At Close Quarters

by Gerald Seymour

  The first hour he had kicked stones, the second hour fewer. They were in the third hour and he moved as Crane had shown him. His booted foot edged forward, found the ground, the ball of his foot rolled, tested. If the test was fine, if the stone held fast, then the weight followed. It was the rhythm of each pace, every footfall tested.

  There was just the starlight for them to move under.

  Crane was fifteen yards in front. It Was Holt's job to follow Crane's speed. Crane set the pace, Holt had to follow. Crane was an outline ahead of him, blurred at the edges by the hessian tabs on his body shape and on the bulk of his Bergen. All the time he had to be within sight of Crane, because Crane would not stop each few yards and turn to see if Holt kept contact.

  A week before, before the hike into the Occupied Territories, Holt would not have credited that so much skill, so much care, would be involved in moving across ground at night.

  It was indeed a rhythm.

  It was the same rhythm from the moment they had crossed the road under the observation post, headed away.

  Every 30 minutes they stopped. Holt would see Crane hold up his hand and then drift to the side off the line of march. A few moments of listening, looking into the darkness, with Crane and Holt sitting back to back, each covering a 180 degree arc of vision. No talking, no whispering, just the straining of the ears and the eyes.

  In the Occupied Territories, Crane had told Holt that they should always be low down when they were listening, looking, seeking for information that they were followed or that there was movement ahead of them.

  Crane had said that a dog or a cat had good vision at night because its low eye line permitted it to see most shapes against a skyline in silhouette. In the short moments when they were stopped, Crane would check his map, holding over it the lens of his Beta light, powered by tritium, giving him the small glow that was hidden from view, sufficient for him to see by.

  During the third hour they crossed the Litani river.

  Waist deep in fast water, going off rocks and climbing back onto rocks, so that they left no footprints in mud.

  There were no roads, and Holt saw that Crane avoided even rough tracks that could have been used by the villagers of Qillaya that was across the river to the east, or Qotrani that was beyond the hill summit to the west.

  It was strange to Holt how much he could see with the help only of starlight, something he had never thought to learn before. He supposed the trail they took might have been made by wild animals, perhaps an ibex herd, perhaps the run of the low bellied hyrax, perhaps the regular path of a scavenging hyena or a fox.

  North of the narrow road between Qillaya and Qotrani, in the fourth hour, they were high above the Litani, traversing a steeply sloping rock face. On the slope face they moved sideways, crab-like. When they had to cross the upper lines of a side valley, Holt saw that Crane immediately changed direction as soon as they had been outlined. He had been told why they did not climb to the upper ridges of the hills, Crane had told him that the military were most likely to be on the high ground, basic officer training was to seek out the greatest vantage point. A hellish strain on Holt's leg muscles as he fought to hold his balance against the sway of the Bergen weight when they crabbed on the sloping, uneven ground.

  By the fifth hour he was sagging down at the RP. The Rally Points, where they stopped for the few moments each half hour, seemed to him to be drifting further apart. He knew that was eyewash, he knew he was feeling the exhaustion of the night march. At the RPs he sat against Crane's shoulder, and had to be elbowed hard in the ribs to remind him that the stop at the RP was not for recovery, but for checking that the way ahead was clear, that the way behind was not compromised.

  He was halfway through the first night, and there would be three nights of marching to get to the tent camp, and then there would be the stampede march back. God, and he was tired, and he was only halfway through the first night. He could hear his chest heaving, he could feel the gasping pant in his lungs. Silence from Crane, as though he were out for a stroll in the park....

  Bloody man.

  Rebecca drove from the Sde Dove airport on the north side of Tel Aviv, across the city.

  Major Zvi Dan sat beside her, still angry, silent. The streets were fully lit. Bright shop windows, pavement crowds, cafes packed. The anger corroded him. The old and the young strolling the streets, examining the windows, laughing and joking and singing, and two men not quite a hundred miles to the north were struggling in the darkness through rivers, over rock slopes, further and deeper into the territory of the enemy. The logic was gone from his mind, blown away by his temper.

  He wouldn't have said that he wanted the citizens of Tel Aviv to hot tail it to the synagogues and offer prayers, nor that they should shut their mouths, shut off their music, tiptoe down Dizengoff, but it fuelled his anger to see so many who knew so little, cared less.

  She dropped him on Kaplan, outside the David Gate of the ministry. She said something to him about what time she would arrive in the morning, but he didn't hear her. He ran, as fast as his imitation leg would allow him, towards the barrier and the night sentries. And he couldn't find his pass . . . and his pass wasn't in his breastpocket . . . and his pass was in his bloody hip pocket. He could have been the Prime Minister, could have been the Chief of Staff, he would not have entered the David Gate if he had not found his pass in his wallet in his hip pocket.

  He was allowed through. They didn't hurry themselves. It was the way of sentries, little men with power, that they never scrambled themselves for a man who was hurrying.

  He headed for the wing building occupied by the IAF

  staff.

