Casca 20: Soldier of Gideon

by Barry Sadler

  He got into his car and pointed to the rear. Billy started the engine and drove through the lines of tanks to where the infantry waited in their rear.

  As they drove along the infantry lines Casca counted and calculated. One battalion of mainly wounded, bruised, and severely battered men from the previous day's battle. And most of his sappers were now raw reinforcements, as the demolition squads had taken the most punishment at Tel Faq'r.

  He spotted Moynihan beckoning to him and Glennon headed for him.

  "I've got a Syrian radio broadcast," Moynihan shouted. "We've only got a few words of Arabic between all of us, but it sounds crazy. Something about the fall of Hell Cuntra."

  Casca took the radio and listened intently. He turned to Hymie, his radio operator. "Raise HQ Intelligence. See if they know anything about this." He went back to listening, but although he had some command of Arabic, his puzzlement increased.

  After a few minutes Hymie shouted to him. "HQ can't work it out, but Syrian radio says that El Quneitra fell at dawn this morning."

  "Who the hell, I'd like to know," Moynihan shouted, "is shooting at us then?"

  Casca glanced toward the fortress, where gray puffs of smoke were bursting from the walls amongst his tanks, followed by shell bursts.

  "This sure is one confusing war."

  "Yeah," Moynihan grunted. "I'm sick of it already, and it's only just started. If we had – hey, lookee there!" He broke off to point excitedly in the direction of the fortress.

  From its unattacked eastern end dozens of Syrian trucks and tanks and foot soldiers were pouring out into the desert. As they watched the stream turned to a flood.

  Hundreds of Arabs, mostly empty handed and bareheaded, were running from the fort, jostling each other as they scrambled away in the wake of their armor.

  Their panic grew visibly. Now there were maybe a thousand men outside the fort and more were pouring from behind the walls every moment.

  Casca leaped into his car, snatched up Weintraub's helmet, and waved it around his head as Glennon gunned the motor.

  "Move out. Move out. Let's go."

  Casca reached the wide open gates in the fort's eastern wall as the last of the deserting troops fled.

  "Easy now," he cautioned Glennon, who slowed as they passed through the gate. "Israelis must have come up the cliff like we did at Tel Faq'r. Take it real slow. Don't want to get shot by our own men."

  But there were no attackers.

  And no defenders.

  The entire fort was deserted. Casca's tanks were now pouring into the fortress area, and he got out of the car by the HQ building where the Syrian flag still flew from its mast.

  Warily, weapons at the ready, they entered the building. Most of the inside doors were open, the rooms empty. Casca booted open a closed door and a startled Syrian corporal leaped to his feet. He quickly raised his hands and backed away from the radio he had been operating.

  "What is happening?" Casca demanded in Arabic.

  The Arab shrugged despairingly and gestured toward the radio. "I am trying to find out."

  The only weapon in the room was a submachine gun leaning against the radio table. Casca picked it up.

  "Keep trying," he said as he left the room.

  The rest of the ground floor was deserted, a single closed door at the end of the corridor.

  Casca kicked it open and roared with laughter.

  He was looking into a kitchen where half a dozen army cooks were lying at ease on the work benches, guzzling from bottles.

  Casca held out his hand and one of the drunks handed him his bottle of cognac. Casca took a great gulp and passed it to Billy Glennon.

  "Carry on drinking," he ordered the cooks in Arabic and reclosed the door.

  Upstairs there was only one closed door, and as it led to the front of the building, Casca guessed that it was the command room.

  He knocked politely.

  "Come in," a firm voice said in Arabic.

  Casca swung his Kalashnikov where it hung from his shoulder, checking that he could quickly fan the whole room. With his finger on the trigger and Glennon and Nathan hard on his heels, he pushed open the door.

  The huge room was elegantly furnished, a large war table covered with maps in the center. One wall was entirely windows, and an officer stood with his back to them looking out toward the Israeli border. Another officer, a lieutenant, sat at a desk to one side.

  The lieutenant stood. The other officer turned and Casca saw that he was a major general. They saluted each other.

