by John Altman
“Talk soon.”
Dalia set the phone down slowly. She checked to make sure she had not missed a call from her daughter. Well, a few hours of birthday still remained.
After a moment, giving her head a small shake, she bent again to her work.
The primary role of the rear guard in phalanx warfare was to keep its fellows from fleeing. Such has been the true purpose of all rear guards throughout history: bolstering the will to combat, smothering the instinct for self-preservation, driving yet another generation into the breach.
As Jim McConnell was always trying to do with her. He fought to keep her in the present, in the fray, despite her natural inclination to flee into books, into the past. But the terms of their deal had been satisfied. The Kremlin-NATO scenario had been her last.
Once you see what’s going on, I have a feeling you’ll want to help out …
A coxswain counted strokes right outside her window—the lake’s surface carried the sound with eerie clarity.
All our fates are entwined, she taught her students.
It was truer today than ever before. And Dalia Artzi—a sabra, one of the first generation born in Israel—knew better than anyone the price of isolationism.
But she had done her part. She had earned her books and her solitude. The military-industrial meat grinder would grind along just fine without her.
She focused. Champing at the bit to engage Darius, Alexander made a rare miscalculation. Moving southward, he left his lines vulnerable. Coming up behind, Darius sat across those lines. Thus, the Macedonians were given a simple choice: turn and fight, or starve. But the young king brilliantly regained the initiative, snatching victory from a force more than twice the size of his own. He countermarched, engaging Darius on a narrow coastal plain where the Persians could not make use of their superior numbers. Alexander then mounted his horse and, with a brazen direct charge, drove Darius from the battlefield in panicked disarray.
The lesson of Issus, she told her classes: timing and maneuverability trumped brute force. This, too, was truer today than ever before. It was the small mobile squad—the OPSEC team, the lone wolf—that had enabled 9/11. And that would likely enable, in the not-too-distant future, nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological catastrophes. Against a small, resolute, and unpredictable rogue player with nuclear or biological capability, all the bombers and land assault vehicles in the world made little difference. Fortress America was, in reality, a house of cards.
And Israel, home to Dalia’s children and grandchildren, was even more vulnerable.
She rubbed at the loose skin around her eyes. The rowing crew was gone. The birds were gone. The study was silent.
She picked up her tea. It had gone cold.
She sighed, then set down the mug and reached for the phone.
JOHN ALTMAN
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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