Casca 20: Soldier of Gideon (16 page)

At 7:30 P.M. that night, twenty-seven hours after it entered the war, Syria agreed to a cease fire. She had lost more than a thousand men and a hundred tanks, forty of which were captured undamaged. Her powerful border artillery, the bane of the Israeli kibbutzim beneath the Syrian heights, were permanently silenced, some destroyed by the artillery bombardment, the rest carted off to Israel.

The Radio Israel report concluded with the message that all short term soldiers were forthwith relieved of duty, and that all wartime promoted personnel would now revert to their substantive rank.

The war was over.

"Well, that's the end of a brilliant, short career," Casca said, chuckling. "I guess we're all busted back to private."

“A bloomin' six-day wonder," Moynihan muttered. "That's what I am, a bloody six-day wonder."

He tore the three stripes from his arm.

The celebration of the end of the war was the most restrained one Casca could remember. The Muslim town that adjoined the El Quneitra barracks had plenty of brothels, but no bars, so Casca and his buddies chose to stay within the captured barracks and loot its small cache of fine cognac.

The defeated general and his aide were pleased to join them in their small debauch despite the anti
-alcohol strictures of their prophet. By the time they had consumed the fourth bottle all distinctions of rank, race, and religion had been obscured anyway, and they were just a bunch of raucous veterans on a drunk.

They talked and sang and shouted and even danced.

Wardi Nathan entertained them with a Maori haka, a fierce war dance accompanied by vigorous facial expressions of clearly cannibal derivation.

The two Arab officers responded with a Bedouin sword dance, using their British made Wilkinson military swords.

Moynihan and Billy Glennon danced an Irish jig, and Casca closed the bill with a hambone, a hilarious version of the Dance of the Seven Veils. He didn't let his audience know that he had seen Salome dance the original.

Early the next morning they set out from the fort. The Israeli Army had already deteriorated to the undisciplined rabble whose unmilitary
demeanor had helped to seduce the meticulous Arab military into the delusion that they were not good soldiers.

Their notoriously
unshined boots were dirtier than ever. Most of the soldiers were unshaven. Their highly individualistic uniforms had been further varied by the addition of various items abandoned by the fleeing Arabs – sword and gun belts and weapons, bandoliers, headdresses.

The ragtag and bobtail army set out for their various hometowns in no particular order, and Casca found that he had been effectively relieved of his general's command by the simple departure of his troops.

He considered himself lucky that his Bren gun carrier had not been taken. It turned out that it might well have been, but a thoughtful Billy Glennon had prudently immbolized it by removing the rotor button from the distributor.

Casca,
Glennon, Wardi, and Moynihan set out along the line of the Syria Israel border, heading for the captured West Bank of the Jordan en route for Tel Aviv. Two young Sabra officers rode with them.

Nursing a monumental hangover, a disgruntled Moynihan counted his assets, and calculated that even with an expected victory bonus he would arrive back in Gleeson's bar almost as broke as he had left it.

Along the way they repeatedly encountered struggling survivors of the Syrian retreat, and they distributed water amongst them as they went. Casca was relieved that they reached the Jordan before their water ran out.

They struck across the desert and stopped at a small dry oasis for a lunch of dates and figs.

They were lying in the shade of the date palms when the sudden crackle of rifle fire sent them scurrying for their weapons and the cover of the BGC.

Casca cursed heartily as he crouched beside the vehicle. "A hangover will always fuck you up," he said with a scowl as he recalled that they were carrying little surplus ammunition.

And the small oasis was virtually surrounded. Every bullet must be made to count. He thumbed his Kalashnikov to the semiautomatic mode of fire.

"Well, screw '
em anyway," Moynihan muttered from under the car. "We've got water and shade, we can hold 'em off forever."

Casca didn't answer. At this season this oasis was dry. They only had the water in their canteens, and the sun was still climbing the sky. Very soon their shade would move away from them.

As he studied the terrain a remote chord of memory resonated in his mind. He had been here before.

From the River Jordan a now dry
wadi ran into the oasis. In the two thousand years that the desert sands had been shifting, the granite walls of the wadi's canyon had not changed too much. A giant beak of rock that his Roman legion buddies had called "Pompey's nose" still looked like the patrician general's famous snorer.

He looked around until he found what he was looking for
– the spot where the dry wadi left the oasis. And when he found it his memory cleared. The opening in the rock still looked like what they had called it in the legion – Salome's Slit.

He nudged the Israeli beside him. "If this gets too bad, we're going to move out through there." He pointed to the slit. "There's a permanent spring down there in the bed of the
wadi. We can dig for water."

The Sabra turned a puzzled face to him. "You've been here before?"

"I soldiered out here once a long time ago."

He was relieved from further explanation by a new burst of firing from their besiegers. The Israeli muttered a curse and the Uzi fell from his hand:

"Oh shit," Casca muttered as he realized that the youth was dead. "These bastards can shoot."

But it seemed that the attackers had only rifles. Each shot came separately, and from good cover, affording little opportunity for response.

One of the tires was shot away with a deafening explosion, then another.

"They're
tryin' to lower this chunk of scrap iron onto me bleedin' head," Moynihan complained as he squeezed off an answering shot.

A yelp came from where
Wardi crouched near the engine. A chance bullet had nicked a radiator hose and he was being sprayed with hot water.

"No wheels and no water," Casca muttered to himself. "This is not looking any better." Aloud he said: "What do you think, Billy?"

The big Irishman fired the shot he had lined up and grinned at the scream from the edge of the oasis. "We got no wheels, and we got no water," he echoed Casca's thinking. "But we don't need 'em. If you guys head out down that wadi like you said, I can stage a pretty good diversion, and I'll meet you there. There's a box of grenades on the floor. I've kept it stocked up all the way through."

