SuezWar2


 * 1) XA0: Judith Gervasi served in all of the Arab-Israeli Wars until che fell victim to ultra-orthodox Jews playing politics and was sent home in the second half of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a move that even she had to admit probably saved her life. More than probably.
 * 2) XA1: Resetting the clock to 1972, Judith provided her government with a great deal of intelligence on the Egyptian moves fully a year in ad- vance, information that turned out to be uncannily accurate. Acting on these tips, the country mobi- lized to nip Egypt in the bud.
 * 3) XA2: So there was no Yom Kippur War on that stream and Judith became legendary. The Labor Party kicked around the idea of making her Prime Minister. But she was content to be a reservist in that force which when rendered in Hebrew and short- ened to an acronym was ZAHAL.
 * 4) XA3: After the near-miss of the 1973 crisis the active forces of Israel were reorganized into twen- ty-two battalions designated by the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Rav Seren (Major) Judith Gervasi com- manded over two thousand men and women in Alef Battalion.
 * 5) XA4: In times of serious conflict in Israel hundreds of thousands of reserves were called up and as- signed to one of the twenty one other battalions, which rapidly became full divisions, but Alef Battalion, the elite, was composed of hand-picked army regulars.
 * 6) XA5: With her head sticking outside of the hatch on the top of one of twenty segments of a towed barge, Judith let the eternal winds of the Gulf of Suez and the moderate roll- ing of the barge kick saltwater spray over her. Judith's tan, mot- tled uniform was impeccable.
 * 7) XA6: She was invincible in war, but Keter knew she couldn't be in two places at once, and if both the Moon and Israel were attacked si- multaneously, he knew Judith would leave the Moon's defense to Hunky and automatically default to de- fending her adopted homeland.
 * 8) XA7: So when Keter moved to assail Taurus City, he ordered up yet another Arab-Israeli War, as though it were room service, simply to keep Judith and perhaps several other important B'nei Elohim tied up Earthside. The insurrection in America was another distraction.
 * 9) XA8: Africa was almost completely surrounded by water. The place where it was joined to Asia had been crossed by a man-made ditch 200 km long for 200 years, permit- ting ships to travel between Europe and the Far East without detouring all the way around Africa.
 * 10) XA9: It was not even a particularly elaborate engineering feat. The land was so flush with sea level that the canal did not require locks. By 1985 fully 23% of all world trade was using the Suez Ca- nal, but it was only wide enough to permit one lane of travel.
 * 11) For a long time there had been talk of widening the canal, but the pro- posals for dredging it wider always entailed shutting down traffic for up to four years and the predicted increase in traffic was not thought to be enough to justify the loss of government revenues from transit fees.
 * 12) That was an enormously important source of income for Egypt as the country approached becoming a net importer of petroleum and Islamist terrorism strangled Egypt's once lucrative tourist trade spigot.
 * 13) For twelve years Israel had relied on Judith's reports, obtained through Robyn's borrowed power of precognition, to concentrate against any attack well before it happened.
 * 14) But this new attack was on the initiative of Belial hym- self, completely outside the scope of Robyn's foresight, so the coun- try was caught completely off- guard. Egypt punched a hole at one point in the much-vaunted "Ben-Ju- dah Line" of fortifications with artillery.
 * 15) The commander of the Egyptian 1st Army knew that the Sinai was like a bread with a hard crust that was soft in the interi- or.
 * 16) After breaching the crust in the short channel between marshy, salty Lake Timsah and the Great Bitter Lake, the Egyptians started ferrying over tanks, troops, ammu- nition, and other war materiel on rafts.
 * 17) They worked as fast as they could, build- ing up quite a bridgehead on the other side, like an infection of bacteria lodged in a wound.
 * 18) Judith's amphibious assault arrived under the guise of twenty decep- tively painted, weathered-looking old barges slowly towed behind a jumbo tugboat toward the southern entrance of the canal.
 * 19) They were in two parallel trains of ten contain- ers all linked together by flexible couplings. At Judith's command they all simultaneously broke free from each other and began moving under their own power toward the assigned beach.
 * 20) All twenty of the special landing craft began to take sporad- ic 40mm mortar fire from somewhere in the city but this was mainly just an annoyance.
 * 21) Each landing craft was coated with tank armor, constructed in the best shape for defense, a shape evolved through more than a century of constant warfare with the Arabs.
 * 22) Judith made hez way to the front of the barge, pushing through the men and women hanging on to straps from the ceiling of the barge. Israel was unique among nations.
 * 23) Ever con- fronted with a chronic shortage of personnel, men and women were drafted equally, trained together, and sent into battle together, at least when the ultra-orthodox fac- tions were out of power.
