Phantom Strike

Eleven

“Goddamn cat!”

The man’s arms flailed wildly, and Ace dodged them, danced off his shoulder, and landed on the desk top. He spun around, sliding on a stack of loose paper, arched his back, and bared his tiny sharp teeth.

He hissed.

Ace left his mark. Half-a-dozen deep gouges began oozing blood from the man’s temples and cheeks.

“Son of a bitchin’ cat,” Arnie Gering yelped as he bolted out of the chair.

“What in the hell are you doing in my office?” Kramer demanded.

“Goddamn cat!” Gering said again, backing away from the desk.

“You’re screwing around with Ace’s computer, Arnie. Tell me why, and tell me now.”

Gering dug a handkerchief out of the back pocket of his jeans and began dabbing at his face. He spluttered some more when he saw the blood.

“Let’s have it, Arnie.”

Kramer stayed close to the door, ready to scream and run if he turned on her. She didn’t know what he was up to, but she was damned proud of Ace the Wonder Cat.

Ace stopped hissing now that Gering had moved away, but he remained alert, his hind legs tensed for another launch.

She glanced quickly at the computer screen:

Gering had been attempting to hack his way into the special projects files.

“What’s going on?” she demanded again.

Gering was regaining some degree of composure. “I’m working late.”

“Working on what?”

“Damn it! Can’t you see I’m scratched up. Why don’t you declaw that damned cat?”

The blood continued to seep from the cuts, obliterating the freckles on his sunburned face.

“I don’t give a shit about your face, Arnie. How did you get in here?”

She checked the door and jamb, but couldn’t see any scratches. Gering had a key to the building, but not to this door. Maybe he had used a credit card on the lock.

“It was open,” he said.

“This door is never unlocked at night.”

“It was open.”

“What are you after?”

Gering cleared his throat. “I was just checking on that job we did in Nebraska.”

“Why?”

“Well, shit. Lefty and I only got a lousy two grand apiece. We ought to get as much as the others are getting.”

Kramer moved sideways across the room, facing him, and closing in on the desk. She reached out and gently stroked Ace’s neck.

She could feel the bunched up muscles under his skin. Ace wasn’t going to relax just yet.

“You’re fortunate to have received a bonus at all.”

“I’m entitled to more.”

“How much more, do you think?”

“Well, I want to know what the others are getting.”

“Forget the others,” she said. “How much do you think you’re worth?”

Gering grinned at her. “I ought to get another five thousand.”

“Maybe you’ll find a job somewhere that will pay you that much more.”

His grin faded. “What? You can’t fire me.”

“I can’t? Seems to me I’m the one who hired you. I’ve changed my mind.”

“You fire me, and I go right to the newspapers,” Gering said.

“With what?”

“There’s something screwy about that deal. You just watch, Kramer. Some reporter will dig into it.”

“And visit you in jail, too?”

“Jail?”

“Breaking and entering. Attempted theft of proprietary information.” She picked up the phone and dialled a nine and a one.

“Hold on, damn it!”

Kramer kept her forefinger poised over the button. “Get out, Arnie.”

With a face turning redder than normal, and still holding his handkerchief to his cheek, Gering spun around and stomped out. She waited until she heard the front door slam, then dropped the telephone back in its cradle and settled into her chair.

She took a deep breath, She was more rattled than she thought she had been.

Damn. Where are you, Andy?

Grabbing the phone, she dialled the number in Washington and got the answering machine, which simply said, “Yes?”

At the beep, she said, “This is Klondike. There’s a problem with Icarus, and someone had better call me fast.”

Twenty minutes later, which was pretty fast for Washington, the phone rang.

It was a male voice she had never heard before.

“Klondike, I’d like a password.”

“Sugar time,” she said.

“And I’ll say, ‘mustard.’”

“Who are you?”

“Urn, I’m someone knowledgeable about all of Icarus. What’s the problem?”

She told him about Gering.

“And you canned him?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that may have been a little precipitous.”

“I can’t have someone working here that I can’t trust,” she said, jotting a note to have all the exterior locks changed in the morning. Also the security alarm codes.

“Yes. You’re probably correct.”

“I know I am.”

“I’ll check into it.”

“And you call me back,” she said. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering.”

“I’ll do that.”

She hung up. Ace the Wonder Cat promptly flopped on top of the phone.

“You deserve a medal, you know that?”

Ace got busy cleaning his claws.

The single airstrip in Northfield, Maine, was a tiny one, but long enough. The F-4s had used every available foot of its length without having to deploy the drag chutes, and as soon as the last Phantom — seven-seven, flown by Wyatt — was down, the runway lights had promptly been extinguished.

Parked in the weed-choked field off the edge of the runway were the six fighters, the two C-130s, and an unmarked Falcon business jet. Two dark blue tanker trucks without identification other than Maine license plates, manned by men in blue denims without insignia, moved among the aircraft, topping off the fuel tanks. Across the runway, a few civilian small aircraft were parked in an unlit area. The few buildings on that side of the field appeared to be deserted, and Wyatt could be assured that they were. Embry’s people would have threatened or bribed anyone who wanted to hang around the airport at night.

Most of the Noble Enterprises crew were inside the Hercules transport, filling up quickly on MREs.

Wyatt and Barr sat with George Embry inside the Falcon’s cabin. Embry had brought along coffee and club sandwiches, and every time he took a bite out of his, Wyatt felt guilty about the guys stuck with the military rations.

