“You’re too old. Your reflexes are too slow. Your vision is impaired. You have a steel hip that could pop or break at any moment. You could not pass the exacting physical demands of Unit 13. You do not speak or understand Hebrew, so you would not understand commands. Do you think, under the circumstances, we should provide you with a translator? Hardly possible, and even if it was, there is the issue of time. Then there are weapons. You are not up to speed on ours. To know how to operate them efficiently, you would have to be drilled with them thousands of times under intense pressure and by mandate of our doctrines. This our Unit 13 people have done, you have not. Also procedures. With raiding, all members of the team must know the target intimately, must be in agreement on tactics and intentions, and if they must improvise, they improvise from that plan, and as soon as possible return to it. You don’t know the plan. Then there are the men. All of them will worry about you, not about the mission. They will be agitated to have a stranger in their midst. It’s an unfair burden to place on them. And there are diplomatic concerns. You are an American citizen. You have no authorization from your government to participate in our combat operations. I don’t know the legal repercussions, but if an American dies on an Israeli combat mission, there could be harsh political consequences. There are many in America who despise Israel and would use the tragedy as leverage to pry us further apart. Conspiracy theories would spring up like germs. Occlusion would be general where clarity is demanded. And consider journalism. Your newspaper rats would probe your death, expose your past life and your secrets, bedevil your survivors, blow security on Unit 13, breach its security, shine a light on its missions when what is most needed is darkness. I cannot under any circumstance imagine this man”—Gold indicated the Director, sitting obdurately next to him, smoking a cigarette, barely listening—“would authorize such a thing.”