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 In the confusion, I found myself back to back with Hauksho. “I’m neutral!” he was trying to explain to an Arab diving at him with a bayonet. “I’m not involved. I’m just observing.” The Arab kept coming.

 With a sigh, the pudgy Oriental stopped talking and sprang into action. He moved with amazing speed for a man of his weight. He deflected the bayonet with a karate chop to the riflebarrel and quickly followed it another to the side of the Arab’s neck. The attacker hit the ground like a felled tree and stayed there.

 After that I lost track of Hauksho, save for the reassuring feel of his back pressed against mine. I was propelled into a game of catch with an Arab crouched behind a pile of sandbags. He threw a hand grenade at me, and I fielded it right-handed and tossed it right back to him. He scooped it up like a beanbag and it zinged into my hands again. Once more I returned it. This time he held onto it. He examined it with a disgusted look, then just dropped it. Evidently he’d concluded it was a dud and there was no percentage in throwing it back to me again. Fortunately for me, he was wrong. Seconds after he discarded it, the grenade exploded, and pieces of surprised Arab rained over the area.

 As they were settling, a group of eight or ten commandos sprang up in their wake, leaped the barricades, and started charging across the compound. They all looked like they were headed straight for me. Their bayonets shone in the moonlight like hungry spits -- and I was seconds away from being a shish kebob!

 Suddenly from my right there was a prolonged burst from a machinegun. It mowed the line of attacking Arabs down like so much grass. I looked toward the source of the bullets. Naomi was firing the machinegun.

 “That’s one I owe you,” I called.

 She smiled her answer. She was still smiling when another Arab dived on her from the rear and wrenched her away from the machinegun. Only her quick reflexes kept her from having her throat cut. Now he was trying again, wielding a long knife and trying to pin her to the ground so he could use it. I hustled over there and bashed in his skull with the butt of a rifle I’d picked up in the confusion.

 By the time I’d helped Naomi to her feet, it was over. As suddenly as they’d come, the Arabs withdrew. We stood there, catching our breath, and watched them go.

“I guess we’ve driven them off,” I panted.

 “No.” Naomi pointed. “Look.”

 I looked. The Arabs had regrouped about a hundred yards from the compound, and they seemed to be setting up camp there. “What are they up to?” I wondered aloud.

 “A siege.” Naomi was very sure. “From there they control the road. They’re going to cut off our supplies and try to starve us out. Also, they’ll keep us out of the fields and the crops will rot.”

 “Will they attack again?”

 “Probably they’re waiting for reinforcements. When they get here, they will.”

 “And meanwhile. . . ?”

 “Meanwhile,” Naomi told me, “I hope you like peas. You’re going to be eating a lot of them.”

 She was right. During the next few days I ate peas till they were coming out of my - yeah, well, my ears too. During that time, I cemented relations with Naomi. I’d saved her life, and she was grateful, and that gave me an edge over Hauksho. I maintained the edge by sticking as close to Naomi as possible.

 Naturally, she thought my interest was romantic. Under the circumstances, however, romance was no easy matter. The first night I kissed her, for instance, our grenade belts got hooked together and we damn near blew ourselves up disentangling them. And it seemed like every time we got into a clinch that looked like it might be going places, some strategic call to duty intruded and put an end to it. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have suspected Hauksho of manipulating these frustrations.

 Still, things were warm between us and getting warmer. They were particularly warm the night the Arabs staged their second attack.

 Naomi had gone into one of the storehouses to check the medical supplies. We’d received word that a caravan was on the way; but there was only a fifty-fifty chance it would get through the Arab blockade, and Naomi was trying to figure out how to ration such items as morphine among the wounded we already had if help didn’t reach us. I’d followed her into the storehouse, and she’d taken a break from her duties to snatch a few moments medium-torrid necking. I’d just removed her bra and inserted my head under her khaki shirt when the alarm sounded.

 Emerging from the storehouse on the run, Naomi at my side and buttoning her blouse over her naked breasts as we sprinted, I could appreciate how Custer must have felt. I never saw so many howling Arabs! The reinforcements they’d been waiting for must have arrived all right.

 Hordes of them-—it seemed-—were charging down on the compound on horseback. Behind them there was troop of cavalry on camelback. And behind them there were still more foot soldiers.

 This was no mere commando attack. It looked more like a full scale invasion!

 Naomi and I joined the kibbutz fighters at the well. They were a pitifully small band, and it was obvious that their valiant efforts would have to be in vain. Within a matter of moments half of them were dead and the rest had dispersed, either running into the desert, where the Arabs mercilessly rode them down, or trying to hide in various places around the compound.

 Hopeless as it was, I practically had to drag Naomi away from the action. It was obvious that the Arabs were just mopping up, and I didn’t want us to be mopped. Exit Naomi was all for becoming a martyr. She came damn close to achieving her objective before I prevailed on her to run.

 By that time the Arabs had the compound surrounded. It was useless to try to escape to the desert. We found a clump of palm trees and crouched down in the sand between their bases.

 It wasn’t really a very good spot. It looked even less likely when some of the camel riders decided to tether their mounts to the trunks of the trees. With the beasts pawing around us, Naomi and I dug a hole in the soft sand with our bare hands, slipped into it side-by-side, and scooped sand over our bodies to keep from being detected. By the time we were through, only our noses and mouths protruded above the dune.

Our bodies were pressed closely together in our makeshift foxhole. Naomi’s braless breasts dug into one side of my chest and titillated me in spite of our predicament. Responding, my manhood burned against her thigh.

 Our attention was distracted -- but our physical reactions didn’t wane -- when some Arabs set up a small table with an oil lamp on top of it a short distance from where we had buried ourselves. Then a chair was brought, and a tall Arab who seemed to be in command sat down at the makeshift desk. We had a nice clear view of him between the legs of the camels tied to the palm trees.

 One after another, various Israeli prisoners were led up to him. He disposed of them quickly, consigning them to a guarded area where the prisoners were being collected. My guess was that he was hoping to discover an Israeli of higher rank from whom he might extract some intelligence information. The first time he seemed to show more than cursory interest in any of the captives was when Hauksho was led up to him.

 “You don’t look Jewish,” he observed.

 “I’m not,” Hauksho told him.

 “He lied to me!” Naomi whispered in my ear. The whisper rode on warm breath which sent a tingle down my body. I patted her plump bottom by way of calming her.

 “Then what are you doing here?” the Arab commander asked reasonably.

 “I’m an international observer.” Hauksho was very smooth. “Here are my papers.” He handed them to the Arab.

 The Arab studied them. “You are a Japanese national?” he said finally.

 “Yes.”

 “How do the Japanese feel about the Jews?”