Allegro Misterioso

Short Story

In the hills that lie between the hard soil fields and the craggy sand-covered mountains, there had been scraps of rain but not enough to give a bountiful harvest. The clouds overhead plinked a view drops this morning. Plink, plink, plink. That was not much comfort at all to the man who was waiting for the harvest season to finally start. But it did not look good. And tomorrow only did not look good either. Usually, there were patches of lush almond trees and acres of potatoes. But this was not a good year.

Overhead there were fighter bombers from his own side crawling just above the of the earth.  The man shook his.

When the planes were passed, he looked to the north into the valleys of Lebanon and worried that what would happen sooner was a reciprocation of another kind. Raindrops of steel and powdered mixture that brought death with them. But as he scanned the Valley and the mountains beyond, he could see no firing. At least not yet. At least not today. He knew the signs.

He turned back to his house and entered. “Marian?”

No sooner had he called for his wife, than a sweet sound came from the second floor. “ I thought you were going to begin harvesting?” With the gentle up of the voice at the end.

“I will go at it tomorrow because there is no rain today.”

“Do as you wish, but I would take anything that I could before the torrent comes down.”

“Do you mean the rain?”

“Whatever else could I mean?”

“I heard you doing that very delicate dance with the antenna to try and get the Arabic station which lies just across the border.”

“Better to know what the weather is going to be rather than let it just happen to you.”

This even the man could agree to.

-

A few miles down the road soldiers from the Israeli defense force were carefully moving along. One of them had a mine detector and he was carefully sleeping just a fraction of a centimeter above the unpaved highway. He knew that the other side had carefully mined these roads in the last year. This led him to the very careful. He thought he heard a home through his headphones. He stepped back and repeated this week and again hum appeared. Quietly signaled the other members of the squad and one of them bent down and gradually used a trowel to uncover the mine.

After about a minute the soldier who had the mine detector got out a pair of delicate players and clipped the three jury-rigged wires. When he had done the last wire, the two of them sighed for relief. And then they went back to their positions for the next mine.

The mine was put in an explosive-resistant bag and carried by the squad leader.

-

It was deep underground in a sandy bunker. There were three men all of them listening to the receivers that were tuned. But they were not tuned for human voices, but for the sound of clicking of the mines. To each mine would start to signal if it were uncovered but it only had a few minutes to warner before it would be diffused.

Then a click came through and the man calculated where it was. He made sure but the clicking stopped just after his calculations were barely think. He raised his hand and the commander silently walked over and looked at his map.

He then called his superior and told him what the location was of the enemy’s position. Then he went back to listening.

-

The commander had a paper that said that the enemy was checking mines along the border. He could see why: the Gaza Strip had exploded with massacres of civilians and freedom fighters pouring out from the strip to wipe out their secret enemy. Allah be praised for having so many true believers.

But he now had to make a decision. It was clear that the Israeli defense forces were checking the roads. The enemy was almost certain that Hezbollah would certainly side with Hamas. While Hezbollah and Hamas were on Allah’s side, this was not in fact certain. While its troops certainly wished Hamas well it would be a very high-level decision to attack the Israelis.

So, he looked intently at his larger map. He knew that he could engage only a small force otherwise he would have to alert those who were higher up than he. And he would rather not do that.

The commander petted his German Shepard and decided to wait. The dog snoozed.

-

 On the road, past the potato patches lined up on signs, the IDF squad was marching. The squad leader was hoping that he could refill the canteens and perhaps gather some food as he sat out on his next length of road. He was welcomed in by Marion and be leader and the farmers looked each other in the eye. It grew quite cold in the kitchen.

The farmer spoke: “Have you found anything on your watch?”

The squad leader nearly pulled out the bag. He showed four anti-personnel mines. “A few pieces. We will be ready.”

The farmer looked the pieces over. “They said the in the south. In my day as commander of this area, we read sure that they not wired to broadcast.”

“Broadcast? I don’t understand.”

“Hezbollah often wires the mines to send off a message if they have been discovered.”

“We haven’t had any such incident.”

“Usually that’s because the enemy has not decided to respond.”

“How are you so sure that these mines are like that?”

The firmer reached over and pulled one of the mines. He examined it and slipped it over. With a few motions, he uncovered a small chip that was easily recognized as a phone chip for broadcasting.

Outside them was the plink plink plink. It was the rain. This time.