Firebreak (49 page)

They skirted the aircraft, amazed at what had happened. “How in the hell?” Furry wondered.

“The engineers are going to have some fun figuring this one out,” Matt said. “My best guess is that the intakes give some lift and with the wing gone, that big horizontal stabilizer gets the full air flow and is very effective.”

“Just maybe,” Furry allowed, “this one wasn’t built by the lowest bidder.”

The blades of the helicopter were still slowly turning when the forward door opened and the steps dropped down. The President stepped down and automatically ducked his head, his long strides quickly covering the ground to the White House entrance. His face was worn and haggard, showing the strain of the last few days. The men following him were silent. Cox was waiting for him in the hall and also followed him down the stairs to the Hot Line. The general wanted to ask him about his wife but a mental warning kept him quiet.

Inside the room, the Teletype operator looked up. Pontowski put his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Tell Secretary Stenilov that I’m here, Larry,” he said. The operator’s fingers flew over the keys.

The room was silent as they waited. Then the Teletype started to rattle again, this time printing in English:

“Mr. President, let us work together and end this madness in the Middle East.”

Shoshana lay on the ground in a state of deep shock. She wondered about the tanks that were now moving to the north. She held up her left hand and inspected the charred remains of her fingers. Two were missing but she didn’t feel a thing. In the distance, she could see tanks moving toward her. But these were more angular than T-72s and the set-back turret made her think of Merkavas. Oh, she thought, Merkavas. Ours. But it didn’t matter. Her war had finished when Levy’s Luck had run its course and the fire had cleansed her, burning away all that was wrong in her past. She was content as the warm, welcome fog of unconsciousness claimed her.

Pontowski sat beside his wife’s bed, wading through the thick read file that waited for him each morning. But he couldn’t concentrate and dropped the file into his lap. He looked at his sleeping wife and a slight smile cracked his tired face. Lupus, the disease they called the wolf, had released its hold on her and again she was in remission, but this time seriously weakened by the damage it had done to her heart. He saw an eyelid flutter. “Quit faking it, Tosh. I know you’re awake.”

Her eyes slowly opened, blinking against the soft light that filled the hospital room. Her hand reached out for his. “I do love you,” she said. For a few moments they did not move or talk, sharing the moment of another morning. “You did it? Stopped the fighting?”

“For now. It was touch and go.”

“And Matt?”

“He’s alive and well. In Israel. Looking for a Shoshana Tamir. He says he’s going to marry her.”

She squeezed his hand. “Then we may have grandchildren yet.”

Oh, love, he thought, if only you knew how close a thing it was. How I had to use Matt to get the Israeli lobby in Congress off my back so I could maneuver. It wasn’t by pure chance he was sent to Israel. And then the way the Israelis fed him information thinking that would influence me. It would have been all right except that grandson of ours has a penchant for getting into trouble. And finding pretty girls.

“What’s going on behind those steely blue eyes of yours?” Tosh asked.

“Thinking about Matt.”

“And how you used him,” she said.

Pontowski sighed. He couldn’t hide anything from his wife. “Yes, but I hadn’t planned on him getting involved with theraid on Kirkuk. That just happened because his unit was ready to do it.” Pontowski shook his head. “It seems that Matt’s deputy for operations was a wild man who got ready for any fight he thought might come his way. Matt just happened to be there. I thought about getting involved, but I couldn’t. You know Matt, he would’ve never forgiven me if I had sidelined him.”

“I suppose,” Tosh said. “That happens when you stand too close to a fire. They can burn uncontrolled and drag you in.”

“Then we need bigger firebreaks,” the President decided.

The vice president for F-15 production at McDonnell Aircraft Company slipped into the flight simulator unobserved. He watched the two men at the console as they went through their well-practiced routine of teaching humility to some fighter pilot inside. “What have you two been up to now?” he asked, capturing their attention. Leander immediately froze the sim and told the crew inside that they would continue in a moment.

“Well?” the vice president demanded, working to keep a straight face.

“Nothing, sir,” Stigler answered.

“You two clowns are always up to something.”

“Meatheads, sir.” Leander said. “We’re not clowns, we’re Meatheads.” He pointed to a prominent plaque above the console that announced
martin’s meatheads.

“At least,” the VP continued, “can you cut the next congressman who comes through here some slack?”

The two young men hung their heads, trying to act ashamed.

The vice president relented. “When you’re finished here, the Old Man wants to see you. Says he wants to shake your hands. It beats me why …” He grinned and left, leaving them to their work.

