Hesh Kestin - The Siege of Tel Aviv

From the ground, Yigal is not yet aware of all that is in the crates, but it is certainly one hell of a good sign one day before the counterattack is set to begin. Now he need not worry about starvation at home.

“Cobi, suit up,” he says. “If things work out, very soon you’ll be a tank commander again. And get our guest a clean uniform from my closet.” He looks up again. “God bless America. Staff Sgt. Abed, our time has come.”

OVER DECADES, THE INSTITUTION of the president’s cabinet had come to reflect not only the size and complexity of the American government but its relation with the corporate world that is its principle stakeholder. Though more than 90% of United States tax revenues derives from individuals, corporations retain massive power and influence in Washington. Very few individual employees have the leverage to make the mind-boggling campaign donations of American corporations and their special interest groups. Thus the American paradox: individuals finance the vehicle of government, corporations drive it. So it is hardly a wonder that the White House has come to look like the corporate world. The president’s cabinet, once a panel of advisors expected to contribute across a broad range of issues, is now made up of specialists, as in any large business: secretaries of the treasury who would not dare comment on national security, secretaries of defense with no interest in housing or health or education. Because of this, when the president makes decisions, he relies upon a close inner circle outside the cabinet, and in the end upon two individuals: Flo Spier, whose shrewd knowledge of the electorate got him to the White House, and Felix St. George, who never stumbled upon a world crisis that could not be ameliorated by the forceful application of cynicism. Thus every major decision in the White House comes down to delicately balancing the requirements of domestic politics with the demands of America’s role in the greater world.

“So what you’re saying, Felix, is that we know what the A-rabs are about to do, but we don’t know how the Jews will counter?”

Like many presidents before him, the leader of the West instinctively and mistakenly includes Iran in the Arab world, just as Israel becomes “the Jews.” In the Oval Office, no one bothers to correct him.

“We know the Arabs are gearing up,” Felix St. George says. “They’re calling it the Siege of Tel Aviv.”

“And we know this how?”

“CIA, DIA, NSA—all in accord.”

“But nothing from the Jews?”

“Nothing, Mr. President. The Israelis have gone low-tech on us. Or they just don’t want to talk.”

“Sigint?” The president loves to use the lingo.

“Signals intelligence works rather well when there are signals. As to humint, the damn CIA pulled its assets from Tel Aviv when the writing was on the wall. They claim their people in Jerusalem were picked up early in the war and never heard from again. Probably they’re in Tehran. The agency preferred their people in Tel Aviv not suffer the same fate.” St. George carefully adds a note of detachment. “That’s what they say.”

“Satellite?”

“DIA has nothing. Just pictures of a severely overcrowded city. Nothing moving. Like a still photograph.”

“And the mysterious pink planes?”

“They are working on that, sir.”

“And those missiles the Jews used to take down the Syrian what-chamacalls?”

“Sukhois, sir. It appears Israel may retain some missile capability. But Stingers don’t work very well against tanks. In fact, they don’t work at all. And tanks are what’s going to roll into Tel Aviv.”

“And the nukes?”

“Those don’t work against tanks either. Even if Israel uses them, it won’t save Tel Aviv. To hit Iran, they’d need long-range bombers. We know they have none.”

“They have jets,” the president says. “Three at least. They could—”

“Jets could conceivably deliver the weaponry, indeed.” St. George makes sure he interrupts the president at every meeting, if only just once. He likes to keep the president in line. St. George is a baseball fan. His favorite pitchers always brush batters back. “We’ve seen evidence of only those three fighters, sir. Super Hornets. But if they’re in Israel, our satellite cameras can’t find them. It’s not like they have any ground facilities left. There’s a small field just outside of Tel Aviv, Sde Dov, but it doesn’t have the runway length. Still a mystery, though there is speculation the pink paint may be anti-radar—we know the Israelis were working on this. Best guess: the three planes probably crashed in the sea for lack of fuel. A suicide mission. But it hardly matters. Pink or green or purple, the planes are gone.” He fixes the president with his translucent gray eyes. “What is clear, so far as can be deduced, is that Israel, what’s left of it, is backed into a corner. There’s no way we can see they can use their nukes, other than in a giant suicide. No armor, no air force, no reserves of fuel or ammunition. Not much food or medicine either.”

“Except for what we’ve just dumped on them.”

“Mr. President, very few countries have gone to war armed only with MREs, antibiotics, and field radios.”

“The radios were a nice touch,” the president says. “I see your fine Hungarian hand in that.”

St. George hates to be called Hungarian. Even “European” galls him. He has been an American citizen for over forty years. “The radios will enable Israel to surrender in an orderly fashion.”

Flo Spier is not pleased. Damn , she thinks, I light the fire, and now the pest from Budapest is frying his fish on it? “Mr. President, my idea was we don’t want to be caught with our electoral pants down. By sending aid, we look like we care—”

The president is offended. “We do care.”

“Yes, sir, of course. But in terms of perception, it’s important to leave a care trail. You will recall my mantra for success in November: Jewish money, Christian votes. What we’ve dumped on Tel Aviv makes a year’s foreign aid look like Halloween candy. A very impressive attempt to intervene without endangering US forces. Plus, we have offered to take three million refugees.”

“Which we may not actually have to take,” the president says. “When do we announce it?”

Flo Spier has clearly taken back the reins. Fuck you, Hungarian sleazebag, and fuck your realpolitik—when it comes to real politics, there’s nothing like a woman . “Mr. President,” she says coolly. “We announce it when it’s too late.”

AT PRECISELY 3:49 AM, as soldiers of the Quartermaster’s Corps paint the last of five blue-green Israeli Egged buses a dull khaki and others follow to stencil on Egyptian insignia, an IDF jeep leading two similarly disguised Humvees rolls through the gates of the bus cooperative’s main installation on Begin Street. The chief of staff returns the sentries’ salute, then dismounts to enter a makeshift meeting room that normally functions as Egged’s repair center. Only a few buses are inside, the rest scattered around the city, out of gas, most functioning as broiling shelters for those refugees who cannot find better.

Two hundred IDF personnel, armed to the teeth, stand to attention, their folding chairs, arrayed in precise rows, shrieking on the concrete floor. Pinky shakes hands with the colonel at the front of the room. He is in his late thirties, a fireplug whose dark curls, cut close to his head, are shorter than those rising out of his shirt. His muscles strain the fabric of his uniform sleeves, which according to IDF regulation are carefully rolled to an inch over his elbows. When war broke out, the colonel headed up the chief of staff’s commando unit. Half the personnel here are his, together with selected individuals from the navy’s special operations group and a similar team from the air force. In better times, the chief of staff’s commandos would be more than sufficient to the job, but most are gone, either prisoners of war or, as the military euphemism has it, missing.