The devils shepherd, p.2
The Devil's Shepherd, page 2
The prow of Eckstein’s Zodiac suddenly lurched forward and rose precariously into the air, and he lost his paddle as he dove onto the rubber nose cone, scrabbling for the rope handholds and throwing his weight down. Feeble yelps reached him from behind, then were snuffed out as the engine screws bit and the big palm of a wave smacked his head, filled his ears, and stung his eyes He shook it off, sputtering and straining to see and hear again.
Up ahead, the roar of the missile boat engines coming to life seemed to split the sea beneath the crackling reports of small-arms fire. He could hear guttural shouts, quick boots slamming the ship deck, and then the fifty-caliber opened up, echoing over the water like a mad-man’s gavel on a steel drum as the explosions stuttered and the shell casings rang off the railings.
The missile boat’s fast attack hull turned quickly, listing hard to port as it came around, heading right for him. But the commando crew at Eckstein’s stern were just as quick and they charged straight for the sharp bow, then suddenly veered the Zodiac hard to starboard as the missile boat driver cut his engines to coast again. And just before Eckstein passed behind the shelter of the mother ship, he turned back to see his pathetic little convoy, still in formation, Uzis buzzing like angry wasps. He squinted, then opened his mouth in horror, for the last Zodiac, Benni Baum’s Zodiac, had gone flat and deflated in the waves, its engine fuel ignited by tracers, spitting pools of fire into the sea.
Eckstein’s rubber craft bounced off the high steel hull of the missile boat, then came back in again, and someone reached down from the boarding ladder and grabbed his vest, but he caught the crewman’s hand and switched it instead to the Zodiac’s rope grip. And all at once the mission changed, Jeremiah became Baum, only Baum, and Eckstein spun on his refugees and began to snatch at them; arms, clothes, bodies of thin skin and unfed bones. He hauled them over his head one after another like sacks of potatoes, smearing each one against the rope ladder until other hands took them away, and he heard himself yelling at the naval crewmen.
“Kadima! Kadima! Kadima!”
He wanted all of them gone, he wanted his boat back, empty and fast. The last falasha’s worn sneakers slipped on the rubber prow, half her legs splashed into the sea, then someone had her by her armpits and Eckstein was spinning again to his crew. But they already knew what he wanted and he crashed onto his back to the hard nippled deck as they roared away from the missile boat, arcing wide to swing around the stern and head back for Baum. Another naval commando team had davited a fiber-glass Snunit assault craft over the rails there, and they freed it and it crashed keel-flat into the water with a tremendous splash. Someone fired a parachute flare into the night, and as it popped Eckstein glimpsed flippered forms leaping from the stern deck after their craft.
He crawled back onto his stomach, hugging the prow again as the Zodiac came around and picked up speed, passing the missile boat on the side exposed to the beach. From the shore, the rebel AK-47 bursts had been joined by the jackhammer of a PK light machine gun and a trio of Russian-made rounds cracked the air overhead and punched into the thin FAC hull just above his hair. He winced hard as he passed beneath the navy’s fifty-caliber, the young gunner pivoting the heavy weapon and playing murderous timpani on the butterfly trigger. Then something thonked from the forward deck, the ship’s bow was momentarily thrown into hard silhouette by the tube flash of an Israeli fifty-two-millimeter mortar, and moments later the shell exploded in the dunes too far behind the beach hillocks and a naval officer berated the mortarman in a torrent of Hebraic curses.
Eckstein instinctively reached for his pistol, then left the Hi-Power in its holster. What the hell could he do with it at this range, anyway? Throw it? Instead, he fumbled for the small pickup beacon pinned to his vest and twisted the phallus head until it glowed green, determined at least to not be killed by friendly fire.
Just out front, the surviving Zodiacs were coming on hard, the lead craft already passing him to reach the missile boat and disgorge their cargo. But Eckstein and his crew broke through the rescue flotilla, racing back toward the dwindling smudge of oily fire that had been Baum’s pathetic craft, and he could feel his heart hammering against the sea-slickened rubber as a pattern of green tracers suddenly appeared out front only a meter above the waves. He smeared himself flat as the Zodiac slipped beneath the quilt of zipping neon projectiles and something clanged off the Evinrude and one of the commandos grunted, but they kept on.
