Suez
From CleanPosts
THE SUEZ WAR
The going was slow as Bravo and Gonen made their way out of town. The road paralled the canal due north through Al-Kubri, which was seized on the first night, as well as the town of Al-Shallufa, which fell on day two along with the Ahmed Hamdi Tunnel under the canal, which for years was a major IDF standing objective in the event of an invasion from Egypt.
With the tunnel in hand Israel could pour troops, tanks, and materiel across in a kind of counter-punch to the Egyptian main intrusion to the north. But the highway and railroad to Cairo was still strongly held by the Egyptian Second Army, and the town of Gineifa was being contested as the key to the whole area.
The forces of Israel were still a long way from being able to seriously threaten the main incursion at Ismailia, at the halfway point on the canal. Soon it wouldn't matter, as Egypt was nearing the completion of the task of fully supplying the bridgehead in the Sinai east of the Canal.
At the crossing of the Gineifa-Qabrit road Bravo and Gonen could go no fur- ther. They were flagged down at a checkpoint and forced to give up their vehicle on the standing orders of Lt. Colonel David Shazar on the Gineifa front. They could not continue on without a set of papers which they did not have.
The bureaucratic nonsense evaporated away the closer one got to the actual fighting. Bravo and Gonen found themselves on foot.
Some of the walking wounded, the simple first-aid cases, were being de- toured onto the road that ran northeast of the checkpoint and across the salt marshes and flats to Qabrit, at the place where land pinched between the Large and Small Bitter Lakes.
Bravo decided to follow them. If there was a way around the checkpoint this was as good as any.
They were on foot for an hour. Soon they arrived at a makeshift camp sprawling among Egyptian homes, a little compound snug back off the road. At least a hundred cots were set up, most exposed to the winds and dust with nothing more than prayers to Allah for good weather. Bravo could see the houses were overflowing. The three local couples were working them- selves half to death trying to bandage up their guests, scrounge up blan- kets, and pass out the white box lunches that had been hastily dumped in a pile by an impatient gang of Israeli soldiers.
Bravo with her remarkable Changed memory knew everyone in her 2190-person battalion by name. She said, "I recognize a few of our people here. Find out who isn't hurt too bad. Find out who is with me and quietly, Gonen. Keep it quiet."
One lady, the oldest of the six, took the time to straighten up and spare Bravo a smile.
"I didn't think it was possible," Bravo said, using Arabic.
"What is that?"
"Why are you supporting your occupiers?"
"Grow up girl! We don't even think to play politics with the wounded. Lend me a hand here."
So that was it. Egypt was no neat monolithic bloc loyal to the Islamist theocracy in Cairo but a society like any other. Big, messy, and out of con- trol. And here were six people trying to put together in their small way what the war was tearing down in broad strokes. Was it futile? Absolutely. But Bravo felt as if she'd been graciously allowed to help feed the troops.
The lady returned to her after she and worked for a while and introduced herself as Henna Naguib.
"I am Major Lilith Gervasi."
Henna told her, "Geography and politics, Major. You're looking at the re- sults of the best kept secret in the nation. The Suez zone is a bloody meatgrinder."
"I've already seen it is a trap."
"We call it the Chute. If you believe the government's maps the Chute is a wide and easy plain decorated with garden cities unaccustomed to war and ready for the taking. Don't believe their accursed maps!"
"A beautiful deception that was," Bravo admitted. "We've got higher eschelon officers in Zahal all positioning and intriguing for the chance to cakewalk in here."
"Look around you and see the results of that little theory!"
Gonen had managed to round up eighteen men from Bravo Battalion whose wounds had been treated and who felt they were ready to get back in the fray. Seeing Bravo tend the fallen had done the trick. No wide-load sitting back at a desk in Suez City was she, but one willing to share their hard- ships and carry her own burden. To go back to Israel on a pussy chit now seemed unthinkable.
Gonen repeated the scraps of information he had obtained from some of his men. "Commander, they only hold ten grid squares centered on Gineifa. It is stalemate on the ground. We surround them on three sides but there is such a build-up in the area it could tip either way very soon."
