Firebreak

by Richard Herman

  “So what are you telling us?” Fraser asked.

  Admiral Scovill answered, “A war is going to break out soon. A military exercise like Desert Star is a screen to move forces into position. Any fool can see that.” He glared at Carroll as if he were personally responsible. “Who presents the biggest threat to Israel and what can we do about it?”

  “The Egyptians, sir. Apply diplomatic pressure and get them to cancel the exercise. That will remove a threat from the Israelis’ southern flank and allow them to concentrate their forces opposite the Syrians. No way the Syrians can take on the Israelis without Egypt tying up part of the IDF.”

  Pontowski nodded in agreement. The lieutenant colonel had reinforced what he was thinking. “Contact State,” Pontowski ordered. “Call the Egyptian ambassador in today and let’s have a friendly chat. Also, I want to send all the players over there a loud and clear signal that we are concerned and are not going to sit on our thumbs and let a war break out. Any other suggestions, Colonel?” Pontowski was testing Carroll, seeing how deep his analysis cut.

  Carroll thought for a moment. “This might be a good time to practice Response Alpha of your new national energy plan.”

  Fraser was floored. “Sir, we don’t need to start rationing gas because of this.”

  “Tom,” Pontowski said, a gentle rebuke surfacing in his voice, “you need to read the plan. Response Alpha is the first step we take in case of an oil crisis. It calls for the government to set up the framework that makes it possible to quickly implement rationing and conservation measures.” He paused, definitely liking the way Carroll thought. “By testing our system, we send a message that our diplomatic efforts to keep fighting from breaking out are not going to be held captive by a fear of an oil crisis or another embargo.”

  “But Mr. President,” Fraser argued, “that means the oil companies will be subject to strict governmental control. That’s politically hazardous—”

  Pontowski cut him off. “We won’t ration a drop of gas at this time or interfere with anybody’s business. We are conducting an exercise to find out how well our bureaucrats have done their job.”

  Ten minutes later, Melissa glanced over the top of her reading glasses at Fraser as he marched into his office. “Get the chief of the Secret Service in here now,” he ordered and closed his office door behind him. Melissa dialed the number and relayed Fraser’s message. My, but he is upset, she thought.

  A few minutes later, Stan Abbott, an athletic fifty-four-year-old, was sitting in front of Fraser. “Stan, thanks for coming up on such short notice.” Outwardly, Fraser was calm and controlled. “I know you’re aware of what the newspapers are saying about the President.” Abbott nodded. “I have just come from the President and want to reassure you that there is no cover-up going on. In fact, we want to do everything in our power to keep that from happening. We’ ‘—again he stressed the “we,” implying he was relaying a message from Pontowski—“are very worried about certain people who work in the Office of the President and …” Fraser hesitated to see how much Abbott would do without receiving direct orders. Abbott said nothing.

  Reluctantly, Fraser continued, committing himself. “We want a fresh look at these people.” He handed Abbott a short list of names.

  “You want us to request a new background investigation on these people?”

  “I was hoping your office could investigate them,” Fraser answered. “Very discreetly of course, but thoroughly. We’ve got to know if there’s any rot in our woodwork, if there is something, anything, that’s been missed.”

  “I can arrange that,” Abbott said. Fraser thanked him and he left the office. Outside, he glanced at the list Fraser had given him. It puzzled him why only two names were written down: Melissa Courtney-Smith and Lieutenant Colonel William G. Carroll. If there was anything about those two that posed a threat to the President, he would find it.

  What a strange derangement, Shoshana thought. I’m worse than a teenage girl and not acting my age. I’m twenty-seven and moving around in a daze living from hour to hour, simply happy to be with him.

  Matt’s back was to her as he leaned over the rail of the apartment’s balcony, taking in the view. The lights of Haifa were twinkling in the dusk, spreading out as night fell. They were both tired after three days of sightseeing and Shoshana was leaning against the doorjamb studying his back, trying to come to terms with the man. Roaming around Jerusalem with Matt had been a discovery for her. He had dragged her into East Jerusalem, the Arab section, and had charged down narrow passageways, eager to meet the Arabs head-on.