 * 24) Then Judith raised hez voice to ad- dress hez people, saying, I have never lied or concealed the truth from you. They gave us the most dangerous beach possible. We'll be practically single file.
 * 25) When you disembark immediately turn to the right and get off the sand spit as soon as possible. We're the first. Our mission is to seize the canal operations center and to secure a beachhead for the forces that will come a little later. God be with us.
 * 26) The boat officer beached Judith's as- sault craft right up onto the sand close to the structures of the locks and the buildings that sup- ported them. The wall behind Judith dropped down to become a ramp, re- vealing a beach being torn up by mortar fire.
 * 27) Che knew the heavy shelling was soon to come. She yelled her grandparent's motto, "Follow Me!" and led her people out onto the sand, the 1st Platoon of Gold Company.
 * 28) Further down the spit were Blue Company, Orange, and White, each with five platoons, all of them storming the sand spit simultane- ously. The astonishing sight of a rusty barge breaking up into twenty mo- torized landing boats, turning with perfect coordination.
 * 29) They were like a drill team on parade, beaching on the spit, and disgorging a thousand IDF troops onto Egyptian soil was spot- ted by the alarmed men in the canal control tower, and they called it in to a gun battery somewhere in Suez City.
 * 30) Splashes began to fly up in the sea around them as the gunners got their range. The splashes got clos- er to the beach, and some of them struck the now abandoned landing craft.
 * 31) Gold Company 2nd Platoon, the peo- ple from the boat immediately next to Judith's, was the first hit with an incoming 155mm shell. Artillery is the troop killer. Sixteen people lay dead, another twenty lay wound- ed or were knocked off their feet.
 * 32) Of the wounded, eight would later die. Only twelve people in that platoon were unharmed, but some of these would be picked off in ones and twos by the random mortar rounds coming in.
 * 33) A pair of soldiers in Judith's Pla- toon, a male and female, set up on the sand a compact air search radar and tried to pinpoint where the rounds were coming from by tracing their flight-paths back.
 * 34) Blue 5th Plt. took 5 dead and 12 injured before he got a fix. The female called out the resulting coordi- nates over a portable phone and requested an airstrike.
 * 35) At first Judith wasn't sure what hap- pened next. She found herself wak- ing up with her legs soaked by sea- water. It slowly dawned on her that she was close to an incoming round and had been knocked by the concus- sion a little ways into the water.
 * 36) Judith had no recollection of the last few seconds, minutes? She didn't know. Her only thought at that point was dying was so easy. Judith had never been obsessed with the issue because she had lived for years in the place where dead peo- ple go anyway.
 * 37) Judith was not to die on that day. Using his talent, Brand had de- flected the incoming shell from striking directly on her platoon. Judith's body armor had intercepted most of the blast shrapnel, and the overpressure had been enough to put her in a mild state of shock.
 * 38) But it was not life-threatening. She was capable of healing herself with her own Talent. Still, Judith was a little dazed, and she no longer led the assault, to be sure.
 * 39) Judith no longer had a coherent platoon to lead. Seven were immediately dead, twelve were wounded, and four of those would soon die from blood loss, missing limbs, or other seri- ous injuries. The rest merged with the other platoons running north.
 * 40) The Orange 3rd Platoon was the last to be hit, six dead and ten wound- ed, three mortally. A single Arch- angel flew to the location called in from the ground and let loose a cluster bomb.
 * 41)  This wbroke up into many bomblets and saturated the area of the offending gun battery with many small explosions, disa- bling the guns and killing all the personnel manning the weapon.
 * 42) Now Judith's people were free to hurry off their vulnerable position on the beach, plagued only by mortar fire, which claimed thirty-one lives. Total killed in the landing phase was just eight percent of her force, and another 12% injured.
 * 43) This was very bad, but not nearly as bad as the forty percent casual- ties Judith had anticipated after she understood her orders. Judith rammed home a lightweight clip of laser ammo. The cartridges were clear Lucite vials.
 * 44) When the trig- ger was pulled, the firing pin broke a seal in the cartridge, mix- ing nitrous oxide and carbon monox- ide which gave a brilliant flash of light.
 * 45) This light pumped the ruby rod and laser light flashed out from the half-mirrored front end. Fully 40% of the chemical en- ergy in the cartridge was put on the target as a burst of pure light.
 * 46) In city the defenders were well dug in. Lasers flicked all along the front hoping to catch an unlucky head. But Judith could see the Egyp- tians were not fighting up to snuff. She could sense the feeling of little boy lost among them.
 * 47) Return fire was mostly ineffective but a few enemy soldiers stood their ground, aimed carefully and took out a few of Judith's people.
 * 48) Ex- pendable nitrous/carbon monoxide shell casings popped away as Judith called on the best within her to put thumping 50 millisecond bursts of light on target. This was the turn of the tide. It was palpable.
