Snap Shot

by A. J. Quinnell

  There came a crescendo of noise and the seven pairs of aircraft were gathering speed down the long, black runway. The first pair lifted off in front of the tower, raising their noses and climbing steeply. The second pair became airborne but stayed low to avoid the slipstream of the first pair. The third pair completed the pattern by lifting high.

  Walter was watching the left-hand plane in the third pair. He could just make out the visored head under the canopy. He felt a surge of confidence. The whole spectacle had been one of graceful perfection.

  ‘Now the waiting starts,’ Ivri said. ‘Thank God this time it won’t be too long. Just an hour.’

  ‘This time?’

  ‘Yes. The last similar occasion was the Entebbe raid. I wasn’t in command of the Air Force but I was on the planning - and the waiting. I aged ten years in one day.’

  He took Walter’s arm. ‘Come on. Let’s go to the Command Room.’

  Gideon flew the plane like an automaton, but he flew it well. His right hand resting lightly on the stick at his side, his feet gentle on the rudder bars, his eyes scanning the instruments and the changing pattern of the windscreen’s head-up-display which was on navigation mode. The radars were at standby with blank screens so as to avoid the possibility of enemy signal detection.

  The F16’s were flying in loose tactical formation and though most of Gideon’s brain was not functioning he kept his position instinctively as they crossed the Gulf of Aqaba and then banked slightly onto a new course over the coast of Saudi Arabia. The working part of his brain was occupied with thoughts of Munger and Ruth and Walter Blum. They were not rational thoughts, but scattered and random. Listening to Walter Blum: ‘She loves him. You must understand that. She collapsed when she heard the news. Couldn’t take it. Whatever happens I believe that she’ll never love anyone else . . . never.’

  His own words: ‘Be calm, Mr Blum. I’ll do my best. It has nothing to do with Ruth or anything else. I know why he’s in there. What they’re doing to him. It’s tricky but I’ll do my best. Have no doubts.’

  He thought of those first hours when Colonel Rener told him he had been selected to attempt the roof-top skimming bombing run to release a man who had risked so much for Israel. He remembered the pride he felt. He remembered the hours strapped into the simulator, seeing for the first time the impossibility of what they were asking him to do. Then working at it, applying all his skills, making one simulated 500 knot run after another, always missing the target as he tried, all within fleeting seconds, to acquire the target, line up with the HUD symbol and trigger the computer to unleash the bomb at the release point. Time after time he had fluffed it, acquiring the target too late and missing. Then, during the third session, as the simulator crew had watched with growing admiration, he had begun to get it together; flying smoothly and accurately, acquiring the target earlier and earlier, shrinking the diameter of the bomb impact points. By the last session over sixty per cent of his attacks were on target. When he climbed out of the simulator for the last time the crew gathered around and shook his hand and shook their heads in awe. But it was the motive that had driven him. The motive that concentrated all his faculties.

  Then waiting for him outside was Walter Blum and he had dropped his bomb - right on target. The hero at the other end was Munger. It was a name like a cancer in Gideon’s mind. Munger - the man who had taken Ruth. Munger, the demon who had destroyed his future. So something had snapped. It was a schizoid cleaving of his brain. The large part was paralysed; the tiny part still functioning had taken the decision and now flew the aircraft. The F16 was in the hands of a mentally ill man.

  There were sounds in his ears again. It was Colonel Rener talking to the controller at the Ma’an base. Gideon only half listened to the carefully rehearsed Arabic patter. A few minutes later the fingers of his left hand worked over the navigation computer console and his eyes watched the symbols of the HUD display flicker and change as the formation banked onto a new course-East-North-East towards Baghdad.

  In the Etzion Command Room General Ivri pointed to a spot on a wall map and said to Walter:

  ‘He’ll leave the formation here, just south of Ar Ramādī. Then, three minutes later, he’ll be over Baghdad on his bombing run.’ He turned to look at a wall clock.

  ‘About fifteen minutes from now.’

  Walter nodded and looked around the room. There were banks of computer screens watched by calm operators, a girl passing out plastic cups of coffee. The base Commander and a group of officers clustered in a group, talking quietly. Occasionally one of them would glance up at the black loudspeaker in the top corner of the room. It would carry the voice-relays when the pilots broke radio silence to report success or failure of their bombing runs. He felt he could sink his fingers into the tension. His own heart was racing.

  They crossed the Iraqi border at 200 feet. Occasionally the planes would rise and fall gently like drifting seagulls on a breeze as the pilots hugged the contours of the rolling desert below.

  At 5.20 pm a symbol flashed on Gideon’s HUD and the operating portion of his brain clicked into gear. He peeled his F16 out of the formation and headed due east. His left hand reached out and flicked on the missile warning receiver. He crossed the flat water of the Lake of Habbaniyan and a minute later screamed over the first outer suburbs of Baghdad. There were three pictures now in his brain, flashing intermittently one after the other: what he could see through the windscreen, superimposed on recollections from the simulator runs; the symbols of the HUD display and, finally, the grey stone wall of the “Palace of the end”.

