The Glory (60 page)

“Colonel, may I suggest something?” says Dzecki.

“Yes?”

“Why not put Shimon Shimon in that rear tank, sir, instead of in the lead? He’s very familiar with all this. He can control
the braking better than anyone else.”

“Elohim, a good idea,” says the Jeptha man.

“Hundred percent, Dzecki,” says Kishote. “Lauterman, you do just that.”

A
s he leaves the bridge, Yossi is unworried. Yehiel is a tough man who gets things done. In his bizarre way Lauterman is impressive,
too. The bridge will reach the water by morning. Meantime he must make sure that enough rubber dinghies and other equipment
are on the move to carry out the paratrooper crossing at Deversoir
tonight
. It is one thing to fib to Bar-Lev, so as to counter his hostility to Sharon’s plan which, risky as it is, seems to Kishote
the best chance to end the war in Israel’s favor. It is another to commit two divisions to a terrible firefight, in an operation
that can’t be supported logistically and is likely to collapse.

What he sees on the narrow black ribbons of road twisting through the high dunes and ridges discourages and confounds him.
Long long lines of machines are still backed up for miles, clear out of sight, where a sharp turn, or a crossroads, or a broken-down
heavy vehicle has halted traffic both ways. At these ganglions of delay traffic-control officers are now posted, trying hard
to unsnarl the massive blockages. But General Adan’s division has been rolling down from the northern sector to its assembly
point for crossing after Sharon; nearly three hundred tanks, with hundreds of APCs and supply vehicles. The situation is actually
worsening.

“I’ll take the wheel, Sarak.”

Kishote goes tearing back to Tasa, at some points climbing up high dunes and plunging down them at roller-coaster angles,
cutting off long stretches of blocked traffic and giving the journalist stomach butterflies. Yoram Sarak has learned to be
silent as he rides with Brigadier General Nitzan, who can be genial one moment and frighteningly stern the next. Sarak is
keeping a daily war diary which he counts on publishing in magazine installments, and afterward as a book. In his job as driver-signalman
for Nitzan, he is getting a valuable inside view of Sharon’s campaign.

But after a very long silence, as they speed back to base, Sarak cannot hold his peace. “Sir, it isn’t going to happen.”

Not looking at him, his face abstracted and gloomy behind dust goggles, Kishote says, “What isn’t?”

“The crossing. Not tonight.” Nitzan is silent. The jeep jolts speedily along. “Sir, I wrote an article about the crossing
problem back in May for
Yediot
. It’s not just that bridge. They’ll probably get it repaired. It’s the crocodiles and pontoon rafts. There’s no way in the
world they can get to Deversoir tonight.”

Nitzan’s silence chills the journalist, and he regrets opening his mouth, a rare feeling.

At Tasa, the division is already drawn up in hot afternoon sunshine for the night assault; three brigades of about a hundred
tanks each, stretching far and wide over the sands with their APCs, half-tracks, self-propelled artillery, AA guns, and support
trucks and busses. Surveying the panorama, hands on hips, Sharon sees Kishote and beckons. “Quite a sight, Kishote, eh?”

“Yes, sir. Quite a sight.”

At the sober tone Sharon gives him a sharp look. “Well, come along.” Back in the caravan he slices some yellow cheese, and
with it eats dried apricots from a bowl. “So? Your report.” Tersely Kishote gives him the picture. Silent moments pass before
Sharon speaks. “The crocodiles are the critical element, Yossi. I know the pontoon rafts are hard to move on those enormous
transporters, but the crocodiles run on their own wheels. Why can’t they make it?”

“Sir, I know the location of all the crocodiles. You can’t hold to your timetable. None of them will be here by midnight.”

“No? How about by dawn?” Kishote shakes his head. “By mid-morning, then?”

“Half a dozen or so, possibly. Most of them later.”

Sharon picks up the telephone. “Connect me with General Bar-Lev … Yossi, three crocodiles lashed together can ferry a tank.
We’ve done it in exercises.”

“Yes, sir. In exercises. If the landing is a surprise, well and good. In an opposed landing if a shell or even shrapnel hits
a crocodile’s rubber float, down it goes, and the tank with it.”

