“Right, sir.” Leiber ran into the cabin. The passengers had come through the fall with barely an injury, but they were all anxiously eyeing the six-potential exits and beginning to cluster around them. Leiber found Beth Abrams sitting against the galley bulkhead with Miriam Bernstein. He whispered in her ear, then moved off and spoke to Esther Aronson and the Foreign Minister.
Beth Abrams, Esther Aronson, and Ariel Weizman moved quickly up to the flight deck. The two women immediately unstrapped Kahn and Burg. They began carrying the men, one at a time, back into the cabin.
The Foreign Minister leaned over Becker’s shoulder and spoke quietly. “Are we sinking?”
Becker waited until the two women were out of the door with Burg. “Yes. We are. If we sink suddenly, we will all be drowned. You may want to order an evacuation now.”
“But the wounded—”
“Put life jackets on them, sir. They can’t stay here.”
“Can’t we get to land?”
Becker looked out the side windows. To his left he saw the mounds of Babylon slide by. He looked back at the citadel mound where he had thought he was going to meet his end. He could see a few commandos on the top of the glacis and a few on the bank waving to him. Some of the commandos had lowered rubber rafts in the river and were pursuing the Concorde. Ahead on the west bank, he could see an earth quay in the distance and a small village. There appeared to be commandos there as well. Help was all around them, but it might as well be in Jerusalem. The Euphrates had him caught in midstream, and he didn’t see how he was going to beach the aircraft. No one could say that he should have thought of that when he took it over the side. He had thought of it, but it seemed like a totally inconsequential question ten minutes before. He looked out the right window. The aircraft might beach itself if it could float on for some distance. But it couldn’t. “We’ve come so far,” he said.
“And we’re so close,” said Ariel Weizman. “And we did not come this far to drown like rats in this cursed river of our sorrow.” He looked out at the muddy water encircling them.
“Did Hausner ever get aboard?” asked Becker.
“No. He stayed.”
Becker nodded. “How’s Miriam—Mrs. Bernstein?”
Weisman shot a glance at Becker. “She’ll be fine, Captain,” he said formally.
Becker turned as the two women carried Peter Kahn out into the cabin. He looked at the bloody water on the floor running back into the cabin as the aircraft tilted upwards. He turned back in his chair. “Salem Hamadi was in here.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, sir. Just thinking out loud.” He watched the two banks slide by. The aircraft was moving more slowly now as they took on more water. Someone—the commandos, the fighter pilots, or he himself—would have to think of something very quickly.
Becker settled back in his chair. He had finally become accustomed to sitting in a downward-pitched flight deck, and now it was pitched upward. Strange how these minor irritations loomed so large during a crisis. He tried the radio just to satisfy the requirement that it be tried, but it was as dead as everything else that was electrical. He spoke to the Foreign Minister, who had sat down in the copilot’s chair. “I’m the Captain and I could order the evacuation if you’d prefer not to, sir.”
Ariel Weizman kept his head and eyes straight ahead. “Will we have any warning if it is going to sink?”
Becker turned and faced the Foreign Minister. “It’s sinking now, sir. It’s only a question of the rate at which it is sinking. If it continues to sink slowly, we can ride it a while longer. If it suddenly slips into the river, then that’s it.”
The Foreign Minister looked at the earth quay in the distance, then back out the side window at the rubber rafts gaining on them. “We’ll wait,” he said hesitantly.
“Fine.” Becker settled back and stared out the window at the new day. They had done some remarkable things with Concorde 02, but now the innovations and cleverness had come to an end. Great seabird that she seemed, she couldn’t float worth a damn.
Miriam Bernstein stared out the porthole at the Euphrates. She looked up and watched the desolate east bank slide by. Her vision was blurred by her tears and the shattered glass distorted her view of the terrain, but she knew she was still looking at Babylon. A mud village appeared and people moved on the bank. A great assembly of them lined the shore and stared. The prismatic effect of the shattered glass gave the black gellebiahs and dun-colored huts a rainbow hue. Like Babylon of the colored brick. She thought she could feel, sense, almost see the Jews of the Captivity as they labored on the banks of the river, their harps hanging on the ghostly willows. She sighed and pressed her forehead to the glass and tears ran down her face. She knew he was dead. He had a preordained rendezvous with Ahmed Rish—or someone like him. She only hoped that he had found some peace at the end.
