Firebreak (31 page)

“IDENTIFIED!” (Bielski)

“FIRE!” (Levy)

“ON THE WAY!” (Bielski)

Again, they heard a muffled crack-boom followed by a heavy recoil that rocked the tank.

“BACK UP!”

Their total exposure time had been less than fifteen seconds and they were still alive. “Not again,” Halaby warned from his steel foxhole in the front of the tank. Levy paused, considering what his driver had just said. In combat, the driver is a microtactician and must constantly be attuned to positioning of the tank. While Levy and Bielski had been preoccupied with firing the gun and killing other tanks, Halaby had been surveying the battlefield and was convinced that the Syrians had them pinpointed and would expect them to pop out of the same hole.

“Which side?” Levy asked. They were communicating in their own special shorthand and reconsidering their tactical position.

“To the left,” Halaby said.

“Do it,” Levy ordered. He could hear Avner grumbling loudly as Halaby backed out of the ditch and back down the hill. Almost instinctively, die driver worked his way back up to the crest in the dark, picking his way over boulders and through a ravine.

“If he throws a track now …” Avner groused.

“Shut up,” Levy said. “LOAD AND CARRY IMI!” They were nearing the top and the tank commander obviously expected to take on a tank again. They crested the top of the hill sixty meters from the ditch and again the firing sequence repeated itself. This time, a Russian-built Sagger antitank missile flashed over them as they backed down the hill, paying out the thin wire that guided it. “They were looking for us in our old position,” Levy told Avner. “Halaby just saved our lives.” Avner snorted in disbelief.

The next few minutes seemed like hours as the tank fought along the crest of the hill, rushing up, taking a quick shot, then backing back down to relative safety on the lee side of the hill, away from battle. The first light of dawn was diffusing through the haze and smoke drifting up the slope when a cease-fire order came over the radio.

Levy halted the tank at the crest of the hill and scanned the slope through his sight and periscope before he popped the hatch. He had to push a thick patch of crisscrossed Sagger wires off the turret to free the hatch. How many of the missiles had been fired at them? Then he stood up and surveyed the carnage around him. He counted nine burning hulks of T-72 tanks on the slope in front of him and numerous destroyed BMPs. The smell of burning fuel and flesh drifted over him and he wanted to throw up. To his left, he could see two burning Israeli tanks, one a new Israeli-made Merkava and an old M60 like his. No survivors there.

He keyed the radio, trying to raise the platoon’s lieutenant. Finally, a voice he did not recognize answered. “What happened to the lieutenant?” Levy asked. “I lost contact with him when the Syrians broke through.”

“Killed,” came the answer. “He led the counterattack. It was touch and go. Say your remaining ammunition and fuel state.”

“Avner,” he asked over the intercom, “how many rounds do we have left?” Silence greeted him. He glanced down into the turret and saw that both Avner and Bielski were sound asleep. He counted the rounds left in the ammunition locker just behind the breech of the big gun. Four rounds, he thought, and all high-explosive antitank. None of the more desirable Imis, the hypervelocity armor-piercing shells that could kill a T-72 with one hit, was left. It had been a close thing and he wondered if he would have been able to disengage and pull back to reload. The radios had been a madhouse during the battle but he had been able to keep most of it sorted out and follow the action going on around him. “Nazzi,” he called over the intercom, “how much fuel left?” Again silence greeted him. He decided the driver was also asleep. Rather than disturb him, he reported the ammunition he had counted and told headquarters that they were down to their reserve fuel.

Then Moshe Levy fell asleep, still sitting in the open turret.

The men surrounding the prime minister were worried, for Ben David had not slept in over seventy-two hours and the strain was telling. His decision-making capability had to be seriously weakened. Still, he seemed fully alert as the latest reports from the north filtered into the command post. The reports from the Northern Command were encouraging and it looked like the Israelis had finally stopped the advance of the Syrian First Army just inside their northern border. One analyst pinpointed problems the Syrians were having with command and control since their command post near die Litani River had been destroyed. Both sides had taken horrendous losses. “I can’t accept much more attrition like that,” Ben David grumbled and immediately asked for the situation on the Golan Heights.

