The Siege of Tel Aviv

by Hesh Kestin

  Through the flying debris and smoke, a lone F/A-18 seems to be headed directly for the 717 when it zooms up and over it, avoiding a collision by little more than inches.

  No one on board can see it, but the pilot of the F/A-18 rising over the airliner at what seems to be an impossibly steep angle of ascent is at the same time reaching into his external vest pocket. In lipstick, he draws two bright red X’s on his windshield.

  Kuwait Air 201 has just begun to level off when it is joined by first one and then a second F/A-18 riding shotgun on either wing.

  Its radio comes alive. “Tower to Kuwait 201. Tower to Kuwait 201. What the hell is going on out there? All I can see is a lot of smoke. Kuwait 201, you are not cleared for takeoff. You are on a military runway. Turn your aircraft around and return to Kuwait International. You are cleared for Runway Two. Kuwait 201, do you read me? Over.”

  “Tower, I read you loud and clear.” The captain looks over to his Israeli co-pilot and navigator. “Regret Kuwait 201 is no longer operational. Over.”

  “Tower to Kuwait 201. Bullshit. I have you on radar. Hell, I have you visual. Turn your aircraft around. Over.”

  The ex-Navy pilot is enjoying this more than any flight he has commanded since Vietnam. Flying a commercial airliner is no different than driving a bus. This is different: it brings back memories. Pressing a button, he suppresses voice on the radio. “Where the hell we going, colonel?”

  “Ben Gurion International Airport. You know it?”

  “I know it’s been Yasser Arafat Airport for a month. We get close, them Gyppos’ll shoot us down.”

  “Captain,” Col. Lior says quietly in the brusque whisper that is his trademark, “as you call it, negatory on that.”

  The 717 captain shrugs, then flips on his mic. “Tower, this is former Kuwait Air 201. Over.”

  “This is Tower. What the fuck do you mean, former? Over.”

  A flight attendant squeezes into the cockpit. “Captain...”

  He raises a forefinger. “Tower, I am pleased to report this aircraft is now designated El Al 201. Over and out.” He turns to the flight attendant. “Peggy?”

  “Captain, they won’t return to their seats. And they’re smoking.” He chortles. “They sure are, baby.” He hits the announcement switch. “Attention passengers. This is your captain speaking.”

  He turns to look back into the cabin through the open door. The commandos are carousing, spritzing beer and chasing each other around first and business as the cabin crew tries to settle them down.

  “It appears you people are out of control back there. Such behavior is contrary to regulations of the International Air Transport Association. But since none of us gives a shit, let me further announce that this is a smoking flight, and that if you’ll give the cabin crew half a chance, they’ll rustle up some breakfast. One more thing. The bar is open and drinks are on the house. Cabin crew, y’all take good care of our passengers. We’re bringin’ em home.”

  110

  THROUGH THE DUST OF his office window, Yigal sees the first wave of F/A-18s flash across the morning sky over Tel Aviv, then head out to sea before turning back to cross the city once more. There are fifty-eight. In twenty-five minutes, two more will appear, escorting what is now El Al 201. For the less well-informed citizens of Tel Aviv, who are aware that an attack on the city is inevitable, the planes spark resigned panic, very similar to the reaction of Londoners during the Blitz, who moved quickly to the shelter of Underground stations in determined desperation.

  But there is no subway in Tel Aviv, and though by law each apartment house must contain a below-ground shelter, in total these are designed to protect the population of the city, not the entire country. Still, chaos does not ensue: like the residents of wartime London, the people of Ghetto Tel Aviv hurry, for the most part stoically, to previously chosen locations as though they are simply late for a date: the lee of abandoned buses and trucks; the underground shelters of public parks and office buildings; beneath the city’s trademark white apartment buildings, which are built on pillars so as to provide parking spaces; within cafés and shops whose doors were forced by the endless flood of refugees seeking shelter and anything they might barter for food.