Embry lifted fourteen manila envelopes from the attaché case resting on the table between their seats. “Documentation,” he said.

“Is it any good, though?” Barr asked.

“The best. Social security cards, credit cards, flying and driving licenses, some nifty passports, the works. Before I leave, we’ll collect all of the ID you guys have. I’ll ship it back to Albuquerque for you.”

Embry passed Wyatt a thicker envelope. “Operating cash, in case you run into any emergencies.”

Wyatt opened the envelope and spilled the bills on the table. There were U.S. dollars in fifties and twenties and a few hundreds, French francs, Algerian dinars, CFA francs for Chad, and Libyan dinars.

“It adds up to around ninety thou, U.S.,” Embry said.

“This getting charged against my contract, George?”

“Nah, this is a freebie. Just in case anyone has to hitchhike out of the country.”

“Or the continent,” Barr added.

Wyatt divided the rubber-banded stacks, kept about a fourth of it, and shoved the rest to Barr.

“Gee, thanks, Daddy.”

“Split it up with the others, Bucky.”

“My guys,” Embry said, “are loading a couple cardboard boxes on the transport. That’s the small arms you asked for, as well as the maps, radios, and other crap for the survival packs.”

“We won’t be needing those,” Barr said.

“Thanks,” Wyatt said.

“On the Nebraska end,” Embry said, “I’ve arranged for a team that will hit there in the morning. By nine o’clock, there won’t be any evidence that you were ever there.”

“Except for eyewitnesses,” Wyatt said.

“Can’t avoid that, can we?”

“I don’t think anyone will ever have to testily,” Barr said. “And if they do, they’ll only remember us as hardworking gentlemen who spread a few bucks around.”

“Let’s hope so,” Embry said. “Okay, brief me on the mission.”

“I thought we’d done that a couple months ago,” Wyatt told him.

“There’s not a doubt in my mind that you’ve made some changes in the tactics, and Church wants to be fully aware of every phase.”

“There’s just one, well maybe two, little alterations,” Barr said.

Wyatt explained, point-by-point and chronologically, the plan he and Barr had prepared subsequent to the skeletal mission profile he had previously laid out for Church.

“Hot damn!” Embry said. “I like your changes. If the computers back at Langley knew about them, they’d up your chances a bit.”

“You ran a game scenario on us?” Barr asked.

“Of course. Standard procedure.”

“How did it come out?” Barr wanted to know.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Come on, George. You can count on me to overcome the odds anyway.”

“The machine suggested a seventy-four percent success ratio.”

“Before we made the changes,” Wyatt said.

“Before you made the changes. I’ll bet you upped it by ten or fifteen percent.”

“Comforting,” Barr said.

“Any time you’re ready,” Wyatt said, “we’d like to hear about this new and urgent deadline. You also mentioned some fatalities.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got a source inside the country, and she’s gotten close to an army lieutenant colonel.”

“Army?” Wyatt asked. “We aren’t going up against the army, are we?”

“His name is al-Qati, and he heads up their special forces unit. They’ve been training with the bomber command that apparently will deploy CW weapons. The commander is a guy named Ibrahim Ramad, a full bird. They’re doing coordinated air and ground attack exercises.”

“Are these the Sukhois?” Wyatt asked.

“Su-24s, right. So, this is the major change I’ve got for your mission.”

Damn. Jan was right about last-minute changes.

Embry unrolled a large reconnaissance map and spread it over the table.

“This is the base at Marada, or near Marada.”

“You want us to hit an air base?” Barr said. “What the hell happened to the chemical plant?”

“You get to do both of them now.”

“We’re short about four aircraft, in that event,” Wyatt said.

“It can’t be helped, Andy. Hell, I didn’t know about this until this morning, a couple hours before I called you, and we’re flat out of time.”

Wyatt studied the map, which was actually a blown-up recon photo. There wasn’t much to be seen except for an antenna complex and a runway.

“It’s underground,” Barr said.

“Right. See these shadows here, look like wide lines?

Those are the entrance doors to the subsurface hangars. You can barely make them out, but there are six ramps, leading down to the doors, see here? The runways are painted in camouflage, but we’ve known about this base for years. You’ll be able to locate it, as well as the chem plant, by geographical coordinates. They’re listed right here.”

“Those hangar doors will be blast doors,” Wyatt said. “We’d have to catch them when they’re open if we want to slip a couple heavyweights in there.”

“Yeah, I know. This is the way it goes. Your primary objective is the chemical plant, which is about ten miles north of Marada Air Base. The secondary target is any Sukhoi you can catch on the ground. We’d like to put a dent in their long-range bombing capability. Third target, if the opportunity presents itself, is the base.”

Wyatt looked at Barr.

“Why not?” Barr said. “I’m bound to have a couple bombs left over after I knock out the chemical plant.”

“You sound like you’re doing the whole damned thing alone,” Embry said.

“I could, but these other hot-shit pilots wanted to come along.”

“All right,” Wyatt said. “The decision to target the planes and the air base means that there’s a new development somebody in your building doesn’t like.”

“Ahmed al-Qati told my source that Ramad intends to hit three Ethiopian refugee camps with nerve, toxic, and psychological agents.”

“Shit,” Barr said.

“It’s supposed to prove to outsiders what they can, and will, do, which is deliver CW over a long range. I guess they’re also interested in evaluating the results of each agent.”

“What camps?” Wyatt asked.

“Unknown.”

“On August second. What time?”

“Also unknown. My agent will attempt to learn the take-off time, but she can’t probe too deeply without risking herself.”

