The Nylon Hand of God

by Steven Hartov

  “Well, we would pay them, of course,” said Eytan as Hakim opened a large padlock. He leapt up to a steel chain and raised the corrugated door.

  The hangar was dark. The smell of cold oil and cylinder solvent hung in the still air. A white Norman Islander jump plane occupied most of the space, but its cowling was off and its engine sat on the stained cement floor like a defective artificial heart.

  Hakim led Eytan around the wingtip to a pile of dark bundles lying on a wooden pallet. He kicked one of the zippered kit bags, as Eytan winced.

  “You see?” said the Moroccan. “We have maybe twelve here. Some student Telesis, some PD Sabres, a Glide Path Nova. But I believe it is not legal to rent them.”

  “I think we could pay five hundred per rig for the week.” Eytan wondered how long the chutes had been huddled like that in the dank space. But then, what was a little canopy rot between friends? “We’ll need ten.” That would give Didi Lerner at least one extra to cannibalize.

  “Five hundred?” Hakim turned to his newfound, wealthy friend.

  “American dollars,” said Eytan. “Five thousand altogether.”

  Hakim stroked his mustache. “I would have to ask the members.”

  “And of course I would leave you with a deposit,” Eytan pressed. “Full replacement price, in case they are damaged.”

  “Or stolen?”

  “You never know.” Eytan shrugged innocently. “But if that happens, you can hand your mates two thousand apiece and tell them to buy new rigs. Right?” He looked at Hakim, who had removed his sunglasses but could still not read the Englishman’s eyes in the gloom. Or, Eytan thought, you can chop your padlock, plead robbery to your friends, and buy yourself a sports car.

  Hakim suddenly decided he needed a smoke. Eytan gently took his elbow and led him away from the gear.

  “Tell you what.” Eckstein opened his other jacket pocket, flipped through a large wad of bills, and peeled off five American hundreds. “You take this as a down payment. Tomorrow morning at seven, one of my mates will be here with the rest of the money.” He was not concerned that Hakim and company might try to roll Didi for the cash. He pitied them if they tried. “You give him the chutes, and he’ll sign any rental paper you want.” For twenty thousand, he reckoned Hakim would drum up a typewriter and hire a secretary. He gripped the Moroccan’s hand, the cash forming a bond between their flesh. “Is it a deal?” Eytan smiled. “Jumper to jumper?”

  Hakim was at a total disadvantage. He had nothing to lose. The Englishman was obviously toqué, perhaps even a criminal. Hakim could call in the Sûreté, but then he would lose a small fortune.

  “We do business,” he said, lifting his chest to show his honor.

  “Bloody good,” said Eytan. He clasped both of Hakim’s shoulders. “Tomorrow at seven, then.” He released him and walked briskly away, turning back only to call out, “Don’t be late. And no dirty laundry!”

  Hakim smiled and waved. He looked down at the money, then held one bill up to the sun. No dirty laundry. What in Allah’s name did that mean . . .?

  Horse began to gesture excitedly, and Eytan turned from the writing table. Didi Lerner was hustling quickly from the direction of the hotel’s reception lobby, across the wide pool patio, his bald head twisting as he scanned for room numbers. Spotting Horse, he took a hard left through the gardens and leapt over a goldfish pond. Horse just managed to haul on the glass door in time for him to bound into the room.

  “Bloody fucking piece of shit Mitsubishi,” Lerner spat, as he landed on the carpet and shook a spray of water from one sneaker, which had trailed into the pond. He was wearing khaki shorts and a black T-shirt that said Blue Sky Ranch and showed three nude skydivers clasping each other’s limbs. The shirt was glued to his body with sweat.

  “Good of you to join us.” Benni smiled at him.

  Lerner unshouldered a canvas gym bag, tossed his sunglasses onto a soft armchair, and went straight for the refrigerated bar. He pulled out a bottle of orange juice, finished half of it, and wiped his lips with his wrist. “Where did you get that fucking truck?” he growled at Eckstein.

  “Abderrahim, the cabdriver.” Eytan grinned. If Didi was only bitching about the transport, then everything else was all right.

  “What is he?” Lerner demanded. “Your bloody cousin?”

  “I don’t think I have any Berber ancestors.” Eytan tapped a finger on his lips. “I’ll have to check.”

  “But you did acquire the gear,” Benni fished anxiously.