Danny Lavon spoke into his intercom. “Fuel, General.”
Laskov looked at his fuel gauges. The aerial combat maneuvers had burned more than he had figured on. “Roger. Send everyone home. We’re going to have to hang around a little longer.”
“Roger.” Lavon radioed the squardron.
The squadron went into a V-formation and flew by Laskov. They came in low over the river and dipped their wings in unison, then turned west and headed home.
Laskov looked out of his cockpit as they disappeared, then turned away. The sun sat on the highest peak in Iran, and its rays came down into Mesopotamia and turned the the grey land golden. The wind had dropped, and he could see only an occasional line of dust clouds racing across the flat alluvial plains. He looked down at the two C-130’s, the smoking guest house, the ruins of Babylon and the village of Arabs sitting in the middle of them. He stared down at the village of Jews on the opposite shore, and the huge, white, delta-winged Concorde floating toward it. “Incredible,” he said into the intercom.
“Incredible,” agreed Danny Lavon.
Laskov wondered if she were on the Concorde. He could see that the wings looked blurry now, which meant that they were awash. He didn’t give the aircraft another two minutes. He tried the El Al frequency again. “Concorde 02, this is Gabriel 32. Bail out, damn it! Bail out! Can you hear me?” There was no answer. Laskov could see five rubber rafts closing in on the Concorde from the rear. He wondered if Becker knew they were there. They weren’t much, but at least some of the wounded could get on them. The rest would have to swim or float if they had life jackets. Why the hell didn’t they get out? Laskov spoke to the two ground commandos and the two C-130 captains. Everyone had ideas, but no one really knew quite what to do. There were contingency plans for just about every situation, but no one, not even the think-tank boys in Tel Aviv, had foreseen this. Major Bartok in the rafts seemed to have the closest shot at rescuing them. The squad of commandos in Ummah had recruited the villagers and many of them took to the water in gufas and tried to pole upriver to meet the approaching Concorde.
The Foreign Minister nodded. “We’ll lose some, but what can we do? Let’s evacuate.”
“Wait one minute.” Becker watched Laskov bank sharply to stay with them over the river. Bank sharply. Bank right. He looked down at his dead instruments. He moved his hands over to the emergency power switch. He turned it on. Dead. He already knew that. But he needed power. Power. The engines were dead and so the generator was dead. The batteries were under water. The nitrogen bottle was back in Babylon, and the primary hydraulic pumps were submerged or damaged. Still, there was a source of power left, and he didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it sooner. He quickly reached down under his seat and pulled a manual handle that he never imagined he would use and never wanted to have to use in the air. A nonelectric hydraulic pump activated itself, and the trap door beneath the Concorde opened and the small generator propeller dropped out.
Instantly, Becker saw a few gauges come alive as the propeller turned under water and activated a generator. The propeller also worked an emergency hydraulic pump, and he s
aw that he had pressure again in some of the systems. The Concorde was being powered by a water wheel. Desperate—but trés pratique. If Kahn were sitting at the flight engineer’s console, he would say that everything was looking good.
Becker knew that he had only a few seconds before the water caused this emergency system to fail also. Already the electrical and electronic components were flickering on the instrument panel. The hydraulic pressure, however, was holding. Becker turned his wheel, and the big starboard aileron went down as the portside aileron went up. The right wing dragged in the water and the left wing began to come around.
The Foreign Minister shook his shoulder. “David! I said—”
“Wait!” The Concorde began moving—banking—to the right. It partly changed direction and partly sideslipped toward the west bank. Ahead, Becker could see the earth quay of Ummah sticking into the river. Becker wanted to hit that quay and nestle the aircraft between its protective arm and the river bank. If he hit the bank downstream of the quay, the aircraft might not beach itself but only slide and spin along the shore and come apart.
