Preface
What follows is Martin Archer’s action-packed and surprisingly prescient novel about Israel’s next big war and its unexpected outcome.
Israel’s Next War
A Predictive Novel
They’re a nice little family living in a modest one story concrete block home with two half grown olive trees in the fenced back yard. It’s as immaculate as it could be with two young kids and a small inflatable rubber pool. He commutes to his job as a beverage company accountant each day in the family’s five-year old Fiat; she stays home with their two little girls. Some days she drives him to work so she can use the car to go shopping or take the girls to appointments or soccer practice. He doesn’t know it yet but she plans to go back to work as soon as the girls are in school.
Everyone in the family was in bed sleeping when the back door of their home was kicked open and the three desperate men rushed in. They were desperate out of breath from running; survivors of a seven man team that had come ashore in a rubber boat and battled its way into the city two hours earlier.
Almost instantly the little girls’ father jumped out of bed and started for the gun in his closet. He was more than a bit overweight and out of shape, but he’d been in the army and knew what to do. That’s where he’d met his wife. As a long time reservist he has a weapon, a Galil assault rifle, and knows how to use it. It was in pieces in a canvas carry case on the top shelf of the closet in pieces, and rightly so—his daughters are precocious little things and into everything. He’d disassembled his weapon and hid it away after his wife caught the girls trying to unzip the case to see what was inside.
One of the intruders rushed into the couple’s bedroom just as the suddenly awakened father lurched towards the closet. His wife said something with a question in her voice and started to sit up.
There was enough light because the door to their bedroom is open and the night light under the linen closet in the hallway provided all the light the intruders need. The man’s wife was a good mother. She always made sure their bedroom door was open and she had carefully placed night lights in the hallway so the girls would be able to find their way to her if they had a bad dream and woke up in the dark.
The first intruder raced into the dimly lit bedroom and smashed the man in the face with a vicious butt stroke of his weapon before he even got half way to the closet door. Then he shot him in the chest twice. It really wouldn’t have made any difference even if the weapon had been assembled and loaded. The same terrorist shot the woman on the bed as she started to scream. The other two men rushed into the other bedroom and shot the little girls as if they were targets hanging on the wall.
Chapter One
Lights came on in the homes throughout the neighborhood and the family’s neighbors, almost all reservists too, rushed for their weapons. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know bursts of automatic weapons fire in their quiet residential neighborhood mean something is seriously wrong. And fighting back is drummed into every Israeli who serves in the military beginning on his or her first day of basic training – go for the attackers and go fast.
The first man to try to reach the family’s little home was their neighbor from two doors down the street. He’s a taxi driver who, of all things, serves in the relatively small Israeli navy when his reserve time comes up each year. His wife was already on the phone calling the police when he stepped out of his front door trying to get a clip into his old submachine gun while holding up his pajama bottoms. He hesitated for a second as he stepped off his porch. Where did the shooting come from? The night was totally silent and the two street lights on the block are lighting the quiet residential street with a yellowish glow. Everything looked normal.
A split second later the front door immediately across the street opened and the taxi driver saw his neighbor, a heavy set older man who lived there alone with two white fluffy little dogs, rush out wearing absolutely nothing except a Galil assault rifle. He headed straight for the house two doors down on the taxi driver’s side of the street.
The taxi driver instinctively started that way too, although he almost fell when his loosely tied pajamas started to slide down below his waist and he stepped on the cuff of one of his pajama legs. He had to hop on one leg to pull them up with one hand while holding his stubby old navy-issued machine gun in the other. Lights were going on and doors banging everywhere up and down the street. Somewhere in the background he could hear shouting.
When the older man got to the middle of the street, and was clearly illuminated by the two street lights, the muzzle flames and chattering roar of an automatic weapon reached out towards him from one of the windows of the embattled house. He tumbled over backwards in sort of a somersault and his weapon skidded away with a metallic clatter as it hit the asphalted street. That was more than enough for the now-running taxi driver—he stopped and fired a long burst straight at the window where the muzzle flashes came from even though the angle was bad. Then, as his pajama bottoms began to fall down around his knees again, he dove awkwardly to his right and rolled behind his wife’s car which was parked in the street in front of his house.
Before the first of what would end up being many police cars arrived two or three minutes later, a dozen armed neighbors in various stages of dress were crouching against the walls of the victims’ home. Even before their car began to screech to a stop the two policemen in the first car to arrive could see the partially dressed neighbors carrying guns and carefully avoiding the windows of the small house. They instinctively knew exactly what it meant.
The driver of the police car could also see the naked body sprawled in the street. He took in the scene in an instant, accelerated again, and skidded to a stop to place his car between the body and the besieged house.
Everything changed with the arrival of the police car. It was almost as if the terrorists had been waiting for it to arrive. Once again an automatic weapon chattered and once again red muzzle flashes came out of a window. A different window the taxi driver noted.