  "I don't suppose you speak Arabic?" the Syrian general said.

  "A little," Casca answered, "but I am much better in English."

  "I speak English," the Arab replied. "I trained at Sandhurst."

  "May I have your weapons?" Casca asked.

  "Of course." The two officers took revolvers from their holsters and laid them on the map table.

  "I see you have brought a bottle," the general said, and gestured toward crystal glasses on a sideboard. "Perhaps we can have a drink. Something else I learned at Sandhurst."

  The subaltern brought five crystal brandy balloons and Casca filled them liberally, emptying the bottle.

  "It might be premature and even silly to drink to an Arab Jewish friendship," the Syrian general said. "Let's drink to peace."

  "To peace," they all said as they raised their glasses. The Arab general drained his at a gulp and they all followed suit.

  "Morale is a funny thing," the general said, weighing the empty glass in his hand. "This morning I would have staked my fortune more, my life, my soul on victory here today. But an army's morale is like a dam wall. When it breaks there is no holding the flood. Damn that fool radio news," he shouted, and hurled the goblet through the glass wall, and a moment later the four others did the same.

  The general pressed a button on his desk console, and after a few seconds a drunken voice answered.

  "Cooks thrive on defeat," he said to Casca. "They're always the last to desert after they have emptied the cellars."

  He spoke into the intercom in Arabic. "Bring me some cognac, you drunken pig."

  In a surprisingly short time there was a respectful knock on the door and one of the cooks shuffled into the room bearing a tray on which were three bottles of cognac. A white towel was draped over his left arm.

  Obsequiously he placed the tray on the table and turned to leave. As he passed behind Hymie he drew a large butcher knife from beneath the towel and thrust it through the Londoner's ribs.

  The drunken cook giggled like a schoolgirl as Hymie slumped to the floor. "I've always wanted to kill a Jew."

  The general snatched up his revolver and clapped it to the cook's head. "Cowardly dog," he shouted as he fired. He emptied all six chambers into the cook as he crumpled to the floor.

  The lieutenant looked up from where he squatted, Hymie's head cradled in his hands. He shook his head.

  The general picked up a bottle, opening it as he crossed to the sideboard. He filled four crystal goblets and carried them back to where the others stood over Hymie's body.

  "I trust your comrade was a brave soldier," he said as he raised his glass.

  "As good as any I've known," Casca said, and a moment later the rest of the huge window disintegrated as four goblets hit it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  At 7:30 P.M. that night, twenty-seven hours after it entered the war, Syria agreed to a cease fire. She had lost more than a thousand men and a hundred tanks, forty of which were captured undamaged. Her powerful border artillery, the bane of the Israeli kibbutzim beneath the Syrian heights, were permanently silenced, some destroyed by the artillery bombardment, the rest carted off to Israel.

  The Radio Israel report concluded with the message that all short term soldiers were forthwith relieved of duty, and that all wartime promoted personnel would now revert to their substantive rank.

  The war was over.

  "Well, that's the end of a brilliant, short career," Casc
a said, chuckling. "I guess we're all busted back to private."

  “A bloomin' six-day wonder," Moynihan muttered. "That's what I am, a bloody six-day wonder."

  He tore the three stripes from his arm.

  The celebration of the end of the war was the most restrained one Casca could remember. The Muslim town that adjoined the El Quneitra barracks had plenty of brothels, but no bars, so Casca and his buddies chose to stay within the captured barracks and loot its small cache of fine cognac.

  The defeated general and his aide were pleased to join them in their small debauch despite the anti-alcohol strictures of their prophet. By the time they had consumed the fourth bottle all distinctions of rank, race, and religion had been obscured anyway, and they were just a bunch of raucous veterans on a drunk.

  They talked and sang and shouted and even danced.

  Wardi Nathan entertained them with a Maori haka, a fierce war dance accompanied by vigorous facial expressions of clearly cannibal derivation.

  The two Arab officers responded with a Bedouin sword dance, using their British made Wilkinson military swords.

