But all the trouble of that time was nothing in comparison to the moment when my daughter Noah asked me, wide-eyed like the small girl she was, “Daddy, are you a refusenik? Is that what you have taught us?” My face fell.
“There’s no better way to wake up than a good slap in the face,” my father would have taught me, had I a father and not a shadow drowning nightly in my dreams. So I had to learn this lesson by myself.
So I stood in front of her, shocked, and tried to find something to say. And some noise probably came out of me, since my wife, Ali, raised her head from her book.
“What’s the matter?” And when she saw the look on my face, she noted, “Sour? Never mind, sour is piquant.” With all her exquisite delicacy, Ali can be pretty tough.
Noah rose angrily to my defense. “Mom, stop it! Don’t you see how bitter it is for Dad?”
“Bitter?” said Ali with a smile. At that time she was translating the cookbook Cordon Bleu. into Hebrew. She was swimming in the spices of haute cuisine. “Even better, then. Bitterness adds finesse to the dish.”
It took me time to realize how right she was.
So I had to answer her. My thoughts over Noah’s question were so painful that I even had moments from visions in the night, fear and trembling came upon me—when I wondered whether my refusal to take part in immoral and unlawful deeds was not in itself an immoral and unlawful deed. And so, wandering among the rooms in the small hours of the night, confused, washing my face with cold water, I even played out a little drama of reformation. It was so easy. I just had to enter the air force command post. Then I would say wide-eyed, with a disarming smile, “Forgive me, gentlemen. I was wrong. Just a passing whimsy. So sorry!”
And in this context, would you believe, I fully understood the meaning of faith and repentance. Uh, the security within the system. All the difficult aspects of my life—responsibility, authority, guilt—evaporated into space like purple clouds of hashish. Hear, hear, they are accepting me back into the angels’ choir. They are going to let me start the engines of the Fouga trainer. My name is going to be cleared, my family relieved of their agony, the aching knot in my gut loosened, and peaceful sleep will visit every night.
A moment later, when I saw my face in the mirror, I burst out with such a laugh that Ali rushed to the bathroom to see what had happened to me.
ABOUT THIRTY-FIVE YEARS before those difficult days related above, I was a fighter pilot in the Fighting First and found myself in a situation that seemed hopeless. I was caught alone in the heart of Egypt, between two enemy jet fighters, and my Mirage was flying on empty. The MiGs kept diving on me, trying over and over to shoot me down as I struggled to stay alive. This unequal contest continued with no end in sight. The moment came when I lost all hope of getting out alive and free.
And at that moment, exactly when I began sinking into despair and was about to lose my fighting spirit, there arose from nowhere a short sentence, only three words, that I have been cherishing since then like a mantra.
The words were “All from inside.”
Which means, “Listen well, Iftach Spector. It all depends on you. The question is only what is inside you, how worthy you are.”
And this is the whole story.
Chapter
2
December 1960
Super Mystere: A single-seat fighter-attack jet built by Marcel Dassault, France. It was a first-line interceptor in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Armament: two 30mm cannons, four hard points under the wings carry fuel tanks or bombs.
The first eighteen Super Mysteres arrived in December 1958, and the Scorpions squadron formed at the IAF Base Hatzor, under Maj. Yaacov Nevo (Yak), the aerial combat star of the air force.
The initial engagements between Super Mysteres and Egyptian MiG-17s ended with no results. In late 1959, during a dogfight with a MiG-17, a Super Mystere pilot went into a spin and had to eject from his aircraft. In two more engagements, in May and October 1960, two MiGs were hit but made it back to base.
Things changed on April 28, 1961. Two Egyptian MiG-17s penetrated Israeli air space near Nizzana, and this time it was the turn of the Egyptian pilot to abandon his spinning aircraft. The Scorpions had gotten their first kill.
ON A BRIGHT BLUE DAY flooded with sun and the freezing wind of mid-December 1960, five newly minted second lieutenants arrived at the Scorpions fighter squadron, Air Base Hatzor, in the south of Israel.
