by Wilbur Smith
They emerged into a reception area where again the Brig’s papers were examined, and a paratrooper major was called to pass David through, a duty he performed reluctantly and at the Brig’s insistence. Then the Brig led David along a carpeted and air-conditioned underground tunnel to the pilots’ dressing-room. It was tiled and spotless, with showers and toilets and lockers like a country club changing-room.
The Brig had ordered clothing for David, guessing his size and doing so accurately. The orderly corporal had no trouble fitting him out in overalls, boots, G-suit, gloves and helmet.
The Brig dressed from his own locker and both of them went through into the ready room, moving stiffly in the constricting grip of the G-suits and carrying their helmets under their arms.
The duty pilots looked up from chess games and magazines as they entered, recognized the general and stood to greet him, but the atmosphere was easy and informal. The Brig made a small witticism and they all laughed and relaxed, while he led David through into the briefing-room.
Swiftly, but without overlooking a detail, he outlined the patrol that they would fly, and checked David out on radio procedure, aircraft identification, and other parochial details.
‘All clear?’ he asked at last, and when David nodded, he went on, ‘Remember what I told you, we are at war. Anything we find that doesn’t belong to us we hit it, hard! All right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘It’s been nice and quiet the last few weeks, but yesterday we had a little trouble down near Ein Yahav, a bit of nastiness with one of our border patrols. So things are a little sensitive at the moment.’ He picked up his helmet and map case then turned to face David, leaning close to him and fixing him with those fierce brown and golden eyes.
‘It will be clear up there today, and when we get to forty thousand, you will be able to see it all, every inch of it from Rosh Hanikra to Suez, from Mount Hermon to Eilat, and you will see how small it is and how vulnerable to the enemies that surround us. You said you were looking for something worthwhile – I want you to decide whether guarding the fate of three million people might not be a worthwhile job for a man.’
They rode on a small electric personnel carrier down one of the long underground passages, and they entered the concrete bunker dispersed at one point of a great star whose centre was the concrete silo, and they climbed down from the cart.
The Mirages stood in a row, six of them, sleek and needle-nosed, crouching like leashed and impatient animals, so well remembered in outline, but vaguely unfamiliar in their desert brown and drab green camouflage with the blue Star of David insignia on the fuselage.
The Brig signed for two machines, grinning as he wrote ‘Butch Ben Yok’ under David’s numeral.
‘As good a name as any to fly under,’ he grunted. ‘This is the land of the pseudonym and alias.’
David settled into the tiny cockpit with a sense of homecoming. In here it was all completely familiar and his hands moved over the massed array of switches, instruments and controls like those of a lover as he began his pre-flight check.
In the confined space of the bunkers the jet thunder assaulted the eardrums, their din only made bearable by the perforated steel baffles set into the rear of the structure.
The Brig looked across at David, his head enclosed in the garishly painted helmet, and gave him the high sign. David returned it and reached up to pull the Perspex canopy closed. Ahead of them, the steel blast doors rolled swiftly upwards, and the ready lamps above them switched from red to green.
There was no taxiing to take-off areas; no needless ground exposure. Wing-tip to wing-tip they came up the ramp out of the bunker into the sunlight. Ahead of them stretched one of the long brown runways, and David pushed open his throttle to the gate, and then ignited his afterburners, feeling the thrust of the mighty jet through the cushioning of his seat. Down between the fields of green corn they tore, and then up, with the swooping sensation in the guts and the rapier nose of the Mirage pointed at the sapphire of the sky that arched unbroken and unsullied above them, and once again David experienced the euphoria of jet-powered flight.
They levelled out at a little under forty thousand feet avoiding even altitudes or orderly flight patterns, and David placed his machine under the Brig’s tail and eased back on the throttles to cruising power, his hands delighting in the familiar rituals of flight while his helmeted head revolved restlessly in the search routine, sweeping every quarter of the sky about him, weaving the Mirage to clear the blind spot behind his own tail.