  Moynihan and Billy Glennon danced an Irish jig, and Casca closed the bill with a hambone, a hilarious version of the Dance of the Seven Veils. He didn't let his audience know that he had seen Salome dance the original.

  Early the next morning they set out from the fort. The Israeli Army had already deteriorated to the undisciplined rabble whose unmilitary demeanor had helped to seduce the meticulous Arab military into the delusion that they were not good soldiers.

  Their notoriously unshined boots were dirtier than ever. Most of the soldiers were unshaven. Their highly individualistic uniforms had been further varied by the addition of various items abandoned by the fleeing Arabs – sword and gun belts and weapons, bandoliers, headdresses.

  The ragtag and bobtail army set out for their various hometowns in no particular order, and Casca found that he had been effectively relieved of his general's command by the simple departure of his troops.

  He considered himself lucky that his Bren gun carrier had not been taken. It turned out that it might well have been, but a thoughtful Billy Glennon had prudently immbolized it by removing the rotor button from the distributor.

  Casca, Glennon, Wardi, and Moynihan set out along the line of the Syria Israel border, heading for the captured West Bank of the Jordan en route for Tel Aviv. Two young Sabra officers rode with them.

  Nursing a monumental hangover, a disgruntled Moynihan counted his assets, and calculated that even with an expected victory bonus he would arrive back in Gleeson's bar almost as broke as he had left it.

  Along the way they repeatedly encountered struggling survivors of the Syrian retreat, and they distributed water amongst them as they went. Casca was relieved that they reached the Jordan before their water ran out.

  They struck across the desert and stopped at a small dry oasis for a lunch of dates and figs.

  They were lying in the shade of the date palms when the sudden crackle of rifle fire sent them scurrying for their weapons and the cover of the BGC.

  Casca cursed heartily as he crouched beside the vehicle. "A hangover will always fuck you up," he said with a scowl as he recalled that they were carrying little surplus ammunition.

  And the small oasis was virtually surrounded. Every bullet must be made to count. He thumbed his Kalashnikov to the semiautomatic mode of fire.

  "Well, screw 'em anyway," Moynihan muttered from under the car. "We've got water and shade, we can hold 'em off forever."

  Casca didn't answer. At this season this oasis was dry. They only had the water in their canteens, and the sun was still climbing the sky. Very soon their shade would move away from them.

  As he studied the terrain a remote chord of memory resonated in his mind. He had been here before.

  From the River Jordan a now dry wadi ran into the oasis. In the two thousand years that the desert sands had been shifting, the granite walls of the wadi's canyon had not changed too much. A giant beak of rock that his Roman legion buddies had called "Pompey's nose" still looked like the patrician general's famous snorer.

  He looked around until he found what he was looking for – the spot where the dry wadi left the oasis. And when he found it his memory cleared. The opening in the rock still looked like what they had called it in the legion – Salome's Slit.

  He nudged the Israeli beside him. "If this gets too bad, we're going to move out through there." He pointed to the slit. "There's a permanent spring down there in the bed of the wadi. We can dig for water."

  The Sabra turned a puzzled face to him. "You've been here before?"

  "I soldiered out here once a long time ago."

  He was relieved from further explanation by a new burst of firing from their besiegers. The Israeli muttered a curse and the Uzi fell from his hand:

  "Oh shit," Casca muttered as he realized that the youth was dead. "These bastards can shoot."

  But it seemed that the attackers had only rifles. Each shot came separately, and from good cover, affording little opportunity for response.

  One of the tires was shot away with a deafening explosion, then another.

  "They're tryin' to lower this chunk of scrap iron onto me bleedin' head," Moynihan complained as he squeezed off an answering shot.

  A yelp came from where Wardi crouched near the engine. A chance bullet had nicked a radiator hose and he was being sprayed with hot water.

  "No wheels and no water," Casca muttered to himself. "This is not looking any better." Aloud he said: "What do you think, Billy?"

