Youssef’s apartment, the one Mookie and Yoni had been assigned. Then, bursts of gunfire from the other building.
A Land Rover was approaching from the gendarmerie at the bottom of the road. We waited until it was about 50 feet away. Amiram and I opened fire, then Dov and Shmuel Katz as well. The driver lost control and crashed into the side of the Renault. There were at least four policemen inside. They, too, rolled behind the wall on the far side of the street. Using the terrace columns for cover, we kept shooting. Within a minute or so, only a couple of the cops fired back.
Though the three Palestinians could not know the reason for the gunfire and the wailing of the car horn, they were now on their guard. When Mookie had blown open the door to Abu Youssef’s flat — and he, Yoni and the other two members of his team ran into the apartment — he saw the Black September man peering out from the bedroom. Mookie raised his Uzi but the Palestinian ducked inside and shut the door. All four of them fired through through the door. When they went in, they found not only Abu Youssef but his wife, both dead. When Zvika’s team burst in on Kamal Nasser, he, too, was ready. Crouching behind a desk, he raised an automatic pistol and fired, grazing one of the team on the leg. But in a burst of Uzi bullets, he, too, was killed.
I suspect that Amitai’s face-to-face meeting with Dado may have saved his life. When he and his team cornered Kamal Adwan, he had an AK-47 raised and ready to fire. Without even a split second’s unconscious hesitation, Amitai fired first. His only regret afterwards was that Adwan’s wife and children saw it happen, and that when they’d blasted open the apartment door, the force blew open the door of a nearby flat, killing an elderly Italian woman. She had been one of the Mossad’s sources of information on the Beirut apartments.
Mookie’s team came down first. They joined us, crouching behind the columns, as sporadic shots continued from one of the policemen behind the wall across the street. When a second police Land Rover approached, | at first signaled the others to let it pass. But when it suddenly accelerated toward us, we opened fire. It swerved, crashing into the rear bumper of the other one.
The other teams were back down now. I shouted for Dov to have the drivers bring the station wagons from around the corner. When we began to pull away, a third police Land Rover appeared. It sped up behind us. Mookie tossed back a grenade. The last thing I saw as we made it to the end of the block and headed toward the seafront was the front end of the vehicle exploding. We dropped hollow, needle-sharp spikes out the window of the car as we left, so I knew that
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