I stood up, afraid that if I waited to let the guards jerk me to my feet the handcuffs would fall off. Two of them advanced, one saying in a loud voice, "This time, you offspring of a pig, you will tell al-Huriya what he wants to know, or we'll begin by breaking your fingers one by one."
When the two Arabs closest to me reached for my arms, I decided it was now or never. I flicked my wrists, the handcuffs dropped to the floor and my arms streaked upward and out with such speed that the Arabs had no chance to defend themselves. Using Karate as we planned, I bunched the fingers of my left hand into a Nukite spear, stabbing into the neck of one guard. It felt as thought I was slicing through a hardening mush; yet I knew in that instant that I had hit the target and that the Arab was only seconds away from oblivion.
I hadn't missed the Arab to my right either, my Shuto sword-hand chop smashing into his throat. He gagged in agony, dropped the machine gun as his wind pipe started to swell shut, and began to sink to the floor.
Simultaneously, Sahl employed a top of the foot Kogan geri kick to wreck the sex department of one of the guards in front of me and Risenberg gave the fourth terrorist a lightning quick side-thrust kick to the belly and grabbing the man's PPsH machine gun with both hands.
The fifth guard leaped forward to crack open the side of Risenberg's head with the barrel of his PPsH. I made a mess of his plan by seizing the weapon with both hands and, as I twisted the barrel toward the ceiling, kneeing him in the groin as hard as I could. As I had anticipated, the explosion of pain made him release the sub-gun which I let fall to the floor. I slammed him across the side of the head with my right hand, then grabbed his shirt front with my left hand, slid my right hand between his legs, lifted him up and pitched him head-on into the sixth guard who was charging through the door. The unconscious body of the man I had laid out crashed into the big Arab, who let out a yell of rage and fell backward through the door, the weight of the other man forcing him to the floor, and startling the two men who had been in the doorway of the guardroom.
I scooped up the fallen machine gun just in time to see the man with the UZI and the two thugs from the guardroom getting to their feet. The three terrorists didn't know it, but they were as close to eternity as they would ever get without being dead. The man with the UZI was jerking up the barrel as I pulled the trigger of the Russian chopper, the series of staccato explosions deafening. At this close range, I could see the hot projectiles ripping off tiny pieces of cloth and particles of burned flesh as the Spitzer-shaped bullets bored all the way through their bodies, making them jerk like monstrous marionettes before finally flopping to the floor.
Sahl, cursing the Syrians in Hebrew, rushed to the aid of Risenberg who was engaged in a tug of war over possession of a machine gun.
Risenberg was much faster than Sahl. He jumped up, jammed his feet into the Syrian's midsection and fell backward, pushing out with his legs as his body landed on its back. The Syrian went flying over Risenberg's head, but it was Risenberg who retained the machine gun. The other Israelis, grabbing the weapons of the defeated terrorists, dodged and the Syrian hit the floor with a thud.
"Snap it up," I said. "That blast I let off has to have warned the whole damn camp! Two of you watch the south side door while Risenberg and I secure the guardroom." My eyes shot to Risenberg, who had gotten to his feet and was ready with the PPsH in his hands, and he nodded.
We rushed through the prison room door, our foot sliding for a moment on the widening pools of blood spreading from underneath the three corpses. Already hundreds of flies were buzzing over the dead men, and only then did I notice that the Israelis being tortured under the arbor had stopped screaming. Either the Syrians had killed them or had taken them down.
Risenberg and I darted across the south side doorway and I motioned to him to take a position to the left of the guardroom entrance. I'd been in scores of firefights and experience had taught me that wise gun fighters stay calm, lay low and wait for the enemy to come to them.
I took one last look behind me and saw Cham Elovitz picking up the UZI and John Ivinmetz and Martin Lomsky grabbing the PPsH chatter boxes from the two other corpses. Lev Wymann and Hymie DuSold, each armed with an AK-47, were on either side of the southside door.