Casca 20: Soldier of Gideon by Barry Sadler Page B

were trying to collect themselves in the shadows, blundering about in the half dark amidst the broken guns and bodies, twisted steel and concrete. To their front, lit blood red by the setting sun, came a host of screaming crazies armed with nothing but small assault rifles, but getting closer, terrifyingly closer, every second.
    And behind these crazies there now were dozens of other trucks spilling hundreds more infantry onto the sand and they were all racing forward screaming.
    And, farther back still, outlined against the darkening sky, the whole horizon was spread with the red silhouettes of Israeli tanks.
    And, in the middle ground was a racing armored car, turret open, a blond head and red helmet waving like a battle flag.
    It was too much.
    In fact, the Arab machine guns were killing a lot of Casca's men, and, in cooler hands, might have killed all of them. But, in the bunkers, among the groans of the dying, the screams of the wounded, the stench of blood and piss and shit and cordite and petrol, there were no cool heads. Every Egyptian had alongside him a corpse or a moaning, dying comrade. And from out of the desert more death was coming in an endless, blood red wave.
    A few Arabs had second thoughts about their Jihad, and their hands faltered at the guns. Their rate of fire slackened. They couldn't see the numbers of the attackers who fell. The sun only lit the ones on their feet, getting closer and closer, and now pouring fire into the bunkers.
    As the first of the attackers' bullets took effect, the defenders stopped firing. They stood and backed away from their smoking weapons and the screaming remains of their friends. Then more of them were falling to the hail of fire from Casca's men, and the Arabs broke and ran.
    As in most armies, Egyptians officers led from the rear, only young boy subalterns being with the troops in the first line of fire.
    Subaltern, NCO, or private, by now all the heroes were dead, and the wave of terrified humanity that was pouring back out of the gun emplacements was through with any idea of heroics.
    The Jihad, the Holy War that guaranteed eternal Paradise for those who died in it, was no longer of interest to any of these men.
    Having your testicles torn off, your guts ripped out, your own leg blown clear of your body to have your falling boot kick you in the head, to taste the bitterness of your own waste as you fell face down into the mess of your dangling intestines these were too high a price to pay for Paradise. There must be a better means to get there or else Paradise was going to be very sparsely populated.
    The officers at the rear were overwhelmed by their retreating troops, and, no matter how they felt about it, were swept back in the retreating wave or simply trampled underfoot.
    All along the line of the Egyptians defense, man's most powerful emotion spread like a brushfire. Sheer terror swept the line and mindless panic ensued.
    Here and there among the defenders a cool head prevailed, and some of the Israelis met fierce resistance, but by the time darkness fell most of the outer defenses of Al 'Arish had fallen.
    Not even David Levy, nor the most devout of the Orthodox Jews, paused for their nightly prayers. Nor did Casca hear anywhere the Muslim ritual call to prayer. What he mostly heard were the endless wails of the wounded, the despairing groans of the dying, incessant pleas of: "Water, water. In the name of Allah, give me water."
    The adherents of two of the world's great religions were too busy killing and dying to pause to pay their respects to the god for whom they were doing it.
    But at last the dying did get their water. The Israeli water wagons were right behind the ambulances, and men crowded around them gulping from their canteens, refilling them, then gulping them empty to refill them again.
    Compassionate Israeli medics moved among the mainly Arab wounded, distributing water as they went.
    There never seemed to be enough water, Casca thought, to slake the