“It’s an honor,” said the husband, whipping a camera to his eye. “By your leave, Colonel?”
“Why not?” The camera flashed.
“God, Colonel Luria, this country,” the woman exclaimed. “The places we’ve been! The Wailing Wall, Masada, Jericho, Hebron, Beersheba. We even climbed Mount Sinai for the sunrise.”
“I have awesome pictures of everything,” said her husband.
“Of course the red carpet is out for us,” Mrs. Freed said. “Julius is the West Coast chairman of bonds. Otherwise, we’d never have gotten into this hotel. So jammed. The whole country is so mobbed. We even had to stand in line to visit that cave in Hebron. You know, where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are buried. Now I can’t wait to read the Old Testament.”
“Let me tell you, Colonel,” said the husband, “you people have made me proud of being a Jew, and also humble. You’re terrific.”
The Freeds went off. The aviator grinned at Pasternak, who was sitting with his eyes almost shut, an insignificant pudgy man in a seersucker suit. “Benny, don’t laugh,” he said hoarsely, “the American Jews are our only sure ally on the face of the earth. Don’t think we’d be getting the Phantoms otherwise.”
“Wasn’t I cordial enough?”
“I guess you were. I get tired, that’s all, of the wise guys here who shit on these American Jews. They’re wonderful. Now listen.” Pasternak dropped one eyelid, and a dusky glint came and went in the other half-closed eye. “Number two, you’ve got the green light.”
Luria sat up. “What? At last?”
“I’ve just come from Jerusalem. I reported to the cabinet, and maybe the news about getting the Phantoms put hair on their chests. Anyway, from now on your aircraft will fight Russians who pursue them.”
“Thank God!” exclaimed Luria.
“Win one fight,” said Pasternak, “just one, and I predict the Russians will make Nasser swallow a reasonable cease-fire.”
Eva Sonshine was again at her desk near the hotel entrance in her blue silk uniform, well-groomed as ever, when Luria approached with a dumpy man in a wrinkled summer suit. Was this, she wondered, the shadowy Sam Pasternak, ultimate political insider and reputed womanizer? Nothing to look at, and his rare pictures in uniform made him out much younger. Luria said, “General Pasternak, Eva Sonshine.”
“Hello,” said Pasternak. “Who do I talk to in the hotel about a wedding?” When he smiled, showing big teeth and opening half-shut eyes, he was more formidable and interesting.
“To me, to start with.” She gestured at a chair, and he sat down.
“Marrying off Amos, Sam?” Luria joshed.
“Amos? Ha! My daughter’s serious about a guy.”
“Daughters can fool you. Don’t sign any contracts. Eva, I have to get back to base very fast. Take good care of General Pasternak.”
“I’ll do my best.” As Luria hurried out she smiled at Pasternak. “What sort of wedding do you have in mind, General?”
“Not sure yet. Do you do Yemenite weddings? Her fellow’s a Yemenite.”
“We do almost anything, but don’t Yemenites usually have those at home, or in a synagogue or something?”
“Possibly. Then again, it could all blow up. I’d like to take you to dinner, if you don’t think Benny would mind.”
Eva lost her breath for a moment. “Benny wouldn’t mind, but what’s the point?”
“I’ve been on the go, I’m low, and I’d enjoy dinner with a pretty woman. If you ran for Miss Israel this year, you’d win it.”
“Oo-ah! That’s a big lie, and I didn’t think anybody remembered.”
“Dinner, then?”
“What time, and where?”
As his driver went speeding through the lush farmlands south of Tel Aviv, Benny Luria’s spirits were high. The melancholia of the morning had blown away like fog on a landing strip, and he was wondering what to do at last about Eva Sonshine.
In the early bravura days of the air force, wenching had been part of the game, with boozing, risky air acrobatics, and a pencil mustache, à la the movie image of the wartime RAF. Those days were gone. The newer pilots in Dov’s age group were no monks, to be sure, but more down-to-earth, less given to playing Errol Flynn. Eva was a cherished relic of that old way of life, and Benny’s disapproval of Daphna, and his desire to be a model for his sons, did not exactly go with a girlfriend planted at the Tel Aviv Hilton.
Eva did not go with his religious stirrings, either. Benny Luria had been feeling these more and more, breaking through the flat concrete of a socialist upbringing. As the number of Phantom pilots dwindled, to the point where he had to get himself qualified in a hurry, and Dov too would soon have to fight, he was asking himself what all those marvellously accomplished Jewish boys were dying for. It had to be for something more than being an admired hotshot airman, and having an Eva Sonshine tucked away in a hotel for rich Americans.
