At once Sharon says, “Kishote, tell General Bar-Lev exactly what you know and what you think. Pull no punches. That’s an order.”
Don Kishote looks Bar-Lev in the eye. “The bridges will be there in the morning, sir,” he says with soldierly calm.
Bar-Lev returns the look and after a moment says, “Good enough. Good luck, Arik. God keep our fighters who have to carry out this murderous plan of yours.”
Kishote remains in the caravan while Sharon accompanies Bar-Lev to his helicopter. Returning, Sharon punches his shoulder. “Well done.”
“What’s the use of a reputation for reliability,” says Kishote, “if you can’t lie when it matters?”
“When I’m Prime Minister, Don Kishote, you’ll be my Minister of Defense.”
“Sir, I’d better get out and crack some heads on the roads.”
“One moment.” Sharon drops into a chair. His genial confident look fades into stony concern. “Yossi, will the bridges really be there at some time tomorrow? And what about the rafts for the tanks tonight? Without tank support I can’t send Danny over. You know that.” Colonel Danny Matt commands the paratrooper infantry brigade.
“Sir, I’ll have another look at the roller bridge first, then I’ll follow up on the rafts.”
“B’seder. If I’m going to attack at dusk, remember, the division has to start out no later than three o’clock.”
“Understood, sir.”
27
The Crossing
Kishote wonders, espying the bridge far off on the move, whether he may not inadvertently have told Bar-Lev the truth. It is creeping steadily over the wide empty desert in the noonday sun trailed by its supply vehicles, fuel trucks, and AA half-tracks, with the “short bridge” of spare rollers bringing up the rear; and when it comes to a rise in the ground it goes straight ahead, humping itself over like a vast caterpillar over a rock, and continues on its way.
“Sir, that has got to be the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,” says Sarak, staring in disbelief. They are approaching the bridge in the signal jeep. “Shimon’s told me about it, but hearing isn’t like seeing.”
“That weird thing won the Israel Prize,” says Kishote. “Pull alongside the half-track.”
“It should win the Nobel Prize,” says Sarak, “if they give one for lunacy.”
Accompanying the bridge in a half-track are Haim Lauterman and the newly assigned colonel, a stumpy desert-dried ordnance officer named Yehiel. The moving colossus raises a considerable tumult as it labors along; snorts and rumbles of the ten tanks, nine towing and one braking; clanks, screeches, hollow booms, and some up-and-down writhing with great groans. The smooth movement is an illusion of distance. Up close the bridge is a protesting tortured Frankenstein of steel, doing its masters’ will but screaming to the sky that it should never have been created.
“How’s it going?” Kishote shouts at Lauterman.
“Slick as water, sir,” the Jeptha man calls back. “We’ll be at Tirtur at three o’clock, no problem.”
“Kishote, what the hell am I doing here?” bawls Yehiel. He is an old friend, a reliable hard-charging commander. “This bridge is okay. I’ve got a lot of urgent things to do at Tasa.”
“Get the bridge to the Canal, Yehiel. Nothing’s more urgent.”
“If you say so, Yossi.”
Yehiel waves as Kishote’s jeep drives ahead; an unlucky guy, that Yehiel, slated for brigadier general until his secretary accused him of raping her. In the ensuing mess, though not officially penalized — Yehiel claimed it was a mutual attraction, and that she proved to be a mental case — he lost all advancement prospects. The woman emigrated to Los Angeles, and still writes him love letters, or so he says. Anyway, Yehiel is now just serving out his time, much embittered.
Straight ahead a high white dune stretches east to west for perhaps a quarter of a mile without a break; impossible to go around, for the bridge is not built for turns, so it will have to climb over the obstacle.
“Sarak, drive up on that dune. I want to watch this.”
“B’seder.”
As the jeep mounts the hard-packed slope, the wireless receiver squawks, “Flagpole Central to Yossi.”
“Yossi here.”
“Flagpole wants to know where you are.”
“Tell him I’m observing Snake, heading for Tirtur, ETA 1400, all normal.”
“And what about crocodiles?”
“Proceeding next to check crocodiles.”
“Hundred percent. Out.”