We climbed the four stairs up to the balcony of our new home, carrying on our backs rucksacks full of flight gear, and halted on the wide and empty balcony. Five doors, painted yellow, were shut. Nobody was there to welcome us.
The Israeli Air Force at that time had six fighter squadrons plus several transports and a few helicopters. That was it, and it was still a hell of an air force. Only five months before, every last one of its pilots—all in all, a few dozen—had crowded into the officers’ mess at Tel Nof Air Base for a party to celebrate our wings, get us drunk on disgusting medicinal cognac, and hoist us from the pool table to the ceiling. Fifteen graduates we were, a large bunch in those days, and we punched fifteen holes in the rotten planks of the ceiling. The officers’ mess, an old barracks left over from the RAF during the time of the British Mandate in Palestine, was spacious enough to hold the whole Israeli Air Force and even Yalo, a robust fighter pilot with blue eyes and a clownish bent, who made us bunny hop with all the girls at the party till our starched khaki shirts with the new wings above the left chest pocket were drenched with sweat and were taken off and thrown aside. The cement tiles buckled under our feet as we danced the Horah. Before morning, we had overturned the tables and broken the chairs, so our training as Israeli fighter pilots was complete.
AMONG THOSE SIX fighter squadrons, the Scorpions were the top of the heap. Two years earlier, the Scorpions had dethroned the senior squadron, the glorious Fighting First Fighter Squadron, with her aging Mystere aircraft. Only the Scorpions were lucky enough to receive the new jet, the crowning achievement of the French aviation industry, the Super Mystere. Even as air cadets we had dreamed of the Super Mystere. Unlike its elder brothers, the Ouragan and the Mystere, which looked like Dutch uncles, the Super Mystere had a menacing presence. It had the face of predator. Under its nose was a giant elliptical mouth, and inside the aircraft’s guts roared a huge jet engine full of power, with an afterburner. The Super Mystere was a large and beautiful aircraft, with elongated lines like a viper. It also flew well, breaking the sound barrier in level flight. In addition, it could achieve fifty thousand feet—seventeen vertical kilometers from Earth. We were told that the sky at that height—above most of the atmosphere—is almost black, and that if one trains his eyes well enough one could see the stars in broad daylight.
This was the ultimate aircraft, and this was the Scorpions, the new spear point of the Israeli Air Force.
Everybody knew that the Scorpions accepted only the crème de la crème Who hadn’t dreamed of getting here? And there we were on that balcony, a bunch of rookies who had just finished operational training. It was electrifying. It was scary.
So we trembled there in the cold wind, proud and glad, and looked around.
On the tarmac in front of us sat five large, beautiful Super Mysteres. Their crystal canopies hung over their open cockpits, as if hovering in the air. The shining Plexiglas sparkled in the morning sun. Each of the aircraft sported two round, plump fuel tanks that peered at us from beneath the wings, their tips bulging like aroused nipples. With their long, sleek body lines, the Super Mysteres looked to me like a group of women lying on a rug, chatting and waiting.
I lowered my eyes. My friend Zur, called ZBB, smiled at me in wordless complicity.
I looked again at the Super Mysteres and felt a wave of excitement. Within a week or two I would make my first flight in this advanced, powerful machine. Could I handle it? And immediately the momentum would begin building—within two months we would try the aerial firing range, and whoever hit the towed flag—the drogue�
��would be inducted into the small, elite group of fighter pilots, those few who defend the skies of Israel daily.
I knew which of us would hit the drogue. I knew it would not be me.
Suddenly the whole process seemed too fast—way too fast. Only yesterday I was a kid, the shepherd of Kibbutz Givat-Brenner, a boy humming pop tunes in the fields and admiring Col. Ariel Sharon’s paratroopers. Then the Sinai War of 1956 came from nowhere, blackouts were in force, and our teachers carried guns. My sixteen-year-old classmates dug trenches in the lawns. And after that came my flight craze. At night in the underground shelter of the kibbutz, I built model planes and tried to figure out the laws of aerodynamics. When the girls put on black skirts and white blouses and went dancing in the evenings, I stayed in my room, immersed in books about war that smelled of long use, most of them translated from Russian. For some time I read randomly, immersed in things such as Hannibal’s tragic fate. Then I discovered World War II. I became entranced by Alexei Merseyev, a Soviet fighter pilot who fought the Nazis (like my own father), lost both his legs, but returned to aerial combat to shoot down Messerschmitts. Merseyev became a hero of the USSR, and I walked the fields, waving a stick and cutting wild flowers the way he did, and swearing aloud.
