Israel's Next War

by Martin Archer

  ******

  That evening Dick and I had an incredibly bland vegetable soup and chicken supper and all kinds of visitors began arriving one after another. Dewey showed up saying he just found out about us being here when he got a call from the ambassador about the need to get us on a Medevac flight to Ramstein in the morning. We’re apparently going out along with a bunch of seriously wounded Israelis. According to Dewey they’re being evacuated at the request of the Israeli government in order to free up beds for newly arriving casualties.

  I’m glad I gave up my room. They’d already stuck a couple of Israelis in it when I looked in a couple of hours ago and I saw them setting up beds in the reading room where I found the magazine.

  Dewey was still sitting on the edge of Dick’s bed talking with us about the war when who should walk in but Colonels Hopkins and Roosevelt. They’re here, Colonel Roosevelt explained, to coordinate an airlift of Israeli wounded to the Ramstein Air Base Hospital in Germany. It will start in the morning and we’re to be on the first flight out.

  Like Dewey, the two colonels hadn’t known we were here until the ambassador told them. They brought a couple of the embassy’s Marines with them to help the girls outside the door protect us from the media. Apparently no one is supposed to know that American officers were up at the front with the Israelis when the war started. I wonder if the Israelis know Ramstein uses a lot of German doctors.

  “How did you two get wounded? Were you fighting with the Israelis? No forget I asked. I don’t need to know,” Hopkins said shaking his head.

  “You got hit too?” Dick asked with a surprised voice as he struggled to sit up and look at me.

  “Well, if you must know, I got hit in the ass. That’s why I can’t sit…”

  “Goddamn it, Dick, stop laughing. It isn’t funny.” But it’s good to see you laugh.

  ****** The Professor in Somalia

  The Fokker will go next. It has the greatest range of the planes we have left and will be going after the most distant of the remaining targets. We’ll push it out of the hangar as soon as the sun goes down. The Antonov from Zimbabwe will follow it out of the hangar a few minutes later.

  If everything goes as planned, both planes will come out of Somalia this evening. They’ll head out over the ocean and stooge along the airways at a normal traveling altitude for a couple of hours, and then come down low and head back northeast in the dark over the Arab Emirates and the unpatrolled desert tracks in the eastern part of Saudi Arabia.

  A war between the Islamic republics and Israel is not something we took into account when we originally drew up the mission plans. According to the minister, all of the Saudi planes are grounded and no one is flying in Saudi air space. The Saudis are not taking any chances with their planes because the Israeli pilots and air controllers have effectively taken over much of the Saudi airspace—they are shooting down everything in the air near Jordan and Israel and they aren’t asking questions before they do it.

  We certainly don’t want the Israeli Air Force to shoot down our planes. So while the techs are getting them ready, the pilots and I are going to spend the rest of the day with the maps figuring out new routes for the Fokker and Antonov to fly tonight. Basically, we’re still going to send them into Saudi air space except now they’ll travel further to the east to be further away from the fighting. No sense taking chances now that we’ve gotten so close to the finish line.

  ******

  Things went from bad to worse after it got dark and we pulled the Fokker out of the hangar. There was an unexpected delay in its fueling. One of the brass hose connections on the fuel truck started leaking as soon as the fueling began. It was sending out a sort of fine misting spray every time the hose was pressurized to pump gasoline.

  Thank God one of the men smelled it and instantly turned the truck off—a gasoline mist is exactly the worst possible problem we could have. The damn thing would have blown up for sure.

  The leak means it’s going to take longer to fuel each of the planes. After talking it over with the pilots and mechanics, and quickly rechecking the Fokker’s fuel consumption rate, I decide to launch the Fokker a couple of hours early so we’ll have more time to fuel the Antonov and get it aloft. Both of the planes have to be in air in time to get far enough away from the Somalian coast before the sun comes up.

  I was really spooked by the possibility of a premature explosion and didn’t want to start the fuel truck’s engine anywhere near the men and the other planes. So the first thing we’re going to do when it gets dark is push the leaky fuel truck by hand almost to the end of the runway in order to get it safely away from the planes still in the hangar. Then we’ll pull the Fokker into position near the fuel truck so it can be fueled.

