The Glory (82 page)

“Plan of genius,” he said.

Visible only as vague running shadows in the night, paratroopers were fanning far out over the airfield to blocking positions
when Kishote heard Aryeh’s voice. “Well, Abba, give me a blessing, I’m going.” There he was, Uzi in hand, breathing hard.

“So you are, are you? I didn’t think you would. You’re pretty junior.”

“I was in on all the briefings and rehearsals. A couple of the juniors are going, and Yoni picked me.” Yoni was Lieutenant
Colonel Netanyahu, commanding the Sayeret. Aryeh threw an arm around his father’s shoulders. “Don’t worry.
Yih’yeh b’seder
[It’ll be okay]. I wouldn’t miss this.”

“I know. Go with my blessing. God guard your way.”

Aryeh vanished from the side of a very anxious father. Behind that fierce mustache, Kishote knew, inside that frame now bigger
than his own, was a kid not long turned nineteen, hungry for derring-do. Kishote felt that he had done his own rash exploits
in Israel’s precarious early years, so that his son would not have to take such risks while he was so young and so raw. But
there was as yet no peace, and Aryeh was his father’s son, and the rest was with God.

About one in the morning, the operation leaders reassembled in the command tent. Motta Gur stood in front of the map, his
round face somber and tired. “Well, gentlemen, the military option exists. I see that.”
(A few handclaps.)
“The risk remains very high. But the curse of terrorism must be lifted from mankind, or civilization will break down. If
you go, the prayers of the Jewish people will go with you, and the whole civilized world will bless your success.”

Zev Barak left the airfield as a final rehearsal was about to start. In these dark hours of a Sabbath morning, he had observed
the top leadership of Zahal reacting like a platoon of good soldiers under attack. The question no longer was whether
THUNDERBALL
could go, but rather, whether it could be stopped. It had taken on a life of its own. As he was leaving he overheard an exchange
between Netanyahu and his deputy, Muki Betzer. “Yoni, by the book we’d plan and game this thing for six months, and then the
big brass would probably drop it as too risky.”

“Right, so it’s good we have twelve hours instead of six months,” Netanyahu returned. “Those hostages are our people.”

“I
have several nightmares about this,” Yitzhak Rabin said to Barak that morning. The two were alone in his inner office. Barak
had just passed through a big conference room where some twenty academic and political experts were gathered, noisily exchanging
ideas for advising the Prime Minister. The cabinet was shortly to meet, to vote the operation up or down.

“A couple of thousand people are now involved, Zev,” Rabin went on, crushing a cigarette in an overflowing brass tray. “From
the cabinet on down. Just one loose-mouth has to talk to his wife. Just one. She talks to her neighbor. A Soviet spy in this
country — and there are all too many, as you know — picks it up. The Russians alert the PLO, they alert Idi Amin, and a Uganda
army brigade with tanks meets our planes at Entebbe.” Hunched over almost in a crouch, he peered sidewise at Barak. “Impossible?”

“I hope unlikely, Prime Minister.”

“All right. Next. The airport’s shut down for the night, so a fuel truck is left standing on the new runway. Why not? The
first Hercules smashes into it in the dark and alerts the terrorists. They at once shoot all the hostages or kill them with
grenades, as they did the schoolkids at Maalot and the Olympic athletes in Munich, and as for the Sayeret —”

“Pardon me, there I have good news, Prime Minister.”

“Oh? Tell me.”

“African international airports take turns as emergency landing fields. It’s Entebbe’s turn tonight, that’s fresh intelligence.
The runway will be lit and clear.”

“Really? Excellent. That’s one good omen.” The Prime Minister sat up, with a wan grin. “Zev, have you pictured a failure?
One thing going wrong, just one little thing? The hostages all murdered, and Israel blamed for their deaths, for negotiating
in bad faith? One more fashla on the world stage, by the Jewish shleppers who produced the fashla of Yom Kippur? It will be
more disgraceful than losing a war. My government will fall. My name will be a curse in Jewish history. All this can be avoided,
simply by handing over forty or so dirty thugs in our prisons to the dirty thugs in Entebbe.” He gave Barak a long stare.
“Nu?”

“Prime Minister, the choice isn’t that clear. That the hijackers negotiate in total bad faith is a given. They’re insisting
on delivery of the terrorists only to Entebbe, where they’re in complete control. For all we know, they’ll give you ten hostages
in return for the forty terrorists and tell you you’ll get the rest when you withdraw from the Golan Heights, the West Bank,
and Jerusalem. Then what?”

