In a low crouch, I whispered fiercely to Leah, "Get down behind the counter to the right. I'll take the left side and we'll work our way toward the back. Stay down until I make my move."
Her face grim, Leah nodded, then jumped behind the counter. I leaped over the top of the counter to the left and began to crawl toward the rear of the shop, the pungent odor of burnt cordite stinging my nostrils.
The young Arab I had knocked out with Wilhelmina lay like a log, a long bloody gash on his temple. I hoped I hadn't killed him. Just to make sure, I felt for his pulse. Good. He was still alive. Whatever information the man possessed, Hamosad interrogators would pull it out of him.
Leah and I were still not out of the woods. I reached the end of the counter and cautiously poked out my head. Six feet away, to my right, was the arched entrance to the rear of the shop. The dead Arab woman was lying on her back, torrents of blood pouring from her chest, flowing down to the floor. A Stechkin machine pistol lay next to her.
I decided to rush the back room and motioned for Leah to fire a round at the top of the archway. That would prevent its occupants, if any, from possibly escaping by the front; if they took a rear route, the Shin Bet would grab them. Leah nodded, then pointed the stubby barrel of the UZI upward. At the same time, we heard shrill police whistles from outside the shop. The Shin Bet was getting ready to rush the House of Medals.
With Wilhelmina ready in my hand and a prayer in my pocket. I tensed myself and gave Leah the go-ahead sign. She triggered the UZI, the short burst of 9 mm slugs stabbing into the back room, a foot or so below the arched entrance.
Now that the curtain was down. I could see that beyond the wide archway was a small open area, empty except for an ordinary wooden chair against the right wall. Ahead, six feet from the chair, was another arched doorway, this one narrow and covered with a green curtain.
I didn't like the setup; yet there was no other way to do it. I first put six of Wilhelmina's bullets through the green curtain. Then I put a fresh clip into the Luger, cocked the old girl, leaped up and zigzagged into the small area, throwing myself against the wall next to the chair.
With Wilhelmina all set to fire, I picked up the chair to my left, crept forward along the wall and then tossed the chair through the doorway, its momentum tearing off the green curtain. I dove into the room, right behind the chair, at the same instant that a man fired a couple of Military Mauser slugs at the chair, the 7.63mm bullets ripping through the seat.
I threw myself to one side, my eyes making an instant survey of what appeared to be a storage room. There were two SLA gunmen in the room, the one with the Spanish-type Mauser dressed in burnoose and kaffiyeh, the second man wearing a gaudily colored sports shirt and yellow pants.
The Arab dressed in Western clothes was sitting on a packing crate, his Finger furiously working a Cytex code key. On top of the crate was a shortwave set. But the man stopped clicking the key and reached for a pistol when he saw me.
In that half a second, the Arab who had hit the chair, spun around and fired as I ducked to one side. The bullet sizzled a foot to my left and slammed into a crate standing against the wall. The blob of copper-coated lead must have hit a nailhead because it ricocheted with a screaming whine, stabbed across the room and buried itself in the opposite wall.
I dodged once more and twice pulled the Luger's trigger. The Arab in burnoose and kaffiyeh jumped and jerked, an expression of shock freezing on his dark face. A small dark hole appeared in the center of his chest; the SLA terrorist was dead before he crashed to the floor.
Worried about the man dressed in Western clothes by the code key — he still hadn't fired — I started to drop flat, firing at him by sheer instinct. Frantically he snapped off a shot with an Italian Glisenti automatic. The bullet burned high through the left side of my suit coat, tore through my shirt and left a graze on the skin of my left shoulder, a momentary streak of agony that interfered with my own aim. Instead of Wilhelmina's 9mm hitting the Arab in the chest, it plowed into his mouth, moved upward at an angle and tore off the top of his skull. The Glisenti automatic fell from his dead fingers and he dropped to the floor, the corpse sitting down flat, leaning against a packing case, the mouth cavern-like in a silent scream.
I jumped to my feet and listened to the terrible silence. Silence? Not quite a full and complete silence. There was another sound, a familiar one that made me shiver. It was a loud ticking, similar to the ticking of an alarm clock, and it could mean only one thing: the SLA fanatics had booby-trapped the place. I could think of only one question: How soon before the big bang?
I ran to the doorway and yelled, "I've cleaned them out back here. But stay back. They've triggered a time bomb. I've got to find it and do a disconnect."
Personally, I had a lot of respect for the Syrian Liberation Army members. Even in the midst of dying they still had been able to contact their main base — I assumed that was what the Arab at the short wave had been doing — and put a destruct device into operation. Dedicated men and women like that are always extremely dangerous. People willing to die for a cause must always be handled with extreme caution.
With my heart pounding, I began a frantic search for the source of the loud ticking, of the timing-detonator that was connected to explosives. I wondered what kind and how much.
The ticking led me to the detonator which had been placed behind the shortwave set. The timer-detonator was of the KLX type and had an hour's maximum running time. I held up the timer and stared at the dial. Only four minutes were left. And there wasn't any way I could reverse the timer knob of the KLX device. My only choice was to yank out the wires. But suppose the timer had a feedback circuit? If it did, I would never know it. The instant I pulled the wires, the back-feed spark would automatically detonate the explosive.
I jerked the four wires from the timing device and prayed. There was no explosion. My head remained on my neck. I still had my two arms and two legs.
The ticking stopped.
Perspiration pouring down my face, I quickly began to trace the wires that had been connected to the timer. They curled across the top of the packing case, ran over its edge and down to a two-foot square box on the floor. Judging from the red markings on the box, there must have been fifty to sixty pounds of nitrocellulose in the small crate, more than enough explosive to blow up the building. In fact, more than enough to blow up half the block!
I jerked the four wires from the box and heaved a sigh of relief as Leah and half a dozen Shin Bet security men came into the room.
"Thank God you're all right," Leah breathed, resting her dark head against my chest. "You look like you've been through hell."
"I'll settle for purgatory," I replied, then patted her hair and looked at the young, clean-cut Israeli with a square chin and thick eyebrows. From the way he acted, I assumed he was in command of the Shin Bet raiding party.
"There's a crate of explosives over there," I said, looking at him. "You'd better have your boys get it out of here."
Nodding, the Shin Bet officer motioned to a couple of his men and they moved toward the box of nitrocellulose.
"You should have waited for us, Mr. Heines, or whatever your name is!" the Shin Bet officer said angrily. "If you hadn't rushed the situation, we might have taken more of the scum alive. Mr. Ben-Zvi won't be pleased when I make my report about your hasty activities."