Barracuda 945 (2003) Page 2

  Indeed by the time young Ray entered Harrow it was assumed he had more or less forgotten anything he ever knew about the religion of Islam. And he had. More or less. But his mother, the former Naz Allam, was a great deal more devout than her husband, and she had, when Ravi was around seven, sent him to a series of private tutorials with a senior imam at a North London mosque. She would sit quietly with him while he learned simplified rudiments of the Koran, God's revelations to the Prophet Mohammed, detailed over 114 chapters.

  When those lessons had concluded, shortly before Ray began prep school in Knightsbridge, his Muslim groundings came to an end. Richard Kerman took care they did not begin again. Later on, his son Ray attended all church services at Harrow with the vast majority of the school in the Church of England faith. Never once was he a part of the small group of separatists, whose parents, Roman Catholics, Muslim, or Jewish, insisted they remain exclusively within their denominations.

  It was widely assumed, within the confines of the great school, that Ray Kerman probably had a Jewish grandfather, or something like that. But Harrow is a bastion of racial equality, and no one ever asked him. In any event, Ray was one of the toughest boys in the history of the school, a thunderous fast bowler (pitcher) on the school cricket team, and a brutally strong front-row forward on the rugby team, which he captained. Those kind of kids never had to answer questions.

  His application for a scholarship to England's Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, were prepared by his headmaster, utilizing school records. Ray entered the British Army without a trace of his very early background in the official records. So impressive was his school record, written and signed personally by the Headmaster of Harrow, they never even asked for a formal birth certificate.

  He was 2nd Lieutenant Raymond Kerman, first in his year at the Academy, a top sportsman at Harrow School, the son of wealthy, well-known North London parents, heir to the Kerman shipping line. Religion: Church of England.

  His first Regiment was the Devon and Dorsets, an infantry outfit whose soldiers were historically drawn from southwest England. It was from there he had first entered the SAS, fighting his way through the brutal, soul-searching indoctrination process, before serving for four years, with immense distinction, in both the Kosovo Campaign, and then earning the coveted Queen's Gallantry Medal during an SAS rescue mission in Sierra Leone the following year.

  He returned to his Regiment as Captain Kerman, an acknowledged SAS "hard man," expert in unarmed combat, skilled in the use of explosives and demolition, an efficient satellite communications operator. He was trained in Close Quarter Battle (CQB), short-range missiles, navigation, strategy, and specialized SAS transport over all terrains. Break-ins to enemy compounds were his specialty. The Regiment had him taught Arabic at the secret Army language school in Buckinghamshire. At thirty-four, he had not yet married.

  Recalled to the SAS for a second tour of duty in 2002, Ray Kerman had been personally selected to command a small, highly experienced SAS team, training members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in counterterrorism procedures. The operation, highly classified, was funded by the Israeli Government. Ray's team contained six senior noncommissioned officers, each of them experts on a wide range of military skills and techniques.

  One week before they left Hereford, bound for an unidentified Army base in the Negev, Captain Kerman had been summoned to see the SAS Commanding Officer. There he was told the Ministry of Defence had issued a special authorization for his promotion to Major. "I may say, we are all delighted," the CO had told him. "You've earned it." Ray Kerman had become a very special man in a very special Regiment.

  He had been in the desert for several weeks, mostly confined to the wire-surrounded, camouflaged SAS compound, with its custom-built urban area, designed to prepare the Israelis for house-to-house combat in city streets,

  The SAS enjoys a towering reputation in the Israeli Army, and Major Kerman, a stern and uncompromising officer, was deadly serious about his job. He was not particularly liked, but he quickly earned a full measure of respect. Like his father, he had little humor, and he possessed the same ruthless streak in his chosen occupation, and this he endlessly tried to drill into the Israeli recruits. He worked them right out on the edge, forcing a supreme fitness upon them, urging them on, driving and cajoling them, hammering home the SAS creed, "Train hard, fight easy."

  Only rarely did he venture into the nearby desert towns, Beersheba to the east and a few miles farther north to Hebron, the volatile flashpoint of so many murderous Arab-Israeli clashes, intensified always by the city's sacred place in the scriptures of Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike. This is the burial place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

  The city's holiness has always added fuel to the incendiary atmosphere between its Palestinian and Israeli populations. As long ago as 1929, Muslim extremists massacred the entire Jewish minority in Hebron. Ever since then, both sides have initiated endless bloodshed. In 1994, a Jewish extremist gunned down thirty Muslim worshipers. And nothing much improved after 1997, when the western part of the city (H-1) became a Palestinian autonomous zone. Riots and hard military restrictions continue to dominate the last resting place of Abraham.

  Ray's first visit to ancient Hebron was in fact his first close encounter with an Arab populace. With his tall red-haired Irish Sergeant, Fred O'Hara, he had wandered through the crisscross alleyways of the souk, watching the Palestinian traders, robed men sculpting olive wood, heating and blowing the city's famous colored glass, selling fruit and vegetables. Ray and Fred both wore civilian clothes, trying hard to blend in as strolling tourists, each of them eating from a bag of pale, sweet Hebron peaches, reputed to be the finest in the world.