  She had protested that it was dangerous, but Matt had ignored her and mingled with the crowds, another tourist spending his money. That constantly changing kaleidoscope of new and old, Western and Arab culture, that mingled and fused in front of them in delightful patterns drew him on. He had finally run down and dragged her protesting into a small restaurant where a friendly owner and his family served an excellent grilled lamb, salad, and homemade bread. The smells of the food, the family speaking Arabic, had triggered a barrage of memories for Shoshana and, for a split second, she was back in Iraq. Then Matt’s voice brought her back to the moment and she had found warmth and protection in his shadow.

  “What’s for tomorrow?” Matt asked, breaking her reverie.

  “Very little, I hope. My father will be home, I’d like you to meet him.”

  He turned. “Oh, oh. This sounds serious when you meet the family.” Then he smiled. “I’d like to meet your father.”

  “We can go to the beach …” She hesitated. “It’s the day after tomorrow I want to show you.” He waited for her to continue. “It’s Yom Hazikaron, our Day of Remembrance. At noon Israel comes to a halt and for two minutes, no one moves, and sirens wail. It’s the way we honor our people who were killed in the wars. If you saw it, perhaps you might understand us a little better. Then at dusk it all changes and we start to celebrate our Day of Independence. Haifa turns into one big street party.”

  “Sounds good,” he said and turned back to take in the view.

  Shoshana! she warned herself. Don’t look at him so much. Don’t touch him. There is so much in him that has changed since we met in Marbella. He is more reserved and confident but there is still that same boyish eagerness. And why do I feel so safe around him?

  Then she gave up and moved to him. “Matt,” she whispered. He turned and she walked into his arms. He held her, gently stroking her hair. He felt a slight shudder run through her body.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She wanted to tell him that falling in love with a gentile, a foreigner, was the ultimate self-indulgence for an Israeli. Instead: “I’m so afraid there’s going to be another war. You don’t read Hebrew … The stories in the newspapers about Syria and Egypt … we’ve seen this so many times before. We are caught in a thousand-year war with no peace. The Arabs will not rest until they have destroyed us.”

  “A map is a map, and the one I saw on TV this evening says the Syrian tanks are moving away from your border. And it’s pretty clear that my grandpop is talking to the Egyptians. I think the whole thing was overblown and there’s not going to be any shooting in the near future.”

  It was what she wanted to hear and she held him close, content with that for now.

  15

  “You are pleased with yourself,” Tosh Pontowski said. She was out of bed and sitting in her favorite chair.

  Pontowski laid down his read file and sipped his early-morning coffee. “Doesn’t happen often. Let me enjoy it.” His wife knew he wanted to talk. “Looks like the Middle East is settling down. The talks with the Egyptian ambassador are going well and he assures us that the Egyptians are going to cancel the military exercise in the Sinai.” “Is he reliable?” Tosh asked.

  “Always has been in the past. Also, the Syrians are pulling back from their forward positions and the Israelis have relaxed their state of alert.” “What about the Russians?”

  “The Kremlin Kapers
are still in full swing. God only knows what’s going on over there. We are sure of two things. Rokossovsky is in a heap of trouble because their economy is in a shambles. He’s fighting for his life.”

  “What’s the second?”

  “The old guard led by the army is trying to kick him out and go back to the Brezhnev way of running the country.”

  “Zack, I’m worried about those stories in the newspapers …”

  “I know, love. There’s nothing the newspapers like better than a scandal to beat the President with about the shoulders and ears. I’ve got an investigation going but so far haven’t found a thing. We’ve even asked the reporters about their sources so we can trace it all down, but they won’t help. Whoever buried the evidence dug a deep hole.”

  “If there was any evidence to bury,” Tosh said.

  “I hope you’re right. But I’ve got a tingling sensation that tells me it’s out there, just waiting to be thrown on the table and stink.” The phone rang and he picked it up. When he set it down, he rose and paced the room for a few moments. “It’s coming apart …” Tosh waited. Years of living together had given her an intimate knowledge of her husband and she knew the news the unknown caller had relayed was bad, very bad. “The Syrians have stopped their withdrawal.” He kissed her cheek and walked hurriedly from the room.