The air had an unreal quality of purity, a crystalline clarity that made even the most distant mountain ranges stand out in crisp silhouette, hardly shaded with the blue of distance. In the north the Mediterranean blazed like a pool of molten silver in the sunlight, while the sea of Galilee was soft cool green, and farther south the Dead Sea was darker, forbidding in its sunken bed of tortured desert.
They flew north over the ridge of Carmel and the flecked white buildings of Haifa with its orange-gold beaches on which the sea broke in soft ripples of creamy lacework. Then they turned together easing back on the power and sinking slowly to patrol altitude at twenty thousand feet as they passed the peak of Mount Hermon where the last snows still lingered in the gullies and upon the high places, streaking the great rounded mountain like an old man’s pate.
The softly dreaming greens and pastels delighted David who was accustomed to the sepia monochromes of Africa. The villages clung to the hill-tops, their white walls shining like diadems above the terraced slopes and the darker areas of cultivated land.
They turned south again, booming down the valley of the Jordan, over the Sea of Galilee with its tranquil green waters enclosed by the thickets of date palm and the neatly tended fields of the Kibbutzim, losing altitude as the land forsook its gentle aspect and the hills were riven and tortured, rent by the wadis as though by the claws of a dreadful predator.
On the left hand rose the mountains of Edom, hostile and implacable, and beneath them Jericho was a green oasis in the wilderness. Ahead lay the shimmering surface of the Dead Sea. The Brig dropped down, and they thundered so low across the salt-thickened water that the jet blast ruffled the surface behind them.
The Brig’s voice chuckled in David’s earphones. That’s the lowest you are ever going to fly – twelve hundred feet below sea level.’
They were climbing again as they crossed the mineral works at the southern end of the sea, and faced the blasted and mountainous deserts of the south.
‘Hello, Cactus One, this is Desert Flower.’ Again the radio silence was broken, but this time David recognized the call sign of command net. They were being called directly from the Operations Centre of Air Force Command, situated in some secret underground bunker at a location that David would never learn. On the command plot their position was being accurately relayed by the radar repeaters.
‘Hello, Desert Flower,’ the Brig acked, and immediately the exchange became as informal as two old friends chatting, which was precisely what it was.
‘Brig, this is Motti. We’ve just had a ground support request in your area,’ he gave the co-ordinates quickly, ‘a motorized patrol of border police is under sneak low level attack by an unidentified aircraft. See to it, will you?’
‘Beseder, Motti, okay.’ The Brig switched to flight frequency. ‘Cactus Two, I’m going to interception power, conform to me,’ he told David, and they turned together on to the new heading.
‘No point in trying a radar scan,’ the Brig grumbled aloud. ‘He’ll be down in the ground clutter. We’ll not pick the swine off amongst those mountains. Just keep your eyes open.’
‘Beseder.’ David had already picked up the word. The favourite Hebrew word in a land where very little was really ‘okay’.
David spotted it first, a slim black column of smoke beginning to rise like a pencil line drawn slowly against the windless and dazzling cobalt blue of the horizon.
‘Ground smoke,’ he said into his helmet microph
one. ‘Eleven o’clock low.’
The Brig squinted ahead silently, searching for it and then saw it on the extreme limit of his vision range. He grunted; Rastus had been right in one thing at least. The youngster had eyes like a hawk.
‘Going to attack speed now,’ he said, and David acked and lit his afterburners. The upholstery of his seat smacked into his back under the mighty increase in thrust and David felt the drastic alteration in trim as the Mirage went shooting through the sonic barrier.
Near the base of the smoke column, something flashed briefly against the drab brown earth, and David narrowed his eyes and made out the tiny shape, flitting swiftly as a sunbird, its camouflage blending naturally into the backdrop of desert, so it was as ethereal as a shadow.
‘Bandit turning to port of the smoke,’ he called the sighting.
‘I have him,’ said the Brig, and switched to command net.
‘Hello, Desert Flower, I’m on an intruder. Call strike, please.’ The decision to engage must be made at command level, and the answering voice was laconic, and flat.