Well, never mind, concentrate on business. Green fields and orchards flashed by as he thought about the coming air battle, working out the briefing in his head, selecting the men to fly the mission. Avi Bin Nun and Asher Snir would be leaders for sure, and he would consult them in picking the other pilots, the best of the best for a mission of missions, teaching a superpower a lesson. It would have to be a convincing clear victory, with no losses to the Heyl Ha’avir, and it could be done; man against man at last, not Jewish pilots against damned Soviet electronics and rocket warheads. …
Day of the sortie, July 30, 1970, 11 A.M.
“B’seder, let’s fly.”
So Luria winds up the briefing as usual, and the pilots hurry out through hot sunshine to their planes, carrying maps, photographs, helmets, and special cameras. No talk whatever about Russians as they pass among the ground crews, just the customary cheery give-and-take before they part into the revetments; Phantom pilots and navigators climbing into their American “wagons,” clunky thunderous giants bristling with missiles and extra fuel tanks, the Mirage soloists like Colonel Luria mounting the ladders to their elegant French birds. These wonderful youngsters are not only unafraid, Benny senses, but eager to take on the foe that has been chasing them back over the Canal with impunity.
Coughing, rumbling, roaring of starting engines, rolling puffs of smoke, the screaming of compressors …
Luria pulls down the canopy of the Mirage, shutting himself into the quieter dark of the cockpit. Check every item in the scuffed manual. Ejection light on. Ease throttle forward. Ease on out, waiting his turn to taxi to the runway. He is not leading the Mirage foursome, younger fliers are running this show. But he is not about to miss it, either. Okay, second group to runway two.
Full throttle, shuddering howl of familiar engines. Into the air, off to the west and to a rendezvous with history, boys with names like Shmuel, Heshi, Moishe, shtetl-descended Jews versus the Red Air Force …
Crossing into Egypt, the Phantoms dive to skim the level sands, while the Mirages climb to thirty thousand feet. Luria expects a quick challenge, a hornet’s nest of MiGs swarming to stop them. His squadron is again using the “Texas” tactic which all but grounded the Egyptian air force back in June. The Mirages penetrate five or six miles up, apparently on reconnaissance only; MiGs scramble up after them; Phantoms ambush the MiGs, roaring in from nowhere. It worked over and over, till the decimated Egyptians quit. About the MiGs’ identity today there will be no doubt, for Russian-speaking Israeli intelligence officers will be monitoring their flight controllers. Anyway, Egyptian pilots are no longer engaging Israeli aircraft.
But where to all the devils are the Russians? Five minutes into the forbidden zone, and no action. Serene sky, serene earth far below, Mirages in air-show formation thrumming along deep into enemy air …
Ah, what confident young faces there were at that briefing! These boys hate the meat-grinder duty of bombing the missile sites. They have trained for air combat, and dodging those “flying telephone poles” instead is a dirty sickening business. When a pilot sees a missile
lock in on the plane of a buddy and blow it up, the experience is horrible. The debriefings have been mournful, the losses appalling, yet their morale is still high.
Voice of the fighter director in Benny Luria’s earphones. “No bandits on our screens yet. Keep going.”
He strains his eyes ahead and above at blue sky, below at slow-moving farmland. So the Russians aren’t on the fighter control radar scopes. So what? Could be atmospherics, could be new electronic countermeasures. Or have the Egyptians warned them about the Texas tactic? Again, so what? Russians afraid of Israelis? Unimaginable. And how will they come at us? No hard intelligence on Soviet air combat doctrine. Or for that matter, on their weapons. Something better than the Sidewinder?
Twelve minutes into the gut of Egypt, and still no Russians. Is it going to be an abort?
On and on, over ground almost as familiar as the Negev or the Galilee from many overflights. Tingling surge of elation in danger, the roaring vibrating Mirage part of his blood and bone. What a mission, the suspense, the unknowns …
Fighter control: “All right, here they come. Two foursomes taking off, from Kutma and Bani-Savif, MiG-21s.”
