Matt sat on a small table against the back wall of the command post at Ramat David Air Base. His hands clutched at the edge, knuckles white. The command post was mostly silent as mission reports filtered in; two F-16s lost, two safely recovered. Then Ramon’s operations report came in; Dave Harkabi last seen engaging two Flankers, his wingman reported hit and ejecting. “Damn,” he muttered. Matt had liked the Israeli major.
“Have you seen enough?” the colonel asked.
He nodded and stood up, ready to leave. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. “You never told me your name.”
The woman looked at him. “Harkabi.” Matt was stunned, not knowing what to say. But the woman was too young to be Dave’s mother and too old to be his wife. “David is my nephew,” she said. “I’ve got to tell his mother.”
Outside, Matt took a breath of cool night air and looked up at the scattered cloud deck scudding across the sky. Damn, Dave, he thought, you were good. I know. I flew against you enough times and you should’ve been able to disengage from two ragheads. And the Flanker isn’t any better than the F-16.
Then another thought hit him. Or was it?
His first stop after he left Ramat David was Shoshana’s apartment in Haifa. He was disappointed but not surprised when she wasn’t home. “Lillian, will you please see Shoshana gets this?” He handed Shoshana’s aunt his Nomex flight suit. Lillian looked at him, not understanding. “It’s fireproof,” he explained, “like a tanker’s jump suit. Her fatigues aren’t and this might protect her.” He was thinking of the burned-out tank and the charred body he had seen.
Lillian nodded and took the flight suit. “Matt, take care and come back. She needs you.”
Matt gave her his lopsided grin. “I know. I’ll be back.”
“Shalom.”
The road south to Tel Aviv was clogged with trucks and vans of every description. Northbound traffic had priority and it took Matt five hours to cover the sixty miles to Ben Gurion. He used the time to take extensive notes, counting the number of trucks and types of equipment. He took pride in the number of new tanks and Bradleys that were moving forward, their United States insignias freshly painted over. MAC was moving cargo. Then he noticed the troops. Many of them were women, some still girls, wearing combat gear and carrying weapons.
He found Colonel Gold asleep in a makeshift office, his head plunked down on a desk, and Matt was reluctant to wake him. Gold’s head snapped up at the sound of his name. He grunted, shook his head to clear the cobwebs, and took a drink from the cup of steaming coffee Matt handed him. “I’m living on this stuff,” he grumbled.
Matt handed Gold his notes on what he had seen at Ramat David and on the road south. The air attaché scanned them, shaking his head. “Right now, it’s touch and go,” he said. “If the Egyptians come in …”
Matt nodded, filling in the colonel’s thought. “It will be over in hours.”
Gold’s lips compressed into a grim line and his head shook back and forth in tight little jerks. “No. It won’t be over in hours. The Israelis will go nuclear.”
“Oh my God,” Matt whispered, stunned by the sureness of Gold’s prediction. In his preoccupation with the loss of Dave Harkabi, he had forgotten about the Israelis’ “withholding” their Jericho missiles. He quickly filled the colonel in.
The air attaché picked up one of his phones. “I’m laying on a helicopter to fly you to Ramon. Get out of Israel soonest. I Ve got to get a message on the wires.”
The corridors of the command bunker were eerily quiet, as if the inhabitants were holding their collective breath, waiting for something to happen. Avi Tamir followed the guard down to the third level, surprised that he was being escorted. “Two people cracked under the strain,” the guard explained. “One of them got violent and attacked the prime minister.” The people they were passing in the hall were not dirty or wounded but mental strain and emotional danger had made them haggard and gaunt-looking. The guard held a door open for the scientist and stepped back. Yair Ben David was waiting inside—alone.
“Do we have a thermonuclear weapon yet?” he rasped, coming directly to the reason for Tamir’s summons to the bunker.
“No,” Tamir answered, “not yet.” In spite of his misgivings, the scientist had been working furiously on the weapon, driving his staff relentlessly.
“How long?” Ben David demanded.
“Two, maybe three weeks.”