The battered jeep made its way down the dusty road, skirting the burned-out hulks of tanks, armored troop carriers and trucks that had been pushed to the side. Matt had to leave the road, detouring around a patch of uncleared mines. He almost drove through a collection of temporary graves-Syrians. All the scars of heavy fighting assaulted him, drivinghome the grisly reality of war’s destruction and after-birth. In the distance, he could see the ruins of a destroyed kibbutz nestled against the western hills of the Huleh Valley.

Matt stopped to get his bearings. I flew up this valley, he thought, when Furry and I took out that command post. He checked his map and found the Huleh Valley. What had Avi Tamir called it, “the jewel of Israel"? He looked up the steep escarpment to the east. It was a cliff that rose fifteen hundred feet to a plateau—the Golan Heights. No wonder it is so vital to control the Golan, he decided.

Some hard fighting went on here, he thought. Maybe someone was at that kibbutz.…

In the confusion of the war’s aftermath, the search for Shoshana had been, by turns, frustrating, confusing, and hopeless. It had taken a major effort just to wangle a hop aboard a U.S. Air Force C-5B hauling relief supplies into the devastated country. The harried Israeli officer who had met the airplane had ordered him not to deplane and to fly out on it. Rather than argue, Matt had simply walked off the cargo plane when no one was looking and started his search.

His first stop had been the Tamirs’ apartment in Haifa. Instead of the woman called Lillian and her mob of children, he found the apartment occupied by two families of refugees from the West Bank, none of whom spoke English. He was about to give up when a well-meaning neighbor relayed a rumor that Avi Tamir was working at his old kibbutz in the Huleh Valley.

The jeep ground up the road to the fourth kibbutz he had found.

Surprisingly, he saw only one girl on guard duty as he approached. Since he didn’t look like an Arab and was driving an Israeli jeep, the bored teenager waved him in. Children were playing in the yard of a freshly completed school building and their shouts and laughter offered a welcome change from the devastation on the road. Matt switched off the engine and leaned over the steering wheel. He was dirty, thirsty, and tired from his search. And I’m only fifty miles from Haifa, he told himself.

Fifty miles! he thought. Fifty miles of mute testimony to the death and destruction of war. And in the end, what had he accomplished? He had found three kibbutzim and no trace of Avi or Shoshana Tamir. This kibbutz had been the hardesthit of the lot. But the place swarmed with kibbutzniks and was full of life and purpose. They’ve got their priorities straight, he decided; rebuild the school first.

A young couple swung past holding hands. Both were tired and dirty from work and more engrossed in each other than where they were going. “Need help?” the boy asked. Matt told them whom he was looking for. The girl pointed to a new building under construction. The boy laughed. “Take a hammer. He needs help.” Their laughter joined and they wandered off, still holding hands.

Matt found Avi on a ladder installing electrical wiring in the ceiling. “Mr. Tamir.” It was almost a question, but not quite. He recognized the scientist but he had changed. He was lean, not pudgy, and his skin had been burned brown from the sun.

The man recognized him but said nothing and continued to work. Matt waited. Finally, Tamir climbed off the ladder. He held onto it for a few minutes, resting. Fatigue etched lines across his face. “Come, it’s time for supper.” He led Matt to a washhouse where they joined a line of men and women waiting for a turn at the wash-basins. “Water is still a problem,” Tamir told him. After washing, they entered the new schoolhouse that doubled as a mess hall and waited their turn in the serving line.

Lillian was serving food behind the counter. A look Matt did not recognize shot across the woman’s face when she saw him. She methodically filled his tray and said nothing. They squeezed onto benches at a crowded table. Animated conversation in Hebrew went on around them as the diners talked about what work would go on after dinner. “Our discussions sound like arguments,” Tamir explained. “Three Israelis equals four opinions.” Thanks to the meal, his natural good humor was returning. “The lack of electrical lights and outlets is holding up work. I’m fixing that first.” After eating, Matt joined Tamir and the two worked together, the scientist barraging Matt with a constant stream of instructions. It was after eleven o’clock when they quit.

Tamir found a bench in the schoolyard and sat down. He was obviously exhausted. “Why?” was all he asked, now ready to talk.

“I’m looking for Shoshana,” Matt said, staring into the night.

“There’s nothing here for you.”

There, it was out. Now Matt knew. Shoshana was dead—the one thing he feared most but had half expected. The reality of her death drove a deep cold wedge into his emotions and he could feel tears well up in his eyes. “I want to visit her grave.”

Tamir said nothing. Finally, he turned and looked at Matt. “What do you see here?”

