Pursuit (36 page)

“I—I don't know, sir …”

The colonel smote his desk irately. “Just once I'd like a constructive answer from one of my staff! I have to do all the thinking around here! Well, don't just stand there; get your men on the way there!”

“Sir?”

“Just don't go too fast,” the colonel said, his tone moderating. “Save petrol, if you know what I mean. Have a couple of flat pneumatics, or give ample rest periods on the way. Actually, you will probably have to bivouac for the night somewhere along the road if you get a slow start, seeing the hour. You might consider that possibility and load up your extended-operation equipment. That should take a few extra hours.”

“I understand, sir,” the captain said, smiling broadly.

“I certainly hope for your sake that you do,” the colonel said sourly, in a tone that instantly wiped the smile from the captain's face, “because if you get yourself or any of your men actually involved in any fighting, you'll go home a corporal!”

He scowled at the retreating captain's back a moment, and then returned to his correspondence. It wasn't that he particularly wanted to see Jews killed, but if anyone had to get killed, better Jews than British soldiers. He had no intention of spending his final days in the bloody country writing letters to relatives explaining why their Alf or their Herbert had been killed just a bloody few days before they left for blighty!

There were campfires along the edge of a placid Dead Sea where an evening meal was being cooked before the second, and intended final, attack was launched against the kibbutz. The trucks of the Arab attackers, together with the personnel carriers that had brought the supplementary force, were drawn up near them, their headlights lighting the shore. Across the sea the rugged mountains could be seen in faint silhouette, and every now and then the flicker of a kerosene lantern from some shepherd's tent high on the slopes. Sentries were posted at the edge of the area lit by the headlamps and the fires; from a short distance one might have supposed that an evening picnic was in progress. It seemed difficult to realize that the two enemies were within sight of each other, eating supper with one eye on the dark no man's land between them, planning on doing their best to destroy the other in a few minutes' time.

At the gate of the kibbutz Ben Grossman had completed his preparations. The mortar had been bolted to the floor of the jeep where the rear seat had been removed. The eight mortar charges had been set in makeshift pockets made by riveting webbing along the rear of the jeep inside the body. Wolf sat at the wheel of the jeep looking apprehensive; bravery in the camps had been one thing for death there had been welcomed; but Morris Wolf loved life in Palestine and hated to throw it away. He suddenly swung around, confronting Grossman.

“If we're going at all, let's go, for God's sake!”

“In a second.” Ben settled on the floor next to the mortar. He checked the charges, nodded, and then looked up. “Set your mileage meter, your odometer, to an even number—”

“You said that before,” Wolf said, irritated. “It's set.”

“When you've gone
exactly
four tenths of a mile—”

“You said that before, too. When I get
exactly
four tenths of a mile I stop and stand up and they shoot me.”

“We'll be beyond any accurate range of rifles.”

“Who said they have to be accurate?”

“If you're going to be shot, you'll be shot,” Grossman said coldly. “Are you ready?”

“I've been ready for a week, for God's sake!”

“Good.” Ben raised his voice; he could not keep the excitement out of it. “Open the gate!” The gate swung back. “Lights!” The floodlights suddenly flared, making day out of night. “Go!”

At the Arab encampment the sudden blaze of light caught everyone by surprise. There was a sudden rush for guns, and then the men hesitated. A single jeep, with what looked like only two men in it, was emerging from the gate. A surrender? The robed troops relaxed but still held their guns tightly, wondering at the strange excursion.

In the jeep, Wolf pressed nervously on the accelerator; the vehicle seemed to leap forward and was suddenly slowed as Wolf quickly braked, slowing down, staring about. The road was clear enough in the strong light of the floodlamps reflected by the mirrors behind them, but in contrast the shadows were sharper, blacker, everything took on a different appearance than during the day. Wolf felt a band of sweat run down his stomach into his crotch and a part of his mind wondered if he had wet himself. God! Was that lump one of the mines they had planted, or was it just a lump? Why had they smoothed the damned things over so well they were impossible to see? What had made him think he could recognize where the blasted mines were laid? But he couldn't go back now, the danger of that was as great if not greater. He crept along, sweating, trying to make out small landmarks that might help him identify the mine locations.

