The gunner was still firing. With small-arms rounds flashing off the tank’s armor like the sparks from a welding torch. Maxwell put multiple bursts into a window where he glimpsed movement. In what seemed all too short a time, he found himself at the bottom of the ammo box.
Ma Deuce done let me down.
Black smoke wafted from the inside of the tank and rose from the grills and rear deck. Something was getting worse.
Maxwell reached down for his carbine. It wasn’t there. With the machine gun silenced, a half-dozen Jihadis charged the tank from the right rear.
He looked to the gunner.
Sergeant Nash had slumped down in his hatch. Unmistakably dead.
A thing of fucking beauty is a fucking joy forever, Maxwell told himself. It’s lonely at the top.
It struck him that the Jihadis had stopped firing their weapons. They just swarmed the tank now. Several more appeared behind the first wave.
Why not just shoot me? Maxwell wondered.
In an instant, the light came on. It enraged him to think that any man believed he’d let himself be taken prisoner.
He hauled himself out of the turret and drew his pistol. Firing point-blank into faces and chests. But the numbers were on the Jihadis’ side. They clambered onto the smoking tank. Mob rules. Searching for handholds, two Jihadis scorched their paws and leapt away. But the rest kept on coming, screaming at him. Maxwell continued firing, dropping them one after another. Until his pistol clicked empty.
Three Jihadis made it onto the deck on the far side of the turret.
Maxwell hurled the pistol into a man’s face. And he drew his great-grandfather’s sword.
“Dreadnaughts!” he shouted, and he laid into his enemy with cold steel.
Captain Brickell witnessed a remarkable thing. As his tank swung around the corner, he saw another M-1 stopped thirty meters ahead of him. Atop its smoking deck, his battalion commander was slashing away with a saber as a group of Jihadis swarmed around him.
It looked like a scene from an old pirate movie.
Brickell turned his co-ax machine gun on the Jihadis who had not yet managed to board Maxwell’s tank. The torrent of rounds swept them off their feet like heavy surf toppling children. One Jihadi bravely tried to kneel and launch an antitank rocket. Brickell cut him in half before he could shoot. Brickell’s loader was up in the adjacent hatch and firing too.
The attack on their rear distracted the Jihadis just long enough for the battalion commander to thrust his saber into one man’s torso, draw back, and smash the hilt into another’s mouth, knocking him headlong from the tank.
Suddenly alone, Maxwell looked about wildly. As if disappointed there was no one left to kill.
Behind the battalion commander, one of his crewmen slumped from the loader’s hatch. His posture said “KIA.”
Maxwell leapt from the tank, stabbed a writhing Jihadi, and jogged back toward Brickell. With his face blackened by smoke, the battalion commander’s grin looked like a madman’s.
Still clutching the saber that had been the joke of the battalion, he scrambled aboard the tank that had come to his rescue. Panting, he leaned into his subordinate’s face.
“Isn’t this the most goddamned fun you’ve ever had in your life?” Maxwell cried.
ELEVEN
Brigadier General Avi Dorn wanted to fight. To slay those who de-stroyed Israel. But Israel’s rebirth was more important than personal revenge.
Speaking on his internal brigade net, he gave the command: “All units, all units. Halt at your present locations. I say again, halt at your present locations.”
As Dorn expected, Yakov Greenberg responded immediately.
“Avi, are you crazy? I could walk to Miqdal from here. We’re smashing them. They’re running like mice. We can be in Nazareth before the Americans reach Afula. It’s wide open.”
“All units. Halt at your present locations.”
Zvika Abramoff was next: “Yakov’s right. They’re simply running away. A halt now makes no sense. And I’m on exposed ground, I don’t want to stop here.”
“All of you. Listen to me. I gave an order. You’re not in the old IDF anymore; this isn’t a debating society. I’ve been ordered by the Americans to halt. You’ll halt, or you’ll be relieved.”
“This is idiocy,” Greenberg responded. “You can tell the Americans I said so. I thought they wanted us to cover their attack.”
“Plans change. I don’t understand everything the Americans are up to. Just do your duty and obey orders. Out.”
Avi Dorn switched off the microphone and sat down. He closed his eyes, finding all of this unbearable. But he had to do what was best for the once and future Israel.
Soon enough, the Americans would be calling. The Americans, from whom he had not heard a word since the attack began.
Captain Jason Albaugh of B Troop, Quarter Cav, ordered his driver to pivot and head uphill. He wanted to verify personally what 3rd Platoon’s leader had just reported.
The Israeli Exile Brigade had been advancing aggressively since it launched its supporting attack onto the heights. Now, Lieutenant Daly reported that they’d come to an abrupt halt, with no tactical rhyme or reason.
Quarter Cavalry’s mission had been to screen to the left of 1-18 Infantry, which was moving forward to cover the flank of the 1st ID attack. Albaugh’s troop, on the extreme left, was to maintain contact with the Israeli exile brigade.
Albaugh passed a few smoldering Jihadi trucks, but the fighting — what little there had been of it here — had moved on. In less than ten minutes, he spotted the turret of Daly’s tank. The lieutenant had put the vehicle in hull defilade, in a swale below a high meadow.
The lieutenant’s head poked up from his hatch. When he saw Albaugh approaching, he climbed out of the turret and jumped to the ground. He waited until Albaugh’s M-1 had come up behind, then trotted over and gestured that he wanted to climb aboard.
Albaugh clambered out of his hatch. Ready for a stretch. The lieutenant hauled himself up onto the fender.
“What the fuck? Over.” Albaugh said.
“Get up on your turret, sir,” the lieutenant told him. “If you stand up, you can see them from here.”
Albaugh scrambled over his tank’s packed bustle racks and stood up between the hatches. Thinking that he made a lovely target for some stay-behind.
Daly was right. The Israelis had just stopped. Albaugh didn’t even need binoculars. Half a kilometer away, he could see a half-dozen IEF tanks and a pair of infantry carriers. No flames, no smoke. They were just plain stopped. Some of the crew members milled about. Others were doing maintenance checks.
“You have their freq?”
“Yes, sir. But they’re not responding.”
“This some kind of union rule? A siesta break?” Albaugh said. Mostly to himself. He was mad that he hadn’t taken the lieutenant’s word and called in a report immediately.
“What’s going on, sir?”
“I’m stumped, T.J. Try to raise them again. If you get a response, give me a holler. Immediately.”
“Roger, sir.”