Matt was surprised by the question. He could hear singing and music coming from the schoolhouse. “Life going on,” he said. Silence. “It’s amazing,” he continued, “war is so impersonal and antiseptic from the air. You don’t see the destruction and waste from up there.” He was looking at the stars. “You know what’s so wrong about war?” He answered his own question, not expecting an answer. “We forget the horrors and if it doesn’t kill or maim you, it’s the most exciting thing that can happen to a person. No wonder we can’t get away from it,”

“That’s not the reason we kill each other here,” Tamir said. “Too many differences, too many people want this small piece of the earth and are not willing to share it.” He hung his head. “We haven’t solved our problems. We’ll fight again.”

“Then why are you here in a kibbutz?” Matt asked. “There’s so much you can do to help your country get ready if you’re going to have to fight another war.”

The scientist raised his head. Would the young man sitting beside him understand that this kibbutz was his home, the place where Shoshana had been born and his wife Miriam killed? “Here is Israel’s moral compass, its conscience. If we lose this, we are nothing. And to think, I gave my country nuclear weapons, and almost created a Holocaust.”

“That wouldn’t have been your fault,” Matt protested.

“Where does responsibility begin? Where does it end?” The pain in Tamir’s words filled the night air. “Tell me, for I don’t know.”

Matthew Zachary Pontowski III, grandson to the President of the United States, didn’t have the answer. “I think my grandfather knows,” he said. Then: “You never answered the question, though. Why are you here?”

“This is my home and where I can help Israel the most.” The crystalline hardness that had soured Tamir’s life shatteredas he sat in the clear night air next to the young American. “And where Shoshana can help.”

For an instant, Matt would have sworn that his heart stopped. “But you said …”

“I said, ‘There’s nothing here for you.’ She was badly wounded—burned. She won’t marry you, not now.”

“Let her tell me that.”

Avi Tamir relented. “She’s in a hospital outside Tel Aviv. I’ll take you there tomorrow.”

“Daddy, what are you reading?” Megan, one of Furry’s twin five-year-old girls, crawled onto the couch beside her father, pulled the orders out of his hands, and pretended to read them.

“Those are orders assigning us to another base,” Furry answered.

“Is it far away?”

“Yes, Meggie, it’s in the United States. That’s where you were born.”

“Does that mean we all have to move?” The little girl could carry on the most serious conversations.

“Yep, it sure do.” He threw her over his shoulder and carried her upstairs to the bedroom Megan shared with her twin, Naomi.

“Sleep tight,” he said, tucking her in bed.

“And don’t let the bedbugs bite,” she giggled, completing their bedtime ritual. He checked on her sister who was already asleep. “Daddy,” Megan’s sleepy voice came from her bed, “why do we have to move so often?”

“Because it’s what I do for a living.”

“But I’ll miss my friends. Can’t you do something else?”

“Probably not,” he told her. “It’s what I am, Meggie. Go to sleep.” He turned out the light and closed the door. Then he hesitated and cracked it open, so he could keep them safe.

The doctor was brisk efficiency and only took time from his busy schedule because his superior told him to. “Shoshana received third-degree burns over the left side of her face,” he explained, leading the two men down a corridor. “A little of her scalp and a small part of her earlobe were burned away where her helmet had not protected her. But all that can be repaired with skin grafts.” Matt could sense Avi stiffen.

“Luckily,” the doctor continued, “the Nomex flight suit she was wearing protected most of her. She will have a zipper shaped burn scar down the front of her body. It runs from her crotch right up between her breasts.” The doctor smiled. “For some reason, it amuses her. Her left hand was burned the worst when her tank was hit—two fingers burnt off—we can’t fix that.” He held the door to a large ward open. “This way, please.”

Shoshana saw them coming and laid down the book she was reading beside her. Her eyes followed Matt as he made his way to her.

“I told you I’d be back,” he said. His words were full and warm, unforced. He knew he loved this woman. Her right hand reached out for his and he didn’t care about the heavy bandages that covered most of her head and face. She was alive.

“I wish … I wish,” she began, her voice strained, “that you hadn’t come.”

“This doesn’t matter”—he looked at her bandages—“reconstructive surgery … it doesn’t matter.”

“We do agree on that.” He could hear a bitter amusement in her words.

“Captain Pontowski is right about the surgery,” the doctor said. “We have you scheduled for a trip to Geneva. The Swiss have the best burn center in the world.”

“I’m not going,” Shoshana said.

“But you must,” her father whispered.

“There’s better things to do with the money,” she said. “And with my time.”

Matt smiled, for the surgery didn’t matter to him. “When are you going to marry me?”

She squeezed his hand and looked at him. A slight shake of her head. She did love this man. “Not now. There’s too much to do here.”

The smile never left Matt’s face. He knew she was telling him to go—at least for now. “I’ll be back, you know.”

She knew.