The police car was covered with hits—and both of its occupants wounded before they could dive out the car door on the safe side away from the house, the driver quite seriously.
Especially surprised by the second round of firing from the house was the school teacher who lived next door to the victims. He was standing in his boxer shorts with his back against the wall next to the window from where the shots came. So his head was only a foot or so from the muzzle flames when the terrorists began firing at the police car.
The school teacher jerked back instinctively when the shooting started, his ears ringing, but only for a couple of seconds. He quickly leaned forward as soon as the shooter stopped firing, twisted his weapon around so he was holding it as far out in front of himself as he could get it, and used his left thumb to fire a burst back in through the window where the muzzle flashes had just erupted. The burst almost tore the weapon from his grasp. Then he dove to the ground up against the house and cut his face on a protruding water faucet.
“Did you get him?” someone shouted. The school teacher didn’t answer. He couldn’t hear the question; he’d been temporarily deafened by his own firing and the firing from the window. He just laid there, unmoving and holding his face for so long some of his neighbors thought he’d been hit.
******
There was absolute chaos in the street in front of the house as more and more police cars and armed neighbors arrived. Several brave souls attempted to reach the wounded men using the damaged police car for cover. They crawled from behind the older man’s house in an attempt to reach him and the two policemen on the street. They didn’t draw fire and were able to get to them despite serious scrapes and cuts to their bare knees and other tender places.
A few moments later one of the men sheltering behind the police car shouted out what he intended to do.
“I’m going to shoot out the street lights.”
Without waiting for anyone to answer he fired three or four short bursts and shot out the two nearest street lights. In the resulting darkness, while carefully keeping the police car between themselves and the house, the two men each grabbed the seriously wounded police officer by the collar of his uniform shirt and crawled backwards, towing him on his back between them. One glance while the street lights were still on and they knew there was nothing they could do for their naked neighbor.
As the seriously wounded policeman was being retrieved, his lightly wounded partner winced from the pain in his leg as he leaned around the rear tire of the patrol car and used his left hand to slowly and systematically empty his pistol into the shooter’s window in an attempt to cover the rescue effort. Several of the men across the street understood what he was doing and did the same thing. The wounded policeman was using his pistol because the automatic weapon every Israeli police car carries was still clamped to the dashboard where he and his wounded partner left it when they dove out on the passenger side.
There was a lot of shouting back and forth. Everybody was shouting questions and giving orders to everybody else. The uncertainty. and chaos was inevitable. There wasn’t much of a moon and without the street lights it was a scene of absolute bedlam and confusion. No one knew for sure what was happening and no one knew how many terrorists were in the house.
The would-be rescuers also didn’t know the state of the family living there. They all understood the initial burst of firing probably meant some of the people in the house were casualties. But they couldn’t be sure and within seconds every new arrival knew there were two little girls in there along with their mother and father.
A military quick reaction force arrived from the sprawling Tel Aviv army base about fifteen minutes later along with a helicopter equipped with a searchlight. The helicopter searchlight was a mistake and the men crawling toward the house knew it as soon as they saw its beam of light snaking along the ground towards them. Sure enough, three or four bursts of automatic fire came from several windows of the house within seconds of the helicopter illuminating the police and neighbors who had previously been moving forward in the dark.
The helicopter itself took a couple of hits and several more of the suddenly visible Israelis went down including a neighbor rushing to the scene from several blocks away who wasn’t found for almost an hour. A newly arrived policeman sheltering behind the door of his police car was also hit.
“There are at least two of them in there,” the force commander shouted to his men. They didn’t hear him and they didn’t need to; they’d seen the muzzle flames for themselves and opened up at them with everything they had. Many of the rescuers ran through their entire magazine before they stopped, quickly reloaded, and began again. They knew this was no time for half measures and conserving ammunition.
******
For more than three hours the standoff lasted without a word from anyone in the house. During those hours the neighborhood was evacuated, the dead and wounded retrieved and rushed off to the nearest trauma center, and the armed neighbors withdrawn and replaced with snipers and special troops with night sights on their weapons. Finally, an Arabic-speaking officer with a bullhorn roared out one last call for everyone in the house to come out with their hands up. Once again there was no response.
So be it was the thought of the incident control supervisor who had taken charge of the scene. He gave the order, explosive charges were slapped onto the front and back doors and exploded, and a volley of tear gas grenades was fired through a number of windows. Then the team of heavily armored special troops rushed into the house.
There was a tremendous explosion in the house about ten seconds after the first of the special troops dashed in through the front and rear doors. What was left of the windows blew out, the roof seemed to lift up and some of its tiles fly off, and the absolutely stunned observers could see two great flashes of red light inside even before the sound of the tremendous explosions reached them. The waiting medics and firemen instantly rushed into the house and did their best.