“Do you have independent corroboration?”

“No,” Embry admitted. “We’re trying, but my source is reliable, and we don’t want to wait and risk having her be right and us be wrong.”

“You going to the UN with it?”

“I don’t play at those levels, Andy. My guess is that the time line is too tight for a round of high-level diplomatic discussions and less-than-veiled threats.”

“We’re not set up, not armed, for an interdiction mission,” Wyatt said.

“I know, and we’re not suggesting that you go play dogfighter with a bunch of MiGs and Sukhois. We figure if we can cause enough damage at the plant and the base, they’re going to forget about Ethiopians, at least for a little while.”

“That’s good,” Barr said, “because I’m not a dog-fighter. Lover and wild horse rider, yes, but dogfighter, no.”

Wyatt studied the map for awhile, then said, “I don’t think we need to know the take-off time. I’d hate to go in there and hit a bunch of them on the take-off run, yet allow one or two bombers to escape and light out for Ethiopia. Or when they know they’re under attack, they just might divert them to Tel Aviv. The best bet is to hit them early and hard enough to shake them out of the fantasy.”

“I second that thought,” Barr said.

Embry licked his lips. “Church thought it would be good to catch them in the open, on the ground. You cause some secondary explosions of CW ordnance, and we’d have gas all over the area, maybe sucked into the underground ventilation system. Goodbye Marada Air Base.”

Barr whistled through his teeth.

Wyatt sagged back in his chair. “That is an interesting thought, George.”

“We knew we’d have casualties hitting the chemical plant,” Embry reminded him.

“Yeah, but a whole air base? What’s the composition?”

“The Sukhoi bomber wing and a fighter/interceptor/ strike wing of four squadrons. MiG-23s and MiG-27s.”

“That’s a lot of people,” Wyatt said.

“Look what they’re planning, just for a test, Andy. And keep in mind that we’re targeting military capacity, not poor, damned hungry people.”

“You haven’t confirmed it, yet,” Wyatt said.

“Look, Wyatt. I don’t think we’ll find a confirmation. We just don’t have enough assets in the area. And we’re not here to debate the targets. You’re the contractor; we pay the freight and you do the job.”

“We’re not backing out, George. But as the commander on site, I’m going to reserve judgement relative to the final attack profile. We’ll buy the three targets, but we’ll remain flexible about the approach. Let’s not forget that we’re the ones with our asses on the line and that time-over-target is going to be damned slim. Bucky?”

“I’ll go with that.”

“George?”

Embry took off his glasses and nodded slowly. His eyes seemed redder, more fatigued, with the glasses removed.

“Yeah, all right, Andy. You call the final shots. I’ll keep pushing my gal, and update you if we learn more about the H-hour.”

“Anything else we need to know?”

Pursing his lips, Embry said, “Marty didn’t want me to tell you this, so keep it to yourselves, huh?”

Wyatt and Barr both grunted.

“You may get there, and then we’ll tell you to turn around and come home.”

“What the hell?”

“It seems that Icarus isn’t approved by all the higher-ups just yet.”

“Well, goddamn it!” Wyatt said. “Stupid old me, I thought you people had your act together before you extended the contract.”

“With the information we just got, the DCI is scrambling to touch bases with everyone who counts, and we’ll know more in the morning.”

“For Christ’s sake!” Barr exclaimed. “You guys are living up to your negative publicity.”

“You can punch me out, Bucky, but I swear I didn’t know. I do believe, with what Mari… with what my asset has provided, that the DCI will have a stamp of approval by morning.”

“This is pretty damned balled up,” Wyatt said.

“I agree,” Embry said. “I always plan for something to go wrong, but this one can’t get much worse.”

It did.

Just as Barr and Wyatt were deplaning, one of the Falcon’s pilots stuck his head out of the cockpit. “Mr. Embry, scrambled call for you.”

Wyatt waited while Embry picked up a phone. He mouthed the name, “Church.”

Embry uh-huhed and huh-uhed a couple times, swore three times, and then said, “Yes, sir.”

When he hooked the receiver back on its bulkhead cradle, Wyatt said, “What now?”

“Your man Gering?”

“Oh, shit!”

Embry told him about the confrontation between Gering and Kramer.

“She’s all right?”

“She’s fine. She fired the guy on the spot. Church is going to have some people take a close look at him.”

“You just can’t count on anyone, anymore,” Barr said.

“Come on, Bucky, let’s get this circus airborne before any more clowns show up.”

Ferry flights were supposed to be boring, but Barr was enjoying himself. Not more than three months before, he believed he’d never again fly a hot fighter plane.

He loved the F-4, and this one was greater than ever with all of the new systems.

Settled comfortably in his seat, with the autopilot directing operations, he had reviewed his new passport and accompanying documentation. His name was Jack O. Milhauser, and he had a couple matchbooks from a New Jersey topless bar as well as a thin catalogue of X-rated videos. He figured he knew what the “O.” stood for, and he thought he would give Kramer hell about the persona she had set up for him. She had probably laughed all the way through it.

If she was still there when they got back. He was going to have to prod Wyatt some more. Though they had been best friends for so long he had forgotten the starting date, he knew that Wyatt could be pretty damned obstinate about some things. His first marriage had soured him on the emotive aspects of life.

Barr also knew, based on his own experiences and the rotating roster of women he dated, that he wasn’t particularly qualified as a matchmaker. Maybe Wyatt knew something he didn’t know. Hell, he didn’t know what to do.