  The trip was essentially business. The two SAS men were trying to familiarize themselves with the layout of the city, because as ever there were rumors around that the Palestinians were once more stockpiling weapons and bomb-making materials. Ray carried with him a travel guide, and throughout the afternoon he made careful notes inside the little book.

  The Major, of course, realized that he too had been born in a similar town, not so steeped in culture, but nonetheless on the edge of a vast desert, among people who wore robes, of the Muslim faith. Like these Hebron Arabs, his own people must have toiled for little in a similar hot, dusty urban trading center. He wondered whether, deep in his subconscious, there was a remembrance of another place, like this, where the toddler Ravi Rashood had eaten peaches and walked with his mother Naz, wearing her long black chador.

  But the years in London, in English schools, in the officers' mess, in exclusive Western civilization, had driven any vestige of his birthright deep into the past. He was Major Ray Kerman, and these Arabs were foreign to him, though their closeness did jolt a certain recall of stories told to him by the bearded Saudi in the North London mosque a quarter of a century ago. He could remember some of them clearly, but one stuck in his mind, a quotation from the Koran, which the Imam had asked him to learn:

  Cling one and all to the rope of God's faith

  And do not separate.

  Remember God's blessings,

  For you were enemies

  And He joined your hearts together

  And now you are brothers. . .

  He supposed that all these robed and bearded men around him knew the same words. He found that strange. In addition, there was another difference Ray experienced in Hebron— different, that is, by the standards of other visiting Englishmen. He had a distinct feeling of déjà vu among the buildings of the city. He could not remember ever having seen houses like this, not the flat-roof symmetry, nor the archways, nor the sheer narrowness of the streets. Yet it seemed familiar to him, the yellow brick and stonework of the buildings, some of it exposed by a crumbling cement outer shell.

  Ray was only faintly aware of this curious sense of having visited before, and he pushed it to the back of his mind. Meanwhile, he and Fred compared observations about the possible locations of snipers who would undoubte
dly show up when the Israelis began any cordon-and-search mission in the Palestinian areas of the town.

  Ray and Fred both spent time chatting with Arabs, and in particular, Ray fell into conversation with a youngish Bedouin in his twenties, trying to trade goats. Ray liked him, his soft, polite voice, and the natural acceptance that soon he must take his camels and his herds back to the desert, which lay to the east, simmering in the oncoming summer heat. Ray thought the Bedouin might have made a halfway decent SAS trooper.

  Late in the afternoon, he and Fred crossed from the large Palestinian section (H-l), over Al-Shuhada Street

  near the old bus station, and into the Israeli-occupied section (H-2). From there they made their way through the market, south of the small Israeli settlement on the edge of the Old City, and on to the great edifice of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the burial ground of Abraham and his family.

  Ray's guidebook told him that here God had bestowed upon Abraham his father role of the Jewish people. And it may not just be Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob buried here. There may also be all twelve sons of Jacob, not to mention Adam and Eve.

  It was on the rough, sandy lower ground, below the great and sacred place, that Ray felt an uneasy stirring in his mind. He was standing next to a group of seven Arabs in black robes, and he was staring, like them, at the ramparts of the massive Tomb, and he felt utterly certain he had seen it before, or at least something very like it.

  His heart beat faster as he struggled to recall when, where, and how. Because he knew he had never been within a thousand miles of Hebron in his life. Yet there were distant images, and he fought to summon them. He found in the recesses of his memory a long, covered bazaar filled with traders, lines of them, in a faraway land. And there was a building, a huge building, a great yellow stone edifice. He could see it from the bazaar. He remembered that.

  But the details escaped him—his memory simply could not find accurate pictures of his first neighborhood, the Bazar-e Vakil, and its vaulted underground teahouse where he had so often tasted sweet pastries with his parents. The Tomb of the Patriarchs was jolting his brain, trying to force the image of the lofty Mosque-e Jame into focus. The greatest building in Kerman remained shrouded in mist, however. Ray's mother had carried him around it so many times, just along the street where they lived. But that part had also vanished, along with his name, and his past.

  "Penny for your thoughts, sir," said Sergeant O'Hara. "You thinking of going inside?"

  Major Kerman shook his head. "I don't think so, Fred," he said. "We ought to be getting back. Whistle up the driver, will you?" Fred immediately took a few steps away from the Arabs and dialed up the number, issuing curt instructions to the Israeli Corporal.

  Which left Major Kerman once more alone with his thoughts, saying nothing, his secrets safe. Which was just as well, because right now he was posing questions to himself, which would not have been greeted with wild enthusiasm among his SAS colleagues. Nor indeed at number 86, The Bishop's Avenue.

  Why am I beginning to admire these people so much? Is it just the influence of Wilfred Thesiger? Or is it my blood? Is that why I feel at home here in the desert?

  He wondered, somewhat dangerously, for the first time in his life. Who the hell am I? Am I really among my own people, right here standing next to the last remaining Bedouins of the Negev?

