LITMIR.BIZ

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      For Avraham Gold, this was the part he hated.

      Hate was the wrong word. He feared it. Any second now, coming right up.

      He always talked here. He talked too much. He felt that he would blurt anything, just to get past this place. He took a long drag from his cigarette – against the rules to smoke on patrol, but it was the only thing that relaxed him.

      “Leave Israel?” he said. “Never! Israel is my home, now and forever. I will travel abroad, certainly, but leave? How could I? We are called by God to live here. This is the Holy Land. This is the land that was promised.”

      Avraham was twenty years old, a corporal in the Israeli Defense Forces. His grandparents were Germans who had survived the Holocaust. He believed every word that he said. But it still sounded hollow to his ears, like a corny pro-settler TV commercial.

      He was at the wheel of the jeep, driving the third in a line of three. He glanced at the girl sitting next to him. Daria. God, she’s beautiful!

      Even with her close-cropped hair, even with her body covered primly in her uniform. It was her smile. It would light up the sky. And her long eyelashes – like a cat.

      She had no business being up here, in this… no-man’s-land. Especially with her views. She was a liberal. There shouldn’t be any liberals in the IDF, Avraham had decided. They were useless. And Daria was worse than a liberal. She was…

      “I don’t believe in your God,” she said simply. “You know that.”

      Now Avraham smiled. “I know, and when you get out of the army, you’re going to – ”

      She finished the thought for him. “Move to Brooklyn, that’s right. My cousin owns a moving company.”

      He almost laughed, despite his nerves. “You’re a skinny girl to carry couches and pianos up and down flights of stairs.”

      “I’m stronger than you might – ”

      Just then, the radio screeched. “Abel Patrol. Come in, Abel Patrol.”

      He picked up the receiver. “Abel.”

      “Whereabouts?” came the tinny voice.

      “Just entering Sector Nine as we speak.”

      “Right on time. Okay. Eyes sharp.”

      “Yes, sir,” Avraham said. He clicked off the receiver and glanced at Daria.

      She shook her head. “If it’s so worrisome, why don’t they do something about it?”

      He shrugged. “It’s the military. They’ll fix it just as soon as something terrible happens.”

      The problem was right up ahead. The convoy was moving east to west along the narrow ribbon of roadway. To their right was a stand of dense, deep forest – it began fifty meters from the road. The IDF had cleared the land right to the border. Where those woods began was Lebanon.

      To their left were three steep, green hills. Not mountains, really, but neither were they rolling hills. They were abrupt, and sheer. The roadway wrapped around and behind the hills, and for just a moment, radio communications were tenuous, and the convoys were vulnerable.

      IDF command had been talking about those hills for over a year. It had to be the hills. They couldn’t clear out the forest because it was Lebanese territory – it would cause an international incident. So for a while, they were going to dynamite the hills. Then they were going to build a guard tower atop one of them. Both plans were deemed unsuitable. Dynamiting the hills meant the road would have to be temporarily rerouted away from the border. And a guard tower would be under constant threat of attack.

      No, the best thing to do was run patrols between the hills and the forest night and day and just hope for the best.

      “Watch those woods,” Avraham said. “Eyes sharp.”

      He realized he had just repeated the exact same words as the commander. What a fool! He glanced at Daria again. Her heavy rifle lay alongside her thin frame. She giggled and shook her head, her face turning red.

      In the darkness ahead, a flash of light erupted from their left.

      It slammed into the middle jeep, twenty meters in front of them. The car exploded, spun to its left, and rolled. The car burned, the occupants already incinerated.

      Avraham stomped on the brakes, but too late. He skidded into the burning vehicle.

      Beside him, Daria screamed.

      They had attacked from the wrong side – the hill side. There was no cover over there. It was inside Israel.

      There was no time to speak, no time to give Daria a command.

      Gunfire came from both sides now. Machine gun fire raked his door. DUNK-DUNK-DUNK-DUNK-DUNK. His window shattered, spraying glass in on him. At least one of the bullets had pierced the armor. He was hit. He looked down at his side – there was a darkness, growing and spreading. He was bleeding. He could barely feel it – it seemed like a bee sting.

      He grunted. Men were running in the darkness.

      Instantly, before he knew it, his gun was in his hand. He aimed out the missing window.

      BLAM!

      The noise was deafening to his ears.

      He had hit one. He had hit one. The man had gone down.

      He sighted on another one.

      Steady…

      Something happened. His whole body bucked wildly in his seat. He had dropped his gun. A shot, something heavy, had gone right through him. It had come from behind him and punched through the dashboard. A gunshot, or a small rocket of some kind. Gingerly, numb with terror, he reached to his chest and touched the area below his throat.

      It was… gone.

      There was a massive hole in his chest. How was he even still alive?

      The answer came instantly: he soon wouldn’t be.

      He didn’t even feel it. A sense of warmth spread out through his body. He looked at Daria again. It was too bad. He was going to convince her… of something. Now that would never happen.

      She stared at him. Her eyes were round, like saucers. Her mouth was open in a giant O of horror. He felt the urge to comfort her, even now.

      “It’s okay,” he wanted to tell her. “It doesn’t hurt.”

      But he could not speak.

      Men appeared at the window behind her. With their rifle butts, they smashed away the remaining shards of glass. Hands reached in, trying to pull her out the window, but she fought them. She tore at them with her bare hands.

      The door opened. Three men now, dragging her, pulling at her.

      Then she was gone, and he was alone.

      Avraham stared at the vehicle burning in the darkness in front of him. It occurred to him that he had no idea what had happened to the lead vehicle. He supposed it didn’t matter now.

      He thought briefly of his parents and his sister. He loved them all, simply and without regret.

      He thought of his grandparents, perhaps standing ready to receive him.

      He could no longer make out the burning vehicle. It was just bright red, yellow, and orange, flickering against a black background. He watched as the colors became smaller and dimmer, the darkness spreading and growing even darker. The inferno of the exploded car now seemed like the guttering of a spent candle.

      He watched until the last of the color went out.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      4:35 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

      Headquarters of the Special Response Team

      McLean, Virginia

      “Well, I guess the band is officially back together,” Susan

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