“To all the devils,” says Barak, “that braking cable is going to part. It has to.”
The thick cable looks in fact as rigid as a telephone pole under the strain, as the braking tank resists the pull from above.
“Not a chance,” says Lauterman. “That cable can tow an aircraft carrier.”
Slowly the tug-of-war begins to favor the towing side, as more of the bridge passes over the crest. The braking tank, dug in like a mule on the up-slope, barely moves. It seems utterly incredible to Barak that the cable does not snap, but in fact it does not. What happens instead is that the bridge, with a sudden startling scream and clang of shearing steel, breaks apart. One half rolls down behind the towing tanks, while the other half sits where it is, draped over the top of the dune, with the cable to the braking tank gone slack. Colonel Yehiel explodes in a stream of very filthy Arabic curses, all directed at General Tal, the bridge, and the art of ceramics, as near as Barak can make out.
“You’re quite right to be annoyed, Yehiel,” says Lauterman, shaking his head sadly. “Now why the devil did Shimon Shimon do that?”
“Shimon Shimon?” exclaims Barak. “The artist? What’s he got to do with it?”
“He’s in the braking tank,” says Kishote.
“Shimon is?”
“Yes, and what could you expect?” rages Yehiel. “Didn’t I say we should put in an ordnance officer, not a verkakteh menorah maker?”
Barak asks, “How long a delay does this mean?”
Yehiel looks at the Jeptha man, who says, “Not long, sir. I worked on the design of those links. They’re made for quick replacement. Three hours, maximum.”
“I’m riding in that braking tank,” says Colonel Yehiel, “from here to the Canal.”
“You’re upset, Yehiel,” says Lauterman. “I don’t blame you. Well, back to work.” He walks toward the broken bridge, spinning his yo-yo. Repair personnel are already trudging up the dune, as the tank crews climb out of the turrets to see what is going on.
Staring after Lauterman and the jumping yo-yo, Barak says to Kishote, “Sanity has no place in this project, has it?”
“Well, I’ll tell you, General Barak,” Yehiel puts in, calming down, “that yo-yo guy does know what he’s doing. We’ll be moving again by midday.”
“Just an eccentricity,” adds Kishote. “Engineers tend to be odd. Say, there’s that young relative of yours, Zev.” He calls to a figure running by, all sand and grease from head to foot. “Dzecki, come over here. Yehiel, let’s have a look at that break.”
Dzecki trots up to Barak and salutes. “Hi, Uncle Zev. What a surprise. Sorry you have to see such a balagan.”
“Well, it was spectacular.”
“Look, sir, please report to the Prime Minister that this bridge is working. Because it really is.” At Barak’s ironic glance toward the wreck, Dzecki bristles. “Okay, what about the space program back in the States? One fashla after another, no? But they got to the moon, didn’t they? And this bridge will get to the Canal.”
“It had better.”
“I get so sick and tired,” exclaims Dzecki, “of all the jokes about the bridge. The Egyptians put seven Soviet bridges across the Canal, latest equipment. No country would sell us anything but old junk like crocodiles and pontoon cubes. We had to invent something.”
Barak smiles and clasps his shoulder. “You’re quite right, and I admire you. Get back to your job.”
“Yes, sir. Please phone my folks, tell them I’m okay.” Dzecki runs off.
“A mess, but it’ll be all right,” says Kishote, returning. “Want to come to the Yard at Deversoir with me? That’s where the crossing is happening.”
“Good enough.”
The half-track goes bumping down the dune. “Well, Zev, what do you think of the great roller bridge?”
“That bridge is Zionism,” Barak says.
Kishote looks blankly at him, then a rueful smile wrinkles his broad mouth. “Just so, and it’s going to work. The waters won’t part, but we’ll pass over them.”
“Halevai.”
The helicopter pilot stands by his machine, watching open-mouthed the tanks struggling with the broken bridge, and soldiers climbing all over the two pieces. Kishote asks him, “What are your orders?”
“To take General Barak wherever he says, sir, except into combat areas.”
“Very well,” says Kishote. “Let’s go.”
“Sir, I circled for an hour with General Adan yesterday, waiting for air force permission to land at Point Kishuf. I never got it.”
“Right. I understand. Yallah.”