He was sure that Kramer’s problem involved frustrated love, but he couldn’t just shove Wyatt into something he didn’t want to do.

Life was a bitch sometimes.

Like for some Ethiopians he had never met, but knew he’d like if he ever did. He thought about that for awhile, to get his mind off Wyatt and Kramer.

Checked the skies around him. The lightening skies were cloudless, but were full of Phantoms, unarmed but with twin drop tanks slung beneath the wings. Wyatt and Gettman were ahead of, and a quarter-mile above, him. Zimmerman was riding his right wing, and Hack-ley and Jordan had paired off a half-mile to his left.

At thirty-two thousand feet, he could see the dawn coming at him, shooting spears of light off the Phantoms above. It was coming up on four A.M. local, which was just a solid expanse of darkened ocean. A glance at his fuel state told him that it was also time for an F-4 breakfast. They had taken off from Maine at eleven-fifteen Eastern Daylight Time, two hours behind the Hercs, and had just about reached their fuel limit.

The problem with this leg of the trip was that it was forty-two hundred miles long, and the F-4s, with a low-consumption cruise at 550 miles per hour, could plan on running out of fuel twice, at sixteen hundred miles and at thirty-two hundred miles. The C-130s, even with a maximum overload take-off weight of 175,000 pounds, could extend themselves to five-thousand miles and complete their share of the journey with ease.

The Phantoms needed a couple refuellings apiece, but their tanker didn’t have the capacity to meet that need.

Wyatt and Barr had figured it as closely as they could, poring over almanacs and meteorological studies for average prevailing winds at various altitudes. Without the drag of weapons and pylons, but with the drag of drop tanks, and with careful manipulations of the throttles, it was going to be possible. Each jet would get one full refuelling and, later, another six-tenths refuelling before the tanker’s fuel bladders were drained. Depending on tail winds, they might have to do some coasting to make Quallene on fumes.

They would also have to hope that their penetration of the African shoreline went unnoticed. There wasn’t much tolerance for wasting fuel in radar-dodging manoeuvres. They would cross the coast low, wishfully below possible radar coverage, but those few minutes would consume fuel at high rates.

Barr hit the transmit button. “Hey, Big Yucca, you see Thirsty yet?

Only Wyatt was utilizing his radar occasionally, so as not to advertise six radars.

“About thirty miles ahead, Bucky. What’s your state?”

“I can wait a while.”

Wyatt asked each pilot for his fuel state, and, after the replies, said, “Yucca Six, then Four, then Two, then Five, then Three.”

A few minutes later, Ben Borman came up on the Tac Two channel.

“I count six still with us. You see me?”

Barr had already located the tanker, several miles ahead and a thousand feet above. She was clearly defined against a brightening sky.

He rogered the query when his turn came.

After Jordan and Gettman had had their chances, Barr took a sip of water from the baby bottle tucked into his harness, then eased in throttle and gently closed the gap between himself and the C-130F.

The refuelling hose was fully extended from the port wing, seeming to float below the Hercules. The small airfoils near the tip allowed the operator to fly the tip within a short range, making the last manoeuvres to dock the tip in the receiving aircraft’s fuel receptacle. He could see Borman, though not clearly, in the Plexiglas bubble at the rear of the tanker.

“Atta way, Bucky, come on a tad more.”

“What the hell’s a ‘tad more,’ Ben?”

“Up ten feet. Speed’s matched.”

Barr was studying the end of the hose, which was just above him. He opened the refuelling receptacle, which was located on the top of the fuselage, behind the canopy.

A bad spot of air, a misdirection with the stick or throttles, and that heavy tip could do devastating things to canopies and pilots.

He eased back the stick a notch.

The hose lowered on him.

“Don’t go getting the hiccoughs, Denny,” Barr cautioned Maal.

“Hiccough,” Maal said.

“Easy, Bucky.” From Borman.

Centred the stick.

“A tiny goose of the throttle; come to Thirsty,” Borman said.

Nudge.

The hose slid overhead.

“You hang tight, right there,” Borman said.

He centred the stick and watched the wings of the C-130, ready to match any change the tanker might make.

“Gotcha!”

He felt the hose connector make contact with the airframe, but he kept his eyes riveted on the airplane above him, taking quick glances at Borman behind his protective window.

“Do you want to catch the windshield while you’re at it, Ben?”

“Sure thing. You using a credit card? I got a four percent discount for cash.”

“Guy behind me is picking up the tab. Ask him.”

It didn’t take long. He flicked the rotary switch to check fuel loads on the main and external tanks.

“That’ll do it, Ben.”

“Roger. I’ll be seeing you again soon.”

Barr eased off the throttles and the C-130 pulled away. He closed the receptacle, did a half-wingover, and slid away from the tanker.

“Eighteen hundred and forty gallons doesn’t go very far, does it, Bucky?” Zimmerman asked.

“Hell, man, we’re getting almost a mile to a gallon.”

“Don’t tell the EPA,” Gettman said. “They’ll want us to change to four-cylinder engines.”

As was typical, Martin Church arrived at his office at seven in the morning. He was barely into his third cup of coffee when the first call was passed through by his secretary at eight o’clock.

“Good morning, Mr. Director. This is Cal Norman at the Post.”

“Good morning, Cal. How are you?”

“Fine, sir. I’m trying to get confirmation on an item that landed on my desk. Or my phone.”

“What is that?”

“There’s this guy out in New Mexico somewhere that…”

“A guy? Does he have a name, Cal?”