Behind them now even more covering fire began to spit from the missile boat, a chorus of echoing rattles and pinging shell casings as the crews’ M-16s and Galils bucked in long bursts, and on the beach the rebel guns at last slacked off into stutters. Eckstein lifted his head, searching the undulating sea. An acrid film of rifle and camouflage smoke drifted over the water like mist above a loch. Somewhere a heavy Israeli tracer struck rock on the beach and went careening off into the night like a red Roman candle. One of the beachhead commandos fired off a Mecar, and the rifle grenade exploded in a plumed flash that flickered over the sea like a disco globe.
He spotted the mahogany heads of Baum’s surviving falashas bobbing in the small waves, the water glistening in their woolly scalps. Another empty Zodiac raced by on his left flank, then slowed as naval commandos rolled into the sea and began passing the refugees back into the craft.
But Eckstein only had eyes for Baum, and he flicked them madly over the water, seeing nothing, the gunfire no longer registering in his ears as he panicked.
Where is he? He cringed as his search foundered and he felt himself choking, helpless, like a child who’d left his dog in a burning building. Where are you?! He wanted to scream, but screaming made you a target, and then his fingers dug into the heavy balloon of boat rubber and he foolishly came to his knees and arched his body out over the water and he did scream.
“Benni!”
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
“Benni!!”
“Stop shouting.”
Eckstein spun his head to the sound of Baum’s voice. There he was, just off the starboard pontoon, his bald head bobbing in the moonlight like an upended buoy. Incredibly, the colonel was smiling.
The Snunit assault craft zoomed by close, its gunner firing a MAG light machine gun at the beach from the bow, and the wake flowed quickly toward Benni and washed over his head. He came up again, spitting, and he raised his voice.
“Get me in before the idiots drown me.”
Eckstein stretched out his hand, and already his crew were turning the craft around as Benni gripped the sinews of Eytan’s arm. Eckstein leaned out, grabbed Baum’s trouser belt, and the Zodiac almost flipped as the major hauled his whale of a colonel aboard . . .
They were the last men to board the missile boat. Baum was breathing like an asthmatic and Eckstein was not much better off as they climbed the rope ladder, with Eckstein’s shoulder butting up into Baum’s rump. They barely negotiated the rail and fell to the deck, where they slumped, soaked and trembling, amidst the crowd of grateful falashas sitting cross-legged and thanking God. A pair of navy medics were counting heads and checking for injuries, while more of the crew still crouched at the rails, popping off rounds at the beach. The fifty-caliber still spat angrily, making the falashas squeeze their quivering hands over their ears.
The Snunit assault craft roared by trailing taut nylon ropes in the water, having picked up the naval commando team from the beachhead, their elbows locked into loops in the ropes as they slid along the wavetops like limp acrobats. The Snunit driver raised a thumbs-up as he passed—he would rendezvous with the mother ship “upstream.”
Eckstein watched as the muscular captain of the missile boat turned from the stern and came wading forward through the refugees, a strange expression of amusement at his lips. He was hatless, carrying a Motorola, and his kibbutznik red curls glistened beneath the parachute flares. He yelled to his riflemen at the rails.
“Sink the Zodiacs.”
There wasn’t time to haul the empty rescue craft on board. Even though the rebel gunfire had been suppressed to the occasional snipe now, Mobote’s reinforcements might arrive at any moment. The young riflemen moved to the opposite rails and fired down into the rubber boats.
The boat commander made his way to the bridge, stopping for a moment to grin down at Baum, who wagged a finger at him.
“The comptroller will have your ass for that, Ami,” Baum warned.
“He can bill me.” The commander sneered and made to move on when there was a sharp bang from the beach and, a split second later, the finned rocket from an RPG screamed by just aft of the stern, then arced lazily down into the water.