 * 49) It fell over the Egyptians like a shadow, like the blackness of mass hatred overtaking a mob. They were already in retreat, moving north on the road home to Cairo, and the Israeli Army was sweeping over the city in a general rout.
 * 50) By the time she caught up to Brand in the canal ops center the build- ing was largely secure. Judith's imme- diate objective had been achieved, and she ordered her people to fan out into Suez City to prepare to greet the rest of the Israeli De- fense Force.
 * 51)  Reinforcements were soon arriving, less clandestinely, in waves of lightly armored hovercraft. There were fights for the railroad station and the Al-Gaysh Causeway to Port Tew- fiq, and a very hot struggle for the Governorate building on the waterfront that was quickly wrapped up.
 * 52) With hez successes of the opening hours, with Judith's empty barges abandoned on the sand bar swaying with the tide and not likely to be needed ever again, Colonel Motti Adan parked his ass safely in that Governorate building.
 * 53) Eager to gain the credit for the victory, he separated Judith's troops from her and reassigned them to the main thrust on the road north to Ismailia. As for Judith herself, he called her out on the carpet.
 * 54) Judith's assigned beach had been a dead-end sand spit with only one way off yet somehow she refused to fail and he wanted to know why. Adan had an affinity for tidiness which Judith didn't share.
 * 55) The Colonel was less inter- ested in killing the enemy and seizing land than he was in making the change of watch into a regular and orderly process complete with pass-down logs. He put a lot of time crafting the Scimitar plan and Judith went off script.
 * 56) When Colonel Motti Adan learned that Judith had deviated from the plan and attacked with only half her force he was absolutely furious.
 * 57) On the top floor of the occupied Gov- ernorate, which had contained the city's police station, che and hez father stood before him at atten- tion as he vented the worst of his wrath, which eventually got around to the question that was foremost in his mind: Where are your peo- ple now?
 * 58) Judith decided on telling a partial truth. I loaded the landing craft forty-six percent full, sir. I left the balance of my battalion in the barracks at Eilat.
 * 59) Your battalion? Major, I can as- sure you that it is no longer, and never shall be again, your battal- ion. Brand asked the Colonel pardon and explained that the beach would have been too crowded with 2190 troops.
 * 60) The resulting confusion would have led to much higher casualties, perhaps even a total rout. He was awarded another stream of shouted insults, focused more intensely directly upon him.
 * 61) My father is also my chief staff officer, sir, Judith said when there was a pause for breath in the colo- nel's stream of invective. He was following my orders. Therefore I will accept the heat, sir. If there is to be any punishment I take it upon myself.
 * 62) I should throw you both behind bars, Adan said, but I think it is far better that you should both sit out the rest of this war. Major Gervasi, you and your father will do nothing. That is mandatory. I repeat: nothing! Do you understand me?
 * 63) Yes sir! they both blurted in reply. Now get out of my sight! There was a very large black car parked right in front of the build- ing. Judith cast covetous eyes on it. Brand saw the Colonel's eagle sticker on the window and shook his head.
 * 64) "No, no, Judith, that is Adan's limousine, you can't be thinking what I think you're thinking." Judith simply got in on the passenger side of the limo and expected Brand to get in and drive.
 * 65) Che had al- ready found the keys in the front ashtray when he reluctantly took his place behind the wheel. Ever- yone is sitting around, che said, disgusted, as they went out of the building onto the streets of Suez City.
 * 66) Everyone is more afraid of the finger-pointing that follows action than in actually being hit with a round! It is time to get out here, father. To the front. That won't be easy.
 * 67) The going was slow as Judith and Brand made their way out of town. The road paralleled the canal due north through al-Kubri, which was seized on the first night, as well as the town of al-Shallufa, which fell on the second day along with the Ahmed Hamdi Tunnel under the canal.
 * 68) That was a major IDF standing objective in the event of an invasion. With the tunnel in hand Israel could pour troops, tanks, and materiel across in a kind of counterpunch to the Egyptian main intrusion to the north.
 * 69) But the highway and railroad to Cairo was still strongly held by the Egyptian Second Army, and the town of Gineifa was being contested as the key to the whole area.
 * 70) The forces of Israel were still a long way from being able to seri- ously threaten the main incursion at Ismailia, at the halfway point on the canal. Soon it wouldn't mat- ter, according to a message from Mike who was the liaison with the Israeli government.
 * 71) He said Egypt was nearly finished fully supplying their bridgehead in the Sinai east of the Canal. At the crossing of the Gineifa-Qa- brit road Judith and Brand could go no further. They were flagged down at a checkpoint and forced to give up their vehicle on the standing or- ders of Lt.