“You’ve been stalling!” Ben David shouted.
“Have I?” Tamir shouted back. “You have no idea.… Get someone else to finish it.”
The prime minister sank into a chair. “I’m sorry, Avi. I didn’t mean that. Please forgive me. But the situation is … critical. We’re barely holding on in the north … Iraq is pouring three fresh armored divisions into Jordan, two into Lebanon … I’m pulling our last reserves out of the Sinai. … We might be able to hold them. But our latest intelligence reports say the Egyptians are moving more tanks into the Sinai. If the Egyptians attack, I will have to use our nuclear weapons.”
“But why do we need a hydrogen bomb?” Tamir protested. “Surely, the nuclear weapons we have—”
“You don’t understand Arabs,” Ben David snorted. “A tactical nuclear weapon on a battlefield means nothing to them. But if the Egyptians attack, I will repay them for their treachery. One bomb, that’s all, one bomb and Cairo no longer exists. Then the Arabs will listen to reason.”
“Is that a step we want to take?” Tamir asked. He was thinking about the danger when a war leaps a firebreak, crossing the barrier that separates the use of conventional and nuclear weapons.
“Do we have a choice?”
Furry was waiting for the helicopter when it landed at Ramon Air Base. He motioned for Matt to hop in the mini pickup he was driving. “Got to hurry,” he said. “We’re coming under a Scud attack about every twenty minutes and we’re out of Patriots.” He gunned the engine and raced for the squadron’s bunker. “They’re trying to keep the base closed. Ain’t working so far. The civil engineers here do miracles but I don’t know how much longer they can do it.” He slammed to a halt and the two men ran down the ramp to the safety of the underground bunker.
“How’s the jet?” Matt asked.
“It’s ready,” Furry answered. “Our troops did some miracles too. It was damaged more than we thought.”
“You got an extra flight suit handy?”
“Yeah,” the wizzo said. “The captain wants to see us before we split.”
They found the captain packing a mobility locker, getting ready to move. She was dressed in fatigues and moved with near exhaustion. Matt decided that in spite of the weariness that drew her face into a tight mask, she was still one of the most beautiful women he had ever met. “We’re deploying to an emergency operating location,” she said, “a highway strip in the Negev.”
“That bad?” Matt asked.
She nodded and sat down. Slowly, she laid out the entire war. It matched what Gold had told him and painted the same grim picture Avi Tamir had just seen. But she left out all mention of nuclear weapons.
“Why are you telling us all this?” Matt asked.
“I was told to,” she said. “You’ve got to make people understand.”
“Meaning my grandfather?”
Again, she nodded, her brown eyes filling with tears.
“I doubt that I’ll even see him,” Matt said, being totally honest. “But we’ll write an after-action report on what we saw here and I’ll see that it gets to the right people.” He turned to Furry. “Time to go.”
Her soft voice stopped the two men before they left. “Shalom.”
Matt turned to look at her. ."Shalom,” he replied. Then they were gone.
The Ganef sat at his desk, fingering the glossy black-and-white photo. He dropped the photo and pushed his glasses back onto his forehead, rubbing the bridge of his nose, making himself think of other things.
So much, he thought, riding with one young man. Have I played
it right? Will the message reach the elder Pontowski and convince him just how desperate we are? God, I hate this nether world of lies, deceit, and indirection I live in. Why can’t we just say to the United States, “Look here, we need your help if we’re going to survive"? No, we have to feed them information, let them discover for themselves what reality is. And for this, I play with people’s lives.
Do I have the Pontowski right? Do I understand the President of the United States? Few people do, he is so clever and complex. Was it pure luck that his grandson was here when the war broke out? And why did the President leave him here? He must know we are feeding information to him, letting him “discover” the reality of our position. Was using the Tamir girl wise? Was it too obvious? The way we held the young Pontowski here and let him see the war through her eyes? Is reality nothing but questions?