“Very quiet,” came the immediate reply. “The Syrian Third Army on the Golan is remaining behind its fortifications and not venturing out from under their protective umbrella of SAMs and artillery.” But the news was not all good. “However, we have monitored a forward movement of their SAMs, bridging equipment, and artillery batteries. We think an attack in the Golan is imminent. Probably within twenty-four hours.”

“And the situation in Jordan?” Ben David asked. For a moment, absolute silence filled the bunker.

The minister of defense, Benjamin Yuriden, stood up. “Not good, Yair,” he said. “We have slowed the advance of the Syrian Fifth Army, but they are still moving forward. Unless we can halt them, they will be within artillery range of Jerusalem in thirty-six hours. We are taking heavy losses and resupply is becoming a problem. Our supply trucks are being attacked by Palestinians when they move through the West Bank. We are moving in armed convoys to get safely through. It’s slowing us down.” The Israelis were up against the hard reality of modern warfare—the side that could pump the most men and material into the maw of combat would win.

Ben David stood up, his face flushed and fists balled into knots. He drove his knuckles down onto the table. “I know how to deal with terrorists and Arabs,” he growled. “The next time one of our supply trucks is ambushed, level the village or town where it happens.”

“Our trucks are being attacked on the open roads, outside the villages,” an army general told him.

“Then go to the nearest village and take ten prisoners. If they will not identify the terrorists, shoot them. The attacks will stop.” No one questioned the prime minister’s order. Fighting for his country’s survival was taking its toll, and for the first time, Ben David was seriously considering his nuclear options.

“He always takes the easiest job, the lazy bastard,” Avner grumbled as he took another round that Dave Bielski handed him through the turret hatch. Each of the shells weighed over fifty pounds and it was hard work loading the magazine to its capacity of sixty-three rounds. As usual, Amos Avner was complaining about their driver, Nazzi Halaby.

“Refueling is Nazzi’s job,” Bielski grunted and worked faster to shut the loader up. A flurry of activity surrounded the tank as a forward support team refueled and reloaded the M60 for battle. Levy had left and gathered with the surviving tank commanders around the tank that had become the company’s headquarters. The crew was buttoning the tank up a few minutes later when Levy rejoined them, a troubled look in his brown eyes.

Dave Bielski caught it at once and sensed trouble. “What now?” he asked.

“They gave me a platoon,” Levy told the three men.

A stricken look crossed Avner’s face. “They promoted you?” Levy nodded in reply. “A
segen mishneh?”
Avner asked. Again Levy nodded yes. “Oh, no,” Avner wailed, his voice high-pitched and filled with lament.
“Shma Yis-real…”

“Shut up,” Bielski growled at him. “We’re not dead yet.”

Avner stopped his recital of the sacred words Jews uttered at a moment of extreme peril. “We might as well be,” he moaned. “A second lieutenant we don’t need.” The high attrition rates the Israelis were suffering in the war had caught up with Moshe Levy and his crew. Levy had received a battlefield promotion to
segen mishneh,
second lieutenant, and would lead a platoon into combat. What had Avner so upset was that Israeli officers were expected to lead and they did just that. Second lieutenants experienced an intensely exciting, but somewhat abbreviated life in combat, and Avner wanted no part of it.

“Mount up,” Levy said. “We’re counterattacking.” Loud whistles overhead announced the beginning of an artillery barrage, and in the distance, they could hear the rumble of jets. A carefully coordinated attack was starting that would poke and probe at the Syrians, looking for a weak spot the Israelis could exploit. A wicked grin split Nazzi Halaby’s weasellike face and he blew a kiss in Avner’s direction. The Druze driver scrambled up the face of the tank and lowered himself into the driver’s seat. He was as frightened as Avner but was determined to show the stiff-necked Orthodox Jew that he would not run from a fight. One of Avner’s most deep-seated prejudices about Arabs being cowardly was taking a beating.

The young woman in uniform pushed her way through the crowd of people hurrying in and out of the building in Tel Aviv, pressed by the urgency of war. Occasionally, a male head would turn and follow her progress, hoping that the captain might have business in his office. She was familiar with the building and took the stairs to the second floor, turned right down the corridor, and walked into the end office, the entrance to Mossad’s headquarters in the basement.

