your judgment, but keep it clustered. Medics and medicians to medical duty."
"I've got operational control of the helo overhead," Shimon said. "What do you want from him?"
"We're on cleanup; you take it. I suggest you land him just ahead of the first bus and use him for medevac. You'd better get me a medic, and find somebody else to take over the mopping up."
"Fair enough. I'll take over, now?"
"It's yours, General."
"I've got it. Good job, Yitzhak."
Galil started to say something, but the distant world at the end of the dark tunnel, the dim world surrounding the piece with the triple bars of a captain, the gray world was going black. Maybe he had lost too much blood after all.
Damn.
CHAPTER 5
Mordecai Peled: Cleaning Up
Mordecai Peled kicked through the smoking remains of the roughly square piece of composite. Part of the outer wall of the cabin, maybe, although it was hard to tell. The whole damn thing stank of burning petrochemicals and scorched meat. A scorched fragment of bone stuck up through the wreckage. He nudged it with his toe, but couldn't decide whether it was part of an arm or leg.
He eyed it coldly. That was just something that had happened to get in his way, and he'd knocked it down. That didn't matter at all.
Hey, Casa mamas, teach your boys not to point guns at my boys.
There's some things you have to give up on. Teaching morality, for one.
You can't teach them that it's wrong to run through the streets of Berlin smashing your people's windows and burning their shops. You can't teach them it's evil to herd your people into the Umshlagplatz and load them into cattle cars to be hauled away and boiled down for soap. You can't teach them that it's unjust to wrap your revered teachers in the Torah scroll and burn them alive. You can't teach them it's immoral to wait on an overpass and then, shouting, "Arafat will fuck your sister," throw firebombs at an auto on a Jerusalem road and boil a baby in his mother's womb.
You can, however, teach them that it's unsafe to raise their hand to you and yours.
That was good enough for Mordecai Peled.
The bodies, some still in Casa uniforms—had to save something for the Thousand Worlds observers—scattered across the lightly wooded slope were something else, though: they had him irritated. The bastards had tried to get in his way, and he didn't like that much. But the dozen or so bodies didn't seem a fair trade for what was shaping up to be at least thirty dead Metzadans and five times that many wounded.
There weren't enough Freiheimer bodies in the universe to trade for the least of his people.
But that was personal, not professional. His professional judgment was that the Thirtieth had been fucking lucky.
Seven hundred and fifty men, all except one stripped company organized into a support/transport/medical command and two specialized training detachments, the lot of them ambushed by fifteen well-armed infantrymen, would be expected to take upwards of fifty percent casualties. Well upwards.
Looking at it the other way: if Peled had staged an ambush like this, he would have expected to knock out more than half the buses and kill well over half the men.
Buses. He shook his head. Buses. Not even APC's, although he didn't think much of APCs, not in a combat zone.
He was an old infantryman, and he took the old infantryman's view: the worse place to be in a firefight was a pillbox—but being inside a vee-hicle was almost as bad. If you need a foxhole, you dig one; you don't build it above ground. Putting tracks, wheels or fans underneath it doesn't make it better. Still an above-ground foxhole.
Well, they weren't organized into two fucking training detachments and a transport/support/medical command now: they were now the First Battalion, call sign Haifa, operational in a combat zone.
Peled didn't necessarily like that, but he understood it.
His earphone hissed. "Haifa A One Twenty, err, Haifa A Twenty," Avigdor Cohen said, correcting himself. "That
"I've got operational control of the helo overhead," Shimon said. "What do you want from him?"
"We're on cleanup; you take it. I suggest you land him just ahead of the first bus and use him for medevac. You'd better get me a medic, and find somebody else to take over the mopping up."
"Fair enough. I'll take over, now?"
"It's yours, General."
"I've got it. Good job, Yitzhak."
Galil started to say something, but the distant world at the end of the dark tunnel, the dim world surrounding the piece with the triple bars of a captain, the gray world was going black. Maybe he had lost too much blood after all.
Damn.
CHAPTER 5
Mordecai Peled: Cleaning Up
Mordecai Peled kicked through the smoking remains of the roughly square piece of composite. Part of the outer wall of the cabin, maybe, although it was hard to tell. The whole damn thing stank of burning petrochemicals and scorched meat. A scorched fragment of bone stuck up through the wreckage. He nudged it with his toe, but couldn't decide whether it was part of an arm or leg.
He eyed it coldly. That was just something that had happened to get in his way, and he'd knocked it down. That didn't matter at all.
Hey, Casa mamas, teach your boys not to point guns at my boys.
There's some things you have to give up on. Teaching morality, for one.
You can't teach them that it's wrong to run through the streets of Berlin smashing your people's windows and burning their shops. You can't teach them it's evil to herd your people into the Umshlagplatz and load them into cattle cars to be hauled away and boiled down for soap. You can't teach them that it's unjust to wrap your revered teachers in the Torah scroll and burn them alive. You can't teach them it's immoral to wait on an overpass and then, shouting, "Arafat will fuck your sister," throw firebombs at an auto on a Jerusalem road and boil a baby in his mother's womb.
You can, however, teach them that it's unsafe to raise their hand to you and yours.
That was good enough for Mordecai Peled.
The bodies, some still in Casa uniforms—had to save something for the Thousand Worlds observers—scattered across the lightly wooded slope were something else, though: they had him irritated. The bastards had tried to get in his way, and he didn't like that much. But the dozen or so bodies didn't seem a fair trade for what was shaping up to be at least thirty dead Metzadans and five times that many wounded.
There weren't enough Freiheimer bodies in the universe to trade for the least of his people.
But that was personal, not professional. His professional judgment was that the Thirtieth had been fucking lucky.
Seven hundred and fifty men, all except one stripped company organized into a support/transport/medical command and two specialized training detachments, the lot of them ambushed by fifteen well-armed infantrymen, would be expected to take upwards of fifty percent casualties. Well upwards.
Looking at it the other way: if Peled had staged an ambush like this, he would have expected to knock out more than half the buses and kill well over half the men.
Buses. He shook his head. Buses. Not even APC's, although he didn't think much of APCs, not in a combat zone.
He was an old infantryman, and he took the old infantryman's view: the worse place to be in a firefight was a pillbox—but being inside a vee-hicle was almost as bad. If you need a foxhole, you dig one; you don't build it above ground. Putting tracks, wheels or fans underneath it doesn't make it better. Still an above-ground foxhole.
Well, they weren't organized into two fucking training detachments and a transport/support/medical command now: they were now the First Battalion, call sign Haifa, operational in a combat zone.
Peled didn't necessarily like that, but he understood it.
His earphone hissed. "Haifa A One Twenty, err, Haifa A Twenty," Avigdor Cohen said, correcting himself. "That
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