Джеймс Миченер - The Source

Reich called his team back and tried to ignite the explosive by rifle fire, but nothing happened. From the Crusader ruins directly above the police station came many rounds of frenzied fire. “How does it sound up there?” Teddy shouted to no one in particular.

“Sounds like Ilana’s winning her bet,” Bagdadi replied.

“What do you mean?”

“They’re going to take the top before we get the station,” Bagdadi growled. He was off for the fourth time to assault the wall, again without result. “Damn the rain!” he cried, as drops ran down his fat face like tears.

At four minutes after ten the team handling the davidka threw potato masher number one into the far end of the Crusader ruins, and the whine and subsequent explosion were horrendous to hear, for to insure firing, the Palmach were using eighteen pounds of black gunpowder where an ordinary gun would have used two. “You can smell the cordite down here,” Bagdadi said in disbelief.

At ten-twenty-five potato masher number two headed for the Kurdish quarter, with equal noise but with little effect, except that when it exploded it seemed to make the May rain turn into a real downpour. Reich called to Bagdadi, “Any use trying to explode our dynamite?”

“Let’s wait,” the Iraqi replied, and through the rainstorm the police station remained in Arab hands.

Then davidka launched shots three, four, five at the Arab souks, at the mayor’s house and at the ammo dump behind the girls’ school, and as the last explosion died away, Bagdadi screamed in unsoldierly fashion, “Teddy! Look!”

Through the gloom, down the side of the Crusader hill, came Isidore Gottesmann and Ilana Hacohen. They were running like children, and Ilana was shouting, “Teddy, we’ve taken the whole hill. It’s ours!”

For a moment Teddy Reich held his hands over his face, muddy rain running down his wrists. Then he kissed Ilana and asked, “The stone house?”

“Great difficulty.”

“Take it,” he said, and as the two ran off to that stubborn house, he said to Bagdadi, “Now we knock out this station.”

The dynamiters, exhilarated by the news from above, darted once more through Arab bullets, reached once more the face of the concrete stronghold, but try as they might, they accomplished nothing. It was frustrating, bitterly disappointing. From above they could hear the Palmach song of victory, yet if the police station were held by the Arabs all would be lost. The Arabs inside, knowing this, fired back with cruel effect and the Jews were driven off.

At about three that morning Ilana and Gottesmann returned to the plateau.

“The stone house is ours!” they cried, and Teddy shouted, “Everyone here!” and with desperation the reinforced Jews rushed at the powerful concrete installation, again accomplishing nothing.

The rain halted, and Bagdadi promised, “Now we can explode the place,” but again the fuses failed to work and his valiant effort came to naught. Of his original team only he was left. He was crying.

It was now a few minutes after four and Teddy Reich was in despair. If dawn came, lighting the streets, the Arabs in the police station—not to mention those in the dread fortress on the high hill—could pick off the Jews with ease. “Everybody!” Reich begged. “Let’s get this cursed place.”

Isidore Gottesmann felt his nerves going, and Ilana knew that her husband could stand no more. Both wanted to retreat to the Jewish quarter, but neither would do so. “Once more,” she begged her tall German, and he who had led the fight both on top and at the stone house bit his cheeks and accompanied the next charge on the concrete walls. Nothing happened and Teddy led his men back.

It was now dawn and the Jews could expect from the Arab quarters a violent counterattack at any moment, but as Teddy stood disconsolately at the head of the stairs he began to laugh hysterically. Others ran to him, and they laughed too, like idiots, for halfway down the stairs, in the soft gray light of morning, an old Jewish woman with a shawl over her head was coming out of the Arab quarter, lugging a sewing machine.

“They’ve all gone,” she called hoarsely.

“They’ve what?” Teddy screamed.

“They are no more,” she cried, disappearing with her treasure.

Four Palmachniks leaped down the stairs, five, six steps at a time. With rifles ready they moved into the Arab quarter. Soon they fired, but in the air.

“See what’s happened!” Teddy shouted. There was no need. From the Crusader ruins Bar-El cried down, “They’ve fled from all positions,” and from the direction of the stone house other Jews came running with news that the Kurdish quarter, the sites on the hill, all were empty.

But the key position was not, and stubborn Arab shooting rang out from the police station, so that the Jews had to take cover down the stairs, and there Teddy Reich looked grimly at Bagdadi and asked, “Ready?” The plump Iraqi nodded, and with quick signals Reich sent many troops against the flanks of the building while he and Bagdadi ran zigzag to the front wall, where they tied down a massive charge of dynamite. Retiring to a corner of the building, where Arab bullets whined at them, they waited, and this time the fuse worked. There was a low, ugly, roaring explosion, after which Reich and Bagdadi darted boldly through the dust and into the gaping hole. Jews were at last inside the concrete police station.

The fighting was brief and hideous. In one room a Jew and an Arab, having exhausted their weapons, scratched and bit each other until the Arab finally strangled his opponent, but Bagdadi came blazing in to spray the place. Then he and Reich, in a compelling partnership of German and Iraqi, went heavy-footed room by room, with one-armed Reich swinging his Shmeisser in deadly fashion, until at last Bagdadi stuck his head out the top window, bellowing, “It’s ours! All but the roof.” And in this manner the impregnable station fell.

Only then could the Palmach believe that Safad was theirs. Men came running in from all quarters of the town to report, “There is no enemy,” and Reich led his leaders on a quick tour of the place to find it mysteriously deserted except for a few old Arabs too weak to run away. From one of these he pieced together what had happened. The old man said, “My son Mahmoud read about it in the paper.”

“About what?” Teddy asked in Arabic.

“Hashiroma,” the old man said. He didn’t understand the word, but he explained, “When the atoomi bomb fell at Hashiroma the rains came.” He moved his hand through the air, simulating a bomb. He mimicked the whining of the davidka and mumbled, “Don’t let the rain touch you, young man. It can eat right through your body.”

The unbelievable had happened. The miracle that Nissim Bagdadi had hoped for had taken place. The Arabs of Safad, that powerful multitude, had heard the ugly whine of davidka, had listened to the unprecedented rain, and had recalled the Jewish children crying, “A new weapon …” In the darkness dilated eyes spread terror, whispers crashed louder than explosions, and finally some fool had cried, “Atoomi bomb!”

“Where’s your son?” Reich asked the old man in Arabic.

“He ran away.”

“He left you? Like that?”

“It was the atoomi,” the old man cackled. “Be careful of the rain.”

From the safe homes by the mosque of Jama el-Ahmar the Arabs had fled. In the hours before dawn they had abandoned the strong points at the ends of the Heart-Purifying Bridge, where no Jews fought. From solid entrenchments the red-capped soldiers of Iraq, the black-and-white-crowned Lions of Aleppo and the warriors of the Grand Mufti fled. Outnumbering their enemy by more than forty to one, the Arab forces had constructed their own panic, and had then obeyed it.