Hero (10 page)

That was what bothered him. The fact that everybody knew that Tetsuo Hanavi was fucking his brother Shlomo's wife had nothing to do with it.

Galil would talk to Shimon about it. He—no. No, it didn't matter.

Galil chuckled to himself. Shit, he had just mentally chided Rabinowitz for doing what he was doing right now. This reconfiguration as a combat regiment was just temporary. This wasn't yesterday. Right now it was more of an exercise than anything else. They'd be back to cadre in a while.

Besides, Natan Horowitz was an operations wizard; an assistant ops officer's main job would be staying out of his way and keeping the coffee and tabsticks coming.

Leave it be.

"Congratulations," Galil finally said. "Good slot."

Tetsuo Hanavi shrugged. "It'll do." His grin threatened to split his face open. "You sure your leg's okay?" he asked, throwing his hip over the corner of the table. Hanavi pulled a pack of tabsticks out of his blouse pocket and offered Galil one; Galil shook his head.

"I told you: it's fine."
And how's your brother's wife?

"If you want to switch slots until you're better, it can be arranged. I've already talked to Natan, and to the adjutant. No problem with either of them if it's okay with Shimon, and with you."

Galil snorted at the transparency of that maneuver. "Thanks. I'm happy where I am." Yitzhak Galil wouldn't give up a real command even for a permanent staff job, much less a temporary one. Not voluntarily, and he would put up one hell of a fight before submitting to any involuntary reassignment.

"As you like." Hanavi stuck a slim tabstick between his lips and puffed it to life, then held it and considered the coal for a moment. "I heard there was a . . . problem with my little brother yesterday."

"A problem." Galil kept his voice low. "Right. He froze in combat."

Hanavi was silent for a long moment. "Are you very sure about that?"

"Yeah. Ask Benyamin.
He
did good yesterday; I've put him in for his first class warrant."

"Good for you. And I already asked him. Now I'm asking you, Yitzhak," Tetsuo Hanavi's voice was low and even, no trace of threat in it.

"We had two troopers from Kelev freeze, both virgins—Ari and that other asshole, Slepak."

Tetsuo blew a ring of smoke into the air, watched it pull apart and drift away. "Benyamin thinks Ari may've caught the edge of a blast. Doc Zucker will second it. It makes sense to me that we give him the benefit of the doubt."

"We?" Galil shrugged noncommittally.

"I want you on board on this."

Galil shrugged again. "Leave it. Maybe we can talk about it later."

Hanavi refused to drop it. "What does the old man have to say about it?"

"Why don't you
ask
him, Tetsuo?"

"I just might, Captain."

"Go ahead, Captain."

"Captain—"

"Stop it," Dov Ginsberg said from just behind them.

Galil turned in his chair.

Dov Ginsberg looked like shit. Beneath the crooked bandage on his forehead, his eyes were red from lack of sleep and his face was pale, except where a shadow of beard darkened his chin and cheeks. His khakis were torn in several places, and stained in more; the damp patches under his armpits were white around the edges from caked salt.

The only thing that didn't look worn was the bright white cast wrapping his left hand and arm almost to the elbow, leaving only thumb and part of the forefinger exposed.

Galil was of above average height and Tetsuo Hanavi was tall, but Dov Ginsberg loomed darkly over them like a tank. Galil felt like a child being supervised by a strange adult.

"Shimon says no arguing." Dov turned to Tetsuo. "He also says for you to leave Galil alone."

Tetsuo Hanavi smiled thinly. "He thought it all out, did he?"

Dov didn't smile, and he didn't answer. "He says for you to leave Galil alone."

"I hear you. Perhaps we'll talk later, Yitzhak," Tetsuo Hanavi said, moving away.

Dov Ginsberg watched Tetsuo Hanavi, his broad face impassive, expressionless.

"You don't like him much, do you?" Galil asked.

Dov thought it over for a moment, then shook his head. "He isn't loyal to Shimon, not the way I am," he said, his gaze never leaving Hanavi. "Then again, nobody is." Dov pursed his lips and hefted his shotgun. "Sir, I need some help. I can't pump this thing worth shit, not with this cast on. Shimon said you had some sort of quick rig for when your left hand was broken, on Thuringia."

"Sure. Not with a shotgun, but with a Barak. Should work the same way."

Ginsberg didn't take that as an agreement. "So would you fix it for me?"

