by Herman Wouk
Barkai’s voice a shade above his usual calm. “Five splashes.”
Outbursts of joy: kisses, hugs, dancing, jumping, one man spinning insanely round and round and round the room and cheering. Zev shouts at the CNO, “Who is he and what’s the matter with him?”
“That’s Zemakh and the matter with him is, he created the countermeasures. All of them. Magiya lo [He’s entitled]! Now we know we can beat the Styx, and it’s all Zemakh’s doing.”
Barak catches the spinning man in his arms and kisses his bristly cheek. “I salute you, my son’s out there.”
Barkai’s voice, everybody quickly silent. “Three enemy boats now retiring at high speed. I will pursue and destroy them. To Zemakh, a salute and the thanks of my crews. And of the Jewish people. Over.”
The CNO thrusts the microphone at Zemakh, who says hoarsely, “Hello, Zemakh here. Acknowledged. Go get them. Over.”
“I intend to. Out.”
A radarman says to Noah as he drops back down into the CIC, a large smoky room amidships crowded with electronic equipment and operators, “Captain, target number two seems to be reversing course.” Noah peers at the screen. Yes, clearly the middle green blip is moving away from the other two, toward the flotilla.
“Kol ha’kavod, one of them turning to fight,” grates Barkai. He seizes the microphone and addresses the flotilla. “All boats, prepare to launch missiles.”
Tense quiet in the CIC. Soon the radarman calls over his shoulder, “Enemy missile launched, Captain.”
“I see it.” Small new green blip on the screen.
Almost at once another radarman. “Captain, Gabriel launched by our lead boat.” Noah clambers topside, and glimpses something he will never forget: amid the decoy trails in the starry sky a white light soaring over a larger golden light, the missiles crossing in midflight; then the Styx light falling into the black sea, the white trail disappearing, and after a tense minute, a great FLASH on the horizon. He tramples back down the ladder. Barkai exults, “Noah, one enemy missile boat sunk, it’s disappeared off the radar.”
“I saw the flash, sir.”
“B’seder. Now we’re closing the range on the nearer one. Go ahead and shoot him.”
“Ken, ha’m’faked.” (“Aye aye, sir.”) The radar blip shows the Styx boat nineteen thousand yards ahead. Noah has often scored hits in the simulator at that range, but this will be his first actual Gabriel launch. “Prepare missile for firing.”
“Captain, missile ready.”
“Very well.” Rapid orders, lights flashing white and green on the consoles, quick back-and-forth jargon among Noah, the weapons officer, the radarmen, the missile men. Flotilla commander silent, watching.
“Captain, system on target.”
Waves are crashing and sloshing against the heaving hull, just as in the endless simulator exercises, complete with rolling and pitching, only now the sea is doing it, not a mechanical rocker, and a real missile topside is primed to go, and a real Syrian Styx boat is trying to run away. With a last glance over the consoles, Noah presses an isolated white button labelled PERMISSION TO FIRE. GHRANG, GHRANG, GHRANG! Alarm all through the boat, all lights on consoles turning red. Silence. THUD. The boat shakes, the Gabriel is in the air.
Though shorter in range, the Gabriel is more advanced than the Styx. Like the Styx, it homes with a nose radar; but an operator on the bridge controls it with a joystick, locking it to ride on the boat’s radar beam until the missile itself sends the electronic signal saying “Okay, I’m in charge.” It is then so close to striking that no evasive tactics will avail.
“Takeover signal from missile, Captain.”
“Very well. Over to missile.”
Pause, all eyes on the radar consoles. Radarman drone. “Missile blip merging with target, sir.” A break of his voice to boyish glee. “Captain, the target’s gone from the screen.”
A yell over the loudspeaker from the missile operator on the bridge. “Huge explosion ahead, sir, enormous flare on the horizon.”
Barkai at the central console: “Noah, you’ve blown him up. He’s gone.”
“All hands,” Noah announces on the PA system, “scratch a Styx boat.”
The vessel rings with cheers. Barkai, his eyes agleam, throws him a salute. Revenge for the Eilat, and not the last of it. The remaining Syrian captain appears to be running his vessel up on the nearest beach, despairing of making good his escape to Latakia. “Noah, go in and destroy him with gunfire,” says Barkai.