‘Brig, this is Motti. Hit him!’
While they spoke they were rushing down so swiftly that the details of the little drama being played out below sprang into comprehension.
Along a dusty border track three patrol vehicles of the border police were halted. They were camouflaged half-tracks, tiny as children’s toys in the vastness of the desert.
One of the half-tracks was burning. The smoke was greasy black and rose straight into the air, the beacon that had drawn them. Lying spread-eagled in the road was a human body, flung down carelessly in death, and the sight of it stirred in David a deeply bitter feeling of resentment such as he had last felt in the bullring at Madrid.
The other vehicles were pulled off the track at abandoned angles, and David could see their crews crouching amongst the scrub and rock. Some of them were firing with small arms at their attacker who was circling for his next run down upon them.
David had never seen the type before, but knew it instantly from the recognition charts that he had studied so often. It was a Russian MiG 17 of the Syrian Air Force. The high tailplane was unmistakable. The dappled brown desert camouflage was brightened by the red, white and black roundels with their starred green centres on the fuselage and the stubby swept wings.
The MiG completed its turn, settling swiftly down and levelling off for its next strafing run upon the parked vehicles. The pilot’s attention was concentrated on the helpless men cowering amongst the rocks and he was unaware of the terrible vengeance bearing down upon him on high.
The Brig lined up for his pass, turning slightly to bring himself down on the Syrian’s tail, attacking in classic style from behind and above, while David dropped back to weave across his rear, covering him and backing up to press in a supporting attack if the first failed.
The Syrian opened fire again and the cannon bursts twinkled like fairy lights amongst the men and trucks. Another truck exploded in a dragon’s breath of smoke and flame.
‘You bastard,’ David whispered as he levelled out behind the Brig, and saw the havoc that was being wrought amongst his people. It was the first time he had thought of them as that, his people, and he felt the cold anger of the shepherd whose flock is under attack.
A line of poetry popped up in his mind, ‘The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold’, and his hands went purposefully to the chore of locking in his cannons-selectors and flicking the trigger forward out of its recess in the moulded grip of the joystick. The soft green glow lit his gunsight as it came alive and he squinted through it.
The Brig was pressing his attack in to close range, rapidly overhauling the slower clumsy-looking MiG, and at that moment he knew he would open fire David saw the Syrian’s wing-shape alter. At the fatal instant he had become aware of his predicament, and he had done what was best in the circumstances. He had pulled on full flap and while his speed fell sharply he dropped one wing in a slide towards the earth a hundred feet below.
The Brig was committed and he loosed his salvo of cannon fire at the instant that the Syrian dropped, ducking under it like a boxer avoiding a heavy punch. David saw the blaze of shot pass high, rending the air above the sand-coloured aircraft. Then the Brig was through, missing with every shell, spiralling up and around in a great flashing circle, raging internally at his failure.
At the instant that David recognized the MiG’s manoeuvre he reacted with a rapidity that was purely reflexive. He closed down his power, and hit his air brakes to punch a little speed off the Mirage.
The MiG turned steeply away to port, standing on one wing-tip that seemed to be pegged into the bleak desert earth. David released his air brakes, to give his wings lift for the next evolution, and then he dropped his own wing-tip and went sweeping round to follow the Syrian’s desperate twists with the Mirage hovering on the edge of the stall.
The Syrian was turning inside him, slower and more maneuverable; David could not bring his sights to bear, his right forefinger was curled around the trigger but always the dark shape of the MiG was out of centre in the illuminated circle of the sight as the aiming pipper dipped and rose to the pull of gravity.
Ahead of the two circling aircraft rose a steep and forbidding line of cliffs, rent by deep defiles and gullies.
The MiG made no attempt to climb above them, but selected a narrow pass through the hills and went into it like a ferret into its run, a desperate attempt to shake off the pursuit.
The Mirage was not designed for this type of flying, and David felt the urge to hit his afterburners and ride up over the jagged fangs of rock – but to do so was to let the MiG escape, and his anger was still strong upon him.
