Cody's Army: Assault into Libya

by Jim Case

Genres: Action & Adventure; Literary Fiction; War & Military

Synopsis

The killers had it coming to them! Book 2 of Cody's Army by Jim Case.

Release date: September 26, 2009

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 219

Sample

Rome has more faces than Death.


One of the largest of Europe’s cities, there is nothing quiet, nothing relaxed, about this most ancient and most contemporary
of the world’s great metropolises, this home of pagan gods and Christian martyrs, this sprawling, noisy collection of humanity,
roasting beneath the Mediterranean sun, a city that has survived emperors, tyrants, barbarians, and fascists; a city as notorious
for its incredible traffic jams as it is for the easygoing ambiance of its ancient fountains and serpentine alleyways where
time seems to have stood still for hundreds of years.


Saint Peter’s Basilica, one of the great churches of the world, and the Colosseum, where Christians and slaves went to the
lions amid the blood-lusting cheers of the masses, epitomize the full spectrum of the human condition that is Rome, and the
maxim that all roads lead there is no less true today than ever before.


The city draws millions of people every year: tourists, business people, those resettling in Rome from somewhere else. And,
too, those who deal in death and terror, for there is much of that in Rome today, as well: Italian terrorists such as those
of the Red Brigade whose more than three hundred terrorist actions per year, such as the assassination of a former Italian
prime minister, have pushed that government to the very brink of anarchy; and the various Palestinian groups such as the one
that turned the Rome and Vienna airports into screaming slaughterhouses.


Italy has a crack antitenorist unit, the Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza, but in a city of five million souls, with
so many new faces coming and going daily, it is a virtual impossibility to isolate and nullify most terrorist actions before
they occur….


Abdul Kamal checked the accuracy of his wristwatch against the face of the wall clock behind the stand-up counter of the snack
bar that was busy with the shoulder-to-shoulder press of office workers stopping oft” for a quick cup of coffee and pastry
on their way to work.


0700 hours.

He finished his orange juice in a quick gulp and left the little tavola calda, emerging onto Via Vittorio Veneto.


The wide thoroughfare practically overflowed with bumper-to-bumper traffic whizzing by dangerously fast in either direction
in a steady downpour that made this new day grim and humid.


He clenched his teeth against the cacophony of countless car horns, incessantly beeping at each other, underscored by the
sibilant hiss of tires on wet pavement.


A Volvo glided out from the speeding flow of traffic and pulled to the curb, its back door yawning open before the car came
to a full stop.


Kamal held back a moment only, his fingertips poised near the front of his opened jacket, near the 9-mm Czech-made automatic
he wore holstered beneath the jacket; then he recognized one of the two men inside the Volvo in the gloomy daylight that was
more night than day because of the low, dark rain clouds. He climbed into the backseat, finding the car’s interior uncomfortable
and muggy, almost claustrophobic. He was used to the open spaces of the desert.


The Volvo eased back into the traffic with the same seemingly effortless ease the driver had exhibited in pulling up to the
curb.


“You have lost none of your vehicular skills since the last time, I see, Majid,” Kamal said to the back of the driver’s head.

Majid Baqir caught Kamal’s eyes in the rearview mirror and chuckled without humor.

“I have gotten better, if anything, Abdul. Beirut was good for not much else, I’m sad to say. It is good to see you again,
old friend.”


Kamal’s gaze shifted to the passenger in the front seat.

“You are Ahmed Mahmud. You have something for me.”

The other man turned halfway around in the front seat and cleared his throat, extending a cloth backpack over the back of
his car seat.


“I am most honored to be working with the great Abdul Kamal.”

Kamal took the backpack, lowering it beside him to the seat, well below window level. He unzipped the pack and reached inside.

“Only Allah is great. We are but the instruments of his will.”

He extracted one of the three compact, lightweight Uzi submachine guns which the backpack contained, withdrawing a handful
of thirty-two-round magazines, dropping them into the pocket of his jacket except for palming one of them into the Uzi’s pistol
grip.


The snick-snack of the Volvo’s windshield wipers filled the car’s interior.


“This rain,” said Majid to Kamal’s reflection in the rearview. “Do you think it will cause problems?”

Kamal’s eyes lifted from the Uzi to look out through the rivulet-streaked windshield.

“Problems? No, not for us. For those we have come to kill,yes. We have the element of surprise, and the rain will be our ally.”


He thought that he could have added that they would need all the allies they could get, making an assault, as they were about
to, on the American embassy in the heart of Rome’s fashionable “embassy row,” another ten-minute drive farther along Via Vittorio
Veneto, but he told himself that Baqir and Mahmud would be well aware of the realities of what the three of them, and the
five others in two vehicles waiting ahead for them, were about to undertake.


“Allah’s will be done,” Baqir intoned solemnly.

The three of them lapsed into silence.

Kamal closed his eyes and, with his finger curled around the Uzi’s trigger, he went over the plan step by step one more time,
but he could find no last-minute corrections to be made.


The other two vehicles would be in place in close vicinity of the American embassy, at number 119: one car passengered by
four more of Baqir’s fighters, the third vehicle a weather-beaten old Citroen, driven by poor Yamir.


