Secret Soldier: The True Life Story of Israel's Greatest Commando

by Moshe Betser

  He gave me a look of expectation with a hint of pleading in his eyes, and no time to respond as he went on. “I stayed out of the way for three weeks,” he said. “I managed the Unit. But I don’t want to miss this operation. I told Ehud that I’m ready to go as a regular soldier. Ehud said okay, so I asked him who had the most complicated and critical target.”

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  He smiled at me. “You do.” He paused, waiting for me to say something. But I remained quiet.

  “Ehud says it is up to you,” he went on. “If you say okay, then it is fine with him.”

  He knew nothing of the plans except what he had heard during that first session when Ehud laid out the original intelligence. A great fighter, terrifically motivated and powerfully courageous, as long as I did not have to take someone off my team to make room for him, Yonni was one “tagalong” I was always ready to accept on board my team.

  “Here’s what we’ve got planned …” I began, and Yonni became the fourth man on my team.

  The IDF uses enemy role-playing extensively. But in special operations missions, where the entire effort is offensive and planned to the last detail, one of the final and most important steps in the exercises is dismantling the plan at every step, thinking up unexpected events to test our reactions in case of a surprise.

  It is called “cases and reactions” and is the only way to plan something going wrong. We might be discovered by accident, or ambushed because of a leak in field security.

  For every stage of a plan as complex as Spring of Youth, between ten and twenty possibilities for accident, error, or unexpected interference need to be taken into account. All are brainstormed and listed, and theoretical responses planned. About half a dozen of the most critical are tested and practiced in real time, with enemy role-playing practiced over and over again.

  We did not know when or where we might be attacked — on the way to the target, back down the stairs, in the building, in the street, in the car, on the beach. But we prepared for it each step of the way.

  As usual, Dado and Mano watched our practice that last night. On one drill they watched from inside the apartment. As we began the retreat, Dado suddenly shouted, “Contact from the rear. You have one man wounded!” A classic “case and reaction” ploy; he pointed at Zvika Livneh. We picked him up and ran down six flights of stairs with him. A few minutes later, Dado came out of the building and called our retreat weak. Mano told us to do it again.

  “What should we do about this?” I whispered to Yonni under my breath. He knew exactly what I meant. Every once in a while a senior officer needs to show off “leadership” to an officer even more senior. The drill had gone fine, and we knew it.

  “One more remark out of him,” Yonni hissed back under his breath, “and I’ll tear-gas him.”

  “You have any?” I asked.

  He smiled and patted a pocket as Mano and Dado disappeared inside the building.

  With me in the lead and Lonny, Zvika, and Yonni in the rear, we ran back up the stairs for the tenth time that night. We paused outside the front door to the apartment, waiting for Ehud’s signal — five clicks on the Motorola transmitter clipped to the inside of my jacket — then waited another five seconds for the explosion on the door handle.

  I burst into the main corridor of the apartment. Mano stood in the corner. I ran past him, leading the force into the flat. “Enemy contact!” Mano shouted as Yonni ran by.

  Yonni swirled, pulled out the Mace canister, and let loose a spray that went right into Mano’s eyes. Mano wanted a reaction. He got one. He started rubbing his eyes, which only makes the sting of the tear gas worse, and in his confusion he crashed into a pile of pre-fab window frames piled in a corner of the apartment living room, shattering the glass. (After the operation, the army reimbursed the contractor for the broken glass and frames, which the contractor thought vandals destroyed. But when he learned what we used his buildings for, he donated the money to the Soldiers’ Welfare Association, Israel’s equivalent of the USO.)

  Pleased with our reactions, Dado said no more about the proficiency of our performance, or anything about Yonni’s reaction. Neither did Mano. Mano never said a word about it. The Unit, after all, once kidnapped half a dozen unsuspecting senior officers from the general staff one day — including blindfolding, handcuffing, and ferrying them from one vehicle to another — when they asked us to prove a capability we had promised them.

  Always protected by a halo of glamour-for good and for bad — special forces units are usually allowed certain liberties with respect to the formal hierarchy of the big army, and in the IDF, no unit was more special than Sayeret Matkal.

