The Glory (83 page)

Yudi pushes open the door. Three soldiers inside, one asleep on a mattress, one squatting against the wall smoking a cigar,
one in a chair eating a sandwich, his mouth open for a bite. His eyes widen in horror as Yudi pulls his trigger, Aryeh a split
second later. Bullets spray the three men, they writhe on the floor and scream, they are done for. Did I kill one? Did Yudi
get them all?

“Aryeh, they’re finished, come on, up the staircase.”

Firing above. Firing echoing from the big room. Words roared on a bullhorn, audible through the wall in Hebrew and English.
“We are Zahal, lie flat, lie flat, we are Israeli soldiers. We’re rescuing you, lie flat, don’t move.”
Up the staircase, confusion in the broad dim corridor. Running figures, blazing
rat-tat-tat,
Ugandan soldiers sprawled on the floor, bleeding and groaning. Squad leader’s hoarse shout: “They’re trying to hide, don’t
let one get away, find them all. ”

Then soon, quiet. Gun smoke drifting in the corridor, bodies scattered on the floor. Squad leader: “Okay, they jumped down
into the fields and ran for their lives. This floor is secure. Yudi, what about that room downstairs?”

Yudi: “We killed three guys, sir. It’s secure.”

Aryeh, voice shaky: “Nobody got away.”

“Well done.”

Next, down to the main waiting room, according to plan. If the fight with the terrorists is still on, reenforce Yoni’s squad,
if it’s over, start moving out the hostages, because it’ll be a big job. The squad clatters down the staircase and outside.
Now the moment Aryeh will never forget. Shadowy Israeli running by in the semidarkness: “
YONI’S BEEN SHOT, I THINK HE’S DEAD
.” And there lies the commander on the pavement outside the terminal, on his back, eyes closed. Yoni Netanyahu down, two medics
bending over him, crackling of gunfire close by and flashes in the distance.

Squad leader: “Terrible, terrible. Maybe he’ll be all right. Into the terminal!”

What a sight in here, huge room, filthy, awful toilet stink, wretched-looking people lying all over the floor, young, old,
stunned and scared, mattresses, blankets, clothes, papers, garbage. Three terrorists lying in blood, one a woman. Yoni’s deputy,
Muki Betzer, holding the bullhorn, lean smart major, terrific reputation as a fighter. Betzer, his voice booming: “I say again,
you are saved. Lie where you are, till we’re sure the criminals are all disposed of. Then we’ll take you to an airplane and
fly you all to Israel. It’s over. You’re free. Be strong and of good courage. Just do as we tell you.” He hands the bullhorn
to another officer, who paraphrases in English.

To Aryeh’s squad leader Muki Betzer says, “I think we’ve got them all, all the ones who were on watch here. What about upstairs?”

“The ones who didn’t jump down and run away are all dead. Second floor secured.”

“Excellent.”

Aryeh is dazed and numb. Yoni shot, maybe dead. After that endless plane trip the swiftness of it all, over in minutes, the
swiftness! He has killed men, Ugandans, either he or Yudi, or both together, three black soldiers left wallowing in blood
in the customs room, a frightful thing but they were posted there to shoot rescuers, to shoot him and Yudi Korff. There outside
lies Yoni Netanyahu, not moving. Several medics by him now, plasma bottles, nervous movements, anxious mutters …

Getting the hostages to the plane not so simple. They are weak, shocked, and still very frightened, for the gunfire never
ceases, now close by, now distant. A double line of paratroopers has formed outside the terminal to keep them from straying,
and to protect them from Ugandan soldiers. Aryeh is now an escort of old ladies and decrepit men, in the long walk to the
plane which was the last to land and will be the first to take off. Those too weak to walk, and the few injured, are being
brought there in the Rovers. It’s a real race against time now. The Uganda army must surely be alerted, all that gunfire!
It’ll be up to the paratroopers at key locations to block any attempt to halt the rescue. The primary objective is to get
the hostages out. Once their plane departs with every freed Jew aboard or accounted for, the mission will be a success. The
Israelis still in the airport will have to stand their ground, and put up a rearguard fight until the last plane leaves …

Half an hour later, as Aryeh and Yudi are helping stragglers up the ramp into the jammed Hercules which will carry the hostages
to freedom, huge explosions rock the ground and fires blaze high into the sky.

“Now what?” Aryeh shouts to Yudi, who knows a lot more about all this than he does.

