Loud and Clear

by Iftach Spector

  I stopped laughing, looked around, and was shocked. Then I thought that there must be something here I don’t understand. And again my eyes were drawn to the “EW” people who were sitting before me and whispering to each other. Who were these people, and what were they doing? Who invited them here?

  There were others in the audience who felt as I did. Stares crossed, people shrugged. I whispered to my neighbor, “Do you understand this operazia?” I used that word in the mocking way our East European elders in the kibbutz used to belittle our youth movement activities. “Because I sure don’t.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t understand it, either.”

  AND THERE WAS SOMETHING ELSE weird in this briefing. It dragged on, gray and dusty like a sack. I felt there were holes in it, things unsaid. It was strange, and even Agassi was different on the podium this time. He was not energetic, and his voice didn’t boom as it used to. He hesitated, and at one point stopped and looked at Moti. The air force commander nodded, and Agassi turned to the room and asked all the pilots, except the few Phantom senior pilots and navigators, to leave the hall and wait outside.

  “We’ll call you back in ten minutes.” I got up to leave, and noticed that most of the audience remained sitting. Only we non-Phantom pilots were sent out. The door closed behind us.

  We hung around on the hot, dry lawn, everybody silent and withdrawn. I lay down on the ground in my flight suit and sucked a grass stem. Something mysterious was being discussed inside there, some secret not for us to know. That is the magic, I thought. I was not so curious as hopeful.

  WHEN WE WERE INVITED in again, the briefing was already in its final stage. Moti stood on the podium and summed up. After him the minister of defense got up also and added some formal words. And again a weird sensation passed through me—it all seemed like a ceremony, not like the end of a good briefing before a good military operation.

  “All right,” Agassi woke me from my musings, “start getting ready. The operation will take place this coming Saturday. Detailed orders will reach your squadrons tonight, through the teleprinter.”

  When we were released, I walked to the front row to join Khetz. Small groups gathered in the passage, discussing and arguing. When they saw me coming, everybody fell silent. Khetz noticed me coming, hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Listen, perhaps you can find yourself a lift back to base? I have something to do in town.”

  “What lift?” I wondered. “Nobody here is going to Hatzor. What, you suggest I get out to the road in my flight suit and stick out my thumb?”

  “No… but perhaps a driver can be found for you in the transportation section here.” But when he saw my face, Khetz changed his mind. “Okay, never mind. We’ll go back together. But I have a meeting in town. I have to ask you to wait outside. Don’t be offended, please.”

  I had no alternative. On the way to Jaffa I sat by him in silence and asked myself if Khetz was leading a double life.

  IT WAS EARLY EVENING. The small military Citroën stopped in the corner of the road above the small fishermen’s harbor in the ancient city of Jaffa. I saw on the stone wall a restaurant sign. Khetz turned off the engine and got out of the car. I began organizing myself for an hour of dozing, but suddenly he returned and opened the door on my side.

  “Come on, come with me.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “You go and finish your business. I’ll stay here.” I hate to be a nuisance. “Go ahead, Khetz, don’t worry.”

  “Forget it. I am not going to leave you here in the car.” And suddenly Khetz understood and laughed. “It’s not what you think, idiot. I have a friend waiting here, an American. We’ll sit, eat something, talk business. Why should you stay in the car?”

  “Okay,” I finally acceded. “I’ll take another table.” I was hungry.

  I followed him into the restaurant. The entrance was very fancy, all glass and black woodwork. On my own I wouldn’t imagine entering such an expensive place. The waiter bowed before the military uniform with the wings but turned his nose up at my unpolished boots and sweaty flight suit. Among the empty tables a man in civilian clothes got up and waved his hands at us.

  Suddenly I was terrified, and I caught Khetz’s sleeve to stop him. There was something weird here. In those times, air force pilots did not meet with foreign citizens. I suspected that what was going on here might be unlawful. What can a squadron commander in wartime discuss with a foreigner in a restaurant immediately after a super-secret briefing? This was not an affair here; it seemed much worse. It got all mixed together with that awful briefing. Suddenly I was flooded with rage. I felt like a total idiot, was suspicious of Khetz, and amazed at myself. How could I be dragged into this business here? I couldn’t believe what he had gotten me into. Why didn’t he tell me beforehand so I could come and go on my own? Why had I agreed in the first place to go with him to Tel Aviv?

