Stockholm 2011
Carl
was packing. The shampoo and toilet
paper embargoes had instantly created panic buying across
Swedes could join the French Foreign Legion, Carl mused. How, then, could anyone argue that he shouldn’t be doing this?
He looked over his bed where he had arranged his things to be packed. He checked a list of things to do around the apartment and wandered his brother’s flat one last time reflecting on the procedures he had been living with and would now live with 72 hours more.
In
the main, the procedures were meant to
keep his plans out of the hands of
Carl
would now fly to
Carl
glanced at his checklist and sat down
at the kitchen table for the final check of his Australian passport.
There were
no stamps for European crossings for the last five years. Just the
Middle
Eastern business visas and Australian,
Carl
thought of Mossad and
The Australian passport was in order and together with the Swedish passport Carl slipped it into the pouch around his neck.
He burned his check-off list in the kitchen sink, packed his bag and left for the airport.
Arriving
in
Gamal was delirious.
“A toilet paper embargo!” His lips quivered with delight. “And shampoo.”
“They’re gonna be uncomfortable from top ta bottom,” Carl smiled.
“The
news is all about hoarding and
smuggling,” laughed Gamal. “
Carl
spent the night at the hotel, left his
Swedish passport with Gamal in the morning and caught the morning bus
for
The
Palestinians were walking on air. They
couldn’t believe
Carl would move into position for the events of the next morning through friends outside the furniture industry.
He went looking for them after dinner. Ahmed was at the Internet café according to plan and after doing his email, Carl left with him in a car with darkened windows. Carl turned off his phone. They drove to a village and neighbourhood near the Apartheid Wall on the other side of which was an Israeli settlement.
They came to a building on the end of a street at an edge of the village which faced the Wall. A guard tower sat off to the right in what was a panoramic view of the wall from the building’s roof, seen from behind a screen which faced the wall. After a quick inspection, Ahmed led them from the roof, into the ground floor garage and out of the night’s darkness.
Gleaming in the light were two airplanes with six foot wingspans. Carl was to pilot one of them in the morning with radio controls. Ahmed’s phone chirped with a text message. He read it and announced, “The other pilot will be here at about 10 am.”
Carl
set to work inspecting the planes’
construction and radio controls. The Palestinians had clandestinely
gathered
the planes’ parts and constructed them but not many knew how to fly
them. The
flight was to be at noon,
Back
on the roof a radio was tuned to BBC
and an Al Jazeera reporter showed up with a video camera. The group
began to
plan the next day’s events, laughing gaily at BBC reports of further
The men assembled on the roof sat behind the screen and contemplated positions for the cameraman and pilots with their radios for the following day. The coffee tables would be moved out of the way. The cameraman would film through a hole in the screen where it would be difficult for the Israeli guards to see him. Carl and the other pilot would have space and vision to work the radio transmitter controls – mainly invisible to the Israeli guards from behind the screen.
They slept on carpets on the roof and kept away from the screen in the morning when they started moving around.
The
other pilot showed up before 10, a Palestinian
from
At precisely noon the planes' engines were fired up, the men drew open the door of the garage and the planes were hurried into the street.
They were in the air and headed for the Wall’s guard tower before the Israeli guards saw where they had come from. The plane piloted by Walid took the lead and flew directly at the tower veering, just before impact, to the right while Carl’s plane, immediately behind him, then veered to the left.
Carl fell in behind Walid who began flying back and forth over the Israeli settlement on the other side of the Wall. Walid eventually swung back towards the guard tower and began circling it. Carl flew his plane just beyond where its noise drew people to windows, roofs and streets. There they began to notice the second plane’s presence around the tower.
“Time?” asked Walid.
“Two minutes,” replied Ahmed.
“Final pass,” Walid announced.
“Roger,” replied Carl.
Walid headed his plane left from the tower and Carl fell in behind him. Swinging over the settlement they then headed back directly towards the tower and opened their bombardier doors, letting loose their payload in the last 30 meters before the tower.
They flew their planes back from the wall and overflew a bit of the Palestinian village before turning back at the wall and crashing the planes into the base of the guard tower.
Slipping down the stairway from the roof, Walid and Carl descended to the street. The car with the darkened windows drove them off to Ramallah before any roadblocks went up. Carl was in a business meeting by 1 pm., having, to his knowledge, broken few Palestinian or Israeli laws.
There
had been many teams such as his. There
were initial rumblings in
Americans awoke to the world laughing at them and immediately forgot why.
And soon began the toilet paper and shampoo smuggling of 2011.
jeff@jeffmarck.net
Jeff Marck's Real Men Build Bridges Home Page
www.jeffmarck.net
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