The old man pushed his reading glasses back into place and picked up the photo again—a reality frozen in black and white. He looked at the last picture of the only person he felt close to, the nearest thing he had to a family. He closed his eyes, the image now frozen in his mind—Gad Habish hanging by his neck from a rope in a public square in Cairo—swinging in the harsh wind of his memory.
20
The reputation of Brigadier General Leo Cox had preceded him into the White House’s Situation Room, but not a single member of the National Security Council had been expecting the fierce intellect and mastery of facts that made his briefing on the current situation in the Middle East so convincing. Zack Pontowski was more than satisfied with Cox and made a mental note to move him permanently from the DIA to the NSC’s staff and get him promoted. The President pulled into himself as Bobby Burke, the director of central intelligence, tried to poke holes in Cox’s conclusions. The general was most tactful and respectful of Burke’s position, but the result was the same—Cox was eating him alive. A polite form of cannibalism, Pontowski thought. Perhaps we need more of it around here. He made another mental note to thank Melissa for her recommendation.
“General,” Burke sputtered, “I simply refuse to accept your conclusion that the Egyptians are going to enter the war.”
“Mr. Burke,” Cox said, his cadaverous face making his words more ominous, “I want to agree with you, but that contradicts what we’re seeing and hearing.” Cox then proceeded to swamp him with facts, all tied together and supporting his analysis. “The only response then available to the Israelis,” he concluded, “will be to escalate—”
“Damn it, General”—Burke was losing his temper—“and just how will they do that if they’re getting their butts kicked like you’re saying?”
Cox bowed his head before he raised his eyes and drilled the DCI. “They’ll go nuclear, sir.” Burke sank back into his chair and a heavy silence came down. They all believed him.
“We must stop that from happening,” Pontowski said, breaking the silence. “How do we do it?” For the next twenty minutes, the options open to the United States were examined.
Finally, Pontowski leaned forward and started giving orders. There was steel in his voice that most members of the NSC had never heard before. “I want immediate action on three fronts, diplomatic, logistical, and military. State”—he gave the secretary of state a hard look—“press for a ceasefire on all fronts. The Hot Line to the Kremlin is still down and their ambassador recalled. But there has got to be a channel open somewhere. Find it. I don’t care who you have to talk to. Logistics, get whatever the Israelis need to them—now. Put the Rapid Deployment Force on alert. If I have to, I will unilaterally reinforce the peacekeeping troops in the Sinai and force the Egyptians to attack through us. Call the Egyptian ambassador in.”
Pontowski stood. “When I say immediate action, I mean within the hour, not this afternoon.” He moved toward the door. “General Cox, would you please join me?” Outside, the two men walked slowly down the hall. “Leo, how good are your sources?”
Cox hesitated before answering. He knew the President was moving fast, based on the facts he had presented. “Sir, there is always ‘noise’ in intelligence: the information that doesn’t fit, the deliberate misleads the opposition plugs into the system. Most of the time, the very mass of information we deal with is the ‘noise’ that masks the true picture. But the reports we’re getting from our military attachés and observers inside both Israel and Egypt all support what satellite and aerial reconnaissance is telling us—the Israelis are losing and will go nuclear if Egypt comes into the war.”
“How reliable are the attachés and observers?”
“Very,” Cox answered. “One of the reports was from Captain Pontowski.”
“Where’s Matt now?”
“Out of Israel, sir. Back with his unit in England.”
“I’d like to see his report.” The relief in Pontowski’s voice was obvious.
“I’ll get it to you within the hour.”
Pontowski stopped before entering his office. “What happened to Bill Carroll?”
Cox allowed a smile to crack his grim face. “We restored his security clearance, gave him a letter of reprimand for an unauthorized contact with a foreign government, and sent him to an operational unit. He asked to go back to his old wing, the Forty-fifth.”
“He’s a good man,” Pontowski said. “I’m glad you protected him.”
The general could only stare at his commander in chief. My, God! he thought, he figured it out. He knows that I used Carroll to short-circuit the CIA and get the intelligence I thought was critical to him.