  “Listen, Khetz, I am going back to the car to wait for you there.”

  “Iftach, what’s the matter?”

  The rage freed a cocked spring in me. Suddenly I said in anger, “Sam, what are you doing? You are wrong, you are wrong, wrong!” Gasping, I added, surprising myself, “Why did you agree to that operation?”

  We stood in the entrance, whispering hoarsely. The man returned politely to his seat.

  “Look, Sam, I don’t like what you are doing now. I hate this operazia you are about to fly. And I don’t understand you. What the hell are you doing in this fancy restaurant? Who is paying for dinner? Who is this guy?”

  “Wait a moment, Iftach. Are you crazy? What’s the matter with you?”

  But I was unstoppable.

  “This is not the first time we’ve attacked SAM batteries. We all did it even before you got back with your damn Phantoms and these stupid ideas!”

  “Quiet… we’ll talk about it later.”

  “And we learned something from experience! So what are you doing now, throwing away everything we’ve learned? Who is this spy you’re meeting at night? Why do you go out against missile arrays with no defense?”

  “Will you please calm down? Don’t shout, for heaven’s sake. This man is on our side, Iftach. He is an expert in fighting against SAMs from the Vietnam War.”

  “You’ll probably tell me EW, now, right? What is EW, huh, Khetz?” I was really steamed.

  “Come on, take it easy.” Khetz grinned, as if calming down a small child. “Come sit with us; relax. He won’t eat you, and you’ll have something good to eat. We’re going to discuss something.” The steam went out of me. I was hungry and thirsty, and I dragged in after him.

  OUR MAN ROSE TO MEET US again. He was of medium height, tending to heaviness, his skin tanned, and the hair on his balding head black and curly. Two black, agile eyes scanned me swiftly. I observed that he had just now made his dress less formal. He didn’t wear a tie, and the upper button of his shirt was opened, as is usual in Israel, but his black shoes shone like mirrors, and his shirtsleeves were fastened with fancy gold cuff links, something never seen here. On one of his fingers he sported a coarse gold ring with a big green stone. I had never met an American before, and he seemed to me disguised, as if hidden behind some kind of camouflage, or perhaps trying to look like an Israeli. A suspicion rose in me. I thought, “This guy probably knows Hebrew. He might have listened to our conversation in the entrance.” I vowed that I would not say a single word, no matter what.

  Khetz and the stranger shook hands very warmly, and it was clear that they knew each other before, perhaps from America. Khetz introduced me as a friend. We shook hands.

  The guest looked at us, asked for pardon, and went to the rest room. I realized that he was extremely sensitive. We sat and waited. Again I whispered, “I think I get what you’re going to rely on. It is an electronic barrage, isn’t it?”

  Khetz waved his hand at me as if waving a fly away.

  “That’s what you dubbed EW, eh?”

  He didn’t answer. Perhaps the code name was too secret to mention. But I
continued in the same line. “It’s black magic you’re relying on,” I said contemptuously. “They’ve sold you a bill of goods.”

  Suddenly two red flares appeared on the thin, pale cheeks before me.

  “Listen, Major Spector, stop talking nonsense. What do you know about it? There were tests, there’s proof—”

  “Proof, eh? What proof, Khetz?”

  “Vietnam.”

  This didn’t silence me. In 1970 there were many articles about that war around, and I could read English.

  “Vietnam, eh? SAM missile suppression, eh?” I was adamant. “Do you, Lt. Col. Sam Khetz, know these proofs personally, or just somebody told you about them? Did you see in your own eyes something about electronic warfare that convinced you to rely on them? Something I don’t know about? Did you?”