Bravo asked the old woman discretely if there was a path around the check- point.
"There is one, through a minefield."
"A minefield?"
"Land mines. Yet another surprise for you here in the Chute. But locals know if you keep to the shoreline of Great Bitter Lake, just at the transi- tion between the mud and dry land, you can pass safely through."
"Then I thank you, and we will trouble you no further."
"Just a moment, Major. I discern that you have a certain urgency, and it is not only for yourself or even your nation."
Bravo nodded. "I can end the bloodshed more quickly than you can imagine. But only if I can move quickly."
Henna stared at her for a moment, then called out to her husband. "Kamal! I want to have a discussion!"
Her husband trotted over, slightly hunched but still thin and agile with garden work showing on his hands and stained clothes. This couple were raiding their precious garden to help feed this crowd.
She said, "The young lady needs to get north."
Kamal smiled at that. "Young lady? That is Bravo! The Zionist Entity's of- ficial monster!"
"Show her the trail along the shore."
"What about you? You'll be all that much more busier here."
"I'll make do." Those words seemed to be her motto, as surely as Bravo's was 'Follow Me.' Henna had the poise of someone whose entire life was spent making do.
At one point on their hike along the shore of Great Bitter Lake a call from Femina Caelestis came in for Bravo on her personal sat phone and she spent a few minutes accepting information and issuing orders.
Soon after that, the east was lit up brilliantly, like a camera flash that extended on and on. "Don't look at it!" Bravo shouted.
Gonen locked eyes with her instead. "Nucdet."
After ten seconds the light faded rapidly, to be replaced by three distant mushroom clouds rising in a neat row.
"What does it mean?" someone asked.
"I think now," Bravo said, "the country is safe. But that doesn't mean the war is over. Much blood remains to be be shed."
"No no no no no!"
Kamal seemed to be greatly disturbed by the Israeli use of nuclear weapons, the first time they'd been used in anger on the surface of the Earth since Nagasaki in the previous century. In space the big firecrackers were quite frequently lit off in anger, but Kamal knew nothing of that.
Instead of being an Israel sympathizer he suddenly saw himself surrounded by strangers who had been renewed as his enemies and his heart wasn't in this little walk anymore. He edged away from them, but Bravo spotted what he was doing.
"Where are you off to?"
Kamal didn't answer, didn't turn around, he just kept walking, counting on the goodwill that he and Henna had earned to buy his way. Bravo said, louder, "Kamal, I will ask you this exactly once: stop where you are."
He paused, then risked taking a few more steps and resumed his withdrawal. Bravo shot him in the back, dropping him face down in the sand. Gonen looked at her, but dared not vocalize his question.
Bravo offered an explanation. "Keep to the waterline, Henna told us. But did you notice how Kamal would lead us inland from the waterline now and again, on a convoluted path? We've been deceived by that old couple. I wager that if we proceed along the shore, we will soon strike a mine."
"Then let us follow our own tracks back out of here," Gonen offered. "We can exact vengeance on Henna at the least. If your suspicions are true, our wounded may be in danger back there."
Bravo shook her head. "Then we will be yet another hour behind schedule." By her original timetable she was supposed to be in Fayid by now, stepping into a boat. Many unforeseen delays now made that impossible.
She stood on the western shore of the swollen Great Bitter Lake, which was thoroughly mixed with the salt water of the Med and the Red Sea. With field binoculars she scanned the waters. This was the "Reed Sea" spoken of in Torah, confused in the popular imagination with the Red Sea.
Here, exactly here, Bravo knew, in perhaps 1300 B.C., El had parted the waters of this lake to let his escaping people cross to the other side, according to the account in the second book of Moshe. Her wife's more mun- dane Old Buron attributed the event to normal tidal action. In those days this lake was an extension of the Gulf of Suez.
The Greek cargo ship Galatea was just now steaming into the lake but Bravo, despite her great faith, knew she couldn't count on a parting of the waters to get to it before it passed by.