The boat commander frowned angrily, spat some orders into his walkie-talkie, and all at once from a turret forward of the bridge the terrible roar of a multi-barreled Vulcan Air Defense System buzzed like a gigantic hair clipper. Its streams of twenty-millimeter tracers stretched to the shoreline and chewed along the hillocks, obliterating sand, brush, flesh, steel, and bone alike.
Everyone on deck, including Eckstein and Baum, jerked spasmodically with the unearthly howl. Then it stopped, the echo keening back over the water. Silence. Not a peep of retort from the beach.
“Zonot. Whores,” the boat commander muttered, as if to justify the slaughter. Then he holstered the Motorola and walked away, shouting orders.
The big twin engines began to rumble, and very quickly the pitching hull of the missile boat settled as it picked up speed.
Eckstein leaned back on a rail spar and stretched his legs out, trying to will his calf muscles to stop twitching. He realized that in those fierce moments of the firefight, when he’d been sure more than once that each breath was his last, few images had flickered in his brain. No memories. No longings. No last wishes. For a brief instant, only the face of his son.
He looked at Baum, who was rubbing sea salt from his thick eyebrows, smearing it back over his bald pate. Baum craned his thick neck, catching a glimpse of the receding wrecks of the Zodiacs and the thin smoke and brushfires on the distant beach. Then he turned to Eckstein and shrugged.
“I told you. A white flag and a suitcase of cash. I don’t need this much excitement.”
Eckstein tried to smile, but his face would not function. This was it. No more. He didn’t need it, either.
He felt the breeze from the forward speed lifting his wet hair as they began the run north for the Gulf of Aqaba and Eilat. He watched as Benni patted the breast pockets of his soaked khaki shirt, came up with a box of Marlboros, then opened it and frowned at the squashed, drowned cigarettes. Baum tossed the crumpled box over the side.
“Well,” said Eckstein, “you should quit anyway.”
Part I
Volunteers
There are no good-tempered generals.
—Michael Shaara,
The Killer Angels
1
Tel Aviv
April 28
THE GIRLS AT the main gate of the Israel Defense Forces Command General Headquarters appeared as delicate as swimsuit models. They were tall and slim, with fine features, modest lipstick, and no more than a touch of eyeliner, and they wore their young strong hair pulled back beneath old-style “overseas” caps. Their olive-drab blouses and trousers failed to camouflage athletic bodies tanned nut-brown from working under a Tel Aviv sun, and as they gracefully slalomed between the lines of waiting vehicles, checking drivers’ identification cards and examining passengers with cool smiles, it was easy to imagine them as harmless as the perfume girls at Bloomingdale’s. But they were some of the best gunwomen in the IDF order of battle.
The Kiria, as General HQ is called, is a massive plot of unmatched architectures just off of Kaplan Street. Girded by kilometers of high pylon and razor-wire fences, patrolled by elite infantry in open armored cars and full battle dress, it houses the command centers of every military and intelligence branch. And each independent structure of glass and steel, stucco or stone is equipped with a means of descent to the much larger balance of the Kiria’s bowels, where neither the impact of nuclear nor biological warheads shall impede the conduct of a war.
At Victor Gate, the main entrance to the complex, perhaps the female gatekeepers’ relaxed air was buttressed by their faith in the hydraulic steel teeth that could instantly thrust from the roadbed, stopping anything short of a main battle tank. Yet the hints that these young women were also deadly shots lay in the types of sidearms nestled in their waist holsters. The pistols were not standard issue, which meant that each not-quite-twenty-year-old girl had earned the right to be selective, having proved her killing prowess on the close-quarter range at Mitkan Adam.
They were not debutantes.
Eytan Eckstein’s royal blue Ford Fiesta was only sixth in line now, but something was holding up progress, most likely the movement within the Kiria of the minister of defense en route to a sitdown with the chief of staff. The five sedans before him were all white Subaru staff cars with black IDF plates, and as the early Mediterranean sun began to turn the vehicles into microwave ovens, their windows rolled down and their drivers’ bronzed arms dangled outside, impatiently flicking ashes.
The constant clutching and shifting was hard on Eckstein’s once-wounded knee, and Benni Baum, squeezed into the small passenger seat, watched his major’s rippling jaw muscle and clucked his tongue.