  The next day we moved to Haifa to conduct drills in the seaborne aspects of the operation, and to hold a full dress rehearsal with all the elements of the mission. From missile boats into the rubber boats at sea, to a beach landing on the Haifa coastline, where Mossad cars and drivers waited to take us up the Carmel to a neighborhood similar to the target in Beirut, we covered everything except a break-in to an apartment.

  In terrible wintry conditions at sea, learning to move back and forth from the deck of the missile boat to the Zodiacs looked like the most dangerous part of the mission. Two commandos from the Shayetet, the navy’s sayeret, field me as I stood up in the rocking boat, reaching for a rope to pull myself aboard the missile boat. For a moment, the ship’s roll appeared certain to crush us all. Just then, the rope snapped in front of me. I grabbed it, and the naval commandos heaved me upward to the deck.

  On our way into Haifa, one of the sailors told me that during exercises the sea is always at its worst. “But when the real thing comes,” he promised, “God will make it calm and peaceful.” I hoped God knew what the sailor knew.

  Dado and Eli Ze’ira, commander of Military Intelligence, came to see us off at the naval pier in Haifa on Monday, April ninth. They began with the usual speeches of encouragement and motivation, but suddenly Dado said, “We’ve got to kill those bastards.”

  I raised my hand. “Did you say kill?” Until then, we had planned the operation as a kidnapping, to take them back to Israel to stand trial. We did not regard prisoners from our encounters with the PLO as POWs but as criminals who had committed murder. None of us expected that any of the targets would simply raise their hands and surrender, but if they did, we practiced to take them prisoner, tying their hands and feet, and carrying them back home with us.

  Dado looked at Ze’ira and then turned back to us. “Yes. Kill them,” said the chief of staff. It is traditional in Sayeret Matkal for the cooks to prepare something special before an operation — but the expectation of a seven-hour boat ride on the wintry seas like we had experienced the day before left none of us with an appetite. And just in case, we all took antinausea pills before leaving the base for the ride to Haifa. But, like the sailor said, God made the sea calm for us that night. Flat and smooth, it turned into a pleasant ride.

  The missile boats stayed far off the coast, running lights dimmed. Beirut sparkled at night like the jewelry in its fancy shops. The missile boats slowed down until steady in the water, the Zodiac boats lowered. Each of us pulled on plastic sheeting to keep our civilian disguises dry for the trip, then we climbed down into the boats.

  The naval commandos used outboard motors for most of the ride. But several hundred meters off shore, they turned off the motors and rowed the rest of the way in. Usually, we would have helped with the rowing and the swimming. But we sat in a pastoral quiet, under plastic sheets, watching Beirut come closer like tourists on a cruise ship arriving in port. Reaching the surf line, the frogmen steered the boats in like surfboards, and then the last few feet they slipped into the water and pushed and pulled until the boats beached. Even our feet did not get wet.

  Three cars with Mossad drivers waited for us, just as planned. Lonny, Zvika Livneh, Yonni Netanyahu, Ehud, and I piled into the first Mossad car. Ehud slid in beside the driver, and I took the window seat beside him in th
e front seat. “Go!” snapped Ehud from under his brown wig.

  But as the driver made the car slide slowly forward, he spoke softly, the tension unmistakable in his voice. “I just came from there for a last look,” he said. “Three gendarmes, armed with submachine guns, are patrolling the street below the apartments.” We knew about a Lebanese police station about two hundred meters away from the target buildings at the intersection in A-Sir.

  Ehud bit his lower lip, remembering the kidnapping of the Syrian officers and how Dado had called off the mission because of the unexpected APC. I read his face as he wondered whether to report by radio back to the command-and-control field headquarters on board the mother ship and risk the entire mission being canceled.

  “Go,” Ehud repeated, making up his mind. We had practiced for just such an eventuality. The driver slowly drove from the darkened beach to the coastal road that leads into Beirut. On the way, all three forces in their cars tried out the radio frequencies we had selected for the operation.

  Driving with traffic, the three cars moved within visual contact of one another, but not too close to be recognizable as a convoy. At the first set of traffic lights, we stopped for a red light. I glanced out the window to a car next to me. An elegant woman in the backseat, her driver in the front, looked over at me. Something soft in her face made me smile at her. She turned her head away. If she only knew what was going on, I thought.