They all stood around looking at her. Bravo froze for a minute to let the gears of her brain-case turn for a while. Finally she began stripping off her uniform, right down to her black panties and bra, revealing a surpris- ingly voluptuous but compact body. The men gaped at her at first, then came to and followed her example.
She said, "What is watertight? The lasers? Strap them on. Get rid of every- thing else, and 'Follow Me'. We're going for a swim."
Salt water was more dense than fresh water, and very salty water like here in the Great Bitter Lake provided a good deal of bouyancy indeed. Swimming was easy. They followed Bravo out about a kilometer off-shore, where she flipped on her back and kicked lazily, waiting for Galatea to pull up and hopefully spot them.
The ship was loaded with Israeli soldiers. They fished them out of the water, rifles lowered again when they recognized their catch. There were some appreciative whistles at Bravo while she stood there in nothing but her black undies and bra. The 19 men with her, standing there soaking wet, started to laugh as they finally understood what was happening. The 1185 other men and women of Bravo Battalion, the half she left behind in Elat, were aboard this cargo ship.
There were towels on hand, and fresh uniforms waiting for them below deck. As the ship continued to steam north, Bravo retired to a stateroom reserved for her, where she showered and caught up on the message traffic. She want- ed to know what was happening with the war.
The three nuclear blasts all in a row were from Astrodyne fighters, not Israeli ones. They had destroyed a column of 680 Egyptian battle tanks and about 400 Armored Personnel Carriers which had crossed the 1949 Armistice Line into the Negev Desert, over the old boundary of Israel. The air bursts killed an estimated 8,000 Egyptians instantly. The main prong of the enemy attack had been blunted.
Bravo noted that the Egyptian boys had gotten their fanciest toys, their tanks and APCs, across the canal first on the Ismailia bridge. Then after the bridge was destroyed they sent over fuel and ammunition for their toys on hastily erected pontoon bridges south of Lake Timsah.
Only now, after these pontoons were in turn destroyed, did they realize they had neglected the unglamorous but vital supply of water, for drinking and for their vehicles. The latest Israeli intel traffic reported that the Egyptians were now trying to correct their oversight with a desperate logistics operation at Deversoir just north of the Great Bitter Lake.
Her officers gathered in the wardroom for evening chow, and she used this opportunity to outline her plan. "Everyone will be armed with one laser rifle and one very old, portable, wire-guided Anti-Tank Guided Weapon. But they shall not be used against tanks. Do not waste them on ammunition trucks or fuel trucks either. The Egyptians can't drink petrol. All I want you to do is hit water trucks."
"Water trucks?"
"That's what I said. Nothing but water trucks. Or water tanks. Or water pipes. Thirst is our weapon. That's phase one. Phase two, we run south and raise calamity in the Egyptian rear at Fayid."
"Ma'am, what formation do you have in mind for the attack?" Captain Gonen asked.
"None. Everyone stays in squads. No more of this bunching up nonsense. We fight the battle loose, the way we've trained so many times before, with everyone talking on their personal phones.
The ship came to a halt on the northwestern shore of the swollen lake, where a long ridge of piled up sand contained the risen lake and kept it from flooding the town. Planks were shoved out from the ship and dug into the face of the sand, permitting her troops to debark.
In the early evening all 1185 of them edged up over the top of the dike and surveyed Deversoir, or Duweir Suweir as the enemy called it. Each one of Bravo's troops wore a $15,000 pair of night-vision goggles, which made the night into day, but only for them.
The canal-crossing operations were intense. Egypt knew the fragility of the thread on which the war now hung. The neglected supplies of water were now their top priority.
Bravo took aim at a water tower with her ATGW and fired. The trick was to keep the target centered in the cross-hairs until it hit. This could be tricky with the intense pressures of combat, but Bravo's people had earned their reputation by their steely cool under fire. Her missile hit, becoming one of five to hit that tower.
