Читать книгу The Angry Sea - James Deegan - Страница 42

29.

THE FIRST TWO to die were swimmers who were run over and dismembered when the final terrorist – a short, stocky Moroccan called Khaled Benchakroun – deliberately ploughed through a bunch of people in the water.

The next two were a pair of teenaged girls, who were smeared like strawberry jam on the sand as he drove the 190-tonne boat ashore and straight over the top of them.

Six more people were killed when Benchakroun jumped from the stranded, heeling yacht and shot indiscriminately at horrified holidaymakers on the very beach on which he had spent his teenaged summers, selling T-shirts and trinkets to identical tourists.

The eleventh person to die was Benchakroun himself, his head blown half off by Jorge Fernández from the hovering helicopter three hundred metres offshore.

Under Ramos’ instructions, the helicopter then landed a hundred metres from the Lucky Lady.

Half of his men were sent to clear away those few people who had not run off the beach, and the other half began to approach the yacht, to engage the remaining terrorists, whom they had every reason to believe were still aboard, and to free the hostages.

But as they got within ten metres of the boat, a twenty-kilogram ball of Semtex was ignited by a timed detonator, initiated by Benchakroun in his last act before leaving the vessel, and five marines were killed, Jorge Fernández and Ramon Ramos among them.