Ahead and below, between eleven and one o’clock, moving dots climbing and expanding to sleek MiGs. Unmistakable nose cone, Egyptian markings. Eight, no, twelve of them, and the leading interceptor is flying straight up at the leading Mirage with a rattling stream of pale gunfire. Ho, that Russki picked a tough customer. Heshi’s classy rolling maneuver puts him on the Russian’s tail, and he shoots. Smoky trail of the missile, BAM! Billowing smoke and fire, out of which flies the Russian, by God, ejecting and parachuting. First victory over a Soviet pilot. Long float down from thirty thousand feet for Ivan Ivanovich, freeze his Russian balls off. Good luck, Ivan, you’re too far from home, not your fight …
Aircraft crisscrossing, rolling, circling, zooming, diving all around in the wide sky, friendly and enemy, oo-wah, a regular Battle of Britain dogfight. And Benny Luria in the thick of it doing dizzy acrobatics, blue sky and green earth rotating around him, MiGs and Mirages shrinking to toys, then swelling to flash past his canopy …
The Phantoms!
Here they come, shooting almost straight up into the mass melee from their sneak approach along the ground, and far ahead a MiG blowing up in a globe of yellow smoky flame. No pilot ejecting, two victories in two minutes. Nothing so hot about the Russian combat tactics so far, sloppy random shooting of missiles, gunfire at extreme range, cautious flattish maneuvering. Oo-WAH, how about that stupid fool? Diving down on a discarded auxiliary tank … inexperienced, inexperienced … in Benny’s earphones, calm Hebrew jargon, various pilot voices: “Avi, check six, he’s coming up on you … I’ve got this guy in my sights, Eli, break off, break off … Hertzel, I’m two kilometers west of the parachute guy, where are you? …”
Voice of the fighter director, high-pitched: “MORE OF THEM COMING, LADS, TWELVE MORE HAVE TAKEN OFF, LOOK SHARP.”
Luria makes a tight circle over the descending parachute, calling and calling his wingmate. “Dudu, Dudu, where are you? Over.”
Fighting in pairs, looking out for each other, is the way to save your neck. Planes tumble and roar in the unquiet sky over peaceful greenery and glittering irrigation ditches. Wingmate, loud and harsh: “Benny, Benny, break off, I’m coming in behind you, a thousand feet high. Break off, MiG on your tail. I’m going to shoot him with a missile, break off, break off.” Luria veers wide, looks up, sees a Sidewinder smoke past a MiG. Tough! Bad shooting? Malfunction? A Phantom blasts up from below at the MiG, shoots a smoking rigid metal cobra. Great explosion of orange-and-red fire, end of a third Russian.
Fighter control: “Russian transmissions are getting panicky, hevra. Cursing and babbling, reports of low fuel, one fellow swears they’re fighting Americans, another yelling for reenforcements …”
This can’t go on much longer. Fuel running out. Benny has one clear thought, get a MiG. Chance of a lifetime. Twenty or more targets out there, not putting up much of a fight, wandering around at sonic speed. Scared angry Russian youngsters, now that they’re under fire. “What the hell are we doing up here, risking our lives for the silly Egyptians?”
“Dudu, Dudu, check six for me. I’m going after this fellow at twelve o’clock low.”
Dive at full screaming throttle, G’s building up, old painful pressure in stomach and balls, keep him in the scope. He’s there, he’s there. Wait for the whistle of the Sidewinder … there it sounds.
The Russian throws on his afterburner and dives straight down to escape. A Phantom comes zooming up after him, after my MiG! Release the Sidewinder quick, get him first … half a second of receding smoke trail. Hit, flame, spreading black smoke, pieces of the plane flying! But who got him, did the Phantom? Did I?
Returning to base with his fuel gauge needle trembling at zero, Benny does a quick victory roll over the field. Maybe I got that MiG, maybe not, wait for debriefing, meantime roll! Sky, landscape, hangars revolve in the canopy, then he levels off and lands, and as he steps to the tarmac, pails of chilly water drench his sweat-covered head and body. Brrr! Other victors are also doused by laughing ground crews. The pilots, dripping or dry, embrace, punch each other, shouting in jubilation, never mentioning Russians. Secrecy orders, highest stringency.