  By ten o'clock that evening Major Kerman was issuing his final briefing to the SAS team that would shortly embark the Israeli Army helicopter and take off for several different locations.

  He stood before his men and told them, "As you know, the situation here in Israel remains very tense. The government is under considerable pressure from the United States, the UN, and the European nations to revive the peace process with the Palestinian leadership, and to commit Israel to a lasting truce with the Arab world.

  "We all know it's been damned difficult. I think the Israeli Government has been trying to exercise restraint despite frequent acts of violence from terror groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The recent acts of aggression and indiscriminate suicide-murder against the Israeli people in both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have been committed by groups whose strategic aim is the wholesale destruction of the nation of Israel. That's where we come in. That's why we're here."

  Ray paused. He paced across the front of a large map of the immediate area around Hebron.

  "Tonight," he said, "at the specific request of the Israeli Government, the DDF is mounting a coordinated military intervention, a large-scale cordon-and-search operation against several Palestinian-occupied towns on the West Bank and Gaza . . . the 'A Territories,' which we have discussed before.

  Our objectives are simple: to flush out the terrorist leaders and seize their arsenals of weapons and bomb-making equipment.

  "Don't let's pretend this is going to be a neatly achieved operation, because it won't be. In fact, it will almost cerainly be extremely untidy. Maybe even messy. Nonetheless, given the relative balance of forces in our favor, it will ultimately be successful. Furthermore, the Israeli Government is certain no other Arab force will come to the aid of the Palestinians, particularly in the short timeframe envisaged for the operation.

  "You must remember, we are here in a very specialized role, to help and advise the Israelis. Most of their Commanders have been trained here by us, so they know what they're doing. Nevertheless, we must be watchful and ready to move in with on-the-spot advice, probably up front, wherever it may be needed. All SAS staff will be wearing IDF combat clothing and helmets, but without insignia. You will carry a personal weapon, your Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun, strictly for your own protection. Only in extreme circumstances will you use it."

  Ray Kerman was keenly aware that this operation would be conducted under hair-trigger stress. Hebron was nothing short of superheated these days. The slightest incident could spark off an eruption of gunfire and explosives. He did not want to lose some of his best men in a senseless shoot-out in the dusty streets of the West Bank. He had cautioned them over and over.

  "If we get through this without someone going berserk, it will be a bloody miracle," he said. "But it won't be one of us. We will each be attached to individual attacking Israeli forces. So try to keep it down, guys. Be careful with your advice, but try to stop anyone doing anything really stupid."

  He outlined the Israeli strategy, explaining that on the following night the EDF would attack several parts of Gaza, as well as the key Palestinian enclaves in the West Bank, at Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Hebron. They had already conducted a mass of intelligence gathering, even some minor maneuvers designed to identify suitable points of entry into the targeted territories. IDF Reservists had already been called up, and were armed and ready at their parent unit depots.

  "I will personally be attached to the force attacking Hebron," said the Major. "I will be in company with Sergeants Fred O'Hara and Charlie Morgan. And we will be conducting ourselves in precisely the same way as everyone else. Remember also, this little war is unlikely to end tomorrow night, so let's make the most of the opportunity to observe firsthand precisely how the Israelis conduct themselves on a volatile operation like this."

  Thirty minutes later, the Israeli helicopter took off bearing the SAS men to their destinations, flying over the Holy Land, bound first for the grim headquarters of Northern Command, where Ray Kerman, Fred, and Charlie would disembark prior to joining the Golani Brigade, the tight IDF battalion that would provide the main cordon in Hebron.

  Ray knew the drill. He'd masterminded the drill. The Gola-nis, backed by a squadron of tanks for extra firepower and protection, would send in Special Forces familiar with the area to conduct the search-and-sweep operation within the perimeter of the town. They would be additionally supported by a battalion of Israeli Paratroopers. Search-trained military engineers were scheduled to go after the Palestinian arms caches.

  Ray had stressed to all levels of the Israeli Command, the success of the operation depended entirely on the spearhe
ad of the force inserting a steel-rimmed cordon around the target without being detected. Stealth and secrecy were paramount, and there would be a full twelve-hour briefing in Northern Command throughout the following day.

  Major Kerman would officially assist in the execution of the operation from the Golani Brigade field headquarters in western Hebron.

  1 a.m. Friday, May 14,2004

  By now, the IDF battalions were fanning out over the West Bank, zeroing in on their targets. Around Hebron there was dark, quiet efficiency from the Israeli troops who made up the Golani Brigade, now approaching the city from three different directions.

  The Barak Battalion, moving north along Route 60 from Beersheba, had already halted two miles from Hebron, just south of the tiny village of Beit Khagal, dismounted their vehicles, and were moving silently forward, through the darkness, on foot.

  From the west, on Route 35, the Gideon Battalion had stopped near the village of Beit Kahil, and they too were walking down the deserted road, weapons raised, every sense on high alert in the pitch black of the moonless Negev Desert.