Then Matt saw Shoshana and Hanni carrying a wounded man into their APC. “They had better get away from there,” a voice said, “until we know who else is out there.” The sharp realization hit Matt that it took a special type of situational awareness to survive ground combat and that he didn’t have a clue.
“Your APCs got a gun mounted on top,” Matt said. “Why don’t you use it?”
“APCs don’t engage tanks,” the sergeant barked. Matt thought about that for a moment and then decided to look again. He could see that the Dragon antitank missile had blown off the tank’s left track, but other than that, the tank was undamaged. The turret was swinging back and forth and the PKT machine gun mounted above the main gun was raking the ground in front of the wadi. They were trapped.
The tank crew was still buttoned up inside and Matt couldn’t see any supporting infantry. Then he noticed the top of the turret; something didn’t look right. He pointed it out to a corporal beside him who looked and only shook his head. “That’s the hatch. It’s got a dent in it.”
Now the American was beginning to get a clue. Maybe the hatch could be pried open like a tin can and a grenade dropped inside. He ran back to the APC and grabbed a breaking bar he had seen inside. He ignored Shoshana and Hanni who were working on the injured man, trying to stop his bleeding. He ran back to the corporal. “Give me a grenade,” he said. Again, he popped his head up, took a quick look and dropped back down. The tank was concentrating its fire in the direction of the APCs in the wadi, apparently aware of their position. Now he understood why the squad leader had moved away. APCs didn’t engage tanks but tanks engaged APCs. He looked again, screwing up his courage. He was going after the tank.
With a shove, Matt pushed himself over the edge of the wadi. But the corporal reached up and jerked him back. He lot his balance and collapsed in a heap in the bottom of the wadi. “Why were you going to do that?” the corporal asked.
“Because APCs don’t take on tanks,” Matt shot back. It was the best one-liner he had ever thought of.
“That was stupid,” the corporal said, shaking his head. He pulled Matt to his feet and pointed behind him. Matt could see a Hummer with a TOW mounted on top coming toward them. “We had called for help.”
There’s many kinds of situational awareness, Matt decided.
“I swear I’ll never even think of playing Rambo again,” Matt said, trying to keep their spirits up with a little humor. The three of them were sitting beside the ambulance at the hospital in Haifa, eating after returning from their sixth run to the aid station to the north. Matt found it hard to believe he could be so tired and still keep moving. Shoshana only looked at him. “You know … attempt to do a John Wayne number on a tank.” In quieter moments, he knew it had been rash to the point of stupidity. But he was also dealing with strong protective feelings that were wrapped around Shoshana.
“You would’ve been killed,” Shoshana said, a concerned look on her face.
“Tamir!” Matt recognized the woman dispatcher’s voice immediately. The young woman was standing there, slightly weaving, on the edge of a physical collapse. “There’s a lull in the fighting,” she said. “Only a few more to bring in-for now.” While Shoshana and Hanni climbed into the ambulance, he asked the woman to call the American embassy and tell them where he was.
“How much longer can you two go on?” Matt asked, sliding into the driver’s seat. He had been going for over thirty-six hours and knew they had been on duty much longer. Hanni was already dozing.
“As long as we have to,” Shoshana said. “Let’s go.”
Matt joined the stream of traffic moving north. The road had been cleared and they moved along at a steady forty kilometers per hour, sandwiched between a supply truck and a freshly repaired M60A3 tank. He noticed that the tank commander standing in the hatch was a woman and realized how desperate the Israelis were if they were manning tanks with women. He mentioned it to Shoshana but she was also asleep. Occasionally, he would see a returning ambulance or a truck transporting wounded men with filthy bandages and still carrying their weapons. Those men were wounded, he thought, returned to combat and wounded again.
“Damn,” he muttered to himself. Through the fog of his fatigue, he realized he had accomplished exactly what Gold had sent him north to do and he had to report it. He passed the spot where the destroyed Merkava tank had blocked the road. The tank had been pushed to one side and a team of mechanics were working on it. He counted six body bags piled off to one side. My God, he thought, they’re retrieving tanks before taking care of their dead.
Overhead, two Israeli F-4 Phantoms crossed the road. He watched them weave back and forth. Flying a CAP over the road, he decided. He listened for artillery. Nothing. The fighting may have stopped for now, he calculated, but they were far from being secure and the Israelis were obviously rushing reinforcements and supplies forward. He looked at his watch—3:40 p.m. Probably another attack tonight, he decided. Which side will be on the offensive?
A soldier wearing the distinctive red brassard of the military police on her left arm waved them past the aid station and they continued north. He nudged Shoshana. “Wake up. Change in plans.” She lifted her head, momentarily confused. Another military policewoman directed them to turn off the road toward a barbed-wire compound.
“POWs,” Shoshana said as they came to a halt.
A lone MP was standing by a single stretcher, waiting for them. Shoshana and Hanni jumped out and loaded the stretcher. The MP climbed into the back and they closed the doors. Worry was written across Shoshana’s face when they climbed back into the cab. “Don’t like hauling wounded POWs?” Matt ventured.
“We’ve done it before,” she said. He could hear the concern in her voice.
“Then what’s wrong?”
“This one is wearing an Iraqi uniform.”
19
Johar Adwan slipped quietly into the back of the squadron’s ready room and found a seat in the back, next to a wall. Johar Adwan looked around, relieved to see only other pilots like himself — the nobodies. Every Iraqi air base like Johar’s at Mosul had its fair share of nobodies — the little men, the pilots without family or connections.
The twenty-nine-year-old Iraqi pilot outwardly accepted his position at the bottom of the squadron’s pecking order, trying to be content as a lieutenant, knowing that he would never be promoted beyond captain and that others, much less qualified than he, would rise far above him in the chain of command. But that was life in Iraq’s air force. There were compensations. Johar Adwan flew Iraq’s most modern fighter, the Soviet-built Sukhoi, the Su-27, that NATO called the Flanker. Johar preferred the other name the pilots had given the big jet fighter — Pugachev’s Cobra — after Viktor Pugachev, one of its designers and chief test pilot.
Another pilot, Samir Hamshari, came into the room, saw Johar, and sat down beside him. Like Johar Adwan, Samir Hamshari was also a nobody. Samir glanced at the slightly balding Johar. “No practice today,” he said. Samir was a year younger than Johar and had introduced him to a new form of air-to-air tactics. Most of the squadron tolerated the two lieutenants, amused by the way they pored over “Red Baron” reports and the issues of the Fighter Weapons Review magazine Russian agents had stolen from the U.S. Air Force and sent to the Iraqis. Because of their interest in American tactics, the other pilots had mockingly shortened the pilots’ names to Joe and Sam.
What no one knew, and what Johar and Samir’s privileged and powerful superiors would not have tolerated, was that the two pilots practiced the tactics they read about whenever they had a chance. And in order to be unobserved by their own radar controllers, they did it below a thousand feet with their IFFs off.