The Concorde was going down as fast as it was turning now. The change of direction had jolted it out of its lethargic sinking and speeded up the rate at which it was taking water. Becker gripped the wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. As he alternately watched the gauges and the ailerons, he could see that the hydraulic as well as the electrical power was failing. The gauges flickered and the ailerons began to straighten out. Now they were both horizontal again, trailing loosely in the water. Becker swore in English.
Still, the Concorde had begun its turn, and as with an aircraft in its proper element, thought Becker, inertia should carry the motion through.
But a flowing river was not exactly like the thin air, as Becker was rapidly learning. The Concorde again assumed the position of least resistance, with its nose and tail lined up in the direction of the current. But at least they were now closer to the shore, and the water moved faster here, giving the Concorde an almost imperceptible quantum of added buoyancy. Becker thought they might just hit the quay.
Suddenly, Becker heard cheers and yelling coming from the cabin, and he looked over his shoulder. Yaakov Leiber appeared at the door and ran into the flight deck. “The commandos are alongside in their rubber rafts!”
The Foreign Minister looked back out the side window. “Perhaps I should try to evacuate the wounded.”
“Nobody moves,” said Becker. “And I mean that literally. No moving around hack there. We’re about five degrees from sliding ass backwards into the Euphrates.”
Leiber walked more gingerly into the cabin and passed on Becker’s orders.
Becker saw a rubber raft come alongside the flight deck on his side. The officer in it, Major Bartok, shouted something about evacuating. Becker shook his head and made a motion with his hand to indicate that both the situation and the aircraft were very shaky.
Major Bartok nodded in understanding. He gave a thumbs-up and shouted something about Becker being not a bad pilot.
Becker turned his face away from the side window and looked downriver. The quay was about 150 meters away now—about twice the length of the Concorde. The gufas were sliding past him on both sides, and he could see the strange-looking Jews in their primitive boats. He looked back to his front. It did not appear to Becker that the Concorde could intersect the quay. Yet he knew that somehow it would. He suddenly felt that their trials were over and that there would be no more tests and no more tribulations. An easy calm came over him for the first time in a very long time, and he relaxed as he stared through the broken windshield, a breeze blowing on his face. As he watched, the Concorde seemed to slide right. Or was it a visual distortion caused by the light on the rippling water? Were they headed for the quay ever since he’d gotten the Concorde to turn? He’d have to ask General Laskov later.
His right wing suddenly skimmed the shore and rode over the top of it, cleaving through mud huts as it went. The drag caused the Concorde to turn more sharply to the right, and as the shore got higher, the right wing rode higher and pushed the opposite wing deeper into the water.
The quay came up fast. The commandos and the villagers moved back and to the sides but stayed on it. The downward-pointed nose of the Concorde hit it first, just below the water line, like a Roman warship with an iron ramming prow. The quay trembled and split as the nose buried itself in the ancient mud brick and slime. Becker found himself staring at someone’s boots outside his windshield less than a meter away. The Concorde sank perceptibly, and Becker could feel its main undercarriage, or what was left of it after the slide, settling onto the bottom. People were all over the aircraft now—commandos, villagers, and survivors. He heard them on the roof of the fuselage, and he heard them wading over the left wing and coming in through the aircraft’s doors. He was vaguely aware of people shouting, weeping, and embracing. The next thing he was aware of was standing on the quay, saluting the Concorde. Someone led him away.
38
Miriam Bernstein and Ariel Weizman found Major Bartok in the confusion of the quay. The Foreign Minister indentified himself and asked quickly, “The Peace Conference?”
The Major smiled and nodded. “They are still waiting for Israel in New York.”
At the C-130, a crewman asked David Becker if they weren’t short of water during their ordeal.
Becker replied. “Yes, of course. Can’t you see everyone is very thirsty?”