“B’seder, sir.” As they lift off Kishote radios for a jeep to meet them at Deversoir, outside the direct fire zone. “Deversoir? I have to report this flight, sir,” says the pilot in the headphones. “Shall I say General Nitzan is ordering me to do it?”
“No, no. I’m threatening you, scaring you, and ordering you not to report it. My responsibility. I’ll tell your superiors that. We’ll sort it all out after the war.”
“That’s fine,” says the pilot dubiously. “Thank you, sir.”
Through Kishote’s binoculars Barak gets a horrifying, gut-churning view of the Chinese Farm battlefield. “Something of a problem”! In this gruesome aftermath of the night battle, smashed and burned-out tanks and APCs dot the rough terrain as far as he can see, some still smoldering. There must be hundreds of destroyed machines; he cannot identify them from this height, but a large number must be Israeli. A lot of Jewish boys, too, must be lying killed among all those pitiful tiny sprawled bodies, though most probably have been removed with the wounded in the darkness.
“The Valley of Death,” he says to Kishote.
Kishote nods, his face empty of its usual humor, a sad unshaven mask. As the helicopter comes down Barak can see two-way ferry traffic crossing the Canal, and the paratroopers and tanks busily moving here and there on the other side. A jeep speeds them to the Yard, where Arik Sharon stands bareheaded, waiting. “Well, Zev Barak!” He looks terribly haggard, but his hearty handshake and tough grin are undaunted. “By my life, you’re a welcome sight. Imagine, we’re winning a great battle, and you’re the first general who’s showed up to see what’s actually going on.”
In Barak’s opinion there are only two ways with Ariel Sharon, you are for him or against him. They are almost of an age. Early on Barak saw himself in a race with Sharon and others for army advancement, but Arik has long since charged ahead into his controversial star role, by many distrusted, by some adulated. Without rancor or envy Zev Barak is on the whole against him, for his cruel Bonapartist streak. Israel is too small for a Napoleon, and too Jewish. He can’t help acknowledging Sharon’s ruthless resolve and military know-how, and this crossing so far has mainly been his doing, but that Chinese Farm shambles! Also his doing …
“I hope we’re winning, Arik.”
“Well, maybe I should have said that we were winning.” The magnetic mien flashes into rage. “I’ve just received the most incredible, inept, destructive, defeatist order of my career from Gorodish. ‘Halt all crossing activity’! Zev, look here.”
Spreading a map on the jeep hood, Sharon argues fiercely for continuing the attack. Surprise is a great but fleeting advantage. His deceptive stroke, a frontal attack on the Second Army, worked out well, convincing the enemy that the Chinese Farm fight was only a diversion, whereas it was the main thrust. Those valorous boys shielded the way of the paratroopers and their boats to the crossing. “Zev, seizing the moment is all of generalship, you know that, and there’s no generalship at Southern Command. Now is the time to throw our strength across the Canal. Not thirty-six hours from now. Now. Today! We can ferry a tank across in seven minutes, and we have four ferries going. Bren Adan and I can be across with two divisions before the Egyptians know what’s happening and —”
“Arik, you’ll need fuel, ammunition —”
“We can ferry those too until a bridge is up. The momentum, the momentum is everything
. We’ve got it now. Gorodish is squandering it, throwing it away, throwing away the campaign and the war.”
“But lacking even one bridge —”
“Zev, I swear to you the Egyptian front will collapse, if we cross in strength today and start to cut them off from behind. They’ll be pulling back their armor in panic, and, Zev, once they start retreating across the Canal they’re finished. They’ve been coasting on their amazing success of the first two days. If only —”
“Arik, can I get over to Africa?”
Sharon brightens. “You want to do that? Kol ha’kavod! But if anything should happen to you —”
“Golda ordered me to see what’s going on.”
“Yossi, get him a helmet and take him over.”
Led by Kishote through racketing tanks, APCs, and halftracks, Barak jumps after him onto a pontoon raft, where a Centurion is rolling aboard with a deafening clank of iron on iron. The propelling unit snorts, the raft moves off over still water, and Zev Barak’s blood stirs. Seventeen years since his last combat, the march on Sharm el Sheikh in the Suez War … The Chinese Farm carnage is hideous, but what alternative is there to fighting, as long as the Arabs keep trying “the military option”?