“Uh, yeah, he gave me his name, but I’m supposed to keep it confidential.”

“That’s understandable,” Church said. “So he gave you a hot tip?”

“That’s what he says. Something about a clandestine air force operating out of Nebraska. His guess is that the CIA has to be involved.”

“His guess?”

“Well, there’s not too many groups have themselves six F-4 fighters,” Norman said.

“F-4s? Those are all but obsolete, aren’t they, Cal?” Church was fond of talking to reporters in question marks.

“I don’t know. I haven’t looked into this too far just yet.”

“How about survivalists? Or white extremists? Those groups are building some fascinating armouries, Cal.”

“But airplanes?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe the FBI does. What does your informant have to do with it?”

“He said he worked on the planes.”

“And did what with them?”

“Painted them, for one thing.”

“What colour?”

“Colour? Cream with red stripes.”

“Those aren’t the colours I’d use on warplanes, Cal.”

“That’s a fact, Mr. Director.”

“What kind of ordnance did he report?”

“Ordnance?”

“Weapons.”

“Well, he didn’t mention any weapons.”

“I’m sure you’re aware of this, Cal, but your informant seems to be a little short on facts. Did he say anything about a use for the planes? Have they got targets?”

“Well, a couple of my colleagues are checking with Nebraska and with some of the Middle East people in the city.”

“Why Middle East, Cal?”

“Uh, given the current world conditions, that seemed the most obvious. Don’t you have some ideas, Mr. Director?”

“I’ve been trying to give you some leads here, Cal. How about the DEA?”

“DEA?”

“The drug enforcement people might use airplanes like that for interdiction. Hell, I don’t know. I’m just trying to help you out.”

“Well, I appreciate it,” Norman said.

“Maybe they tossed him out of the group, or something. Maybe he’s got a grudge? If I were you, I’d call him back and ask about weapons. Or if he got himself blackballed from the group.”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll do that. Thanks, Mr. Church.”

They took on the last of their fuel two hundred miles off the coast and two hundred miles south of the Canary Islands. Wyatt then ordered all of the aircraft into a tight formation, the C-130s flying nearly wingtip-to-wingtip, and the Phantoms flying in a compressed diamond beneath the transports. On any radar in the area, they would be picked up as one blip, a single airplane on its way to somewhere.

One unknown airplane is much less threatening than eight unknown airplanes.

Once they were grouped up, Wyatt ordered a gradual descent, conserving fuel as much as possible.

The formation crossed the coastline at one thousand feet of altitude, one hundred miles north of Dakhla, Western Sahara. The next northern city of relative importance, Laayoune, was nearly three hundred miles away.

The Western Sahara Desert, once they were past the tiny bit of green along the coast, was dismal and forbidding. At their low altitude, it seemed to go on forever. Millions of square miles of rolling, undulating, almost colour-free blandness.

Wyatt had flown in North Africa before, but never in this region. He had studied the maps, but the maps were short of landmarks and population centres. No one wanted to live here, and he couldn’t blame them.

He checked the chronometer. 0912 hours local.

He looked up. Jim Demion was holding the Hercules steady two hundred feet above him.

“Wizard, Yucca One.”

They had agreed to use only call signs after violating the airspace of Western Sahara.

“Go, One.”

“Give it about ten more miles, then start gaining altitude at a hundred feet per minute. We want to get up where the fuel consumption reads a little better.”

“Roger, One. We’ll do it.”

They were at fifteen thousand feet, idling along at 350 knots to stay with the transports, an hour and forty minutes later. The landscape hadn’t changed much at all, though the sun was higher. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and though that generally was a positive sign for pilots, Wyatt missed the clouds.

“Yucca One, Four,” Gettman said.

“Go.”

“You suppose we’re within fifty miles of where it is we want to be? At that time, I begin to go into my famous panic routine.”

“Let me check on it, Four.”

Wyatt spun in the frequency on his Tac One radio. “Degas.”

He waited for a count of ten, then tried again. “Degas.”

One thousand one, one thousand two, one thou… “That you, Yucca?”

“Roger that, Degas. I need a signal for my ADF.”

His Automatic Direction Finder needed a radio transmitter emitting a signal in order to be useful.

“Yucca, I hate to get mean about it, but you’re a couple days off schedule, you know that?”

“I know it,” Wyatt said.

“This mean I have to get rid of my harem?”

“Just give me the damned signal.”

“Ah, roger the signal, Yucca. Coming up.”

Twelve

When he heard the first faint drone of airplane engines, Neil Formsby finished his glass of iced tea, donned the shirt he had prepared, rose from his cot, and left the tent.

There was a light breeze blowing out of the southwest, but it was not strong enough to raise a lot of dust or sand.

For some unfathomable reason, he had been enjoying his solitude. There was nothing like being by one’s self a thousand kilometres from anywhere to enforce introspection. Jesus Christ in the wilderness. He felt as if he needed another thirty-five days, and he halfway resented Wyatt showing up early. And contrary to the careful planning, they had arrived during daylight; he would not be allowed to demonstrate his jury-rigged runway lights.

Formsby had known Wyatt for fifteen years. They had first met when Wyatt was detached to the Royal Air Force to learn to fly Harrier jump-jets with Formsby’s squadron, and they had become good friends. Wyatt had made the arrangements which brought Formsby to the United States for a year-long course in air superiority tactics, and he had smoothed the way for Formsby to get time in F-15s and F-16s. That alone was worth a lifetime’s friendship.

