Isaac's Beacon

by David L. Robbins

  Yakob and Hugo sat in the bed of the third tender in line, on a half-ton of supplies. Yakob had given him a well-worn bolt-action Dutch rifle. Hugo hadn’t handled many long-barreled weapons, mostly the short Stens he’d made with Julius, and his pistol. He nested the rifle in his arms the way Yakob did.

  Following their British escort, the convoy wended through the alley out of Mamilla. Sitting in the open bed, Hugo became glad of the warden’s winter coat; the blue morning belonged to December. He hugged himself as the convoy left the city, the truck accelerated, and the wind rose.

  Two miles south of Jerusalem, the landscape opened to olive trees and a hamlet. A tiny kibbutz had taken hold here around the tomb of Rachel, a domed building visible from the road. The people of Ramat Rachel waved at the convoy. Beyond their settlement began the Arab lands.

  The police in the armored car set a quick pace. This made a cold, jostling ride for the Haganah fighters seated on boxes. A mile past Ramat Rachel, the road skirted two towns, Bethlehem on the left with eight thousand Arabs, Beth Jalla on the right, home to three thousand. Houses of cinderblock and humble stone crowded every hilltop; women walked the road’s shoulder with bundled-up children; every child gave the Jewish supply trucks an unfriendly stare.

  Three miles beyond Bethlehem, the convoy passed Solomon’s Pools, a great reservoir from the king’s time. The ruins of Roman aqueducts linked the hills in the rising landscape. Beside the winding road, many houses were abandoned.

  Yakob sidled closer behind the screen of the truck cab. “We were sure you’d hang.”

  “The warden let me out.”

  “Did the Irgun get to him?”

  Hugo celebrated with a little lie. “Pinchus himself.” Yakob patted his shoulder. Hugo asked, “Has there been trouble for any of the convoys?”

  “Not too bad. Yesterday was quiet. The day before, we swapped a few rounds with some locals on the high ground. They shoot. We shoot. They go home. We keep going. Tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “Why are you going to Massuot Yitzhak? There are safer places.”

  “The fellow I’m going to see said the same thing to me in Buchenwald.”

  “Then why are you going?”

  “The warden told me to keep a low profile. It doesn’t get lower than a kibbutz on the edge of the Negev. Is this rifle loaded?”

  “Yes.”

  With Yakob, Hugo hunkered against the cold as the landscape grew barren and gained in elevation. South of Solomon’s Pools, the road wended up steepening hills. The four laden trucks strained to climb the grades and navigate the switchbacks. A limestone cliff loomed, sheer and white. On the bluff, in the wind, stood a dozen Arabs. They weren’t hiding, and they had guns.

  Red Yakob charged the bolt of his rifle. Hugo scrambled upright to do the same. The engine of their truck whined higher; the driver floored the gas. The last truck in line, the one behind Hugo, couldn’t keep up on the incline and began to fade.

  Yakob saw something menacing from the Arabs; he raised his carbine and fired at the clifftop. Suddenly the Arabs disappeared, but gunshots snapped above and around Hugo. Yakob worked his long rifle at targets high and low; Hugo brought his rifle to his cheek but in the bouncing truck could find no one to shoot at.

  The Revadim truck, last in line, straggled too much. Out of the crags of the cliff, a dozen Arabs surged into the open, swooping down the windswept hillside to intercept it. Yakob scrambled to reload a fresh magazine. He screamed at Hugo, “Fire!”

  Hugo brought one Arab into his sights, but his truck stopped and spoiled the shot.

  Yakob leaped out and sprinted straight at the raiders.

  Hugo’s driver and assistant jumped out, too, rifles in hand. Hugo expected them to gallop after Yakob; he prepared to do the same, but the two Haganah men stayed with the truck and took cover behind the opened doors. A machinegun on the cliff opened up on the halted convoy. Hugo stayed on the boxes of bullets and fruit, unsure where he should run or hide.

  The Revadim truck showed it was still alive. Squealing tires, the driver spun off the road onto the stony slope and dashed away, bounding downhill. Round after round punched its sides and hood, spiderweb holes blinded the windshield as it fled. The Haganah men in the back emptied their weapons at the chasing Arabs and managed to drop one. The body rolled down the incline, spilling a checked keffiyeh on the hill.

