“Why isn’t Sergey here?” someone asked.
“He said he wasn’t going to wait for the trucks. He took a bunch straight up the mountain.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Yeah, well, you know Sergey: ants in the pants.”
“We can’t pull that kind of stunt with all these kids here. We have to wait for the trucks to arrive.”
“When the hell will that be, Yitzhak?”
“Shouldn’t be too much longer now,” said Yitzhak—who had been the last man out of Atlit.
“We waited for so long, some of us weren’t sure we’d see you again tonight,” someone teased.
“The inside team did a good job,” he said, reaching for the cigarette that was being passed around. “But it was weird. The place was lit up like Tel Aviv on a Saturday night, but quiet as a cemetery. Not a soul in sight. The Brits were all in their beds, sound asleep. I could hear them snoring, so help me.
“Then, just as I was about to leave, I found myself face-to-face with a ginger-haired little guy in a British officer’s uniform. I was close enough to punch him, which I was about to do. But he blinked and walked past me, like I wasn’t there. I didn’t recognize him, but he had to be one of our guys.”
“Must have been.”
“What do we hear from the others?” Yitzhak asked. “Are you in touch with the walkie-talkie?”
“Worthless piece of shit,” said one of the men, pointing at the boxy pack beside him. “I got nothing but static all night, and the damn thing weighs as much as my grandmother.”
“That’s no joke,” someone snickered. “I’ve seen your grandmother.”
The sound of engines somewhere in the dark silenced all conversation until two trucks and a small bus pulled up with their headlights switched off. The Palmachniks started helping people onto them almost before they came to a stop. Some of the men tried to talk the refugees out of bringing their belongings any further. “There is no room, sweetheart,” someone said to a woman with a bulging satchel. But when he tried to pull the bag out of her hand, she slapped his face with enough force to be heard up and down the line.
“Enough,” said Yitzhak, tossing the valise into the truck. “It’s all they have, poor creatures.”
Shayndel winced at hearing herself called a “creature” and ignored the hands extended to help her climb into the first truck, which she had chosen after seeing that the men in charge were crowding into the cab. Leonie, Tedi, Esther, and Zorah pushed their way up beside Shayndel and settled together on the floor, with Jacob squeezed among them.
The convoy crept along slowly until they turned left, away from Atlit and east into the mountains. After another hard turn that threw everyone off balance, the headlights came on, illuminating a narrow gravel road, and the driver put his foot down on the accelerator.
As they gained speed, the girls’ hair flew up so that they almost looked like they were underwater. Zorah threw her head back and closed her eyes. Leonie held her hand out over the side, fondling the breeze. Shayndel had the urge to start singing.
As the truck started to climb the side of the mountain, Tedi inhaled the tang of pine and the mulch of fallen leaves and a dozen other scents: tree sap and resin, pollen from six kinds of dusty grasses going to seed. The soldiers up front added dark notes of leather, tobacco, onion, whiskey, sweat, and gunpowder. It was a wild mixture, the aroma of escape. She caught Leonie’s eye and grinned. “It smells like heaven out here.”
The roads became rougher and in the back of the truck, the refugees banged into one another and tried not to cry out. They slowed to a crawl as the incline grew steeper and the convoy negotiated one hairpin turn after another.
“It would be faster to walk,” someone muttered as the initial giddiness began to subside. When the truck lurched to a sudden halt Shayndel jumped up and saw that they had come to a fork in the road.
The driver and two soldiers hurried out of the cab and immediately started arguing.
“Turn right,” said Yitzhak, who was holding a flashlight.
“I don’t think so,” said the driver.
“What do you know?”
“More than you.”
“Yes, but I’m in charge.?
??
When they started out again, the driver turned right so sharply that everyone in back fell over.