The Ganef was expecting her and motioned her to a chair in his office. He tried not to notice her legs when she crossed them and decided the short skirt was very provocative, especially to Americans.

“Well?” he asked.

The Intelligence officer from Ramon gave a slight shake of her head. “Neither of them has made a pass at me. I thought Furry was interested at first, but he’s happily married and misses his twin girls. Why do American men insist on carrying pictures of their children in their wallets to show everyone?” A beautiful, wistful look played across her face. “And Pontowski only asked if I happened to know Shoshana Tamir.”

“What about Colonel Gold?”

“Nothing;” she answered. “He’s all business and would be highly suspicious if I made a pass at him. He knows the game. Gold may look like a pompous ass but he’s not. He’s a tough one.”

The Ganef sat quietly for a few moments considering his next move. “So, we need something more than sex to put the Americans in our pocket. What is the price?”

“More intelligence,” the woman answered. “Pontowski must become one of the Americans’ best sources. The more the Americans learn through him, the more they will believe him when he tells them what we need.”

“Then we must pay the price,” the Ganef decided. “We must convince Gold that his best source of intelligence is Matt Pontowski. He will beg the ambassador to keep him in Israel as an observer.” And perhaps, he thought, the young man might fly another mission for us.

Moshe Levy sensed, rather than knew, that the carefully coordinated counterattack was falling apart as he led his platoon toward their objective, a ridgeline overlooking the coastal road right on the border. It had been an easy advance and his three tanks and four APCs had encountered little opposition. Yet he was certain something was wrong. The two F-4s that he had heard checking in on the radio had not received clearance into the area and were holding when they should have been hitting targets of opportunity. The artillery barrage that was supposed to roll forward of their advance wasn’t and he wondered if the shells falling around him might be their own.

He tried to look through his periscope but the bouncy ride and dust kept him from focusing through the small prisms. Levy wished the tank had the original commander’s cupola with its ring of vision blocks, but the Israelis had replaced it with a low-profile cupola. He had no idea if there were friendly tanks or APCs to the left or right of his platoon. In fact, he couldn’t see much of anything buttoned up in the turret and didn’t even know where the enemy was.

Levy had to make a quick decision if they were to continue. He threw his hatch open, stuck his head out and scanned 360 degrees around him before he hunkered back down in the tank. The hard metallic ping of bullets ricocheting off the turret echoed inside. Tank commanders have a very limited view of the action around them when they are buttoned up and the smoke, haze, and dust that engulfed Levy’s tank had blinded him. The quick peek had confirmed his worst fears: His platoon was rolling along totally unsupported on its flanks. “Nazzi,” he half barked, half coughed over the intercom, “head for that low ridge off to your right and try to find a hull-down position.”

Halaby did as ordered and veered the tank to the right. He could hear the rapid ping of bullets ricocheting harmlessly off the front slope of the tank, the most heavily armored part. Then Halaby saw the machine-gun nest; it was dug in at the top of the ridge directly in front of them. He tuned out Levy’s barked commands as they engaged a Syrian tank and concentrated on where Levy wanted him to go. They were almost under the protective shadow of the ridge. Halaby expected the soldiers manning the machine-gun nest to break and run but they didn’t. Now he could see another man wiggle into place beside the machine gun and aim an RPG at them. The tank was less than sixty meters away from the ridge when he saw the flash of the antitank weapon the Syrians had gotten from the Soviets.

The high-explosive warhead of the RPG-7V was traveling at a thousand feet a second when it hit the front of the tank and the shaped-charged warhead ignited one of the Blazer reactive armor plates attached to the tank. The explosion from the reactive armor canceled out the RPG. Halaby uttered an Arabic curse. The RPG could not have penetrated the front of the tank where the armor was the thickest. Now they had an open patch of armor where a Sagger could hit and penetrate. Halaby twitched on the T-bar he steered with and centered the tank directly on the men shooting at him. He buried his right foot in the big gas pedal and hurtled the tank over the top of the ridge and dropped its fifty tons of steel onto the three men in the machine-gun nest, grinding them into the rocks and dirt.