Our Sacred Honor

“Yes.” His own voice was calm.

“Shut up!”

Abu took a deep breath and let the exhale slowly come out.

He was an expert with the anti-tank rocket. He had fired so many of these, and he had become so accurate with them, that he was now a very valuable man. That was something he had learned about war. The longer you lived, the more skills you amassed, and the better you became at fighting. The better you became, the more valuable you were, and ever more likely to remain alive. He had known many who didn’t survive long in combat – a week, ten days. He had met one who died on the first day. If only they could last a month, things would start to become clearer to —

“Abu!” the voice hissed.

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Ready? They’re coming.”

“Okay.”

He went about his business, relaxed, almost as if he were just practicing. He hefted the rocket launcher and unfolded the stock. His placed his left hand along the length of the barrel, lightly, lightly, until the target came into view. You didn’t want your grip too firm, too soon. The index finger of his right hand caressed the trigger mechanism. He put the gun sight near his face, but not to his eye. He liked to have his eyes free until the last moment, so he could acquire the entire picture before focusing on the details. His knees bent slightly, his back ever-so-slightly arched.

He could see light from the convoy now, behind the hillside to his right, approaching along the road. The lights reached upward, casting strange shadows. A few seconds later, he could hear the rumble of the engines.

He took another deep breath.

“Steady…” a stern voice said. “Steady.”

“Lord Allah,” Abu said, his words coming quickly now, and louder than before. “Guide my hands and my eyes. Let me bring death to your enemies, in your name and in the name of your most beloved prophet Mohammed, and all the great prophets in all times.”

The first jeep came around the bend. The round headlights were clear now, cutting through the nighttime mist.

The boy Abu instantly became rigid under the weight of the heavy gun. He put his right eye to the sight. The vehicles in the line appeared, large, like he could reach out and touch them. His finger tightened on the trigger. The breath caught in his throat. He was no longer a boy with a rocket launcher – he and the launcher melded together, becoming one entity, a killing machine.

All around his feet, men moved like snakes, crawling toward the roadway.

“Steady,” the voice said again. “The second car, you understand?”

“Yes.”

In his gun sight, the second jeep was RIGHT THERE. He could see the silhouettes of the people inside it.

“It’s easy,” he whispered. “It’s so easy… Steady…”

Two seconds passed, Abu slowly sweeping the rocket launcher from right to left, following the target, never wavering.

“FIRE!”

* * *

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.