He followed the Syrian into the rock pass, and the walls of stone on either hand seemed to brush his wing-tips, the gully turned sharply to starboard and David dropped his wing and followed its course. Back upon itself the rock turned, and David swung the needle nose from maximum rate turn starboard to port, and the stall warning device winked amber and red at him as he abused the Mirage’s delicate flying capabilities.
Ahead of him the MiG clawed its way through the tunnel of rock. The pilot looked back over his shoulder and he saw the Mirage following him, creeping slowly up on him, and he turned back to his controls and forced his machine lower still, hugging the rugged walls of stone.
The air in the hills was hot and turbulent, and the Mirage bucked and fought against restraint wanting to be free and high, while ahead of it the Syrian drifted tantalizingly off-centre in David’s gunsight.
Now the valley turned again and narrowed, before climbing and ending abruptly against a solid dark purple wall of smooth rock.
The Syrian was trapped, he levelled out and climbed steeply upwards, his flight path dictated by the rocks on each side and ahead.
David pushed his throttle to the gate and lit his afterburners, and the mighty engine rumbled, thrusting him powerfully forward, up under the Syrian’s stern.
The eternal micro-seconds of mortal combat dragged by, as the Syrian floated lazily into the circle of the gunsight, expanding to fill it as the Mirage’s nose seemed to touch the other’s tailplane and David felt the buffeting of the Syrian’s slipstream.
He pressed the cannon trigger and the Mirage lurched as she hurled her deadly load into the other machine in a clattering double stream of cannon fire and an eruption of incendiary shells.
The Syrian disintegrated, evaporating in a gush of silvery smoke, rent through with bright white lightning, and the ejecting pilot’s body was blown clear of the fuselage. For an instant it was outlined ahead of David’s screen, cruciform in shape with arms and legs thrown wide, the helmet still on the head, and the clothing ballooning in the rush of air. Then it flickered past the Mirage’s canopy as David climbed swiftly up out of the valley and into the open sky.
The soldiers were moving about amongst their vehicles, tending their wounded and covering their dead, but they all looked up as David flew back low al
ong the road. He passed so close that he could see their faces clearly. They were sunbrowned, some with beards or moustaches, strong young faces, their mouths open as they cheered him, waving their thanks.
My people, he thought. He was still high on the adrenalin that had poured into his blood, and he felt a fierce elation. He grinned wolfishly at the men below him and lifted one gloved hand in salute before climbing up to where the Brig was circling, waiting for him.
The artificial lights of the bunker were dim after the brilliance of the sun. An engineer helped David from the cockpit as his mates swarmed over the Mirage to refuel and rearm it. This was one of the vital skills of this tiny air force, the ability to ready a warplane for combat in a fraction of the time usually required for the task. Thus in emergency the machine could return to the battle long before its adversary.
Moving stiffly from the confines of the cockpit, David crossed to where the Brig was already in conversation with the flight controller.
He stood with the gaudy helmet tucked under one arm as he stripped off his gloves, but as David came up he turned to him and his wintry smile exposed the gold tooth in its nest of fur.
Lightly he punched David’s arm. ‘Ken! Yes!’ said Major-General Joshua Mordecai. ‘You’ll do.’
David was late to fetch Debra for dinner that evening, but she had already learned the reason from her father.
They went to the Select behind David’s Tower, inside the Jaffa Gate of the old city. Its unpretentious interior, decorated with patterns of rope upon the walls, did not fully prepare David for the excellent meal that the Arab proprietor served with the minimum of delay – mousakha chicken, with nuts and spices on a bed of kous-kous.
They ate almost in silence, Debra quickly recognizing and respecting David’s mood. He was in the grip of post-combat tristesse, the adrenalin hangover of stress and excitement, but slowly the good food in his belly and the heavy Carmel wine relaxed him, until over the thimblesized cups of Turkish coffee, black and powerfully reeking of cardamon seed, Debra could ask, ‘What happened today, David?’