  By the time the waves of Kuwaiti aircraft double back over the city, there is no one on the streets but Misha’s police force, together with medical teams already well distributed in first aid stations across the city. There is no other way to deal effectively with the huge numbers of expected wounded; no vehicles are available to bring the victims to the city’s hospitals. In groups of three, doctors and nurses are stationed where the wounded are expected to be.

  There are no wounded.

  One by one, the city’s residents poke their heads out from their hiding places as the F/A-18s return east.

  “Phase one, check,” Yigal says to no one, though Misha and Alon Peri are with him. He turns to Peri. “This is really going to work?”

  “Absolutely,” Peri says. Then: “All things being equal.”

  “I never know what that means,” Yigal says. “What if their tin cans take other routes?”

  “On the narrower streets, their turrets can’t turn,” Misha says. “All they can shoot is the tank ahead. Unless they’re totally incompetent, they’ll stick to the boulevards.”

  “And the...devices?”

  Peri beams with confidence. “Couldn’t be lower tech. They’ll be fine.”

  “If not, this guy’s dead,” Misha says.

  Yigal turns back to the window as the last of the F/A-18s flashes by. “If not,” he says, “we’re all dead.”

  111

  THE PRESIDENT IS AT the lake, popping open a bottle of Peroni Nastro Azzurro. He prefers this Italian brand, but can never drink it anywhere but Camp David. Where there are photographers, which to the president’s great annoyance is everywhere else, he makes a point of drinking Bud, Lone Star, Sam Adams. Election day is right around the corner.

  With him are the members of an ad hoc war room, none of them in bathing attire.

  “The Arabs are ready to roll,” Admiral Staley says. “No doubt about that.”

  “Big?” the president asks. He dips a toe in the water. It is not quite as warm as he would like, but he still intends to swim out to the platform a half mile out. Two Boston Whalers—engines idling, each holding four Secret Service agents, one of them equipped with oxygen—stand by to accompany him.

  “We invaded Iraq with less,” Staley says. “Over a thousand tanks, Jordanian, backed up by mechanized infantry, Egyptian those. Strung out all along the western border, there’s enough Syrian and Iraqi ground forces to surround Washington D.C.”

  Shielding his eyes from the sun with both hands, Felix St. George peers out onto the lake—this is as artificial as his gesture, which is meant suggest he can be depended on for the long view. “Mr. President, if Israel has the capacity, this is the time they’ll effectuate.”

  “You’re talking what, Felix—Armageddon?”

  “Mr. President,” the security advisor says. “Do you recall the story of Samson?”

  “Delilah gave him a haircut, that one?”

  “That one, Mr. President. Sir, he pulled down everything around him.”

  No slouch at gestures himself, the president hands Flo Spier his watch. “Flo?”

  “Sir, if this goes nuclear, a radioactive cloud will cover the globe. Mr. President, I hate to sound cynical...”

  “No, you don’t. Because you’re so good at it.” Now both the president’s feet are in the water. “Go ahead.”

  “Mr. President, those Jordanian tanks better take out Tel Aviv before Tel Aviv takes out the world.”

  The president stretches his arms over his head, then straight out, then stretches again. “Admiral?”

  “Mr. President?”

  “What are the odds? Am I going to get to see that blowjob movie tonight?”

  “Mr. President, aside from the nuclear option, which doesn’t seem like they’ve got an
y way to deliver, Israel’s down to a few tanks, and they’re strung out in an easily punctured line. Sir, by the time you finish that film this evening, the State of Israel, such as it is, will no longer exist.”

  The president chugs the last of his Peroni and, in a final gesture, hands the empty to Admiral Staley. “Well, I always said they should have put it on a travel poster,” the president says, turning to the lake. “Israel—see it while it exists.”

  The president dives in, his smooth, even stroke barely disturbing the surface of the water as the two purring Boston Whalers full of Secret Service personnel follow at a discreet distance. Aside from the two small boats, the president has the entire lake to himself.

  112

  WITH NO HELICOPTERS OR observation planes, no drones and no access to Israel’s five orbiting satellites, Pinky and his senior staff have little choice but to climb as high as practical in one of Israel’s modest skyscrapers to view what is officially known as Phase II but which everyone involved in its planning thinks of as the Battle of Tel Aviv.