With nine tanks hauling it up the slope — three yoked in front, three more pulling on each side, and the braking tank trailing behind on an extra-thick cable — the bridge slowly, slowly crawls up the dune, amid showers of sand from the tank tracks, savage engine roars, and great clouds of dirty blue exhaust. The three leading tanks pass the crest and start down. The first rollers follow over the top, and the bridge begins to move more easily and a little faster, as the drag of gravity behind decreases. What happens after that goes very quickly, and Kishote does not understand it at first, or quite believe his eyes. As though coming alive and revenging itself on its tormentors, the bridge takes off, scampers down the hill with great squeals and clanks, and leaps up on a leading tank with a hellish colliding crash and a shower of sparks. There it stops, its huge length stretching back almost to the crest of the dune in a boil of dust and smoke.
“God in heaven, I hope nobody’s killed,” Kishote exclaims. “Let’s get down there, Sarak.”
“By my life, I think Shimon is in that tank.” Sarak throws the jeep into gear and hurtles down the slope.
When they reach the scene Yehiel is pounding at the tank hull with a wrench, and getting answering bangs from inside. Yehiel exclaims to Kishote, “They’re responding in there, anyway. What a fashla! Who ever dreamed up this rolling nightmare?”
“Can you get them out?”
“Sure, but it’ll take a while.”
Lauterman is peering up at the rollers that mounted the tank. “That first roller is kaput,” he says to Kishote. “We’ll have to replace it, and I guess we’ll need another tank.”
Trotting around to the other side of the wreckage, Kishote crawls under a giant roller hanging askew, and manages to pry loose the tank’s hull telephone. “Hello, in there! Brigadier General Nitzan here. Are you all right?”
“Hi, General. Shimon Shimon here.” The ceramicist sounds very hoarse and trembly. “All right? We’re pretty shaken up. It sounded like the end of the world in here. The loader is bleeding, he fell, nothing serious. How can we get out, sir? Both turret hatches are jammed.”
“They’re working on it now.”
“Well, the sooner the better. Not to put too fine a point on it, sir, one of us has shit in his pants. It’s a bit stuffy in here.”
“Open any vents you can. You’re not in danger. The bridge got away and ran up on you, that’s all.”
“Sir, I warned the idiot commander of the brake tank about just that! He must have been asleep, or jerking off. He’s from Savayon, the jerk-off capital of Israel.” Savayon is a wealthy suburb, much abused by people who don’t live there.
Yehiel is discussing with the tank commanders gathered around him how to pull the bridge off the tank. The Jeptha man stands by listening. Yossi says, “Lauterman, any ideas?”
“Uncouple the first two rollers, I’d say, sir. Back up the bridge and they’ll probably just fall off the tank. Maybe it’s even usable. These cylinders are hollow, and that Patton has a strong hull.”
Yehiel overhears him, and glances at him with a trace of respect. “Excellent. That’s it. Get your engineers to do the disconnecting, and we’ll free the tank.”
As Lauterman goes off, Yehiel takes Kishote aside and says in a guttural whisper, “Kishote, that fellow plays with a yo-yo.”
“Well, he knows his stuff. We all do strange things.”
“To the devil, that’s true enough. If I’d had a yo-yo, and a different secretary, I might be a bri
gadier general.”
“How long a delay, Yehiel?”
The colonel squints at the bizarre pileup of rollers on the tank, then at the bridge stretching far up the slope, the tanks stalled with limp cables dangling from them, and the soldiers swarming out of the personnel carriers to work on the wreck. “I’d guess two to four hours.”
The Jeptha colonel is already giving instructions to a knot of grease-streaked sappers. “A word with you,” Kishote says to him.
“Certainly, sir. Dzecki!” Lauterman calls. “Come along here.”
“Yes, sir.”
The three walk a little way up the slope, amid settling dust and pungent drifting smoke. “Is this going to happen again, Lauterman? Or anything like it?”
“General, this bridge traversed such obstacles with ease — bigger ones too — when Major Pasternak’s tanks towed it. Dzecki, confirm that.”
“That’s right, sir. Any number of times, before they got sent off to the north.”
“There you are,” says the Jeptha man defensively. “You can’t blame the bridge, sir. It’s an inspired, beautiful construction. A work of genius! But it’s meant for trained handling.”
“You’re not answering my question. Will it happen again?”
