Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [104]
“You will go back on the next plane, Zadok,” he said to me tersely, his hands on his hips. Why is it that all friggin’ officers have to authoritate with their hands on their hips?
“I’ve come too far for you to do this to me,” I pleaded.
“Either go peacefully, or I’ll have you tied up.”
“Major, hey, old buddy, I’ve come halfway around the world to find this place. I have to stay.”
He glanced at my leg, shook his head, and turned to leave.
I grabbed him instinctively and this drew a crowd. Everyone gawked as Ben Asher took my hands off him. He seemed on the verge of ordering me put under restraint.
“The wounded will be evacuated,” he said. He continued to stare at me and his stare was frightening. The major was a concrete block of a man, who could do away with me with a single backhand blow. I was going dry and I knew he could see me grow pale and faint. He reached down, picked up a rock, and turned and threw it. It landed over a hundred feet away.
“If you are not wounded, you should have no trouble retrieving that stone and bringing it back here inside one minute,” he said and immediately started time by looking at his watch.
“There’s a difference between a wound and an injury,” I pleaded. “Anyone knows that!”
“You have wasted ten seconds,” he said.
“But ... God dammit—I have to stay!”
I don’t know what possessed me, except that I knew I had to do something flamboyant and do it quickly. For some odd reason, I have always been able to stand on my head, even as a little kid. I loved to sucker guys into head-standing contests in the Marines, especially when we had a half case of beer in us. I could also have challenged him to an arm wrestle, but the size of his arm discouraged me.
So I stood on my head. God, let me tell you, I thought my bloody leg would fall off. I was determined to maintain balance, no matter how.
The move caught Ben Asher by surprise. I could see that upside down. His grizzly arms dropped from his hips and he gaped. Suddenly cheers began to break out from the paras. The major looked around at everyone threateningly.
I remained in this ridiculous position, even though every square inch of my body began to ache. Ben Asher was going to see how long I could take it.
It was no longer a game. I could feel the veins in my neck bulging and sweat erupted all over my body. I felt myself swooning, on the verge of passing out.
“You’re a real pain in the ass, Zadok,” he said. “All right, you dumb son of a bitch, get off your head. You can stay.”
Shlomo grabbed me as a rousing cheer went up from the men. Ben Asher whipped around and snarled everyone into instant silence, then cracked the meagerest of smiles.
The business of war interrupted in the form of a half-dozen mortar shells landing on our perimeter. God, if there’s anything I really hate, it’s mortars. They’re on you before you have a chance to react and their blast can leave you reeling, punchy, and half dead.
Ben Asher was at the field phone to the forward observation post, and in a minute our own mortars and recoilless rifles responded. The Egyptian shelling stopped. Ben Asher ordered the Recon platoon to move forward and take the position away from the Egyptians.
Fortunately, it was a typical Arab hit-and-run attack. Coffeehouse fighters. They abandoned the position and fled into the Pass without further ado. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t try to sneak back under cover of darkness and give us a miserable night.
After the Recon platoon secured the position, Ben Asher decided to move into it with more men and use it as our own forward post. A heavy machine-gun and rifle squad deployed and dug in. We were, in effect, inching up to the Pass against our orders.
The major was concerned about nightfall. The Pass was over fourteen miles long. On the other side of Mitla, beyond our reach, the Egyptians could cross the Canal by rubber raft and put God knew how many troops into the Pass.
I watched through a pair of field glasses as the phone line was being run to the new observation post. Mitla Pass was beginning to take on a weird fascination.