“Bar-Lev? Sharon here. I’m reporting with regret that the timetable I gave you for the crossing tonight turns out a little
optimistic … Yes, I know. But Yossi Nitzan himself has been out on the roads, and the bottlenecks that have since developed,
what with Adan’s division … The roller bridge? Minor breakdown. It’s being repaired. But the traffic problem …” A long pause.
Sharon darts a glance at Kishote. “I see. Let me give that some thought. I’ll ring you back shortly.” He hangs up. “Predictable,
that Bar-Lev! He says Southern Command recognizes the problems and is sympathetic. If I request a postponement for twenty-four
hours, it will be approved. He didn’t say
‘I told you so,’
but it was in his voice. The cat that ate the bird.” Sharon regards his deputy through half-closed eyes. “What do you think?”

Don Kishote is slow to answer. “Sir, today you have a green light. Tomorrow there may be a red light, from the UN, or Southern
Command, or Kissinger. If you go tonight, the army will follow. You can commit this army to a crossing, nobody else.”

“It’s not necessarily true that the army will follow me.” Sharon’s ebullience is all gone. His face is graven with heavy lines.
“The army may follow, and it may not. The operation may never get a chance. If things go badly in the first few hours — and
that’s a fifty-fifty shot — Gonen or Bar-Lev or even Dayan may get cold feet and abort it. Just another Arik Sharon brainstorm,
that killed a lot of Jewish boys to no purpose.”

“Sir, there’s no way to win this war except to cross the Canal.”

“Yes, I’ve pointed that out once or twice. You’re right that after tonight the light can suddenly turn red. Yet you’ve just
told me that I don’t have the means to cross tonight.”

“Maybe postponement is the answer, then, sir. En brera.”

“It’s no answer.” Sharon shakes his head brusquely. “The whole operation turns on surprise. Our preparations are already visible.
A day’s delay, an alerted enemy, and the bridgehead may not be an achievable objective.” He leans his face on a hand over
his eyes.

On impulse Don Kishote says, “General Sharon, release me from other duties and let me go out on the roads tonight and stay
there, all night if I have to. I’ll commandeer tanks and bulldozers. I’ll shove vehicles off the asphalt into the sand. I’ll
order every kind of unit, including General Adan’s tanks, to make way for the crocodiles and rafts. I’ll threaten court-martials.
I’ll draw my gun, if I must. It requires a general, sir, to get this thing unsnarled, and I’ll do it.”

Sharon looks up. “And if so, what result can I count on?”

His mind running back over the bottlenecks he has seen, Kishote replies — with a very strong sense of jumping off into the
unknown, and perhaps taking Sharon’s ten thousand men with him — “Sir, six crocodiles in the water at dawn. More at midday,
with the first pontoon rafts.”

“I said
count on
, Kishote.”

“I heard you, sir.”

Grasping the telephone with a swoop of a thick hand, not taking his eyes off Kishote, Sharon calls General Bar-Lev.

“A
capulco!”

In Kishote’s headphones, at two o’clock in the morning, the long-awaited signal from the paratroop leader; the first unit
has gone over in rubber dinghies and landed on the other side. Near his jeep a bulldozer is pushing a stalled empty tank transporter
off the Refidim road in bright moonlight, to break a mile-long traffic jam. Three and a half hours behind schedule, the thing
is happening, the Canal has been crossed.

Sharon on the command network, calm and cheery:
“Well done, Danny. What’s the situation over there?”

Easygoing tones of Colonel Danny Matt:
“So far, so good. We’re cutting the wire fences. Very quiet here. Not so quiet over on your side to the north, I see. Plenty
of trouble at the Chinese Farm.”
Toward midnight the so-called Chinese Farm has erupted like a volcano, and it has been flaming and thumping ever since.

This abandoned Egyptian agricultural station partly blocks the roads on the way to the Canal, so Sharon’s forces are battling
to clear the entrenched enemy out of the “Farm,” where several square miles are crisscrossed with embankments and irrigation
ditches, perfect cover for concealed defenders. “Chinese Farm” is a complete misnomer. After the Six-Day War the army found
rusting machinery there, with Oriental lettering, probably Japanese. The soldiers dubbed it “the Chinese Farm” and the name
has stuck to this widespread and very formidable military obstacle.

From twelve miles away, Kishote can see the fire flashes and starshell glare all over the sky above that area. Sharon’s plan
is clearly working, for Danny Matt’s paratroopers had to run right past the Chinese Farm en route to Deversoir, and the dinghies
with their engineer personnel also had to get by there, to ferry them across the Canal. But the laconic reports of the brigade
commanders fighting to clear the Farm are grim: many tanks burning, heavy casualties, major withdrawals to regroup.