  On a mission like that, the paranoia begins with the conviction that everyone around you is completely aware of a foreign presence in their midst. As a security officer flying in and out of Israel in the early seventies, I knew those feelings. But the exchange of glances with the woman snapped me out of the paranoia that the whole city knew of Sayeret Matkal’s arrival in town. The silence in the car started to grow comfortable as we settled into the seats of the Buick Skylarks that the Mossad agent rented in Beirut.

  But the driver suddenly broke the quiet when we reached a second red light. “There are policemen in the area,” he repeated, obviously worried. A fully trained Mossad agent, the driver recognized risk when he saw it.

  I glanced at Ehud, thinking of the Syrian officers. If he broke the radio silence to update Mano Shaked on board the missile boat in the darkness far off the coast, Mano would contact Dado. He would discuss it with the chief of the Mossad. They might go to the defense minister, who would call the prime minister. By then, the mission would be scrubbed.

  Everyone in the car waited for Ehud’s answer. Everything was so delicately planned, we worried that the slightest bit of information that departed from the plan might spin the command post into panic. My body tensed waiting for Ehud’s answer.

  The light changed. “I heard you,” Ehud finally said to the driver. “Go.” The car lurched forward, and I relaxed into the soft upholstery of the big American car, watching the scenery of Beirut like a tourist on my way to A-Sir. I understood exactly what Ehud meant, and it made me glad. We would see for ourselves and then decide.

  The ride into the hills passed quickly, and then we drove slowly into the target neighborhood, finding parking places off the Rue Verdun. Just as we had practiced, Ehud and I walked first.

  Cars drove by on the street. A few people out for late-night strolls, not untypical in a Mediterranean city. I put my arm around Ehud’s waist, like a lover. “It reminds me of Rome,” I whispered into his ear as we moved along the sidewalk.

  At first, we didn’t see any of the policemen reported by the Mossad driver. But suddenly, two gendarmes came out of the shadows ahead, pausing on the sidewalk to light cigarettes. A street lamp made their brass buckles glisten in the night. Submachine guns hung from straps draped over their shoulders. They blocked the sidewalk. I felt Ehud tense.

  “We’re tourists,” I reminded him, “civilians. They’re the ones who should get off the sidewalk, out of our way.”

  So, Ehud and I continued our stroll, heading straight for them. But they ignored our approach. We hugged a little closer and narrowed our path to the edge of the sidewalk. Still the cops did not move. As we crossed their path, my shoulder brushed lightly against one of the gendarmes’. He didn’t even turn to look at me.

  Ahead of us, everything looked perfect. I knew the corner and the alley by heart. The glass doors to the lobby of my target’s building shone brightly ahead.

  We knew the guard sometimes napped. But no guards appeared in view as we moved closer to the building. “This is it,” I said to Ehud, dropping my arm from his shoulder and leaving him in the street as I headed toward the glass doors.

  Through the lit lobby behind the doors, I saw the staircase. Zvika, Lonny, and Yonni followed me. Ehud, Amiram, and Dov Ber, the liaison officer from the Shayetet assigned to the mission, stayed in the street.

  Inside, I drew both Beretta and Uzi. We moved fast, in stages, taking each landing and then moving to the next in a fast half-run, half-walk, two or three steps at a time. Six flights up the stairs, we counted each landing, trying to keep our steps, even our breathing, quiet.

  Finally, in front of the door, Zvika knelt to attach the explosive to the door handle. I stood behind him, covering his back. Lonny and Yonni took each side of the door.

  I looked at Lonny watching Zvika prepare the plastique. Lonny’s blond wig really made him look like a girl. He glanced at me. I grinned. He tried to smile back, but the tension made his smile forced and tense. I felt calm. I winked at him, and then nodded to Zvika to get ready. I clicked the radio mike three times, letting Ehud know we were ready.

