By the Rivers of Babylon (36 page)

Abdel Jabari sat near the shepherds’ hut and spoke authoritatively into the PA microphone. “Back! Back! It is finished! Fall back!” The PA speaker, its wire miraculously unscathed, blared from the hole of Outpost No. 2 “Back! Back!” Deborah Gideon awoke to its sound. She brushed the clay off her face and looked up out of the hole at the sky. An incredibly beautiful cluster of dazzling blue-white stars sat right above her. Footsteps hurried past her, heading downslope. She closed her eyes as a silhouette blotted out the stars above her.

“Back?” shouted Jabari. Though by now the young Ashbals knew it was yet another ruse, they pretended they did not and fell back as ordered by that strong voice. Another voice, as strong and as compelling, the voice of Ahmed Rish (or was it another ruse?), ordered them forward. The voice called out in the darkness and, in fact, it even crackled over the few functional field radios. “Forward! Attack! Follow me!” But the other voice, further down the slope, said, “Back! Go back!” And it was certainly easier to direct one’s footsteps downslope than up—and less deadly. In fact, the Israeli fire seemed to abate as though they were waiting to see how it would go. The meaning, as the Ashbals saw it, was clear. The Israelis seemed to be saying, “You are no longer trapped on the slope. The back door is open. Go.”

•    •    •

Near the center of the eastern defensive line and twenty meters behind it, Peter Kahn and David Becker stood by the big nitrogen bottle. Attached to its nozzle was a telescoping strut from the front nose wheel assembly. Balanced on top of the strut was a seat from the Concorde. On the seat was a tire from the nose assembly. Kahn gave the signal and Becker put a match to the kerosene-soaked seat and tire. They burst into flames and Kahn released the pressure valve. The nitrogen shot into the hollow strut and pushed its telescoping section into the air. The seat and wheel hurled upward and arched over the breastworks like a fiery image from the Book of Ezekiel. It hit the slope and bounced high, spewing burning particles and throwing off its flaming wheel. The seat and the tire bounced again down the slope through the ranks of the Ashbals.

Kahn and Becker retracted the strut and fastened another seat and the second and last tire to it. They lofted the burning, bouncing missile into the air, then put a third seat on the strut, pointed the wheel assembly farther southward, and fired again.

The Ashbals turned back, only a few at first, then all of them, including their remaining officers and sergeants. They moved quickly, but did not run or break into a disorderly route. They picked up the wounded when and where they could, but left the dead and near-dead for the buzzards and jackals. The unaided wounded crawled and rolled down the slope.

The Israelis had ceased firing even before Burg’s runners got the order out to the line. The unspoken understanding called for an unhampered and unharassed line of retreat for the Ashbals. The Ashbals were recovering a lot of loose equipment because of the lack of Israeli fire, but it seemed a small price in exchange for their ending the attack. And it was the Ashbal rank and file, not the officers, who had tacitly accepted the Israeli deal. Burg felt this was an important point.

There was a stillness on the hill and down the slope, a stillness that penetrated into the dark, out to the mud flats, and into the surrounding hills. The steady east wind blew off the smells of cordite and kerosene and impartially covered the living and the dead with a film of fine dust. As the din cleared from everyone’s ears, they noticed that the stillness was only a temporary postbattle deafness. Now the east wind could be heard as well as felt, and it carried with it the sounds of crying and moaning men and women from the littered slope. The jackals began howling in
the night—howling like a Roman crowd that had just witnessed an excellent fight in the gladiator pits—like a crowd mesmerized into a temporary silence, then suddenly bursting forth with approval at the slaughter.

Burg looked at his watch. The whole thing had taken just thirty-nine minutes.

Dobkin lay bleeding on the west bank of the Euphrates. He heard the silence and wondered what it meant. It had two interpretations, of course. He tried to replay the sounds of the past fifteen minutes in his mind—to interpret them like the old campaigner that be was. But the pain in his thigh bothered his concentration. Still, he felt certain that he would hear the Arabic victory shouting if that was the way it had gone. He listened intently through the pain. Nothing. Silence. He let the pain and fatigue take him into unconsciousness.

Hausner found her near the south end of the west slope. She was staring over the edge of the drop, down into the river. She held a rifle by one hand at her side. Hausner stood a few meters to the side of her and stared at her face, illuminated by the reflection from the river. “You killed someone.”