In going over the plan for the upcoming attack, he found himself thinking again of the devious route that had brought him
this far since this operation was born at that briefing eight days ago in Sofia.


He had insisted on being in on the action. His reputation was that of one who did far more than simply plan the missions,
then sit back while others took the risks. He went into the fires of battle with his brothers in the Palestinian cause, and
he knew his reputation was crucial to holding on to the power he had lately sensed being sucked from him by other PLO factions;
other militantly radical offshoots like his own.


For so long it had been Arafat and Kamal, the powers that ruled the PLO. Then Arafat’s weakening and capitulations to the
enemy had brought dissent, and dissent had led to a violent break, both for Kamal’s followers and those other factions with
whom they bickered to the point where death threats had been exchanged and their joint effectiveness had, of course, suffered.


He thought about that and realized once again that for him there could be no other life. Not until his people had their stolen
lands rightfully returned to them. He would never live to see that day, of course, he knew, no matter how today was written.
He would die fighting the enemies of his people—if not today, then soon. It could be no other way, he would have it no other
way, and then he would be reunited with his family in paradise, graced with Allah’s favor forevermore.


He had been born in Palestine where he had witnessed the slaughter of his mother and father. He and his brothers and sisters,
all of them mere children, had been spirited away by relatives to the filthy refugee camps of Lebanon. His two younger brothers
had died fighting the Jews when the Zionist warmongers had invaded Lebanon. His sister was killed in a Palestinian refugee
camp massacre in Beirut.


He had long ago given up any hope of the Palestine issue being resolved by peaceful means, due to the Israelis’ steadfast
refusal to restore the real home of the Palestinians in their own land. His hatred of the Zionists, and their American backers
fueled his rage and commitment to the never-ending holy war against the Israelis until such time as they would be forced to
address his people’s demands.


War, yes. Holy War. Jihad.

His side fought not with million-dollar high-tech machinery that spewed death from the skies, the way his enemy fought, but
with highly coordinated, very effective campaigns every bit as potent and twice as persuasive: the war of terror, striking
savagely at the enemy from within its very heart.


Innocent lives among the enemy lost? Those lives were no more innocent than the lives of Kamal’s mother, father, brothers,
and sister, to his way of thinking.


The tears he had shed for them had been, and would be, exchanged for blood.

His notoriety, among allies and enemies alike, stemmed from his genius for planning and executing flawless operations, capturing
headlines time and again, making the world all the more aware of the Palestinian cause. In I983, he and his gunmen had shot
up a synagogue in Rome, wounding forty-seven, killing four. The attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador in London
had been aborted at the last moment when the ambassador’s plans had changed too late for Kamal to redeploy his forces, and
he had most recently masterminded and commanded the hijacking of an EgyptAir plane to Beirut.


Majid tapped on the Volvo’s horn, clearing a path out of the traffic flow, to a curb at the corner where he braked several
dozen yards down the street from the high wall surrounding the American embassy.


“Yamir and the others are in place,” he said over his shoulder.

Kamal noted the time.

0711 hours.

“Give them the signal,” he instructed. “It is time.”

He could feel a taut metal edge icing through his system in these moments of heightening combat awareness, as if attuned to
everything in the busy scene bustling around the Volvo.


An unending stream of umbrella-wielding pedestrians clogged the sidewalks; the somehow orderly melee of cars, trucks, and
Rome’s great green buses raced past, seemingly in every direction.


The American embassy looked safe and secure behind its walls and the iron-barred gates where Marines stood guard, admitting
onto the grounds a flood of visitors with the proper identification, and administrative and clerical employees.


This had everything to do with Kamal’s timing of the attack.

The sentries stationed by the barred parking lot entrance, and at the front sidewalk entrances, would be too busy with the
crowd to pay much attention to the Volvo and the two vehicles already staked out near this intersection. Even so, the Americans
had beefed up security precautions extensively in the wake of so many terrorist actions during the past several years, and
the men assigned to guarding American embassies around the world were famous for being alert—and tough.


The cars carrying his unit would have stood a good chance of being noticed during less busy hours, he knew, and that would
have been catastrophic, especially in the case of Yamir, the youth behind the wheel of the ancient, deadly Citroen, which
Kamal noted was in place across the side street near the corner where Majid had parked the Volvo.


Majid flicked the Volvo’s headlights off and on, just once.

The youth over in the Citroen did not return the signal but started his engine and pulled away from the curb, driving slowly
toward the sidewalk entrance of the embassy.


Kamal had labored many hours over the blueprints of the embassy, supplied in Sofia by Colonel Vronski, and had drawn on his
own knowledge of the embassy area. He previously had made several visits to Rome to walk these sidewalks, photographing the
embassy from as many angles as possible. He had then organized the movement and timetables for this unit, arranging for them
to arrive in Rome independently of each other over the past two days, and from different points of origin inside Bulgaria—except
for Majid. He had been stationed in Beirut, but Kamal had insisted on Majid’s presence, Majid being the best fast-car driver—especially
in a combat situation—that Kamal had ever worked with.


