Herman Wouk - The Glory

by The Glory(Lit)

  "Yossi, man to man, can this crossing continue?"

  "Zev, it must."

  "No bridges? The main roads blocked? A single weak supply line with heavy enemy armor choking it north and south?"

  "Yes, it's so audacious the enemy can't believe we're trying-it." Kishote's tone is hard and positive. "They think it's an empty feint. That's our big chance. The Jewish God is throwing a deep sleep on them."

  Egypt under my boots, by God! What a contrast to the tobacco-poisoned tension and boredom of the Pit, the nervous tirades at Southern Command!

  Here at last is Zahal of Barak's young years. Alert confident helmeted Jewish boys ride fast-moving machines

  through a beautiful green watered setting like a field exercise in the Jezreel Valley; all the more like an exercise in that the enemy is - at least here in Africa - almost an abstraction. No gunfire at all, only sporadic sputters to the north over in Sinai. The commandeered half-track crosses a narrow freshwater irrigation canal and rolls through palm trees, lush orchards, and cultivated fields to Danny Matt's signal truck, where a hefty tank brigade commander, Colonel Haim, is just back from a reconnaissance in force. Aglow with success, Haim reports destroying several missile batteries with a ten-tank company, and sending a mobile SAM-6 unit running off toward Cairo. "They were totally surprised, Danny, no opposition but feeble machine-gun fire."

  "But the surprise is over now," says Barak.

  "Not necessarily, sir," says Danny Matt, a tall colonel with a black Theodor Herzl beard. "Thank God, they still seem to think we're a diversion. But, Yossi, Yossi, when are the rest of Haim's tanks coming? And what about the timetable? What about Adan's division?"

  Kishote says little, and nothing about the halt order. As he and Barak return on an empty raft, three crocodile ferries go by the other way, each carrying a tank. They find Sharon haranguing two very grim and grimy brigade commanders, one of them bloodily bandaged. "Well," he says to Barak, "so did you see a defeat? A disaster? Are we surrounded? Is it a Sharon catastrophe?"

  "It's a courageous start, Arik, very risky but very powerful. I'll tell Golda that."

  Sharon brightens. "That's all I ask. Meantime these fellows here have cleared the Tirtur and Akavish Roads alongside the Chinese Farm. There's still gunfire going on, and I'm not saying we won't have to keep fighting, but we've secured our supply line."

  "We have," croaks one of them. "And it wasn't easy."

  "Those tanks that just went over, Arik - what about the order to halt?"

  "Why, I wouldn't dream of disobeying Gorodish, that would be insubordination," says Sharon with a crafty grin. "I'd already ordered those three tanks of Haim's to cross, you see, and I couldn't break the crews' hearts."

  "Ah. Are there many more hearts not to be broken?"

  "Look, Zev, I'm grateful that you came. You've seen it with your own eyes now. For God's sake just tell Golda and Dado they've got a great victory in the making here, if only they'll get Bar-Lev and Gorodish off my back!"

  Golda Meir greets Barak when he comes into her office by flinging both arms in the air. "Kosygin is in Cairo. How about that? The Premier of the Soviet Union! Can you imagine Nixon flying here, to tell me how to conduct policy? We're fighting the Russians, plain and simple. Sit down, Zev, you look tired. Did you hear Sadat's big parliament speech?"

  "No, Madame Prime Minister, I've been on the move."

  "Well, nothing new. He'll consider a cease-fire if we'll just go back behind the old armistice lines and so on. Generous. Your wife's a charming lady, my grandchildren loved her. So, what did you see? The military's been opening up a bit, but you're an eyewitness. What's going on down there?"

  He does not mince words about the traffic jams and the Chinese Farm havoc. Her face falls. "I knew it. I knew there was trouble. They're still soft-pedalling it for me." But at his picture of Zahal in Egypt she turns radiant. "Why, Zev, that's what matters. We're carrying the fight to them. We're back to being ourselves. A week ago who would have predicted this?" When he starts the topic of the halted crossing she holds up a flat palm. "Zev, Dado is fighting this war, he's doing a good job, and I won't second-guess him. Now the bridge. What about the bridge?"

