The Glory (42 page)

Pasternak stares at him and grunts, “Are you joking?”

“I swear it’s true.”

“And Washington?”

“Vague noise. The State Department won’t say who fired the first shot. I have to get a navy statement right now on that nonsense.”

“Good luck.” Pasternak shakes his head and resumes quick scrawling.

Barak threads through the fluorescent-lit corridors, where air vents hum and rattle without seeming to remove the smoke or
bring fresh air; past the huge main war room with its three-story operational maps, crowded by gloomy junior officers wearing
ear-phones, to the navy’s area in the Pit. Much against their will, Navy Command has been moved here from Haifa because —
so the Supreme Command has decided — in their eyrie on Mount Carmel they have been too independent and detached. But even
here underground the navy HQ is as different as though it were still on Mount Carmel. The officers appear cheerful, the young
female sailors perky and pretty, all in a milieu of excited optimism. Even the air seems more breathable.

“Ah, Zev,” says the
Mahi
(chief of naval operations), a good-looking big-jawed man, who like Barak was brought to Palestine as a child to escape the
Nazis. “Just in time.” He gestures at the table map, where the girls are moving boat emblems eastward. “The flotilla has been
lying off Cyprus, and now they’re heading full speed toward Latakia. The flag is in your son’s boat.”

“What’s the plan, Binny?”

The CNO taps the map at the Syrian shore. “Their coastal radars are bound to pick up our boys any minute, so we assume their
missile boats will sortie to challenge. What’s coming up, my friend, is the first missile-to-missile battle in naval history”
— he rolls off an orotund phrase with relish — “a Mediterranean Coral Sea!”

Barak knows the exact ranges of the Styx and the Gabriel. His smile at the hyperbole is strained. “And suppose the Syrians
don’t come out, what then?”

“Barkai will enter Latakia port and engage by gunfire.”

“And the coastal artillery? The minefields?”

“Intelligence got us the minefield charts. As for the coastal batteries, well, you know Barkai. He’ll say ‘L’Azazel,’ and
go in.”

Barak’s voice drops. “Look, Binny, we both know how far the Styx outranges the Gabriel.”

The CNO matches the lowered voice, not the anxious tone. The big jaw thrusts out, the eyes are hard. “The Styxes were able
to sink the
Eilat
for two reasons — surprise, and size of target. A Saar is a water bug, and the Styx is a fire-and-forget weapon, no operator
guidance. Electronics can fool it. Smart ship-handling can dodge it. As for the Gabriel, wait and see.”

“Binny, what about that Egyptian fabrication that your ships shelled them?”

The CNO promises to provide him with a full factual refutation within the hour. Barak returns to Golda’s conference room,
above in the main army building, where the cabinet members are gathering, some in shirtsleeves, others tieless in wrinkled
suits; the big fish in Israel’s small pond, the usually complacent faces now showing uncertainty and shock. The few who matter
like Dayan, Galili, Sapir, Allon, are not among them. So well known because politics is Israel’s chief spectator sport, endlessly
interviewed, pictured, caricatured, they are self-important strutters all, in Barak’s opinion, but tonight, what a deflated
lot of middle-aged worriers!

Golda takes him into her inner office. “Let’s hear.” She listens with half-closed reddened eyes, nodding and smoking, to his
report. “A bad picture. But all this is from Pasternak? Not Dado himself?”

“Prime Minister, Sam is there for Dayan, and he gets whatever information Dado does, and at the same time. Dado is three-deep
in generals.”

She sourly smiles. “I can picture it. Dado’s coming to talk to the cabinet soon, so that’s all right.”

“Madame Prime Minister, I have to return to the Pit for the navy’s answer to the Egyptian fakery. Also, a sea battle is shaping
up off Syria, and my son’s missile boat is in it.”

“A sea battle?” With a bleak nod, brushing ashes off her bodice, she says, “Go ahead, Mr. Alarmist, by all means, stay with
the navy till it’s over. God guard your son in the sea battle. What concerns me right now is the land, our land. God guard
our sons in
that
battle.”

“
T
arget dead in the water.”
Zev hears those words as he returns to the navy war room. What a contrast to the long faces elsewhere in the Pit, and the
deep dejection at the Prime Minister’s offices! Smiles and handshakes all around here, and the CNO raising a hand for silence.
Loudspeaker voice again:
“Large silhouette on fire and listing. Probably a minesweeper. Over.”

