“Captain.”
The skipper scans the horizon with his binoculars. He knows the Egyptian Navy is out of the picture, but this operation is going on in broad daylight, and the only military cover he has is a group of half-tracks on the beach that have brought in female soldiers to punch a hole in the identity card of each person who receives a ration of MREs, Meals Ready to Eat, the US military’s solution to feeding fighting men in the field.
“Captain!”
“Jesus, what?”
“Is it safe to go ashore?”
“Safe? Every second this operation continues is one I can’t guarantee. So far, so good.”
“Well, I’m ready.”
He shouts down to the men and women in the daisy chain, “Hey, hold that thing out of the water!” The crew has now started unloading five-foot-long wooden crates marked FIM-92 in black stenciling. “Shit, anybody know Hebrew here? Billy!”
The rabbinical student comes running up with a carton marked Pharmaco. “These should go next, captain. Medical stuff. I got a whole crate opened—”
“I said I’m ready,” Blunt says. “Captain, we’ll need a boat.”
“Forget the meds. Get down there in the water, son, and make sure those long crates stay dry.”
The kid doesn’t have to be told twice. He is over the side and scampering down a rope ladder like a monkey with a skullcap pinned to his hair. He starts shouting at the people in the daisy chain, who stop for a moment, shocked to hear the strange locutions of biblical Hebrew. Billy shouts again. They get it, lifting the boxes above water. It is beginning to develop a chop.
“A boat! I’ll need a boat of some sort!”
“What boat?”
“I hope you don’t think I’m going to wade ashore!”
“We got no more boats for the unloading, sister, so for fucking sure we got no boats for you. If you’re not helping, go over the side!”
“Over the side?”
“Everyone else is doing it.”
“Captain, we’ve got equipment, expensive equipment. And luggage, Louis Vuitton for God’s sake. And my hair. I’m about to do a stand-up on the beach.”
As he picks up the binoculars once more to scan the skies, he starts to laugh. It comes out a gravelly snort, part amusement, part indignation. “You’ve got expensive equipment? You know what’s in them crates? Each one of them crates cost the US taxpayer thirty-eight thousand bucks, though from what I understand we got them at a significant discount from—never mind who from.” He turns to the daisy chain. “For chrissake, Billy, tell them to hold that shit out of the water! It don’t shoot wet!”
In a split second, Connie Blunt forgets about her luggage. “I thought we were carrying MREs. You don’t mean we haven’t been carrying humanitarian—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Captain Frank tells her, almost laughing now. “We’re bringing food and water, sister, but among the meals ready to eat we got a different kind of MREs. Missiles Ready to Engage. Doesn’t get more humanitarian than that.”
“But this contradicts everything we’ve been told!”
“War is hell, sister. Now get your fat ass out of the way or start humpin’ crates. I got no time to play around.” He considers for a moment. “Missiles Ready to Engage—I like it. You got no fucking idea how much I like it.”
The next moment he stops laughing. The entire daisy chain has frozen in place, every one of its human links looking up.
From out of the east, five gray jet fighters blast into view, coming in high from over the eastern horizon.
85
IN THE AIR, THE Syrian wing commander surveys the scene below: the six ships at anchor in choppy water, each unloading its cargo to long lines of Jews shifting the supplies to shore like a fire brigade of ants. Two much longer queues converge on a central point on the beach to receive the goods. At 2200 feet, this is the Syrian flight commander’s reconnaissance pass, high enough for his Sukhoi SU-24s to evade cannon fire from the beach. But there are no cannons visible on the beach, only several nests of khaki-painted vehicles, some trucks, mostly jeeps. He opens communication.
“Massawi Red to Massawi Flight. Massawi Red to Massawi Flight. Follow my lead, brothers. First the ships, then anything moving on the beach. Massawi 2 the second ship, Massawi 3 the third, Massawi 4 the fourth, Massawi 5 the fifth, and Massawi 6 in reserve. The lead freighter is mine.”
Under his breath, he curses his superiors, who refused to give him more aircraft, suspecting a trap. Some trap. If he had more planes, he could simultaneously strafe the lines of people on the beach into a long stain of blood.
“Follow my lead, brothers. As the Americans say, it is shooting fish in an oil drum. In the name of Islam, let us expunge this plague of Jews and Christians. Death to the Crusaders! Over.”
86
ON CV STAR OF Bethlehem, Captain Frank is desperate, and shouting. “Do any of you people know how to fire one of these things? Are any of you veterans?” He has just managed to pull one of the Stinger missiles out of its box. “I need an infantryman here!”
He gets one, a red-haired diesel mechanic from Kansas City.
“Sir,” Taylor C. Briggs says. “You got that backwards. You’re gonna shoot yourself to kingdom come if’n you don’t turn it around.”
“You know how to operate one of these gizmos?”
“Piece of cake, sir. You see this here, this pops up. It’s your view-finder. Gives you general direction. Then you get it up on your shoulder—”
“Jesus H. Christ, kid. Don’t teach, do! Grab this pig iron and get ready. Those mothers are coming back. They’re turning now!”
A mile out to sea, the Syrian formation performs a graceful unified Immelmann turn and slows to come in low.
87
A STAPLE OF AMERICAN infantry warfare since the 1980s, the FIM-92 Stinger missile is both one of the most complex weapons in the foot soldier’s armory and the simplest to operate. Once it is pointed in the general direction of enemy aircraft, its dozens of micro gyrocompasses home in on the heat from the target’s engines until it makes contact. The infantry calls it fire-and-forget. With a weight of only thirty-three pounds and an effective range of up to three miles, it is both lethal and, if one knows where to look, widely available on the open market in such places as Pakistan’s Hindu Kush, leftover stock supplied by US Special Forces to Muslim insurgents in neighboring Afghanistan. These mostly illiterate fighters used it to send the country’s Soviet invaders packing. They then turned the same weapon on the Americans who, in a triumph of wishful thinking, hoped they would not become targets of their own technology. Once taught, any child can shoot a Stinger, and did.
The red-haired kid on the deck of CV Star of Bethlehem was apparently paying attention during advanced infantry training at Fort Hood, Georgia. In a matter of moments, others on the deck pry open more crates. Firing Stingers is not only easy. It’s fun.
88
AS HE BRINGS HIS SU-24 out of its Immelmann, the Syrian wing commander sees the first missile rising to greet him. He dives. It misses his aircraft by inches, but homes in on his portside wingman, who abruptly ceases to exist. The resultant blast hits the Syrian wing commander’s own fuselage with an enormous push, so that his entire aircraft trembles momentarily before recovering. As the wing commander pulls out and heads to sea, he watches two more of his aircraft disappear in mammoth fireballs.