 * 72) Colonel David Shazar on the Gineifa front. They could not continue on without a set of papers which they did not have so they soon found themselves on foot with Adan's car confiscated.
 * 73) Some of the walking wounded, the simple first-aid cases, were being detoured onto the road that ran northeast of the checkpoint and across the salt marshes and flats to Qabrit, at the place where land pinched between the Large and Small Bitter Lakes.
 * 74) Judith decided to follow them. If there was a way around the checkpoint this was as good as any. They were on foot for an hour. Soon they arrived at a makeshift camp sprawling among Egyptian homes, a little compound snug back off the road.
 * 75) At least a hundred cots were set up, most exposed to the winds and dust with nothing more than prayers to Allah for good weather. Judith could see the houses were over- flowing.
 * 76) The three local couples were working themselves half to death trying to bandage up their guests, scrounge up blankets, and pass out the white box lunches that had been hastily dumped in a pile by an impatient gang of Israeli soldiers.
 * 77) One lady, the oldest of the six, took the time to straight- en up and spare Judith a smile. I didn't think it was possible, Judith said to the woman, using Ara- bic. Why are you supporting your occupiers?
 * 78) Grow up girl! the woman snapped. Jew, Arab, we don't even think to play politics with the wounded. Lend me a hand here. So that was it. Egypt was no neat monolithic bloc loyal to the Isla- mist theocracy in Cairo but a soci- ety like any other.
 * 79) Big, messy, and out of control. And here were six people trying to put together in their small way what the war was tearing down in broad strokes. Was it futile? Absolutely.
 * 80) But Judith felt as if she'd been graciously allowed to help the troops. Which she cer- tainly could do, since her talent as a bene eloah was healing.
 * 81) But Robyn intruded on her thoughts just then, communicating by voice message on Judith's micro that Taurus City was simultaneously under at- tack by the Navy of Belial, in un- ion with American forces.
 * 82) Judith replied that she was stuck be- tween two firefights, with no way to disengage and come to Robyn's aid. Judith was still separated from Ariel and Victoria.
 * 83) Even worse, both Robyn and Judith knew Shyla was flying Binah's avatar in low Earth orbit to come the aid of Israel. Even if she abandoned that role and left now, by the time Shyla re- turned to Selene it would be too late to make a difference in the struggle for Taurus City.
 * 84) Almost as though Belial planned it that way, Robyn said ruefully, and Judith could only agree with har.
 * 85) Judith knew everyone in her 2190-per- son battalion by name, somehow. Che said to Brand, I recognize a few of our people here. Find out who isn't hurt too badly. Find out who is with me and quietly, father. Keep it quiet.
 * 86) Brand managed to round up eighteen men and women whose wounds had been treated and who felt they were ready to get back in the fray. See- ing Judith tend the fallen had done the trick.
 * 87) No wide-load sitting back at a desk in Suez City was che, but one willing to share their hard-ships and carry hez own bur- den. To go back to Israel on a pussy chit now seemed unthinkable.
 * 88) Brand repeated to Judith the scraps of information he had obtained from the wounded. They only hold ten grid squares centered on Gineifa. There is a fragile stalemate on the ground. We surround them on three sides but there is such a build-up in the area it could tip either way very soon.
 * 89) A call from Shyla came in for Judith on her portable micro and she spent a few minutes exchanging informa- tion. Before che even terminated the connection the east lit up brilliantly, like a camera flash that extended on and on. Don't look at it! Judith shouted.
 * 90) Brand locked eyes with her instead. Nucdet. Bigger than that, father. Anti- matter. Nothing but gamma rays, wavelengths proton short. That means a pile of cooked Egyptians but no fallout and even their tanks might still run after we scrape out their ashes.
 * 91) After twenty sec- onds the light faded rapidly. There was no mushroom cloud. What does it mean, Major?one of the walking wounded asked.
 * 92) I think now the country is safe. But that doesn't mean the war is over. Much blood remains to be shed. And we're way behind sched- ule. We were supposed to be hit- ting Deversoir an hour ago.
 * 93) Judith led her little platoon about a mile east over loose desert sand until they stood on the western shore of the swollen Great Bitter Lake, which was thoroughly mixed with the salt water of both the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. With field binoculars she scanned the waters.
 * 94) This was the Reed Sea spoken of in Torah, confused in the popular imagination with the Red Sea. Here, exactly here, Judith knew, El Shaddai had parted the waters of this lake to let her escaping peo- ple cross to the other side, ac- cording to the account in the sec- ond book of Moshe.
 * 95) Hez grandparent Judith said the part about the ten plagues was true, but Pharoah never chased after the Israelites after- ward. In those days this lake was an extension of the Gulf of Suez, and the Hebrews simply waited for low tide and made a crossing on foot.