  “Ah course I got the bloody gear. Would I drive five fucking hours from Casa with an empty truck?” Lerner backed up with his orange juice bottle and slumped into the soft chair, then quickly arched as he felt the glasses under his rump. He pulled them out and looked at the twisted frames. “Bloody hell,” he snapped. “And don’t expect any change back from your dollars, Herr Schmidt.” He turned to Eckstein. “Your Hakim is one slick, happy bugger.”

  “No matter.” Benni crossed his wrists and flagged his hands. “Horse, you can put the balance in the safe.”

  Horse picked up the soft attaché and went to the sliding closet in the entrance foyer. The main reason Benni had selected the N’Fis as his base was that only the first-class hotels had private safes in the rooms. The funds were crucial to this operation, and he did not want the men wandering around with large sums, or raising the curiosity of desk clerks with deposits and withdrawals from the boxes at Reception.

  “And you should see this stuff,” Didi carried on. “The bloody colors. We’ll look like a flying circus.”

  “But you think the gear’s okay?” Eytan’s amused expression further annoyed Lerner.

  “Buggered if I know,” he complained. “I’ll have to repack everything and hope to hell I don’t need rigging tools.”

  Eytan thought for a moment, his smile fading. They would need a large open area and some sort of clean mat for repacking the chutes. “We’ll have to do it tonight,” he said. “Find someplace outside of town.”

  “It’ll take three hours minimum,” said Lerner. “Me and Lapkin together.” He looked up at Eckstein with a frown. “You don’t remember how, do you?”

  Eckstein had not made a free-fall jump in three years. Military jumping was easy. You just threw yourself out and let the static line do the rest, a dope on a rope. However, skydiving was a complex skill, and his abilities were purely functional. He could remain stable, turn right and left, track on a vector, and pull. But he could no longer trust himself to pack properly. He shrugged sheepishly.

  “Wanker,” Didi mumbled. “Well, I’m not touching the reserves. We’ll just have to play Russian roulette.”

  “Why can you not do the same with the main parachutes?” Horse asked foolishly as he walked back from the safe.

  “Have you seen the cars on these roads?!” Didi shouted, making Horse wince in confusion. “This gear belongs to Moroccan skydivers.” A country’s vehicles were evidence of the general cultural regard for things mechanical. The choked cities and dusty highways were filled with sputtering, sloppily repaired hulks.

  “Repack the mains, Didi,” Eytan agreed.

  “Bloody royt,” said the Australian as he finished his juice.

  “Where is the truck?” Benni asked.

  Didi threw a thumb over his shoulder. “In the front lot. I gave the doorman a hundred green and told him I’d double it tomorrow if nobody touches that rattling piece of shit.”

  “Should we not post someone?” Horse asked Benni. He was afraid to look at Lerner.

  “It will have to do,” said Benni.

  “Yeah,” Lerner snapped. “We’re not the Queen’s Own Guard.”

  “All right, people.” Eytan was looking at his watch and snapping his fingers. “On to the next.” He picked up his Ethiopian ruck and slung it as he walked toward the door. Benni joined him. The colonel was wearing a white safari shirt, and Eytan opened one of his breast pockets and stuffed the equipment list inside. Benni turned to Lerner, who w
as still slumped in the chair.

  “Well?” he said. “You two have a project.”

  “Just five minutes,” Didi promised, “and we’re off.” He frowned at Horse. Being paired with the mousy analyst was not his idea of the perfect marriage.

  Horse called out to Benni. “What about my groceries?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Baum as he stopped again and turned. “Give us the list.”

  “Brown sugar, salt, flour, parsley, and food coloring.” Horse looked at his fingers. “Oh, and a large piece of hard cheese, also some cheesecloth. And white glue.”

  “Got it,” said Eytan, and he and Benni went out.

  Lerner looked at Horse. “What’s all that for, then?” he asked as he turned the skydiving T-shirt inside out.

  The analyst was folding up the terrain map. He would also sweep the room and carry all incriminating scraps with him when they left. As a rule, he felt intimidated by the field expertise of the men he worked with, but when they encroached on his territory, he could be surprisingly brusque.

  “I am going to bake a bloody cake,” he snapped.