In all, twenty-three missiles from Bravo Battalion struck eight steel water tanks or reservoirs. She dropped the firing mechanism and turned west to start jogging double-time, bending around the lake towards Fayid.
Captain Uri Gonen found a parked water truck in his sights, and successful- ly took it out before following Bravo to Fayid. One hundred eight such trucks were destroyed. None of them were armored, certainly not to the 30 centimeters of steel which the ATGWs were capable of penetrating.
Sergeant Binyamin Gafhi fired and hit a raft returning across the mouth of the canal where it entered the Great Bitter Lake, making it unavailable to pick up one of the parked water trucks. Twenty-five such empty rafts were sunk all told.
Private Marina Merom fired her missile. The rocket screamed away, spooling out a fine guidance command wire behind it. Using electrical signals sent down that wire, Marina carefully kept her crosshairs on target and struck a steel aqueduct pipe. Hers being one of fifteen hits on the same pipe. It would soon be repaired, but not quickly enough to help the Egyptians trapped in the Sinai.
By this time the Egyptians began to realize the threat was coming from the levee and directed fire south. The sand erupted with machine gun and mortar fire. Private David Zismann was killed before he could shoot his AGTW, one of ninety-nine personnel who suffered this fate.
First Lieutenant Meir Eitan struck a parked water truck that was hit by someone else even as he directed his missile in. About fifty rockets were wasted in this same way, two or more rockets on one target. It was bound to happen, given the Battalion's loose organization at that point, and their orders to pick their own opportunity, fire, and get the hell out of there.
Corporal Dalia Bibi squeezed the trigger on her missile launcher...and nothing happened. The fifty-year old weapon was a dud, along with two hun- dred ninety-four others. Cursing, she dropped it joined the flood of Bravo personnel running toward Fayid.
Private Uzi Herschson advanced closer to Deversoir to get inside the 2,500 meter range of his weapon. There he struck a raft with a water truck on board, sinking both birds with one stone, so to speak. Sixty-two others managed to pull off the same feat over the next half-hour.
First Lieutenant Noami Meridor, rattled by machine gun rounds dinging the sand nearby, couldn't keep her target centered and missed. Her missile struck the ground and exploded. Fully three hundred twenty-nine of the ATGW were clean misses, but even so, they contributed to the fog of war and served as suppressing fire to keep the Egyptians from retaliating effectively.
Private Shaul Ben-Elissar didn't aim for a water truck or a reservoir as he was ordered, instead he directed his rocket at a truck carrying Egyptian troops south to their position. Seventy-four such trucks, with perhaps ten troops each, were destroyed.
Captain Maxim Shahal wiped out a large crane truck which was busy attempting to right a water truck overturned by an earlier blast. Eight of these cranes were destroyed that night.
Sergeant Yossi Levi, who had been one of the nineteen men who swam with Bravo out to meet Galatea, hit the hardest target of all, a water truck which was moving down a street, attempting to get out of Deversoir to cross the canal somewhere to the north. Ninety-six others in Bravo Battalion carried off this same stunt.
The ATGW attack fell silent. Nearly a thousand wires lay on the sands be- tween the canal and Deversoir. Bravo's raid was complete. In roughly one half- hour's work, she had ensured a swift denouement to the war and would keep the lives of many Israeli soldiers out of danger.
Not all the water supplies were destroyed, but enough to ensure that only the Egyptian officers would taste water in the desert tomorrow. When rumor of this got out, they would have a full-scale mutiny on their hands, and the Egyptian army would disintegrate before the two-pronged advance of IDF Schwarzkopf tanks. Racked by demon thirst, entire brigades would willingly surrender to the Israelis just for the hope of a mouthful of water.
Bravo Battalion never rested on it's laurels. Now it was fifteen kilometers across loose sand south to the fighting in Fayid, an exhausting night-time run.
Bravo was among the first people to arrive at the battle in Fayid. She rammed home a lightweight clip of laser ammo. The cartridges were clear Lucite vials. When the trigger was pulled, the firing pin broke a seal in the cartridge, mixing nitrous oxide and carbon monoxide which gave a brilliant flash of light. This light "pumped" the ruby rod and laser light flashed out from the half-mirrored front end. Fully 40% of the chemical energy in the cartridge was put on the target as a burst of pure light.