  Matt’s height gave him a slight advantage and he could see over most of the heads around him. He was caught with Shoshana and Avi Tamir in a slow-moving current of humanity that was heading up the narrow path that led up the hill outside Haifa and into the cemetery on top. The distinctive wail of a nearby air raid siren started to build and was joined by other in the distance. It was exactly twelve o’clock. The crowd stopped moving. Matt could see men come to attention and little children fidget beside crying mothers, not understanding what was going on around them. He glanced at Shoshana and Avi, surprised that she was not crying like her father. The strident pitch of the siren wound down to a mournful echo and then died. For a few moments, the crowd was absolutely silent. Then he could hear low sobs and the voices of mothers hushing their children as the crowd started to move again, quietly and slowly.

  Shoshana sat on the ground next to her mother’s grave while Tamir pulled at some weeds that had grown around the headstone that had been missed by the Arab gardener who tended the cemetery. Matt waited patiently and Shoshana finally turned to look at him. “I barely remember my mother …”

  “Miriam was killed in the Yom Kippur War,” Tamir said. “Shoshana was six years old and they were at a kibbutz in the Huleh Valley. Have you been there?” he asked Matt. The pilot shook his head no. “You should see it, it is the jewel of Israel. But it lies at the base of the Golan Heights and the kibbutz was shelled by Syrian artillery. Miriam was rushing children to a bomb shelter … she never made it.” Tamir stared off in the distance, seeing something in his past. “Shoshana is so much like her.”

  In the silence, Matt looked into Shoshana’s eyes and knew that he loved her. He didn’t fight or question it, he simply knew. He would tell her later when the moment was right.

  “They shouldn’t be flying,” Tamir said, gesturing at two low-flying aircraft approaching the hill. Matt looked, picking out the two fighters immediately. He estimated they were flying at about five hundred feet when a long stick of a smoke trial reached up toward the aircraft and one disappeared in a bright flash. “My God …” Tamir whispered.

  “MiGs!” Matt shouted. “Hit the deck!” He threw himself on the ground next to Shoshana and rolled on top of her. The lone survivor streaked over the cemetery as another Hawk surface-to-air missile streaked above it, this time missing. In the distance, air raid sirens started to wail and the retreating fighter skimmed over the housetops of Haifa. “Bomb run,” Matt said. He had seen four 500-kilogram bombs slung under the MiG-23. “Syrian markings,” he told them. In the distance, they heard the dull thuds of exploding bombs and saw pillars of smoke rise above the harbor. “They hit something. Got a secondary.”

  Now they could see more aircraft in the sky. The crowd in the cemetery panicked and started screaming and running down the hill. “Stay here,” Matt ordered and pulled Shoshana to her feet. He pushed her against a tree and grabbed Tamir, dragging him with them. “We’ll be okay here,” he said. “The target’s Haifa, not us.”

  From his vantage point, Matt watched the brief air battle over Haifa as the first wave of Syrian aircraft struck at their targets. The Israeli defenders were slow in reacting and he could only count two Hawk SAM batteries in action. Then the distinctive rhythmic beat of a Bofors antiaircraft cannon reached them. “Here comes the second wave,” he announced as more Syrian fighters roared over them. He was counting the attackers, timing the reaction of the Israelis, and trying to gauge the damage caused by the Syrians. “You’re getting a break,” he said. “They’re not concentrating on their targets, only jettisoning their loads indiscriminately over the city.” The first of two Israeli F-15s slashed down onto the attackers.

  “This is a break for us? This is good?” Tamir was yelling at him. “Innocent people are down there …” Matt stopped him by pointing to a plummeting aircraft, twisting and failing out of die sky. A parachute was drifting, down above it. In the distance, they saw another MiG explode as the Israelis worked the attackers over.

  “Yeah,” Matt said, his voice low and unemotional. “You got a break here. It was a well-planned surprise attack. Great timing and they penetrated your air defense system. But they blew it over the target area, and that’s where it all counts. Most of the bombs were off target. You had better hope it was the same all over.”