“Is it confirmed that they also want five million dollars from the French?”

“That’s new, sir. We’re still checking.”

Rabin looked at the wall clock and stood up with a sigh like a groan. “Let’s go to the cabinet meeting. Golda told me you
were her Mr. Alarmist. Are you alarmed, Zev?”

“By the choice before you, yes, Prime Minister, I’m very alarmed.”

“So am I.”

While the cabinet still debated, the
THUNDERBALL
mission took off for Entebbe. The timetable required it, and the pilots understood that they might be recalled in mid-flight.
When they were almost an hour out, the signal came.
Unanimous government decision: Go
.

Aryeh lies gasping, stripped to the waist, on the canvas seat that stretches all along the Hercules’ fuselage. The four transports
are flying almost due south down the Red Sea, staying at wave-top height to evade detection by Saudi and Egyptian radar; and
the torrid sea-level July air blowing into the plane is hardly breathable. The heat, the
heat!
How can anyone sleep in this sweat bath? Yet he can hear snores from the Land Rover, where boys from his squad are curled
up. Aryeh thought the low canvas might be cooler than the car, but if anything the coarse sagging hot cloth, slippery with
his sweat, is worse. He is too beat to move again. Lie and endure.

Lieutenant Colonel Netanyahu goes by, sidling between the Land Rover and soldiers lying on the deck.
Ha’m’faked,
the commander, is in full uniform, of course, above the discomforts of ordinary soldiers like Aryeh Nitzan.

“Aryeh, get some sleep.”

“I’m trying, Ha’m’faked.”

“This heat won’t last. Take salt tablets.”

Aryeh has no recollection of falling asleep. Next thing he knows he is shivering, and his skin is sticky with dried sweat.
The plane is freezing cold and bouncing around. His watch shows that he has slept three hours or more. His bewhiskered pal
Yudi Korff, a year older and also the son of a general, is on his feet, struggling to put on a sweater.

“What the devil, Yudi, where are we?”

“Over Ethiopia, crossing the high mountains. Two hours to go.”

As Aryeh hustles on his clothes, he sees on the other side of the plane Yoni Netanyahu slipping toward the rear. Has Yoni
slept at all? Probably not.

Aryeh has never known anybody like Yoni Netanyahu. As Amos Pasternak once displaced Aryeh’s father as his idol to emulate,
Yoni has now displaced Amos. In nerve, skill, and brains Amos and Yoni are nearly matched, he thinks, but beyond that they
could not be more different. Amos Pasternak is easy to figure out, strictly army, all drive and ambition, his eye on General
Staff rank; and, Aryeh suspects, already on the number-one spot, Ramatkhal. But Yoni is an enigma. Every bit as tough as Amos,
just as demanding a leader, he is an austere original, in and out of the army, spending years in America, studying philosophy
at Harvard. What is Yoni’s goal? Where is he headed? One night, finding himself beside Yoni by a fire in the wilds, eating
field rations, Aryeh ventured to ask him his opinion of Max Roweh, for he himself has found the books of his future stepfather
impenetrable.

“Roweh? Important thinker, brilliant author, serious Zionist. Altogether an outstanding mind. Why do you ask?”

“He and my mother are getting married.” Awkward pause. “My father is already remarried.”

Long silence. Then Yoni, level and low. “Your father is a great soldier, Aryeh. His march on El Arish in the Six-Day War is
a classic. I’ve studied it hour by hour, and lectured on it. You have a name to live up to, and you’re not doing badly.” With
that Yoni got up and left the fire. It was the first time he had referred to Don Kishote, and those few words healed raw scars
of some severe chewings-out he had given Aryeh.

As the Hercules wallows and pitches in icy air, Aryeh reflects that there is Yoni Netanyahu for you, able to grasp both his
father’s warmaking and Max Roweh’s thoughts. Yoni has his detractors in the battalion — what commander doesn’t, in any unit
large or small? — but to Aryeh Nitzan he is a nonpareil, a leader he would follow into the cannon’s mouth. About this coming
action, Yoni said to the strike force, just before they boarded the plane, “Remember, soldiers, we’ll be the best fighting
men on that field.” Simple fortifying words. Surprised befuddled terrorists and sleepy Ugandan guards will be the opposition,
and even if the surprise fails — well, it won’t!