After the debriefing, wet and somewhat let down — there’s no doubt that the Phantom got the MiG — Benny trots along the walkways of the married officers’ quarters. Since taking squadron command he has avoided coming through here by daylight after a mission. He is the feared messenger, the Angel of Death. But today is different, not a single plane lost. He bangs on the door of his cottage, and out comes Irit in a shapeless housedress, a dust cloth on her hair. “So, back again. Benny, by your life, you’re all wet, let me go!” As she yields to his sopping embrace with joy, he sees two women emerge on nearby porches to watch them, wives of aviators whose parents he visited yesterday; Uri, who spun down and may have been captured, and Mendel, who disappeared in a ball of flame.
“Got to get out of this suit, Irit. Good mission. All the boys came back.”
“Thank God.”
In a hot shower Luria’s spirits revive, as a sober realization returns of what the day’s work has been. Shooting down Russians, driving the Soviet Union out of the Egyptian skies! Well, that was the job, and the boys did it. Now let the politicians sort out the explosive politics.
12
Lost Victory
While the dogfight with the Soviet pilots was raging, Colonel Yossi Nitzan stood with a border patrol team on the Jordanian boundary south of the Dead Sea, peering at a trail of footprints leading through raked sand, severed rolls of barbed wire, and a dug-up patch of minefield. Evidently the infiltrators returning to their hideouts had passed through hours ago, for the prints were half-filled with grit blown by the hot wind. “A small gang, maybe half a dozen,” he said.
From open-top command cars the trackers, heavily armed Bedouins in yellow kaffiyehs, were pulling their camels off dung-splattered wooden platforms amid much Arabic cursing and nasty camel noises and stink. One balky camel, spitting and roaring, caught his driver with a lashing kick that laid him out on the sand.
“New camel. Bad camel,” the leader of the trackers, a master sergeant with an iron-gray mustache, observed to Kishote. These Bedouins, loyal to Israel, were invaluable for some army tasks.
Far down the ruler-straight tarred road that bisected the arid flat Arava to a shimmering horizon, a dust cloud was drawing near. It ground noisily to a halt and a bulky figure, tousle-headed and dust-covered, heaved out of a jeep. General Ariel Sharon, the new southern front commander, had recruited this camel corps and installed the hundred-mile barrier of minefields, barbed wire, and raked sand from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea. On his orders terrorists were now being tracked far inside Jordan, and killed in their mountain retreats.
“So, Kishote, what’s the delay?”
The recalcitrant camel was bellowing and biting the
air, as his bloodied rider tried to seize his bridle.
“Camel insubordination, General.”
“L’Azazel, are you serious?” Sharon climbed up on the platform behind the plunging beast, and bellowing a foul Arabic curse he shoved it stumbling off the platform. The Bedouins yelled appreciation. “Get these trackers going,” he said to Don Kishote, jumping down, “before the trail is stone cold.”
“Sir, suppose I go along with them and see how they operate?”
“You?” Amusement sparkled in Sharon’s eye. “Can you ride a camel?”
“How different is it from a horse?”
“Shh!” Scanning the sky with binoculars, Sharon held up a hand. Overhead sound of many jet engines, a throbbing rumble, the noise seeming to come from far behind the planes.
“Phantoms,” said Kishote. “Lots of them. Returning home.”
“Yes, but also Mirages. Something big went on over there.”
Kishote shouted at the master sergeant, “Well, yallah!” The camels went striding through the wire and the minefield in single file, the yellow kaffiyehs of the drivers fluttering.
“Phantoms and camels,” remarked Sharon. “Some war. Now listen, Kishote, you’re an armor brigade commander, not a baby-faced paratrooper. No adventures on camels. Report to my headquarters at 2000, for some serious business, and by the way, I’m coming to your son’s bar mitzvah.”
“Marvellous, sir.”
In the Hilton’s lower lobby, under a wooden arch lettered in gilt NEW YORK DELI, Yael Nitzan and Lee Bloom walked in through the double doors. “Well! At least it’s air-conditioned,” said Lee. “I’m sweating buckets, and this is a tropical suit!”
Growl of a familiar voice. “Hello, there, Yael.” Sam Pasternak sat in a booth with Eva Sonshine, who twiddled fingers at Yael with a bright smile. Obviously Sam had picked her up at her desk as she was: open-necked white shirtwaist, blue jacket with Hilton insignia, no makeup on that perfect pale skin of the professional beauty. Yael despised Eva for a lightweight, content to be her brother’s longtime doxy. What was that confounded Pasternak doing with her? He said, “Say, isn’t this Kishote’s plutocrat brother from Los Angeles?” The men exchanged tart grins. “What brings you to Israel, Mr. Lee Bloom?”