Soldier of Gideon Read online

  From one of the captured bunkers Casca directed fire onto his chosen section of the Egyptian defenses. Every Israeli gun joined with him, and the deadly rain poured into the one section of the Arab defense from all over the area.

  In a few minutes there were no more flashing muzzles in the selected area, and Casca rushed forward with his heavy weapons squad as the Israeli big guns shifted their attention to the other end of the Egyptian line.

  Casca had a clear mental picture of the likely scene in the bunkers beyond the dunes. He knew that the thick concrete and heavy steel would be mainly undamaged, but it was also clear, as the defenders had ceased firing, that the bombardment had penetrated the walls in a number of places. And he also knew, from bitter personal experience, that once high explosive shells did succeed in penetrating armor, their effect on personnel was heightened when fragments of exploding shells bounced around inside the bunker, ricocheting off the walls and the weaponry, inflicting severe wounds on any human flesh that might be encountered, while the confinement amplified the enormous noise and concussive effect, bursting eardrums and bulging eyes from their sockets.

  It was not hard to guess why these Egyptian guns were no longer firing. But it was now Casca's task to ensure that they did not fire again.

  Inside the bunker a few brave souls were, no doubt, lurching amongst the debris, sweating and swearing as they wrestled overturned guns back into position.

  Fire showed through a breach in a bunker wall, and Casca directed all of his machine guns at this light, which betrayed where a section of concrete wall had been broken away.

  From the distance he could not tell what he was shooting at, but knew that every round that entered through the hole would have at least some effect on the defenders, and none to their liking. At the very least, it would hamper their efforts to extinguish the fire.

  The hole was not large enough to hope for entry with mortar fire, so Casca concentrated the firepower of the Davidkas to the rear of the bunker, again counting on the bunker's own armor to multiply the effects of the mortars' shrapnel, noise, and concussive effect.

  He devoted some of his machine guns to spraying the walls of the bunkers to either side of his selected target, hoping to diminish the fire that would otherwise come from those directions.

  Even so, one Egyptian machine gun got their range, and, as the tracers started to cut into where they crouched behind the dune, Casca gave the prearranged order.

  The heavy weapons stopped firing, their crews flattening into the sand. All the foot soldiers rushed forward in silence, the first men tugging the pins from grenades, nobody firing a shot.

  They arrived by the broken bunker wall and hurled several grenades inside, crouching against the bunker wall for protection, hands over their ears as explosion after explosion reverberated within the concrete box.

  Atef Lufti, shotel in hand, was the first man through the hole, but he found only poor sport – half a dozen staggering wrecks, clutching at torn abdomens and faces, or with the glazed stare of idiocy, hands clapped in frozen horror over their ears.

  Lufti butchered them all anyway.

  Casca saw quickly that there was nothing usable in the bunker, but by the time Lufti was through it was quiet, if stinking, and it did at least afford them a breach in the Arab line.

  They quickly extinguished the fine, which was dying anyway for lack of fuel.

  The Egyptian machine gunners were no longer firing on Billy Glennon's squad as they had disappeared into the blackness of the night the instant they stopped firing. The squad now moved silently up to the bunker and manhandled their machine guns and mortars in through the shell hole. Belatedly the Egyptians realized what was happening and turned their guns on the moving shadows they could just make out in the starlight and the flashes of gunfire. A number of Israelis died, but the weapons were passed through the wall into the bunker.

  Farther along the Egyptian defenses the concentrated artillery bombardment had silenced another section of the line, and the barrage was moving on to another site while heavy weapons squads pinned down the surviving defenders. The rear wall of the bunker opened into a trench that communicated with the other bunkers to either side.

  As the first of the alerted Egyptians came running along the trench, Tommy Moynihan opened fire with his Uzi, standing in the open and firing first to one side, then to the other, then leaping back into the bunker as the Arabs opened fire on each other.

  The crossfire stopped abruptly, and Moynihan stepped out into the trench once more to spray his Uzi over the confused soldiery to either side.

  Both groups of Arabs withdrew, but the respite could only last for seconds.

  Over his shoulder Moynihan glanced back into the bunker.

  "Go man," Casca shouted, "I'll take this side."

  Before the Arabs could regroup, both their bunkers were under attack from the rear. And a couple of grenades quickly solved what was left of the problem. Casca now held all three bunkers and their communication trench.

  But, he reasoned, it would quickly become too hot to hold. Then he thought, by the teeth of Mars, I could use a few seconds to think. Nothing for it but to keep going. They clambered out of the trench onto the sands behind the bunker and paused in a dune trough about fifty yards away.

  Billy Glennon had the machine gun ready. just as the first mortar shells landed in the trench they had just quit, but Casca's hand restrained Billy's from the trigger.

  Casca did a rough count of the silent, crouching figures. About half his company had made it this far. Not too bad. He knew some were still out with the heavy weapons behind the dune from where they had launched this attack.

  From one of the bunkers bursts of submachine gunfire greeted the Arabs who followed their mortar shells into the trench, and Casca realized that he still had a few men in the bunkers. They had better come out pretty soon or they would be cut off by much larger Arab numbers.