“Mr. President”—it was Fraser—“the Egyptian ambassador will be here in two hours.”
“Thanks, Tom. That’s fine.” Pontowski held open die door to his office and motioned Cox inside for privacy. “Leo, there’s something I need you to do right now. Do you know Egypt’s air attaché?”
The two pilots stood at attention in front of General Mana’s desk. They were surprised that the general was wearing a flight suit, even though it had obviously been tailored for him. The general’s aide minced in and handed him a folder. The general smiled at the twenty-year-old lieutenant colonel, thanking him. Johar and Samir kept their eyes rooted on a spot above the general’s head.
Mana thumbed through the folder, throwing pictures of two crashed F-16s onto his desk, in front of the two pilots. “By not following orders,” Mana said, “you two denied me the kills that were rightfully mine. Please explain yourselves.”
“Sir”—it was Johar—“I’m not sure we can. Everything happened so fast and, and we were just there. “ Samir nodded vigorously in agreement. “The only way I can explain what happened is that”—he was thinking furiously, knowing Mana could be very dangerous and they were, after all, nobodies—“that your aggressive airmanship drove the F-Sixteens right into our feces. It was night, you knew that the Israelis would turn away from us, back towards you … But it was all very confused and we managed to get off two missiles. The shots were … pure luck.” He had almost said “The shots were golden BBs” but that would have been too much of an Americanism and a mistake.
Mana rolled a letter opener between his thumb and forefinger, examining its blade. “It is encouraging that you understand what happened. But it does not change the result.” He drove the tip of the letter opener deep into his desk. “Those were my kills.”
“Yes, sir,” Johar said. “We know that.” Samir nodded vigorously.
“Then you will understand why I am receiving the credit for them. Please, this was not my idea. The other pilots who were there are insisting on it.”
“That is how it should be,” Johar agreed with Samir, who was still nodding.
Mana smiled. “There will be reporters and TV cameras on base today to report my victory to our people. I think it would be wise if you two were not here.”
“Thank you, sir,” Johar said, “for your understanding.”
“Dismissed.”
The two pilots beat a hasty retreat. Outside the headquarters building, they glanced at each other, an u
nspoken comment that they had been lucky. But that was life in Iraq’s air force.
The Egyptian ambassador was the model of diplomatic propriety. His distinguished reputation, polished appearance, carefully tailored dark suit, and expensive hand-tooled leather briefcase all marked him as a member in good standing of the Washington diplomatic corps. Pontowski stood and extended his hand when Matsom Hamoud al-Dasud was ushered into his office. “Mr. President,” Dasud murmured. He was acutely aware that they were alone with no interpreters. Normal diplomatic protocol required translators even though his mastery of English was well known. It was his first danger signal.
“Mr. Ambassador,” Pontowski said, his face dead serious. “Thank you for coming on such sort notice, but a critical problem has arisen.”
“We are aware of the situation and my government has told me to be at your service.” For the next few minutes, the two men exchanged formal courtesies as they sparred.
When they had reached the appropriate moment, Pontowski came to the purpose of the hastily called meeting. “Mr. Ambassador, it is my intention to reinforce the UN peacekeeping forces in the Sinai while my ambassador to the United Nations pursues a cease-fire in the Israeli-Syrian war.”
Dasud’s right eyebrow arched. “That is not necessary. The intentions of my country remain as before, committed to peace and regional prosperity.”
Pontowski deliberately glanced at his watch—another signal. “We are running out of time to stop this war before it escalates.”
“The war is not of our making, Mr. President.”
“Then why do you refuse to stand down your forces from your military exercise in the Sinai? Why are you moving up reinforcements as the Israelis withdraw their forces to meet the new threat from Iraq?”
“Mr. President, you must remember the troubled history of our two countries. While we remain committed to the peace treaty with Israel, there are many political factions in my country that demand we maintain a strong defensive posture at this time.”
Pontowski decided it was time to pull off the velvet gloves of diplomacy. “Mr. Ambassador, my analysts tell me that Egypt is preparing to attack Israel.”
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