of the killing zone—like it was a parade!”
“I know, Iftach.”
“Into the killing zone you slide in like commandos, in small groups, and from several directions, so that if one is hit, the others may still hit the target.”
“I know. Enough.”
“And to fly as fast as you can! And stick close to the ground—there are always hills to hide behind!”
Khetz said in a calm voice, “Listen, Iftach. There is a good reason why we’re going in this way, flying formation and at high altitude. You are just not acquainted with the planning.”
I couldn’t shut up. “What is it I don’t know, Khetz? What is there to know? Okay, so you believe in your electronics—switch it on, who cares? But keep low to the ground! The ground defends you, hides you from their radars and missiles! Khetz, the ground is physics, not electronics. The ground is real!”
“I know.”
“Then do me a favor and don’t fly in there in formation! Why this parade, Khetz, why all this operazia? It is impossible to fight this way. Where is the personal leeway? How will your pilots see the missiles, break—”
“Enough!”
Finally I shut up.
THE SMALL CAR HOPPED and yawed on the old road to Yavneh. The evening was beautiful, and the air was full of the smell of wild blossoms. A large orange moon, almost full, rose in the east and lit the world. The road shone before us like a line of silver, and all around was white like milk. Khetz switched off the car’s lights, and so we drove.
“Yo, like daytime!” But there was no joy in his voice. I was silent. Something bad, bigger than I, was happening right in front of me, and there was nothing I could do. I felt tied up and mute, like in a nightmare.
But when we left the main road and turned into the side road leading to our base, Khetz stopped the car on the shoulder and switched the engine off. Suddenly a thought—a hope—rose in me. Was he going to say I had convinced him? And when we got to the base, would he call Moti and postpone this operation to think a little more?
But Khetz only lit a cigarette and asked me what was going on with the Dagger, that air-to-air missile he lent me. After a pause, I was glad to tell him that the test flights were going very well. It seemed that adaptation of the Dagger with the Mirage was possible. All that was left was to launch the missile on an aerial training target, to see if it launched without problems and scored a hit.
The change of subject was relaxing.
Khetz smiled at me warmly and said that the combination of Mirage plus Dagger might be “almost too good.” The cigarette illuminated the wrinkles in his lean face and lit sparks in his small, dark eyes. We both were thinking the same thing: the missile the Fighting First was using for tests came from the Falcons, Khetz’s Phantoms. They also had too few missiles. Suppose the tests come out well. Then what? Is all this going to be just a theoretical experiment? Nobody at headquarters had any intention of giving us such good stuff.
Then Khetz said, “If your experimental launch is a success, you’ll get six Daggers from the Falcons to take with you down to Refidim.”
“Wow, Khetz!”
“But with one condition.” We eyed each other. “That you undertake personally to bring me a MiG shot down by a Dagger.”
“What do you want, his scalp?” We both laughed.
He lit a cigarette for me, too. We sat a little more, perhaps for a longer time than expected of two busy men whose squadrons await them, but long enough for the moon to set. It became dark, and then something strange happened. Khetz was not the sentimental type, and it was not his habit to open his heart, at least not with me. But then, sitting behind the wheel, he opened up and told me of a strange dream that kept repeating the past few nights: Aki was visiting him. This was the first and only occasion when Aki’s name was brought up.
Khetz asked me, and I told him about that awful afternoon, two years before, when the phone rang in Refidim and I was scrambled with Zorik to search the Red Sea south of the town of Suez. Once and once again, and for the third time, we scanned the opaque surface of the water while the sun was setting and the air darkened. I told Khetz in detail how we returned time and again to the oil and jet fuel slick, and how we circled each of the few ships in the vicinity, and of the hopes that rose when sailors waved to us with unclear pieces from one cargo ship— its name was
Khetz hadn’t heard this story about Aki’s death from me. We smoked and talked. His voice, when he talked with me of Aki, was soft and warm. The dream was pleasant, he told me. Not at all frightening.
And when we arrived home and separated, the hour was already late. The moon set and the darkness was total, and the lawns among the eucalyptus trees began to collect dew. We said good night, and each of us climbed his own set of stairs and entered silently into the opposing door. I saw his outside light going off.
Sleep covered me like a waterfall. But at midnight I woke with a start. A sudden fear nailed my flesh, and I didn’t know who or what woke me. Sleep did not return, and I lay gazing at the dark ceiling till I understood, slowly and silently, what my friend Sam Khetz had told me.
THE CORD BETWEEN US unraveled on Saturday, July 18, 1970.
When I came out of the house in the morning I stopped at the door, went back, and told Ali that Khetz was going to die today. “Aki came to call him,” I told her.
Her eyes grew big, and she waved me away like a fly, saying I was tired and stressed, and talking nonsense. “Go to work, and when you get back we’ll take a couple of days off. I have to take you in hand.”
“But Ali, Khetz agreed—”
“Go.”
I went. I didn’t fly that day. We were just a minor side show to that day’s performance. Menachem led our four-ship division on patrol. A heavy haze hung over the canal when the Phantoms charged into Egypt, and my Mirages didn’t see much of what happened on the other side.
That evening the debriefing of Operation Challenge took place. Again we met in the same barracks building in Tel Aviv, and the same audience was present. Sam Khetz was already gone, and his navigator, Einy, was a prisoner in Egypt, joining his predecessors there. The story of the failure of the Phantoms was told by Avihu, the commander of the second Phantom squadron. He himself got back by sheer luck, with his aircraft badly damaged, and survived a very ugly crash landing in Refidim.
The debriefing was fragmented and disjointed. The audience didn’t listen. The officers in the front rows conferred secretly all the time with Moshe Dayan, who looked with one eye at the ground near Moti Hod. An EW man stood and began defending the electronic warfare gear that had failed us, giving out details and data; suddenly the whole thing ceased to be a secret. At last Moti took the podium and said, “Gentlemen, we failed in this operation, but the war goes on.” Then Dayan and the senior officers left.
In the door out I spoke to my new base commander, Col. Rafi Harlev, who had just replaced Yak, and sheepishly asked if the Falcons squadron was available. Harlev looked at me for a long time.
“No,” he finally replied. “We’ve named a replacement.”
RIGHT AWAY I KNEW WHO THE MAN was. Even before the name was announced, before I saw Ran Pecker shaking hands with Moti, it was as clear as day that Ran was the right man, the one in the whole air force on whom this terrible mission was built. Frank Savage, the veteran fighting general, brave as the devil, came once again ready to do battle. Ran unpacked his suitcases—already cleared to go for a year of studies in London—returned the plane tickets, silenced his wife, Kheruta, and the kids, who longed for a happy, calm, green year, and reported to Hatzor to take the broken and ailing Falcons under his wing.
Pecker took upon himself a difficult mission, to restore that squadron and lead it while continuing to fight the war, without one day’s rest. And he took on one more thing that even Frank Savage—the original—hadn’t done: he
