by Herman Wouk
“That will grind down the tanks, sir,” says Kishote drily, “before they ever fire a shot. It’s a hundred thirty miles. It’ll push the crews to the fatigue limit. A lot of breakdowns en route are inevitable. Traffic will pile up in the passes and the high dunes. Tanks will bog down getting off the roads. A total mess.”
“So you’re against this?” The tone is calm, but Sharon’s eyes narrow.
“I’m saying what to expect, sir, but we have the best repair gang in Zahal. Our garageniks can take apart and put together a Centurion in the dark like an Uzi. What’s more, transporter drivers can’t be controlled. They can wander off or be commandeered. Our own tanks we can control. We’ll get there worn out, sir, but we’ll get there as a division, ready to fight. Let’s do it.”
Among the officers, a rueful murmur and nodding of heads. Sharon dismisses the meeting, and when he is alone with Yossi he slaps his shoulder, “Well done, Kishote, stating all the objections before they could. I’ll lead the first company that gets on the road. You come along with command headquarters, and check at Point Yukon yourself in the morning, to make sure that Tal’s brainchild, that confounded roller bridge, is ready to go. I intend to cross into Egypt day after tomorrow.”
“What! Monday?” Kishote blinks. “Does Gorodish agree?”
“Gorodish is out of his head. The roof has fallen in on him. He’s issuing orders that make no sense, and he’s very self-conscious and touchy about taking advice. He served under both Bren Adan and me in this very command, and now he has to command us. He’s well aware that Bren created the Bar-Lev Line, that I built up the Sinai infrastructure and road system, and that we both know ten times as much as he does about all this. Zeh mah she’yaish, Kishote. But Bren’s the greatest tank man in Israel, and between us and Mandler’s brigades we’ll win Gorodish’s campaign for him.”
Droning over the white-capped Sea of Galilee, Dov’s plane and the three other Phantoms are bumping into the dense murk over Syria. Now Dov is locked to the dead reckoning of Major Goldstein, once his navigation instructor. Their target is a large Syrian tank force, and as Dov is figuring it the objective has to be ahead at about five miles, when Goldstein’s voice breaks radio silence with one word: “Nered.” (“Let’s go down.”) The air becomes rougher, the cloud layer thicker and darker, as they descend. At moments Dov can see only Itzik’s wing ahead and to his right. Two thousand feet, fifteen hundred. Dirty mist, rain hammering on the canopy. Okay, there is the ground, glimpsed through thinning wisps of cloud and drifting rain curtains.
Nothing there.
Not a thing. Broken rock, greenish scrub, here and there a shallow conical hill, not a sign of war in the two-mile circle of hazy visibility. Nothing! Old intelligence? Wrong intelligence? Or has there been a sudden breakthrough, and are those Syrian tanks already rolling westward over the Purple Line forts into the Golan?
Straight ahead a jagged ridge of low hills, vague in the mist. Goldstein: “That ridge is not on the map. The target may be on the far side of it. Forward, then.”
As they are arching over the ridge, antiaircraft fire ignites the air all around them; sudden hell of fireworks, ground twinkling below, colored balls rising up, flames exploding all over the murky sky.
Wow, the real thing! Change altitude, jink like mad, evade, evade, evade …
Oh God, oh God, ITZIK! No!
It happens so close to Dov that the blast rocks his aircraft. One moment Itzik is zooming to evade, and the next second he is vanishing in a dirty billowing expanding globe of flame, with black ragged pieces tumbling away. Blown to bits! Red and yellow explosions flaring everywhere in the gray sky, over the canopy, across the windshield. Oh, Itzik!
Now Goldstein, level-voiced. “I’m hit, but I have power. I’ll try to eject over our territory. Abort, abort, return to base. God rest poor Itzik. Abort! Dov, Avrash, acknowledge.”
“Avrash here.” Very shaky tones. “Acknowledged.”
“Dov here. Acknowledged. Major, Avrash and I can still try to find that tank force. It’s our mission.”
“Shlilee, shlilee! [Negative, negative!] Abort. Go home. That’s an order. I’m turning west. Out.” Dov reverses course and roars full throttle skyward, for the antiaircraft is obviously locked in on their altitude. In seconds he is over the ridge, climbing into thick clouds. He can’t see Avrash. Has he too fallen?