At the front both sides were well dug in. Lasers flicked all along the front hoping to catch an unlucky head. Bravo could see the Egyptians were not fighting up to snuff. She could sense the feeling of "little boy lost" among them as the failure of their invasion was beginning to dawn on their minds. This was the supreme moment.
The Egyptian army realized their troubles had multiplied. Their rear was now a chaos of laser fire as they were caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.
Return fire was mostly ineffective but a few enemy soldiers stood their ground, aimed carefully and took out a few of Bravo's people.
Expendable nitrous/carbon monoxide shell casings popped away as Bravo called on the best within her to put thumping 50 millisecond bursts of light on target. This was the turn of the tide. It was palpable. It fell over the Egyptians like a shadow, like the blackness of mass hatred over- taking a mob. They were already in retreat, moving west on the road to Cairo, and the Israeli Army was sweeping over them in a general rout.
Gonen, surveying the whole scene nodded his head in admiration. Bravo had done it again.
After intimidating the folk in Fayid with laser fire and a few carefully picked explosions Bravo's force entered and methodically occupied the village. This was a standard seizure, a play right out of the book. The grunt- work of war. Bravo could have done it in her sleep. She felt like she did. She had taken over Fayid chiefly to get at least a couple hours of long- delayed shut-eye.
While she slept in a borrowed house Gonen received another two dozen men from the original Bravo Battalion who had deserted their units to fight once more with their beloved commander. The word was Lt. Colonel David Sha- zar had found out about the desertions and had put a special watch on the former Bravo boys and girls. There wasn't likely to be any more. Bravo was content to know they were all safe now.
They put up tents, all of them disguised to match the Sinai landscape. Bravo authorized six hours of down time, but this amounted to just four hours of sleep. A full third of her men and women were to be on watch as sentries for two hours at a time, and even Bravo shared in this duty. She took the first watch.
The encryption on IDF two-way radio was compartmentalized. The intense sat- phone traffic flying around the whole Levant did not exist as far as the receiver cared. It was filtered out. So when they heard the receiver squawk it was automatically for them.
Previously it had only been heard at one hour intervals for the general war update, the latest on how the war was unfolding. Now a call came in specif- ically for "Bravo Recon Detachment."
"Bravo Recon Detachment?" She looked at Gonen with a grimace. "Detached from Adan. No doubt he believes his own bolshevik." When Gonen held out the device to her she objected, saying, "They can triangulate us on that!"
"He orders us to immediately stop."
She grabbed the handset from him suddenly, with snarling violence. "This is Major Gervasi, roger, over."
"Major, this is Colonel Adan. I assume your chief staff officer has relayed my order for you to halt, over?"
"Yes sir. We have indeed stopped for the night, over."
"You will relay your position, over."
"Sir, no doubt your software has our position by now."
"You will stand fast until I arrive."
"Respectfully, sir, we're on the clock. Arab-Israeli Wars only come around maybe five, six times in a lifetime. Bravo out."
She handed the thing back to Gonen and said resolutely, "I realize this device is too valuable to discard but I'm giving you a direct order to maintain radio silence." She required from him, and got, his solemn acknowledgment. He almost irresistibly wanted to drop the radio and let it scatter into pieces. Instead he snorted in his breath and folded the rage back into himself.
Time for candy, she thought. From her stock of male studs Bravo selected Lieutenant Levi Herzog, a pleasant curly-haired officer in his mid-twenties. Not the best in the bunch, she admitted when he came over to her part of the tent and undressed for her behind the privacy curtain. No, Bravo believed in appetizers before the main entree. And never the same one twice!
When Bravo stripped off the layers of her clothing the label of Major fell away too. Before long they became merely two animals clutching and grasping at each other for dear life. Every man in camp would give their life for Bravo and one reason was that if they were really good Momma would let them back in the womb.