She turned her head quickly. “I . . . but you’re all right. You’re all right.” She let the rifle fall and turned toward him.

He seemed to hesitate. Making love was one thing. Showing
affection on the morning after implied a deeper commitment. He didn’t know if he was ready for that. “You . . . you’re an MIA.”

She hesitated also. “I’m here. Not missing.” She laughed softly, a nervous laugh.

“Me, too,” said Hausner with what sounded like a touch of disbelief. “We made it.”

“I killed a young girl.”

“Everyone who fires a gun in battle for the first time thinks he has killed someone.”

“No. I really did. She fell down the slope.”

“She may have been nicked a bit and run off.”

“No. I hit her in the chest . . . I think.”

“Nonsense.” But he knew it was not. He wanted to say, “Good for you, Miriam. Welcome to the club,” but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. “You fired the gun and you thought you killed someone. Did you hear her yell?”

“I . . . I don’t know. It happened . . .”

“Come with me. I have to get back.”

She picked up the rifle and followed. She wanted to say something neutral like, “Thank you.” Instead it came out, “I love you.” She said it again, louder. “I love you.”

He stopped but would not turn. He knew that he was not going to make it. He knew that with more certainty then he’d ever known anything. But maybe she was fated not to make it, either. If she were to die and he hadn’t told her that he loved her, too, then that would be a tragedy. But if she lived, then his “I love you” could only cause her further grief. He began walking again and he could hear her soft footsteps in the dust, falling further and further behind.

Rabbi Levin ministered spiritually and physically to the wounded. He helped carry bodies from the line to the hut, then assisted in dressing wounds. He looked like a casualty himself, smeared with blood and hollow-eyed, and he smelled like a charnel house.

After the wounded were all assembled in and around the hut, the rabbi began making an accounting of them in a small book. He added the wounded of the second night to the wounded of the first night and made notes on their progress or lack of it. Tamir, unchanged. Hausner’s three men—Rubin, up and around; Jaffe, unchanged; and Kaplan, bleeding again. Brin was
dead, they’d told him, leaving only Marcus and Alpern still fit for full duty out of Hausner’s original six men. Ruth Mandel was still feverish. Neither Daniel Jacoby nor Rachel Baum, wounded together, was doing well. Abel Geller, the steward, lay bleeding to death all over the floor of the hut, his white uniform an incredible red. A pool of mixed blood had collected on a low point in the ancient brick floor, and it made a splashing sound whenever Rabbi Levin walked through it. There were six other wounded whom he didn’t know by sight, and he gave them numbers until he had time to identify them.

The rabbi needed air. He walked outside, but there was only more carnage there. Shimon Peled, the Foreign Minister’s aide, lay dead against a wall of the hut. He had died not of his moderate wound but of a heart attack. He’d been ruled unfit for combat duty, but had insisted on being given a rifle. Levin shook his head. There would be a lot of stupidity and stubbornness that would pass for bravery in the hours and days ahead. He found some towels and covered Peled’s face with one of them. Strange custom, this covering of the face of the dead. There were two girls lying against the wall, dead also. He arranged their bodies in a more restful position, closed their eyes—another strange custom when you thought about it—and covered their faces with towels also. He’d get their names later.

The biggest loss was the six men and women on the outposts. Rabbi Levin entered their names in his book. Deborah Gideon, Yigael Tekoah, Micah Goren, Hannah Shiloah, Reuben Taber, and Leah Ilsar. He’d say a prayer as soon as he had a minute or two.

And where was Hausner? He’d been reported as missing, as dead, and as alive. Even Jacob Hausner couldn’t be all three at once. Levin wondered if they would be better or worse off without him. And General Dobkin? Did Ben Dobkin make it? He’d have to say a special prayer for Ben Dobkin.

As the rabbi walked back into the hut, Beth Abrams collapsed from the heat and the stench, and Levin carried her outside. She revived before he even set her down and insisted on going back to her nursing. The rabbi sighed and let her go. Yes, it
was
going to be a long and terrible night. The rabbi had an unorthodox thought: If everyone looked out for himself first, then everyone would have at least one person looking out for him. That didn’t sound as if it should come from a rabbi, but he liked it. He took a deep breath and went back into the hut.