As Noah’s vessel races landward to within a hundred yards of the beached boat, coastal batteries light up the sea with green floating flares. Shells begin to straddle his vessel, throwing up towering splashes. The stranded Syrian boat is a wreck, half out of the water and steeply canted on the beach. Roaring back and forth through the shellfire, Noah rakes it again and again with all guns. From the dark derelict some sporadic shooting back, as it absorbs the rain of shots for a long minute or two, then it explodes in heavy smoke and bright flame.
Zev Barak drives as fast as he can through blacked-out streets jammed with army vehicles chugging and rumbling into and out of Tel Aviv, repeating Barkai’s dry victory report under his breath, for he means to quote it to Golda word for word. “Five enemy vessels encountered. Four sunk, one stranded and set ablaze. No damage or casualties to the flotilla. Returning to base.” This battle off Latakia, though small in scale, has surely been a turn of naval history; the first missile-to-missile sea fight, and a victory of little Israel over the Soviet Union. Vindication of the navy, of the Gabriel, and of electronic know-how in the Jewish State.
Wrapped in an old black shawl, Golda is drinking coffee and smoking on a worn sofa in her Ramat Aviv home. “So?” she asks in a rheumy voice, setting aside a wire basket of despatches. “Your son is all right?”
The way she brightens at his account of the battle does his heart good. “Wonderful boys,” she exclaims. “Those missiles, those electronic gadgets, fine. A victory, a ray of light.”
He produces a sheaf of navy papers and photostats. “Absolute proof the Egyptians invented that pretext, Madame Prime Minister. Location of all our war vessels at the time, impossibly distant from the scene.”
Nodding and sighing, she says, “The Americans at least will believe us. That’s good. The cabinet meeting, Zev, was not so good.”
“Dado’s pessimistic?”
“Dado was all right. He cheered them up. He said this is the containment phase, very hard, but the war will turn around. It was Dayan. He wants to pull back already in the Sinai, to a line twelve miles from the Canal and try to build up our strength there. Retreat, retreat, shorten lines, fighting withdrawal.” Golda raises pouched sleepless eyes to Barak.
Barak’s exultant mood fades, the Latakia fight shrinking to the marginal event it really is on this shattering first night of war. “Was that the decision? Was there a vote?”
“There was no vote. Dado said he would hold on both fronts and fight back. The cabinet went with him and I went with him, although the news is very bad from the Golan. Even Dado said he might have to order a retreat there, but not yet.” She sourly smiles. “So, how alarmed are you now?”
“Madame Prime Minister, we’re going to win this war.”
“From your mouth in God’s ears, that’s what I believe, but we won’t win it on the sea. And if God forbid we lose it, it will be on the Golan.”
20
The Third Temple Is Falling
Golda speaks true. In a melee of clanking snorting war machines, thundering guns, and lurid fire, Israeli and Syrian forces are tangled together on the Golan Heights. Amos Pasternak’s sector is on a slight rise facing the valley where the Syrians have been massing for weeks, and more and more tanks keep coming at him. Over and over he shouts on the battalion network, “Identify before shooting! Identify before shooting!” Any tank that comes in sight through the darkness, the smoke, and the dust is probably an enemy, but above all he can’t afford losses to friendly fire.
Venturing high up in the turret with a special infrascope to glimpse the battle, which to the naked eye is all black night and stinking combat haze, Amos is horror-stricken to find himself square in the beam of an infrared projector, in effect a brilliant searchlight. “Driver, driver, full speed reverse,” he bawls. The driver down in the tank’s belly sends it jolting and rumbling backward. “Now sharp left.” Amos swivels the turret gun as they lurch and crunch over rocks, intending to fire at that projector, when a crash hurls him against the hatch cover. They have backed into another tank. Friendly or enemy? “Forward and turn right.” He risks switching on his searchlight. A head and shoulders emerge from the other turret. L’Azazel! Dark, mustached, a young Syrian, looking as scared as he himself probably looked in the infrared glare. Point-blank range, not twenty feet. An instant of pity for the youngster with the round frightened eyes. “Fire.” Roar of cannon, BAAM! Ringing in his ears, choking smoke. The tank aflame, the Syrian’s uniform on fire, the poor guy clawing at himself and at the turret, trying to jump out.
