The Glory (91 page)

Slow down and drop back four miles, so as not to dive into the first unit’s bomb explosions. All this was calculated long
ago and cranked into computers for visual display on the transparent screens. And there goes the first unit, popping up two
by two for their dives …

W
orked out long ago to a hair, the strike plan is a balance between least time over the target for the whole force, and enough
time between dives to avoid blowing each other up with bomb fragments. Solution: diving in pairs at intervals of thirty seconds.
Four pairs, a half-minute for each pair; total time of the bombing attack, two minutes. For those two minutes, these pilots
— and their backups who are not flying — have drilled and drilled for months, not informed of the target until just before
the aborted strike. Yet they have guessed it long since, from practicing six-hundred-mile bombing runs. A circle of that radius
on the map, drawn around Israel, shows only one target …

A
head and below, concussions, flame, smoke
.

Danny and Mussa are the last attacking pair, most likely to catch the heat from a surprised defense. Yet their plunge at the
dome, which already looks like a broken eggshell, is all but unopposed; a few white AA puffs, nothing more, no SAMs in sight,
no SAM warnings on the buzzer. Death dot crawling down the pipper toward the smashed dome. Einsteinian ballistic calculations,
reduced to a simple picture for a pilot to follow and obey. Dot on dome. Okay, bomb button. Heavy jolt, plane instantly lighter,
turn and climb on afterburner, pull as many G’s as possible and —
Ow! OWW!

Terrific pain shoots through Danny’s head and neck. The G suit is working, but he bent his head when he turned instead of
bracing it against the headrest, and he has taken the murderous G’s in his neck muscles. Never mind the pain, it will pass,
he is conscious. Zoom up into the sky, form up with those F-16s in plain sight overhead, trapping the last red rays of the
setting sun on their white Stars of David. God, what an exciting sight! Behind and far below, smoke billowing up from the
smashed egg. Next question, have they all made it?

“This is Knife Edge! Report!”
The flight leader somewhere up there, breaking silence.

“Knife Edge Two, b’seder.”

“Knife Edge Three, b’seder.”

“Knife Edge Four, b’seder.”

Voices of friends, all recognizable, young, excited, charged up.

“Cluster One, b’seder.”

“Cluster Two, b’seder.”

“Cluster Three, b’seder.”

Silence.

The leader:
“Cluster Four, are you there? Cluster Four, Cluster Four, report!”

A moment of worry for Danny, through all his neck agony, about the fate of poor Cluster Four. Oo-ah!
He
is Cluster Four. The code names were given just before takeoff, the pain made him forget it. He shouts, “Cluster Four, b’seder,”
but makes no sound, his vocal cords still strangled.

“Cluster Four, answer up, Cluster Four!”
Pause.
“Danny, are you there, are you all right? Answer, Danny!”

With all his might, Danny strains and croaks, “Cluster Four, b’seder!”

“Carbon, Carbon, from Knife Edge One. CHARLIE. I say again, CHARLIE.”
Thus the leader exultantly reports all planes safe, to the command plane circling many miles in the rear.

“What are the results?”

“Target appears totally destroyed according to plan.”

The eight F-16s are already formed up as they climb steeply at thirty thousand feet in the lilac evening sky, four by four
as in a parade flyby.

“Return to base, good luck.”

The voice of the flight leader, brisk and cheery:
“Knife Edge and Cluster, go to forty-two thousand feet, head for home, make six hundred knots.”

The pain in Danny’s throat, head, and shoulders is subsiding. He turns off the microphone to shout in his bubble as the aircraft
soars, “Dov, Dov, we did it. Now let’s see what those mamzerim, the politicians, can do with ten years!”

The strike force races home through the thin upper air, scoring contrails against the stars, breathing through oxygen masks,
consuming mile by mile a fraction of the fuel they burned going in, lighter by two tons of bombs, the detached tanks, and
most of their fuel. Even so, they land one by one on the illuminated Etzion runway almost dry. The ground crews greet them
with joy, having no idea of where they have been, but sensing that they have done something momentous. Danny runs and embraces
Mussa as he steps off the ladder from his bubble. “Well, we did it.”

“That’s what we’re paid for,” says Mussa, and he walks off into the darkness.