•    •    •

There was no celebration among the Israelis this night. Although they had accomplished the incredible feat of arms, not only was the price high, but they knew that the worst was yet to come. Now would set in the hunger and the thirst. The wounded were consuming vast quantities of water. Their moans and cries carried across the still hilltop, wearing away at the morale of the others.

A party went downslope and began looking for abandoned equipment. Three other teams went off to search for the outposts. When they brought back the hacked-up bodies of Micah Goren and Hannah Shiloah, there was a great deal of weeping among the defenders. The bodies of Reuben Taber and Leah Ilsar, each with a neat hole in the head, were added to the dead in back of the shepherds’ hut.

Occasionally, a shot would be heard on the slope. The men and women on the hill pretended not to notice the shots, but they could not help noticing that there wasn’t as much moaning from the Arab wounded left behind.

The Israelis badly needed a morale booster, and they found it in Yigael Tekoah. He was already a hero—presumably a dead one—for disregarding his own life to shout the warning. Now he was a live hero, found with multiple, but not mortal, wounds. He was brought back into the perimeter. Between periods of unconsciousness, he told them what he had done to try to save Deborah Gideon and asked about her. He was assured that she was fine and a runner was quickly sent out to pass on to the search parties what Tekoah had told them about her.

At Outpost No. 2, they could see where she had lain in the dust, but she was no longer there. They called for her and searched the area, but it was apparent that she had been taken prisoner.

Jacob Hausner stood with Burg on the promontory and watched the full moon rise in the east. If the full moon really made lunatics restless, then Ahmed Rish would be howling tonight. The entire slope turned blue-white, and the full extent of the carnage could be seen clearly now. “That’s it until moonset,” said Hausner.

Burg nodded. The next period of darkness between moonset and the beginning of morning nautical twilight would be about
an hour and a half long. He wondered if Rish would attempt an attack then. Twilight might catch them on the slope, and then that would be the end of Ahmed Rish and company. “Maybe they’ve had it,” he said aloud.

The awful post-action sounds hung in the night air: the moaning, the cries of pain, the weeping, the labored breathing from the necessary exertions, the heavy, shuffling footsteps of people fatigued beyond their limits, the sounds of retching, and the occasional sharp report of a
coup de grâce
being administered on the slope.

These sounds were far more unsettling than the sounds of the battle that had created them, reflected Hausner. He stared at the body of Nathan Brin, not yet removed from the place where he had fallen. He wanted to say something aloud or touch the man, but Naomi Haber, on duty with the starlight scope, was already tottering on the edge of hysteria. His low reserve of compassion was better expended on the living, he thought. He said a silent good-bye to the young man who had been such a fountainhead of optimism and strength, then walked over to the girl and put his arm around her. He marveled at how young people became so attached to each other in so short a period of time, but then remembered his own situation. “A lady who means very much to me was also forced to kill tonight. She is a professional pacifist, but she is coping with it.”

Haber put down the rifle. “I’m all right. I can cope with that. Let me do my job.” She wiped her eyes and went back to her protective scanning.

Hausner walked away and began his lonely circuit of the line.

As the night wore on and the shock wore off, most of the defenders on the hill returned to a more normal state of mind. Everything began functioning again. The dwindling supplies of water and ammunition were distributed, the wounded were cared for, and repairs were made on the defenses wherever possible.

After Hausner completed his inspection of the defenses, he found Burg and they both moved to the cockpit of the Concorde. As they entered, Becker was working the radio. Its squeal shot through the still cockpit. He switched it off and spoke to the two men behind him. “The Lear is still on station. Probably won’t have to go and refuel until daylight.”

“Well, we’ll try again at daylight, then.” Hausner took a long
drink from a bottle of sweet Israeli wine that was Becker’s ration. He made a face. He couldn’t see the label, but he knew it wasn’t a Trockenbeerenauslese. He sat in the jump seat, took Rish’s psychological profile from the floor, and flipped through it absently. “One of our brilliant Army psychiatrists says here that Ahmed Rish would respond to treatment. He didn’t say what kind of treatment, but I presume he meant decapitation.” He looked up. “If you were Ahmed Rish, Isaac, what would you do next?”