  She cannot help a painful smile at his account, shaking her head. "Tallik's patents."

  "It will get there, Madame Prime Minister. Meantime they're putting over a bridge of pontoons."

  She stands up heavily. "I'm very glad I sent you. Come along now, I have to respond to Sadat in the Knesset."

  When she mounts the podium with a proud look and a fighting face, the buzz subsides in the Knesset chamber and the galleries, usually half-empty but now crowded wall to wall. Her first words are an apology for the delay in disclosing casualties. She accepts full responsibility. Enemies were listening, and the news of the first days' losses would have given them aid and cheer. The whole country's grief has weighed on her heart for a week. Now she is sharing it with

  the families of the fallen and the wounded, who bore the brunt of the surprise assault and saved Israel.

  "Some nations fault us for 'inflexibility'" - a bitter smile - "in insisting on peace treaties as the price for returning territories our enemies lost in the Six-Day War. But we remember all too well how Nasser, when we stood on the old armistice lines, announced that the Arabs were going to wipe out the 'Zionist entity' once and for all. Now suppose this new unprovoked attack, on our holiest day, had struck at those same lines? We who lived through the dread weeks of May 1967 can easily imagine, and we will never never take that risk again. Let our enemies know that."

  Well, there's her answer to Sadat, and plain enough, thinks Barak.

  "Some of these very nations that deplore our 'inflexibility' have declared a hypocritical 'embargo' on our region," Gol-da's voice rises in anger, "which only means they won't have to deliver defense materials we've bought and paid for, while the Soviet Union is flooding the most advanced munitions to our foes. Fortunately, to redress this unjust imbalance, the United States of America alone has stepped in with an airlift-" A standing ovation drowns her out and sweeps the chamber, and also the whole gallery except for the diplomatic section. "An airlift, I say, that will have the everlasting gratitude of the Jewish people.

  "Moreover, not only have Egypt and Syria, outnumbering us more than twenty to one in manpower, been waging all-out war on us, with massive resupply and expert guidance of the Soviet Union, they have been openly joined by the armed forces of Iraq, Morocco, Jordan, and Libya. Yes, we too are now getting help from America," she looks straight up at the diplomatic section, "but in fighting to survive we are doing it ourselves." In this round of applause Barak sees a few diplomats furtively clap.

  "How well we're doing, I'm not prepared to reveal. As I say, the enemy is listening. But we have pushed back the enemy in the north, in the south our forces are operating on both sides of the Suez Canal, and further disclosures -" She has to stop as a ripple of noise spreads through the chamber. "Further disclosures will come as appropriate, from our gallant army leadership.

  "I turn now to the domestic tasks that lie before us..."

  She has not proceeded far when Barak feels a tap on his shoulder. At the whispered word, "Telephone call from the Ramatkhal," he hurries to a corridor telephone. Dado comes on with a roar of anger. "By my life, Barak, has she lost her wits? The grossest breach of security! Places in danger the lives of all my soldiers in Africa! Compromises the operation! Why to all the devils did she do it?"

  "Sir, after all the bad news I guess she wanted to say something uplifting-"

  "Any uplifting event in the field was for the military to disclose!"

  "Also, sir" - Barak is doing his best to sound calm, for Dado in a rage is unnerving - "if Kosygin's pressing Sadat for a cease-fire, this may give us more time to carry the fight into Egypt. Now that the world will know we've crossed the Canal, Sadat may well dig in so he won't seem to be collapsing."

  Tense pause. "She doesn't think that way," growls the Ramatkhal. "It'
s too subtle. Anyhow, Zev, you just convey to her in no uncertain terms that I'm furious, and that she has harmed our chances of winning the war."

  Crash of receiver.