  And how his leg hurt him when he tried to run Into the building, another check on his pass Up the stairs and into the access corridor used by night duty staff, one more check on his pass . . . along the corridor and into the fluorescent lit room that was the war management section of the Israeli Air Force. A big, quiet room, where the men and the women on duty spoke in soft whispers, where the radios were turned down, where the teleprinters purred out their paper messages.

  A room flanked by huge wall maps, and dominated in the centre by the operational console table. It was from this room that the long range voice contact had been kept with the Hercules transporters flying the slow lonely mission of rescue to Entebbe, and from this room also that the F16s had been guided the thousands of miles to and from their strikes against the Palestine Liberation Organisation headquarters in Tunis and the Iraqi nuclear OSIRAK reactor outside Baghdad. Those who worked in this room believed themselves to be an elite back-up force to the elite arm of Israel's retaliatory strike capability. Those who worked in the room looked first with puzzlement, then amusement, at the hobbling army major making his entry.

  It was a room of great calmness. Low key calmness was the strength of the men and women who supported the combat pilots. Major Zvi Dan had abandoned calmness. He was dirty, he was tired, his hair was dishevelled.

  All eyes were on him.

  A girl officer, wearing lieutenant's insignia on her shoulder flaps, glided from a chair to intercept him.

  "I need to see, immediately, the duty brigadier."

  Major Zvi Dan breathed hard. In no condition, not with the imitation leg.

  "In connection with what, Major?"

  "In connection with a classified matter."

  "Believe it or not, Major, all of us who work in here have a degree of security clearance."

  There was a tiny surf of laughter behind her. She was a pretty girl, auburn hair gathered high onto the crown of her head, a tight battledress blouse, a skirt that was almost a mini, and short white socks, carefully folded over.

  "Please immediately arrange for me to see the duty brigadier."

  "He is sleeping."

  "Then you must wake him up," Zvi Dan growled.

  "Regulations require t h a t . . . "

  Zvi Dan lowered over her. "Young lady, I was fighting for this God-forgotten country be
fore you were old enough to wipe your own tiny butt. So spare me your regulations and go at once and wake him."

  This last he bellowed at her, and she did. She spat dislike at him through her eyes first, but she went and woke the duty brigadier.

  He was in poor humour. He was a tired, pale man, with grey uncombed hair and a lisp in his voice.

  "Major, I do eighteen hours on duty on a night shift.

  During that time I take two hours' rest. My staff know that I am to be disturbed from that rest only on a matter of the highest importance. What is that matter?"

  "You have a strike tomorrow against a Popular Front camp in the Beqa'a, located at 35.45 longitude and 33.38

  latitude."

  "We have."

  "It has to be cancelled."

  "On whose say?"

  "Mine."

  "The strike was authorised by the Chief of Staff."

  "Then he didn't know what he was doing."

  "Tell me more, Major."

  "That camp must not be attacked."

  "What is it? Do we have prisoners there?"

  "No."

  The duty brigadier gazed shrewdly at Major Zvi Dan, as if his annoyance was gone, as if now he were amused at the puzzle.

  "Do we have a ground mission going in - which the Chief of Staff does not know about?"

  "There is a mission. The Chief of Staff would not be aware of the fine detail."

  "To that camp?"

  "There is a mission in progress against that camp."

  "An IDF mission?"

  "No."

  "Fascinating So, who can that be? The Americans, the doughnut boys?"

  "The British."

  "So the British have gone walking in the Beqa'a, have they? How many of them?"

  "Two."

  "Two British are in the Beqa'a. What have they gone to do, to pick grapefruit... ?"

  "There is nothing in this matter that should amuse you." Major Zvi Dan stared coldly for a long time into the face of the duty brigadier. The coldness came from the freshness of his memory. Two men battleclad, their heavyweight Bergen packs, their bearded dark, creamed faces, their killing weapons. "In liaison with our Military Intelligence section, the British have two men walking into the Beqa'a to get above that camp, to identify the assassin of their ambassador to the Soviet Union, to shoot that man."

  "It is the policy of Israel, Major, the policy of the country that pays your wage, to hit the source fount of terrorism. From that camp an attack was launched against your country. It is expected and demanded of us that we strike back."

  "You scatter a few bombs about, you may inflict casualties, you may not."

  "It is expected of us."

  "You will break up the camp. You will destroy a real chance of the killing of a single man whose death is important. Send that attack tomorrow morning and you ensure that two days later a brave pair of men will arrive at their target position to find nothing to fire upon.

  Brigadier, how many times do you kill the people you want killed, for all the Phantoms, all the bomb weight?"

  "Thank you, Major."

  "Which means?"

  "That I shall wake the Chief of the Air Staff. Where will you be?"

  He wrote on his notepad his extension number. He tore the page off, handed it to the duty brigadier.

  "All night."

  "I make no promises, I merely pass the problem higher."

  The quiet returned to the room.

  All of them, at their desks and their consoles and tables and maps, watched with the duty brigadier the flapping swing door, and heard the uneven diminishing footfall.

  The girl officer asked, "What do we owe the British, sir, with their arms embargo, their criticism of us?"

  The duty brigadier said, "The British were going to hang my brother in 1947 when he was in the Irgun.

