by Hesh Kestin
Entering from Balfour Street, black uniformed Revolutionary Guards guided by officers following step-by-step instructions on preset GPS units rush past the Israel Police kiosk, where the bullet-riddled body of a single cop hangs lifeless, and kick down the door of the prime minister’s residence. Making short work of two security men armed with Tavors and a cook wielding a meat cleaver, the attackers kill the nanny coming down the stairs, then the grandmother and the two children in their beds, before finding the prime minister in her bedroom screaming into a dead phone. Pursuant to orders, she is photographed first alive and then dead, the images transmitted instantaneously to Tehran. There the photos will be matched with file photos of Israel’s leadership on a gruesome checklist where names are crossed off in a relentless tally.
Though rape will become common in the days ahead as less disciplined Arab armies swarm Jerusalem, these Revolutionary Guard commandos work by the book. In a few minutes, they are out the door and on their way to the next target. The Minister of Agriculture lives on the next street.
By the time it is light, the entire administrative structure of the State of Israel has been decapitated. The list is so thorough that even the director of the Israel Museum is wiped out.
29
TWO MILES FROM THE Jordan, a column of two hundred Jordanian Challengers grinding up the winding road westward encounters its first resistance.
Six Israeli Chariots crest an embankment concealed by a turn in the road and, opening fire, destroy the first five Jordanian tanks, causing the column to stop dead. The IDF commander has chosen his spot well. The Challengers attempt to move off the road, but on one side there is a sheer stone wall and on the other a severe drop of several hundred feet. Dazed, a dozen Challenger commanders attempt to descend rather than remain sitting ducks. Their vehicles lose traction immediately on the loose stone and tumble down into the abyss.
The Chariots keep picking off Challengers until drones appear overhead. They dive. As the Chariots burn, the most forward of the Jordanian tanks bulldoze their own incapacitated armor off the road and proceed westward. There are no more Israeli tanks. Around the next turn, a sign in Hebrew, English, and Arabic reads JERUSALEM 5KM.
All in all, the Islamic Liberation Force—so the Arab and Iranian invaders have styled themselves—will utilize no fewer than six thousand drones, their warheads constructed of depleted uranium from the nuclear reactors Iran convinced the world were limited to peaceful use.
The drones, a product of the People’s Republic of China, whose need for oil is all but unlimited, are used on every front within the first hours of the war to wipe out Israel’s first line of defense. Planners in the Iranian equivalent of the Pentagon studied Israel’s defense profile from all angles and discovered what the Wehrmacht discovered in preparation for its invasion of Poland: only a thin line protected the interior of the target country. Once that line is shattered, any reserve units would not have a line to defend, and could then be picked off by conventional means, which in the case of armor means overwhelming force of numbers. Thus the Iranian planners demanded full commitment, not one drone held back, and made sure of it by concentrating control of the drone force in Iranian hands. In the twenty-first century, the blitzkrieg is reborn.
30
AT THE ISRAEL AIR Force base adjacent to Ben Gurion International Airport, bulldozers push aside the still-burning jets that litter the field, allowing three surviving IAF F-16s to take off in the direction of Northern Sinai in an attempt to head off a massive Egyptian mechanized infantry force headed to Tel Aviv.
From his bunker in what is left of IDF headquarters in the Kirya, the Chief of Staff orders the Air Force to stop the Egyptians at all costs.
“Jerusalem is lost,” he tells the head of the Air Force. “We must save Tel Aviv. Throw everything you have at them.”
The head of the Air Force, whose heart will give out within hours, victim of a cardiac condition he concealed for a decade, gives the order.
“Roger that,” answers the wing commander as three planes break the sound barrier. His face is still adorned with traces of lipstick.
31
AT AN ARMORED CORPS base thirty miles from the Lebanese border, Misha Shulman finds most of his fellow tankists, the majority from northern Israel and thus closer to the base, in manic disarray. The headlights of his Mercedes reveal the same scene repeated at Armored Corps bases across Israel. Inside the reinforced concrete structure that holds the brigade’s ninety-two tanks and six jeeps, all is ready. The vehicles are gassed up and loaded with ammunition, spare parts, medical equipment, and food rations for two weeks. Trickle-current has kept their battery banks charged. They are ready for action, but for one minor detail. The six-inch-thick sheet-steel gates of the bunkers are locked.
Through the kind of snafu that is common to all armies, even one so well organized as the IDF, the base’s regular-army maintenance crews have been rushed to the front, and with them the keys.
Misha assesses the situation in an instant.
Before him, his fellow tankists attempt to pry open the locks with tire irons from their civilian vehicles, but the tire irons bend and the lock hasps remain rigidly in place. An officer attempts to shoot off a lock with his sidearm. It makes a big noise.