“Yossi, man to man, can this crossing continue?”
“Zev, it must.”
“No bridges? The main roads blocked? A single weak supply line with heavy enemy armor choking it north and south?”
“Yes, it’s so audacious the enemy can’t believe we’re trying it.” Kishote’s tone is hard and positive. “They think it’s an empty feint. That’s our big chance. The Jewish God is throwing a deep sleep on them.”
Egypt under my boots, by God! What a contrast to the tobacco-poisoned tension and boredom of the Pit, the nervous tirades at Southern Command!
Here at last is Zahal of Barak’s young years. Alert confident helmeted Jewish boys ride fast-moving machines through a beautiful green watered setting like a field exercise in the Jezreel Valley; all the more like an exercise in that the enemy is — at least here in Africa — almost an abstraction. No gunfire at all, only sporadic sputters to the north over in Sinai. The commandeered half-track crosses a narrow freshwater irrigation canal and rolls through palm trees, lush orchards, and cultivated fields to Danny Matt’s signal truck, where a hefty tank brigade commander, Colonel Haim, is just back from a reconnaissance in force. Aglow with success, Haim reports destroying several missile batteries with a ten-tank company, and sending a mobile SAM-6 unit running off toward Cairo. “They were totally surprised, Danny, no opposition but feeble machine-gun fire.”
“But the surprise is over now,” says Barak.
“Not necessarily, sir,” says Danny Matt, a tall colonel with a black Theodor Herzl beard. “Thank God, they still seem to think we’re a diversion. But, Yossi, Yossi, when are the rest of Haim’s tanks coming? And what about the timetable? What about Adan’s division?”
Kishote says little, and nothing about the halt order. As he and Barak return on an empty raft, three crocodile ferries go by the other way, each carrying a tank. They find Sharon haranguing two very grim and grimy brigade commanders, one of them bloodily bandaged. “Well,” he says to Barak, “so did you see a defeat? A disaster? Are we surrounded? Is it a Sharon catastrophe?”
“It’s a courageous start, Arik, very risky but very powerful. I’ll tell Golda that.”
Sharon brightens. “That’s all I ask. Meantime these fellows here have cleared the Tirtur and Akavish Roads alongside the Chinese Farm. There’s still gunfire going on, and I’m not saying we won’t have to keep fighting, but we’ve secured our supply line.”
“We have,” croaks one of them. “And it wasn’t easy.”
“Those tanks that just went over, Arik — what about the order to halt?”
“Why, I wouldn’t dream of disobeying Gorodish, that would be insubordination,” says Sharon with a crafty grin. “I’d already ordered those three tanks of Haim’s to cross, you see, and I couldn’t break the crews’ hearts.”
“Ah. Are there many more hearts not to be broken?”
“Look, Zev, I’m grateful that you came. You’ve seen it with your own eyes now. For God’s sake just tell Golda and Dado they’ve got a great victory in the making here, if only they’ll get Bar-Lev and Gorodish off my back!”
Golda Meir greets Barak when he comes into her office by flinging both arms in the air. “Kosygin is in Cairo. How about that? The Premier of the Soviet Union! Can you imagine Nixon flying here, to tell me how to conduct policy? We’re fighting the Russians, plain and simple. Sit down, Zev, you look tired. Did you hear Sadat’s big parliament speech?”
“No, Madame Prime Minister, I’ve been on the move.”
“Well, nothing new. He’ll consider a cease-fire if we’ll just go back behind the old armistice lines and so on. Generous. Your wife’s a charming lady, my grandchildren loved her. So, what did you see? The military’s been opening up a bit, but you’re an eyewitness. What’s going on down there?”
He does not mince words about the traffic jams and the Chinese Farm havoc. Her face falls. “I knew it. I knew there was trouble. They’re still soft-pedalling it for me.” But at his picture of Zahal in Egypt she turns radiant. “Why, Zev, that’s what matters. We’re carrying the fight to them. We’re back to being ourselves. A week ago who would have predicted this?” When he starts the topic of the halted crossing she holds up a flat palm. “Zev, Dado is fighting this war, he’s doing a good job, and I won’t second-guess him. Now the bridge. What about the bridge?”
She cannot help a painful smile at his account, shaking her head. “Tallik’s patents.”