“You could declare yourself disabled with that leg, you know,” said Benni. In the Israel Defense Forces, being wounded and disabled in action afforded a soldier compensatory privileges unequaled by any other army. “You could be driving a Mercury.”
“Itzik would love that,” Eytan snorted. “He’d chain me to a desk forever, and with the surgeon’s blessing.”
“Now that would be a travesty,” Baum huffed sarcastically. He had been trying to lure Eckstein out of the field for some time, though he was unsure of his own motives. Baum was slated to retire altogether from the army and had only extended his tour to help Eckstein with Jeremiah, In turn, he believed that Eckstein should follow the natural progression, stop “playing spy” and run a unit from “inside.” Yet he suspected himself of a selfish wish, that Eckstein should hold down an office in Jerusalem so that he, the retiree, would retain an ally in SpecOps. Someone to visit, someone to keep him in the game should gardening and clicking his heels to Maya’s redecoration commands prove to be loathsome.
“Tiyeh retzini. Be serious,” said Eckstein. “Can you picture me working in Itzik’s little circus?”
“It’s not such a bad idea.”
“You’ve forgotten why we’ve stayed in the field, Benni. So he doesn’t have to actually look at us.”
Eckstein and Baum were admittedly the best of General Itzik Ben-Zion’s officers, but the commander resented their operational coups, while forced to employ them if he wanted to continue to bask in their glories.
“Well, everyone has to come in from the heat eventually,” said Benni, twisting the title of the novel that launched John le Carre’s fame. He lit up a fresh Marlboro. The ashtray was already overflowing.
“Thank you for the advice. Crude, yet borderline poetic,” Eckstein replied. “But it would be like jumping from a volcano onto an iceberg.”
Baum laughed. Eckstein was right, of course. Even though Baum held the title of Chief of Operations, he made sure to hold most of his meetings, briefings, and rendezvous outside of Jerusalem headquarters. Not that he actually suspected Itzik of wiring his office, which would have been difficult since it was electronically swept once a week by the internal security detachment known as “Peaches.” Baum had simply been weaned by the Mossad back in the 1960s, when street corners, cafés, and empty orange groves were the office and such habits were ingrained for the sake of security. But most importantly, these personal quirks kept him out of Itzik’s line of sight, as the lumbering colonel knew that he was always a ripe target for inconsequential assignments concocted by his general.
“I want to change,” Eckstein suddenly said, but he used the verb l’hachlif, which also means “switch.”
“Departments?” Baum’s tone was incredulous. He could not really envision Eckstein going back to Training again, or taking a straight AMAN desk where you analyzed Syrian troop concentrations by having your field agents monitor prostitute flow.
“Clothes.” Eckstein shifted in his seat, snatched up one of Baum’s cigarettes, and stabbed the car lighter. He was tempted to honk the horn, but the gatekeepers would probably respond by pulling him out of line and searching his trunk. Neither he nor Baum had slept in over thirty-six hours, and his eyes stung as if invaded by sand, his mouth mealy and his stomach sour.
The missile boat had zigzagged north through the Red Sea, then run the demarcation line straight up the Gulf of Aqaba, where just south of the resort city of Eilat they offloaded the refugees onto a “civilian” snorkel boat. An air force C-130 picked them up at the local airport, and the already culture-shocked Ethiopians were subjected to further technical thunder and wonder, opting to pray and sing Amharic folk tunes rather than peek out the portholes at the Negev Desert sweeping below.
Officials of the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee took charge at Jerusalem’s Atarot Airport, but Eckstein’s dawn fantasy of limping off home to catch his young son before the school day began was dissolved by a messenger driving the major’s own Ford and waving a note from Ben-Zion. As always, Itzik’s missive was polite, flowery, and so apologetic: “0800 hours. Meeting at the Kiria. B.Z.”
Eytan and Benni had managed to borrow some sandals and T-shirts from a kibbutznik acquaintance en route to Tel Aviv, but they were both still wearing their miserably damp fatigue pants.