  They reprieved him 48 hours before he was to go to the hangman. I was a small boy then The first people that I learned to hate were the British soldiers, who had captured and tortured my brother, and twenty years later I was a guest at their staff college, the staff college of the Royal Air Force. We owe them only what is best for us, and that decision mercifully is not mine."

  In the small night hours, Major Zvi Dan's head lay on his hands that were spread on his desk.

  The telephone was close beside him, and stayed silent.

  The end of the seventh hour of the first night march, the time of the fourteenth rest moment at a rally point.

  Above them, aloft on the steep slope, were the lights of the village of Meidoun. At the previous rally point Crane had shown the marking of the village on the map, used the Beta light for Holt to see it, and then Crane had shaken his head, as though the place was bad news.

  Holt knew that already Crane had broken one of his bible laws. The bible according to the prophet Crane stated that they should not pass within a thousand yards of a village. But no damned option. They had been moving on the slope below the village and above the Litani where it ran fast in a narrow gorge. They were sandwiched. It was a bastard place, and the rules were broken. On the far side of the gorge Holt could follow the movement of headlights snaking on the road, going north. To the west was a Shi'a village, below them was the rushing river. To the east was the main military road.

  Holt heard a stone fall. He heard a stone dislodged below him. After the long silence of the walk in the night his hearing was clearer than he had ever known.

  He froze. Crane, beside him, had half risen. Crane was now a bent statue. There were the sounds of more stones slipping on the slope below. Crane showed Holt the palm of his hand, the gesture that he should not move.

  There were the sounds of a young shrill whistling voice, and then the sharp bark of a dog. The whistling and the barking and the falling stones were closer.

  Crane's hand was on Holt's shoulder, urging him down, down until his face ate at the cool dust of the rock slope.

  God, was this where it ended? Not a third of the way in, not eight miles from the jump-off. Pray God that it didn't end because a village kid had gone after rabbits with his dog down to the scrub at the side of the Litani river. He tried to control the pace of his breathing.

  Breathing was another of the chapters of Crane's bible.

  Everything was down to control of breathing, keeping it regular, keeping it smooth, swallowing it down. He smelled the boy first, then he saw him.

  The smell was of urine and animal fodder. It was a fecund sweet smell. No cigarette taste in his mouth, nor the cloy of toothpaste, nor the scent of soap on his face.

  He could smell the boy clearly moments before he saw him.

  At first the boy was a shadow shape. The boy materialised as a wraith out of the darkness below, but coming fast, climbing easily on a steep pathway running down from the village to the river gorge. It was the moment it could all end. A shout would have been heard in the village, a scream would have roused the village. A fear yell would have brought the men of the village running, scrambling for their weapons. And there was the dog.

  The dog was close to the heels of the boy, skipping after him then stopping to sniff or lift a hind leg, then catching the boy. He knew that each village was an arsenal.

  Each village community would have automatic rifles and rocket propelled grenade launchers and machine guns. He wondered if Crane had his hand on the whip-cord handle of his knife. He could follow the line of the boy's climb, he saw that the boy with the dog at his heels would pass less than a dozen yards from them. He tried to slow his breathing, tried to master the battering heave of his heartbeat.

  The boy was level with them, no break in his pace.

  The boy was unaware of them. Long seconds in the life of young Holt. Didn't want to look, didn't want to see.

  Had closed his eyes. Didn't want to know the moment of discovery if that were to be their fate. If Crane knifed the boy then the boy would be missed and searched for, and when he was found then the trail of his killers would be tracked. The rock that s
eemed to penetrate into the flesh of his groin grew sharper, more cutting with each moment that he lay prone on it. He was against Crane's body and there was not the slightest flicker of movement. His bladder seemed to have filled to aching point. There was the first whisper of cramp behind his knee. There was a dried leaf teasing at his nostril. He wanted to pee, wanted to jerk his leg straight, wanted to sneeze, and if he wet himself or moved his leg or sneezed then the mission was gone before it had begun.

  He heard the growl of the dog.

  The boy was above them, going quickly. The boy called for the dog to catch him.

  Holt fractionally opened his eyes. The dog was two, three yards from them. The dog was thin as a rake, brindle brown he reckoned, and back on its haunches in defence, and growling at Crane.

  The boy threw a stone, and called louder for the dog.

  The growl was a rumble of suspicion. His bladder was bursting, cramp pain spreading, his sneeze rising.

  The dog yelped. The second stone thrown by the boy hit it square in the neck.

  The boy raised his voice to shout for the dog to come.

  He heard the sounds going away. He heard the sounds of the boy and his dog dwindling away up the hillside path. He lay on his face. He felt only exhaustion, he felt too tired to know relief.

  He felt Crane's hand on his shoulder pulling at him to get upright.

  Crane's mouth was at his ear, a near silent whisper,

  "We've time to make up."

  "Did I do all right?"

  "That wasn't militia, not soldiers, just a kid. That was nothing."

  Crane rose to his feet, headed away. Holt let him go fifteen paces then took his own first step.

  He remembered the words of the song, mouthed them silently to himself,

  "'Wish me luck, as you wave me goodbye, Wish me luck, wish me luck, wish me luck . . . ' "

  And he seemed to hear her voice.