“It will get there, Madame Prime Minister. Meantime they’re putting over a bridge of pontoons.”
She stands up heavily. “I’m very glad I sent you. Come along now, I have to respond to Sadat in the Knesset.”
When she mounts the podium with a proud look and a fighting face, the buzz subsides in the Knesset chamber and the galleries, usually half-empty but now crowded wall to wall. Her first words are an apology for the delay in disclosing casualties. She accepts full responsibility. Enemies were listening, and the news of the first days’ losses would have given them aid and cheer. The whole country’s grief has weighed on her heart for a week. Now she is sharing it with the families of the fallen and the wounded, who bore the brunt of the surprise assault and saved Israel.
“Some nations fault us for ‘inflexibility’ ” — a bitter smile — “in insisting on peace treaties as the price for returning territories our enemies lost in the Six-Day War. But we remember all too well how Nasser, when we stood on the old armistice lines, announced that the Arabs were going to wipe out the ‘Zionist entity’ once and for all. Now suppose this new unprovoked attack, on our holiest day, had struck at those same lines? We who lived through the dread weeks of May 1967 can easily imagine, and we will never never take that risk again. Let our enemies know that.”
Well, there’s her answer to Sadat, and plain enough, thinks Barak.
“Some of these very nations that deplore our ‘inflexibility’ have declared a hypocritical ‘embargo’ on our region,” Golda’s voice rises in anger, “which only means they won’t have to deliver defense materials we’ve bought and paid for, while the Soviet Union is flooding the most advanced munitions to our foes. Fortunately, to redress this unjust imbalance, the United States of America alone has stepped in with an airlift —” A standing ovation drowns her out and sweeps the chamber, and also the whole gallery except for the diplomatic section. “An airlift, I say, that will have the everlasting gratitude of the Jewish people.
“Moreover, not only have Egypt and Syria, outnumbering us more than twenty to one in manpower, been waging all-out war on us, with massive resupply and expert guidance of the Soviet Union, they have been openly joined by the armed forces of Iraq, Morocco, Jordan, and Libya. Yes, we too are now getting help from America,” she looks straight up at the diplomatic section, “but in figh
ting to survive we are doing it ourselves.” In this round of applause Barak sees a few diplomats furtively clap.
“How well we’re doing, I’m not prepared to reveal. As I say, the enemy is listening. But we have pushed back the enemy in the north, in the south our forces are operating on both sides of the Suez Canal, and further disclosures —” She has to stop as a ripple of noise spreads through the chamber. “Further disclosures will come as appropriate, from our gallant army leadership.
“I turn now to the domestic tasks that lie before us …”
She has not proceeded far when Barak feels a tap on his shoulder. At the whispered word, “Telephone call from the Ramatkhal,” he hurries to a corridor telephone. Dado comes on with a roar of anger. “By my life, Barak, has she lost her wits? The grossest breach of security! Places in danger the lives of all my soldiers in Africa! Compromises the operation! Why to all the devils did she do it?”
“Sir, after all the bad news I guess she wanted to say something uplifting —”
“Any uplifting event in the field was for the military to disclose!”
“Also, sir” — Barak is doing his best to sound calm, for Dado in a rage is unnerving — “if Kosygin’s pressing Sadat for a ceasefire, this may give us more time to carry the fight into Egypt. Now that the world will know we’ve crossed the Canal, Sadat may well dig in so he won’t seem to be collapsing.”
Tense pause. “She doesn’t think that way,” growls the Ramatkhal. “It’s too subtle. Anyhow, Zev, you just convey to her in no uncertain terms that I’m furious, and that she has harmed our chances of winning the war.”
Crash of receiver.
Early next morning heads turn as the most recognizable Israeli of all strides into the bustling Tel Aviv Hilton in army fatigues and Vietnam cap. Israel’s plushiest hotel is full up, though not with tourists. Those birds of passage have long since taken flight, and birds of another feather have wheeled and alighted; foreign correspondents, radio commentators, TV anchormen, film crews, combat photographers, and the like. The compound bird’s-eye of the media is ever cocked for a fresh episode of the perils of Israel. Dayan joins Sam Pasternak and Eva Sonshine at a coffee table in the lounge, looking around at the journalists with one reddened eye. “So, Eva, what are the vultures croaking about today?”