  “But they killed people,” Tamir protested, “innocent women and children—”

  “And they missed their targets,” Matt interrupted, determined to make his point. “You can still fight another day.”

  “I have work to do down there,” Shoshana said, walking away from the two men. She stopped and turned. “Come. You can help me.”

  The American swept the sky, looking for other aircraft. He could see the plan form of six F-15s established in a HICAP over the city. The attack was over. He followed Shoshana down the hill, toward the fires burning below.

  “Where is the main threat?” Ben David demanded. He was deep within the concrete bunker that served as Israel’s wartime headquarters. The big situation map in front of him was etched on a clear glass plate and plotters wearing headsets stood behind, marking up information they received in grease pencil. Because they worked in the rear, they had to write backward.

  Three large arrows out of Syria were pointed at Israel. One of the plotters moved the head of the arrow that represented the First Syrian Army coming down the Bekáa Valley from the north. The lead tanks were twenty-five miles closer to Israel and would soon cross the Litani River, the last major obstacle before they reached the northern border. The arrow for the Third Army pointed at the Golan Heights had not changed. But the arrow for the Fifth Army coming out of the Jebel Druze highlands kept inching its way southward, directly through Jordan and toward Jerusalem.

  The minister of defense, Benjamin Yuriden, answered his question. “We are not sure at this time.” It was not what Ben David wanted to hear and he said nothing, barely controlling his anger. Ben David fought his natural inclination to vent his fury and yell at the men in front of him. They had been surprised by an enemy that they had thought of as cowardly, stupid, and technologically inept. And it shouldn’t have happened, not after the Yom Kippur War of ‘73. Ben David made a mental promise to destroy the career of the chief of military intelligence. Other heads would also roll if they got out of this.

  What the Syrians and Egyptians had done was on the situation board in front of him. It was the reality he had to deal with and he didn’t like what it did to his self-image. The Arabs had snookered him, outfoxed him and his advisers by showing the Israelis what they wanted to see and believe. The retreating tanks on the northern border had convinced the Israelis that the Syrians simply
didn’t have the will to fight, matching the cowardly image the Israelis had of them. All the while, a large part of the IDF was deployed opposite the Egyptians in the Sinai while the Israelis took a big sigh of relief.

  And then the Syrians had pulled off an unbelievably complicated maneuver—they had stopped their massive withdrawal and reversed in place. That was something that had even Israeli tank commanders staring in wonder with their mouths open.

  The evidence was plainly before him—they were facing a formidable enemy. Three voices assaulted him at once, each with a different opinion. Ben David stared at the board in front of him, somehow managing to listen to all three at once. Then he erupted in a series of questions.

  “Do we have a blocking force at the Litani River?”

  “Moving into position now,” Yuriden answered. “They are in contact with the Syrians.”

  “How long can they hold?”

  “Unknown. The Syrians have the mass behind them to force a crossing within hours.”

  “Situation on the Golan?”

  “Exchanging artillery barrages. The Syrian counterbattery fire is proving very effective. The Syrian tanks are not moving yet.”

  “How far have the Syrians penetrated into Jordan from the Jebel Druze?”

  “Forty-five kilometers and are opposite Nablus, still well within Jordan and headed straight for Jerusalem.”

  “What are the Jordanians and Iraqis doing?”

  “Nothing. But the Jordanians are evacuating their people and protesting in the UN.”

  Ben David lowered his head for a moment. Then his decision was made. “Order air strikes against the tanks of the First Army trying to cross the Litani River and the Fifth Army moving through Jordan. If the Jordanian Air Force intervenes, destroy it.” Then another thought occurred. “Can we hit any of the headquarters commanding those three armies?”

  Yuriden’s face was an impenetrable mask. He stepped onto the small stage and the stocky ex-air force general pointed at the Syrian city of Homs, north of Lebanon, just inside the Syrian border. “The headquarters for the First Army moving down the Bekáa Valley is located here, over two hundred kilometers behind to the rear.” At least this fit the Israeli image of the Syrians.