This was the first time the eight men of this strike force had linked together, and Kamal had taken great pains to arrange
that also, knowing that antiterrorist commandos of the NOCS were backed up by an extensive intelligence network supplemented
by several western spy agencies. But up to this point he suspected that there had been no suspicion at all on the part of
the NOCS, which certainly would have passed word on to the Americans of what Kamal and his men intended. That was one of the
best things in his favor in running an operation like this: his group having no headquarters large enough to be isolated and
bombed by the enemy or raided by commandos. Instead Kamal’s terrorist network was scattered among populous urban areas, like
the cells he ran in Vienna and Rome.


He had arrived last night in Rome, spending the night in a safe house in the poor Cassarina section of the city, a twelve-block
area even more densely populated than the rest of Rome. After so much planning the anticipation had made the previous night
very long.


But it was happening now.

Baqir and Mahmud, both in the front seat, withdrew their Uzis, loading their weapons and pocketing additional clips, their
eyes, like Kamal’s, following the slow progress of the Citroën.


Yamir, a lad of fourteen, had volunteered for his role in this action after the only other surviving member of his family
had been blown to bits during Israel’s bombing of the PLO Headquarters in Tunisia in October 1985.


Kamal felt his pulse pound in anticipation of what was about to happen. These were the moments that gave life meaning: taking
vengeance; spilling the blood of one’s sworn enemies. And a strike like this, in addition to furthering the Palestinian cause,
would work well in his own favor in more subtle ways. He was striking at the very heart of the enemy this day, and from this
day on PLO dissidents would flock to his command, and his power would not be in danger, as he sensed it now was.


He banished such thoughts of personal gain from his mind, watching the flow of pedestrians on the sidewalk in front of the
embassy. He saw a pair of women, walking together, approach the front entrance gate.


The Citroën came abreast of the embassy just as the Marine held the unlocked gate open far enough for the women to pass onto
the grounds, the sentry’s eyes keenly scanning the street in front of the embassy—just as Yamir pulled on the Citroen’s steering
wheel and the old car picked up speed, mounting the curb to suddenly commence a racing approach directly at the front gate.


The Marine saw this. He pushed the women inside behind the wall and started to shout an alarm to someone Kamal could not see.

The Citroën sliced through pedestrian traffic on the sidewalks, pitching injured bodies this way and that as others screamed
and jumped out of its oncoming path just in time.


“Allah be with us,” Ahmed Mahmud said with a sigh from the Volvo’s front seat.

Then the world seemed to explode.

The last thing Kamal saw across and up the street by the embassy, before turning away from what he knew would come, was Yamir’s
Citroen plowing in from only several feet away at the brick wall and the iron gate. Kamal and the others in the car turned
from looking in that direction then, lowering their heads.


The explosion, detonated by the suicide car’s collision with the gate, erupted into a ground-shaking blast that swallowed
everything else, the force of the dynamite fireball exploding wrought iron and brick and mortar and pavement and ripped-apart
human bodies high, wildly into the air in every direction, drowning out the startled shrieks of shock and pain, the shattering
of glass, and the din of vehicles on the street colliding into one another as the angry cataclysm threw everything and everyone
off-kilter.


The echoes of the blast were still rolling from building front to building front up and down Via Vittorio Veneto, somewhat
muted by the rain, as debris fell as far away as the parked Volvo. The momentary, stunned silence of people before the panic
and the real screaming started still lay heavily over the scene like a tangible presence when Kamal hissed “Now!” to the others.


He and Majid and Ahmed tumbled from the Volvo to storm in the direction of where the bomb-rigged Citroen was no more, that
car having practically disintegrated, nothing but unidentifiable, twisted, smoldering, charred remains of machine and human
beings around a jagged hole, ten feet across, that had been blown into the embassy wall where the front gate had been moments
ago.


Kamal and the other two stormed through the stalled traffic and in between dazed bystanders who were slowly, tentatively,
picking themselves up to see what had happened.


As they approached the remains of the front gate the slashing rain abruptly turned into a misting drizzle.

Alarms pierced the stillness from inside the wall; commands and pounding boot leather could be heard from the other side of
that jagged opening, running toward it from various directions inside the compound.


People now began screaming and moaning all around, realizing what had happened when they saw the grisly mosaiclike splash
of blood across the embassy’s outer wall.


Four other men rushed from another car that had been parked around a side street opposite the embassy, waiting for the blast
as a signal.


Kamal reached the outside of the break in the wall first, no more than twenty seconds after the explosion, the six men of
his team flanking either side of the opening, tight along the wall. The sight of seven drawn Uzi submachine guns in the hands
of seven determined-looking, running men scared those bystanders who could move into panicky mass exodus behind the sea of
stopped autos and any other cover close at hand. Kamal and the driver of the other car were the first to peer around the hole
in the wall. They saw the torn, but clearly palpitating, dead body of the front gate sentry just inside the wall, and two
more Marines charging in at a run.


The Marines saw them and pulled away from each other to start backing toward co. . .