whole world to see what she saw in her husband; her man! Her savior! Her lover! The smile did not go unnoticed.
How, in hell, did I manage to get myself in this predicament, Austin was thinking just as Bangor, Maine airport was becoming visible, with his speed still reading three hundred and fifty miles per hour.
Dear God, we are going to make it Austin thought, while Bill was almost certainly fearful of a negative outcome.
One thing they both knew was in their favor, the weather was perfect and the airport had become visible when they were still thirty miles away, but time was running out. The Al-Qaeda operative’s final stroke had been to activate the timer on the nuclear explosive device just before Austin put a bullet through his head.
The timer was ticking.
CHAPTER 1 – BETRAYAL
The first explosion on that early spring day of 1982 went off at exactly six in the morning. Residents at the northern Lebanese refugee camp of Nahr-Al-Bared were jolted awake. The explosion itself was not something unusual; they were used to hearing them occasionally amongst the sound of gunfire. This after all was a base for Palestinian guerillas fighting the Israelis.
What jolted them awake was the severity of the explosion. It was unusually loud and powerful, almost throwing them off their beds.
As people tried to gather themselves and walk towards their balconies to check it out, a second explosion sent them scrambling either for their weapons or to a safe hiding place. They knew exactly what was happening.
The Israelis were here.
The Israelis were fed up with all the incursions into their country by Palestinian guerillas coming through Lebanon. They had suffered so many innocent civilian casualties, so when the latest attack took the lives of several school children, they decided to invade Lebanon and solve their problem once and for all. They knew the Lebanese authorities did not have the ability or the will to hand the culprits over or even arrest them. The army was too weak, having been deliberately kept in this state under the Syrian occupation. Some people might argue that the Syrian presence in Lebanon was for security reasons and the protection of the Lebanese, but it was an occupation. Nothing happened in the country without the approval of Syria.
The invasion of Lebanon had been planned years earlier; however, like many of their other plans the Israelis had been forced to shelve it as a result of international influence. After the latest guerilla incursion, kidnappings and rocket attacks the Israelis had had enough. The plan was dusted off and put into action.
Israel had a lot of experience dealing with the Palestinians. They knew they had one chance to hit them hard and had to attack on all fronts. They could not allow them to escape into Syria to come back and fight again at a later date, even though the Syrians kept them under very tight control. The Palestinians in Syria did not have the freedoms they enjoyed in Lebanon – freedoms that grew from the weak Lebanese government who did not have enough power to deal with the Israelis, nor the Palestinians. They had taken full advantage of that.
While the main Israeli military force had to come through the south of Lebanon, the Palestinians were scattered in many different camps around the country, so they sent their air force and helicopter gun-ships, backed by rockets and artillery, to take care of the rest.
The Palestinians fought with all the munitions they had been given and the war opened up on other fronts. The Israelis had already accomplished their mission against the refugee camps and their armored division was inside the capital, Beirut.
The Syrians proved to be no match for the Israelis. It was a war of technology. It was a dogfight between the American built F-16’s and the Russian built MIGs, and the MIGs were no match for the far superior F-16’s. There were roughly 150 aircraft on each side, but the Israeli fighters shot down 86 Syrian aircraft, with no loss to themselves.
The leader of the Palestinian movement in the north knew what had caused those explosions. With his seventeen-year old son by his side, they looked through the window and saw droves of the helicopter gun-ships firing at their targets with deadly accuracy. His son, Abbas, ran and grabbed his Kalashnikov AK-47 automatic rifle and headed for the door and only did he stop when he heard his father scream after him.
"Why father," he asked? "I want to fight like everyone else."
"Come here and see this, my son," his father said. "You will soon understand."
Abbas moved toward his father and peered through the dusty window. What he saw made his blood boil over. Two of his father’s best friends, the second and third in command of the camp, were accompanying the Israelis, leading them towards the compound, and pointing at their house.
"I want you to hide in the secret place my son. They should not find you."
"I will not hide unless you come with me," pleaded Abbas.
"If I come with you, they will not stop looking until they find and kill us both."
"But no one knows about the hiding place, not even your friends."
"I know my son, but unless they find one of us, they will not stop until they do. You know as well as I do, they cannot afford to give up."
"I would rather die with you, father."
"Listen to me, son. I have lived a long and productive life and fulfilled my duty to my people and my homeland. Now is your turn to do the same and take over. Just think of what will happen to our people if those two traitors manage to take control of the organization. Our families will be slaughtered. You have to stay alive."
Abbas listened to his father in utter desperation. He knew he was right. He had to stay alive.
Abbas and his father took another look outside and saw their enemies getting very close to the house.
Abu Abbas, the father, hurried to the refrigerator, grabbing a bag on the way and started filling it with food and water while Abbas, entering the closet, made his climb up into the coffin.
Abu Abbas handed the bag to his son with tears in his eyes.
"Remember son, I will always love you and please remember what we always talked about. Never trust anyone my son. I am counting on you to avenge my death."
"I promise I shall father," replied Abbas with tears streaming down his face.
Abbas stole a last glance at his father just before he closed the door to the coffin. His heart was breaking.
A few seconds after his father shut the door to the closet Abbas heard the front door burst open. After the screaming and commotion settled down, he heard the whole interrogation. At many instances he wanted to jump to his father’s aid, but every time he started to move, he remembered his father’s last words, “I am counting on you, son,” and he would contain himself.
Abbas never knew anyone could cry so deeply in silence. He listened.
The torture went on for at least thirty minutes, which passed slowly, like hours, and it seemed the only thing his father’s deputies wanted to know was his son’s whereabouts.
You better tell us where Abbas is, they would demand as they continued to beat and torture him.
"I will tell you again," he heard his father respond. "As soon as I heard the first explosion,
