Ranch

Retired major general Ariel Sharon was practically neighbors with Judith Margolies. It took a scant half hour for her to be driven from her kibbutz of Yad Mordechai to his home at the Sycamore Ranch a little to the east of Sderot.

She was driven by Colonel Yehoshua Saguy. He was the chief intelligence officer of the 143rd Reservse Armored Division. Saguy was also the first stepping stone in a bridge that Judith hoped would lead to the Prime Minister. Certainly she had exhausted every other avenue, and now, on the very brink of national catastrophe, she was near despair.

Neither Judith nor Saguy were in uniform, as they were not in a duty status, but both had brought their Class Bs in duffle bags they stored in the boot of the colonels car. Judith, who was twenty-six years of age chronologically, chose not to wear the long-sleeved minidresses that she normally affected. They were quite popular in 1973, even in Arab countries. Instead she wore somewhat more conservative attire, as she was to meet a married military man who was her own age in terms of calendar time. But she would not be able to disguise how she looked to be two decades younger than she was.

The Sycamore Ranch had all the olfactory ambiance of your run-of-the-mill sheep farm, but Judith did not even crinkle her nose. After all, there was livestock at Yad Mordechai too. The general was expecting them. He was sitting on his porch sharing tea with his wife Lily when Yehoshua drove up, and rose to greet his visitors. Despite their non-duty status both the colonel and lieutenant colonel Margolies saluted the general out of respect, then Yehoshua drew near to shake his superior officer's hand. There was real affection between the two men. Sharon said, "Yeshi, you have brought arm candy with you, and you never spoke of her!"

"It is nothing like that, sir," the colonel said with a slightly embarrassed grin. "This is Sgan Aluf Judith Margolies and she, or rather what she has to say and to show you, is the reason I have come."

Judith bowed her head to affirm what the colonel said. Lily Sharon came down from the porch to join her husband, who was genuinely confused. He said, "I knew you looked familiar, I have seen photos but I assumed they were from the Second War. So youthful you still are! How do you manage to do it?"

"Time travel, sir," said Judith, with a completely straight face, and just for a moment Sharon believed her. Then he decided it was a delicious joke and broke into his characteristic laugh. If Judith was B'nei Elohim she would not have spoken so, even as a joke.

"Lily, We are to entertain a celibrity today," he told his wife. "This is Judith Margolies." And such was Judith's fame as a soldier and a Nazi hunter that Lily could only remain silent and stare in genuine awe. But more soberly, Sharon said, "Whatever you have come to tell me is for the ears of Lily also. If not, then you might as well leave now."

Yehoshua assured him, "Sir, nothing we have is from Israeli intelligence, because Israeli intelligence has practically nothing. That, in fact, is precisely the problem."

Judith hefted the briefcase she was carrying. "If we could go indoors, sir?"

In the general's spacious home Judith saw a large dining table under an ornate chandelier. She asked General Sharon for his permission to use it to lay out what she had brought, which he cheerfully granted. She reached into her briefcase and began laying out documents. As she did this, Sharon, his wife, and Colonel Saguy seated themselves, and Judith began to speak as she worked.

"I think, general, that despite the fact that you were born here and I came from Britain, we are very much alike. We are both patriots who have fought hard for the continued existence of our small country, and we both hold the opinion that lately it is led by idiots. And how very unfortunate that is, sir. Within twenty-four hours you, I, and Colonel Saguy will be in field dress and the country will be at war."

She paused to see the startled reaction of the general, then continued to lay out her evidence. She said, "Aman has nothing like this, sir, because the Egyptians have put the canal under a SAM umbrella that makes aerial reconnaisance quite perilous, and besides, the belief that Egypt will not attack has taken on the dimensions of religious belief."

"There what is the source of this information?" demanded the general.

"The B'nei Elohim, sir."

General Sharon had been raised to think in entirely secular terms, and he was proud of that fact. "The ones with the crazy white horns? They are religious kooks themselves."

"Kooks, sir, perhaps, but they are kooks who grounded most of the Egyptian air force on the first day of the Third War. They have aided me in every way to bring Nazi war criminals to justice. And now they have reached out to me with this imagery, even as I am now reaching out to you, sir."

Sharon began looking at them. The photographs were mostly white, with the Suez Canal running through them as a gray band, and they were speckled with tiny shapes that were quite distinctive: Soviet-supplied T-55 main battle tanks. To the untrained eye they resembled nothing so much as a sketch done in ink by an atavistic child, but Sharon knew every kilometer of the canal. It was unusual, but clearly genuine.

Colonel Saguy said, "We counted thirteen hundred tanks, sir, T-55s, some T-62s, all nearly flush on the western bank of the canal. That is far more than they've ever brought forward in exercises before. It is more than they had even last May, the first time we thought they were going to cross over."