“Minesweeper?” says the CNO into the portable mike. “What’s a minesweeper doing out in five hundred fathoms of water, Barkai?
Over.”

“Picket duty, like that torpedo boat we hit. I’ve detached Motti to sink both cripples with his guns, and am running ahead
with four boats to Latakia. Over.”

“Ah, Zev, look here.” The CNO takes him by the elbow to the big map table. “First they got a torpedo boat picket with their
three-inch, then this big radar blip showed up, so Barkai closed and launched Gabriels over the horizon. Two big flashes,
and now he’s confirmed it — a large vessel aflame and disabled, huge holes blasted in the hull —”

“Not a neutral? You’re sure?”

“Not a chance! A picket. Saw our boats on radar and ran. Something to tell Golda, hey? The Arabs need Russian missiles, but
we Jews make our own, and —”

“TEEL … TEEL … TEEL.”
The flotilla commander again on the loudspeaker, his voice calm and unchanged. Startled faces in the room. Sudden silence,
but for the whirring of the air vents.
“I say again, TEEL … TEEL … TEEL. Urgent. Activate all countermeasures. All boats commence evasive action, maneuver at discretion
…”

W
ind and spray blow hard in Noah’s face as he comes scrambling topside. Yes, there those things are again to the southeast,
the yellow moons of the horrible
Eilat
night and of his nightmares ever since, hanging among the stars, growing larger and drifting to the right. The two Saar boats
far up ahead are turning sharply this way and that, firing off their countermeasures. Noah’s own rockets of chaff and decoys
go hissing and blazing into the night sky, making slashes and zigzags of red, yellow, white, against the darkness.

Barkai’s voice on the bridge speaker: “Noah, ninety seconds to impact.” Below at the command console Barkai is watching the
pips of the missiles in flight, and of the enemy boats which have suddenly emerged from the radar shadow of the land for this
surprise launch.

“Acknowledged, sir. … Hard right rudder! Engines ahead flank speed.” If all the electronic countermeasures fail to work, he
can still try to dodge those evil globes. The six years since he went down with the
Eilat
melt away and the fright is on him again. But now he is not helpless, he is captain of this feisty little vessel, and he
can do radical evasive maneuvers. “Hard left rudder. Left engine stop.” Those lights are swelling in the sky, showing dark
smoke trails. But will the ECMs work? Does Israel have a sea defense, or are those damned things homing on him, and is he
about to go down in enemy waters, this time probably forever?

“Rudder amidships! Flank speed.” The boat sways and shudders, smashing at the waves, throwing spray high as the bridge. “All
engines stop. … All engines back full.”

The lights are sinking, the Styxes are going into their dive at the boats ahead — no, also at him,
at him
. Noah is feeling the fear now in his stomach and his balls.

U
nderground in Tel Aviv, frozen attitudes in the navy pit. Eyes on the clock, time of Styx flight about two minutes, almost
over. Second hand clicking loudly from mark to mark.

Barkai’s voice a shade above his usual calm.
“Five splashes.”

Outbursts of joy: kisses, hugs, dancing, jumping, one man spinning insanely round and round and round the room and cheering.
Zev shouts at the CNO, “Who is he and what’s the matter with him?”

“That’s Zemakh and the matter with him is, he created the countermeasures. All of them.
Magiya lo
[He’s entitled]! Now we know we can beat the Styx, and it’s all Zemakh’s doing.”

Barak catches the spinning man in his arms and kisses his bristly cheek. “I salute you, my son’s out there.”

Barkai’s voice, everybody quickly silent.
“Three enemy boats now retiring at high speed. I will pursue and destroy them. To Zemakh, a salute and the thanks of my crews.
And of the Jewish people. Over.”

The CNO thrusts the microphone at Zemakh, who says hoarsely, “Hello, Zemakh here. Acknowledged. Go get them. Over.”

“I intend to. Out.”

A
radarman says to Noah as he drops back down into the CIC, a large smoky room amidships crowded with electronic equipment
and operators, “Captain, target number two seems to be reversing course.” Noah peers at the screen. Yes, clearly the middle
green blip is moving away from the other two, toward the flotilla.

“Kol ha’kavod, one of them turning to fight,” grates Barkai. He seizes the microphone and addresses the flotilla. “All boats,
prepare to launch missiles.”