“How far have we come?”

Jesus Christ! He had forgotten to check the odometer, and they had been driving for what seemed like an hour! He looked down and felt a momentary relief.

“Two tenths of a mile, plus a little …”

He shut his eyes a second and then instantly opened them, cursing himself, and then he knew that in all that brilliant light and with those elongated blackened shadows and under that pressure, he had no idea where the mines were. He tried to assure himself that he would automatically miss the mines, that that would only be fair since they were, after all, his own mines; he tried to assure himself that there were, after all, only eight of them and he must have passed at least four so far. But he knew he was steering the jeep blindly, weaving for no real reason at all—

“How far now?”

Shit! He had forgotten to look again! This wasn't his bag of tricks; he was a cook, and now that he was probably going to be dead in a few minutes it wouldn't hurt to tell the truth, which was that he wasn't even a very good cook, but he promised if he ever came out of this he would learn; he would become the best cook in—

“Wolf! I said how far now?”

Oh, God, he had forgotten again! He looked. “Four tenths,” he said, his voice uneven, “plus a little.”

“Then stop.
Stop!
”

He jammed on the brakes and sat there trembling. They had missed all the mines. How was it possible? If they weren't killed, if they managed to find their way back one way or another—and he intended to walk back, at least fifty feet from the road—he would even go to synagogue. Then he smiled wryly. He wouldn't and he knew it. He glanced back toward the settlement, directly into the glowing lights, surprised they were so close; and in that moment two things happened: the lights were suddenly extinguished, leaving him half-blinded, and there was the soft cough of the mortar as Grossman fired the first round.

There was a brief pause, then Wolf's vision cleared as the beach seemed to rise in the air, taking his mind from everything except the reason they had come on the insane mission in the first place. The mortar shell had struck one of the beach fires at the extreme edge of the small enclave; embers flew through the air, making a pyrotechnic display that brought Wolf back to his childhood but which did little damage to the Arabs. But the thing worked, Grossman's idiot mortar really worked! With a grunt Grossman made a small adjustment and dropped a second charge into the open maw of the tube; another cough, another pause, and the encampment on the shore of the sea seemed to explode, scattering bodies. Now Grossman was feeding his remaining six charges into the mortar as fast as the weapon could deliver them. Between the
crump, crump, crump
of the striking shells they could hear the screams of the wounded men, and in the light of the blazing trucks they could see the wildly agitated shadows of men scattering from the range of the mortar. A personnel carrier started up and was immediately swamped with men trying to climb aboard; a truck limped from the devastation with a shattered wheel, covered with men, only to give up the impossible flight as the men fled to other transports or charged blindly down the dirt road in the dark, seeking escape.

Grossman was out of shells but there was no way for the Arabs to know that. The two men in the jeep watched the grotesque scene, each trembling but for a different reason, Wolf from nerves now that the peril was over, Grossman from the pleasure of victorious battle. Together they watched the few undamaged vehicles gather together the remnants of the attacking force and disappear into the night, fleeing for home. In a few minutes all Wolf could see where the small encampment had stood were the flickering flames from the dying fires where the mangled trucks were burning themselves out, belching black smoke from the acrid rubber, licking at the edge of the sea. All he could hear were the oddly out-of-place sounds of night birds returning to investigate the torment of sound that had sent them scattering; and the ragged beating of his own heart.

The battle for Ein Tsofar was ended.