When RAF Captain Neil Formsby had lost power on his Harrier at a hovering thousand feet and jammed his foot through the firewall in the ensuing crash, he woke up in the hospital to find Wyatt in attendance. And after he was out of the hospital and in rehabilitation, Wyatt had been there with a job offer. Only for Wyatt would Formsby isolate himself in a hostile and foreign desert and come to enjoy it.

He was impressed when he first caught sight of the approaching aircraft. The two lumbering transports were flanked on each side by three fighters. They were a thousand feet off the ground when they passed over, the roar of twenty engines thundering with an impact he could feel right down through his toes.

One of the jets waggled his wings at him.

Formsby truly missed, and achingly longed for, the cockpit of a fighter aircraft.

As they went by toward the east, the C-130s fanned out wide and let the Phantoms have first chance at Formsby’s crude runway. They turned back and made their approaches quickly enough that he supposed fuel was becoming critical.

It wasn’t until the first aircraft touched down that he considered that his efforts at levelling ground could possibly be inadequate. Wyatt had told him that they would substitute softer tires for rough airfields, but the F-4 still managed five hops before it settled in.

His runway was almost too short.

Sand-covered hard earth did not offer the same friction as concrete or asphalt, and excessive pressure on the brakes induced skidding.

The first Phantom reached the end of the airstrip and had barely turned off when the next one touched down.

Formsby ran out to meet the first plane. His running gait was a trifle lopsided because of his ankle.

Its nose hobbled up and down in rapid little motions as it crossed the sand toward him. In the glare of the sun off the windscreen, he could not make out who was at the controls.

He spun around, revealing the back of his shirt to the pilot. In big black letters on the white shirt were the words: “FOLLOW ME.”

Trotting toward the tanker trailers, he led the big jet to a spot near his tent, then turned and waved his hand in a horizontal circle.

The pilot raised his canopy as the Phantom turned ninety degrees, then braked to a stop.

Formsby gave him a cut-throat signal, and the turbojets spun down.

The pilot slipped his helmet off, and Formsby recognized Barr.

“Good morning, Nelson,” he called.

“Who?”

“You.”

“Oh, right. Sometimes, I forget who I am. G’day to you, mate.”

“That’s an atrocious accent, Nelson.”

“We do what we can.”

“You must have been lowest on fuel,” Formsby said.

“I resent that, Neil. I’ve got two, maybe three litres left.”

Formsby grinned at him, then trotted out to meet the next plane.

In twenty minutes, he had all of the planes parked, the jets aligned with their tails toward the tank trailers, and the C-130s side by side in front of them.

Men spilled from the Hercules aircraft, produced ladders, and helped the pilots out of their cockpits.

He received at least a half-dozen compliments on the design of his shirt.

Crossing to the fourth interceptor, he greeted Wyatt as the man came down the ladder.

“Welcome to my humble air base, Andrew.”

Wyatt threw out his hand, and they shook hands. “Outside of a demonstrated need for more practice with a bulldozer, Neil, you’ve done very well. It’s good to see you.”

“We are meeting earlier than expected, are we not? I would hate to think my calendar has been running slow.”

“We’re early, and I’ll tell you why in a little while,” Wyatt said. “First, we’ll visit your latrine…”

Formsby waved his hand at the vista around them.

“…then, if you’ve got something to drink?”

“There’s about nine thousand gallons of water. Or, your unexpected arrival has caught me with a few bottles of unconsumed ale and champagne. It’s in the icebox.”

“You always did know how to live in the desert,” Barr said as he approached, his hand out. “What’s for lunch, buddy?”

“We live off the land here, Nelson.”

“Ecch.”

Formsby shook hands also with Demion and Kriswell, both of whom he had met before, then Wyatt took him in tow and introduced him to the others.

The group scattered for the dunes to relieve themselves while Formsby popped the corks on his last four bottles of champagne, put out the ale, and started stacking paper plates with ham-and-cheese sandwiches. He used Swiss cheese since Americans in general had no palate for more exotic cheeses.

Since they could not all fit inside the tent, they ate their lunch sitting on the hot earth in the shade created by a C-130 wing.

Wyatt brought him, and apparently most of the others, up to date on the reasons for the premature initiation of their mission.

Formsby was appalled by the callous disregard for human life. “Refugees? Women and children?”

“That’s the word, Neil,” Wyatt said.

“What kind of a bastard are we dealing with?” he asked.

“The worst kind, apparently.” Wyatt briefed them on the commanders involved, referring to biographies provided by the CIA. It was always good to know one’s adversaries, and Formsby memorized the names. Ramad, al-Qati, Salmi, Ghazi.

“And,” Wyatt added, “the Langley people suspect there will be some deniability built in — such as rogue commanders acting on their own. However, they’re also certain that the great Leader and his chief advisor, Kamal Amjab, have given a thumbs-up to the plan.”

The heat was intense, and Formsby got up and crossed to his tent to get the last of the ale, a stack of paper cups, and a big jug of iced tea. He brought them back and walked around the group, pouring.

It was not high tea.

Wyatt spent forty minutes briefing the mission. Formsby could tell they had discussed it before, but Wyatt was now making some changes in timing and targeting.

“Questions, anyone?” Wyatt asked.

“The distance to target,” Hackley asked, “is five hundred miles?”

“From the staging base,” Wyatt said, “five hundred and six miles.”

“And with this bird, we’ve got a full-load combat range of five-twenty.”

“That’s right, Norm. Time over target is going to be almost nil.”