Lauterman brings out the yo-yo, and absently spins it. “Sir, I’d ride in that braking tank myself, but frankly I get claustrophobia in a tank. Even with both turrets open, I want to puke or scream. I’ve done both. My hat’s off to these tank fellows, I tell you.”
“Colonel, may I suggest something?” says Dzecki.
“Yes?”
“Why not put Shimon Shimon in that rear tank, sir, instead of in the lead? He’s very familiar with all this. He can control the braking better than anyone else.”
“Elohim, a good idea,” says the Jeptha man.
“Hundred percent, Dzecki,” says Kishote. “Lauterman, you do just that.”
As he leaves the bridge, Yossi is unworried. Yehiel is a tough man who gets things done. In his bizarre way Lauterman is impressive, too. The bridge will reach the water by morning. Meantime he must make sure that enough rubber dinghies and other equipment are on the move to carry out the paratrooper crossing at Deversoir tonight. It is one thing to fib to Bar-Lev, so as to counter his hostility to Sharon’s plan which, risky as it is, seems to Kishote the best chance to end the war in Israel’s favor. It is another to commit two divisions to a terrible firefight, in an operation that can’t be supported logistically and is likely to collapse.
What he sees on the narrow black ribbons of road twisting through the high dunes and ridges discourages and confounds him. Long long lines of machines are still backed up for miles, clear out of sight, where a sharp turn, or a crossroads, or a broken-down heavy vehicle has halted traffic both ways. At these ganglions of delay traffic-control officers are now posted, trying hard to unsnarl the massive blockages. But General Adan’s division has been rolling down from the northern sector to its assembly point for crossing after Sharon; nearly three hundred tanks, with hundreds of APCs and supply vehicles. The situation is actually worsening.
“I’ll take the wheel, Sarak.”
Kishote goes tearing back to Tasa, at some points climbing up high dunes and plunging down them at roller-coaster angles, cutting off long stretches of blocked traffic and giving the journalist stomach butterflies. Yoram Sarak has learned to be silent as he rides with Brigadier General Nitzan, who can be genial one moment and frighteningly stern the next. Sarak is keeping a daily war diary which he counts on publishing in magazine installments, and afterward as a book. In his job as driver-signalman for Nitzan, he is getting a valuable inside view of Sharon’s campaign.
But after a very long silence, as they speed back to base, Sarak cannot hold his peace. “Sir, it isn’t going to happen.”
Not looking at him, his face abstracted and gloomy behind dust goggles, Kishote says, “What isn’t?”
“The crossing. Not tonight.” Nitzan is silent. The jeep jolts speedily along. “Sir, I wrote an article about the crossing problem back in May for Yediot. It’s not just that bridge. They’ll probably get it repaired. It’s the crocodiles and pontoon rafts. There’s no way in the world they can get to Deversoir tonight.”
Nitzan’s silence chills the journalist, and he regrets opening his mouth, a rare feeling.
At Tasa, the division is already drawn up in hot afternoon sunshine for the night assault; three brigades of about a hundred tanks each, stretching far and wide over the sands with their APCs, half-tracks, self-propelled artillery, AA guns, and support trucks and busses. Surveying the panorama, hands on hips, Sharon sees Kishote and beckons. “Quite a sight, Kishote, eh?”
“Yes, sir. Quite a sight.”
At the sober tone Sharon gives him a sharp look. “Well, come along.” Back in the caravan he slices some yellow cheese, and with it eats dried apricots from a bowl. “So? Your report.” Tersely Kishote gives him the picture. Silent moments pass before Sharon speaks. “The crocodiles are the critical element, Yossi. I know the pontoon rafts are hard to move on those enormous transporters, but the crocodiles run on their own wheels. Why can’t they make it?”
“Sir, I know the location of all the crocodiles. You can’t hold to your timetable. None of them will be here by midnight.”
“No? How about by dawn?” Kishote shakes his head. “By mid-morning, then?”
“Half a dozen or so, possibly. Most of them later.”
Sharon picks up the telephone. “Connect me with General Bar-Lev … Yossi, three crocodiles lashed together can ferry a tank. We’ve done it in exercises.”
“Yes, sir. In exercises. If the landing is a surprise, well and good. In an opposed landing if a shell or even shrapnel hits a crocodile’s rubber float, down it goes, and the tank with it.”
