31

AT AN ARMORED CORPS base thirty miles from the Lebanese border, Misha Shulman finds most of his fellow tankists, the majority from northern Israel and thus closer to the base, in manic disarray. The headlights of his Mercedes reveal the same scene repeated at Armored Corps bases across Israel. Inside the reinforced concrete structure that holds the brigade’s ninety-two tanks and six jeeps, all is ready. The vehicles are gassed up and loaded with ammunition, spare parts, medical equipment, and food rations for two weeks. Trickle-current has kept their battery banks charged. They are ready for action, but for one minor detail. The six-inch-thick sheet-steel gates of the bunkers are locked.

Through the kind of snafu that is common to all armies, even one so well organized as the IDF, the base’s regular-army maintenance crews have been rushed to the front, and with them the keys.

Misha assesses the situation in an instant.

Before him, his fellow tankists attempt to pry open the locks with tire irons from their civilian vehicles, but the tire irons bend and the lock hasps remain rigidly in place. An officer attempts to shoot off a lock with his sidearm. It makes a big noise.

There is a certain absurdity built into the structure of the IDF that is not found in any other army. All armies but the IDF are organized in a top-down command structure in which the best trained, most capable personnel command and those less qualified carry out those commands. But Israel’s defense system is dependent on reserve soldiers who may be corporals in the IDF but run huge businesses in their civilian lives. In order to concentrate on their civilian careers, many leaders of Israeli society avoid taking on the honor of high rank in the reserves because that honor carries the burden of extra months of training and maneuvers every year. The head of a company employing a thousand workers may thus find himself under the command of a schoolteacher whose leadership experience is confined to a classroom of fourth-graders or a farmer whose civilian responsibility is a herd of dairy cows. In times of peace, these differences are swept away in a kind of gentleman’s agreement. But in times of war, leader-ship tends to occur organically.

To wit: Reserve Staff Sgt. Misha Shulman, whose formal education ended before high school, whose military training outside of ten years in the IDF reserves consists of five years on the streets of Moscow, seven years in the Siberian gulag, and twelve years running Israel’s principal criminal organization.

“Get the fuck out of the way,” he shouts to the lieutenants and captains attempting to pry open the locks.

In response, the lieutenants and captains who are in theory his commanding officers melt away from the gates.

Misha is already in his Mercedes: the heaviest model made, two tons of German automobile powered by a five-liter engine so over-engineered it will outlast the car itself. At speed he backs it up thirty feet, then throws the vehicle into drive, flooring it. The car hits the gates so hard the steel gives way with a sound like an enormous hammer pounding a reinforced concrete wall.

The gate remains on its hinges, but one of its doors is bent sufficient for the bright lights of the tank bunker to shine out into the early morning dim.

Misha backs up again, now to fifty feet.

This time, when the vehicle hits, the sound of metal on metal is accompanied by a hiss from the car’s crushed radiator. Beyond the escaping steam is an opening wide enough for a man to slip through.

In a moment the man is in, and in another comes the sound of a Mk IV Chariot tank’s enormous 1200cc diesel starting up. As the other reservists run to the side, Misha among them, the tank snaps open the steel gates of the bunker and pushes Misha’s steaming Mercedes out of the way like a cheap toy.

Brigade 112 is off to war.