* * * I was sitting down to dinner with Nava a little before seven on May 8, 1972 when the phone rang. We’d just fed Michael, who was almost two, full of energy, and showed no sign of wanting to go to bed. “It’s Manno,” said the voice on the line. Brigadier General Emanuel “Manno” Shaked was Dado’s chief of operations. “A plane has been hijacked,” he said. “It’s heading for Lod. It will land in about 30 minutes. They’ve got hostages. Get to the airport. Dado and Dayan are on their way.” I called Danny Yatom and told him to get whoever was at the sayeret base to Lod as soon as possible. But most of the men were on training exercises, including one team with Yoni deep in the Negev Desert. He immediately began calling them back. When I got to the airport, I found Dayan and Dado huddling in a room below the control tower, unfurnished except for a small table in the corer. Talik was there with them. He was now head of all military operations in the kirva. Rechavam Ze’evi as well, the head of the central command area, which included Tel Aviv. So was Ahrahle Yariv, who had succeeded Meir Amit as head of military intelligence, and nodded glumly as I joined them. The plane had landed. A Sabena Boeing 707 bound from Brussels to Tel Aviv, it had been hijacked after a stopover in Vienna. All we knew at this point was that the hijackers were Palestinians and that there were about a hundred passengers on board. Dado said that, while we figured out how to respond, we had to make sure, at all costs, the plane didn’t take off again. It would presumably go to an Arab country, where we’d be powerless to act. Though only a handful of my men had arrived, I took the only officer who had, Shai Agmon, and an El Al engineer to see whether we could disable the hijacked jet. It was parked well off from the main terminal area. With the El Al man leading the way, we approached from the rear, crouching low, hoping the hijackers wouldn’t spot us. The engines were still running, but at least th