“Bar-Lev? Sharon here. I’m reporting with regret that the timetable I gave you for the crossing tonight turns out a little optimistic … Yes, I know. But Yossi Nitzan himself has been out on the roads, and the bottlenecks that have since developed, what with Adan’s division … The roller bridge? Minor breakdown. It’s being repaired. But the traffic problem …” A long pause. Sharon darts a glance at Kishote. “I see. Let me give that some thought. I’ll ring you back shortly.” He hangs up. “Predictable, that Bar-Lev! He says Southern Command recognizes the problems and is sympathetic. If I request a postponement for twenty-four hours, it will be approved. He didn’t say ‘I told you so,’ but it was in his voice. The cat that ate the bird.” Sharon regards his deputy through half-closed eyes. “What do you think?”
Don Kishote is slow to answer. “Sir, today you have a green light. Tomorrow there may be a red light, from the UN, or Southern Command, or Kissinger. If you go tonight, the army will follow. You can commit this army to a crossing, nobody else.”
“It’s not necessarily true that the army will follow me.” Sharon’s ebullience is all gone. His face is graven with heavy lines. “The army may follow, and it may not. The operation may never get a chance. If things go badly in the first few hours — and that’s a fifty-fifty shot — Gonen or Bar-Lev or even Dayan may get cold feet and abort it. Just another Arik Sharon brainstorm, that killed a lot of Jewish boys to no purpose.”
“Sir, there’s no way to win this war except to cross the Canal.”
“Yes, I’ve pointed that out once or twice. You’re right that after tonight the light can suddenly turn red. Yet you’ve just told me that I don’t have the means to cross tonight.”
“Maybe postponement is the answer, then, sir. En brera.”
“It’s no answer.” Sharon shakes his head brusquely. “The whole operation turns on surprise. Our preparations are already visible. A day’s delay, an alerted enemy, and the bridgehead may not be an achievable objective.” He leans his face on a hand over his eyes.
On impulse Don Kishote says, “General Sharon, release me from other duties and let me go out on the roads tonight and stay there, all night if I have to. I’ll commandeer ta
nks and bulldozers. I’ll shove vehicles off the asphalt into the sand. I’ll order every kind of unit, including General Adan’s tanks, to make way for the crocodiles and rafts. I’ll threaten court-martials. I’ll draw my gun, if I must. It requires a general, sir, to get this thing unsnarled, and I’ll do it.”
Sharon looks up. “And if so, what result can I count on?”
His mind running back over the bottlenecks he has seen, Kishote replies — with a very strong sense of jumping off into the unknown, and perhaps taking Sharon’s ten thousand men with him — “Sir, six crocodiles in the water at dawn. More at midday, with the first pontoon rafts.”
“I said count on, Kishote.”
“I heard you, sir.”
Grasping the telephone with a swoop of a thick hand, not taking his eyes off Kishote, Sharon calls General Bar-Lev.
“Acapulco!”
In Kishote’s headphones, at two o’clock in the morning, the long-awaited signal from the paratroop leader; the first unit has gone over in rubber dinghies and landed on the other side. Near his jeep a bulldozer is pushing a stalled empty tank transporter off the Refidim road in bright moonlight, to break a mile-long traffic jam. Three and a half hours behind schedule, the thing is happening, the Canal has been crossed.
Sharon on the command network, calm and cheery: “Well done, Danny. What’s the situation over there?”
Easygoing tones of Colonel Danny Matt: “So far, so good. We’re cutting the wire fences. Very quiet here. Not so quiet over on your side to the north, I see. Plenty of trouble at the Chinese Farm.” Toward midnight the so-called Chinese Farm has erupted like a volcano, and it has been flaming and thumping ever since.
This abandoned Egyptian agricultural station partly blocks the roads on the way to the Canal, so Sharon’s forces are battling to clear the entrenched enemy out of the “Farm,” where several square miles are crisscrossed with embankments and irrigation ditches, perfect cover for concealed defenders. “Chinese Farm” is a complete misnomer. After the Six-Day War the army found rusting machinery there, with Oriental lettering, probably Japanese. The soldiers dubbed it “the Chinese Farm” and the name has stuck to this widespread and very formidable military obstacle.