Whirling thoughts. Sickly urge to urinate, never mind that. Flying by instinct and by drilled-in responses. Compass course west by south and climb, climb, to get out of the overcast. Hang on to yourself. Itzik is gone, you have to fight all the harder, fly more missions. What a pitiful start for a combat career! What a difference from the Six-Day War … what a defeat … one pilot out of four surely dead. Maybe two, maybe three. Benny Luria’s son fleeing for his life. How can he face his father and Itzik’s ground crew? And Itzik’s pregnant wife, Ida, from the same kibbutz, nineteen years old, a religious girl, no television on Shabbat … After the debriefing he’ll have to walk past the apartment of big-bellied little Ida, a widow and not yet aware of it. Dov’s father has talked much about the sad side of being a tayass, but not until you’ve seen a wonderful guy like Itzik die instantly in a midair explosion … Why not me? Just crazy luck …
Out of the clouds. Ahead the Sea of Galilee, the ribbon of the Jordan, and there is a Phantom in front at eleven o’clock low, on the same course. Avrash! So he’ll be breaking the terrible news first. …
At Tel Nof, when Dov releases the drag parachute and rolls to a stop, he can see Itzik’s crew huddled on the runway and Avrash walking away head down, helmet dangling from his hand. Itzik’s plane captain calls as Dov climbs out of the cockpit, “Any chance he made it? Ejected? Got captured?”
“Itzik is gone. We’ll never see him again.” Their stricken looks spur him to add, “It was over in a second. He went out in fire.”
Among the somber faces is his own plane captain. “Major Goldstein is safe, sir, behind our lines,” he says.
“Thank God.”
In the briefing room, his father is waiting with the squadron commander and Avrash. Dov does his best to return professional answers to the questions, to show no trace of feeling. That rule he has breathed in with the air of his family. “In your judgment, what went wrong,” asks the debriefer routinely toward the end, “and what can be corrected?”
Avrash and Dov look at each other. Though Avrash is senior, he gestures to Dov, the base commander’s son, to speak. Maybe Avrash just isn’t up to it.
“What went wrong, sir? Bad weather, poor intelligence, very bad luck. What I really think is, sir, we lost two Phantoms on a wild goose chase.” Dov glances at his impassive father, and regrets the escape of the angry words. Unprofessional. But he blurts on, “How can it be corrected? Well, I don’t know exactly how Itzik can be brought back. Sorry, sir.”
On the grass-lined path to the quarters Benny Luria puts an arm around his son’s shoulders. “Itzik was a superb aviator.”
Dov chokes out, “I guess you’re glad to see me.”
“Don’t talk about it. I’m going back to fighter control.”
“What’s happening in the war?”
“Terrible confusion, no solid information. We seem to be holding them, north and south, but the air force is mostly responding to howls for help. No coherent new battle plan yet.”
“I have to walk past poor Ida’s porch.”
“You won’t see her.”
Dov does not. The shades are drawn. When he enters the family quarters he smells frying meat, Yom Kippur quite forgotten. Galia springs at him to embrace him, and her face is wet. He has to clear his throat. “So you know about Itzik.”
She leans away in his arms, staring at him with tearstained dark eyes. “And about Major Goldstein.”
“Well, Goldstein’s fine. Listen, so is Itzik. Is it so bad to die fighting for your country? It’s bad for his wife.” He gives her a squeeze and a kiss. “Something to think about, motek.”
T
hat night Zev Barak works his way through corridors of the labyrinthine Pit far below central Tel Aviv, where there is no night or day, and officers hurry here and there with harassed pallid faces. He finds Sam Pasternak in the Defense Minister’s cubicle, morosely writing on a pad. “Can we talk, Sam?”
“Make it fast. Dayan wants a sitrep for the cabinet meeting at ten.”
“That’s exactly what Golda wants — some solid facts going into the meeting.” Barak takes the hard chair facing the desk. “The telephone reports are making her head swim. She told me to question Dado, but his room is so jammed with ex-Ramatkhals and major generals, you can’t see him for the uniforms and the smoke.”
“Ask me the questions.”
“Aleph, is the news really that bad?”