  With shouts of “Jihad! Yallah al Yahud!” the Arabs turned on Hugo’s truck, the next in line. Behind a boulder, Yakob singlehandedly held the attackers at bay. He picked off one, then another, and the rest dove to the ground. Hugo, with no one to tell him what to do, fired at the Arabs but wasted the shot high.

  The Haganah driver and assistant popped up to fire from behind the truck’s doors. They gave no orders or help to Hugo, too occupied on their own. Hugo twisted to look through the busted windshield at the assault on the trucks ahead, all under attack and returning fire. The British cops in the lead truck had driven beyond the skirmish.

  In ones and twos, more Arabs descended on the trucks. Yakob winged another, then looked back at Hugo but shouted nothing. Hugo was supposed to know what to do.

  A hammer-blow struck the driver’s door of Hugo’s truck; the fighter behind it grunted and fell backwards. His rifle clattered out of his hands onto the road. He lay face up, gasping and panicked. Blood spread around a hole in the chest of his white shirt. Only his hands twitched. The driver’s eyes affixed straight up, past Hugo. Another bullet banged the door. Hugo flinched but watched the driver take hard breaths, slacken, quiet, then draw to a close as if he’d climbed out of his body on those breaths.

  A bullet smashed into the tailgate of the truck, an ugly gong that reset Hugo’s attention.

  With the butt of his carbine, he smashed at one of the wooden ammo cases until it splintered open. He knew too little about the rifles he and Yakob held, but it seemed reasonable to think the guns were intended for the Etzion bloc. Probably the ammo matched them. He scooped up as many small boxes as he could carry, labeled .303 British. A bullet zinged behind his head to pierce the rear windshield. Shards cut his cheek, barely missing his eye. Hugo rolled out of the truck and landed beside the corpse. He gathered up the dead fighter’s rifle, threw the strap of his own Dutch gun across his shoulders and, keeping the truck between himself and the cliff where the Arabs had a bead on him, took a deep breath.

  The din of the fighting swelled. Shouts of Arab bravado, anger, and pain mixed with the gunshots. The assistant driver on the other side of the truck fired in two directions, at the attackers ahead and the ones behind creeping up on Yakob.

  Under the truck, Hugo slid him the dead driver’s rifle and two boxes of ammo. The assistant paused in surprise at what arrived had at his feet, then resumed firing.

  Behind his big rock, Yakob’s gun went quiet. He held up a small metal sleeve, an empty five-round clip. He dropped it, then showed Hugo another clip, meaning when this runs out, we are dead.

  Hugo exhaled with puffing cheeks and bolted away from the truck. He ran a zigzag, dodging rounds that zinged off the road left and right, then he slid in behind Yakob’s boulder.

  Hugo flung down the ammo cartons. Urgently, Yakob broke into them. He spilled out twenty-five loaded clips. Yakob punched him in the shoulder, then grabbed at the ammunition.

  “You alright?” Yakob asked. “Blood on your face.”

  Hugo touched the little wounds on his cheek. “I’ll be very happy if these are all I get.”

  Firing fast, Yakob put the advancing Arabs on their bellies. He had more bullets now and let them know it. Hugo propped his own rifle next to Yakob; he’d let the redhead shoot.

  He kept one carbine loaded while Yakob emptied the other. Bullets geysered the dusty ground. The shooting deafened Hugo; he couldn’t hear the rest of the battle on the road and hillside. The number rushing down on them grew
to a hundred.

  Beside Hugo’s truck, the assistant driver took a bullet in the gut. On his knees, he kept firing. His mouth hung open, but Hugo’s ears were too stuffed to know if he was screaming. An emptied clip sprang from the Haganah man’s magazine to bounce on the road. The fighter groped with blood on his hands for one of the ammo boxes Hugo had slid to him. Another bullet drove him back against the truck door. His head loosened on his neck, fazed and querying. A last smash rocked him off his knees to fall on his side next to his rifle.

  Four boxes of ammo remained to Yakob, plenty to live a few minutes more. Hugo shouted, inches from Yakob’s face, “I’m going to run for the truck.”

  Yakob asked nothing, again supposing Hugo knew what he was doing. He squeezed off more rounds at Arabs fifty meters away. Hugo darted from behind the cover of the rock. Snipers on the cliff tried to zero in on him.