"Sure, Dov." Galil shrugged. "It's pretty simple—take about ten minutes. Meet me after the staff meeting. You just drill right through the charging handle—well, it's the pump grip here—and then you run a loop of cable or tubing through. One-centimeter siphon hose is fine, if you can get it. When you need to pump it, you just slip your hand in the loop and pump away. No need to grip, and I'll make the loop large enough that you can still hit the magazine release with your left thumb."

Normally, Kelev used the Aggressor/Defender Company's armorer, but with the reshuffling going on, it would be better to leave poor Shimshon Nakamura alone. The tools he needed ought to be in the local Casa armory. Hmm . . . what was the easiest way to get access to it?

Leave it to Bar Yosef, Galil decided; that's what the liaison officer is for, particularly if he's also the adjutant.

Galil caught Bar Yosef's eye and raised a finger; Bar Yosef mouthed a quick "Later?" and returned Galil's nod of agreement.

"I'll handle it for you," Galil said.

"Thank you." Dov nodded, then walked away, eyeing everybody in the room levelly as he took a seat near the front of the auditorium.

"Good morning, all." Shimon Bar-El was at the top of the stairs, briefcase tucked under one arm. His hair was slicked back against his scalp, damp from a shower. "Settle down, please. We have a lot to go over and not enough time." He bounded down the stairs, un-snapping the closures on his briefcase as he did.

He stopped at Galil's elbow. "Doc Zucker claims he's got a therapy that can get you healed quickly, if painfully—he says he'll have you ambulatory in a few days. Want to try it?"

"Of course." He couldn't run Kelev from a chair, not for long, and with Tetsuo sniffing after his job there wasn't a choice.

"Good man." Shimon trotted down the rest of the steps and took the center seat at the table on the raised podium. "Listen up. Agenda is as follows. After-action critique on yesterday, followed by status reports—Liaison, Regimental S1, S2, S4, Special Staff, Medical—mmm, I'll handle Medical. No S3 for now; Natan's off with his nose in some papers." He held up a hand. "Just hang on. I'll take questions in a minute.

"Then, battalion reports: bat commanders, bat S1, S4. We'll have to make it quick, because at ten hundred hours, we've got a briefing from Divisione"—he pronounced it with just the right accent—"Intel, and then we have a greeting from Generale DiCorpo d'Armata Massimo Colletta, followed by briefings from the rest of Divisione staff.

"Afternoon today, and all day tomorrow, is research. Sidney, I'll need your evaluation of the Araldo Model V, and your recommendation as to whether we get more firepower out of liaison with a salted—both senses—Casa tank company, or a quick—and I do mean quick—transition of some of your people. Chiabrera's laid on an eleven-tank company for you to play with."

"I can tell you right now."

"Bullshit. I'm not interested in your prejudices against locals." Bar-El was visibly irritated. "I've fought with the Casas before. Some of them are real good, and most of the rest aren't as bad as you think they are. If they were, the Boche would have overrun them months ago. Manning the tanks ourselves would cost us more than forty men; if we put a liaison trooper into each platoon as loader or driver, that only costs us three men. And these are good tankers. Ezer?"

Ezer Laskov stood, leafing through the sheaf of flimsies on the clipboard clutched in a bony hand. "I've checked out their files. They're orphans from broken-up outfits, not apparent misfits. The least-qualified Casa tank commander has something like three hundred logged hours in the Araldo V." He looked up at Shimon. "If it's close support, though, we're better off with gunners aboard, not drivers. The fire-control system is just a copy of the Stadia Z, and there is a ranging machine-gun-mounted coax."

"Hmm. Possibly; save it for later." Bar-El turned back to Rabinowitz. "The point is, they've had hundreds of hours in their tanks, and we'd be lucky to get you fifty in the next week. So I want thought-out answers, none of this reflexive we're-better-than-they-are bullshit. And save your questions—well, what is it, Ebi?"

Colonel Chaim Goren, commander of the First Battalion, scowled as he rose. "Meaning not more than average offense, Shimon, what is all the rush about?" He sounded every bit as irritated as he looked. "I did a walk-around today and the training division has at least another two, three weeks to go on their introductory cycle. They don't need us now, and they've got security in hand here. I don't see that we need to reconfigure for combat, not to avoid another problem like you had yesterday."