And the part about conquer- ing the Canaanites afterward was embellished too. It was the cusp between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age when nomads were settling down in permanent settlements across the Levant. The Hebrews slid in there with the rest of the folks. In a sense, the Israelites were Ca- naanites all along, just ones who didn't raise or eat pigs.

The Greek cargo ship Galatea was just now steaming into the lake but Judith, despite hez reverence for El Shaddai, knew she couldn't count on a parting of the waters to get to the ship before it passed them by.

They all stood around looking at her. Judith froze for a minute to let the gears of hez brain-case turn for a while. Finally che began stripping off hez uniform, right down to hez black panties and bra, revealing a surprisingly voluptuous but compact body. Che couldn't hide the bulge between hez legs but it wouldn't matter anymore, this was Judith's final campaign. The men and women gaped at her at first, then came to and followed her example.

Judith said, What is watertight? The lasers? Strap them on. Get rid of everything else, and 'Follow Me'. We're going for a swim.

P5 - GALATEA

Salt water is more dense than fresh water, and the very salty water of the Great Bitter Lake provided a good deal of buoyancy indeed. Swim- ming was easy. Nineteen soldiers followed Judith out about a kilometer off-shore, where che flipped on hez back and kicked lazily, waiting for the Galatea to pull up and hopefully spot them.

The ship, it turned out, was loaded with Israeli soldiers. They fished them out of the water, and rifles were lowered again when they recog- nized their catch. The men and wom- en with Judith, standing there soaking wet, started to laugh as they fi- nally understood what was happen- ing. The 1185 other men and women of Judith's Bravo Battalion, the half che left behind in Eilat, were aboard this cargo ship.

There were towels on hand, and fresh uniforms waiting for them below deck. As the ship continued to steam north, Judith retired to a stateroom reserved for hem, where che showered and caught up on the message traffic. Che wanted to know what was happening with the war. The antimatter burst had destroyed a column of 680 Egyptian battle tanks and about 400 Armored Person- nel Carriers which had crossed the 1949 Armistice Line into the Negev Desert, over the old boundary of Israel. Shyla had killed perhaps 8,000 Egyptians instantly. The main prong of the enemy attack had been blunted.

