Israel (97 page)

No, such unseemly doubt must be banished. It was the Jews who were the poison sickening his spirit and the spirit of his people. Palestine was his country. The land had always sustained the Arabs with a proud dignity. Once the Jews were gone, the land would once again sustain his people's spirit.

And once Herschel Kol was dead, Jibarn's own spirit
would be cleansed. After today Jibarn could set aside the role of warrior and begin his duties as a husband and a father. He himself had grown to manhood without benefit of masculine guidance—

He looked back toward Haim's grave. No guidance but for the Jew's.

He must be hard and strong. The end of the blood feud was within reach.

He began to unpack the knapsack. He would strip off his Syrian officer's uniform for the simple robes of his origin. Today he would kill the son dressed as on the day he killed the father. When he was finished dressing, he would see to his service revolver and await Herschel.

The smoldering wrecks of three burnt-out tanks clogged the roadway past Bet Yerach. The bazooka had accounted for one of the tanks before its firing mechanism broke. Herschel, the only one of his volunteers with technical training, hurriedly examined their single precious antitank weapon, but with Syrian troops blasting away at him, he had little time to tinker. His men destroyed the other two tanks with Molotovs. The wrecks had blocked a second wave of tanks from making it through the pass, but many tanks had made it during the initial assault. Herschel and his men could hear them attacking Degania as they traded automatic-weapons fire with Syrian troops clustered around an armored personnel carrier parked at the base of the slope.

One of his men lobbed a Molotov at the carrier, and as the Syrians scattered from the flaming petrol, Herschel chased them with his Sten gun until the magazine was empty. He loaded his last magazine and turned to his second-in-command, a young sergeant who until recently had been captain in Haganah. “Assign two men to begin reloading magazines,” Herschel said. “You're in command
now. You and your men should have no trouble holding the high ground.”

Herschel scrambled up the side of the slope past his men firing down at the Syrians. He swung around over the summit of the mound and hurried down the peaceful back of the hill toward his father's grave.

The trip took less than five minutes, but as the sounds of battle faded, Herschel started to feel like that small, awe-struck boy who gazed up at his proud father in Bedouin garb.

As Herschel walked the quarter-mile to his father's grave, he thought about Jibarn Ahmed. He tried to see the blood feud from the Arab's point of view, but it was difficult to understand how Yol's accidental shooting of an old shepherd could lead a boy to murder Haim Kolesnikoff, who had shown Jibarn nothing but kindness.

There was no marker, but Herschel had no trouble finding the spot. A hundred thoughts ran through his brain as he stared at the grave. He supposed he ought to reconnoiter the immediate area, perhaps set up some kind of ambush. He did nothing but stare at his father's grave. Then he knelt to press his face against the grass that was now a part of Israel.

“Throw away your gun,” Jibarn Ahmed called out in Hebrew from behind him. “Do not move.”

Herschel tossed aside the Sten. Behind him he could hear Jibarn's approaching footsteps. “I knew you'd come,” he said, still kneeling, not turning around. As Herschel spoke, he began unfastening the buttons of his shirt just above his belt buckle. The instrument of his father's death, loosely wrapped in cloth, was in his waistband.

“Being here was not as easy for me as you think, Herschel,” Jibarn replied. “My star with the Syrians has fallen since you foiled me in Providence. I'll never understand why that Wilbur Burns turned down my money. I
was willing to pay triple what you offered, and Burns a Christian—incomprehensible.”

“You Syrians will lose precisely because you can't understand such things,” Herschel said, watching as Jibarn's shadow loomed across his father's grave.

“You are a romantic,” Jibarn chuckled. “So was your father. It led to his undoing and it has led to yours. Besides, I am not Syrian; I am a Palestinian.”

Herschel was about to claim the same for himself, but then he realized it was no longer true. Since the fourteenth of May he had been an Israeli.

He watched Jibarn's shadow move, felt a gun barrel touch the back of his head. His Fingers groped for the haft of the dagger. At least the Arab would die with him.

