The Glory (24 page)

Then in July 1970 the Russian aviators began pursuing and even firing at Israeli aircraft, whose pilots were under strict
orders to avoid combat with them, so that they had to flee with afterburners gulping fuel. Meantime Phantom losses to the
new missiles kept increasing.

E
va Sonshine, runner-up for Miss Israel in 1968, was putting to rights her dishevelled long black hair when the telephone rang.
“Benny,” she shouted over the shower noise, “he’s in the lobby.”

“Already? Tell him, ten minutes.”

“B’seder.”

The aviator hurriedly dried himself with capacious Hilton towels, grateful to poor Eva for lifting him out of a mood of fearful
gloom. He had had a harrowing morning, visiting the parents of Phantom airmen who had fallen to the sinister black “flying
telephone poles,” as the squadron was ruefully calling the missiles. What had made the visits especially difficult was that
he really hardly knew the lost aviators, for the previous squadron leader had gone down only a few days ago. In this eerie
new warfare between Phantoms and electronically guided Russian rockets, the air force was barely holding its own, and so Benny
Luria, who had not yet qualified in Phantoms, had been commandeered to take over the squadron, and he was rushing through
a Phantom course.

“Why are you so rough?” she grumbled when he came out, still drying his close-cropped head. “Look at my hair. Hopeless. Did
you have to pick my lunch hour to fall in on me?”

“Motek, you’ve saved my life.”

“Don’t exaggerate. Listen, I’d like to meet this General Pasternak.”

“You never have? Sure. Look for us in the lounge.”

“I don’t want to be that obvious.”

“Nonsense. Do it.”

A warm kiss, and he was gone. The runner-up to Miss Israel stared at the mirror, inventorying her slant eyes, smooth skin,
and Greta Garbo cheekbones, as Benny called them. How much longer, really, should she put up with the man? This receptionist
job he had gotten her was more secure than modelling, but so dull! And her looks would not last forever. Well, no matter,
lovemaking in midday was something different, a bit wild, almost as in their early days. Back to the lobby then, to smile
and smile at the stupid questions and angry squawks of rich Americans. It was a living for her and her bedridden mother.

Pasternak’s eyes were bloodshot, shoulders sagging, head drooping from a three-day emergency trip to Washington. He and Luria
sat in a far corner of the lounge, not crowded because the tourists were mostly out sightseeing. “Number one,” Pasternak said
hoarsely, sipping coffee, “they’re going to resume sending the Phantoms.”

“Hundred percent! It’s definite?”

“Yes. On the quiet, so as not to step on Arab corns. Just the stuff they owe us that Nixon held up in March.”

“Sam, what did it?” He looked here and there and dropped his voice to a murmur. “Habakkuk?”

This was the code name for intelligence from a deep source in Egypt, which revealed the reason for a sudden steep climb in
Phantom losses; the Russians had equipped the SAM-3 missiles with advanced countermeasures to nullify the Phantom electronic
shield.

“Habakkuk, plus the fact that the Russians weren’t really bearing down on the Egyptians to consider a cease-fire.” Pasternak
heaved a thick weary sigh. “Nothing will ever stop the attrition but Soviet pressure on Nasser.”

“But meantime, anyway, the Washington stick turns back into a carrot.”

Pasternak’s large head heavily nodded. “Yes, and if Golda would choke down the State Department’s cease-fire plan, which is
absolutely terrible, and which she’s rejected so far, we’d get a bigger carrot than that. However —”

“Isn’t that Colonel Benny Luria?” A lean very tan lady came striding through the lounge, followed by a bald man carrying a
camera. On the general principle of being nice to Americans, Benny smiled and waved. She carolled, “Oh, so you
do
recognize me!”

As she came closer, he had a memory flare. “Why sure. Gloria. Los Angeles bonds dinner. You showed me how to do the frug.”

“Well, bless your heart. Yes, I’m Gloria Freed. Julius, this is Colonel Luria, the air hero of the war.”

“It’s an honor,” said the husband, whipping a camera to his eye. “By your leave, Colonel?”

“Why not?” The camera flashed.

“God, Colonel Luria, this
country,
” the woman exclaimed. “The places we’ve been! The Wailing Wall, Masada, Jericho, Hebron, Beersheba. We even climbed Mount
Sinai for the sunrise.”

“I have awesome pictures of everything,” said her husband.