  ******

  Moving the fuel truck in the dark was easy. It only took about fifteen minutes despite the dark and no headlights. Everyone just got behind it and pushed so the truck’s engine didn’t have to be started. Getting the Fokker to the fuel truck, on the other hand, took some doing. In the end our chief mechanic came up with a simple solution—the men attached a long tow rope to the plane’s tow ring and we pulled the heavily laden Fokker by hand all the way out to the fuel truck. As you might imagine, we parked the plane upwind of the truck.

  After we pulled the Fokker to the fuel truck, and everyone moved well out of the way, almost a kilometer, two volunteers started the fuel truck and fueled the plane—one handled the hose; the other watched for misting gas and checked the gauges. They fueled the Fokker with the truck parked downwind of the plane and positioned so the leaky hose connection was the most downwind part of the truck. Almost everyone volunteered to help with the fueling.

  No one knows why I chose the two particular volunteers I selected—but if we are to have martyrs, they might as well be men who are unmarried and don’t have dependents.

  Our big problem, the one my two brave volunteers will have to face—the engine of the fuel truck has to be running in order to pump the fuel. It will be one hell of a bang if the vapor from the leaking hose connection gets to the truck or pump engine and the explosive-laden plane blows up.

  The whole fueling procedure is also much more difficult than when we sent the DC-6s because of the weather—it is a dark night tonight with just a sliver of moon hanging over the desert sky and lots of clouds. But the two men got it done in the darkness, albeit with a couple of banged fingers and muttered curses. Then we rejoined them and some of the men began pushing the fuel truck back towards the hangar in case the Fokker blows up when it starts; the rest of us used the tow rope to pull the Fokker away from the big puddle of gasoline and into position pointing down the runway.

  After the fuel truck got sufficiently clear, the tow rope was removed and everyone once again moved way back for safety’s sake. Then one of the pilots climbed in and started the engines. Both of the Fokker’s engines started immediately and in less than five minutes the noise of its engines faded away as the plane disappeared down the runway and into the darkness. Despite the hour we lost because of the fueling problem it still lifted off about an hour ahead of its initially scheduled time. Then we trotted back to the hangar to get the Antonov and repeat the process.

  Well, actually most of the men trotted; I walked and got so tired I had to stop a couple of times to rest. I’m getting too old for this shit.

  I tried to minimize the danger of igniting the gas that spilled by having the men push the fuel truck by hand towards another fueling spot near the end of the runway as soon as the Fokker took off. When they got it there they ran back to help us pull the Antonov up to the truck. As it turned out everyone pulled except me and men who had to stay in the remote control van.

  “Are you okay, Professor? Why don’t you just sit here and rest while we finish pulling the Antonov up to the truck and fuel it.”

  I don’t remember much that happened after that although I think I heard the Anatov come down the runway. Or maybe I just dreamed it.

  Chapter Nin
eteen

  My missile boat, the Yaffo and our sister ship, the Hanit commanded by my friend and rival for a place on the next promotion list, Ari Caspi, were the only ships tied up at the Haifa naval docks when the war started. In fact, except for the four Dabur-class patrol boats still at Ashod, our missile boats were the only ships of the Israeli Navy still in our Mediterranean Sea home waters.

  As you might imagine, we spent the first few hours of the war getting safely to sea in the darkness and then on to our rendezvous behind Cyprus. And that’s where we are now, bobbing around in an isolated Cyprus cove. What’s left of the entire Ashod squadron of Dabur patrol boats, all four of them, is here with us to shelter under our anti-aircraft missiles.

  There used to be ten boats in the Dabur boat squadron but six of them and most of the rest of our surface ships were sent through the canal on a cloudy night last week to join the Red Sea squadron based at Eilat.