Gonen tried to reconcile in his mind the images of Bravo's effortless ac- cord with harsh military necessity and Bravo's hidden yielding physical femininity. There was little enough privacy in the field. When she bedded down she made involuntary vocalizations. She was a moaner, but resourcefully quiet. Gonen listened between his breaths and heartbeats. And Bravo knew he did.
* * * * *
Time to wake the boss after a glorious four hours of uninterrupted sleep.
She answered Gonen's insistent knocking, opening the door in the nude. Gonen's jaw dropped. She had no shame. Just another boy in the showers only no boy ever looked like this! He'd never anticipated seeing her naked and was surprised how voluptuous she was. The lines of her uniform had somehow de-emphasized her curves. I could fall in love with her just for her breasts! he thought. He brought his gaze up to look her straight in the eye.
"What, the D-Day plus 96 hours report?", she groaned. "It can wait."
"Not that. There's a major who says he's here to relieve you. He says he's got orders for you to return to Suez City."
"Damn." She rubbed her head vigorously, standing her hair on end. "Very well, give me a minute," she said through a yawn and turned back into the house.
Twenty minutes later, with a quick thank-you note in Arabic script left on the door, she rejoined Gonen in the center of town where her surviving peo- ple were standing at attention in a single rank, thirty rows of thirty.
Major Yeshayahn Haim introduced himself and handed her a packet with her orders, which she quickly read.
She turned to address her people in a loud, clear voice. "It seems this is the end of the road for me. There were things I did which could be called 'high-handed,' but I did them all to accomplish our mission, and above all, to preserve the lives of the men and women of this unit, with whom I have never been more proud to serve than over the last four days. I ask that you show Major Haim the same 'Follow Me' spirit that has made Bravo Battalion the undisputed best. Thank you, and take care."
With an exchange of salutes Major Haim accepted the transfer of command of Bravo Battalion. As Bravo departed the scene, the discipline of the Battalion relaxed a little, and they broke out into spontaneous applause.
The ride south was in a truly ancient CH-46 twin rotor helicopter, flying very low over the desert. Bravo could feel the whole airframe of the chop- per twisting and wiggling as it flew. She tried not to think of what was to come.
Brigadier General Shmuel Gavish had taken over the Suez governorate building from Colonel Motti Adan. An American officer was present, as well as Adan, who was briefing General Gavish on Bravo's misdeeds. "Major Durr deliberately deviated from Scimitar, sir, the invasion plan approved by the Prime Minister himself. Well speak of the devil, here she is now."
Bravo stopped two paces before the generals desk, and they exchanged a salute. He said, "Major Durr, the Colonel here says you altered the Scimitar plan. What do you have to say in your defense?"
"The country is out of danger, sir."
"I know, thanks to the nuclear airstrike by Astrodyne. That still doesn't excuse your insubordination for the sake of insubordination. You have have become popular, Major, but Israel is asking you to serve the country, not your own ego."
"I am the head of security for Femina Caelestis, sir, of which Astrodyne is only the commercial arm. I myself ordered the nuke strike."
That had the effect of silencing both the General and the colonel. There was a New Confederate officer also present in the room, clad in gray, and he could only let loose a slow appreciative whistle, like the one Bravo's ass earned on the Galatea.
She looked at all of them in wonder. "Oh, I see now. None of you realized the country needed a political buffer, a space for plausible deniability. Imagine the outcry in ONE if Israel had nuked that column herself. This way the condemnation falls on Astrodyne alone."
The Colonel, General, and the American were literally speechless, so Bravo continued her defense.
"Aside from the three nukes which blunted the Egyptian thrust into the Negev, it was Astrodyne who tracked the column of seven hundred Egyptian tanks and four hundred APCs as they crossed into the Sinai and it is was the Astrodyne cruiser Valorous which took out the Ismailia Bridge with six orbit-to-ground smart bombs. It is the Valorous which even now continues to knock out the enemy's pontoon bridges as soon as they put them up, and all of those actions were planned and ordered by me.