“Not that good.” Pasternak’s head sinks between his shoulders. “When the sirens sounded this afternoon, Zev — and it seems a week ago — I estimated that if the Egyptians sleep tonight on this side of the Canal in substantial force, they’ll have won the war. Politically, which is what counts in the long run. I hope I was wrong, because it’s happening, and the north is worse.” He peered blearily at Barak. “Amos is up there, though I don’t know just where. The Syrians are overrunning or bypassing our fortified points all along the Purple Line. They have night-vision equipment, we don’t have any, and they have ten tanks to our one. The Mount Hermon outpost has already fallen, with all our ultrasecret stuff. Small but terrible disaster right there.”
“In short,” Barak says, his heart cold, “no good news on any front?”
“Well, the mobilization is way ahead of schedule. At this rate we’ll be up to strength north and south by tomorrow night. Amazing job. And of course the Jordanians haven’t attacked yet. Still, they’re massing troops, and two Iraqi formations are reported on the way. Now, Zev, what about the politics? The UN? What does Golda hear? The Arabs blatantly broke the UN cease-fire, no? Fired the first shot, no? So? No action in New York?”
“Oh, yes, the Egyptians claim we started it. Our navy shelled them, so they’re simply defending themselves, and the Syrians are coming to their aid as allies. The UN is studying this grave charge of Israeli aggression.”
Pasternak stares at him and grunts, “Are you joking?”
“I swear it’s true.”
“And Washington?”
“Vague noise. The State Department won’t say who fired the first shot. I have to get a navy statement right now on that nonsense.”
“Good luck.” Pasternak shakes his head and resumes quick scrawling.
Barak threads through the fluorescent-lit corridors, where air vents hum and rattle without seeming to remove the smoke or bring fresh air; past the huge main war room with its three-story operational maps, crowded by gloomy junior officers wearing ear-phones, to the navy’s area in the Pit. Much against their will, Navy Command has been moved here from Haifa because — so the Supreme Command has decided — in their eyrie on Mount Carmel they have been too independent and detached. But even here underground the navy HQ is as different as though it were still on Mount Carmel. The officers appear cheerful, the young female sailors perky and pretty, all in a milieu of excited optimism. Even the air seems more breathable.
“Ah, Zev,” says the Mahi (chief of naval operations), a good-looking big-jawed man, who like Barak was brought to Palestine as a child to escape the Nazis. “Just in time.” He gestures at the table map, where the girls are moving boat emblems eastward. “The flotilla has been lying off Cyprus, and now they’re heading full speed toward Latakia. The flag is in your son’s boat.”
“What’s the plan, Binny?”
The CNO taps the map at the Syrian shore. “Their coastal radars are bound to pick up our boys any minute, so we assume their missile boats will sortie to challenge. What’s coming up, my friend, is the first missile-to-missile battle in naval history” — he rolls off an orotund phrase with relish — “a Mediterranean Coral Sea!”
Barak knows the exact ranges of the Styx and the Gabriel. His smile at the hyperbole is strained. “And suppose the Syrians don’t come out, what then?”
“Barkai will enter Latakia port and engage by gunfire.”
“And the coastal artillery? The minefields?”
“Intelligence got us the minefield charts. As for the coastal batteries, well, you know Barkai. He’ll say ‘L’Azazel,’ and go in.”
Barak’s voice drops. “Look, Binny, we both know how far the Styx outranges the Gabriel.”
The CNO matches the lowered voice, not the anxious tone. The big jaw thrusts out, the eyes are hard. “The Styxes were able to sink the Eilat for two reasons — surprise, and size of target. A Saar is a water bug, and the Styx is a fire-and-forget weapon, no operator guidance. Electronics can fool it. Smart ship-handling can dodge it. As for the Gabriel, wait and see.”
“Binny, what about that Egyptian fabrication that your ships shelled them?”
The CNO promises to provide him with a full factual refutation within the hour. Barak returns to Golda’s conference room, above in the main army building, where the cabinet members are gathering, some in shirtsleeves, others tieless in wrinkled suits; the big fish in Israel’s small pond, the usually complacent faces now showing uncertainty and shock. The few who matter like Dayan, Galili, Sapir, Allon, are not among them. So well known because politics is Israel’s chief spectator sport, endlessly interviewed, pictured, caricatured, they are self-important strutters all, in Barak’s opinion, but tonight, what a deflated lot of middle-aged worriers!