  The building rises forty-five stories above the Diamond Exchange on the border that defines Tel Aviv proper from the municipality of Ramat Gan. Once separate geographical entities, the two have agglutinated, as Tel Aviv has with its other suburbs. From their observation post on the tenth floor—going any higher would isolate the IDF leadership should they need to descend quickly—Pinky and his officers have a 360-degree view of the city and its environs, including the Ayalon Highway which slices south to north. From here, they see the first of hundreds of Challenger tanks moving by fours on both sides of the divided highway, some branching off onto the broader streets leading west to the sea. As predicted, the tanks stick to the wider thoroughfares.

  Pinky eases down his high-powered binoculars and turns to the others. “Those who are religious, you know what to do,” he says. “In fact, all of you. It’s an order. Pray.”

  113

  AS FOUR ROYAL JORDANIAN Apache helicopters hover at two thousand feet, seemingly endless columns of Jordanian armor push through the flimsy barriers of bed frames, derelict refrigerators, and abandoned cars surrounding Ghetto Tel Aviv and enter the city. From the point of view of the tank commanders, who toggle between front, rear, left, and right views on their screens, Tel Aviv is a ghost town, its boulevards empty, nothing in motion. Thirty feet above them, at regular intervals, white bed sheets serving as flags of surrender hang from taut cables. Indeed, the only movement is the sheets themselves as they stir in a light breeze coming off the Mediterranean.

  Enclosed in their tanks, the officers and men of the Royal Jordanian Armored Corps are at once gratified and puzzled. There is nothing alive, not so much as a stray dog or cat. There wouldn’t be: all but the quickest have been eaten. The sheets give the city a strangely festive look as the tanks move into position.

  114

  FROM HIS PERCH ON the terrace of the second-floor apartment overlooking Ibn-Gvirol Street, his harness clipped to the cable, Cobi tightens his gas mask and launches down until he reaches the moving Challenger below, slips the clip from the cable, and drops to the roof of the slow-moving tank. Were he less focused on what he was trained over and over to do, he would see copies of himself alighting on every tank on the boulevard; were he in one of the Jordanian Apaches soaring over the city, he would see hundreds more. He clambers to the tank’s ventilator in the turret, pulls the foot-long brass tube from his belt, and smashes it down into the ventilator with his hammer.

  By this time, the tank crew may be aware something untoward is happening, but like most main battle tanks, Challengers have 360-degree viewing capacity on the horizontal plane but are blind to anything happening immediately above or below. What is happening above is an example of the primitive overcoming the sophisticated. The ABC (Atomic, Biological, Chemical) filter on the intake vent of the Challenger is a soft multi-tissue membrane—it must be in order for clean outside air to enter the otherwise sealed tank cabin. Once that membrane is pierced, such as by a brass tube struck by a ballpeen hammer with sufficient force, the cabin is no longer secure.

  The IDF planning group responsible for this breakthrough—and it is a breakthrough in more than figurative terms—first examined the feasibility of inserting a grenade into the cabin and thus neutralizing its crew of four on the spot, but since the objective is to utilize the enemy armor immediately, it was decided to use CS, commonly known as tear gas. The problem then was how to pierce the filtration membrane and fill the cabin with CS at once. Alon Peri provided the answer: a simple tube that, when hit in its center, engages a firing pin, while at the same time tearing through the filtration mesh.

  From his office overlooking Ibn-Gvirol and—though he is not at the moment aware of it—his own son’s part in the operation, Yigal watches with Alon Peri as the choreography unfolds: IDF personnel sliding down the taut cables between the buildings, dropping to the tank roofs, inserting the brass tubes, striking them with hammers.

  “How long will it take?” Yigal asks.

  “Three,” Peri says, watching with him.

  “Three what, minutes? That’s too—”

  “Two,” Peri says. “One. Blastoff.”