  Well, perhaps he had only lost about a quarter of his company. So be it. The ways of war. They couldn't be changed. Not by Casca. Not by Mars himself.

  But if they all didn't move pretty soon, they would be cut off. Beyond the farther rise of the dune there was a large, square building, probably a store of some sort. He pointed it out to Billy and the big Paddy hefted his machine gun around and sprayed it liberally with lead.

  To their astonishment there was no answer, but they were already rushing for it anyway, Uzis blazing from their hips. Casca saw a door and threw himself at it shoulder first. Wood splintered, a lock tore loose, and he tumbled inside. His Kalashnikov came up ready to fire, but there was no need to shoot. Or rather, there was great need not to shoot. Casca pointed the muzzle of his rifle to the floor, and motioned similarly to the others who were rushing through the door after him.

  There was just enough light to see the racks of weapons and the crates of ammunition.

  "Oh shit, Casca groaned, "what a target we make here."

  Billy Glennon arrived, bringing up the rear, toting the heavy Browning like a toy. "Well," he said with a chuckle, "we'll have something to hold it with anyway. I've got a dreadful dislike for running out of ammunition."

  The rest of the company was now crowding into the building. Billy Glennon opened a timber window flap and hastened to set up his machine gun to cover the direction they had come from. On the other side of the room Harry Russell was doing the same, and at the other walls soldiers were carefully easing open the wooden shutters.

  They found that they enjoyed a clear field of fire in every direction. They were in possession, and, so far, they were not under attack.

  "Could be a lot worse," Moynihan grunted, opening his canteen and swallowing thirstily.

  Casca opened his canteen and swallowed too. Then a thought struck him as he saw others doing the same. "Hey, we'd better take it easy on the water. It might be a while before we see that water wagon."

  All around the room men reluctantly screwed the caps on their canteens as they realized that the b
attle was far from over, and a long way from won. Their eyes flickered about the room, but the only liquid in sight was in some fire extinguishers on the walls.

  Casca promptly lost interest in the water situation. If they should get pinned down inside this cache of high explosive, all the water in the Aswan High Dam wouldn't save them. He knew well enough the raging thirst that follows every battle. His concerns were now outside thirst. The numberless campaigns that he had endured had forced him to think like a dispassionate general, regardless of how his tongue might be frying, or his wounds hurting.

  He had learned in the hardest possible way how to ignore, or at worst suppress, the demands of his body so that he could keep that body alive through whatever demands battle might make upon it.

  Doomed as he was to an eternity of soldiering, he had come to hate and fear death. He could confront it when necessary, as he had as a boy soldier in Caesar's legions, but the curse of Christ had deprived him of the luxury of welcoming his death in the very moment of that confrontation. For every death that he suffered now had to be endured over again as the endless curse took effect and his body agonizingly reknitted so that he might live again to die again.

  Not dying had become a very high priority, and each time he succeeded in not dying he got better at avoiding death. His present situation, however, was making him wonder if two thousand years of soldiering had taught him anything after all.

  The main thrust of the battle, as planned, had moved away from the sector that he had first brought under attack. And now he was in possession of a powder keg.

  To be sure, the position was secure for the moment, the field of fire open, the scope for enemy counterattack limited. But it might take only one tracer bullet, or a single grenade not to mention a rocket to blow the whole shebang into eternity.

  An idea came to Casca. He tried to push it away, but it persisted, so he entertained it and explored its possibilities.

  Very well, he thought, here he was, right back where it had all started 1,935 years earlier. Long enough time surely. Maybe by now he was within reach of release. The Jew had cursed him to wait for his return, so there was the implicit promise that the curse would not last forever. The dying revolutionary had not said when or how or why he would return, but a thousand other prophets had chanced their arm on the point. And most of them, almost all of them, made it about now. But from their words, it had looked like about now for most of the nineteen hundred years that Casca had waited for his release.

  Yet this time there was one big difference. He was back in the land where the curse had first been laid upon him.

  The poet that lurks unrealized in every man cried out in Casca for a final resolution of his eternal dilemma in the place where it had been born.

  And now, perhaps in a way that he could have never thought of, the resolution might be in sight.

  If, as seemed likely, one round from the Arabs were to arrive within this building stacked to the ceiling with high explosive, then surely he would die.

  Surely, he would really die.

  How could even the curse of the vengeance minded crucified one put back together a body so blown apart? The flesh wound in his side had already healed, but that had been a mere scratch.

  Casca had a horrifying but also liberating vision of being blown apart, blasted to the four winds by any chance round that might arrive. And, surely, that must be the end.

  Across the top of a pile of rockets his eyes connected with Hyman Hagkel's. "The End of Days, do you think?" Hymie smiled at him, his fanatical eyes clearly lusting toward his own death.

  In Casca's soul a tiny dissonance trembled. He shook his head.

  "Just one more end to one more day," he said. "And it's up to us how it ends. Let's get to it."

  With sudden determined resolution he moved to where Billy Glennon's Browning commanded the field of their most likely source of attack. "See anything?" he asked.