Golda takes him into her inner office. “Let’s hear.” She listens with half-closed reddened eyes, nodding and smoking, to his report. “A bad picture. But all this is from Pasternak? Not Dado himself?”
“Prime Minister, Sam is there for Dayan, and he gets whatever information Dado does, and at the same time. Dado is three-deep in generals.”
She sourly smiles. “I can picture it. Dado’s coming to talk to the cabinet soon, so that’s all right.”
“Madame Prime Minister, I have to return to the Pit for the navy’s answer to the Egyptian fakery. Also, a sea battle is shaping up off Syria, and my son’s missile boat is in it.”
“A sea battle?” With a bleak nod, brushing ashes off her bodice, she says, “Go ahead, Mr. Alarmist, by all means, stay with the navy till it’s over. God guard your son in the sea battle. What concerns me right now is the land, our land. God guard our sons in that battle.”
“Target dead in the water.” Zev hears those words as he returns to the navy war room. What a contrast to the long faces elsewhere in the Pit, and the deep dejection at the Prime Minister’s offices! Smiles and handshakes all around here, and the CNO raising a hand for silence. Loudspeaker voice again: “Large silhouette on fire and listing. Probably a minesweeper. Over.”
“Minesweeper?” says the CNO into the portable mike. “What’s a minesweeper doing out in five hundred fathoms of water, Barkai? Over.”
“Picket duty, like that torpedo boat we hit. I’ve detached Motti to sink both cripples with his guns, and am running ahead with four boats to Latakia. Over.”
“Ah, Zev, look here.” The CNO takes him by the elbow to the big map table. “First they got a torpedo boat picket with their three-inch, then this big radar blip showed up, so Barkai closed and launched Gabriels over the horizon. Two big flashes, and now he’s confirmed it — a large vessel aflame and disabled, huge holes blasted in the hull —”
“Not a neutral? You’re sure?”
“Not a chance! A picket. Saw our boats on radar and ran. Something to tell Golda, hey? The Arabs need Russian missiles, but we Jews make our own, and —”
“TEEL … TEEL … TEEL.” The flotilla commander again on the loudspeaker, his voice calm and unchanged. Startled faces in the room. Sudden silence, but for the whirring of the air vents. “I say again, TEEL … TEEL … TEEL. Urgent. Activate all countermeasures. All boats commence evasive action, maneuver at discretion …”
Wind and spray blow
hard in Noah’s face as he comes scrambling topside. Yes, there those things are again to the southeast, the yellow moons of the horrible Eilat night and of his nightmares ever since, hanging among the stars, growing larger and drifting to the right. The two Saar boats far up ahead are turning sharply this way and that, firing off their countermeasures. Noah’s own rockets of chaff and decoys go hissing and blazing into the night sky, making slashes and zigzags of red, yellow, white, against the darkness.
Barkai’s voice on the bridge speaker: “Noah, ninety seconds to impact.” Below at the command console Barkai is watching the pips of the missiles in flight, and of the enemy boats which have suddenly emerged from the radar shadow of the land for this surprise launch.
“Acknowledged, sir. … Hard right rudder! Engines ahead flank speed.” If all the electronic countermeasures fail to work, he can still try to dodge those evil globes. The six years since he went down with the Eilat melt away and the fright is on him again. But now he is not helpless, he is captain of this feisty little vessel, and he can do radical evasive maneuvers. “Hard left rudder. Left engine stop.” Those lights are swelling in the sky, showing dark smoke trails. But will the ECMs work? Does Israel have a sea defense, or are those damned things homing on him, and is he about to go down in enemy waters, this time probably forever?
“Rudder amidships! Flank speed.” The boat sways and shudders, smashing at the waves, throwing spray high as the bridge. “All engines stop. … All engines back full.”
The lights are sinking, the Styxes are going into their dive at the boats ahead — no, also at him, at him. Noah is feeling the fear now in his stomach and his balls.
Underground in Tel Aviv, frozen attitudes in the navy pit. Eyes on the clock, time of Styx flight about two minutes, almost over. Second hand clicking loudly from mark to mark.
