Hesh Kestin - The Siege of Tel Aviv

“Ma’am!” he barks. “All hands on deck, ma’am!”

The base commander is mistress of the Marine officer’s trick of speaking quietly and slowly. Even so, her voice has all the feminine charm of a 50 cal. machine gun. Her delivery is pointed, humorless, staccato. Lieutenant Colonel McKendrick did not get where she is in the Corps because she is a pussy.

“Marines, I’ve been informed there has taken place a bit of unauthorized pleasure flying. In case it is not known to any of you assholes, the aircraft on this tarmac are property of the government of the United States of America, which does not look with favor on anyone borrowing same without official sanction. The original price tag on each of these aircraft is $67 million dollars, stripped. Losing one on an unauthorized flight would not only be sufficient for general court martial for the fist-fucker who does so, but would stain the reputation of this entire squadron, of which up to now I have been damn proud.”

She takes a moment to light a cigarette, something the commandant of any other base would never do, but this one is so far from official purview she can get away with anything up to but not including shooting several of her pilots in the head.

“Be that as it may, we’re in Office Hours.” This is the Marine equivalent of Captain’s Mast in the Navy, a form of military justice from which there is no appeal, and in which there are few limitations on punishment. “Sergeant Major?”

“Office Hours in session, ma’am!”

“Very good, sergeant major.” She looks out at her men with a mixture of anger and pity. “Now all of you gyrene cunts who participated in or aided this morning’s excursion, identify yourselves.”

At once Stan, Chris, and Jimbo step forward. Two other officers join them, then an enlisted man, then another, and another. Two officers follow. When the sergeant major steps up, the entire squadron joins him.

Col. McKendrick shakes her head slowly. “You sorry palm-fuckers make it so easy. Every gyrene on deck is hereby found guilty of violation of UCMJ Article 86, Unauthorized Absence, and is consequently restricted to barracks.”

The colonel pauses for a long time, her scowl slowly melting.

“For a period of two hours. Anyone ever mentions this offense or its level of punishment, I will personally remove his liver with my teeth. Sergeant Major, dismiss these Marines. Semper fi! And God bless America.”

TEL AVIV HAS NO harbor capable of berthing ocean-going ships. At the very center of its beachfront, a large marina shelters several hundred pleasure craft, mostly sail, but the port itself is far too shallow for commercial tonnage. Just to the south, in the tiny fishing port of Jaffa, lighters could be used to offload cargo from a freighter lying at anchor in deep water, but the ancient harbor, which was the region’s main port until the construction of Haifa in northern Israel and Ashdod in the south, now has neither the fleet of small boats necessary for the job nor the manpower trained to row them out and back.

Instead, the six freighters of the aid flotilla lie at anchor about two thousand feet beyond the breakers. Crew members on four of the ships pass boxes of supplies to others in lifeboats, who pass these on to a long daisy chains of civilians—male, female, young, old, secular and religious—standing waist deep in the surf. From the other two vessels, tankers filled to the gunwales with potable water, civilians shoulder fire hoses leading to tanker trucks on the beach.

AS HER CAMERAMAN SHOOTS the unloading from CV Star of Bethlehem , Connie Blunt manages to carry two pieces of expensive luggage to where Captain Frank oversees the unloading.

“Captain.”

The skipper scans the horizon with his binoculars. He knows the Egyptian Navy is out of the picture, but this operation is going on in broad daylight, and the only military cover he has is a group of half-tracks on the beach that have brought in female soldiers to punch a hole in the identity card of each person who receives a ration of MREs, Meals Ready to Eat, the US military’s solution to feeding fighting men in the field.

“Captain!”

“Jesus, what?”

“Is it safe to go ashore?”

“Safe? Every second this operation continues is one I can’t guarantee. So far, so good.”

“Well, I’m ready.”

He shouts down to the men and women in the daisy chain, “Hey, hold that thing out of the water!” The crew has now started unloading five-foot-long wooden crates marked FIM-92 in black stenciling. “Shit, anybody know Hebrew here? Billy!”

The rabbinical student comes running up with a carton marked Pharmaco . “These should go next, captain. Medical stuff. I got a whole crate opened—”

“I said I’m ready,” Blunt says. “Captain, we’ll need a boat.”

“Forget the meds. Get down there in the water, son, and make sure those long crates stay dry.”

The kid doesn’t have to be told twice. He is over the side and scampering down a rope ladder like a monkey with a skullcap pinned to his hair. He starts shouting at the people in the daisy chain, who stop for a moment, shocked to hear the strange locutions of biblical Hebrew. Billy shouts again. They get it, lifting the boxes above water. It is beginning to develop a chop.

“A boat! I’ll need a boat of some sort!”

“What boat?”

“I hope you don’t think I’m going to wade ashore!”

“We got no more boats for the unloading, sister, so for fucking sure we got no boats for you. If you’re not helping, go over the side!”

“Over the side?”

“Everyone else is doing it.”

“Captain, we’ve got equipment, expensive equipment. And luggage, Louis Vuitton for God’s sake. And my hair. I’m about to do a stand-up on the beach.”

As he picks up the binoculars once more to scan the skies, he starts to laugh. It comes out a gravelly snort, part amusement, part indignation. “You’ve got expensive equipment? You know what’s in them crates? Each one of them crates cost the US taxpayer thirty-eight thousand bucks, though from what I understand we got them at a significant discount from—never mind who from.” He turns to the daisy chain. “For chrissake, Billy, tell them to hold that shit out of the water! It don’t shoot wet!”

In a split second, Connie Blunt forgets about her luggage. “I thought we were carrying MREs. You don’t mean we haven’t been carrying humanitarian—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Captain Frank tells her, almost laughing now. “We’re bringing food and water, sister, but among the meals ready to eat we got a different kind of MREs. Missiles Ready to Engage. Doesn’t get more humanitarian than that.”

“But this contradicts everything we’ve been told!”

“War is hell, sister. Now get your fat ass out of the way or start humpin’ crates. I got no time to play around.” He considers for a moment. “Missiles Ready to Engage—I like it. You got no fucking idea how much I like it.”

The next moment he stops laughing. The entire daisy chain has frozen in place, every one of its human links looking up.

From out of the east, five gray jet fighters blast into view, coming in high from over the eastern horizon.

IN THE AIR, THE Syrian wing commander surveys the scene below: the six ships at anchor in choppy water, each unloading its cargo to long lines of Jews shifting the supplies to shore like a fire brigade of ants. Two much longer queues converge on a central point on the beach to receive the goods. At 2200 feet, this is the Syrian flight commander’s reconnaissance pass, high enough for his Sukhoi SU-24s to evade cannon fire from the beach. But there are no cannons visible on the beach, only several nests of khaki-painted vehicles, some trucks, mostly jeeps. He opens communication.