  "Damnedest field of fire I've ever looked over," Glennon grunted without taking his eyes from the area covered by his gun. "Where the hell are they? If they don't want to fight, why don't they just lie down and die?"

  Throughout the area that was exactly what the Egyptians were doing. Some of them were simply collapsing behind their guns, paralyzed with fright; some were hiding; some were running. But almost none were fighting.

  The officer led Israeli Army had found for its enemy an officerless rabble of young boys and tired old professionals.

  And none of the boys, and few of the pros, had ever experienced a battle like this one. They were reeling in horror and despair from scenes of spurting blood and spilled guts that were all the more terrifying because they happened in the dark. And the bits and pieces of dismembered bodies flying around alerted the Arabs to their own imminent fate.

  As dawn broke over the Sinai there was not a single Egyptian officer in effective command in the whole of Al 'Arish, although here and there a captain or a major, a colonel or a sergeant tried to rally around him a few Arabs in the defense of their Jihad.

  A few succeeded, but these heroes died as painfully, as brutally, and as uselessly as the cowards and the sensible ones who were running for the horizon.

  Casca's company played little further part in the action. The arms store was a fine place to rest but no sort of bunker to fight from. And, hell, the company had lost enough men for one day. The Egyptians were either unaware that they had occupied the building or were too busy running, hiding, and dying to care.

  Only when the Arab defense positions emptied in a wholesale, every man for himself retreat, did Casca permit his troops to open fire. They sprayed the few Arabs who came close with lead, but attracted no return fire amid the general chaos. As the sun came up Casca was delighted to realize that his ammunition store had survived intact and that the fleeing Arabs were making no attempt upon it.

  Over the Regimental Headquarters a large blue and white flag was rippling in the light morning breeze.

  "Well, you learn all the time," he said with a laugh to Harry Russell. "The last place I'd have ever wanted to be in turns out to be the safest position there is."

  Harry sat down on an ammunition case. "Yeah," he said, "it sure is an unusual sort of bunker but I like it."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Brigadier General Israel Tal invited his field officers to a working breakfast in the luxuriously appointed Egyptian general officers' dining room.

  "Fruits of victory," he said ironically as he passed around a plate of fresh figs. "A brutal battle, but we have set the stage, as we planned to, for the victories that are to follow.

  "I have just been advised that an Egyptian relief column is on the way here consisting of an armored brigade and a brigade of mechanized infantry." He paused for effect. "I must also tell you that we will not be waiting for them as they will not get here: They had the misfortune to encounter Avraham Yoffe's men at Bir al Lahtan." He grinned happily as his officers cheered. "So we will be pushing on immediately to Suez."

  There was another general cheer. "Some of us, that is. Some of you I am sending to the assistance of General Sharon, who is about to attack Abu Agheila. He is at present, encircling the whole area, which is, as you know, an extremely complex maze of fortifications that has been built up over many years, and will not be easy to take.

  "But we must have it. It commands the central axis through the Sinai. Ariel Sharon will launch a coordinated attack of infantry and armor at nightfall today. Colonel Weintraub's regiment will join him. The force will be lifted from here by helicopter."

  "Sounds like a fun way to start the night," Moynihan said when Casca told him the news. "I suppose they'll put us down right in the middle of it all."

  Moynihan had guessed right. The helicopters swooped into the center of a ring of fire.

  General Sharon's concerted attack was occupying the Egyptians at every point of the compass. For an hour every gun that he could bring to bear had been firing as hard and as fast as the barrels could stand.

&n
bsp; Shells were landing all along the perimeter of the fortress's outer defenses while other guns were pouring more and more shells into every corner of the inner perimeter. The Israeli Air Force had spent the last two hours of daylight plastering the entire area.

  The attacking bombers and strafing fighters had the sky to themselves as there was not an Egyptian plane left in condition to fly.

  Wave after wave of Vautour bombers pounded the fortifications. The Arab antiaircraft gunners tried valiantly to make up for their lack of air defense, but only succeeded in exposing themselves as targets for the escorting fighter planes. By the time Colonel Weintraub's helicopters arrived there was scarcely a gun crew left that could fire into the air.

  The timing was meticulous. The incessant bombardment cloaked the arrival of the airborne force and ceased only half a minute before the first choppers set down and troops leaped from them.

  The dazed, bewildered, and thoroughly scared defenders barely registered that the helicopters were coming. Their attention was entirely devoted to the desperate effort of trying to answer the encircling artillery barrage.

  Casca deployed his men in a protective circle around his heavy weapons squad and succeeded in keeping at bay the few Egyptian troops who attempted to attack them.

  Then the mortars and the Brownings opened up and the startled defenders discovered that their front was behind them. After hours of heartbreaking, suicidal effort to organize their fire onto the attackers out in the desert, they now had to try to regroup to fight into the center of their own area.

  And they had barely managed to start thinking about that when General Sharon's armor and infantry came swarming at them from all over the desert.

  The battle was over almost as soon as it had begun. Sandwiched in the dark between the paratroopers and the encircling force,. the Egyptians scarcely knew which way to turn. When they fired, they frequently hit their own troops. When they thought about running, they ran into some sort of fire, no matter which way they ran.