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We were as ready as we were ever going to be. We got the final go-ahead
from in mid-February. Our backpacks were crammed full with the whole array
of equipment we’d designed, commandeered or purchased for the mission —
including a metal detector we got from a hobby shop in Pennsylvania. All the
cargo except our personal gear, our weapons and our communications
equipment was loaded onto the cart. A command post was set up in a few
wooden huts on Mount Keren in the Negev, complete with special antennas to
receive the intercept transmissions if we succeeded. Not since the first Golan
operation had the attention of the kirya been so keen, or the stakes so high. In
addition to Meir Amit, and of course Avraham, also flying down to Mount
Keren would be General Tzur’s successor as armed forces chief of staff —a
gruff Palmach veteran whom I’d met very briefly at the end of my officer’s
course but who I would come to know well, and work closely with, in the years
ahead: Yitzhak Rabin.
The helicopter lifted off at about six-thirty at night. Compared to special
operations nowadays, the mission still had a somewhat improvised feel about it.
Certainly, that was true of the equipment we were ferrying in, and the tools
we'd devised to make sure we could get it installed and working. But the men in
my team were soldiers I’d trained from the day they arrived in the sayeret.
Achihud Madar was unfailingly surefooted, whether finding his way alone at
night on unfamiliar ground or in a firefight inside a building. He also had
natural dexterity. He and another of the soldiers who was also gifted with his
hands, Nissim Jou’ari, would be performing the most technically delicate part of
the operation on the cable. The third member was Oded Rabinovitch. Tall, thin
and quiet, he was absolutely reliable in whatever part of an operation he was
given to execute. And as my deputy commander, I’d chosen a sayeret officer
named Kobi Meron, who’d been with me on a number of Golan missions. Over
six feet tall, he was probably the strongest man in the unit, quick-thinking and
utterly unflappable.
When we landed, we telescoped out the axles on the cart. The roar of the
departing chopper was replaced by silence. Under the soft light of hundreds of
stars, I led the way deeper into the desert. It took nearly an hour to reach the
road leading to the cable site. Though traffic was light, I posted Oded and
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