  There were higher buildings now. The F16 banked first to the left and then to the right, weaving a path to take it clear of missile emplacements. He started his final run in and in his mental vision was the model of the wall. He was looking at a point ten metres to the right - a point above a wide buttress. That was the point on which he would place his HUD target symbol in a few seconds. That was the point behind which Munger lay waiting.

  Now he saw reality through his canopy. A curving row of buildings, a different darker colour than those on the simulator - but the same. He was banking sharply, forced back into his seat by the G-force. He knew that beyond those buildings was a broad avenue and then the square and facing him across that the “Palace of the end” and the wall. In his mind’s eye he saw again the point above the buttress covered by the HUD symbol. Every second was being split into milliseconds. He saw everything perfectly. Buildings flashing past his wing-tip only metres away. The avenue opening as the F16, straightened up. There was the square. There was the wall - and the buttress. The attack symbol slid above it. His fingers moved to the computer trigger.

  Then . . . a voice in his ears - calm, flat. The voice of Colonel Daniel Rener.

  ‘Red Leader to base. Bomb gone - on target.’

  It was the voice of a pilot - an Israeli pilot completing a perfect mission and in an instant it slammed into Gideon’s brain like a bolt of lightning and healed its sickness. In the next millisecond his right hand shifted the stick while his left foot nudged the rudder bar. The HUD target symbol swung a fraction across the looming wall and his fingers triggered the computer.

  Three seconds later the F16 jumped as it shed 1000 lbs and rose, bouncing away into the sky. The bomb had a delayed fuse of half a second. It slammed into the grey wall, paused and then blew it apart. Up in the sky Gideon Galili was sobbing behind his visor, his whole body quivering with the shock of how close he had come. How close to negating every principle, every element of his beliefs and his training. He pulled the F16 into a climbing turn to the west down a predetermined missile-free track. He turned and saw the explosion and the debris punched into the sky and across the wide square. He heard the other pilots reporting their successes at El-Tuwaitha and he flicked on his microphone and, in a shaking voice, said:

  ‘Red Three to base. Bomb gone - on target.’

  Then he was levelling the aircraft out and turning back. He was going to take a loo
k. He knew his fuel limitations and he knew about the missile danger. He did not care. He had been dead and now he was alive - resurrected. He eased forward the stick and cut the power and speed right back and slanted down to the dust-filled square.

  He thought he saw them. They were two-thirds across. Two men. One was hobbling, the other helping him, arms around him, half dragging the limp torso. They were moving painfully slowly. There was no other movement in the square. They would surely make it to the ‘souk’.

  Then from out of the dust around the “Palace of the end” a group of men dressed in khaki uniforms appeared, running towards the fugitives.

  He cursed. If only the F16 had not been stripped of its cannon. No matter. He poured on the power, felt the punch as the plane leapt forward out of its glide and lined up on the pursuing men. An F16 afterburner screaming twenty feet above a man’s head is akin to a lifetime in hell distilled into two heartbeats. As Gideon pulled up he turned and saw the men scattering, their hands over their ears. Three of them were lying huddled on the ground. He laughed out loud. It was a fair bet that they all had brown trousers. There was no sign of Munger and his helper. They had made it. Gideon’s laugh died. He had a mental picture of Ruth waiting for her lover - her future husband. So be it. He would live with the pain.

  He looked at the HUD and had started to compute his course out when there came a high-pitched shriek and his eyes flicked to the missile warning receiver. His heart went cold when he realised that missiles were locked onto him. His last dive and pull-out had taken him close to the Palace housing the Government offices and close to the banks of missiles guarding it. He knew they would be SAMs and probably two salvos of two. He pulled round in a tight left-hand turn, momentarily blacked out from the G-force and then automatically he hit the electronic countermeasure button. He knew the distances exactly. If a SAM got within two hundred metres it would lock on and his countermeasures would be useless. At one hundred feet, its radio proximity fuse would detonate and metal rods would explode at hypersonic speed into his line of flight. From his missile warning receiver he could tell that one had broken lock. The other was coming in from left. He could not outpace it so he dived and turned hard towards it, hoping that his G’s would cause the missile to overshoot.

  He almost made it. Surely it was a matter of only a yard or two. But the shriek continued and he knew he would die in a second. He actually saw a silver shape from the corner of his eye. His last thought was: ‘I gave him to you’.

  There was a flash of fire in front of him and Gideon Galili and his F16 disintegrated in a ball of flame.