Aryeh crawls into the Land Rover, careful not to wake the sleepers, and snuggles down. Two hours to go, then
action
. His squad is assigned to clear out the second floor, not the toughest job. Those Ugandans will be less alert than the hijackers
guarding the hostages, but they’re posted to stop a rescue, and the orders are stark.
“Shoot to kill.”
Problem, the rehearsal mock-up showed only the main hall on the first floor, where the hostages are. His squad drilled with
crayon diagrams showing the separate entrance to the staircase. Still, it’s simple enough to find a staircase and scramble
up …

Yudi Korff shakes him by the shoulder. “One hour out, Aryeh. Time to get ready.”

Fell asleep again! Pretty relaxed, at that, for a guy going into his first gunfight! So Aryeh thinks, as he puts on his battle
gear. Throughout the plane the other commandos are doing the same. Murmur of talk, clanking of weapons. Yudi says casually,
“Well, this is it, Aryeh, hah? Kill or be killed.”

With that, to his own astonishment, Aryeh’s knees weaken, and he breaks out in a sweat. So far he has followed Yoni into enemy
territory twice; sabotage incursions into Egypt and Jordan, peculiarly peaceful though scary enough, in and out without meeting
a foe, without firing a gun. He wants to say something lighthearted to Yudi, but the words die in his throat. Aryeh knows
all about the sweat of fear before battle. He has read about it, heard much talk about it. Okay, it has hit him. Clench the
chattering teeth, quake and endure.

Now the Hercules runs into a storm. The turbulence over Ethiopia was nothing compared to this rolling and plunging, the changing
roars of the engine, the creaks of the fuselage, the fitful lightning flashes on the wings, the
cracks
of thunder all around, the heavy rattle of rain on the fuselage, or is it hail? Fastened down to the deck, the Land Rover
rocks and totters. Aryeh hangs on, wondering how the transports can stay in formation through this. If they get separated
the whole operation collapses, doesn’t it?

Okay, this was what I wanted, Sayeret Matkhal, and here I am.
Yih’yeh b’seder, yih’yeh b’seder …

All at once they are in smooth air again under a clear starlit sky. Behind, lightning still flashes. Peering out the windows,
Aryeh sees the other three transports. A relief, one worry the less.

“Start vehicle engines.”

Yoni’s command passes down the aircraft. First the Mercedes, then the Land Rovers snort and belch fumes. The rear ramp of
the aircraft opens, letting in a rush of cool air. Aryeh can see past the Mercedes to the black waters of Lake Victoria. Almost
there! Like a bad dream, Aryeh’s anxious fit is gone. Wild swing of mood to confidence, even elation. About to land in Africa
and rescue Jews, two thousand miles from home! Plane dropping rapidly, landing wheels groaning into place. Well, here we go.
Jolt, jolt,
down
. The Hercules has landed, rolling along a brightly lit runway. Roar of engine braking, plane slowing, turning. Even before
it stops, there goes the Mercedes down the ramp. Aryeh’s vehicle after it, crammed with his squad. Teeth-jarring
BUMP
as it drops to the tarmac. Not so different from Lod, this Entebbe, and strangely quiet. An airport is an airport. Nice cool
fresh air.

Now everything has to go very fast. Seconds count. The air controllers in the tower saw this huge plane land, they must be
wondering, what the devil? The three vehicles race down the old runway past ragged uncut grass in the fields. Sloppy maintenance.
Strange big gray things rise up from the grass here and there, six or seven feet high. Anthills! Africa. The grass smells
pungent and strange. Not a word spoken in the Rover, every man tensed to jump out on command.

Firing ahead.

Two Ugandan soldiers up there on the runway. One falls, the other starts to run. Blaze of an Uzi, down he goes. Who fired?
Surprise blown? But here they are already at the old terminal. The Mercedes halts at the dark control tower as planned, and
Aryeh sees Yoni hit the ground first, his squad tumbling out after him, running toward the three doorways to the big main
room. Well, this is it, racing pulse, hammering heart, pile out of the Rover, there’s the door to the staircase. Yudi Korff
running side by side with Aryeh, Uzis at the ready. Powerful voice of Yoni ahead,
“Kadimah! Kadimah! Kadimah!”
(“Forward! Forward! Forward!”)

Aryeh plunges after the squad leader into the staircase entrance. My God, no staircase. Where is it? Dim-lit corridor here,
corridor there, room to the left, door closed. Squad leader: “Yudi, Aryeh, clean out that customs room. Rest of you, here’s
the staircase around this corner, follow me.”