“That’s what used to be the Uganda air force,” Yudi exultantly yells back. “Our farewell compliment to Idi Amin.”

The ramp closes. The Hercules crawls over the diagonal strip to the main runway, gathers speed and heaves up into the star-strewn
sky, toward Lake Victoria.
Mission accomplished
. Is Yoni dead or alive? Aryeh saw the stretcher go by as the commander was carried aboard the second aircraft, which is now
taxiing to take off. Whether he himself will get out of Africa alive, Aryeh Nitzan still does not know. If not, he will be
no worse off than Yoni, who by what he has been hearing, will not live. If Aryeh does get away to live and tell the tale,
and his gut says he will, it will be a tale of the long arm of Israel rescuing Jews in peril of their lives, and of his brave
commander who fell to save them.

M
ax Roweh’s lecture at the Library of Congress on the Bicentennial, “Proclaim Freedom,” has earned him and Yael invitations
to the ceremonies aboard the aircraft carrier
Forrestal
in New York Harbor, where a column of tall sailing ships from all over the world is passing in review before President Ford,
to honor America’s two centuries of independence. They sit with Ambassador Dinitz in the diplomatic section of the reviewing
stand, all three bleary from staying up through the night to follow the fragmentary reports of the rescue at Entebbe. Rumors
and news flashes of a rescue have kept coming, but the Israel government has blacked out all information, and whatever Dinitz
knows, he is being closemouthed about it.

President Ford is speaking before a battery of TV cameras when a bristle-headed marine sergeant comes to Dinitz and murmurs
in his ear. He slips away, and returns to his seat in a glow. “Okay, it’s officially confirmed,” he whispers. “Now I can talk.
They’ve landed at Lod airport. All safe.”

“Incredible, miraculous!” Yael chokes out the words and kisses him.

Commentators have been guessing that the rescue planes may still be in the air, or down somewhere in Africa refueling. Now
the hard news of the success is beginning to spread aboard the
Forrestal
. Amid whispers in the diplomatic section, eyes are turning to the Israeli ambassador. Sitting directly in front of him, a
black diplomat in colorful African garb faces around smiling and shakes his hand. With the brilliantly uniformed marine band
playing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and the tolling of a big bell — thirteen times for the thirteen original colonies of 1776
— the ceremony on the flight deck ends.

In the cavernous hangar deck, where a buffet lunch is set out to lessen the crush of departing VIPs at the ladder to the launches,
Ambassador Dinitz is so beset with attention that Yael and Roweh become separated from him. But soon a marine colonel with
golden shoulder loops is leading the diplomat to them through the mob. “Something has come up, my friends,” says Dinitz with
a delighted grin. “It seems the President has invited me to return to Washington in his helicopter.”

The marine officer says to Roweh, “Yes, and if you wish, sir, I can see that you and your guest go ashore in the next launch
without waiting.”

“That will be most appreciated.”

Dinitz says as the colonel goes off, “How about this? I’ve hardly spoken to President Ford since he took office, and now suddenly
I ride in his helicopter.”

“Enjoy your moment, Simcha,” says Roweh.

In the launch he and Yael hear much excited talk among the packed-in VIPs about the rescue. The general tenor is that the
Israelis have gone and done it again, and that America should be more like Israel in dealing with its enemies and with terrorism.
One beefy man well over six feet tall, in an elegant cowboy hat, polished cowboy boots, a pin-striped suit and a western string
tie, capsulizes the matter so: “I’m an unholy son of a bitch if those amazing fucking Jews haven’t gone and fucking upstaged
the Bicentennial!”

As they settle into the back seat of Roweh’s waiting limousine, he remarks, seeing her twist a handkerchief in her hands,
“It won’t be long now, Yael. You’ll phone from the apartment. Philippe, turn on WQXR.”

“I’m
sure
Aryeh’s special unit did it,” she says, “that’s their kind of mission. I’ll call Kishote first chance.”

“I wonder when the Arabs will at last suspect,” Roweh says, speaking through a Mozart piano concerto as the car crawls in
Battery Park traffic, “that in some strange fashion they may be doing the will of Allah. Nothing could have restored Israel’s
world position overnight in such a total stunning way — absolutely nothing, Yael — except this hijacking.”

“Oh, come on, Max! It’s not the hijacking, it’s the rescue.”

“My dear, exactly. Over and over the Arabs create these occasions, and the Israelis rise to them, thrill mankind, and compel
very reluctant admiration.”