  Chapter 23

  As news of the Israeli air strike on El-Tuwaitha spread across the world, condemnation bounced back in a mighty echo. While officers of dozens of the world’s air forces quietly applauded the planning and precision of the raid, the politicians and statesmen of those countries loudly and publicly proclaimed their horror. Orchestrated by France and Iraq they waxed eloquent about the unbridled aggression of the Jewish state and they endorsed the statement of the Secretary General of the IAEA that all the evidence at the disposal of his agency showed that Iraq’s nuclear programme was designed only for peaceful purposes.

  President Reagan issued a statement which was later described as couched in the strongest language ever directed by an American President at its long-time ally.

  In the halls and corridors of the United Nations delegates began drafting a resolution demanding mandatory sanctions against Israel. The American delegation, was confused and silent. It was rumoured that the State Department was advising the President to teach Israel a lesson by drastically reducing US military and financial aid. A White House ‘leak’ reported that Reagan considered Menachem Begin akin to a dangerous lunatic.

  Three days later in the early morning of June 10th, General Yitzhak Hofti arrived in Washington aboard a transport plane of the Israeli Air Force. He went straight to Langley and spent two hours with William J. Casey, the Director of the CIA. In the afternoon a meeting took place in the Oval Office of the White House. It comprised President Reagan, Alexander Haig, General Yitzhak Hofti and William J. Casey.

  From his briefcase General Hofti took a slim file and a large photograph. Together the President and Secretary of State read the file and studied the photograph. Then they looked up at William J Casey. He nodded and said:

  ‘Our analysts confirm that it’s authentic.’

  There was a long silence and then Reagan said to Hofti:

  ‘The Secretary of State will issue a statement indicating that although our Government feels that Israel acted precipitously, there are grounds to believe that there was justification.’ He paused, glanced at Haig, and then added:

  ‘Of course, there will be no cuts in aid. Any sanctions resolution at the UN will be vetoed by our Government.’ A slight smile appeared on Hofti’s lips, ‘Thank you sir.’ Reagan glanced down at his desk. ‘Tell me, General. How was this photograph obtained?’

  ‘With great courage and sacrifice, Mr President.’

  EPILOGUE

  It was a decade later. A decade that had seen Israel slowly and painfully make peace with its neighbours. It was a peace sometimes strained, and often suspicious; but it was peace and the people of Israel gradually adjusted and spent their energies arguing with each other, which is what they enjoyed most.

  On a late summer afternoon Walter Blum drove to Ben-Gurion Airport to greet a visitor. Since his retirement he had lived in Jerusalem and rarely travelled abroad, preferring instead for his friends to come to him.

  He was an old man now, and not in the best of health. Two slight heart attacks the year before had caused much concern. He was told to cut back on his over-indulgent habits, but his philosophy was such that a life without indulgences was no life at all. He was quite resigned to meeting his maker and arguing the point.

  He had many visitors from all over the world but he was especially looking forward to greeting this one. He was a ten-year-old boy and he would stay with Walter for two weeks. His parents were away in the West Indies on an assignment for a magazine and concurrently celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary. During the coming two weeks Walter was to show the boy something of Israel and, at the same time, explain a few things about his antecedents. His parents thought that he had reached an age when he could understand, and that Walter was the ideal person to explain.

  The boy came out through Customs, spotted Walter immediately, ran over and threw his arms around his neck. Walter beamed and held him at arms’ length and studied him. He had grown a lot since last year. He was tall for his age, and slim, with dark hair and very blue eyes and an open, enquiring face.

  So they toured the country, visiting the old battlefields in the deserts and the mountains, the archaeological sites and the historic monuments and buildings, the kibbutzim and the cities. All the time Walter talked and the boy listened; sometimes he grew a little bored as any ten-year-old would, but he never showed it, for he loved and respected the old man.

  On the last day they went to Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, to the burial ground of the men and women who had helped create Israel; the soldiers and statesmen, the workers and thinkers.

  In spite of the proximity of the city it was strangely quiet among the endless rows of flat, white gravestones. Walter led the boy to one of them and translated the Hebrew inscription and told him about his grandmother. The boy asked a lot of questions and listened to the answers solemnly. Later they walked to the Memorial of the Unknown Soldier. This is surrounded by the graves of men and women who had been killed in the many wars and never been identified. It also contains graves for those whose bodies have never been recovered. The gravestones are all alike.

  The boy noticed a few small pebbles on several of the graves. He asked about them and Walter explained that the custom went back thousands of years to when the Jews lived in the desert. Stones were piled over graves to protect them from scavenging animals. Somehow the custom had survived as a symbolic gesture of
protection for the dead.

  They reached a grave close to the Memorial and Walter took the boy’s arm and translated the inscription and told him of a man who had died on the 7th June, 1981. When he finished talking the boy stood looking at the gravestone for a long time. Then he reached down and picked up two small pebbles from the path and laid them on the white marble.

  The name of the boy was Gideon Munger.

  The name on the gravestone: Gideon Galili.