Finally my induction notice came, then the smell of the high-octane fuel of the Harvard trainer and the propeller’s noisy, dissonant whine. Then the heart-stopping takeoff—as if I were being sucked right up into the sky between two screaming Meteor jet engines—and before I knew it I had my wings, and I stood looking at the Super Mysteres from the balcony of the Scorpions squadron.
It was so fast.
A DOOR OPENED and a head with thick, short, red hair peered out. Nissim noticed us standing there and rushed back in, roaring in a loud voice in his Bulgarian accent, “They’re here!”
A long sh… sh was heard from the inside of the room. Nissim slammed the door. We looked at each other, wondering. A thin black dog crawled out from beneath the building, stretched herself, yawned, and finally rose to smell us and lick Uri Sheani’s hands. We all crowded around to touch her fur for luck. Lira was the famous mascot of the Super Mystere pilots.
Dogs and all kinds of animals loved Sheani. He was a nature boy who used to raise swamp cats in his parents’ room at his kibbutz, Ein-Harod, in the Izreel Valley. His little tigers tore the curtains to strips and frightened the neighbors. When we went AWOL from base, the vicious watchdogs guarding the fences stopped growling and cowered before Sheani, begging to be petted.
He was a short, muscular young man with straw-colored hair and a square face. His eyes were pale blue above a charming smile flashing lots of white teeth. His broad jaws and the dimple in his chin hinted at the tremendous willpower hidden behind the smile. Two years earlier, when we air cadets were tested for strength of character in the thirty-five-kilometer field run with full equipment, Sheani made it first to the end, limping badly. But when he took his shoes off, the faces of the instructors went pale. The soles of his feet were bloody minced meat. I was always an admirer of good sportsmanship, but this was something more than athletic prowess.
Uri Sheani was superb at orienteering. In one of our few breaks in the flight course, we decided to drive around the whole Negev—Israel’s southern desert—to survey the benchmarks and take pictures. It was a ten-day trip. We were five boys on a rented jeep, and only one of us had a driver’s license, but we all abused the small vehicle over hundreds of kilometers of sand and rock. The jeep rewarded us in kind when we had to carry it on our backs through the wadis and down the steep slopes of the Yehuda Desert, down to Ein-Gedi on the coast of the Dead Sea, three hundred meters below sea level.
Uri sniffed the air like an animal and found water for us. When we fell asleep, dead tired, near the bonfire, he would listen to the night sounds and in the morning would show us fine footprints and wild animals hopping in the distance. When we arrived at the operational training and became acquainted with the gun sight and gunpowder, Sheani’s powerful hands could manage the Ouragan aircraft with gentle and economical nudges. He proved to be a first-class gunner. In aerial target shooting he set a record, doubling the old one.
AND STILL WE STOOD THERE, before the closed doors of the Scorpions, waiting. Nothing happened. Finally Umsh sneered and said, “Guys, what a Zikago.” We grinned at each other.
We had been together for more than two years since the five of us were in Tel Nof with a hundred other rookies brought for flight school, dressed with baggy clothes, and given over to a sergeant to the torture of the obstacle course. Then, in the middle of it all, we all were ordered to go under the rusty barbed-wire fences and thorns to collect pieces of aluminum and human flesh—all that was left of an Ouragan jet that passed over us, did a roll in the air, and augured in with a boom and a big splash of kerosene. A small fire was soon put out that left a black, fatty layer over everything and a cloying, sweet smell that stuck to skin and clothes. “What a Zikago” was the phrase Umsh coined then for any snafu.