"Well, you're right about that," Shimon Bar-El said. "There's been a change of plans. At oh-six-thirty this morning, the Commerce Department rammed a ceasefire down the throats of both sides, effective thirty days from tomorrow." He paused for a moment. "Which means that Generale Colletta has no need of a cadre to train a new division for him, and which also means, gentlemen: welcome to the Thirtieth Regiment, Operational."

Galil didn't look hard for the thin smile on Bar-El's face; he knew it was there.

Sidney Rabinowitz didn't like it. "We've been planning for cadre, not for strike. I've been training for cadre, not strike. We're manned for cadre, not for strike."

"Yeah. Well, I didn't know. If I had any reason to believe that the Thousand Worlds was going to pull this, I would have mentioned it, honest." Bar-El shrugged. "We'd have made some personnel changes at home—a lot more young PFCs than we have, a lot fewer career NCOs."

"Right." Ebi Goren's tone was just a hair short of insolence. "Dutch brevets all over the place." Goren was one of the more vocal critics of negative brevets, the practice of temporarily demoting soldiers to fit them into the table of organization.

"French brevets, as well. Real brevets, too," Shimon said, ignoring the tone, rubbing it in. "We're going to have enough trouble putting the right man into the right job to worry about whether he already has the right number of bars or leaves on his shoulder." He lit a tabstick and puffed on it for a moment. "Look, I know you all know me, and you know how I feel about the
Freiheimers
," he said, pronouncing the word like a curse, "and I don't feel any better about them since yesterday. But it's just a job. We do what we're paid for and then we go home. Period. So let's get to it. Any urgent questions?"

"I've got one, Shimon," said Lieutenant Colonel Horem Bar Yosef, the adjutant. "Hell, I've got a hundred."

"I don't have time for a hundred. Can they wait?"

"No, sir. Well, most of 'em can, but one can't. Chiabrera's got me, Sadok and Yossi Bernstein meeting with Divisione G4 while the rest of you are getting yourself greeted. Divisione G4 is a full colonel, and you know how these folks are about NCOs."

Shimon shrugged. "Yossi?"

The Supply and Logistics sergeant was already reaching into his pocket; he extracted a set of lieutenant colonel's leaves, and switched them with the senior master sergeant's stripes clipped to his collar. "Any chance I can get lieutenant colonel's
pay
?" he asked, dryly. "Or even a major's?"

"No. This is just a French brevet, not a real one."

That was proper, Galil decided. Bernstein wasn't being asked to do anything beyond his normal responsibilities; the purpose of the added rank was only to make it easier for him to deal with the locals.

Bar-El turned back to Bar Yosef. "Will that do it?"

"Not quite. I'd better be a full colonel."

"Be my guest. Now, we'd better get to the after-action critique. Oh, what
is
it, Tetsuo?"

Tetsuo Hanavi waited until the room quieted around him. "General, if everything we've been planning is suddenly going into the dumper, then it would seem to me that we could put off an after-action critique."

Shimon Bar-El sighed. "No, we can't. Understood?"

"Well, no."

Shimon Bar-El's eyes closed, then opened. "Fine. I'll make it real clear for you, for all of you. We lost—I lost thirty-two men yesterday, and I've got one hundred ninety-three in hospital, shot up, chopped up, burned." His nostrils flared momentarily, but that was the only sign of emotion. When he spoke again, his voice was flat, almost too casual. "I will not have that be for nothing. I will not." He sighed. "Now, Yitzhak Galil, Regimental Headquarters Company, we'll begin with you. How did you fuck up yesterday?"

Galil had been waiting for this. He sat back in his chair, and folded his hands across his lap. "I don't think I did too badly, except in preparation. If all of the RHQ Company was going to go operational—even if it was more for admin purposes than any other—I should have insisted that we wait until the tubes and sapper gear were down."

"You did suggest that."

"I should have convinced you."

"Oh, get off it." Ebi Goren shook his head. "I know that a certain amount of breast-beating is supposed to be part of an after-action critique, but let's pretend we're all sober. Forgetting for a moment that putting Deir Yasin and Nablus under RHQ company is really just an administrative convenience, sappers and tubes aren't going to do you any good in an ambush—not if you're on the receiving end. If there was reason to worry about an ambush, then it's Shimon's fault for accepting unsecure transport."

"Bull
shit
, Ebi." Ezer Laskov, regimental S2, spoke up. "Anybody see anything in the Intel data to suggest that? I went over the folders last night—"

"When you should have been sleeping," Shimon Bar-El said.