“I see that,” said the crewman. “But I wondered why all the men are clean-shaven.”
“Shaven?” Becker ran his hand over his face. “Oh. He made us shave.”
Rabbi Levin had cornered Major Bartok at the edge of the quay and was demanding that he be taken by raft to Major Arnon, who was now on the hill, so that he could supervise the locating and exhuming of the bodies. Major Bartok assured the rabbi that there was no need for him to go back, but Rabbi Levin proceeded to tell Major Bartok why he was wrong.
The village of Ummah had never seen anything quite like the procession marching through its one crooked street and was not likely to see anything like it again. The villagers helped carry stretchers and passed food and wine to those who wanted it. There was a mixture of crying and shouting and impromptu songs and dances. Flutes appeared, and their haunting notes lay over the quay and village as the people of the Concorde moved slowly toward the huge, towering C-130. An old man gave Miriam Bernstein a stringed instrument. A harp.
Everything was happening too fast for the survivors, and very little of it was registering consciously. Everyone had questions to ask, and the more questions the commandos asked, the more questions the people of the Concorde asked.
Major Bartok picked up his radiophone and called Captain Geis, whom he could see sitting up in the big flight deck of the C-130. “Tell Jerusalem. . . . Tell Jerusalem they have freed themselves from their Captivity. We will carry them home. Casualties and after-action report to follow.”
“Roger,” said Geis, and relayed the radio message.
The Prime Minister sat back and wiped his eyes as the radio message came over the loudspeaker. He thought of how they had been unsure of themselves and how they had doubted. But in the end they had said Zanek—“Go”—and that was what was important. He wondered who had lived and who had died. Was the Foreign Minister alive? The delegates? Bernstein? Tekoah? Tamir? Sapir? Jabari? Arif? How about Burg? And how about Dobkin? Would he live? And Hausner. The great enigma and troublemaker. How long had the Deputy Minister of Transportation—Miriam Bernstein—kept the Minister of Transportation from firing him? He had a lot of questions to answer if he were alive. The Prime Minister opened his eyes and looked around the room. “Heroes, martyrs, fools, and cowards. We’re going to need at least a month to sort out who is who.”
Captain Ishmael Bloch taxied his C-130 up the Hillah road. On board were all Major Arnon’s commandos, fifteen exhumed or unburied bodies from the hill, including Alpern’s, plus a mutilated corpse from the base
of the hill. The commandos had found Burg’s shoe with his daybook stuffed inside, and this enabled them to move quickly to complete their unpleasant assignment.
There was also a body so badly torn by the shrapnel that it was almost left behind as an Arab, but a sharp-eyed soldier had noticed the Hebrew letters hanging from a heavy chain around the neck. Also on board were thirty-five wounded Ashbals along with half a dozen Arab dead who were identified as possible wanted terrorists. Ahmed Rish and Salem Hamadi were not believed to be among them.
On the operating tables were General Dobkin and Deborah Gideon. The two surgeons were waiting for the aircraft to lift off before they could go back to work.
Rabbi Levin, who had gotten his way about being returned to the hill, came over to the operating tables and looked up at the surgeons. The man operating on Deborah Gideon looked up and nodded quickly. The woman who was operating on General Dobkin pulled down her surgical mask. “I have never seen such brutality.” She paused. “But he’ll live. You’re not needed here, Rabbi.” She smiled and pulled her mask back in place.
Rabbi Levin turned and walked to the rear of the aircraft to find Lieutenant Giddel so that he could continue their argument on the necessity of serving only kosher foods during field operations.
The C-130 was taking a long time to lift, and Captain Bloch was becoming impatient. “I told you we’d roll to Baghdad.”
“I hope this isn’t a toll road, Izzy.”
The big aircraft finally lifted off, and Bloch banked it sharply to the left over the Euphrates. He looked down at the Concorde, almost directly below him. “You know, Eph, I’d like to meet the crazy bastard who flew that thing in here and sailed it out.”
“Becker. I’ve flown with him on reserve training. He’s pretty good.”