Tense quiet in the CIC. Soon the radarman calls over his shoulder, “Enemy missile launched, Captain.”

“I see it.” Small new green blip on the screen.

Almost at once another radarman. “Captain, Gabriel launched by our lead boat.” Noah clambers topside, and glimpses something
he will never forget: amid the decoy trails in the starry sky a white light soaring over a larger golden light, the missiles
crossing in midflight; then the Styx light falling into the black sea, the white trail disappearing, and after a tense minute,
a great
FLASH
on the horizon. He tramples back down the ladder. Barkai exults, “Noah, one enemy missile boat sunk, it’s disappeared off
the radar.”

“I saw the flash, sir.”

“B’seder. Now we’re closing the range on the nearer one. Go ahead and shoot him.”

“Ken, ha’m’faked.”
(“Aye aye, sir.”) The radar blip shows the Styx boat nineteen thousand yards ahead. Noah has often scored hits in the simulator
at that range, but this will be his first actual Gabriel launch. “Prepare missile for firing.”

“Captain, missile ready.”

“Very well.” Rapid orders, lights flashing white and green on the consoles, quick back-and-forth jargon among Noah, the weapons
officer, the radarmen, the missile men. Flotilla commander silent, watching.

“Captain, system on target.”

Waves are crashing and sloshing against the heaving hull, just as in the endless simulator exercises, complete with rolling
and pitching, only now the sea is doing it, not a mechanical rocker, and a real missile topside is primed to go, and a real
Syrian Styx boat is trying to run away. With a last glance over the consoles, Noah presses an isolated white button labelled
PERMISSION TO FIRE
.
GHRANG, GHRANG, GHRANG!
Alarm all through the boat, all lights on consoles turning red. Silence. THUD. The boat shakes, the Gabriel is in the air.

Though shorter in range, the Gabriel is more advanced than the Styx. Like the Styx, it homes with a nose radar; but an operator
on the bridge controls it with a joystick, locking it to ride on the boat’s radar beam until the missile itself sends the
electronic signal saying
“Okay, I’m in charge.”
It is then so close to striking that no evasive tactics will avail.

“Takeover signal from missile, Captain.”

“Very well. Over to missile.”

Pause, all eyes on the radar consoles. Radarman drone. “Missile blip merging with target, sir.” A break of his voice to boyish
glee. “Captain, the target’s gone from the screen.”

A yell over the loudspeaker from the missile operator on the bridge. “Huge explosion ahead, sir, enormous flare on the horizon.”

Barkai at the central console: “Noah, you’ve blown him up. He’s gone.”

“All hands,” Noah announces on the PA system, “scratch a Styx boat.”

The vessel rings with cheers. Barkai, his eyes agleam, throws him a salute. Revenge for the
Eilat
, and not the last of it. The remaining Syrian captain appears to be running his vessel up on the nearest beach, despairing
of making good his escape to Latakia. “Noah, go in and destroy him with gunfire,” says Barkai.

As Noah’s vessel races landward to within a hundred yards of the beached boat, coastal batteries light up the sea with green
floating flares. Shells begin to straddle his vessel, throwing up towering splashes. The stranded Syrian boat is a wreck,
half out of the water and steeply canted on the beach. Roaring back and forth through the shellfire, Noah rakes it again and
again with all guns. From the dark derelict some sporadic shooting back, as it absorbs the rain of shots for a long minute
or two, then it explodes in heavy smoke and bright flame.

Z
ev Barak drives as fast as he can through blacked-out streets jammed with army vehicles chugging and rumbling into and out
of Tel Aviv, repeating Barkai’s dry victory report under his breath, for he means to quote it to Golda word for word.
“Five enemy vessels encountered. Four sunk, one stranded and set ablaze. No damage or casualties to the flotilla. Returning
to base.”
This battle off Latakia, though small in scale, has surely been a turn of naval history; the first missile-to-missile sea
fight, and a victory of little Israel over the Soviet Union. Vindication of the navy, of the Gabriel, and of electronic know-how
in the Jewish State.

Wrapped in an old black shawl, Golda is drinking coffee and smoking on a worn sofa in her Ramat Aviv home. “So?” she asks
in a rheumy voice, setting aside a wire basket of despatches. “Your son is all right?”

The way she brightens at his account of the battle does his heart good. “Wonderful boys,” she exclaims. “Those missiles, those
electronic gadgets, fine. A victory, a ray of light.”