"Thirteen hundred? That's their reserves as well. But this photograph, I've never seen the like."

Judith supplied an answer: "It's a negative of a thermal image taken from a B'nei Elohim platform that...well, sir, it can best be described as an airship. It moves fairly slowly, sounds like a faint whirlwind, and it would not do for it to be seen by day. These images are from two nights ago. No one in Zahal cares to have a look, but the entire Egyptian Second Army is sitting on the canal from Qantara to Deveroir, and the entire Egyptian Third Army likewise is parked from Suez City north to the lake."

Sharon didn't ask whether the enemy was massed on the shores of Great Bitter Lake as well. He knew even the Egyptians would consider it unfeasible to make a crossing there. And there were no roads to Israel north of Qantara. But he did say, "This is hard to believe. Certainly our own high-altitude reconnaissance planes, flying out of range of the SAMS, would have seen something."

"No sir," said Lilith. "Everything, everything is under camoflage netting, so you can only catch them after dusk with infrared, and when you go thermal you need to fly under a thousand mneters to resolve the gun barrels. They've been getting all this ready since August. But Chief Idiot Eli Zeira preaches that Egypt isn't confident about going to war and Sadat is doing everything in his power to feed that belief, right down to a flow of pure shit from a double agent."

"How will they breach the sand berm we've piled up flush along the east side of the canal?"

"With four hundred fifty water cannons, sir, powered by petrol and drawing water from the canal itself. Then they'll use ferries and throw over pontoons. The B'nei Elohim say they will start at 1400 tomorrow and they will have at least five bridgeheads punched through the berm by dusk. They'll bring SA-6 and 7 air cover across the canal with them, not to mention self-propelled triple A."

"I believe her," Saguy said. "The Egyptians have brought forward everything they need for a crossing. This is no exercise. And when they break through the poor fellows garrisoned on the 'impregnable' Bar-Lev Line will be fed to a meat grinder."

"Why do your religious kooks say Sadat will start a war he knows he can't win?"

"My kooks, sir, say Sadat thinks he needs this war just to stay in power. They say the last war, the Six Days, was so humiliating to the Egyptians even losing another war will be acceptable if they can win back a piece of the Sinai, maybe enough to reopen the canal to shipping. And we know Syria wants the Golan back, sir. The B'nei Elohim say it's going to be a two-front war. But with everyone in our government buying into Zeira's 'assessment' we're going to be caught by surprise and lose not only the Golan but the whole Sinai peninsula."

Sharon said, "If Sadat and Assad are tempted to cross the borders of the country itself the PM may resort to the Samson Option. Things are different now than in the Six Days. She could send Cairo and Damascus up in clouds of radioactive smoke."

Judith said, "Yes sir, the B'nei Elohim have also said as much. The Soviets would, of course, retaliate by taking out Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and the Americans will sit back and count themselves lucky it ended there. But it won't end there for us. It will be like the Nazi catastrophe all over again, for us."

In the silence that followed, the general's wife Lily blurted, "Never again!"

Sharon was on the verge of a decision, but he said, "Tomorrow is Yom Kippur. There are twelve religious kooks in the Knesset who would never assent to a mobilization on our highest holy day."

Judith replied, "Not even the National Religious Party could block mobilization when hostilities actually break out, sir, which will be, as I said, at 1400 tomorrow. Besides, tomorrow is also Ramadan, which is Egypt's highest holy day. They're willing to set it aside to start a conflict. The only question, sir, is whether we take our own religious principles to be a suicide pact."

The general's face grew stern. It was as though he had switched from a retirement mindset to his old ways as a commander with the flick of a switch. He said, "I am calling you both to duty status as of this moment, on my own authority. Are your unforms on hand?"

"Yes sir," they said together.

"Take these documents to Major General Shmuel Gonen at Southern Command in Be'er Sheva. By the time you arrive I will have already spoken to him by phone." He looked directly at Judith and continued. "You have proceeded correctly to go from Yehoshua to me, and now you're going from me to Gonen, and I will do my best to persuade him to send you on to General Elazar. At best, we can get a pre-emptive strike on Syria and Egypt overnight. The next best would be a general call-up of reservists at dawn tomorrow, which would give us half a day to get ready. At worst, someone in the chain from Gorodish to Golda will put your photos in the round file. But you have to try, because as my wife just said, 'Never again'!"

Judith did brief Lt. General David Elazar but things went much slower than Sharon guessed. As late as 7 AM Saturday morning Elazar was still bickering with Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. But more evidence was trickling in besides Judith's photos and her messages from the B'nei Elohim. Army intelligence reported the evacuation of the families of Soviet advisors from Egypt and Syria.