  The big Irishman fired the shot he had lined up and grinned at the scream from the edge of the oasis. "We got no wheels, and we got no water," he echoed Casca's thinking. "But we don't need 'em. If you guys head out down that wadi like you said, I can stage a pretty good diversion, and I'll meet you there. There's a box of grenades on the floor. I've kept it stocked up all the way through."

  Casca laughed and thumped the Paddy on his beefy shoulder.

  "Oh shit, I'm sorry," he said as Billy grunted in pain from the bayonet wound. "This seems to be my day to screw up all around."

  "We're doin' all right Case," Glennon assured him.

  But Casca knew it wasn't true. He had fouled up by leaving the fortress as if in a country that was really at peace. And he knew so well that this part of the world had never been at peace.

  He had now caught a few glimpses of their attackers, and knew that they were Bedouins. There were all sorts of Bedouins, nomadic farmers and goat herders, camel caravaneers, desert caterers, wandering brigands.

  They had fallen amongst the worst of them, a band of thieves who lived by robbing and murdering at every opportunity the arid landscape afforded. These desert jackals had no loyalty to Syria, Jordan, Israel, nor to any nation but themselves. They would just as readily have attacked Bedouin travelers.

  "Well," Casca muttered as his shot was answered by another short scream, "we'll give them more than they might have expected."

  He tapped Billy on the shoulder. "Mount up. Just drive off of us."

  As he clambered into the car Glennon unlatched a trenching tool from its clip and handed it to Casca. "You'll need this for the water." He was saying good bye and Casca knew it.

  A second later the motor roared and the BGC lurched away, the flattened tires flapping loosely at the sand.

  A hail of rifle fire followed the car, the bullets pinging harmlessly off the armor while the soldiers scored several hits on the Bedouin riflemen.

  Then Casca was on his feet, leading the rush for the gulch at the far side of the oasis. As they reached it and ran between the granite walls a few of their attackers came out into the open and raced after them.

  Wardi Nathan and the young Israeli officer stopped at the slit and sprayed the pursuers with their Uzis. All but three of them fell, but both Wardi and the Israeli collected lead.

  Out in the oasis Billy Glennon was driving the protesting vehicle through the san
ds to the rear of the circle of Bedouins, lobbing grenade after grenade at where they crouched in cover.

  A lot of them died where they were, and a lot more died as they tried to escape by running into the oasis where Casca and Moynihan cut them down.

  But at the far end of the oasis the long suffering engine stalled. Billy Glennon stood on the driver's seat and calmly fired his Uzi one shot at a time as the Bedouins rushed at him.

  He accounted for several, but there were too many and they quickly surrounded the car in a human swarm.

  Billy had been hit several times, Casca knew, and now he threw his spent Uzi at his nearest attacker.

  Casca closed his eyes as he realized what was to come. Glennon bit the pin from a grenade and dropped it casually into the box at his feet as his body was riddled with bullets and the Bedouins clambered onto the car.

  There was a brilliant burst of orange and red, a terrible noise, and the car, Billy, and the horde of Bedouins disappeared in a great cloud of dust and smoke.

  Both Wardi and the Israeli had now fallen to the ground, and Casca and Moynihan crouched over them.

  Wardi looked up at Casca, opened his mouth wide and lolled his tongue out of one corner in the macabre Maori man eating gesture. His eyes twinkled once and he died. Casca turned to see Moynihan closing the Israeli's eyes.

  "You and me and them, General," he said as the three remaining Bedouins ran toward them. He dropped his empty Uzi to the sand.

  The biggest of the attackers was one of the largest men Casca had ever seen, enormous by Arab standards. He was roaring like a maddened bull as he came firing from the hip; then he threw down his rifle in disgust as it jammed. The two Bedouins running beside him threw away their empty weapons, too, and drew long, curved knives.

  Casca dropped his empty gun and his arms moved fast as he blocked the two knife blows that came at him. From the corner of his eye he saw the giant and Moynihan grappling. Casca had blocked one knife blow with a downward swinging curve of his left arm, and the other with an upward circle of his right. He continued the circle around until the Bedouin's arm was locked inside his, and grunted in satisfaction as he heard the bones break.