  The city of Marrakesh lies in southern Morocco, at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, whose ridges are brushed with snow even in summer and firmly encapped by a dangerous mantle in December. The low plaster buildings jut up from a wide, flat plain of huge rectangular plots which alternate between lush grove patches and barren sand, as if the sultan Youssef Ibn Tachfin could not decide if he preferred to settle in desert or garden. The walls of the old medina, within which wind an impossible labyrinth of souks, are high, thick, and perfectly symmetrical, their pastel orange-pink so breathtaking under the Maghreb sun that most of the buildings encircled by them have been similarly washed in emulation. And the other prevalent color of Marrakesh is a glistening emerald green, as the underground irrigation khettara still feed the parks and gardens with cold mountain water. So from any small distance, Marrakesh resembles carved cubes of salmon flesh on a bed of kale.

  There were other cities in Morocco, such as Ouarzazate and Er-Rachidia, which were in closer proximity to Algeria and might have offered a more convenient departure base. But they lay at the edge of disputed territory, where roving bands of Polisario still raided, and their streets were filled with wary garrisoned soldiers. Marrakesh, on the other hand, was still a tourist mecca, her citizens striving to import and sell every matter of Western convenience. Benni had decided that its cultural stew would provide the best natural cover for his men, and the ingredients needed to improvise the basic tools of warfare would likely be found somewhere in the winding alleyways of mysterious stalls.

  Jerry Binder was happy to be in Marrakesh, at least relative to the claustrophobic mode of arrival he had just endured. The alleged “express” from Casablanca had stopped at every puny hamlet, pisspot, and goat crossing, and by the time he finally hopped down from the old red-and-yellow electric car, he had sworn to attend a Crosby, Stills and Nash revival and machine-gun the whole damned bunch, for he could not expunge the old hippie tune from his brain.

  Binder quick-marched along the concrete platform of the Marrakesh station, a large stuffed duffel bag over his shoulder, his mountain ruck and German parka packed away. Whenever he was off duty from Midtown North, his fashion tastes leaned toward shades of black: cowboy boots, jeans, tight-fitting T-shirts that displayed his torso. But Baum had pointed out that his appearance was too Ramboesque, so he had switched to blue jeans, high-topped Reeboks, and a white golf shirt. Now he looked more like a personal trainer en route to a job at one of the big hotels.

  The driver of a tan Petit Taxi stuffed Binder’s duffel into the back seat and was pleased to hear the American say, “The Mamounia, my man,” as he squeezed his muscled bulk into the front. The Hotel Mamounia was a very luxurious place, and latching onto one of its guests for a few days could cover a month’s rent in the ville nouvelle.

  They drove quickly along the wide thoroughfares of the Avenues de France and de la Ménéra. Binder did not respond much to the driver’s chatter, but when he saw the wide-open gate of the medina walls at the intersection of el Yarmouk and el Fetouaki, exactly as Eckstein had described it, he smiled. Jerry did not often reflect on his Judaism, but he was an ardent admirer of Israel’s military machine, and so far these Landsmen were proving to be pros.

  The driver dropped him off inside the circular drive of the hotel. Binder watched him pull away, then shouldered his bag, went back out onto Houmane el Fetouaki, and began to walk. The duffel was not light, but he had often humped a lot more and much farther.

  He had been waiting outside the Camping Oasis in Casablanca when it opened in the morning, and was not surprised to discover its supplies barely fit for a Cub Scout troop. Still, he had managed to find the GI duffel, ten garrison belts, and a pair of plastic canteens and pouches for each. He also bought seven cheap lensatic compasses, which was all they had. Alice packs would have been a wonderful find, but Eckstein had assured him that the Marrakesh bazaar would have plenty of large camel-leather backpacks. Then he was quickly on his way back to an electronics store on Allal ben Abdallah, where he spotted a Realistic three-watt walkie-talkie with a telescopic antenna, which would be good for the dunes, and promptly cleaned the shop out of its inventory of four. They did not have external jacks, but he bought earplugs for them anyway, figuring that Sadeen could bypass the noisy speakers. He left the clerk desperately trying to sell him a Discman and hustled for the train station at Casa-Port.

  Binder kicked out a nice pace now along el Fetouaki, following Eckstein’s brief, keeping the Koutoubia mosque to his left and bearing straight on at the traffic circle. His hard expression beneath wraparound sun visors brushed off a couple of eager boy guides, and there, as described, was the gas station across the open square, and the flophouse Hotel al Charaf, soaking up the fumes. “Ahh. Home,” Binder said to himself with satisfaction. “Fucking Israelis must have a color shot of every Arab street corner on earth.”