“All that means,” Barr said, “is you got to be accurate. Hit what you aimed for and skedaddle.”

“What the hell?” Gettman said. “If we run short of fuel, we’ve made plans for hitchhiking.”

“That’s doing it the hard way, Karl, but yeah, we’ve got backup,” Wyatt said.

Cliff Jordan — Formsby was concentrating on attaching faces to the names of the people he had just met — pointed at the tanker trailers. “Neil, do those rusted, broken-down buckets actually have all the fuel we need?”

Fuel — its availability and transport — was probably the most crucial aspect of this mission. Lacking a sufficient quantity in the right location meant that the ordnance did not reach its targets. Formsby was quite content with his success at producing the required amount in the correct geographical location.

“But of course,” Formsby said. “Andrew told me a minimum of thirty-one thousand gallons, forgetting that I must negotiate in litres, naturally. I have five five-thousand-gallon tankers and one eight-thousand-gallon tanker.”

“The way we’ll handle it,” Wyatt said, “we’ll refuel all of the aircraft here, which eats up twenty-five thousand gallons, and load the balance in the C-130F. After we fly to the staging base, the C-130 will top off all the fuel cells again.”

“Neil,” Barr said, “I have one little question. How’d you get all that junk here without tractors?”

Formsby explained his arrangement with the paranoid and greedy Jacque. “But that brings up a point I’d like to discuss, Nelson. Originally, I had planned to return to Rabat with Jacque and his fellow travellers. After considering the man’s demeanour and my suspicion that he may well think I have more dollars than I have, I believe the better course would be for me to accompany you to Libya.”

“Libya is safer than Jacque?” Barr asked.

“You haven’t met Jacque.”

“It’s just as well, Neil,” Tom Kriswell said. “I can use you as an assistant air controller.”

“I would be pleased to serve,” Formsby said.

“What about the fifty grand you owe Jacque?” Wyatt asked.

“Why, I’ll leave it for him. It wouldn’t do to skip out and have my reputation tarnished. And I might well have to do business with him again in the future. Especially if Andrew keeps lining up these contracts.”

Wyatt looked at his wristwatch. “All right, guys. Anything else?”

The pressing matters appeared to have been met.

“Let’s go to work,” Wyatt said.

With a few groans and a few profane comments about the temperature, the men levered themselves from the ground and spread out to the aircraft. Formsby pitched in, helping to strip the red tape, logos, and N-numbers from all of the aircraft.

Two men went from plane to plane with a large roll of brown paper and masking tape and masked off canopies, air intakes, exhausts, and the lower side of the wings and fuselage. Two more men rolled compressors and gasoline generators from the cargo bay of the Hercules. Stepladders with broad plates on their legs, to prevent them from sinking into the earth, were carried out of the C-130, and the two men — Littlefield and Cavanaugh, Formsby thought — donned face masks and began to spray paint the first F-4.

Not much effort was given to precision and finish for this paint job. Random patterns of brown, tan, and beige were sprayed over the original cream, mixed with drops of perspiration from the two artists. With the low-visibility grey of the undersides, the new camouflage colours would make the F-4s hard to pinpoint from above or below. The C-130F would also get camouflage, but the transport was being left in its prim, unadorned aluminium finish.

Nelson Barr ran back and forth, supervising the spray job, claiming he was in charge of decorations. Littlefield tried to shoot him with a spray gun, but Barr dove beneath a wing just in time.

Two more teams of men laid out hoses between the fuel trailers and aircraft, powered up the pumps, and started refuelling. The mixed aromas of JP-4 and catalysed paint drifted on the breeze.

Jim Demion and two others hauled tools from one airplane to another, making adjustments and quick-fixes listed on a clipboard he carried.

Formsby gathered all of the red tape remnants and stacked them in a pile.

Then he went to help Wyatt and Ben Borman pull the tarpaulins from the ordnance pallets. With tin snips, they went around each pallet, cutting the steel strapping that held the crates and cradles in place.

Wyatt and Formsby used crowbars to pry the lids off crates while Borman climbed into the Hercules, then returned with a small tow tractor pulling a train of mobile bomb cradles and a small crane. He started transferring bombs from the pallets to the cradles with the crane.

As soon as all of the aircraft were masked off, those two men — Maal and Vrdla? — started hauling weapons pylons from the C-130, distributing them to the Phantoms.

Formsby was suitably impressed by the efficiency of Wyatt’s team. No one complained, except good-naturedly, and generally the complaints were related to the heat. All had a job to do, or a series of jobs, and all took on their chores without orders from a superior.

As the crates came apart, revealing missiles, bombs, and countermeasures pods, Formsby carried the cast-off crates over to his pile of tape and stacked them on top. Just before they took off, he would set fire to the stack.

The pylons were mounted, including a pair each on the underside of the wings of both Hercules aircraft. Wyatt explained to him that the upgraded Phantoms had internal countermeasures derived from the F-15. The C-130s were each designated for a pair of countermeasures pods, and Kriswell and Vrdla dropped what they were doing to inspect and test the ALQ-72 countermeasures pods after they had been hoisted into place and fastened to the pylons.

By four o’clock, they had accomplished all they were going to accomplish in Algeria.

Each F-4, with paint barely dry to the touch, was outfitted with six five-hundred-pound bombs on the pylons and four Super Sidewinder missiles semi-recessed on the underside of the fuselage. With the external fuel tanks in place, they appeared almost too heavy for take-off.