  Hugo bolted for the pickup and skidded in the road behind the open passenger door. He tugged the rifle from under the dead assistant, then tossed it into the cab. Hugo hurtled into the truck bed to lift the opened ammo crate and push it through the bullet-busted rear windshield. A bullet thudded into the sacks of cattle feed. Hugo leaped out, then as fast as he could, bounded into the driver’s seat.

  The truck had been left idling. Hugo dropped it into gear and floored the pedal. The pickup rocketed forward. Both bullet-punched doors slammed shut.

  Yakob might think Hugo was trying to escape. Hugo wished he’d explained himself.

  The next truck in line was fifty meters ahead. Hugo barreled to it, then locked the brakes. He spun the steering wheel to slew the truck sideways, smoking the tires. Three Haganah men were holding their ground; two others were splayed on the pavement, killed or too hurt to fight. Hugo wedged his truck between the defenders and the Arabs, hiding inside the burnt-rubber haze to toss out a dozen cartons of ammo. Rounds drummed on the side-panels of his pickup. A bullet stabbed through the door to nail his thigh but didn’t break the skin. Hugo yelped and mashed the accelerator, cranking the steering wheel into a sharp turn; he spun the pickup on squalling tires and surged for the lead truck.

  Again, Hugo sideslipped between the Haganah men and the Arabs. He threw out more ammo and tossed the three fighters the dead assistant’s rifle. One boy in a wispy moustache threw down his Sten and snatched up the long-barreled gun. He broke open a carton of ammo, loaded fast, and fired through the first five-round clip. Another bullet punctured the passenger door; this one drilled a rut through the tops of both of Hugo’s thighs, ripping the pants he’d been arrested in. The slug banged into the driver’s door and dead-ended at Hugo’s feet. He felt no pain yet, the wound happened too fast, but the grooves across his lap oozed. The young fighter reloaded and kept up a steady barrage.

  Hugo wheeled the pickup around. The steering handled sluggishly; a bullet had popped the front right tire. He leaned on the gas to get all the speed the truck had left. Screeching on the metal rim, the pickup howled back toward Yakob.

  Hugo drove flat-out. Downed Arabs littered the hillside and the shoulder of the road. Trailing sparks, he rushed at Yakob who cast a worried glance as Hugo closed in, again not knowing what Hugo was doing. With ten meters to go, Hugo pitched the truck sideways, careening to a halt that blocked Yakob from the battle behind him. Before the truck settled or the haze from the smoldering tires drifted away, Hugo grabbed the last ammo boxes and rolled out of the cab. Bullets drubbed the truck’s hood and beat at the feed sacks. Hugo ducked behind the buffeting truck. Kneeling awoke the ache in his thighs; the wounds seared, and blood pulsed in the grooves.

  Behind his rock, on the other side of the truck, Yakob bellowed, “Now!”

  To the roars of Yakob’s rifle, Hugo limped around the rear bumper, expecting a bullet. He hobbled until he buckled behind the boulder, just ahead of a ricochet.

  Yakob handed him the spent rifle to reload. The barrel almost burned Hugo’s hands.

  The Arabs vanished when three armored police cars and a Red Shield ambulance powered up the hill. Leading the way was the shot-up Revadim pickup that had escaped to Bethlehem for help. Fifty cops piled out of the metal-plated trucks to take control of the scene. No more shots were exchanged except for Yakob, who kept shooting as the last Arab disappeared from his sights.

  Six khaki-clad cops crept around the bullet-pocked pickup. Approaching, they said to Yakob, “Easy, easy.” Yakob squeezed off a final round. The policemen inched up, hands in view.

  The first cop took a knee. He gestured at Hugo’s blood-soaked pants, a red trench across each thigh. The policeman sucked his teeth. “These will take a few stitches.” Two cops crouched beside Yakob to ask if he was hurt. He was not. His freckled skin was afire, and his hands trembled; Hugo saw how scared Yakob had been.

  The cops lifted Hugo to help him limp from the boulder. The carnage of the battle clogged the road and cluttered the hillside. The Bethlehem cops collected ten bodies of the Haganah and loaded them into the Red Shield ambulance which turned for Jerusalem. On the rocky terrain, a dozen black robes flapped in the highland breeze. The Arabs would return for them.

  The cops helped Hugo stumble toward their truck. Skid marks from his crazed driving scored the road. One defender staggered up on a wounded hip, two were borne away on stretchers. Only four of the seventeen Haganah had come through unscathed, one of them Yakob. None of the British escort inside their armored car had been harmed.