  I waited for an answer for some seconds. There was none. I knew I hit the nail on the head. “From Vietnam,” I told him, “I haven’t heard of great success against SAMs.”

  And when he didn’t say anything, I added in a rage, “If I were you, Sam, I wouldn’t keep quiet. I would get up and oppose going out on this operation Saturday. But no one can do it instead of you. They all depend on this American knowledge that only you, and perhaps Avihu, can estimate the worth of.”

  Khetz sat silently.

  Only then did I grasp what was so weird in that briefing. It was this: the briefing for the attack on the most massive Soviet missiles array, the strongest antiaircraft system in the world, was not a briefing at all. The commanders didn’t command. In fact, they didn’t know what to say. In fact, it was an apology.

  “I pray you, Sam, don’t go out on this mission. Tell them!” Khetz shrugged, and I blew my top again. “You keep it in because your mouth was shut in the briefing? Huh? This is a really bad reason. But never mind, Khetz,” I said, “we still have time till Saturday.” He was looking away from me.

  “Well?” Again, no answer came.

  “What are you ashamed of? So what the hell if you’re ashamed! Be a man, call Agassi. Call your friend Moti. What are friends for? Demand to cancel the operation. At least postpone it.”

  Khetz answered quietly, “Now I think it was better to leave you to wait for me in the car… but it’s over. Here, he’s coming back.”

  Our guest was making his way to our table. We rose to receive him. Khetz added quietly,

  “Sit with us, listen, and don’t interrupt.” His voice was low, but clear and hard.

  As soon as possible I went to the rest room, and took as much time there as I could. When I got back candles were already lit on all the tables, and the room was half dark and full of diners. My strange couple was bent head to head, immersed in a quiet conversation that seemed like the continuation of other conversations in the past. I sat down and tried to concentrate on my dinner and not pay attention to them. This was easy, since it was noisy, and my basic English didn’t allow me to grasp much of the foreign terms that rolled between these two, in American acronyms. Were these parts of equipment? Or perhaps electronic warfare technology? Maybe methods of flying? I didn’t know. The words sounded to me like Chinese. I would learn them in time. Only the face of the stranger was cut deep into my memory, a strong, dark, heavy face that reminded me of the actor Telly Savalas. And I still can hear his voice whispering over that table with Khetz, who suddenly seemed to me thin and weak and very, very tired.

  Thirty years after this evening I would meet this man again. It would be in the year 2000, and we would meet almost accidentally, in an Irish bar in the suburb of Rosslyn, in northern Virginia. By then David Brogg’s head would be as bald as an egg, but his face was as strong as ever. Over a pitcher of dark beer we would both recall that bizarre dinner in Jaffa, on July 16, 1970, when Brogg sat and preached the faith to us, his eyes moving from Khetz to me—a somber stranger keeping a gloomy silence, poking at his fish and not tasting it.

  THE CITROËN WAS RATTLING on again. We were on the Yavneh road, going from Jaffa to Hatzor, and I was rattling again, too, in agony. “Tell me just one thing, Khetz. Is this what we have learned, to rely on magic?” And when he didn’t answer me, I said, “Khetz, missile batteries are dangerous! You can’t march in there—into the heart of the killing zone—like it was a parade!”

  “I know, Iftach.”

  “Into the killing zone you slide in like commandos, in small groups, and from several directions, so that if one is hit, the others may still hit the target.”

  “I know. Enough.”

  “And to fly as fast as you can! And stick close to the ground—there are always hills to hide behind!”

  Khetz said in a calm voice, “Listen, Iftach. There is a good reason why we’re going in this way, flying formation and at high altitude. You are just not acquainted with the planning.”

  I couldn’t shut up. “What is it I don’t know, Khetz? What is there to know? Okay, so you believe in your electronics—switch it on, who cares? But keep low to the ground! The ground defends you, hides you from their radars and missiles! Khetz, the ground is physics, not electronics. The ground is real!”

  “I know.”

  “Then do me a favor and don’t fly in there in formation! Why this parade, Khetz, why all this operazia? It is impossible to fight this way. Where is the personal leeway? How will your pilots see the missiles, break—”

  “Enough!”