The Mozart piano concerto ends. The first news bulletin is,
“A report just in, not yet confirmed by the Israeli government. In the daring Entebbe rescue three hostages and one Israeli
soldier were killed.”

Yael turns scared eyes to Roweh. He takes her hand. “Yael, my dear, you don’t know that that’s true, you don’t know that your
son took part. And if he did, that he was that one soldier is very, very long odds.”

She mutely nods, but her eyes remain scared. Back in his River House apartment, she tries and tries to call Kishote, and keeps
getting the maddening high ding-a-ling that signals overloaded circuits. But she persists, figuring he will stay late, though
by now it is ten at night there. At last comes the welcome
bleep
of a call going through. “Oh, Yael, hi!” Miriam, his longtime secretary sounds exhilarated. “He’s speaking to the Ramatkhal.
Can he call you back?”

“No, no, I’ll hold. God knows when he’ll get another overseas line. Miriam, how about Aryeh, is he all right?”

“Why not? He’s fine. He was here in the office an hour ago.” Yael gasps with relief. “Wait, here’s the general.”

E
arlier that afternoon, on the outer fringe of the dancing, singing, cheering mob at Ben Gurion airport, Don Kishote was watching
and waiting for Aryeh. When he espied his son wearily descending from the Hercules, he darted over the tarmac and caught him
in a fierce long bear hug. Haggard, hoarse, Aryeh gestured at the hundred raggle-taggle hostages coming down the ramp of the
leading Hercules. “The question is, Abba,” he said bitterly, “whether all of them are worth one Yoni.”

“They’re Jews, Aryeh,” Kishote said. “Yoni thought so.”

Benny Luria and his son Danny, now a Phantom pilot, were also watching the jubilation. Towering over his father, his flaming
red hair clipped air force style, Danny had searched for and found Luria on the thronged airfield, the Talmud volume under
his arm. As they watched the hostages stream out on the tarmac to be rushed, embraced, and tearfully kissed by their families,
Benny Luria said to his son, “Now I know why Dov died.”

I
n the early days of cinema, a much-used comic device was to reverse the film. A diver would fly up out of the water and land
dry on the board, or a collapsed building would rise out of its rubble and stand upright. With the Entebbe rescue, something
like that happened to Israel’s smashed Humpty-Dumpty image, as Cookie Freeman had put it to Don Kishote. The shattered egg
pulled itself together, the shell fragments coalesced around the albumen and yolk, the cracks disappeared, the egg leaped
up on the wall, and behold, there was Humpty-Dumpty again, smooth, whole, smiling. And the world now knew that whenever and
wherever Jews were threatened because they were Jews, Humpty-Dumpty would have to be reckoned with.

November 16, 1977

Dearest Queenie —

As always, hearing your voice for a few minutes has brightened my day. I’ve just this minute hung up, and as promised I’m
writing in more detail about the incredible Sadat development. By every indication the man is really coming. Not an hour ago,
for instance, the Foreign Ministry notified me that poor sick Golda wants me to escort her to the airport to meet him. So
I have to try on the uniform I’ve put on only once or twice since Rabin relented after Entebbe and let me retire. I hope it
still fits.

You ask, what is the mood in Israel? I would say, “dumb-founded.” The public can’t believe that it’s happening. Rumors and
guesses are flying. At one extreme people say it’s Messiah’s time, at the other that it’s only one more Arab trick before
another surprise attack. I myself cautiously hope it’s a real peace move, based not on Egyptian good will but on the bizarre
shift in our politics that’s put Menachem Begin into power after nineteen years. He’s been our ultrahawk and perpetual opposition
leader, and Sadat may figure that if anyone can sell our people a tough peace deal, Begin can.

You also ask what my work at Rafael is all about. Well, Rafael is the Armament Development Authority, and it produces advanced
weaponry for one of two reasons: either to give us an edge in battle, or because our enemies have acquired stuff which no
big power will sell us. I’m a political appointee, my lump of sugar for my long service as Rabin’s military secretary. My
dream of going back to biochemistry is forgotten, I can’t make up those thirty years as a soldier. This is as near to science
as I can come, but the genius and self-sacrifice of the scientists and engineers under me make me feel humble. I’m not in
their class, and never could have been. Half of them could go abroad for two or three times the salary we pay them, but they
love Israel. My brother Michael, may he rest in peace, was the scientist in the family. If he’d lived he might have been up
for a Nobel Prize, and I’m an idiot by comparison. I did well to serve in the army, after all.