Casca laughed and thumped the Paddy on his beefy shoulder.

"Oh shit, I'm sorry," he said as Billy grunted in pain from the bayonet wound. "This seems to be my day to screw up all around."

"We're
doin' all right Case," Glennon assured him.

But Casca knew it wasn't true. He had fouled up by leaving the fortress as if in a country that was really at peace. And he knew so well that this part of the world had never been at peace.

He had now caught a few glimpses of their attackers, and knew that they were Bedouins. There were all sorts of Bedouins, nomadic farmers and goat herders, camel caravaneers, desert caterers, wandering brigands.

They had fallen amongst the worst of them, a band of thieves who lived by robbing and murdering at every opportunity the arid landscape afforded. These desert jackals had no loyalty to Syria, Jordan, Israel,
nor to any nation but themselves. They would just as readily have attacked Bedouin travelers.

"Well," Casca muttered as his shot was answered by another short scream, "we'll give them more than they might have expected."

He tapped Billy on the shoulder. "Mount up. Just drive off of us."

As he clambered into the car
Glennon unlatched a trenching tool from its clip and handed it to Casca. "You'll need this for the water." He was saying good bye and Casca knew it.

A second later the motor roared and the BGC lurched away, the flattened tires flapping loosely at the sand.

A hail of rifle fire followed the car, the bullets pinging harmlessly off the armor while the soldiers scored several hits on the Bedouin riflemen.

Then Casca was on his feet, leading the rush for the gulch at the far side of the oasis. As they reached it and ran between the granite walls a few of their attackers came out into the open and raced after them.

Wardi Nathan and the young Israeli officer stopped at the slit and sprayed the pursuers with their Uzis. All but three of them fell, but both Wardi and the Israeli collected lead.

Out in the oasis Billy
Glennon was driving the protesting vehicle through the sands to the rear of the circle of Bedouins, lobbing grenade after grenade at where they crouched in cover.

A lot of them died where they were, and a lot more died as they tried to escape by running into the oasis where Casca and Moynihan cut them down.

But at the far end of the oasis the long suffering engine stalled. Billy Glennon stood on the driver's seat and calmly fired his Uzi one shot at a time as the Bedouins rushed at him.

He accounted for several, but there were too many and they quickly surrounded the car in a human swarm.

Billy had been hit several times, Casca knew, and now he threw his spent Uzi at his nearest attacker.

Casca closed his eyes as he realized what was to come.
Glennon bit the pin from a grenade and dropped it casually into the box at his feet as his body was riddled with bullets and the Bedouins clambered onto the car.

There was a brilliant burst of orange and red, a terrible noise, and the car, Billy, and the horde of Bedouins disappeared in a great cloud of dust and smoke.

Both Wardi and the Israeli had now fallen to the ground, and Casca and Moynihan crouched over them.

Wardi
looked up at Casca, opened his mouth wide and lolled his tongue out of one corner in the macabre Maori man eating gesture. His eyes twinkled once and he died. Casca turned to see Moynihan closing the Israeli's eyes.

"You and me and them, General," he said as the three remaining Bedouins ran toward them. He dropped his empty Uzi to the sand.

The biggest of the attackers was one of the largest men Casca had ever seen, enormous by Arab standards. He was roaring like a maddened bull as he came firing from the hip; then he threw down his rifle in disgust as it jammed. The two Bedouins running beside him threw away their empty weapons, too, and drew long, curved knives.

Casca dropped his empty gun and his arms moved fast as he blocked the two knife blows that came at him. From the corner of his eye he saw the giant and Moynihan grappling. Casca had blocked one knife blow with a downward swinging curve of his left arm, and the other with an upward circle of his right. He continued the circle around until the Bedouin's arm was locked inside his, and grunted in satisfaction as he heard the bones break.

He swung a heavy boot into the balls of the first attacker, then chopped the maimed one in the neck.

His second mighty kick caught the sagging Bedouin in the throat and then he turned to jump with both heels onto the other's kidneys.

He heard a crack and a horrible scream and turned to see the giant break Tommy's back across his knee. He hurled the small Paddy's broken body at Casca and followed it fast. Casca caught Tommy and held him for a brief moment, the flat of his foot stopping the giant Bedouin in mid rush as it caught him in the belly.

Casca turned and stopped to lower Tommy to the sand and as the Bedouin rushed again, he caught him with a high backward kick that sank his heel deep into the giant's groin. As he turned back his flailing arm struck the Bedouin mightily in the throat, and he grabbed him by his mangled balls with one cruel hand while the other gouged his eyes from their sockets as he slowly cracked the giant's spine across his knee.

He dropped the body to the sand and walked to where the trenching tool lay on the sand. He placed its edge against the writhing Bedouin's throat and slowly leaned on it, exerting more and more pressure as the artery burst in a fountain of red blood, then the spine was severed, and finally the head was separated from the huge body.

He turned to kneel beside Tommy.

The little man seemed even smaller. He grinned up at Casca.

"The old story, Case, a good little one and a good big one."

"Not that good, Tommy, he's dead."

"So am I, General."

"Rubbish, you're good for a lot of fights yet."

Moynihan closed his eyes wearily. "Ye're a good general, Case."'

"That's not such a great trick, Tommy. Generals get lots of help. You're a damned good sergeant."

A crooked grin lifted a corner of Tommy's mouth, one eye opened a slit, and he was gone.

Casca smoothed the eyelids closed and picked up the trenching tool.