Benny Luria comes out of the gloom at a trot, wearing a knitted skullcap, most unusual for him while on duty. He fiercely
hugs his son, puts his hand on his thick red hair, and says in a choked voice, “Repeat this:
‘Blessed are you, O Lord, Ruler of the Universe, who grants favors to the unworthy, and has granted me supreme favor.’
” It is the blessing on deliverance from danger. Danny knows the words. Without sharing his father’s growing religiosity,
he repeats them from the heart. “Abba, Dov flew with me all the way.”

His father squeezes an arm around his shoulders. “I know. Mission fulfilled, and all pilots Charlie! A great feat, Danny,
a feat for the generations. Highest professionalism, plus the hand of God.”

April 1982. Deadline for all Israeli forces to withdraw from the Sinai and seal the Camp David peace.

In the media, and in many governments including the American, much skepticism has prevailed as to whether the Israelis would
not in the end, find some pretext to stay put. What, leave behind their networks of modern roads, their airfields, their many
military camps and underground command bases, constructed at such enormous expense? Give up the oil fields they have developed,
which have made them energy-independent and balanced their national budget? Abandon the vital Sharm el Sheikh naval base,
the great Etzion air base, the beautiful coastal town of Yamit? Meekly hand all these priceless installations over to the
Egyptians, who tried and failed to recover them by force of arms? Just wait and see.

The Israelis are indeed full of surprises. As they surprised the world in the Six-Day War, and at Entebbe, and in the Reactor
Raid, so they now surprise the world by hauling down their flags and quietly departing from the last of these irreplaceable
assets. That is not to say the departure is a gladsome business. Moving day even in private life tends to be lugubrious; how
much more so, in the life of a nation.

T
he dismantling is over at Sharm el Sheikh. Everything of military use has been removed or blown up, and only the ransacked
buildings remain standing. The base commandant, Noah Barak, is having a last look around his rubble-strewn office when his
father walks in. “Hi, I came down with the admiral. In case you’re not feeling bad enough, I brought you this. Remember it?”

He hands the commandant a framed snapshot of a skinny boyish lieutenant in shorts and a helmet, raising the Israeli flag over
a building by the sea.

The commandant nods. His beard is flecked with gray, and he is far from skinny. “I remember more than this, Abba. I remember
you bringing me here in ’57 when we gave the base back to the Egyptians.” Bitterly he adds, “For the first time, that is.”

“Remember by chance what you said way back then?”

“Do I?” Noah shifts to a childish treble. “ ‘Abba, why do we have to give it back? We won the war!’ And you said” — Noah puts
on a deep voice — “ ‘We’re doing it for peace.’ ”

“Good memory. You also said, ‘We’ll get it back.
I’ll
take it back!’ “ Barak gestures at the picture. “And you kept your word.”

Noah puts on his white dress-uniform blouse and his cap. “Yes, and here we go again, doing it for peace. Maybe this time it
will work.”

As the blue-and-white flag slowly comes down, green-clad soldiers on the parade ground, and navy girl soldiers lined up on
the wharf in their pretty white uniforms, stand at attention singing “Hatikvah,” tears pouring down the girls’ cheeks. Zev
Barak tries to sing, but cannot bring out a sound. Six Dabur patrol boats are leaving the wharf in a column. As the anthem
ends, they sail in a tight circle round and round, their sirens wailing.

A
t Etzion air base Egyptian officers and soldiers wait to take over, keeping a discreet distance from the parade ground. Danny
Luria has come from Ramat David for the ceremony, and now wishes he had not. The spectacle of the wrecked hangars and blasted
facilities is bad enough, but not since Dov’s death has he seen his father so brought down. Yet Benny Luria goes stiffly through
the flag-lowering, singing “Hatikvah” with the ranks of aviators and ground crew. The ceremony over, he exchanges salutes
with the much taller, heavily mustached Egyptian general in resplendent dress uniform who approaches for a low-toned colloquy.
Then Benny Luria comes to his son, takes his arm, and murmurs,
“Blessed are you, O Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, the True Judge,”
the blessing on evil news, usually spoken at a death.

“Amen,” says his son. “Let’s go home, Abba.”

“Amen!” Benny’s voice turns loud and hard. “Back to the Promised Land.”