Judith noted that the Egyptian boys had gotten their fanciest toys, their tanks and APCs, across the canal first on the Ismailia bridge. Then after the bridge was de- stroyed, again by Shyla, they sent over fuel and ammunition for their toys on hastily erected pontoon bridges south of Lake Timsah. Only now after these pontoons were in turn destroyed did they realize they had neglected the unglamorous but vital supply of water, for drinking and for their vehicles. The latest Israeli intel traffic reported that the Egyptians were now trying to correct their over- sight with a desperate logistics operation at Deversoir just north of the Great Bitter Lake.

Judith's officers gathered in the wardroom for evening chow, and she used this opportunity to outline hez plan. Everyone will be armed with one laser rifle and one very old, portable, wire-guided Anti- Tank Guided Weapon. But they shall not be used against tanks. Do not waste them on ammunition trucks or fuel trucks either. The Egyptians can't drink petrol. All I want you to do is hit water trucks. Or water tanks. Or water pipes. Thirst is our weapon. That's phase one. Phase two, we run south and raise calami- ty in the Egyptian rear at Fayid.

What formation do you have in mind for the attack? Brand asked hem.

None. Everyone stays in squads. No more of this bunching up non- sense. We fight the battle loose, the way we've trained so many times before, with everyone talking on their micros.

Tactical planning then turned to what would happen after Deversoir. Bravo Battalion never rested on its laurels. After each soldier fired their round, Judith ordered an ex- hausting night-time run north over fifteen klicks of loose sand to capture the crossroads town of Fay- id.

Around midnight the ship came to a halt on the northwestern shore of the swollen lake where a long ridge of piled up sand contained the ri- sen lake and kept it from flooding the town. Planks were shoved out from the ship and dug into the face of the sand, permitting her troops to debark. In the darkness the forces of Judith's shrunken battalion edged up over the top of the dike and surveyed Deversoir, or Duweir Suweir as the enemy called it. The canal-crossing operations were in- tense. Egypt knew the fragility of the thread on which the entire war now hung. The neglected supplies of water were now their top priority. But running out ahead now was Ariel as a brilliant point of white light, like the antimatter airburst but in jen shape, and far ahead of hem was Victoria crossing the night sky like an unseen bat, dropping grenades on Egyptians and generally raising hell.

P8 - DEVERSOIR

Judith took aim at a water tower with her ATGW and fired. The trick was to keep the target centered in the cross-hairs until it hit. This could be difficult with the intense pressures of combat, but Judith's peo- ple had earned their reputation by their steely cool under fire. Her missile hit, becoming one of five to hit that tower. Judith dropped the firing mechanism and turned west to start jogging double-time, bending around the lake towards Fayid.

Captain Brand found a parked water truck in his sights, and success- fully took it out before following Judith to Fayid. The truck was not armored, certainly not to the 30 centimeters of steel which the Anti-Tank Guided Weapons were capa- ble of penetrating.

With Ariel illuminating all, Ser- geant Binyamin Gafhi fired and hit a raft returning across the mouth of the canal where it entered the Great Bitter Lake, making it una- vailable to pick up one of the parked water trucks.

Private Marina Merom fired her mis- sile. The rocket screamed away, spooling out a fine guidance com- mand wire behind it. Using electri- cal signals sent down that wire, Marina carefully kept her cros- shairs on target and struck a steel aqueduct pipe. It would soon be field-repaired, but not quickly enough to help the Egyptians trapped in the Sinai.

By this time the Egyptians began to realize the threat was coming from the levee and directed fire south. The sand erupted with machine gun and mortar fire. Private David Zis- mann was killed before he could shoot his ATGW.

Corporal Dalia Bibi squeezed the trigger on her missile launcher...and nothing happened. The weapon was a dud. Cursing, she dropped it joined the flood of Bravo Battalion personnel running toward Fayid.

Private Uzi Herschson advanced closer to Deversoir to get inside the 2,500 meter range of his weap- on. There he struck a raft with a water truck on board.

First Lieutenant Noami Meridor, rattled by machine gun rounds ding- ing the sand nearby, couldn't keep her target centered and missed. Her missile struck the ground and ex- ploded, but still she contributed to the fog of war and served as suppressing fire to keep the Egyp- tians from retaliating effectively. And Victoria kept giving the enemy presents of her own.

Private Shaul Ben-Elissar didn't aim for a water truck or a reser- voir as he was ordered, instead he directed his rocket at a truck car- rying Egyptian troops south to their position. Scratch twelve ene- my troops.