The troops of the Hebron British garrison were bivouacked some twelve miles south of Dahiriya, their tent stakes only a few hundred yards from the edge of the road, when the remaining trucks and personnel carriers of the attacking Arab force returned toward Hebron. The command car at the head of the line pulled out of formation and drove toward the encampment while the rest of the battered line pulled over and rested. The Egyptian colonel descended wearily from the command car and identified himself to the sentry; minutes later he was joined by Captain Wiley, who had been wakened from a sound sleep and had only removed his mustache guard and pulled on some trousers before confronting the colonel.

“The Jews have heavy artillery,” the Egyptian informed the captain in his faultless but stilted English. “They have heavy guns, mortars, and endless ammunition. The area on all sides of the settlement is thoroughly mined. It is against the mandate to allow the settlements to be armed, as you know. What do the British intend to do about Ein Tsofar?”

“Why,” said the captain, pleased by the ease of the solution, at least as far as he was concerned, “I shall have to return to Hebron at once and explain the situation to my colonel.”

“And what will he do?”

“I imagine he will inform Jerusalem.”

“Who in turn will inform London,” the Egyptian said sardonically, “who in turn will inform their representative in the United Nations, who in turn will eventually inform the General Assembly—and by that time you will have been out of Palestine a long time.” The Egyptian colonel sighed but it was largely acting, as Captain Wiley clearly understood. The Egyptian had not really expected any action on the part of the British; he was merely establishing the credentials for his failure to take the settlement, which Captain Wiley was expected to pass along the chain of command until it reached the ears of the Egyptian's superiors.

The Egyptian shook hands solemnly, saluted briefly, and waved to his driver to proceed. Behind him he left a happy officer. Captain Wiley looked at his wristwatch. It was four-thirty in the morning. If they broke camp now they could be back in Hebron Fortress in time for a decent breakfast, which would be a vast improvement over the slop the field cooks dished up. He called over the sentry and gave the appropriate orders; five minutes later, when the bugler had had time to soak his head in water to wake up a bit, the bugle went to work and the camp came to life.

A good campaign, Captain Wiley thought, and began to build it up in his mind into a proper desert battle à la Lawrence of Arabia, to intrigue his wife and son when he got home. And the best part of it was, he knew Colonel Fitzhugh would be pleased, and when the colonel was pleased life was generally more tolerable throughout the Hebron garrison.

Eleven members of the Ein Tsofar kibbutz, plus Dov Shapiro, who had only come to help, had fallen in the fight and were buried the following day with due ceremony within the borders of the settlement itself. Sixty-four Arab bodies had been recovered along the slopes and by the shore of the sea, and these were laid to rest in a shallow mass grave at water's edge where their bodies could easily be recovered during a truce Perez intended to ask the British to arrange before they left Palestine for good. Twelve Jews and five Arabs occupied litters in the makeshift hospital, recuperating from their wounds; the Arabs could be transferred to ambulances during the truce. The mines in and along the road had been properly located and every person at Ein Tsofar now had those locations firmly engraved on his or her memory.

Wolf, remembering the position of each mine perfectly in the daytime, could not imagine how he had managed to drive through the field the night before without blowing both Grossman and himself to bits. The hand of Max Brodsky's God? Well, if that was the case he just wished Max Brodsky's God had given some advance notice of His intentions; it would have saved much anxiety. And Wolf had an additional thought: Grossman, the night before, had to notice how nervous he had been, but Grossman had never said a word to the others. A pity he disliked the man, because he had to admit Grossman had done a fine job the night before. An odd person, Grossman.

When an exhausted Deborah and a very tired Ben Grossman dropped into their common bed that night, they held each other without speaking for a long time. By common silent agreement neither mentioned the battle; it was enough that they had both survived and each had done his best for the common survival. There was no need to discuss it. And they still had each other, which was the most important fact of the moment.

Deborah had her head tucked tightly into Ben's shoulder, her arms about him, pressing him tightly to her. He stroked her head, running his fingers softly over her hair, feeling her breath warm on his bare skin, and then found himself bringing up the one subject he had meant to put off as long as possible.

“There's something I want to tell you—”