  The silence stretched on as we waited for Ehud’s five clicks, signifying that each of the three forces had called in their readiness. Finally, the clicks began. I counted them off with my fingers — one, two, three, four, five. With the fifth click my open palm turned into a fist, and I pointed at Zvika. He activated the fuse and stood up. I leaned against the wall, Lonny to my right. Zvika took the other side of the door, Yonni to his left.

  All three forces set their fuses to the same amount of time. The explosions were Ehud’s signal to report back to the mother ship that the operation had begun, setting in motion the rest of the IDF forces in Beirut that night.

  The seconds passed slowly waiting for the fuse. But just before the explosion, shooting broke out in the street below. Those last two seconds waiting for the fuse to work seemed endless as I listened to the fire in the street.

  Finally, the explosion blew open the door in a blast of smoke. I burst in with Zvika, instinctively taking the left-hand turn into the main corridor of the apartment, running down the hall I knew so well from the drills.

  Four strides and I reached my target’s office. Half a dozen empty chairs faced the desk. Behind it, filing cabinets reminded me that Military Intelligence wanted any piece of paper we found. To my right, said the architectural plans I had memorized, was the master bedroom door. I swung in that direction just as the door flew open.

  The face I knew from three weeks of carrying his picture in my shirt pocket looked at me as I raised my gun. He slammed the door. Bursts from my Uzi and Zvika’s stitched the bedroom door. I rushed forward and kicked through the remains of the door. The man responsible for the Munich Massacre lay dead on the floor.

  More shooting from the street made me turn away from the sight. The piles of paper on the desk and the filing cabinets behind it made me pause for an instant. But the shooting continued downstairs, and no matter what Military Intelligence wanted, the firefight below changed everything. “No time for documents!” I commanded, already running through the apartment corridor. “They need help downstairs.”

  Yonni and Lonny guarded the apartment entrance from the foyer. They followed me and Zvika out as I ran down the hall to the stairs, leaping from landing to landing, on our way to the street, where the firefight grew louder.

  Out the front door, I ducked into the shadow of a tree, scanning the intersection just as a burning Lebanese police Land Rover rolled through the intersection. Straight ahead, Amiram Levine in a blond wi
g looked like a crazed dancer in the middle of the intersection, his tiny, powerful body swinging his Uzi back and forth from target to target.

  To my right, Ehud stood in the middle of the intersection, doing the same. I added my own fire at the Land Rover, giving Amiram cover for him to run toward me. The Land Rover crashed to a halt against a building. But a second vehicle, a jeep full of reinforcements, came screeching into the box of fire we created at the intersection. Bursts of gunfire knocked the four passengers out of the vehicle as our fire strafed the jeep.

  For a second, silence fell over the neighborhood. From the far distance I heard sirens. And explosions. Amnon Shahak’s crew at work on the Habash headquarters, I figured.

  “Muki!” Amiram called out. “The guard. He’s in the Dauphin.” He pointed to a squat little Renault parked across the street. “He started the firing,” Amiram shouted. “I shot him — but I’m not sure he’s dead.” A bullet ringing against the asphalt a few feet from me confirmed Amiram’s doubts.

  “Let’s get him,” I said. Amiram and I ran diagonally across the street, flanking the Dauphin and firing into it as we moved. But as we charged into our final approach we saw Dov Ber, the liaison officer from the naval commandos, also attacking — from the opposite direction. Brave but wrong, he ran directly into our line of fire. Luckily, Amiram and I spotted him just before we fired, eliminating the driver.

  The Mossad drivers pulled into the intersection, tires screeching as they braked to a halt beside Ehud. The teams of fighters from the other two targets suddenly came into view, hurling themselves into the first two cars.

  We ran toward ours. The sirens came closer. A roar of flames burst from the spilled fuel tank of a jeep. But before I reached the car, a third jeep with reinforcements pulled into the intersection. I pulled a grenade from its clip under my jacket. The jeep braked hard and a gendarme jumped out. I fired at him with my Uzi, but missed. He ran inside and disappeared in the lobby. I threw the grenade at the jeep. It flew through the air in what seemed to be slow motion, bounced off the tarpaulin roof of the cabin, landed on the street beside the jeep, and exploded. Four gendarmes tumbled out of the jeep, either wounded or dead.