  Early next morning heads turn as the most recognizable Israeli of all strides into the bustling Tel Aviv Hilton in army fatigues and Vietnam cap. Israel's plushiest hotel is full up, though not with tourists. Those birds of passage have long since taken flight, and birds of another feather have wheeled and alighted; foreign correspondents, radio commentators, TV anchormen, film crews, combat photographers, and the like. The compound bird's-eye of the media is ever cocked for a fresh episode of the perils of Israel. Dayan joins Sam Pasternak and Eva Sonshine at a coffee table in the lounge, looking around at the journalists with one reddened eye. "So, Eva, what are the vultures croaking about today?"

  "They smell blood, Minister."

  "Whose blood? Mine?"

  "To tell the truth, Dado's. He had a bad press conference after Golda's speech."

  "Well, he was caught unawares. So was I, God knows."

  "Eva tells me," Pasternak says, "of all kinds of rumors going around here. Our bridgehead's been smashed, Dado's had a heart attack, you've fired Arik Sharon-"

  Dayan's sallow face freezes. Quickly Eva stands up, saying, "I have to get back to my desk," and hurries away.

  Rubbing his eye, Day an mutters, "Still another disaster at the Chinese Farm last night, Sam. Word just coming in." "Elohim, what now?"

  "A paratroop brigade from the south sector was thrown into a night fight without briefing, to help clear the road for Tallik's bridge. They were stopped cold, pinned down in the ditches. Tanks had to go in to rescue them and take out their dead and wounded. Second terrible fiasco there. Ready to go? Come along."

  Outside beyond the portico it is raining hard. Dayan's dripping car drives up, the doorman salutes him, and people waiting for taxis stare at the famous one-eyed hero. "Amos is all right?" Dayan asks as they get in.

  "Well, he's still out there in Syria with his battalion."

  "A son of his father. My God, Sam, the price, the price of this war. Already nearly a thousand dead, and no end in sight. My telephone never stops ringing, my closest friends have lost sons or they're missing." He leans on an elbow, glumly looking out at the drumming rain.

  "Where are we going, Minister?"

  "Dado has called a meeting of senior officers down south at Kishuf, to decide how to continue the war, now that Golda has cut off our retreat."

  Gloomy silence, slap-slap of windshield wipers.

  "Minister, the airlift news this morning is great."

  "Yes?" Dayan rouses himself. "What's the latest?"

  "Eleven Phantoms coming today, eleven more, on top of the fourteen that have arrived. Twenty-six Skyhawks due tomorrow. Tanks rolling off the Galaxies like an Independence Day parade."

  ''And I had to push Golda on the airlift!'' Dayan shakes his head in wonder. "Where would we be otherwise?"

  "Minister, most of the stuff won't reach the front before it's all over. This is mainly resupply -"

  "Nonsense. The Phantoms can fly tomorrow, and we're right at the red line on them. Those fighter-bombers refuel in

  the air, you know. American carriers are strung across the Mediterranean to protect them. All organized in five days, Saturday to Wednesday. They're phenomenal, the Americans, once they get going."

  "Moshe, they simply woke up to their own national interest, and high time," the hardened Mossad skeptic retorts. "They can't let the Russians win a surrogate war here-"

  "Easy to say! Shallow! This will cost them a damaging oil embargo, and who can say whether their 'surrogate,' as you put it, will win? Can you? Can I? They're being magnificent."

  Two Phantoms are overflying the Suez Canal more than sixty thousand feet up, on a mission rendered urgent by Golda Meir's disclosure. Benny Luria in the lead plane has already heard on the morning news Cairo's dismissal of the "token raid for television." Aerial reconnaissance of Egyptian troop movements is now mandatory, and the flight is testing a gap reportedly blasted in the missile wall by Sharon's tanks. The pilots and navigators in oxygen masks are peering down tensely for the flash of a missile launch. So far, as the Canal and its lakes slide slowly under their wings, nothing. Thrumming engines, azure peace of the stratosphere.