  We won’t be here much longer. Operation Sea Dragon is underway and it’s our job to mislead the Islamic Coalition and the rest of the world into thinking our entire navy is still here in our home waters. It isn’t; the attack we’ll be launching tonight against the Syrian ports and Syrian navy is designed to make the Islamic Coalition commanders think it is.

  While we’re shooting up the Syrian ports and shoreline, the entire Israeli navy except for our two missile boats and the Dabur class patrol boats accompanying us, will be getting ready to execute Operation Seven Deborah tomorrow night. Seven Deborah is a massive attack on the Iranian ports in the Persian Gulf and all the ships in those ports and the surrounding waters. It will be carried out by our submarines, the fast missile boats and the six Daburs which passed through the Suez Canal six nights ago before the war started, and all the missile and patrol boats already assigned to the Eilat squadron.

  I know about Seven Deborah because I was on the planning staff before I got the Yaffo. I didn’t think then, and still don’t, that we should wait until tomorrow to launch it. But the powers that be decided to give the neutral shipping in Iran’s ports and waters two days to get clear.

  My job is simple. Tonight, Wednesday night, the Yaffo is going to launch missile and cannon attacks on some of the shipping and port facilities in the Syrian oil port of Banias and other targets up and down the coast from it. While we’re doing that Ari’s Hanit is going to carefully shoot up Latakia. Some of the Daburs will come with us right into the Latakia and Banias ports and the rest of them will shoot up various smaller Syrian ports and fire their newly installed missiles at inland targets. With two big exceptions we’re going after everything in Syrian waters no matter whose flag it flies.

  Our navy’s policy is simple—you associate with Syria or any other country at war with us; we sink you. The only exception is Tartus where the Russians have a naval base; we’re going to give it a pass. Somewhat similarly, we’re not going to totally destroy Banias—we’re going to be very careful not to damage anything that is related to the export of oil through the port by our friends the Kurds. Everything else we’re going to destroy.

  Our Dabur patrol boats and their eleven man crews are quite interesting. They’re all teeth. They’ve each got two torpedo tubes firing MK-46s and mines, two 20mm cannons, and a machine gun. That’s what the Syrians already know about because we’ve started exporting them. What they’re about to find out is all the Daburs in our inventory were recently upgraded. Now each of our Daburs also has a couple of Carl Gusav recoilless rifles firing six 84mm rounds per minute and a launcher for our Gabriel III ’fire and forget’ anti-ship missiles which have been modified and pre-programmed to additionally hit land targets.

  Hopefully, we’ll make so much noise and cause enough damage to Syria’s port and inland targets the Islamic navies will think the entire Israeli navy is in the Mediterranean and not expect us anywhere else. I’m optimistic; the latest satellite photos show almost the entire Syrian navy, such as it is, is still tied up at Latakia.

  We fought the Syrian Navy years ago at Latakia when our four missile boats sank five of their navy’s ships; the Syrians, on the other hand, fired wildly and scored missile hits on two innocent civilian merchant ships tied up at the Latakia dock.

  ****** General Roberts

  Dorothy and I spent the night of the embassy attack at the embassy and even had time to enjoy a private dinner with ambassador Tolson and his wife, Jan, in their quarters. Then we went to bed exhausted. Truth be told, we could have left for the States this afternoon. But I’m still not sure about the Egyptian army and don’t want to risk taking Dorothy and the embassy’s evacuees out to the airport by car if it’s not safe on the roads. We might have gone this afternoon if a helicopter had been offered by the Egyptians, but it wasn’t and I didn’t think to ask for one.

  The initial no-show of the Egyptian police and army during the attack on the embassy, the lack of a meeting or discussion with the President, and the initial absence of any effort to help us leave really worries me a lot more than I let on. It’s the main reason we’re still here. The Egyptians may still be trying to decide which way to jump. And why haven’t I had a meeting with the Egyptian President or at least a phone call?

  For a while after the mob’s attack on the embassy I was concerned about my plane and its crew. Fortunately, about an hour after the attack I was able to make contact with them via a satellite link routed through Washington. Lieutenant Colonel Gunderson, the pilot, told me he and his air force crew had wondered why so many soldiers had suddenly appeared at the airport—but they did not know about the attack on the embassy or the massive civilian unrest until I told him about it.