“Driver, left turn and stop.” He trains the gun back toward the Syrian lines, and clicks the mike button to the battalion circuit: “Yardstick commander here. All Yardsticks make reports.”
Strung out across the sector, some tanks answer up, but too many remain silent. Sector barely covered, gaping holes. Falling back is unthinkable, yet if some reserves don’t show up soon there will be no defense line blocking this valley, the main northern corridor into Israel.
Amos’s father is dozing off at his underground desk. When the telephone startles him awake he is not sure whether it is night or day, or what day. Dayan sounds refreshed and chipper. “Sam, I’m going to the Golan at first light. Pick me up and run me to Sde Dov, just the two of us, no driver. Organize a helicopter.”
Suppressed yawn. “Yes, Minister.”
Gray-faced and red-eyed, Dado Elazar nods and tiredly smiles when Pasternak tells him about this. “Well, of course. The Minister wants to smell powder. Talk to air operations.” No wonder the Ramatkhal is wide awake, Pasternak thinks; on the wall map of the Golan, heavy crimson arrows slash almost to the command HQ at Nafekh, scarily close to the Jordan bridges. The Sinai transparency tells just as grim a story; the Egyptians are across the Canal from end to end, still advancing.
In a brightening dawn Dayan waits on the street outside his Zahala home in a field uniform, red paratrooper boots, and a crumpled U.S. Army cap he acquired visiting Vietnam. They drive through streets streaming with heavy army transport. “Dado wouldn’t come with me,” says Dayan. “I asked him. He’s wrong, Sam. A commander-in-chief should see the battlefield with his own eyes. The dead, the wounded, the burned-out machines, the way the men look and talk. That’s how you get the feel of what’s really going on. How do you read the battle so far?”
“Minister, the Golan is the worst, it’s critical today.”
“That’s why I’m going there. Syrian tanks looking down the chimneys of Tiberias! A nightmare, who could have believed it? At least the women and children are off the Golan, thank God. I saw to that. But we can’t possibly evacuate the Galilee. It would panic the nation.” A pause. Abruptly, “Sam, how did we ever get into this fix?”
“Sir? You mean the surprise?”
“No, we war-gamed for surprises.” Dayan’s enigmatic probes are often rhetorical, but now the good eye is staring at Pasternak for an answer.
Pasternak ventures a guarded comment. “Well, Minister, doesn’t it go back to the military budget cuts? Dado warned the government that he would no longer be able to fight a war on two fronts. That he’d have to defeat them one at a time, shuttling our forces. Those cuts were political decisions by the cabinet.”
“Right! It was the politicians, and I told them the same thing then. Last night I also told them the hard truth. The enemy’s seized the initiative, and now we have to think in strictly military, not political terms. Fall back to lines matched to our strength, survive until a cease-fire, and live to fight another day. That’s what we did in 1949, and that first truce saved us. But Dado was all optimism, promised to counterattack in the next few days and turn the war around. It was what they wanted to hear, and I was the bearer of bad news, so I was ignored.”
The helicopter is coming down as the car pulls into the airfield. Dayan shouts over the noise, getting out of the car, “I’ll try to see your Amos.”
After the all-night fighting Amos and the driver are having their turn at a nap, while the loader and gunner stand guard. Opening his eyes, he feels rested and famished. He climbs up in the turret with binoculars for a look-around in the early sunlight. By God, his battered battalion and the rest of Seventh Brigade did a job. Scattered far and wide on the brown valley floor below are burned-out Syrian tanks, APCs, and other vehicles, many still flaming or smoking, and dead Syrians too. A few shadowy figures skulk among the wrecks. Several Soviet T-62s are undamaged, evidently abandoned, valuable booty to be towed in when the chance comes.
“Yanosh here, calling Amos.” In the helmet earphones the brigade commander sounds hoarse and fagged out.
“Pasternak here.”
