Turning right on to the diagonal runway, Kafri drove at a steady 40 miles per hour with full headlights as ‘the distant halo of the Old Terminal’s lights sharpened into detail’. Betser could see the ‘canopied entrances’ to the building and began the countdown in his mind to the moment when the vehicles would stop and he and his men would rush into action. He broke radio silence to utter the codeword for his break-in teams to chamber a round and set their weapons ‘to single shot mode for selective shooting’. All three vehicles were filled with the ratcheting sound of assault rifles being primed.

Then, just as they turned left on to the approach road that led to the Old Terminal, the occupants of the Mercedes could see in its headlights two armed Ugandan sentries who were 100 yards in advance of the control tower. The one on the left quickly vanished into the darkness; but his comrade on the right lifted and aimed his rifle at the Mercedes and called out ‘Advance!’

Betser assumed from his time in Uganda that it was a routine challenge and that the soldier was unlikely to fire. That was why they were in the Mercedes. They could drive right by him. ‘Eighty, seventy, sixty,’ he said under his breath, counting down to the moment when they would leave the car. He was concentrating on the first canopied entrance that he would use to enter the large hall and tackle the terrorists.

‘Amitzur,’ said Yoni. ‘Cut to the right and we’ll finish him off.’

Betser was horrified. ‘Leave him, Yoni,’ he said quietly but emphatically. ‘It’s just his drill.’

After the briefest pause, Netanyahu repeated his order to change direction. He was convinced that the sentry was suspicious and about to open fire. They had to take him out before he did. As Kafri swerved towards the soldier, Netanyahu and Zussman drew and cocked their silenced Berettas.

‘Giora, let’s take care of him,’ said Yoni.

The memory of Ma’alot flashed through Betser’s mind. He felt they were making a fatal mistake before they had even reached the terminal. ‘Yoni, no!’ he urged. ‘Don’t shoot!’ But his warning was ignored.

Netanyahu and Zussman pointed their pistols out of the window and aimed at the sentry, who was wide eyed with astonishment. At a range of ten yards they opened fire from the moving car, the silencers turning the crack of their shots into a ‘bare whisper’. It was a difficult aim, but at least one of the bullets hit its mark and the sentry tottered and fell. Netanyahu and the others could breathe again.

Kafri began to accelerate when suddenly the silence was shattered by a long burst of automatic fire. Betser jerked his head round to see the Ugandan sentry, who must have got back on his feet with his gun, crumple in a hail of Kalashnikov bullets fired from one of the Land Rovers. This prompted yet more unsilenced firing from all three vehicles at both the downed sentry and his fleeing comrade, who was eventually cut down by bullets from a mounted machine gun.

The sound of the unsilenced gunshots had put the whole operation in jeopardy. The element of surprise had been well and truly lost and Betser, for one, expected the terminal building to vanish at any moment ‘in a fireball of explosions as the terrorists followed through with their threats to blow up the hostages’.

‘Drive!’ shouted Netanyahu at Kafri, who had braked at the first sound of unsilenced fire. ‘Fast!’

Kafri stamped on the accelerator but had only covered a short distance when bullets spat out of the darkness. Aware that they were easy targets packed into the vehicles, Yoni and Betser both yelled, ‘Stop!’

The car screeched to a halt, as did the Land Rovers behind. They had stopped short of the control tower and at least fifty yards from the edge of the Old Terminal, rather than the five they had planned for. Flinging his door open and shouting at the others to follow him, Betser began running towards the Old Terminal, careful to veer left to avoid the pool of light in front of the building. He could hear the thumping of boots behind him and knew that his break-in teams were close behind.

From the darkness to his right came a burst of fire. Flicking his AK-47 to automatic, he fired back as he ran, his bullets hitting his assailant and causing him to fall. On reaching the corner of the Old Terminal he paused ‘while the rattle and crack of rifle and sub-machine gun fire shook the air, kicking up bits of asphalt at our feet’. Behind him the rest of the assault teams were ‘bunched up, instead of heading to the assigned entrances’. It was a ‘complete contradiction of the battle plan’, caused no doubt by the loss of the surprise and the threat of incoming fire.

Netanyahu shouted at Betser to move forward, passing him as he did so. He then moved a little to the right to let Betser, Yiftach Reicher and the rest of the assault teams go beyond him. As Betser ran on, staying close to the front of the building, he could see an armed man come out of the second canopied entrance to the large hall and take up a position behind the low concrete wall. Betser fired a couple of shots at the man before his magazine emptied. They missed and the man ran back inside.

Betser paused briefly to reload, flipping the empty magazine round and replacing it with a full one, before continuing on to the first canopied entrance. Finding it blocked off and no way through, he ran on to the second entrance, followed by Amos Goren. But in the lead now was Amir Ofer, part of the squad assigned to the second entrance. Ofer’s job was to watch the back of his officer, Amnon Peled. But on leaving the Land Rover his legs had momentarily gone to jelly and he lost sight of Peled. Terrified that he would not arrive in time to do his job, Ofer ran as hard as he could to the second entrance, ignoring the cover of the building and overtaking both Betser and Peled in the process.

Yoni Netanyahu was almost opposite the first entrance, and not far from the point where he planned to set up his command post, when he stopped and turned to his left. He may have wondered why Muki Betser’s squad had run past the blocked entrance; or he might have been checking on the progress of Yiftach Reicher and Giora Zussman, the leaders of the other assault teams. But by pausing in open ground, when most of his men were hugging the front of the building, he was vulnerable to Ugandan snipers.

Shots rang out from the control tower–the vantage point barely eighty yards away that Motta Gur had warned about–and Netanyahu was struck in the chest and lower right arm. Sighing, he collapsed to the ground. ‘Yoni’s been hit,’ shouted Tamir Pardo, his communications officer, who was following close behind him.