At 8 AM Elazar and Dayan met with Prime Minister Golda Meir, Deputy PM Yigal Allon, and Military Secretary Yisrael Lior. It was Lior who settled matters by reading a telegram from the head of Mossad that not only supported everything Judith told Elazar, but added many amplifying details.

Only five Egyptian brigades remained in Cairo, everything else was in the Canal Zone. Syria was expected to attack the Golan but Sadat would not call off his own attack if they didn't follow through. The Soviets did not know Egypt was about to go to war, by Sadat's design, but the Egyptians were entirely confounded by Israel's complete non-response to their preparations.

After that Dayan had no more argument with Elazar, and in fact a new shakiness in his voice betrayed a nervousness and doubt that infected even the PM. Elazar called for a pre-emptive strike on Syria and Egypt at noon, but this was overruled by Golda Meir. The United States was the last ally Israel had, she pointed out. "If we strike first, we won't get help from anybody."

Even a full mobilization might be viewed as an aggressive act. But she was willing to do a partial call-up. Mobilization orders went out to the reservists and regulars of the Israel Defense Force while the soldiers were at home, or attending synagogue, or even living overseas.

Ironically, the country being more or less shut down for Yom Kippur left the roads clear for the reservists to reach their units without undue delay.

Egypt’s attack consisted of 100,000 soldiers, 1,300 tanks, 240 warplanes and 2,000 pieces of artillery. At the same time, at the other end of the long axis of Israel, six hundred Syrian tanks advanced across the uplands known as the Golan Heights.

In the Sinai, Israel lost two hundred of their three hundred tanks right away, but a pair of extra tank divisions were rushed forward to halt the Egyptian advance. Egyptian troops using Soviet-supplied anti-tank weaponry hold the Israelis to a line five miles east of the Suez Canal. Meanwhile more Egyptian tanks and infantry massing on their side of the canal are protected from Israeli air attack by a tough shield of anti-aircraft missiles guided by radar, again courtesy of the Soviet Union.

On October 13 the Egyptians stuck their toe out from under their SAM umbrella to try to break through two mountain passes in the Sinai. What followed was the largest tank battle on Earth since the 1943 battle of Kursk between Germany and Russia and the second largest tank battle anywhere, ever, involving nearly two thousand tanks. During the battle a total of 264 Egyptian tanks were knocked out, to Israel’s ten. On the 14th another Egyptian attack on the Suez Canal was stopped with the destruction of 200 tanks and a thousand Egyptian soldiers killed.

The following day a third battle was fought at the meeting point between the Egyptian Second and Third Armies that served as an administration area for both armies and headquarters for the 16th Infantry Division. Tanks fired at practically point blank range. Egypt lost 150 tanks to Israel’s eighty. With this action Israel erected a wall of fire between the two halves of the Egyptian expeditionary force.

Overnight an IDF parachute brigade established a toehold on the other side of the Canal. Two forward-deployed Egyptian anti-aircraft missile bases were taken out, allowing Israel to establish air superiority over the western bank of the Suez Canal.

Ariel Sharon, commanding the 143rd Reserve Armored Division, crossed the canal north of Great Bitter Lake through a gap spotted by an American SR-71 spy plane where the extreme right flank of the Egyptian 2nd Army was "in the air".

The 162nd and 252nd Armored Divisions followed through the gap and turned south leaving the encircled Egyptian Third Army stranded on the east side of the Canal with no way to be resupplied. At that point the war on the southern front was all over but the crying.

Judith served under David Elazar in the Northern Command, where things moved a bit faster. The high tide of the Syrian advance reached nearly to Nafah in the southern Golan by 1700 of the second day. Judith arrived the next morninbg in an armored transport as part of the first wave of reserve forces who began to walk the Syrians back north, inflicting heavy losses on them as they went. The only moment on October 9th that was touch-and-go was a Syrian counterattack at Quneitra, with helicopter-borne troops but it was repulsed, and Israel had reached the line from which Syria launched their attack on the first day of the war.

Defense Minister Moshe Dayan wanted to halt right there, thirty miles from Damascus, to avoid drawing the Soviet Union into the war. General Elazar, by contrast, wanted to advance another twenty miles into Syria to set up a strong defensive line and stabilize the northern front. Prime Minister Golda Meir, assured by the US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that Nixon had her back, sided with Elazar.

The Israeli thrust east from the Golan Heights into Syria began on the 11th and pushed the Syrians back after fierce fighting. Early that evening, Judith’s brigade was already six miles over the border into Syria. A few days later, the Christian commander of Syria’s forces in the Golan is executed before a firing squad in Damascus for ordering the withdrawal.

Moshe Dayan went on television to remind the Syrians that the road from Damascus to Israel was also the road from Israel to Damascus. But the next day Iraq enters the war, with fifteen thousand Iraqi troops shoring up the Syrian front. King Hussein of Jordan resistd Arab pressure, however, and refused to move against Israel in yet another war.