He sensed Jibarn's hesitation. Abruptly the gun barrel moved slightly away. Herschel felt the Arab's hand tentatively touch his shoulder. “My brother,” Jibarn began, then faltered. “My brother, I—”

Don't be soft, his mother had warned. Herschel didn't wait to make his move. He threw himself sideways, using his strong legs to sweep Jibarn's feet out from under him. As the Arab fell, his revolver discharged and the bullet plowed a furrow across Haim's grave. Before Jibarn could aim and fire a second time, Herschel struck with the knife at Jibarn's chest.

The revolver fell from Jibarn's hand as he sagged across the grave. He rolled face down before settling into stillness. Herschel waited, tense and expectant; it had to be a trick.

But it wasn't. Jibarn Ahmed was dead. Herschel's father had been avenged. Why wasn't he glad? he wondered. Why was his triumph stained by regret?

He rested for several minutes and then turned over the body and began to go through the dead man's pockets for identification. One day it would be time for both sides to account for their dead. He found a small leather folder
containing Jibarn's identification papers, some money and a photograph of a woman and a young boy.

Herschel knew that they had to be Jibarn's wife and son. He could hear the embittered, tearful wife now. “The Jews killed your father. They are the children of death and have made you an orphan, me a widow. You must avenge your father's death, my son. You must kill the Jews.

And so it would go, Herschel thought as he pocketed the leather folder, retrieved his gun and began to make his way back to the position. So it would go.

Herschel returned to the battle.

The sun had been up only a few hours over the airstrip outside Tel Aviv when the air raid sirens began to sound. Danny glanced at the sky, but as yet there was no sign of Spitfires.

“Just a few more minutes,” he muttered to himself. “Just a few more—” He watched as the only three Messerschmitts that could fly were wheeled out of the hangar. He and the other two pilots were in their flying overalls. They had their helmets under their arms. There were no intercoms in the helmets, but that didn't matter since none of the Messerschmitts had a radio.

“We gotta go,” Danny yelled at the worried-looking crew chief.

“The cannon are malfunctioning,” the chief argued.

“I knew that was going to happen,” Danny spat disgustedly. He looked at his fellow pilots. “I say there's no time to wait. If those Spitfires catch us on the ground—”

“Do the machine guns work?” one of the pilots asked the chief.

“I hope so.”

“Me too.” Danny scowled. “All right, look. I say we go up and do the best we can.”

“I'll have another three ready to go, with cannon and bomb-racks, in an hour,” the crew chief promised.

“Let's hope this fucking field is still here in an hour,” Danny shouted over his shoulder as he ran to his plane.

His fighter was hurtling down the runway, the other two Messerschmitts behind him, when a wave of four Spitfires came in low, just skimming the treetops. They opened up, strafing the field. The Arabs must have spotted the Messerschmitts and panicked, because they immediately jettisoned their bombs in order to increase their agility for the coming dog-fight. The explosions tore up the vacant field bordering the airstrip, but the bombs didn't come close to the hangars sheltering the men and machinery.

Danny hauled back hard on the stick with his right hand and worked the throttle with his left, at last airborne. The second pilot, a Protestant ex-Marine flier named Charlie, made it into the sky as well, but the third was overtaken by a Spitfire while it was still barreling down the runway.

There was nothing anyone could do. Danny watched with a mixture of fascination and horror as the Spitfire peppered it, shattering its canopy. The hapless grounded fighter skidded off the runway over a grassy knoll and then nose-dived into a ditch just before disappearing in billowing flame and smoke.

Danny had the nose of his Messerschmitt tilted toward the heavens, climbing at three thousand feet per minute, desperate to gain the altitude he would need to come down hard on the enemy. Charlie was right beside him, and then on cue he dropped back a little to serve as Danny's wingman. There was no telling how many more enemy planes were in the vicinity, so they began to thatchweave, crossing each other's tail to protect against an ambush from behind as they went after the quartet of Spitfires.

The enemies banked around and tore back toward Tel Aviv and presumably easier pickings. Charlie broke away,
wisely circling the air base to protect it against further attacks from other enemy planes.

Danny should stay behind as well, he knew, but he went after the Spitfires. This was, after all, his first chance for combat, and he just couldn't pass it up.