There is a certain absurdity built into the structure of the IDF that is not found in any other army. All armies but the IDF are organized in a top-down command structure in which the best trained, most capable personnel command and those less qualified carry out those commands. But Israel’s defense system is dependent on reserve soldiers who may be corporals in the IDF but run huge businesses in their civilian lives. In order to concentrate on their civilian careers, many leaders of Israeli society avoid taking on the honor of high rank in the reserves because that honor carries the burden of extra months of training and maneuvers every year. The head of a company employing a thousand workers may thus find himself under the command of a schoolteacher whose leadership experience is confined to a classroom of fourth-graders or a farmer whose civilian responsibility is a herd of dairy cows. In times of peace, these differences are swept away in a kind of gentleman’s agreement. But in times of war, leader-ship tends to occur organically.
To wit: Reserve Staff Sgt. Misha Shulman, whose formal education ended before high school, whose military training outside of ten years in the IDF reserves consists of five years on the streets of Moscow, seven years in the Siberian gulag, and twelve years running Israel’s principal criminal organization.
“Get the fuck out of the way,” he shouts to the lieutenants and captains attempting to pry open the locks.
In response, the lieutenants and captains who are in theory his commanding officers melt away from the gates.
Misha is already in his Mercedes: the heaviest model made, two tons of German automobile powered by a five-liter engine so over-engineered it will outlast the car itself. At speed he backs it up thirty feet, then throws the vehicle into drive, flooring it. The car hits the gates so hard the steel gives way with a sound like an enormous hammer pounding a reinforced concrete wall.
The gate remains on its hinges, but one of its doors is bent sufficient for the bright lights of the tank bunker to shine out into the early morning dim.
Misha backs up again, now to fifty feet.
This time, when the vehicle hits, the sound of metal on metal is accompanied by a hiss from the car’s crushed radiator. Beyond the escaping steam is an opening wide enough for a man to slip through.
In a moment the man is in, and in another comes the sound of a Mk IV Chariot tank’s enormous 1200cc diesel starting up. As the other reservists run to the side, Misha among them, the tank snaps open the steel gates of the bunker and pushes Misha’s steaming Mercedes out of the way like a cheap toy.
Brigade 112 is off to war.
32
YIGAL SEES THE CLOUD of dust from half a mile away. The brigade is heading north at speed, probably hitting sixty-five miles per hour and tearing the roadway
into a mulch of pulverized asphalt. In moments he catches up to the rearmost tank, whose commander spots him on his 360-degree video screen. Almost immediately, the entire column slows to a halt, moving off the roadway to give the red BMW a chance to reach the column leader, which is just behind the brigade’s reconnaissance jeeps. When he gets there, Yigal dumps the car by the side of the road. The tank’s hatch opens and Ephraim, his driver, pulls himself out.
Ephraim is one of six Ethiopians in the brigade: three drivers, one loader, one gunner, and one commander. For unknown reasons Ethiopians are drawn to the armored corps. These are the sons of immigrants whose lives in Africa centered on subsidence agriculture, whose most advanced technology is the ox-drawn wood plow—the low-tech model is pulled by a man. These are people who in one generation have leaped from pre-history to computer-guided fire control. As a driver, Ephraim is responsible not only for maneuvering sixty-five tons of war machine but for keeping it operational. He is twenty-eight years old, and like most Israelis has mastered the art of aggressive understatement.
“Yigal,” he says as the man from the red BMW clambers onto the tank, “you almost missed the party. We were going to start without you.”
As is common in the IDF, officers are called by their first names or their nicknames. There is not a private in the IDF who would hesitate to call the chief of staff Pinky.
“Traffic,” Yigal shouts as he settles in to the right of the driver. “Every time there’s a war, it gets awful.” He pulls on his helmet, adjusting the mic over his lips. “To all units, this is Roller One. I need status. Noam, come in. Over.”
Through his earphones, he hears the voice of his operations officer four tanks to the rear, his voice tinny but clear, special filters canceling out the deep roar of the engines just in front of him. To protect the crew, which IDF doctrine holds as being more important than the tank itself, Chariots are the only main battle tank produced whose engine is forward of the crew compartment. This adds tons of steel between the crew and any missile coming head on. The Chariot is less well protected in the rear, but as General Israel Tal, its designer, is said to have explained, “The armored corps is not expected to retreat.”
“Noam to Yigal, we’re in shit. HQ reports two to three hundred cans now crossing Lebanon border at Adamit, invaders splitting, half to coast, the rest southeast to Safed. Ours to interdict coastal force. They’re heading to Haifa. Over.”
“Roger, Noam. Rendezvous Position 253. Repeat: Rendezvous 253. Proceeding to objective in three columns. Noam, stay with me on 79. Itzik, your guys break off on 541. Amir, your cans via 545. Resume forward movement at maximum speed. Confirm, over.”
The battalion commanders report as the tanks start forward, each unit led by two recon jeeps, essentially the eyes and ears of any armored force. Even with 360-degree video, a main battle tank is an ungainly beast that must be led to battle and provided with real-time intelligence. This is especially true at night, when jeep reconnaissance is essential in revealing the enemy’s order of battle. In Yigal’s brigade, as opposed to the more centralized structure of the armored corps as a whole, each recon platoon, either two or three jeeps, reports directly to the commander of his battalion, not to the brigade commander, thus encouraging independent action on the battlefield.