  Yakob asked the police commander if a ride could be arranged to take him and the remaining defenders the rest of the way, four miles south to Gush Etzion. The officer agreed.

  Hugo asked the cops to set him on the pavement. A medic hurried over to bandage his thighs. Yakob, still flush, came to sit beside Hugo.

  Yakob started to cry. None of the cops tried to comfort him. Hugo didn’t touch him, either.

  Chapter 79

  Rivkah

  Massuot Yitzhak

  A cold wind whipped out of the north, carrying the clatter of gunfire from the bleak hills. Hundreds of reports hinted at a furious battle. When the shooting stopped, the silence was sudden and ominous. Something had been decided.

  Standing in the quarry road, Vince lapped an arm around Rivkah’s shoulders. Rivkah wore Malik’s rifle across her back. Others waited, too, to find out who had been fighting.

  The grinding of gears replaced the quiet. A heavy armored car turned off the Hebron road into the Gush Etzion bloc, then climbed to Massuot Yitzhak.

  A kibbutz boy with a rifle stepped into the vehicle’s path, one hand up. The driver motioned for the young guardian to walk around back. The boy did. A door opened; the boy peered inside. Whatever he saw made him wave the truck onward. The boy and his gun disappeared into his foxhole.

  The armored car lumbered up the hill to stop in front of Rivkah’s house. Mrs. Pappel came off the porch to meet it. Vince, Rivkah, and the settlers followed. The truck’s rear door opened. A medic climbed down, then reached behind him to offer a hand.

  Vince left Rivkah’s side to help Hugo step out. Gauze wrapped both of his thighs; dried blood crosshatched his face. Unsteadily, Hugo spread an arm across Vince’s shoulder.

  Vince said, “Hello again.”

  Hugo took ginger steps, doing all he could to keep upright. Mrs. Pappel looked in the backdoor of the ambulance. She asked someone inside, “What happened?”

  Rivkah helped Vince get Hugo through the crowd and into the house. They set him at the kitchen table. Hugo grunted into a chair; Rivkah set a kettle to boil, then hurried to her bedroom for fresh bandages.

  Vince sat beside Hugo. He was supposed to hang, wasn’t he? How had he dodged death row? What had just happened in the hills above Bethlehem? This was Rivkah’s home; it was her place to ask. But Vince sat covering Hugo’s smaller hand. Hugo offered no explanation yet, and Vince asked him nothing.

  Vince said to Rivkah, “Bring me a wet cloth.”


  She soaked a towel. He dabbed clean the cuts on Hugo’s cheek and temple.

  Mrs. Pappel entered; behind her came a redheaded man. Though he was unhurt, he appeared, like Hugo, still in the aftermath of a battle, apprehensive and battered. He stank of gunpowder. The redhead shuffled to a chair at the table without being invited, not because he needed to sit but to come beside Hugo, with whom he’d shared something terrible.

  Mrs. Pappel said, “This is Yakob.”

  Rivkah kneeled before Hugo to unravel his hasty bandages. Hugo touched her shoulder.

  “This is how Vince first found me. No home. Nothing. Wretched.”

  “You’re safe.”

  “He said that to me, too.”

  She sucked a breath at his wounds. The bleeding had stopped; the matching channels across both thighs were pink and clean-cut. Rivkah helped Hugo remove his ruined trousers. The little Irgunist showed no shyness or humility for his thin legs or roughspun underwear. Both thighs would require stitches, and he’d need something for the pain. She wrapped his wounds, then put him in her bed.

  Rivkah pulled up the blankets and sat beside him. Vince peeked in the doorway, then left again.

  Hugo said, “You haven’t asked me what happened. Why I’m here.”

  “It seemed more important to take care of you.”

  “We don’t know each other.”

  “No.”

  “I apologize if I made a poor first impression.”

  “That was a while ago.”

  The bed quivered under Hugo’s laugh. “A while.”

  She stood to let him rest.

  He said, “I’m supposed to be dead, you know. A few times over.”

  “You’re not.”

  He shrugged against the pillow, a we’ll see gesture.

  “It hurts.”

  “Mrs. Pappel went for the doctor.”

  “May I stay here? I don’t want to go to a clinic.”

  “It’s a small house.”