Misha offers his hand.
Ido pointedly ignores it, replying with a mock salute. “Misha Shulman, staff sergeant. I know you well. In fact, I tried to have you removed from the Armored Corps.”
“I knew someone did. I didn’t know it was you. What, afraid I’d steal a tank?”
“More like introducing hard drugs, selling military secrets, that kind of thing. Yigal, this is your friend?”
“You’re both my friends.”
“Yigal Lev,” Ido says, “As always, a man of many parts. Can we get to the point? I find standing for more than a minute wastes too much energy.”
Yigal squats on the ground. “Gentlemen, please be seated.”
The two look at each other, then squat as well.
“Actually,” Ido says, turning to Yigal. “You shouldn’t even be here. Him even less. This is a closed military area. You’re neither in uniform nor called up. In fact, if I remember properly, Yigal, I personally dissolved your brigade. In consonance with the rest of the IDF, it no longer exists. Also, if I recall correctly, Pinky wanted you court-martialed for disobeying a direct order on the battlefield. But as it happens he’s been busy.”
“Busy ordering a retreat,” Misha says.
“Does he have to be here?”
Yigal nods. “Yes, Reserve Staff Sgt. Misha Shulman does have to be here. And I suggest you treat Misha with a modicum of respect, not only because he is my friend but because if you keep at him he is likely to shoot you in the head.”
“I was thinking of the balls.”
“Yeah, well, stop thinking of fighting amongst ourselves. I’m here because I prefer fighting the enemy.”
“Over there,” Ido says, waving airily to the east. “About six kilometers. You can’t miss them. Arabs mostly, with a nice overlay of Iranians. Intelligence, when we had intelligence, also noted a Pakistani unit—imagine that, Pakistan—and a nasty group of rapists from Chechnya, of all places. What do you want me to do, Yigal, conjure up an army? You were sent home. Stay there.”
“Ido,” Yigal says. “I’m taking back my tanks.”
“What?”
“I’m taking back my tanks. That’s why we’re here.”
“Yours?” Ido says. “What did you do, buy them?”
“I don’t have to buy them. They were taken from me without reason.”
“Yours? Oh, I see. I thought for a moment you were sober. Very good. If I live through this I’ll tell my grandchildren. It’s like those an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Pole walk into a bar jokes. A capitalist and a gangster walk into command headquarters and the capitalist says—”
“The capitalist says he wants his tanks. Why is that funny? You’re not using them, are you?”
“Talk to the chief of staff. Pinky will be amused. He could use a good laugh.”
“You talk to Pinky,” Yigal says. “We’re reactivating the 112th.”
“That brigade is activated, Yigal. It’s just blended into something else, which you have no part of. Pinky took the map with him. When he comes back you can ask him to explain our disposition of forces, including your former tanks, all well dug-in in defensive positions.”
“Look, Ido. I don’t want this to be unfriendly. We’re taking our tanks.”
“You were relieved of command. The gangster too. You can’t just walk in and take tanks.”
Misha has had enough. It does not take much. He reaches behind him and removes the gold-plated .40-cal CZ pistol from his belt and levels it at Ido’s head. Firing at this range will leave nothing of it: torso, shoulders, neck—check. Head? None. “I changed my mind about aiming for the balls, Yigal. This piece of shit has none.”
“Oh, now I understand,” Ido says, showing no fear, a natural consequence of either hopelessness or constant hunger, perhaps both. Doubtless the jaundice does not help. “You’re going to steal the tanks.”
“You’re going to stop us?” Misha says, holding the pistol so level a ball bearing would not roll off.
“Just like that? No permission? No authority?”
“Misha, put down the gun. This is not a matter for guns. Ido, listen carefully. You’ve got a defensive perimeter as effective as a line of clothes hanging in the sun. Fewer than two hundred tanks, most of them immobile, covering a line a hundred kilometers long. On the other side there are a couple thousand enemy cans, maybe double that, maybe triple. To know exactly we’d need a satellite, and I doubt we’re in contact with those. The way we’re disposed, the enemy can break through at any point. You and I could do it with three tanks. We don’t have a defensive perimeter. We have an illusion.”
“We have the best we can do.”
Misha is still pointing the gun at Ido’s head, but now it wavers, perhaps from doubt, perhaps because it weighs almost four pounds. Even a hard guy like Misha cannot hold a weight like that steady forever. “Yigal, let me just put him out of our misery.”
“Misha, put away the gun. It’s an order. Ido is a military professional. He understands.”
“He understands this,” Misha mutters. But like a child deprived of a favored toy, Misha tips up his pistol, then places it in his lap.
“Very good. Ido, I’m taking my brigade back. But I need more. I need control of all the armor you command.”
“What is this, a coup d’état? We’re what now, Haiti? Liberia?”
“Yigal,” Misha says. “We’re running out of time. And I’m running out of patience.”
“Do you agree, Ido, that this defensive perimeter is a joke? I’m asking for your trust.”
“You’re asking for the keys to half the surviving tanks in the State of Israel.”
“I’m asking for all of them. Look, Ido, we served together over twenty years. There wasn’t a moment in that time, from officer’s training onward, that I didn’t trust you and you didn’t trust me. Comrades in arms to the end, right? Well, my friend, we have reached the end. The State of Israel barely exists, but with your help it will.”
“Yigal,” Misha says. “Let me just shoot the fucker.”
The look on Yigal’s face is no longer one of friendly persuasion. “Sergeant, shut the fuck up. When I agreed to this, it was on one condition. What was it?”
Misha makes a face. “That you command.”
“Exactly.” He turns to the general. “Ido, what is IDF doctrine when we are surrounded, outnumbered, outflanked, and down to our last ammunition and fuel?”
Ido laughs. “Attack!”
“Nu, mon general?”
Mon General sighs, then offers a wan smile. “It’s treason, you know. Pinky can have me shot.”
“I know.”
Major General Ido Baram glances up, now to Misha, then to Yigal. “Tell me what I need to do.”
52
THAT NIGHT, SOMEWHERE IN the Negev desert—she is unsure precisely where, having dropped down out of the sky in an all but featureless landscape that might as well be the moon—Alex sits in a dry riverbed by the side of a paved road. She has already changed into female garb, her pilot’s uniform stuffed into the bag that had held her makeup, dress, and high heels. The road is doubtless marked at some point, but all she can tell is that it runs north-south. Her compass is functioning, as is her mind, which seems to go into overdrive under critical conditions. As a pilot, she felt confident in her competence during training flights, or when delivering a plane, but once in combat she is always ramped up, super-capable, her reflexes so quick they operate without her knowledge, eye-to-hand controls moving seamlessly without routing through the conscious brain. In the more quiet moments of her life, and this is certainly one of them, she wonders if her wandering gender identities are in some way connected to the peculiar duality of her abilities as a pilot.