“Deception,” the general answered. “They wanted us to mistake them for reconnaissance drones and be caught unmasked. It didn’t work. Levy’s Luck again.”
“That man is charmed,” Ben David agreed.
“Are you going to retaliate?” the general asked.
“What are our casualties?” Ben David replied.
“So far, none.”
“Then we wait.” His carefully masked anger raged in its cage.
The APC was moving again, this time forward, back into their original position. Shoshana was having a hard time seeing where she was going; the combination of gas mask and periscope didn’t work well for her. Hanni seemed to be doing better so they switched places and Hanni drove while Shoshana rode in the crew compartment. Then they were back under the camouflage netting where they had started as the dark on the eastern horizon broke with the first light of dawn.
Shoshana could see movement in the valley below, moving toward them. The radio was silent.
Tara sat in her aunt’s library next to the fireplace, feeling the warmth of the fire. B. J. Allison refilled her teacup and touched her arm. “There, there, dear,” she cooed. “These things do happen. You did exactly what I would have.” There were few higher compliments from the old woman. “But we must think about the future.” She sat down in the wing-backed chair opposite Tara and sipped at her tea, deep in thought. Allison’s strength was her ability to quickly reevaluate a situation and find new opportunities. Her thoughts did not follow a concrete, nicely ordered path from A to B to C, but rather she hovered over a problem and moved around it, darting in and out, looking at it from every viewpoint and finding a niche she could exploit.
At die same time, on another mental level, she was evaluating Tara. If she sensed the young woman had become a liability, she would dispose of her, taking whatever action was necessary. And she was very fond of Tara. Age had not diminished Allison’s thought processes but sharpened them, making her a formidable power.
“Dear, when all this breaks in the papers, I think you’re going to have to make a confidential phone call to a certain police lieutenant I know. Tell him you were the “mystery woman’ but that when you had left, Fraser was sleeping in bed. He’ll be expecting your call. Don’t be afraid to tell him your name but make him coax it out of you.” Allison gave Tara a tight little smile. By the time Tara made her phone call, the lieutenant would already have “discovered” a witness who would swear that he saw Tara leave well before Fraser could have died.
Allison set the cup down and folded her hands primly in her lap. “We must change directions,” she said. “I sank my money in a dry hole. Remember I had mentioned another person I thought you would like to meet? His name is Sheik Mohammed al-Khatub. Perhaps you know of him?” Tara‘s reaction indicated she did. “I will arrange for you to meet him tomorrow evening. Dear, it is very important that he take you into his confidence very quickly. I must know the timing of OPEC’s next oil embargo.”
Allison also knew how to many money out of that eventuality if she had a little warning. She gave an inward sigh. Exploiting an oil embargo was such a simple thing to do but she was only reacting to world events, not controlling them. She made a mental promise that she would settle matters with Pontowski at another time, another place.
The radio came alive as the first Israeli artillery salvo walked through the tanks advancing toward Shoshana’s position. She could hear the distinctive sound of Levy’s voice respond to the eager requests of his company commanders to open fire. In every case, he ordered them to hold. He knew how long the artillery batteries could continue to shell the tanks before they had to stop shooting and start moving to avoid Iraqi counterbattery fire. Almost on cue, the artillery barrage stopped and Shoshana could hear the rumble of jets as they rolled in on the tanks.
Three sharp knocks on the rear ramp tore her attention away from the battle going on in front of her and she spun the periscope around to the rear. A fully NBC-suited soldier was hosing down the APC with a hose leading to a small tank trailer while two others were scrubbing it down with long brushes. It was a decontamination team at work in the midst of the fighting.
When they were finished, the team leader gave her the hand sign to drop the ramp. The team checked them and the interior of the APC for contamination. The leader put her mask next to Shoshana’s and spoke in a normal voice. “You’re clean,” she said. “Keep wearing your suits, but you should be able to take your masks off in thirty minutes. Keep buttoned up until then. This stuff doesn’t last as long as we thought.” The team moved on to the next APC ambulance.
The radio crackled with urgent requests for support as the teams holding the northernmost sides of the valley came under heavy attack. Again, Levy did not respond. Now the closest tanks were less than two thousand meters away as the last F-4 pulled off. Two tanks exploded as the F-4s’ Maverick antitank missiles found their targets.
Now Levy ordered his blocking force to commence fire and the hillside exploded as his tanks opened up. Shoshana’s world narrowed as she watched, transfixed by three Iraqi tanks moving in a V formation coming straight toward her position. Levy’s tank surged out of its deep rut and slammed to a halt when its turret was clear. It fired two quick rounds and reversed back into its hole. Two of the tanks exploded but the third pulled around its burning leader and came up the hill,directly toward their position, its main gun swinging onto her.
“Hanni!” Shoshana yelled. “Reverse out of here!”
She watched in horror as the tank, which she could clearly identify as a T-72, fired. “Hanni! Go!” she shouted. The APC jerked and then stopped, stalled. The shell impacted thirty meters in front of them as the tube of the T-72 raised for die automatic loader to eject the spent shell casing out of the breach. Hanni ground the starter and Shoshana knew she was going to die. She had heard tankers talk about how the tube on the main gun of a T-72 would first raise to eject the casing and then point downward with a fresh shell to slam into the breach. Then the gun’s barrel would raise, retrain, and fire.
Levy’s tank roared out of its hide as the T-72's tube was depressing to reload. With maddening slowness the turret of the M60 traversed toward the T-72. “Fire! Damn you, fire!” Shoshana shouted as the M60's 105-millimeter gun cracked. The muzzle of the T-72's gun had raised and was pointed directly at her when it disappeared in a flash. The APC’s V-6 diesel came to life and now they were moving backward to safety.
The radio crackled. “Band-Aid, did you take a hit?” It was Levy.
Shoshana held the mike against her gas mask. “No damage,” she reported. She could hear the trembling in her voice.
“Hold,” Levy replied. “We’re going to be needing you.” Hanni slammed the APC to a halt. Levy did have that effect.
“Band-Aid,” the radio spat, “a TOW team four hundred meters to your left and one hundred meters downslope needs a medic. Go.” Hanni rolled the APC forward, past their last position and toward their first pickup. When they crested the ridge, Shoshana got her first clear look at the valley. Burning tanks and BMPs were sending up clouds of black smoke obscuring her view. Off to her right, she could see the Iraqis regrouping for another thrust up the slope. She swung the periscope to the rear to fix their escape route. A sickening feeling swept over her when she realized they had been well dug in and hidden in their old position. She had been looking at the battle through a raised periscope and had assumed that if she could see the tank, the tank could see her. Only Levy’s sharp command at the right time had saved them from running away from where they were needed.