“The air holds our greatest strategic advantage and also our greatest vulnerability,” Wareagle added.
“Grenades,” Blaine said suddenly.
Wareagle grasped his intent immediately. “Two waves, Blainey?”
“Separated by twenty seconds, at most. Say six in the first wave. It’ll be their job to scatter Rasin’s troops and take out the guards at the highest positions. Picture it. By the time they’re finished, Rasin’s men will be running every which way, easy pickings for the larger second wave. Once they’re sufficiently scattered, we land here and here,” McCracken explained, pointing to the storehouses on the eastern fringe and the open expanse in the plateau’s center.
Wareagle was nodding. “The first wave can drop smoke when they pass the exposed center.”
“I like it, Indian. Create a wall of smoke the second wave appears out of. It’s perfect.”
“Not perfect, Blainey, but as close as we can come.”
Hiroshi and his five warriors most skilled with the motorized gliders would make up the first wave. Twenty seconds later McCracken and Wareagle would lead the twelve samurai in their trailing helicopter down in the second. The remaining seven from Hiroshi’s Sikorsky would spill out to form the rear of McCracken’s attack phalanx on the northern front of Masada where Rasin’s forces were concentrated.
“After you, Indian,” he said to Wareagle as the southern edge of Masada appeared below and a wall of thick gray rose across the center of the fortress.
And together they plunged into the cool air, with another of Hiroshi’s lead team’s grenade blasts reaching them as hard rumbles in the night.
The first explosion brought Yosef Rasin from the hot room of Masada’s bathhouse, where he had been making the final preparations to launch his vaccine into the air. His plan was to fire the cannisters by specially constructed mortar from the bathhouse roof, and he was going through the arduous task of removing them from their heavily sealed packing when the initial grenade blasts stung him. He emerged into the open to be blinded and deafened at the same time by a grenade that was all light and sound. A pair of soldiers crumpled to the ground and Rasin staggered back against the ancient ruins, holding his ears.
Lace leaped down to his side as rubble from more grenade blasts showered down upon them.
“It’s McCracken!” she screamed above the chaos.
Rasin was in no position to argue, eyes clearing in time to see the huge black shapes swooping down from the sky and dropping grenades to scatter his troops.
He grabbed hold of Lace’s steellike arm. “You’ve got to hold them off! You’ve got to buy me time! The shells! I’ve got to fire the shells!”
“Not from here!” she screamed, pulling him away from the next blast. And then she seemed to realize something, easing back into the dust-smoked fray. “The lights! I’ve got to get to the lights!” She swung back to Rasin. “Get back into the hot room. Wait there.”
“Wait for wh—”
“You’ll see. You’ll know. Just do it!”
And Rasin obeyed as a fleet of the black-winged monstrosities crashed through the wall of gray smoke deployed a hundred yards away in the center of the mountaintop.
Chapter 27
“Say again, please!” the voice instructed from Jerusalem.
“I said,” Major Shamsi repeated from the base of Masada, “that Rasin’s forces are coming under attack on the mountain!”
“Did you say ‘attack’?”
“Yes! For the third time, yes!”
There was a brief pause. “Major, be advised that a detachment is en route. You are not to engage. Is that clear?”
“Mister, I couldn’t get up that rock if I wanted to.”
“You fool!” Isser raged, storming into the operations center. “You crazy fool!”
Isaac was standing by the window smoking a cigar, his withered frame lost in the confines of his baggy overcoat. A pair of soldiers looked on with rifles at the ready. Isaac had located Isser at a Mossad command post in the guise of a luxurious house in the Rehavia neighborhood of Jerusalem within sight of the Knesset building.
“Temper, temper,” he said to the Mossad chief, waving a chastising finger. “To think that friends should speak to each other in such a tone….”
“You could have walked away. I set it up so you could. But now you leave me no choice. You force the issue.”
“That’s the idea, old friend.”
“What are you saying? Did McCracken put you up to this? Where is he?”
“As of this moment, starting to clean up the mess you have made of our world.”
“Make sense!”
Isaac puffed away on his cigar. “I am. You’re just not listening. But now you’re going to. You joined forces with Rasin, and now it’s time you learned just what you’ve become a party to.”
“I don’t have to listen to this!”
“Yes, you do. It’s for your own good, you see,” Isaac told him, and opened his overcoat to reveal a dozen sticks of dynamite taped to his chest. Before the soldiers could respond, his cigar was a touch away from the instantaneous fusing. “Now why don’t you have a seat, Mr. head of Mossad? I’ve got a story to tell you….”
McCracken and Wareagle passed through the gray cloud side-by-side in the air, amazed at how easily the motorized gliders handled. The ten-horsepower motor hung directly over their heads, attached to a shaft extending the glider’s length. At the shaft’s end a propellor spun soundlessly. Speed was controlled by manipulation of a single handgrip, much like that of a motorcycle, on the right side of the frame the fliers were attached to by a harness.
Below the chaos wrought by Hiroshi’s initial six-man attack wave was already obvious to them. Rasin’s troops were scattering for cover, positions of stronghold abandoned, all semblance of organization gone. The airborne samurai coming in now knew exactly what their role was from this point on.
Suddenly Wareagle swooped down, firing his M-16 on full automatic. In the narrow area lit by one of the floodlights, Blaine could see a gunman struggling to regain position on the blasted-out top of the guard tower that looked over the entire northern quadrant of Masada. The Indian’s fire blasted the rocks briefly before locking onto the enemy. Blaine dipped his wings to drop next to Wareagle.
“That’s clearing the way, Indian.”
“The hellfire beckons, Blainey.”
Around them the remaining eighteen samurai had broken into a wide spread. Twelve were already firing toward positions where Rasin’s soldiers were deployed. The key was to keep the enemy splintered, keep him on the run. That way the vastly superior numbers came to no advantage at all. Meanwhile, at the first available opportunity, the remaining six samurai, armed with swords as well as rifles, would land and start the process of securing ground control from the south northward. At the same time Hiroshi’s team of six would close from the upper terrace of Herod’s palace across to the south. The dozen gun-wielding warriors under Blaine and Johnny’s lead would join the rest on the ground as soon as they had done as much damage as possible from above.
Blaine nodded at Johnny and the two of them darted through the air at divergent angles. McCracken had used conventional hang gliders on numerous occasions, but the feeling of this was totally different. He supposed it was as close as a man could ever come to flying, so effortless were the controls required to swerve and swirl through the air.
Down below in a high-walled section of the vast storehouses nearest the eastern wall, he caught sight of a small cluster of Rasin’s men struggling to get an M-60 properly mounted. Blaine kicked his legs up to dip into a dive and roared down at a forty-five degree angle with machine gun blasting, curling into a rise just as he passed over the neutralized target area. Manipulations with his legs controlled the maneuvers effortlessly.