  With my permission to do what he thinks is best to safeguard his crew, including leaving without us, Colonel Gunderson decided to accept an Egyptian offer to move the plane from the Cairo Airport to a nearby Egyptian Air Force field where it can be better protected. Good. The man thinks fast and can make decisions.

  Colonel Gunderson called back yesterday afternoon and again this morning to report on his whereabouts and inquire as to my travel plans. At the moment, the plane is gassed up and ready to go. The nearby Egyptian air force officers club is providing Gunderson and his crew with great meals and cold beer for those not in the cockpit. As it stands, Dorothy and I can either board the plane at the Egyptian Air Force field or Colonel Gunderson can quickly hop over to the Cairo Airport and pick us up there.

  Gunderson’s good news is he and his crew are safe and doing just fine; he is even getting food deliveries from the Officers Club for the enlisted men and women in his crew. He also lets me know that, because of the circumstances, he’s decided that he and everyone else in the crew will continue to sleep on the plane despite Egyptian offers to take them into the city to stay at the Cairo Hilton.

  “I declined by explaining that you are unpredictable and might unexpectedly show up and want to leave at any time.” Well there’s something to that.

  Ambassador Tolson is surprisingly upbeat about the situation in Egypt despite this morning’s assault by the mob and all the deaths that occurred. He clearly feels he is playing an important role in keeping the Egyptians out of the war and said as much. And there’s a good chance he is. In any event, it’s been a long day and Dorothy and I were exhausted when we finally crawled into bed.

  ******

  I spent all Wednesday morning waiting for a call inviting me to a meeting with President Morsi. It didn’t come and there was no meeting. Finally, early Wednesday afternoon, and after talking again with General Hegazi who once again explains President Morsi is still “too ill” to talk to anyone and sends his regrets, Dorothy and I finally left the embassy and traveled to the Egyptian air force base to fly home. The Egyptian president’s illness is worrisome. I wonder if there’s been a coup?

  Dorothy and I left the embassy in a heavily armed Egyptian army convoy similar to that of Hegazi’s yesterday. We are taking about forty of the Americans in the embassy with us, mostly dependents with children. Ambassador Tolan wanted to exte
nd the usual courtesies and accompany us to the airport to see us off. But he didn’t—because I quietly asked him to remain at the embassy in case there is another problem. I don’t trust the FBI guy to do the right thing if there is another attack.

  Cairo’s streets are normally jammed with people and activity. Not today. Everyone seems to be staying home and waiting to see what’s going to happen. It may be because there are armored cars and Egyptian troops everywhere in the embassy district and all along the road out to the military airfield. It’s eerie but at least the absence of traffic let our little convoy make good time. The last thing I did before we left was call Peter and ask him to check with NSA and the CIA to see if there are any indications a coup is underway in Egypt or negotiations are going on between Egypt and the new Islamic Coalition. So far there have been none, at least none that we know about.

  Perhaps it’s just my imagination because I’m unfamiliar with the Arab world, but the lack of contact with Egypt’s president really worries me. On the other hand, he may be cagey as a fox—deliberately “too sick” to be able to talk to anyone including the leaders of the new Islamic Coalition.

  ******

  Our flight back to the States was uneventful except for a couple of howling babies being evacuated who got on everyone’s nerves including mine. Dorothy and I even had a chance to sneak in a few hands of Gin Rummy which she won, as usual, because she has such a good memory about the cards that have already been played. We both laughed when I told her my excuse for losing—I was thinking of other things and couldn’t concentrate. We laughed because that’s what I always say.

  Actually, even though it wouldn’t have made much difference to the ultimate outcome, this time there is some truth in my excuse. I spent most of the time on the long flight back to the States reading the Morning Book and the continual flow of arriving messages. Reading and periodically talking on the satellite phone to Peter and twice to Tommy Talbot at Defense kept me busy most of the time.