“Ammunition and fuel now available at the crossroads. Replenish by platoons. Meet me there.”
“Pasternak here. I expect another attack soon.”
“So do I.”
High time to replenish, at that. Amos’s surviving tanks look much the worse for wear; outside equipment boxes ripped, one tank still smoldering, another on its side with its gun pointed at the sky; and on the battalion circuit the talk is nervous and sad — many wounded and dead, supplies almost gone. Upright in the turret, Amos leads his battalion into the dense pack of tanks and trucks at the crossroads depot, where unshaven soldiers are noisily prying open ammo crates and passing shells, and the smell of diesel oil is rank in the air from all the pumping. Colonel Yanosh Ben Gal stands by his signal jeep, a helmet clamped on his hawk face and wild long hair. The tubby man beside him in a cloth cap is nobody but the Minister of Defense! Dayan inquires without ado, “Amos, what’s been happening in your sector?”
Amos collects his thoughts and begins an account of the night battle, insofar as he can reconstruct it. His crew feverishly takes on shells and a fuel truck is pumping away, when he hears, “Planes. Planes, coming in low. Take cover!” The shouts send him diving under his tank. A fusillade of low-aimed AA fire breaks out, bullets whizzing and whining close by. He sees the Minister of Defense standing there with hands on his hips, watching two gaudily-painted MiGs fly past a few yards overhead as though he were at an air show. Amos wonders, peering up at the famed warrior, whether he has no nerves or a death wish. The bombs explode without damage, throwing up splashes of earth and smoke far beyond the depot, and the planes dwindle away.
“From what Yanosh tells me, Amos,” says Dayan, resuming their conversation as if the interruption were a telephone call, “you’ve got a battalion of heroes out there.”
“Many, many casualties, Minister. It was a hard night.”
Amos’s loader pokes up in the turret. “Sir, Yair reports Syrian tanks coming up the valley, distance four miles.”
“Here we go,” says Amos.
“Good luck,” says the Minister of Defense. “Reserves are coming, Amos.”
“One moment,” says Yanosh, his bristly face worried and drawn. “Amos, look here.” He produces a scrawled-over Golan map, holds it against the tank hull, and marks it with
quick swooping pencil lines. “Their artillery is beginning to zero in on the ramps.” These are the slanting earthworks where the tanks are positioned. “On my signal, move your tanks to back off and deploy here instead. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.” Amos climbs up on the tank, and plugs in his headset. “All Yardsticks, return to sector. Minister, please tell my father I’m okay.”
“I’ll tell him more than that.”
Nakhama moans as the bedside telephone rings. “My God, how long have you been asleep? An hour?” Barak came home to tell her about Latakia and cheer her up, and he has managed to sleep a little, for the sun is high.
“Barak here. Yes? … B’seder, I’m on my way.”
Nakhama buries her head in the pillow. He dresses quickly, worried about her shot nerves as well as the war. Far from rejoicing over Noah’s victory, she has been whimpering about it. Suppose those countermeasure gimmicks don’t work next time? It’ll only take one failure! Why did he make Noah stay in the navy? The sea is worse than the air. A pilot can parachute from a burning plane, but if Noah’s boat is sunk in Arab waters he can only drown, or get captured and murdered. Wars! Wars! The wars will never end until the Arabs have cut every Jewish throat, if it takes a hundred years. Such is Nakhama’s tune these days. When he bends over her to kiss her neck and say goodbye, her response is a gruff sound into the pillow.
In Dado’s crowded underground command cubicle a commotion is going on, when Golda Meir and Barak arrive. The Chief of Staff hangs up the telephone and jumps to his feet. “Is there a problem?” she coolly inquires.
“We’re handling it, Madame Prime Minister.” Dayan is on the Golan Heights, he tells her, giving direct orders to the air force. Only immediate massive air strikes, Dayan is insisting, can stop the Syrians from overrunning the Galilee. “But Madame Prime Minister, that is a judgment for me to make,” Dado says in level firm tones. “I don’t yet believe things are that bad, and I know the Golan. I captured it in 1967. And even if the Minister is right, my air weapon is my decisive reserve, and only I must control it.”