******
“How many?” asked the Prime Minister as he paced the floor in his residence. He desperately wanted a cigarette and his ulcer was hurting again.
“Eight of ours and three terrorists. Five more of ours wounded. The little girls and their parents all died from multiple gunshot wounds.”
“Goddamn them. Deliberately shooting children. Those dirty bastards. We’re going to retaliate really big this time.”
“Well here’s the thing, Prime Minister. We’ve identified one of the men in the house. He’s an Iranian.”
******
Israel’s cabinet met in emergency session later that morning and every arriving cabinet member and senior official asked the same question. “Iranians? Not Arabs? Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Iranians. We’re still checking but we’re pretty certain. We have a tentative identity for one of the men on the beach and we found some papers on two of the men in the house. They’re all Iranians—and they all seem to be members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.”
“Or someone wants us to think they are,” cautioned the rumpled heavyset man in the windbreaker. He was sitting on one of the chairs pushed up against the wood paneled wall. Only cabinet members sit at the table. The head of the Mossad is never a member of the cabinet.
The meeting was already well underway when the last of the cabinet members rushed in and looked surprised when he saw the meeting had already started. Somehow he hadn’t been called until his absence had been noted by the cabinet secretary. Why wasn’t I called immediately, he asked himself? He started to say something as he sat down. But he’d been listening to the news as he drove over and knew it would have to wait. It’s that damn Meir, the little prick, I bet he did it deliberately.
“If it’s Iran it means they’re probably Shiite fanatics trying to get to paradise. The Ayatollah’s been raving about us for the last six months, ever since the electricity and gasoline shortages began again up there,” suggested one of the ministers.
“Yeah, but this is the first time the Iranians have done anything like this. Why now? And it just doesn’t make sense that they would use people from one of their military organizations.”
“Well, maybe it does,” offered the Cabinet Secretary. “According to the American and French media, the new sanctions are finally starting to bite and the war with the Sunnis in Iraq and Syria is going nowhere. The Iranian street is becoming unhappy. Maybe they’re trying to distract their own people, get them focused on something external instead of their own problems.”
The Cabinet Secretary was a good friend of both the Prime Minister and the Mossad director. He teaches graduate courses in international relations at Tel Aviv University and acts as the government’s spokesman when the Prime Minister isn’t available for one reason or another.
“Or maybe they are trying to do something to make up with the Arabs, particularly Iraq’s Shia, in an effort to end the war,” suggested the head of the Mossad. “We just don’t know. Hell, it may all be a fake. I’m suspicious. It was just too easy to identify them as Iranians.”
“Well, whoever it is they’re not going to get away with it. That’s for sure. Isn’t it Prime Minister?” exclaimed one of the men. He was wearing the traditional hat and garb of sixteenth century Poland that marked him as an ultraorthodox Jew.
The question and the answer it demanded came from the head of one of the smaller religious parties in the government coalition, a party with a good deal of support from the Haredim voters in the ultra-religious settlements on the West Bank. The party’s leader, Ari Keren, is still in the cabinet as one of the deputy prime ministers even though in the last election he’d lost a lot of votes and Knesset seats to the latecomer’s hard-line immigrant oriented party. The hypocris
y of his belligerence and call for revenge was not lost on the others, particularly the late arrival—Ari Keren’s constituents are the Haredim, the ultra-orthodox Israelis who insist on voting and receiving welfare but refuse to serve in the military or work due to their belief that doing so is not sufficiently “Jewish.”
“No Ari, of course not.”
“Then,” suggested the late arrival in heavily accented and somewhat imperfect Hebrew, “how about we announce a new policy? Effective immediately construction of one hundred new homes will be approved and built on the West Bank for every Israeli killed or wounded by terrorists. Starting right now. I’d love for that asshole Ayatollah to take the blame for the construction instead of us.”
“Not a bad idea Chaim,” replied someone sitting at the other end of the table. “We could announce eight hundred new homes this afternoon and name the settlement after the family.”
Chaim Naumenko was the late arrival. He’s the relatively young leader of a new political party whose supporters, mostly recent immigrants from Eastern Europe, wanted the government to take an even harder line on terrorism and finish removing the remnants of the European socialism that so stifled Israel’s prosperity during its early years. Naumenko’s party received an unexpectedly large number of votes in the last election, so many that he had to be brought into the governing coalition. The Prime Minister and many of the others around the table see him as a serious political threat in future elections. The appeasement-oriented left and the ultra-conservative religious parties absolutely hate him because he campaigned loudly on requiring them to work and serve in the army and pay taxes.
“We can do better than that,” suggested the big and bulky defense minister with a bitter smile as he leaned forward with both elbows on the table and cradled a coffee cup in his hands. “Let’s announce the policy and name the new settlement after the Iranian Ayatollah or that moronic president of his. Sew some long term discord between the Palestinians and the Iranians. Remind everyone of the price the Arabs will pay every time they fuck with us.”
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