Aaron Cohen - Brotherhood of Warriors

It began almost immediately after 9/11. My office in Beverly

I arrived at the Robert Land Academy, a sprawling, sixty-eight-acre

My last day in Los Angeles was more stressful than

Outside the airport, a woman, tall, slim, dirty blond, in

Besides the new fishpond work, I was going to my

My stepfathers friends Jack and Sara Eisner lived in the

Located on the Mediterranean coast, just south of the city

This is it, I told the old, white-bearded cabdriver with

Throughout basic training, instructors engaged in a brutal level of

At the seven-month mark, the regular combat units in the

We were now given the luxury of six hours sack

After the massa kumta we were granted a week off.

When we werent on the range, we were in the

From the two platoons of roughly forty guys in basic

From this point forward, almost a year into our army

After graduation we were given ten days off to recharge

On our first day as operators in the unit, Ilan,

The heart and soul, or perhaps I should say the

Eventually, you start to get comfortable with your fear. As

Most warriors in the field start to isolate themselves at

One morning in Tel Aviv as I was trying to

By the last few months of my tour, I was

When I came back to Los Angeles that summer, I

I returned to L.A. and got my own apartment. Back

How can the United States improve its overall level of

J ust after 4 P.M . on March 4, 1996, as Israel was busily preparing for the Purim holiday, a massive explosion tore through the heart of Tel Aviv.

I felt the blast before I heard it. Stretched out on Tals sofa, I noticed the barrel of my machine gun vibrating. As the whole apartment house began to shake, a cheap alarm clock and a framed picture of Tal and two other Special Forces soldiers from our unit came crashing down from the shelf. I barely lifted my head from the sofa. Having grown up in Los Angeles, Id long ago become accustomed to riding out earthquakes and their aftershocks.

Plus, I was too numb to move; my mind and body were fried. I was in Tel Aviv on my first overnight leave since joining the Special Forces a few months earlier. Somehow, Id managed to make it through the brutal physical and psychological gauntlet to become a fully operational soldierwarrior or fighter is the literal translation from the Hebrew word lochem and was eagerly awaiting my first undercover mission for Sayeret Duvdevan, Israels elite Special Forces counterterrorism unit. Driving my Israel Defense Forcesissued car from our desert base to Tel Aviv, I wasnt thinking about Purim parties (in Israel the holiday is a time of drinking, feasting, and costumed mayhem in nightclubs). I wanted nothing more than a cold beer and a few hours sleep on Tals couch.

Tal was already in his third year in Sayeret Duvdevan. The name Duvdevan is something of an inside joke to Israelis; it literally means cherry. As most Sabras (that is, native-born Israelis) know, there is a species of cherry in the Holy Land that looks no different from the edible variety but which packs a strong and often lethal poison. As a Special Forces unit operating undercover disguised as Palestinian men and women, Duvdevan is the cherry that may look harmless but often proves deadly. Tal was on his mandatory rotation out of the unit just as I was on my way in. A short, tautly muscled Sabra of Sephardic descent, he was arguably the units most talented counterterrorism instructor. He had the look and demeanor of the consummate lochem . His jet-black eyes rarely betrayed a glimmer of emotion; he never wasted a word, never bullshitted; and, like most Duvdevan vets, wouldnt regale the barracks with war stories of his past undercover missions in the shetah , Hebrew for field. But in my first weeks of training, Id heard it whispered that Tals trigger finger had neutralized more Arab terrorists than cancer.

When the explosion hit, Tal was cracking open a couple of bottles of Maccabee lager; the beer foamed over and the shockwave jolted him against the refrigerator. He darted to his open balcony. I was close behind. The perfect Mediterranean blue sky was instantly darkening: a massive thunderhead of black smoke billowed down the street toward us.

Piguah, piguah! Tal yelled, Hebrew for terrorist attack. He was still completely calm, but his eyes darted back to the living room, locking on his machine gun.

I grabbed my own M-4, a lightweight version of the M-16, and we tore downstairs, heading in the direction of the Dizengoff Mall. If it was a terrorist bombing, I prayed the mall wasnt the target. Located at the intersection of Dizengoff and King George streets, its the citys most popular shopping center, and on erev Purim, the intersection was sure to be packed with teenagers, tourists, schoolchildren, and young mothers with strollers. No more than half a minute after the explosion we arrived on the scene and my worst fears were realized: The bomb had ripped through an enormous section of wall, destroying the malls entrance, leaving a scene of unspeakable carnage. Scores of mangled bodies and limbs were scattered everywhere: arms blown off, bodies decapitated. A female soldier stared up at me, howling and writhing, one leg missing below the hip, the other gashed beyond repair. I knew shed likely bleed to death before we could set up triage. As I turned, my boot heel slipped on pavement slick with blood.

T he Dizengoff Mall resembled a battlefield more than a crime scene. It didnt take Tal and me more than a few seconds to realize what we had to do: No one had a goddamn clue what was happening, and the collective sense of panic was escalating exponentially by the moment. All the usual authoritiesthe cops and the border patrol soldiers who park in front of the mall, checking bagswere dead or dying. Tal shot me a quick, fierce glance. I nodded, acknowledging that I understood it was now our duty to take charge of the crime scene.

Like all the elite commando units in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the fighters of the Sayeret Duvdevan carry two pieces of special identification. We have a card that says were exempt from shaving, permission usually granted to ultra-Orthodox draftees who refuse to violate the biblical strictures against trimming their beard and side locks while in service, but in our case, issued solely to accommodate our need for disguise when we go undercover in the West Bank.

More important, we carry a black clearance pass which grants us the highest operational level of security clearance in the Israeli army. Members of the top-tier Special Forces units can go to any military base in the country, no questions asked, walk into classified recon rooms, even sit shoulder-to-shoulder with officers planning top-secret operations. The other thing black clearance allows us to doactually requires us to dois take charge of a scene of a terrorist attack, regardless of the ranking military or law enforcement officers present.

I chambered my M-4, began running through the mob, screaming in Hebrew, Get the fuck out of the way! Move! Move! I shouted at one girl who stared mutely back in terror. When she turned I saw the blood streaming down her face: There was a gaping, scarlet-and-black hole. Her eyeball had been blown clear out of the socket.