The Spitfires were flying in a ragged line abreast. The pilots on the ends saw him coming and peeled away to intercept him, while the other two went on toward Tel Aviv.

Danny put on throttle and climbed, then pushed his stick forward and dropped like an anvil toward the closest Spitfire. He knew the second was likely fastening on his tail at that very moment, but there was nothing he could do about it, so he decided to concentrate on the one in front of him. His altimeter unwound and speed indicator climbed as he power-dived for his target. He felt calm, completely in his element. He felt immortal and if he did die, it would be all right as long as he died up in the blue in a blaze of light.

The Spitfire floated into the Messerschmitt's gunsight. Danny squeezed the control-stick trigger of his machine guns, wishing he had the use of his wing cannon. The Messerschmitt's twin machine guns chattered away, their recoil slowing his attack dive. The Spitfire looked like it had been sprinkled with fairy dust as his rounds hit home, striking sparks off of its fuselage. White vapor—engine coolant, Danny guessed—began to stream from its cowling as the Spitfire banked steeply, trying to get away. Danny would have followed it, but at that instant his Messerschmitt began to shudder beneath the violent impact of the second enemy's machine guns. Danny hauled on the stick and worked his rudder, trying to slide away, but the bastard stayed on him. Danny glimpsed what looked like fireflies dancing along his wings toward his cockpit and then there were holes in his canopy and something was chewing hard on his left thigh.

His lap filled with blood. He felt faint and fought against a fatal blackout as he roared through the sky, desperately trying to get away from the Spitfire.

Suddenly it was swooping past him. He saw Charlie on its tail, hammering away with his twin guns.

“Get him, get him,” Danny yelled, but Charlie peeled off and let the Spitfire escape. The last Danny saw of it, it was on its way back to Cairo, flying low and hard, looking for all the world like a whipped dog with its tail between its legs. Charlie zoomed by and Danny caught a glimpse of his anxious face peering at him. Danny waggled his wings to show that he was okay, sort of, and then brought his fighter around for landing. The Messerschmitt had taken a pummeling, but it landed beautifully. Danny managed to cut his engine before he passed out.

When he woke up they were cutting his trouser leg away. He was lying on a table in the infirmary. Charlie, the crew chief and some of the other pilots were anxiously crowding around as the doctor finished stitching up his leg. It turned out that the bullet had passed clear through his thigh muscle, causing a lot of blood and gore but no crippling damage. Danny would be walking with a cane, but considering the lack of pilots, he would be back on the active roster within the week.

“You should have clobbered that bastard, Charlie,” Danny scolded.

“Another time,” Charlie smiled. “You did okay, though.”

“An unconfirmed kill.” Danny wanted to be cool, but he couldn't contain himself. A smile broke through his studied indifference like the sun. “Yeah,” he beamed. “I guess I did do okay.”

His smile quickly faded as he remembered the third pilot, the one who'd never gotten off the ground. “Max?” he asked. Charlie shook his head.

Danny heard engines revving. “What's going on?”

“Three more fighters,” the crew chief proudly announced, “fitted with cannon and bomb racks. They're on their way to Cairo to give the bastards a taste of their own medicine.”

“Great.”

Charlie said, “I can still hardly believe the two of us ran off four Spitfires.”

“That's because they couldn't handle a fair fight,” Danny responded. “They thought this war was going to be a turkey shoot. Now that we can shoot back, they'll fade. You'll see.” Danny laced his hands behind his head, impatient for the doctor to finish bandaging his leg so he and Charlie could go have themselves a drink and rehash the dogfight. He was elated by his first taste of combat, secure in the knowledge that he had come through it okay. At long last he was a tried and true fighter jock.

“I still say it was a miracle,” Charlie insisted.

Danny sighed happily. “This whole country's a miracle.”

The battle for the Deganias lasted from dawn until mid-afternoon, when the promised artillery at last arrived at nearby Kinnereth and began to fire on the Syrians. The guns had no aiming devices, and most of the forty or so rounds went wild, but the Syrians were scared anyway. By four o'clock there was no sign of the enemy and the valley was completely quiet.