“I don’t like it,” Carroll said. “The Syrians have got their sierra stacked in neat piles to pull that one off.”
“What are you saying?” Cox asked.
“Look what they’ve done. Stopping a withdrawal of that size and immediately reversing is a complicated maneuver for armor. They didn’t do it with one army corps but three, and it had to be coordinated with the Egyptian exercise in the Sinai. This was well planned and rehearsed. And we haven’t heard from the Iraqis yet.”
“But the Egyptians are not fighting and the IDF can concentrate on the Syrians,” Cox argued.
“General, right now the Egyptians have stopped maneuvers and are making nice friendly sounds to the Israelis. But they haven’t stood down. That exercise was planned to present a threat in the south that the Israelis had to honor. I’m willing to bet that the Egyptians will remain in place and the moment Israel withdraws the forces they had positioned to cover the exercise, the Egyptians will attack. That Egyptian exercise was meant to make the Israelis deploy part of their defenses in the Sinai to weaken the northern sector. You watch, the Sinai is going to be quiet while the Syrians try to crack open the northern part of Israel.”
“The Israelis can handle it,” Cox predicted. “I think the Syrians are about to get their asses kicked in the next few days.”
“Don’t bet on that,” Carroll said. “The Israelis have always planned for short, decisive wars. This one is going to turn into a slugfest with heavy attrition on both sides.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” Cox said.
“Me too.”
The opening attack on Haifa had caught Furry in downtown Haifa. He had been playing tourist and taking pictures of Israel’s Day of Remembrance when the first MiGs dropped their bombs. He had snapped four pictures of the fighters before a policeman shoved him into a shelter. After the attack, he had returned to the hotel on the beach and tried, unsuccessfully, to contact Matt. Then he tried to phone the American embassy in Jerusalem but couldn’t get through. In frustration, he left a note for Matt and jumped in the car he had rented and drove to the air base at Ramon.
The base was sealed tight and only after protesting vigorously and by getting himself arrested by the military police, one of whom recognized him, was he able to get onto the base. The squadron he and Matt had flown out of was a mass of activity and he was told to stay out of the way. He wandered into different rooms trying to get a handle on the action but the built-in Israeli penchant for secrecy worked against him and he found himself constantly shuffled around. Finally, he had gone to the personal equipment section, gathered up his and Matt’s flying gear and hooked a ride out to the bunker where their F-15 was sheltered. At least, he figured, I can get us ready to get the hell out of here when Matt shows up.
Much to his surprise, he found their F-15 fully armed and two pilots doing a preflight inspection. “Just what the hell you think you’re doing?” he yelled. They ignored him. There was no doubt in his mind that they were going to fly his jet and he scrambled up the crew ladder and jumped in the front seat. It was all he could think of to do.
One of the pilots climbed up after him, drew his pistol, pulled the slide back chambering a round, and pointed it at Furry’s temple.
The security guard at the entrance to the White House office building stopped Carroll and told him that he couldn’t enter because his security clearance had been temporarily pulled. Not knowing what to do, Carroll had called his old boss at the DIA, General Cox, to find out what was going on. But Cox was caught up in a series of conferences and meetings as the DIA tried to piece together what was happening in the Middle East. Out of frustration, he called Melissa Courtney-Smith.
Melissa promised Carroll that she would try to get it all straightened out and his clearance reinstated. Until then, she urged him to go back to his old office at Arlington Hall. “Without a clearance, I can’t get in there either,” he told her. “Hell, I can’t do squat-all.” He hung up the phone and headed for the personnel office in the Pentagon. Maybe, he thought, I can get some action there.
“Mr. Fraser,” Melissa said, stopping the President’s chief of staff as he left his office, “Lieutenant Colonel Carroll has had his security clearance pulled. We need to get it reinstated.”
“I hadn’t heard. Perhaps,” he said thoughtfully, “it would be best if we let the system work, not get involved until we learn more.” He rushed out, in a hurry, to a meeting with the President and the National Security Council. A slight smile cracked his mouth. Melissa watched him disappear and placed a call to Carroll’s home in Virginia. She needed to talk to him.
The nineteen-year-old reservist who was driving Matt across the tarmac at Ramon kept up a constant wave of chatter, telling Matt about the two attacks they had beaten off and how his air defense battery had shot down at least one MiG and damaged another. They had to hold before crossing a taxipath as two F-16s taxied past. Overhead, he saw an F-16 and F-15 enter the recovery pattern. “What the …!” Matt shouted. “That’s my jet!” He jumped out of the jeep and ran for the bunker where he had last seen his F-15E.
The pilot had to wait outside the buttoned-up bunker until the Eagle taxied in. Without the recognition code, the ground crew wouldn’t let him inside. When the blast doors winched open, Matt ran inside, only to be thrown to the ground by two sergeants. “Knock it off!” he yelled. “You guys know me.” They ignored him as the Eagle taxied inside and the doors closed. He was speechless when he saw Furry climb out of the backseat and scramble down the ladder.
The wizzo had a grin from ear to ear when he saw Matt still spread-eagled on the ground. “We got two MiGs and blew the shit out of a mobile command post,” he announced. He squatted beside Matt. “Seems they’ve been checking out our jet while we’ve been rootin’ and scootin’ after the local talent in Haifa.” Matt wanted to protest that he hadn’t been skirt-chasing. “Anyway,” Furry continued, “I got here just as they were getting ready to launch on a mission …”
“They can’t do that,” Matt yelled.
“Well, they did,” Furry told him. “They need every airframe they’ve got. They’re even flying trainers on combat missions with kids barely out of pilot training. Anyway, I figured the best way to get the bird back in one pice was to have at least one person in the cockpit who had a clue — me. I can’t believe what I did.”
“Probably got yourself a court-martial,” Matt told him, “is what you did.”
“I don’t give a shit about that. Hell, I was on the receiving end of some bombs in Haifa and wanted to even the score. Can you believe I violated rule number one? I flew with someone a hell of a lot braver than me.”
The pilot who had flown the Eagle joined them. “Your backseater is good, very good,” he told Matt. There were few better compliments in the Israeli Air Force. He extended his hand and pulled Matt to his feet.
Fraser had no trouble following the discussion going around the conference table in the Cabinet Room of the White House. He sat at his usual place, against the wall and behind the President, slightly to his right, not part of the National Security Council, but handy if the President wanted him. Fraser felt the mood in the room was definitely on course and that the United States would not act in haste and throw all its support behind Israel without considering its other interests in that part of the world. B. J. Allison would be pleased if she could hear the secretary of state argue for a cautious and deliberate approach to the war. And he was more than pleased with the CIA’s intelligence summary that saw no immediate threat to Israel’s survival.