“I know, Shoshe, I know.”
Shoshana let the hot water envelop her. “Aunt Lillian”—her voice was dreamlike and she was twelve years old again—“will I ever be pretty like you?”
“You’re beautiful, Shoshe.” She gently bathed her niece.
Lillian closed the bathroom door behind her when she was finished. “You need to soak for a week,” she said to herself. In the kitchen, she found four giggly children standing over the American. He was half-dressed and passed out on the floor. She stripped him down to his shorts and ordered the children to wash him. The children fell over themselves with laughter and went to work while Lillian went to Shoshana’s old bedroom and kicked the children sleeping there out into the hall. Then she went to the bathroom, retrieved Shoshana, and gently placed her in her own bed.
Back in the kitchen, she found the children scrubbing their victim with more enthusiasm than skill. “Now help me get him to bed,” she said to the biggest girl. The two of them carried him to the bedroom and unceremoniously dumped him in bed beside Shoshana. “Not much of a wedding night,” Lillian said to herself and closed the door. She leaned against the wall, closed her eyes and hugged herself, forcing the tears to go away. “I’ll be damned if I’ll call the Ganef.”
The late-afternoon light filled the bedroom with soft warmth. Outside the door, the apartment was quiet. Shoshana lay there, trying to remember what had happened. The last thing she could remember was the warm water of the tub enveloping her. She touched the bare back beside her and felt a sudden warmth wash over her.
“Matt.”
“I’m here.”
“No, don’t kiss me there. No, don’t stop.”
“Make up your mind.”
“Quit laughing.”
“Shoshana, I love you.”
“I know. Oh, that’s good. No, don’t stop. Quit teasing me.”
“I’m not.”
“Oh. Yes. Help me, help me. Oohh, Matt, I do love you.”
The apartment exploded with shouts and laughter when Lillian brought her small charges back. Shoshana and Matt were on the balcony and smiled at each other. “Have you ever thought of having children?” Matt asked.
Shoshana smiled gently at him. About some things, Matt was incredibly naive. “Every woman does.”
“Let’s get married,” he said. “Now.”
She reached out and touched his cheek, wanting to say yes, wanting to run away from the insanity that had engulfed her and all she loved. A basic need deep inside her wanted to hide inside the love he was offering her. But she couldn’t. “Matt, if we could—”
“Good, let’s do it.”
“But it’s not possible in Israel,” she told him. He stared at her, not comprehending. “We don’t have civil marriages. Only a rabbi can marry a Jew here and religious law forbids marrying a Jew and gentile. We’d have to go to another country and there’s no time for that.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do as soon as this war is over. It can’t go on much longer.”
For a few minutes, they said nothing, content to be with each other in the fading twilight. “Matt, you’re going to have to go soon. Nighttime is probably the best time to travel and I’ve got to find Hanni.”
Matt resigned himself to leaving. “I need to use your phone to check in with the air attaché. He probably knows if the roads are open. Who knows, maybe my orders have changed.”
It took Matt over an hour to get through to Gold at Ben Gurion Airport. The colonel sounded relieved when he learned Matt was still in Haifa. “Furry says they’re running into problems and it will be at least another twenty-four hours before the jet’s fixed. I want you to go over to Ramat David Air Base. They’ll be expecting you. Hurry.”
“I’ll be damned.” Matt grinned when he hung up. “I was right. They’re sending me over to Ramat David.” He held her for a moment. “I’ll be back.”
A middle-aged woman was waiting to escort him at the first checkpoint blocking the road to the air base. She climbed into the car and eyed him suspiciously. “You must be someone important,” she grumbled. Ten minutes later, she led him through the concrete warrens of one of Israel’s most closely guarded command posts. “You’re the first foreigner who’s ever been in here,” she told him. “Ben David himself cleared you in.” The tone of her voice told Matt what she thought of that decision. “They want you to observe a strike.” She pushed through a door into a large, dimly lit room.
A strong odor of dried sweat and unwashed bodies assaulted Matt’s nose. A few heads looked up and took the newcomer in, every face tired and haggard. Three banks of consoles formed semicircles around a low stage where one man, the direction officer, sat behind a small console. From his position, he could direct the entire operation. Behind him, a massive Plexiglas sheet formed a wall. A map of Israel was etched into the Plexiglas and plotters worked behind it, posting new information. On a side wall to the left were three large computer-generated displays that had to do with air defense threats and Israeli force status. Large alcoves were set into the other two walls where he could see communications panels and radar screens.
Matt concentrated on making sense out of the three large computer displays. He sucked his breath in when he realized what the numbers meant. The Israelis had started the war with twenty-five front-line squadrons with 602 fighters and another 150 in storage; 436 of those aircraft had been destroyed or lost to battle damage. The remaining 316 aircraft had been reconstituted into twenty below-strength operational squadrons. He mentally calculated an attrition of 58 percent.
“We’re facing over eight hundred fighters now that Iraq has come into die war,” his escort told him. “Now, their flight to Iran pays off.”
“Has my country flown in replacements?”
“Not that I know of,” the woman said.
“This is what you really wanted me to see.”
“Yes, I think so. And an attack on the new Iraqi nerve gas facility outside Kirkuk.” With a few explanations from the woman, Matt was able to decipher the planned strike. The IAF was launching two attacks on the Syrian airfields at Shay rat and Tiyas as a cover for four F-16s that were going against the nerve gas plant near Kirkuk. It was a well-coordinated plan that had already started when Matt arrived. The four F-16s were holding in an orbit with a tanker over the Mediterranean between Cyprus and Syria waiting for a go.
RPV drones were penetrating deep into Syrian airspace, serving as bait to bring up Syrian radars and air defenses. Once the Syrians committed on the drones and the Israelis knew the exact location of the detection and tracking radars, they would attack the radar sites with antiradiation missiles from F-4s. At the same time, other aircraft would start wholesale jamming of Syrian radio communications and surviving radars. If the direction officer determined the Syrians were sufficiently blinded, he would clear in more F-4s, which already were airborne, to attack the two airfields.
The Israeli planners had calculated that the Iraqis would concentrate on the airfield attacks going on in Syria and be partially blinded by the jamming directed against the Syrians. Again, if the direction officer gauged the plan was working, he would order the four F-16s on the tanker against die primary target outside Kirkuk. The F-16s would then descend and head straight for the Syrian coast to make a four-hundred-nautical-mile, low-level dash across Syria and into Iraq. It was a long way in and out.
“Why don’t you use Jericho missiles with conventional warheads to hit the target at Kirkuk?” Matt asked.
“Two reasons,” the woman answered. “The Iraqis have not started to use their tactical missiles and we don’t want to give them a reason. Also, we’re ‘withholding’ our missiles.” She didn’t tell him that the Jericho lacked the throw weight necessary to send a heavy enough conventional warhead that could penetrate hardened bunkers at that range.