At the end of “Ladya’s day,” our first day in the air force, many of us decided they had had enough. They smelled the stench and had second thoughts. We—the fifty boys who stayed—were sent to casual company on the base, cleaning, whitewashing, shoveling, painting—in short, waiting for the real stuff to begin. That’s how I came to know the air force, and my friends at the thirty-first pilot course.
THE DOOR OPENED AGAIN. A short, solid man came out on the balcony and faced us. The back of his thick neck was shaven and the flight suit was tight on his barrel chest. He wore no rank insignia on his worn flight suit that was almost white from many launderings.
Uncertainly, we saluted him.
“You must be the trainees!” he announced.
We nodded.
“Welcome to the Scorpions!”
And suddenly he gave us a warm, beautiful, contagious smile, which lit up his big, heavy face. We all smiled back at him. This was our introduction to Capt. Zorik Lev, the legendary vice commander of the legendary commander of the best fighter squadron in the Israeli Air Force. Zorik never wore rank insignia on his shoulders or wings on his chest. This was a kind of coquettish modesty; just looking at him told you who and what he was.
“PUT YOUR RUCKSACKS HERE. Here! And go into that room! Hurry, move it!”
It seemed that every sentence here had to end with an exclamation point.
We were pushed inside, one after another, and on entering, scanned the room. This was the squadron briefing room, the heart of its existence. The room had a large central table, covered with maps of the Middle East. Around the table, leaning against the walls, sat twenty or so pilots of the elite jet fighter community. We realized that they had all come here to welcome us and to get to know the trainees.
I looked at the men cautiously, surreptitiously. The first impression was one of—a festival of mustaches! Almost everyone here sported one: Yalo’s clipped mustache was next to David Ivry’s Cossack-style flowing yellow one. A black enormous mustache on Beit-on’s upper lip contrasted with the two red brushes sported by Nissim and Yozef Salant. And the cat’s whiskers mustaches that belonged to Aki and Avihu were better than the blurry shadow on Khetz’s beak. Mustaches and more mustaches. They surrounded us challengingly. Oh, my God, I thought, awestruck. We trainees hadn’t much to add to the glory of the Scorpions in this respect, even if you considered the yellow thread under Goldie’s nose. And what’s more, though ZBB’s and Umsh’s cheeks were shadowed, Sheani and I had no hope: the shrubbery hadn’t even begun to grow.
I scanned the unknown faces, searching. Who among them was Yak?
However, Zorik was the dominant figure. His sharp eyes searched the room; he decided, enough, and banged the table with a heavy fist. Silence. Then he addressed the new arrivals. The introduction ritual had begun. Each of the trainees was invited to stand up in turn and introduce himself to the group.
After much pushing and shoving, Umsh got to his feet. He was two or three years older than the rest
of us. Black-haired, virile, tall, and athletic, Zvi Umshweiff was the handsomest guy in our group. He towered over the rest of us.
When Umsh began talking, I looked again to try to spot Yak. A character, Yak was the one whom air cadets discussed admiringly as “the best fighter pilot in the history of the IAF.” Recently, while in the operational training stage, we were given the manual on aerial combat theory. Yak had written this manual. I spent nights on the crude but clear sketches he drafted there—an aircraft gets on his adversary’s tail, and suddenly, as in a sophisticated jujitsu exercise, is catapulted forward, instantly transformed from predator to prey. And, of course, Yak was one of the very few in the world who had shot down MiG-17s, the most modern jet fighters built in the USSR. Yakir Laufer, the ex-mechanic who knew everything, said that nobody in the world could sit on Yak’s tail. And then he would add humbly, “for now.” This naive arrogance—which, as we advanced in our training, was gradually proving itself true—annoyed the rest of us.
Yak was already nearing the end of his command of the Scorpions. His successor, Maj. Shimon Ash, joined us in the conversion course on the Super Mystere, and he also was watching us, but Zorik, the vice commander, was the boss. Still, I knew that Yak was hidden among the men, and he was the player who would separate the sheep from the goats. Whoever he didn’t like would wash out and go back to the old planes, the Mysteres or the Ouragans.
Loud and Clear Page 2