“Of course the red carpet is out for us,” Mrs. Freed said. “Julius is the West Coast chairman of bonds. Otherwise, we’d never
have gotten into this hotel. So
jammed
. The whole country is so
mobbed
. We even had to stand in line to visit that cave in Hebron. You know, where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are buried. Now I can’t
wait to read the Old Testament.”

“Let me tell you, Colonel,” said the husband, “you people have made me proud of being a Jew, and also humble. You’re terrific.”

The Freeds went off. The aviator grinned at Pasternak, who was sitting with his eyes almost shut, an insignificant pudgy man
in a seersucker suit. “Benny, don’t laugh,” he said hoarsely, “the American Jews are our only sure ally on the face of the
earth. Don’t think we’d be getting the Phantoms otherwise.”

“Wasn’t I cordial enough?”

“I guess you were. I get tired, that’s all, of the wise guys here who shit on these American Jews. They’re wonderful. Now
listen.” Pasternak dropped one eyelid, and a dusky glint came and went in the other half-closed eye. “Number two, you’ve got
the green light.”

Luria sat up. “What? At last?”

“I’ve just come from Jerusalem. I reported to the cabinet, and maybe the news about getting the Phantoms put hair on their
chests. Anyway, from now on your aircraft will fight Russians who pursue them.”

“Thank God!” exclaimed Luria.

“Win one fight,” said Pasternak, “just one, and I predict the Russians will make Nasser swallow a reasonable cease-fire.”

Eva Sonshine was again at her desk near the hotel entrance in her blue silk uniform, well-groomed as ever, when Luria approached
with a dumpy man in a wrinkled summer suit. Was this, she wondered, the shadowy Sam Pasternak, ultimate political insider
and reputed womanizer? Nothing to look at, and his rare pictures in uniform made him out much younger. Luria said, “General
Pasternak, Eva Sonshine.”

“Hello,” said Pasternak. “Who do I talk to in the hotel about a wedding?” When he smiled, showing big teeth and opening half-shut
eyes, he was more formidable and interesting.

“To me, to start with.” She gestured at a chair, and he sat down.

“Marrying off Amos, Sam?” Luria joshed.

“Amos? Ha! My daughter’s serious about a guy.”

“Daughters can fool you. Don’t sign any contracts. Eva, I have to get back to base very fast. Take good care of General Pasternak.”

“I’ll do my best.” As Luria hurried out she smiled at Pasternak. “What sort of wedding do you have in mind, General?”

“Not sure yet. Do you do Yemenite weddings? Her fellow’s a Yemenite.”

“We do almost anything, but don’t Yemenites usually have those at home, or in a synagogue or something?”

“Possibly. Then again, it could all blow up. I’d like to take you to dinner, if you don’t think Benny would mind.”

Eva lost her breath for a moment. “Benny wouldn’t mind, but what’s the point?”

“I’ve been on the go, I’m low, and I’d enjoy dinner with a pretty woman. If you ran for Miss Israel this year, you’d win it.”

“Oo-ah! That’s a big lie, and I didn’t think anybody remembered.”

“Dinner, then?”

“What time, and where?”

A
s his driver went speeding through the lush farmlands south of Tel Aviv, Benny Luria’s spirits were high. The melancholia
of the morning had blown away like fog on a landing strip, and he was wondering what to do at last about Eva Sonshine.

In the early bravura days of the air force, wenching had been part of the game, with boozing, risky air acrobatics, and a
pencil mustache, à la the movie image of the wartime RAF. Those days were gone. The newer pilots in Dov’s age group were no
monks, to be sure, but more down-to-earth, less given to playing Errol Flynn. Eva was a cherished relic of that old way of
life, and Benny’s disapproval of Daphna, and his desire to be a model for his sons, did not exactly go with a girlfriend planted
at the Tel Aviv Hilton.

Eva did not go with his religious stirrings, either. Benny Luria had been feeling these more and more, breaking through the
flat concrete of a socialist upbringing. As the number of Phantom pilots dwindled, to the point where he had to get himself
qualified in a hurry, and Dov too would soon have to fight, he was asking himself what all those marvellously accomplished
Jewish boys were dying for. It had to be for something more than being an admired hotshot airman, and having an Eva Sonshine
tucked away in a hotel for rich Americans.

Well, never mind, concentrate on business. Green fields and orchards flashed by as he thought about the coming air battle,
working out the briefing in his head, selecting the men to fly the mission. Avi Bin Nun and Asher Snir would be leaders for
sure, and he would consult them in picking the other pilots, the best of the best for a mission of missions, teaching a superpower
a lesson. It would have to be a convincing clear victory, with no losses to the Heyl Ha’avir, and it could be done; man against
man at last, not Jewish pilots against damned Soviet electronics and rocket warheads. …

D
ay of the sortie, July 30, 1970, 11
A.M
.