  In an operation that seems to have been designed by Busby Berkeley for a military training film—though minus the music—from one Jordanian tank to the next the same scene repeats: hatches fly open as the coughing, choking tank crews climb out, a good many falling off their tanks in a blind attempt to find clean air. Immediately, from storefronts and apartment house entryways, IDF soldiers sprint out to throw the retching tank crewmen to the ground and cuff their hands behind them with plastic ties. It is not so much a battle as a harvest.

  While this is happening, IDF tank crews in gas masks enter the Challengers. These will be hot zones for at least an hour. Hatches open to air them out, the tanks move forward immediately, their new commanders riding above, for the moment able to remove their masks. What they see at street level is what the four Jordanian Apache pilots see from two thousand feet.

  The empty boulevards swarm with people, a whole city come alive as the shelters empty. From the apartment house terraces, the white sheets are pulled down—one enthusiastic civilian even sets one alight, the flaming fabric falling to the street and nearly setting an IDF tank commander on fire. On every street, spontaneous dancing breaks out. Someone plays an accordion on his balcony. Here and there, as on the Jewish New Year, a ram’s horn sounds, a kind of tenor bellow, its pizzicato notes celebrating the joy of deliverance.

  Then the Apaches drop down.

  As one the celebrants look up, their happiness evaporating into fear as they stampede for cover. For dozens of civilians, it is too late—the Apaches’ twin 30mm machine guns plow through the crowd, spewing death in long lines like sewn seams as the helicopters swoop down the boulevards, aiming their Hellfire missiles at the tanks still bear the flying pennants of the Royal Jordanian Armored Corps. Two tanks are taken out immediately, their armor exploding in a wide radius, killing the tank crews and causing further civilian casualties.

  But the attack does not last long.

  From apartment house roofs, IDF infantry, among them a nine-teen-year-old red-haired girl sergeant who last used a Stinger missile a week earlier on the Tel Aviv beachfront, take them down with an efficient dispatch that is at once angry and professional.

  Little is left of the Apaches other than their forty-eight-foot rotors, which spin off over the city until they crash into the tops of buildings and, in one case, fly through the windows of an office tower, some twenty feet of rotor blade sticking out into the still air like a flagpole. Later that day, an enterprising teenager will crawl out and attach to it the blue and white flag of Israel.

  115

  WHILE CLOSE TO TWELVE hundred captured tanks move eastward out of Tel Aviv in four columns, the sixty ex-Kuwaiti F/A-18s have already struck three significant targets: the Egyptian military field adjacent to what will soon enough return to being called Ben Gurion I
nternational Airport, the Jordanian field outside of Jerusalem that shortly will again be called Atarot, and a constellation of four smaller former IAF airfields in the north that were taken over by Syria and Iraq. In each case, most enemy aircraft are destroyed on the ground, black smoke from the planes and the asphalt burning beneath rising in columns that can be seen as far away as Cyprus. There casual observers note the fires before American intelligence specialists underground in the island’s British bases can detect it via satellite.

  The few enemy pilots able to get their planes in the air take one look at the masses of Kuwaiti Super Hornets and decline to engage. All are pursued and brought down, some over enemy territory where anti-aircraft operations were terminated a month earlier. After all, Israel has no air force.

  Under the command of General Ido Baram, the newly Israeli tank force is focused on seven distinct objectives:

  [1] Pierce the wall of Syrian troops surrounding Tel Aviv that is meant to prevent its population from fleeing eastward;

  [2] Bypass the Egyptian force waiting for Jordanian armor to secure the city so they can enter and begin cleansing operations, then prevent the enemy fleeing south and east, an IDF tactic first used in the Yom Kippur War to bottle up Egypt’s Third Army in Sinai;

  [3] Secure the international airport so that food, medicines, and ammunition can be airlifted in;

  [4] Punch through Syrian troop concentrations north of Tel Aviv to reach Israel’s main power station at Hadera, hard by the ancient Roman port at Caesarea, so that Israeli military engineers and civilian employees of the Israel Electric Company can reconnect its twin turbines to the power grid supplying Tel Aviv. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard commandos who moved in early to take over the power station are now outgunned. Those who do not die in battle are collected in Caesarea’s restored amphitheater, before the war a popular venue for concerts.