  Benny Luria is courting disciplinary action, for base commanders have now been forbidden to fly missions. But Dov is in the other plane, and on hearing of this he preempted the lead plane. Let come what may! He has been drilling hard with Dov on an antimissile tactic he read about in an American air force journal, developed in Vietnam. Benny knows it works, because earlier in the war he saved his own life with it.

  Five minutes into Egypt air space, and still nothing. Breathing easier, Benny wigwags his wings to signal Commence photography. He and Dov fly flat ever-widening circles over the assigned areas, while automatic cameras capture copious photographs. The landscape below is blotchy with the shadows of drifting clouds, and from this altitude, troop concentrations are only more vague blotches. But the pictures taken by these CIA supercameras will show the hairs on the mustaches of the Egyptian tank commanders.

  "All right, we've done it, Dov. Let's go home."

  Rattling roar of the jets, heavy vibration of the plane as it accelerates to Mach 2. Thrust of helmet against headrest, a hard blow. Far ahead the thread of the Canal sparkles, the low sun glares. Watching for landmarks of Sharon's missile gap, Benny Luria spots a pale flash. "Missile, Dov, eleven o'clock." "I see it."

  The spurt of flame climbs and seems to be locking on Dov's plane. He jinks and it is after him, veering as he veers, straightening as he straightens, steadily ascending toward him, a visible missile now. L 'Azazel, Dov has fought a good war, made a fine record, three confirmed MiGs downed. God help him to evade. Drilling is one thing, staring down at climbing death is another, as Benny too well knows.

  That evasive maneuver he taught Dov is simple but tricky, and the timing is everything. At the last possible moment, you flip over and break downward; a few seconds too soon, and the missile will detect the move and change course to hit. A second too late, goodbye! But if you time it just right, the plane will fall off so fast in the thin air that the rocket, unable to alter its course in time, will fly past harmlessly. No way to help Dov now, either he will save himself or not...

  Now, Dov, NOW, BY YOUR LIFE, over and down.

  Aircraft and fire-spurting pole still converging.

  Dov, Dov, Dov, GO...

  The other plane flips and drops like a stone. The missile flames past it and up into the fathomless blue.

  In Benny's earphones, his navigator: "He did it, sir, hundred percent."

  Calm voice of Dov as he straightens out far below: "How was that, Abba?"

  "B-plus. You waited too long," Benny Luria replies through a choked throat. He hears his son laugh, and feels for the first time the trickling sweat that has broken out all over his body inside the G suit.

  A few minutes before the Ramatkhal takes off for the decisive strategic meeting in the south, the developed Luria photographs are delivered to his helicopter.

  29

  Goodbye to Glory

  Shells are now falling all around Deversoir. In the enormous brick-paved Yard the tanks and APCs are battened down, in the Canal below an occasional explosive splash drenches the pontoon bridge engineers, and everywhere stinking gunpowder smoke swirls and stings the eyes. Don Kishote is supervising traffic himself, keeping access clear for the nine pontoon rafts rumbling in on huge transporters. Defying the whistling shells and the flying shrapnel, the engineers down at the waterline are linking up several of these rafts into the stub of a bridge, already projecting a third of the way across.

  "Arik, it's Arik, sir." A dirty bloody soldier runs up to Kishote. "Arik's been hit!" Kishote follows him through the crowding machines and sees Sharon down on the bricks, his back to a tank track, bright blood welling into a bandage around his temples. He looks slack-jaw
ed and vacant. Pushing through the anxious officers around him, Kishote asks the medical orderly, "How bad is it?"

  "He'll be all right, sir. Shrapnel wound, but it's not lodged in his head. He's just dazed."

  "I'm not dazed," says Sharon irritably. "Kishote, they're finding the range, the bastards. Pull all the command vehicles out of the Yard right away, before the antennas get knocked

  off and we lose communications. Then go back outside and keep those pontoon rafts coming, whatever you do."

  In a little while he emerges from the Yard, his hair blowing over the stained bandage, his stride somewhat shaky. "B'seder, Yossi, tell Ezra to take over command here, and let's go to Kishuf."