“B’seder, let’s fly.”

So Luria winds up the briefing as usual, and the pilots hurry out through hot sunshine to their planes, carrying maps, photographs,
helmets, and special cameras. No talk whatever about Russians as they pass among the ground crews, just the customary cheery
give-and-take before they part into the revetments; Phantom pilots and navigators climbing into their American “wagons,” clunky
thunderous giants bristling with missiles and extra fuel tanks, the Mirage soloists like Colonel Luria mounting the ladders
to their elegant French birds. These wonderful youngsters are not only unafraid, Benny senses, but eager to take on the foe
that has been chasing them back over the Canal with impunity.

Coughing, rumbling, roaring of starting engines, rolling puffs of smoke, the screaming of compressors …

Luria pulls down the canopy of the Mirage, shutting himself into the quieter dark of the cockpit. Check every item in the
scuffed manual. Ejection light on. Ease throttle forward. Ease on out, waiting his turn to taxi to the runway. He is not leading
the Mirage foursome, younger fliers are running this show. But he is not about to miss it, either. Okay, second group to runway
two.

Full throttle, shuddering howl of familiar engines. Into the air, off to the west and to a rendezvous with history, boys with
names like Shmuel, Heshi, Moishe, shtetl-descended Jews versus the Red Air Force …

C
rossing into Egypt, the Phantoms dive to skim the level sands, while the Mirages climb to thirty thousand feet. Luria expects
a quick challenge, a hornet’s nest of MiGs swarming to stop them. His squadron is again using the “Texas” tactic which all
but grounded the Egyptian air force back in June. The Mirages penetrate five or six miles up, apparently on reconnaissance
only; MiGs scramble up after them; Phantoms ambush the MiGs, roaring in from nowhere. It worked over and over, till the decimated
Egyptians quit. About the MiGs’ identity today there will be no doubt, for Russian-speaking Israeli intelligence officers
will be monitoring their flight controllers. Anyway, Egyptian pilots are no longer engaging Israeli aircraft.

But where to all the devils are the Russians? Five minutes into the forbidden zone, and no action. Serene sky, serene earth
far below, Mirages in air-show formation thrumming along deep into enemy air …

Ah, what confident young faces there were at that briefing! These boys hate the meat-grinder duty of bombing the missile sites.
They have trained for air combat, and dodging those “flying telephone poles” instead is a dirty sickening business. When a
pilot sees a missile lock in on the plane of a buddy and blow it up, the experience is horrible. The debriefings have been
mournful, the losses appalling, yet their morale is still high.

Voice of the fighter director in Benny Luria’s earphones. “No bandits on our screens yet. Keep going.”

He strains his eyes ahead and above at blue sky, below at slow-moving farmland. So the Russians aren’t on the fighter control
radar scopes. So what? Could be atmospherics, could be new electronic countermeasures. Or have the Egyptians warned them about
the Texas tactic? Again, so what? Russians afraid of Israelis? Unimaginable. And how will they come at us? No hard intelligence
on Soviet air combat doctrine. Or for that matter, on their weapons. Something better than the Sidewinder?

Twelve minutes into the gut of Egypt, and still no Russians. Is it going to be an abort?

On and on, over ground almost as familiar as the Negev or the Galilee from many overflights. Tingling surge of elation in
danger, the roaring vibrating Mirage part of his blood and bone. What a mission, the suspense, the unknowns …

Fighter control: “All right, here they come. Two foursomes taking off, from Kutma and Bani-Savif, MiG-21s.”

Ahead and below, between eleven and one o’clock, moving dots climbing and expanding to sleek MiGs. Unmistakable nose cone,
Egyptian markings. Eight, no,
twelve
of them, and the leading interceptor is flying straight up at the leading Mirage with a rattling stream of pale gunfire.
Ho, that Russki picked a tough customer. Heshi’s classy rolling maneuver puts him on the Russian’s tail, and he shoots. Smoky
trail of the missile,
BAM!
Billowing smoke and fire, out of which flies the Russian, by God, ejecting and parachuting. First victory over a Soviet pilot.
Long float down from thirty thousand feet for Ivan Ivanovich, freeze his Russian balls off. Good luck, Ivan, you’re too far
from home, not your fight …