Matt shook his head, climbed into the back and closed the rear doors. Well, he thought, this is one way to see what’s happening up front.
“We’re getting close,” Shoshana said. “I’m not going to wake Hanni yet. She drove most of the last run.” Her partner had crawled into the back of the ambulance when Matt took over the driving and had fallen into an instant sleep. Shoshana, much more familiar with the road, was navigating. The first light of dawn was etching the eastern sky, punctuated by momentary flares of artillery. The dull whumps of the big guns would follow seconds later.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Matt said. “Why were all those kids still in Ofra? They should have been evacuated out like the ones I saw in your apartment.”
Shoshana stared into the night. “The government tried. But the settlers at Ofra are hard-liners and wouldn’t go. They’re afraid if they leave, the government won’t defend their homes and will pull back to a better defensive position. By not evacuating, they force the government to defend their homes.”
“That’s dumb,” Matt said.
“Not to the settlers.” She looked at him. “You don’t understand, do you?” He shook his head. “The settlers moved in after we occupied the West Bank during the 1967 war. Every one of those settlements is illegal.”
“So why’s that illegal?”
“We signed the Geneva Convention on Occupied Territories, which prohibits settlement.”
Matt was astounded. “But it’s been going on for twenty-five years.”
“The government encouraged it.”
“That’s dumb” was all Matt could think of to say.
“Not to many Israelis. They believe that all of Palestine belongs to them.”
“How do you feel about it?” he asked.
Shoshana stared into the night, too tired to discuss it further. “I just want the fighting to stop.”
A large shadow loomed up in front of them and Matt slammed his foot onto the brake pedal, skidding the ambulance to a halt. The hulk of a burned-out Merkava tank was blocking the road. “Christ,” Matt mumbled. “I almost ran into it.” He jammed the gearshift into reverse and backed up to maneuver around the tank. As he eased off the road to the right and rounded the tank, he stopped again. “There’s someone next to the tank,” he said. “We better check on him.” He threw the door open and hopped out.
“Don’t!” Shoshana shouted, jumping out after him. She knew what he would find and followed him. Matt was bent over the body of the Israeli tanker, not touching it. The scorched-black corpse was on its back, arms bent at the elbow, reaching up.
“My God,” Matt whispered.
She reached down and checked the identity tags of the corpse. “A colonel.” Then she looked inside the crew compartment at the rear of the tank. “Probably a brigade commander caught moving his command post.”
“What in the hell happened?”
“I don’t know,” she answered and pulled him back to the ambulance. “We’ve got to go. Our job is with the living.”
Three kilometers down the road, they found five ambulances stopped in front of a low building. They pulled into line and Hanni got out and went inside. She was back within minutes. “We’re at the aid station,” she said, “but there’s no one to transport. They’re waiting for the medics to bring more in.”
”Why don’t you use helicopters for air evac?” Matt asked.
“We do when we can,” Shoshana answered. “But we don’t have enough helicopters to go around, so we still use a lot of ambulances.”
Matt walked inside the temporary aid station and was surprised to see many wounded men, some lying on the floor, others sitting and resting against the wall. Anger flared when he realized they could be transporting many of them. He walked into the next room. It was filled with even more seriously wounded. “What the hell?” he growled.
A medic was giving a shot to one of the men and looked up. “Yank?” he asked, recognizing Matt’s fitigues.
“Yeah,” Matt answered. “I just got here with an ambulance. Someone said there’s no one to transport. Why in hell aren’t we moving these guys?”
The medic looked around. “Nothing anyone can do for them.”
Matt’s face turned rock-hard. It was his first experience with triage.
Matt pointed to the first room with the much less seriously wounded. “What about them?”
“They’ll be going back in a few hours.” The medic shrugged.
“Then why in hell can’t we move them now?”
The medic looked at him for a moment before answering. “They’re going back to their units, where they’re needed.”
Matt turned and walked out, determined to do something. Hanni was waiting for him. “You’ve got to go back. Shoshana found a stalled A PC, one of your M One-thirteens that we use for an ambulance up front. She’s got it started and we’re going forward.”
“Why doesn’t she tell me to leave?”
Hanni shook her head. “She couldn’t do that. Matt, you’re tearing her apart. She wants to be with you but—”
“Come on, I’m going with you.”
He and Hanni sat in the back of the M113 while Shoshana drove, working her way across a battlefield. Loud clangs echoed through the small compartment, deafening them when bullets ricocheted off the outer hull. “I thought vehicles with a red cross were protected under the Geneva Convention,” he yelled at the woman, glad that he was wearing a flak jacket and a helmet.
“You think that makes a difference to the Syrians?”
The APC jerked to a halt. “Get out!” Shoshana yelled. “Syrian tanks!” Matt followed Hanni out, relieved to get out of the metal box and see what was going on around them. Shoshana had hidden them in a wadi, a dry streambed that had down-cut eight feet into the terrain. Matt could hear the distinctive clank of a tank coming from over the edge. It sounded like it was fifty meters away.
Ahead of them, a squad of Israelis had dismounted from their M113 and were also hunkered down in the wadi. One of them held a Dragon antitank missile. The squad leader motioned for them to deep down as the clanking grew louder. Then the squad leader pointed at his eyes with forked fingers, then to Matt, then back down the wadi. Matt understood immediately what he wanted and ran back down the dry streambed until he was well clear of the clanking sounds. He poked his head over the edge of the wadi. Much to his surprise, he saw only one tank moving toward them and it was at least five hundred meters away. He looked for supporting troops and counted nine on the other side of the tank, moving along in its shadow.
Since he didn’t know the hand signals to flash what he had seen, he ran back to tell them. The squad leader nodded and deployed five men to the left and the Dragon team down the wadi to where Matt had been. When they were ready, he raised his fist and pulled it down hard. The men on the far left popped up and sent a rain of fire into the soldiers beside the tank. Matt stuck his head over the edge and saw the turret traverse toward the five men. A hand grabbed the back of his flak jacket and pulled him back down. “Keep down,” the squad leader baiked. At the same time, the Dragon team on the right swung the missile over the edge and fired. The boom of the missile hitting the tank washed over them. “That was our last one,” the sergeant told him. “We’ll be lucky to get him.”
Matt fell down to the bottom of the arroyo and held on to his helmet as the tank continued to fire. Then a hand grabbed his flak jacket and jerked him to his feet. The squad leader pushed him in the direction of the Dragon team. Matt tired to find Shoshana but had lost both her and Hanni. Another soldier kept pushing him along until they were past the Dragon team and well away from the APCs. “Knocked off a track, but the bastard’s still firing,” the sergeant said.