In Syria, all eighty tanks of one Iraqi brigade were destroyed by Israeli tanks and planes with absolutely no losses to the Israelis. Another Iraqi tank brigade was blocked by Judith and a demolition crew who arrived at two bridges the tanks needed to cross and slice partway through their support structures with blow torches, letting the weight of the tanks do most of the work. There were no tell-tale explosions. When the bridges collapsed, fifty of the eighty tanks were stranded on a dirt “island” with fewer than ten tanks able to advance, which the Israeli Air Force quickly takes off the board.

On the 16th the Israelis held their position just eight miles outside of Damascus and Judith's brigade of infantry was an important part of this strong offensive line. The IDF also halted five miles west of the road from Damascus to Amman, Jordan, ready to block any late-minute entry of Jordan into the war with a flank attack. The Soviet Union finally grew alarmed at the setbacks experienced by their Arab client states.

At that point the Israelis begin to breathe a sigh of relief, particularly when equally spectacular results started to come in from the southern theater of war. At that point, only after the nation seemed to be out of danger, the twelve Knesset members of the National Religious Party, with none of their own boots on the ground and representing a constituency who also evaded military service on religious grounds, prevailed upon the female Prime Minister Golda Meir to withdraw Judith Margolies from the front lines of the conflict. In the event she refused they threatened to walk out of the temporary power-sharing arrangement of her Alignment party, which would in turn drive her from office. Meir caved in, and Lilith Margolies was relieved of duty.

When she made formal protest, General Elazar, demonstrating an extraordinarily short memory of Judith’s legendary accomplishments for Israel over the years, angrily refused. She bared her arm with the six tattooed numerals, but it was not enough for Elazar and she was dismissed.

She didn't know it at the time, but the demobilization order saved her life.

As the 1973 Yom Kippur war rages on, President Nixon ordered an airlift of military supplies to allow Israel to keep fighting. The Soviets supply their Arab client states continuously throughout the war. To keep Lilith away from the temptation to wage war against the Arabs by “unofficial” means, she is placed on an empty C-130 Hercules cargo plane on it’s way back the United States.

A veritable conveyor belt of Soviet war supplies move by air to Egypt and Syria, while the Americans supply Israel from their own endless abundance. But when the Soviet Union sees the Arabs checked in the Golan and now in the Suez, and Nixon refuses to pressure Israel to allow the trapped Third Army to escape, Leonid Brezhnev begins airlifting Soviet troops to Cairo to supplement the Egyptians.

Passing through the strait of the Dardenelles, Soviet naval forces in the Mediterranean reach a total of 97 ships, including 23 submarines, while the US adds a third carrier battle group from Spain for a total of 60 ships. Three carriers in a theater always heralded war.

Nixon takes the US to DEFCON 3 and sends the 101st Airborne into the Sinai to counterbalance the Soviet troops, but events are moving fast and there is insufficient time to match the Soviets troop-for-troop. Nixon tells Brezhnev that sending any more troop transport planes would be crossing a red line, but Brezhnev calls his bluff.

Fighters from the USS Independence shoot down the next cargo plane hauling Soviet troops. Brezhnev replies with a nuclear-tipped torpedo round fired at the Independence. The United States didn’t even know the Soviets had nuclear torpedoes. The weapon didn’t even have to be close. The blast takes out the carrier, several support ships steaming alongside, and even damages the Soviet submarine that fired it. The Cold War had just gone hot.

Michael met Judith at Yad Mordechai and took her on her last jaunt by fold-door, this time to Robyn's home in

Nixon orders weapons red and free on all Soviet forces in the Mediterranean, and the two sides slug it out. Both remaining US carriers are taken out, but the Soviet naval forces definitely come off much the worse.

This hardly matters at all. An exchange of ICBMs takes out the American and the Soviet capital cities, killing ten million people instantly and many more people after the fact. Then the two superpowers go back into their own corners to assess what is happening and see if the other side is willing to escalate.

A few more items on each side’s laundry list are nuked, such as the Hanford site in the US where Robyn and Hunky were once held, and the Sevastopol navy base, but Brezhnev and Nixon are both dead, and cooler heads don’t think losing more millions of lives would be worth what either side has gained by the war, which is precisely nothing.

Haziel appears to Lilith one final time after she has returned to America, while the country is busy tearing itself apart in the wake of the limited nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.Sha knows har own adopted nation of Israel is a radioactive shambles. It is December of 1973. Haziel brings a coat to bundle up Lilith. The yin seems to be sad and listless, and says nothing, letting Haziel whisk the two of them to wherever sha wishes to go.Certainly the novelty of traveling in this way has worn off.