  Finally I shut up.

  THE SMALL CAR HOPPED and yawed on the old road to Yavneh. The evening was beautiful, and the air was full of the smell of wild blossoms. A large orange moon, almost full, rose in the east and lit the world. The road shone before us like a line of silver, and all around was white like milk. Khetz switched off the car’s lights, and so we drove.

  “Yo, like daytime!” But there was no joy in his voice. I was silent. Something bad, bigger than I, was happening right in front of me, and there was nothing I could do. I felt tied up and mute, like in a nightmare.

  But when we left the main road and turned into the side road leading to our base, Khetz stopped the car on the shoulder and switched the engine off. Suddenly a thought—a hope—rose in me. Was he going to say I had convinced him? And when we got to the base, would he call Moti and postpone this operation to think a little more?

  But Khetz only lit a cigarette and asked me what was going on with the Dagger, that air-to-air missile he lent me. After a pause, I was glad to tell him that the test flights were going very well. It seemed that adaptation of the Dagger with the Mirage was possible. All that was left was to launch the missile on an aerial training target, to see if it launched without problems and scored a hit.

  The change of subject was relaxing.

  Khetz smiled at me warmly and said that the combination of Mirage plus Dagger might be “almost too good.” The cigarette illuminated the wrinkles in his lean face and lit sparks in his small, dark eyes. We both were thinking the same thing: the missile the Fighting First was using for tests came from the Falcons, Khetz’s Phantoms. They also had too few missiles. Suppose the tests come out well. Then what? Is all this going to be just a theoretical experiment? Nobody at headquarters had any intention of giving us such good stuff.

  Then Khetz said, “If your experimental launch is a success, you’ll get six Daggers from the Falcons to take with you down to Refidim.”

  “Wow, Khetz!”

  “But with one condition.” We eyed each other. “That you undertake personally to bring me a MiG shot down by a Dagger.”

  “What do you want, his scalp?” We both laughed.

  He lit a cigarette for me, too. We sat a little more, perhaps for a longer time than expected of two busy men whose squadrons await them, but long enough for the moon to set. It became dark, and then something strange happened. Khetz was not the sentimental type, and it was not his habit to open his heart, at least not with me. But then, sitting behind the wheel, he opened up and told me of a strange dream that kept repeating the past few nights: Aki was visiting him. This was the first and only occasion
when Aki’s name was brought up.

  Khetz asked me, and I told him about that awful afternoon, two years before, when the phone rang in Refidim and I was scrambled with Zorik to search the Red Sea south of the town of Suez. Once and once again, and for the third time, we scanned the opaque surface of the water while the sun was setting and the air darkened. I told Khetz in detail how we returned time and again to the oil and jet fuel slick, and how we circled each of the few ships in the vicinity, and of the hopes that rose when sailors waved to us with unclear pieces from one cargo ship—its name was Iola. But the two men we were looking for were not there. We harried the Iola until she entered the Egyptian harbor at Adabiya, where we were driven out by Egyptian antiaircraft artillery. And when we came back the oil slick in the sea widened and the sun sank behind the Egyptian coast, and the colorful oil rainbows died in the dark water and were gone. And when we returned there at first light the next morning, the thread—if there ever was a thread—had vanished, and Aki was gone.

  Khetz hadn’t heard this story about Aki’s death from me. We smoked and talked. His voice, when he talked with me of Aki, was soft and warm. The dream was pleasant, he told me. Not at all frightening.

  And when we arrived home and separated, the hour was already late. The moon set and the darkness was total, and the lawns among the eucalyptus trees began to collect dew. We said good night, and each of us climbed his own set of stairs and entered silently into the opposing door. I saw his outside light going off.

  Sleep covered me like a waterfall. But at midnight I woke with a start. A sudden fear nailed my flesh, and I didn’t know who or what woke me. Sleep did not return, and I lay gazing at the dark ceiling till I understood, slowly and silently, what my friend Sam Khetz had told me.