"The Egyptians had quite a formidable system of overlapping SAM coverage around their bridgehead. Without support by Femina Caelestis, which Israel has enjoyed since 1948, by the way, it would have cost the country many planes and many lives. So that is what I've been doing, General, sir, be- sides assailing the enemy at Deversoir and al-Fayid, which caused them to abort their bridgehead operations over the canal."
Into the awkward quiet space Bravo tilted forward and placed a sheet of paper on the general's desk smartly.
"What's this?"
"My resignation, sir. I offer up my commission, effective immediately."
"I beg you to reconsider."
"Sir, we were set up to fail. Our assigned beach was a dead-end sand spit with only one way off. I used less than half of my force because that was how many I judged could land there without getting overly bunched up. If I had followed the so-called Scimitar 'plan' my casualties would have been much more.
"I cannot continue to serve under Colonel Adan. He has an affinity for tidiness which is simply inappropriate in wartime. The Colonel is nothing but a paper-pushing bureaucrat, less interested in killing the enemy and seizing land than he is in making the change of watch into a regular and orderly process, with pass-down logs no less!"
"I can make this right, Major Durr. I have here in my desk the paperwork and the silver palm leaves of your promotion to Lieutenant Colonel."
"And being a Lieutenant Colonel, I would still answer to Adan?"
"Naturally."
"Then I cannot accept, sir. I cannot work with him. Our nation has always had a terrible manpower shortage, so I consider it a grievous sin to dig trenches, sit on one's ass, and let a war of movement turn into a contest of attrition like we saw with Lebanon in 2006.
"But I consider it an unpardonable sin to strip Bravo Battalion from me, to force men and women I know and care about into a meat-grinder of his own making, while I was ordered to the sidelines during what will probably be the last war Zahal will ever be asked to fight."
"Is that true, Colonel? Was she sidelined?"
"Sir, I judged her alteration of Plan Scimitar to be a serious breach of discipline, and administratively placed her and her chief of staff on sus- pension."
"So for the critical hours after her amphibious assault what was the Major doing?"
"Formally, she was supposed to do nothing, sir. Of course, that didn't stop her from sneaking behind my back--"
"To save the lives of my people in your death-trap!" Bravo shouted.
General Gavish raised a hand to silence both of them. "You're a citizen- soldier, Adan? Consider yourself a citizen again. Consider yourself demobilized."
"You can't do that, sir!"
"I just did. You're a rabbi in real life? Go back to your synagogue. The war is over for you starting right now. Now get out of my sight!"
Bravo grinned, not even stifling the desire to show her pleasure at this. Adan stomped out without a further word, deliberately omitting the formalities of a parting salute.
"Now will you accept your promotion, Bravo?" He was confident that she would do so after watching Adan humiliated.
"No sir. At this moment, the resignation which you hold in your hands takes effect. I am forever and permanently no longer a commissioned offi- cer in the Israel Defense Force. I realize as a citizen if I choose to live within the borders of Israel I will continue to have certain obligations in the reserves, but they will have to be humble ones, perhaps the duties of a private or corporal."
A wry grin here.
"After all, General, you said it yourself, the important thing is the coun- try, not my own ego."
There would, of course, be quite a kerfuffle in the media, but Lilith didn't feel a single pang of regret over her decision to resign. It was the presence of the New Confederate general in the office of General Gavish that made her take the final leap. Neither Israel nor the New Confederacy were members of ONE, by their own choice, and this was pushing them closer together as allies. Lilith could no longer abide that.
Already the Egyptian government had fallen, and revolution in the streets of Cairo was building toward a crescendo. Eretz Yisrael now extended from the Nile to the Euphrates, as promised by Yahweh, and the surviving people in her battalion were safe.
Bravo, over the course of several lifetimes, had played an extraordinary role in making all of those things possible. She was finished. So with a deep feeling of contentment she pushed herself away from General Gavish, rendered her best salute, and left his office smartly, never once looking back.