Captain Maxim Shahal wiped out a large crane truck which was busy attempting to right a water truck overturned by an earlier blast.

Sergeant Yossi Levi, who had been one of the nineteen men who swam with Judith out to meet the Gal- atea, hit the hardest target of all, a water truck which was moving down a street, attempting to get out of Deversoir to cross the canal somewhere to the north.

The ATGW attack fell silent. Nearly a thousand wires lay on the sands between the canal and Deversoir. Ariel's light went out, Victoria flew off unharmed, and Judith's raid was complete. In roughly one half- hour's work, they had ensured a swift denouement to the war that would keep the lives of many Israe- li soldiers out of danger.

Not all the water supplies were destroyed, but enough to ensure that only the Egyptian officers would taste water in the desert tomorrow. When rumor of this got out, they would have a full-scale mutiny on their hands, and the Egyptian army would disintegrate before the two-pronged advance of Israeli tanks. Racked by demon thirst, entire brigades of Egyp- tians would willingly surrender just for the hope of a mouthful of water.

Q1 - RESIGNATION

Brigadier General Shmuel Gavish had taken over the Suez governorate building from Colonel Motti Adan. An American officer was present, as well as Colonel Adan, who was briefing General Gavish on Judith's misdeeds. By her own admission Major Judith Gervasi Judithiberately de- viated from the Prime Minister's Scimitar Plan, sir. Well speak of the devil, here she is now.

Judith stopped two paces before the generals desk, and they exchanged a salute. He said, Major Gervasi, Colonel Adan says you Judithiberately altered the Scimitar plan. What do you have to say in your defense?

The country is out of danger, sir.

Thanks to the American nuke. That still doesn't excuse your insubor- dination for the sake of insubordi- nation. You have become popular, Major, but Israel is asking you to serve the country, not your own ego.

General, that was neither a nuke, nor American. I ordered a clean Astrodyne gamma ray airburst, tech- nology neither the US nor Israel have.

That had the effect of silencing both the General and the colonel. The US officer present in the room, clad in desert brown, could only let loose a slow appreciative whis- tle. He did not contradict Judith.

She looked at all of them in won- der. Oh, I see. None of you offi- cers realized our country needed a political buffer, a space for plau- sible deniability. Imagine the out- cry if Israel had nuked that column herself. This way condemnation for breaking the nuke taboo falls on Astrodyne alone.

The Colonel, General, and the Amer- ican colonel were literally speech- less, so Judith continued her defense.

Aside from the antimatter air- burst which blunted the Egyptian thrust into the Negev, it was my mother who tracked the column of seven hundred Egyptian tanks and four hundred APCs as they crossed into the Sinai and it is was my mother who took out the Ismailia Bridge with orbit-to-ground smart bombs. It is my mother who even now continues to knock out the enemy's pontoon bridges as soon as they put them up, and all of these actions were planned and ordered by me. The Egyptians had quite a formida- ble system of overlapping SAM cov- erage around their bridgehead. Without support by Astrodyne, which Israel has enjoyed since 1972, by the way, it would have cost the country many planes and many lives. So that is what I've been doing, sir, and all this besides assailing the enemy at Deversoir and al-Fay- id, which caused them to abort their bridgehead operations over the canal.

Into the awkward quiet space Judith tilted forward and placed a sheet of paper on the general's desk smartly, her letter of resignation.

With all due respect, General, I cannot continue to serve under Colonel Adan. I consider it an unpardonable sin to strip Bravo Battalion from me and force men and women I know and care about into a meat-grinder of his own making, while I was ordered to the siJudithines during what will probably be the last war Zahal will ever be asked to fight.

Sir, Adan interjected, I judged her alteration of Plan Scimitar to be a serious breach of discipline, and administratively placed her and her chief of staff Fon suspension right after Suez City was made secure.

Now for the first time General Gav- ish was learning that for the crit- ical hours of the war, Judith had been under orders to do nothing. He launched into a tirade against Adan intended to bring sufficient satis- faction to Judith that she might with- draw her resignation. In reply Judith simply pushed herself away, rendered her best salute, removed the major's insignia at her collar, and departed without looking back once. Outside the avatar of Binah was already landing to take hem and the other bene elohim to Taurus.