Suddenly the dusk of evening was lit by the searing white furnace glare
of an explosion, and the glass windows of the restaurant were blown out
in a glittering cloud of flying glass. It was as though a storm surf
had burst upon a rock cliff, flinging out its shining droplets of spray,
but this was a lethal spray that scythed down two girl students who were
passing the windows at that moment.
Immediately after the flash of the explosion the blast swept across the
terrace, a draught of violence that shook the red-bud trees and sent
David and Debra reeling against the pillars of the library veranda. The
air was driven in upon them so that their eardrums ached with the blow,
and the breath was sucked from their lungs.
David caught her to him and held her for the moments of dreadful silence
that followed the blast. As they stared so, a soft white fog of
phosphorus smoke billowed from the gutted windows of the restaurant and
began to roll and drift across the terrace.
Then the sounds reached them through their ringing eardrums, the small
tinkle and crunch of glass, the patter and crack of falling plaster and
shattered furniture. A woman began to scream, and it broke the spell of
horror.
There were shouts and running feet. One of the students near them began
in a high hysterical voice, A bomb. They've bombed the cafe. One of
the girls who had fallen under the storm of glass fragments staggered up
and began running in small aimless circles, screaming in a thin
passionless tone.
She was white with plaster dust through which the blood poured in dark
rivulets, drenching her skirt.
In David's arms Debra began to tremble. The swine, she whispered, oh,
the filthy murdering swine. From the smoking destruction of the
shattered building another figure shambled with slow deliberation. The
blast had torn his clothing from his body, and it hung from him in
tatters, making him a strange scarecrow figure. He reached the terrace
and sat down slow, removed from his face the spectacles that were
miraculously still in place and began fumbling to clean them on the rags
of his shirt. Blood dripped from his chin.
Come on, grated David, we must help. And they ran down the steps
together.
The explosion had brought down part of the roof, trapping and crushing
twenty-three of the students who had come here to eat and talk over the
evening meal.
Others had been hurled about the large low hall, like the toys of a
child in tantrum, and their blood turned the interior into a reeking
charnel house. Some of them were crawling, creeping, or moving
spasmodically amongst the tumbled furniture, broken crockery and spilled
food. Some lay contorted as though in silent laughter at death's crude
joke.
Afterwards they would learn that two young female members of El Fatah
had enrolled in the university under false papers, and they had daily
smuggled small quantities of explosive on to the campus until they had
accumulated sufficient for this outrage. A suitcase with a timing
device had been left under a table and the two terrorists had walked out
and got clean away. A week later they were on Damascus television,
gloating over their success.
Now, however, there was no reason nor explanation for this sudden burst
of violence. It was as undirected, and yet as dreadfully effective as
some natural cataclysm. Chilling in its insensate enormity, so that
they, the living, worked in a kind of terrified frenzy, to save the
injured and to carry from the shambles the broken bodies of the dead.
They laid them upon the lawns beneath the red-bud trees and covered them
with sheets brought hurriedly from the nearest hostel. The long white
bundles in a neat row upon the green grass was a memory David knew he
would have for ever.
The ambulances came, with their sirens pulsing and rooflights flashing,
to carry away death's harvest and the police cordoned off the site of
the blast before David and Debra left and walked slowly down to where
the Mercedes was parked in the lot. Both of them were filthy with dust
and blood, and wearied with the sights and sounds of pain and
mutilation. They drove in silence to Malik Street and showered off the
smell and the dirt.
Debra soaked Davies uniform in cold water to remove the blood. Then she
made coffee for them and they drank it, sitting side by side in the
brass bed.
So much that was good and strong died there tonight, Debra said.
Death is not the worst of it. Death is natural, it's the logical
conclusion to all things. it was the torn and broken flesh that still
lived which appalled me. Death has a sort of dignity, but the maimed
are obscene. She looked at him with almost fear in her eyes. That's
cruel, David. In Africa there is a beautiful and fierce animal called
the sable antelope. They run together in herds of up to a hundred, but
when one of them is hurt, wounded by a hunter or mauled by a lion, the
lead bulls turn upon him and drive him from the herd. I remember my
father telling me about that, he would say that if you want to be a
winner then you must avoid the company of the losers for their despair
is contagious. God, David, that's a terribly hard way to look at life.
'Perhaps, David agreed, but then, you see, life is hard. When they made
love, there was for the first time a quality of desperation in it, for
it was the eve of parting and they had been reminded of their mortality.
In the morning David went to join his squadron and Debra locked the
house on Malik Street.
Each day for seventeen days David flew two, and sometimes three,
sorties. In the evenings, if they were not flying night interceptions,
there were lectures and training films, and after that not much desire
for anything but a quick meal and then sleep.
The Colonel, le Dauphin, had flown one sortie with David. He was a
small man with a relaxed manner and quick, shrewd eyes. He had made his
judgement quickly.
After that first day, David and Joe flew together, and David moved his
gear into the locker across from Joe in the underground quarters that
the crews on standby used.
In those seventeen days the last links in an iron friendship were
forged. David's flare and dash balanced perfectly with Joe's rock-solid
dependability.
David would always be the star while Joe seemed destined to be the
accompanist, the straight guy who was a perfect foil, the wingman
without personal ambition for glory whose talent was to put his number
one into the position for the strike.
Quickly they developed into a truly formidable team, so perfectly in
accord that communication in the air was almost extra-sensory, similar
to the instantaneous reaction of the bird flock or the shoal of fish.
Joe sitting out there behind him was for David like a million dollars in
insurance. His tail was secure and he could concentrate on the special
task that his superior eyesight and lightning reactions were so suited
to. David was the gunfighter, in a service where the gunfighter was
supreme.
The I. A. F. had been the first to appreciate the shortcomings of
the-air-to-air missile, and relied heavily on the classic type of air
combat. A missile could be induced to run stupid. It was possible to
make its computer think in a set pattern and then sucker it with a break
in the pattern. For every three hundred missile launches in air-to-air
combat, a single strike could be expected.
However, if you had a gunfighter coming up into your six o'clock