“Amir here. Roger, Yigal. In twenty. Over.”
“Noam confirms. Moving out. Over.”
“Yigal, it’s Misha. Arik probably still on his way. Can’t get him on cell. I’ve taken command. Over.”
“Roger that, Misha. Get yourself a gunner. You can’t do both. Let’s go kick Syrian ass. Over and out.”
“Noam here. Yigal, kicking Persian ass. Over.”
“Say again? Over.”
“Element splitting to coastal road is Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Repeat: Iranian. Over.”
“Impossible, Noam. HQ is paranoid. Over.”
“I wish. ID positive. Updated T-72S. Revolutionary Guard. Over.”
Yigal does not miss a beat. His men expect nothing less. To pause even for a moment would be to telegraph doubt. “Okay, we’ve seen the same tin cans before. Same Russian hardware we know and love. Aim forward and low. That’s the sweet spot. Iranian. Amazing. Over.”
“Bad news, Yigal. Per HQ, these are likely fitted with Russian Svirs. Laser guided, not heat. Over.”
“Roger that, Noam. Revised instruction to all commanders. Stay within three hundred meters. Fire from cover. Lasers inoperable where obstructed. Repeat, obstacle defense. Party time. Over and out.”
In two miles, at the appropriate intersection, Armored Brigade 512 splits off onto three separate roads to regroup at the rendezvous point above Highway 4, which hugs the Mediterranean from the Lebanese border to Haifa.
33
IN THE WAR ROOM of the Revolutionary Guard four stories underground in Teheran, General Niroomad sees something he doesn’t like in the satellite image on the wall of tiled TV screens. “Closer on screen three, colonel.” He likes this less. “What are they thinking? Colonel, get me the Syrian fool.”
The adjutant transmits the order. “Syrian operations, sergeant.”
Almost instantly the small screen in front of General Niroomad opens on the Syrian war room, where Field Marshal Al-Asadi can be seen smoking a cigarette in a long holder.
“Greetings, my brother,” Al-Asadi says in English, smiling as he delivers a virtual slap in the face to Niroomad, whose Arabic is rudimentary despite three years of study. He is smiling.
“Blessings upon you, field marshal. I see all goes well.”
“The fruit of careful planning, my brother.”
“For which you and your magnificent staff are to be commended,” General Niroomad says. “Only one small thing.”
“Certainly, my brother.”
“Regarding your descent from Lebanon...”
“On schedule,” Al-Asadi says. “All proceeding as planned.”
“Yes,” General Niroomad says. “But I beg to bring to your attention a Jew tank brigade moving to intercept Revolutionary Guard armor moving south on the coastal road.”
Al-Asadi flicks the ash off his cigarette in the holder. “This is not possible. Syrian Air Command has neutralized all Israeli armor across the north.”
“Field marshal, I regret to inform your excellency that in this matter your intelligence is faulty.”
A long silence ensues. “Do you offer criticism, my brother?”
“I offer advice. This is the same armored brigade that stopped your tanks in previous wars. And for the same reason: insufficient field intelligence which did not call in air support.”
“Traitors were responsible,” Al-Asadi says with studied coolness. “As you may know, we in Syria have a Shia problem. As a Shia, you yourself know they cannot be trusted.”
“Sunni dog, if you cannot fight a war, at least fight your tongue.”
“Dog? Your mother’s cunt, Persian.”
The screen goes black.
General Niroomad purses his lips. He knows the answer, but asks anyway. General Niroomad assumes nothing: it is his trademark. “Colonel, is there no line of communication with our unit heading south from Lebanon?”
“Only through Damascus, sir.”
“Thank you, colonel.”
“Sir, given twenty minutes perhaps I can revive communication via—”
“Optimistic, colonel, but not realistic. Here then are my orders. Should we receive a Syrian request for support in any action from this moment on, be sure to answer in the affirmative.”
“Certainly, my general.”
“Send nothing.”
“No support, my general?”
“The Sunni dogs are sacrificing our 32nd Tank Division. Do you know who commands that division, colonel?”
“I do, my general.”
“When we finish with the Jews, we will deal with the Sunni,” General Niroomad says, his voice dry, his gaze on the wall of screens. “My son will be avenged.”
34
> IN THE WHITE HOUSE Situation Room, the president and his advisors are joined by Lieutenant General Arthur Hefty, a pragmatic and some would say troglodytically gung-ho Marine who retains the crew-cut he had upon graduation near the bottom of his class at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. Much decorated for his early service as a lieutenant in Marine Reconnaissance during the Vietnam War, and for his frontline abilities as he rose in the ranks in every American military engagement since, General Hefty is a Marine’s Marine. But not necessarily a diplomat’s.
“Arthur,” the president tells him with neither greeting nor preface, “we have a hot request from IDF. What’s available and how fast?”
“Mr. President, the time frame?”
“Seems to be yesterday,” the president says. “Israel has got itself in a kosher pickle.” He pauses for applause, a familiar tic on the stump, and one the American public will see a lot of: this is an election year. Here there is only silence. “Seems we never bothered to share certain intelligence.”