Free Scimitar SL-2 by Patrick Robinson Page A

the valley where the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers meet. It’s nowhere nearanywhere, 700 miles from Shanghai, 800 from Beijing. Over 15 million people live there, and they make a lot of cars and trucks.”
    “How do you know all that?”
    “I’ve been there.”
    “I didn’t know you’d been to central China.”
    “Neither did the Chinese.”
    Ahmed laughed and shook his head. “You have many surprises no one knows, General Ravi,” he said.
    “I’m hanging on to ’em as well,” replied the Hamas C in C. “Since I plan to go on breathing.”
    In Ahmed’s humble but youthful opinion, the General was without doubt the cleverest, toughest, and most ruthless man he had ever met. He had seen him kill without blinking, destroy without a moment’s pity for the dead and suffering. And he had seen him lavish on his own very beautiful Palestinian sister Shakira a devotion and admiration almost unknown in the Arab world.
    Ahmed was best man at their wedding. He had acted as Ravi’s personal bodyguard throughout several missions against the Israelis and the West. And Ahmed had stood almost dumb-founded when a reckless young Palestinian terrorist had attacked the General before a mission, viciously trying to land the butt of an AK-47 on Ravi’s jaw.
    The speed with which Ravi had dealt with him was blinding. He had broken the young man’s arm into two pieces, and his collarbone, and then rammed his boot into the boy’s throat as he lay on the floor, saying quietly, “I’ve killed men for a great deal less. Take him to a hospital, Ahmed.”
    On the way, young Sabah had explained that the Iranian-born Hamas C in C had been one of the most feared team leaders in the British Army’s SAS, and probably the best exponent of unarmed combat in the Regiment. By some miracle, the former Maj. Ray Kerman had found himself on the wrong side in a bloody battle in the holy city of Hebron, where he had been saved by Shakira.
    Shakira had brought him to Hamas. He changed his name back to that of his birth. He converted back to his childhood religion ofIslam. And in the process provided the organization with possibly the most important Muslim battle commander since Saladin eight hundred years earlier. At least that’s how the High Command of Hamas used his name to inspire new recruits.
    And now he fought alongside his Arabian brothers, with whom he shared forefathers. As the most wanted terrorist in the world, he returned to the Muslim religion and married his adored Shakira.
    “Allah himself sent him to us,” Ahmed had said en route to the hospital. The kid with the broken arm and collarbone was inclined to think Satan himself had also had a hand in it.
    The Chongqing-built truck faced the most hazardous part of its journey over the last mile. The gradient looked like Mount Everest, and the engine howled in low gear, the four-wheel-drive tires somehow managing to grip the granite and mud surface, which was slick from a small river gushing out of the mountain.
    There were many lights and the final 600 yards were downhill, into a hollow with a tall, steel-topped barbed-wire fence crossing it. “Impregnable” was the only word General Ravi could find to describe it.
    To the left and the right of the main gates were high guard posts, each one built on six stilts the size of telegraph poles. They were set 10 feet above the razor-sharp steel spikes ranged along the top of the structure. Inside the post were two searchlights and two armed guards, each one manning a mounted heavy machine gun. General Ravi could not quite work out whether they were trying to stop people getting in or out. Either way, his money was on the guards.
    Patrolling the outside was a detail of eight men, split into two groups of four and stationed in the open on either side of the gate, rain or no rain. Through the gate Ravi could see no further light, save for that coming through a regular seven-foot-high doorway. There were no other lights between the huge outside