  He gave the desk clerk sixty-five dirhams for a room overlooking the street, bounded up the stairs, and barely inspected the showerless cubicle as he stuffed the duffel under the bed, went out with his ruck, and locked the door. He made the clerk’s day as he handed him “forty American.”

  “Listen up, Mohammed old buddy,” Binder said as the clerk smiled at him and squinted. “I’m climbing in the Atlas tomorrow. Anybody touches my stuff…” He drew a finger across his own throat and made a gurgling sound. The clerk laughed, but Binder raised his sunglasses to show his eyes, and the young man nodded somberly.

  Outside in the sun, Binder found O’Donovan leaning against a lamppost. As he passed him, he said, “Speaking of blades . . .” and the two men paired up, heading for the souks.

  The Djemaa el Fna cannot really be compared to the municipal squares of any other cities on earth. Bordered on the south end by the respectable structures of banks, apothecaries, and the post office, the remaining three sides feather off into establishments of questionable legality. The expanse of its sun-bleached asphalt could rival the parking lot of a sports stadium, but no vehicle can easily maneuver there, for the el Fna is constant host to an undulating circus of snake charmers, magicians, potion hawkers, jugglers, freelancing tour guides, and stiletto-wielding hash dealers. While in the center of the square crowds surge from one entertainer to another, the circumference is lined with canvas-shaded tables offering orange slices, chicken hearts, lizard tails, and turtle broth, all to the accompaniment of tareejah drums, cobra flutes, and the distant calls of muezzins from the minarets.

  Amir Lapkin and Ari Schneller hardly had to wander beyond the borders of the el Fna to acquire everything on their list. They had linked up at Lapkin’s hotel room, emptied their gym duffels, and headed for the fray, quickly latching onto a Moroccan teenager and giving him one hundred dirhams to serve as “bodyguard.”

  Lapkin filled his carryall with cans of lentil soup, burlap bags, plastic cigarette lighters, five boxes of large Ziploc sandwich bags, and
a rectangular drum of cooking oil. Schneller bought penlights, dark twine, batteries, black electrical tape, shoe polish, two dozen lollipops wrapped in red cellophane, shaving brushes, a large roll of insulated alarm wire, a dozen mini-screwdrivers, five small cans of electric motor oil, and three pairs of striped flannel pajamas.

  Their guide was very disappointed, for he had trotted around behind the foreigners dreaming of his commissions when they would finally wade into the jewelers’ souk, which they never did. But Lapkin gave him another hundred dirhams just for waving off the flies, and he and Schneller trotted back to the Hotel de Foucald, just south of the el Fna, their duffels clinking and clanking.

  They encamped on the pink plaster balcony of their second-floor room and began to work.

  Lapkin’s first task was to create guznikim, the primitive but reliable beacons that IDF troops use for everything from marking targets to landing choppers. He opened ten soup cans with his Swiss Army knife, flushed the contents down the toilet, and affixed a disposable lighter to each one with electrical tape. Then he cut ten squares of burlap and stuffed them in the cans, sealing them in sandwich bags. Tonight he would fill the cans with sand, leaving a wick of exposed burlap, and soak the contents with cooking oil. A man could light his guznik, later smother it with his boot, let it cool, repack it, and drop it in his ruck.

  Schneller went to work on weapons-cleaning kits, even though Shaul Nimrodi had not yet come up with so much as a cap pistol. He laid out ten Ziploc bags, filling each with a screwdriver and a meter length of alarm wire with a small eye fashioned at one end. Using the scissors of Lapkin’s knife, he cut squares of cleaning patches from the pajamas and trimmed the shaving brushes until only hard bristle remained; in every other bag, he enclosed a small can of oil. Team partners would have to share.

  The men worked together to modify a pair of penlights for each member. One would be taped to the back of the jumper’s left wrist, the bulb toward his fingers, so that as he gripped the parachute-steering toggles above his head, the next man in formation could track him. The spare would be closed in a pocket and secured to the buttonhole with a length of twine, as would the compasses and any other tool in danger of being dropped. The penlight bulbs were white, so Lapkin and Schneller happily sucked on lollipops after stripping the red cellophane and taping new covers over the lights. The illumination kits were finished off with a roll of electrical tape, an extra battery, and three meters of twine.