A
t Yamit (Seaside) on the Mediterranean, the ghost of Moshe Dayan hovers over the dismantling. Yamit is not a military base
at all, but a beach and farming town constructed just across the Sinai border after the Six-Day War; as Dayan then put it,
“to create
uvdot
[facts] on the land.” Several such “facts” were strung inside Sinai in a strip along the borders. In the end they almost
wrecked the Camp David talks, for Sadat demanded, in return for peace, every last inch of the Sinai. So Dayan sadly reversed
himself and agreed to the uprooting of the
uvdot
, including prosperous Yamit, his crowning fact. Before concurring, Begin telephoned Arik Sharon, the toughest of the tough,
for his approval to give up Yamit. Now Dayan is gone, and the uprooting is for other hands. Whose but Arik Sharon’s?

“Kishote, I have to evacuate and bulldoze Yamit.” Early in April, Sharon, a civilian minister, is talking to the chief of
planning branch in the Kirya. “We can’t leave a town on the Sinai border for the Egyptians to move into. That’s asking for
trouble. We can’t leave ruins for terrorists to hide out in, either. Every stick and brick we can’t remove, we’ll have to
plough under. It’s heartbreaking, but not one stone must remain on another.”

“I can see that.”

In a grating tone Sharon goes on. “Then there are the townspeople. They’re getting a dirty deal. We induced them to come and
make their lives in Yamit, and now they have to give up their homes, their schools, everything. The diehards won’t go quietly.
There’ll be protests, women lying down in front of the bulldozers, and so on. As usual with the charming jobs, I’ve got it.
I need a deputy. Will you take it on?”

“All right.”

“So quick? It doesn’t bother your conscience one bit, Yossi, evacuating settlers and razing a settlement?”

“Yamit isn’t a settlement, Arik. Planting those people inside the Sinai was a strategic brainstorm of Dayan’s, and a misguided
one. It doesn’t bother my conscience, no.”

“It does mine, and mark my word, it’ll haunt us as a precedent.”

“For the Holy Land? Show me in the Bible, Arik, where God promised Abraham the Sinai desert,” says the chief of planning branch.

“Okay, Don Kishote. Draw up a plan for the evil day.”

There is no flag-lowering at Yamit, only the crash of the bulldozers into crumpling walls, the yells of protesters, the sirens
of police vans coming to take away the violent ones, the swelling murmur of crowds of onlookers. Some shoving, shouting, wrestling,
a lot of camera work, and the people are out. It becomes a protracted long day of monotonous eradication of wreckage.

The crowds fade away. April 25 is the last day for Israel’s compliance with the Camp David Accords, and the chief of planning
remains there to the last, to assure that all happens in full compliance with the treaty. As the sun sets on the place that
was once Yamit, its dying rays slant down on level sands, departing bulldozers, and the lone figure of Don Kishote, surveying
the patch of desert that was once Yamit.

T
he Lebanese War starts as a triumph and becomes a controversial bog, but it is the making of Danny Luria. After scoring six
victories in the air battles, to his father’s bursting pride, Danny becomes a leading instructor in F-16 combat. He speaks
no more of disenchantment. He speaks very little altogether for a long while after the elegant Hilton wedding of Amos Pasternak
and Ruti Barak, a sort of feudal festivity for the top management of Rafael and Kivshan. At the wedding Danny is as jocund
as anyone, kisses the abashed bride on the cheek, and leaves early.

He then blossoms out as an old-style devil-may-care tayass, toothbrush mustache and all, drinking and wenching in the obsolescent
RAF pattern of the Weizman era. Girls either fall hard for him, or they steer clear of him so as not to be smirked at. “What,
you’re going out with
Danny Luria
? Hmmm! Really? Well, kol ha’kavod!” The girls who fall take the teasing with superior smiles, for they have in tow a noted
tayass, while it lasts.

Professionally, Danny remains dead serious, and his advancement in the air force year after year is steady and rapid. When
he requests a long travel leave before assuming a squadron command, he gets it as his due. He plans it meticulously, as he
does all things that matter — his love life is not one of them — and trots around the globe touching all five continents.
His return date is locked into one week before Israel’s Independence Day 1988, completing the biblical cycle of the first
forty years. Back in 1948 the date was May 14, but this year, by the vagaries of the Jewish lunar calendar, the anniversary
falls on April 22. The celebration promises to jam all air traffic into Israel for weeks, so he reserves the El Al flight
from Zurich to Tel Aviv half a year ahead, and repeatedly reconfirms it. He is all the more astonished, when he boards that
plane, to find it taking off only two-thirds full. As soon as the seat belt sign is off he goes to the flight deck to find
out why.