Sarak says, “Sir, Flagpole is calling you.” He flips switches on the receiver. Sharon, level and unhurried:
“Yossi, what is your situation?”

“Four crocodiles free, sir, and well along toward the Canal. Now freeing two more. The bridge is on the move. Several pontoon
rafts are on their way as well.”

“Good. Find a senior officer and delegate that job. I need you at the Yard right away.”

“Yes, sir.”

Nobody better than Yehiel, thinks Kishote, if all is well with the bridge. He has no trouble finding it in the bright moonlight,
a black giant horror acrawl over level sands.

“Got it!” Yehiel bares his teeth in a cruel moonlit grin. “On your way, Kishote. Lauterman has this baby under control now,
and it’s on schedule. The crocodiles will be there by dawn, I promise you, and I’ll deliver some pontoon rafts, too. I’m the
man for this. You’re a gentleman, I’m not. I fuck secretaries. The one officer in this army who does such a horrid thing.”

The gunfire at the Chinese Farm battlefield is growing thunderous as Yossi speeds his jeep along the sands, bypassing bumper-to-bumper
road traffic. The sky is slashed with all manner of colored streaks and flashes, a colossal fireworks display paling the moon
and betokening fearsome carnage below. At a main road junction the fat lieutenant controlling traffic shouts to Kishote, over
the vehicle racket and the booming of the guns, that he is diverting movement southward, because the tank battle at the Farm
has spilled over across the roads to Deversoir. Evil tidings! The junction is cluttered with ambulance busses heading the
other way; wounded being evacuated already, a disheartening sight.

Kishote goes jouncing across the open desert, a very rough ride, but this is terrain he knows well, and finding his way through
the seam is not hard. He comes on Sharon standing amid the half-tracks and APCs of his mobile headquarters. Alone among the
officers and soldiers he wears no helmet, and his white-blond hair identifies him from far off. He points to the flaring sky
over the Chinese Farm battleground. “Picturesque, yes? Our battalions are fighting like lions. It’ll be all right.” But Kishote
knows the man and hears undertones of deep worry in the tranquil words. “Yossi, go over in the next dinghy to the other side,
have a look around and bring back a report.”

Astonished, Yossi blurts, “Sir, have you lost contact with Danny Matt?”

“Certainly not, all’s well over there. I’d go myself but I must stay close to this fight.” He gestures at the flame and tumult
to the north, takes Kishote aside by the elbow, and speaks hard quick words. “We’re at a crisis. It’s happening early. Southern
Command considers me a liar or a simpleton, and their yellow streak is showing already. They claim we’re cut off and surrounded!
I assure them over and over that the Chinese Farm battle is difficult but going well, and that Danny Matt is securing his
beachhead. Nothing doing. I’m in extremis, they say, and can lose Danny’s brigade as we lost the boys in the maozim. Yossi,
we’ve got a triumph developing here, and they’re on the verge of cancelling it. Dayan’s already suggested pulling Danny back.
Call it a night raid, he says, and let it go at that. God knows what’s happened to Moshe Dayan.”

“Sir, why should Dayan believe me more than you?”

“Dayan told me to send Yossi Nitzan over. Understand? Now get going.”

Kishote goes and returns, a brief eerie excursion to Egyptian soil, where Matt’s paratroopers are methodically digging in
and deploying a perimeter defense in predawn twilight, as though on a night exercise in the Negev. Of the enemy, no sign there,
while the inferno blazes to the north. When he gets back the sun is coming up and the Chinese Farm has at last become quiet,
no more rattle and crash of guns, and no strange lights tearing the pale sky. At Deversoir tanks and APCs are crowding into
the Yard, the enormous brick-paved parking area which Sharon ordered dug into the rampart years ago. Bulldozers arc tearing
away at the thin sand-and-brick wall which was left after the hollowing-out of the Yard, and Kishote is not surprised to find
Sharon driving one of two bulldozers. “I know exactly where to dig,” Sharon bellows at him, “and I have to show these shleppers!”
As he speaks, another bulldozer breaks through the wall. A cheer goes up from the tank crews, for there across the Canal,
misty green in the morning sun, is Egypt, a vision of Eden from the dead Sinai sands.

Sharon wallows down from the bulldozer, and shouts to his operations officer, “Get all those tanks to move aside, so we can
launch the crocodiles.”

“They’re here?” Kishote exclaims.