‘How are you feeling, Lieutenant?’ asked Baruch.
‘Fine, thank you, sir,’ said the lieutenant, politely speaking English rather than Hebrew out of deference to these foreign ‘observers’.
‘How’s the rib, Deborah?’ asked Samuels, who had rejoined them.
‘It’s healed well, sir. No problems with it.’ She twisted left then right to demonstrate. Wilkes noted one eye twitch slightly with the movement. There was pain there, but she was in control of it. The woman was tough.
Samuels was called aside by an NCO.
‘This is Lieutenant Glukel’s first week back on operational duty. She was wounded,’ said Baruch, giving the soldier an avuncular pat on her armoured shoulder.
The lieutenant remained braced up, her face impassive. She was battle ready. Wilkes skimmed a professional eye over her kit. She carried the ubiquitous M16A2 assault carbine, but with a reflex sight, one of the new batteryfree units that utilised tritium and fibre optics to project its dot onto the target. The characteristic Israeli pudding basin helmet appeared heavy and was probably therefore one of the new bulletproof ceramic models. The vest too looked to be ceramic, offering protection from below the femoral arterial line to the mid upper arm. The hand gun she carried was compact and, from what he could see, probably a Glock 17 or 19. Then, of course, there was all the spare ammunition in those pouches on the vest and also, possibly, a brace of hand grenades. Lieutenant Glukel had to be strong to carry all that into battle. Survival in close-quarter street fighting could depend on her ability to move quickly. The gear was a trade-off. She was carrying a lot of protection and the weight of it all might negate the benefits of having it.
‘Can I help you with something, Mr Wilkes?’ said the lieutenant.
Wilkes snapped out of his daydream and realised he’d been staring at the soldier. ‘No, sorry, Lieutenant…er, nice vest,’ he said lamely.
‘You want us to take someone alive from that snake pit?’ She didn’t wait for Wilkes to answer. ‘That means we’re going to have to clear the building room by room. The ceramics will make sure I see another sunrise.’
Jesus, the woman read my mind! The fact that she knew what he was thinking indicated that the lieutenant was every inch the professional combat soldier.
Lieutenant Glukel turned away before Wilkes could apologise again and spoke briefly and heatedly with Major Samuels. She then left the rooftop, sweeping several of the troopers and NCOs along with her. Baruch and Wilkes both watched her leave. ‘She’s good, Tom. One of our best. But she’s a bit…touchy at the moment. Lost her brother. Died in front of her eyes, on her last patrol in fact.’
‘Shit,’ said Wilkes.
‘Here, we say, “kakat”!’
‘Kakat!’ Wilkes repeated.
‘Perfect. You sure you’re not Jewish?’
Wilkes smiled. ‘The major and her seem pretty close?’
‘That’s probably because Lieutenant Glukel is Major Samuels’ younger sister. He wants her removed from combat status. He lost a brother and doesn’t want to lose another member of the family.’
‘Oh,’ said Wilkes. The fact that Glukel and Samuels were brother and sister was something he hadn’t expected.
‘The choice of combat status is the lieutenant’s. And it’s not my place to deny her that if it’s what she wants.’
Wilkes nodded. He could understand that. In a way, the situation wasn’t dissimilar to his own skirmishing with Annabelle.
‘Israel is a small country and everyone except the religious academics serves in the army at some point,’ Baruch explained. ‘It’s not unusual for brothers to fight together and, in this case, two brothers and a sister. As I said, the major and I don’t see eye to eye on the lieutenant’s combat status. Also, he doesn’t believe taking Kadar Al-Jahani prisoner is worth risking lives for. Especially his baby sister’s. I’ll be honest with you, Warrant Officer, neither do I.’
‘You know my rank?’ Wilkes said, taken aback.
‘And your regiment.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Wilkes didn’t know what to say next.
‘The Australian SAS has a formidable reputation. You of all people would know how difficult it is to storm a building occupied by a committed, well-trained enemy.’ Baruch suddenly brightened. ‘But today, it will go well. I can feel it. See here.’
The sun had set and night was coming down fast.
Wilkes allowed himself to be pushed to the front of the crowd gathered around the trestle tables. The fact that Baruch knew he was SAS rather than CIA relaxed him a little. He didn’t know how to behave like a CIA man — now he could just be himself.
Wilkes looked around for Monroe to tell him his cover was blown, but Monroe was nowhere about. ‘Brilliant,’ he said to himself.
The portable tables were groaning with monitors, laptop computers and a spaghetti of electrical connection cords and other computer-related paraphernalia. A generator hummed five metres behind this command station, with a backup beside it. Three technicians in civilian clothes sat at the tables and fussed over the gear like mothers over their first-born. One of the grey monitors flashed into life and the knot of spectators pressed closer.
‘Sorry, can y’all please just move back a little and give us some air,’ drawled one of the technicians, irritated by the pressing crowd. He was a young black American man of around twenty who wore a red Sikorsky-branded baseball cap, a yellow Hawaiian shirt and jeans that looked as if someone had tried to pull them off him and nearly succeeded, the top half of his Calvin Klein underpants showing. Wilkes thought he looked like a rapper. The halfdozen soldiers of assorted rank politely did as they were asked and moved back a pace.
‘Okay,’ the technician said, nodding, relaxing slightly. ‘So what we have here is an update on your Combat Forces Digitisation Program, bringing its efficiencies to the difficult-to-manage urban combat zone. The heart of the system is the Dragon Warrior UAV. We’ve had one Dragon Warrior up for some time, giving us the overall picture, and it has now been joined by a second Dragon Warrior — the one you just saw taking off. That means we can orbit the target building using the first Dragon Warrior as a relay platform, allowing us to obtain a wealth of information from the battlefield in real time. In short, we’ll know what’s going down as it’s happening, and be more able to deploy our forces where and when required.’
Dragon Warrior — pretty tough name for something that looked like a flying doughnut, thought Wilkes.
‘And the Dragon Warrior is not limited to urban conflicts either. It can be given an over-the-beach battlefield capability by simply attaching the winglets provided.’
‘Salesmen,’ said Baruch quietly in Wilkes’s ear.
‘The Dragon Warriors possess thermal imaging as well as infrared, refractive light and x-ray cameras, all with up to one thousand times magnification. Basically, from a thousand metres away, day or night, we can tell you whether the enemy have clipped their nose hairs. And we can relay that information to any other command set, be it a bunker, tank or hee-lo — anywhere on the battlefield,’ he said while he tapped several letters on the keyboard.
‘Although it beats me why the presence of nose hairs on the battlefield might be important,’ said one of the other technicians, sharing his observation with a snigger.
‘I don’t understand,’ said one of the Israeli officers.