All that was left on the pallets were ninety kilograms of plastic explosive and cotton-packed detonators, and they were carefully loaded aboard the transport by Borman, who had the experience with ordnance-handling.

Formsby had saved his best for last. At three o’clock he had wrapped big Idaho potatoes in tinfoil and shoved them into newly fired charcoal briquettes. He served them at four-thirty with fresh butter, sour cream, and chives, alongside sixteen-ounce sirloin steaks, grilled to perfection.

He thought it was very American.

They got to wash it down with two cases of Coca-Cola that had been on ice for four hours.

“Neil,” Barr asked, “how would you like to move to America?”

Colonel Ghazi, the army commander, arrived at Marada Air Base at five o’clock.

Ahmed al-Qati walked up the long ramp from the hangar to meet his airplane. He wanted a private discussion with his superior before the two of them met with Ramad.

The airstairs were lowered from the door of the Lockheed JetStar, and al-Qati climbed them quickly, before Ghazi could deplane.

He found the colonel still seated in one of the plushly cushioned swivelling chairs. His uniform shirt appeared freshly pressed, and it was pressed also from the inside-out by his large torso.

“Good, Ahmed. I am glad you came to meet me. Please take a seat.”

Al-Qati sat across the aisle. “I thought perhaps we should have a few moments to talk between ourselves, Colonel.”

“Yes, I had thought the same thing.”

Al-Qati leapt right into what was bothering him. Bothering him? It was nearly killing him. Only Sophia helped him keep his sanity.

“This… this Test Strike is foolishness beyond comprehension. I fear the outcome will not be what is envisioned.”

“The leadership feels otherwise, Ahmed. They firmly — very firmly — believe that the Israelis and Americans will view our country with heightened respect. Even with dread, which the Leader appears to desire more than respect.”

“The world will damn us, Colonel Ghazi.”

“I doubt the world will ever know. The Leader is certain that the Israelis will want to bury the incident. They are so beleaguered now, they will not want to admit publicly to another threat. And we know that the United States always goes along with them.”

“But, the Ethiopians…”

“Will say nothing. Theirs is a chaotic administration, and, if anything, they will be relieved that the draw on their food and medical resources will be lessened. I think you worry unduly,” Ghazi said.

“In recent years, all countries run to the United Nations the minute they perceive a threat against them.”

“So? Should it come out, we are only following orders.”

“That excuse did not go over well at Nuremberg,” al-Qati said.

“Nevertheless, we do have our orders, and we will follow them.”

The army commander must be under a great deal of pressure to go along with this fantastic scheme, al-Qati thought. He had always respected Ghazi for his rationality under stress, but this was completely irrational.

“Colonel, I appeal to…”

“In vain, I am afraid, Ahmed. We are committed.”

Ghazi did not say that he was committed, but he had grouped himself with the powers that were.

“As you say, Colonel,” al-Qati said. There was no other place to go, no other person to hear his argument.

“Now,” Ghazi said, “let us proceed to what I wished to discuss with you. The People’s Bureau,” — which was what the Leader had re-termed all of the embassies and consulates — “in Athens has forwarded to the intelligence bureau an interesting item.”

Al-Qati waited with the appearance of attention, even though his stomach churned.

“The Bureau has several agents in Washington, of course, and one, a student at Georgetown University, collected a rumour that may concern us. There are several reporters from different newspapers, and from the Cable News Network, dashing around the city asking questions about a group of F-4 Phantom fighter aircraft.”

“F-4 fighter airplanes?” al-Qati asked, just to be asking something.

“Indeed. Apparently, some men have prepared six of the airplanes for a special mission. The reporters appear to be grasping at straws, asking their sources what possible use the fighters could be put to. One theory in circulation concerns the chemical plant north of Marada.”

“That is speculation.”

“Very probably, Ahmed. And yes, rumours of other targets abound — Syria, the Bekaa Valley, some in China. Still, it is interesting that our fertilizer factory is mentioned prominently, is it not?”

Al-Qati did not think it interesting. He thought it irrelevant.

“What is of greater interest, Ahmed, is that these airplanes disappeared from wherever they were being held shortly after the Leader took his decision on Test Strike.”

Now, it was relevant. In al-Qati’s world, timing was everything.

“Do you think, Colonel, that news of the strike plan has leaked?”

“It is possible, Ahmed. More and more people have acquired knowledge since the decision was taken.”

“And the Americans will intervene?”

“I think not. Not as they did before. If it is to happen, it will be a covert operation, and that makes this rumour of unaffiliated fighter aircraft all the more suspicious.”

“What do you wish me to do, Colonel?”

“Ramad listens primarily to himself. When I bring up the matter in our meeting, I would like to have your support.”

“Of course. My support of you, or of my country, has never been in question.”

Al-Qati meant that sincerely, but he was beginning to question just how blindly he was to follow the instructions issued in Tripoli.

At one o’clock in the morning, Janice Kramer parked her Riviera in the parking lot of the Four Seasons Motel, locked it, and entered the lobby. She was wearing Levi’s and a red, low-cut Mexican peasant blouse, and three guys in the lobby, who had struck out earlier in the evening, instantly started to get out of their chairs. She chilled them with an icy glare of her green eyes.

What she ought to be, she thought, is home, curled up on her couch with a brandy snifter, revelling in her future prospects as Mrs. Andrew Wyatt. Her elation, so far, had been curtailed by her worry.

What she ought not to be doing was running Martin Church’s errands for him. He didn’t even pay her. Except indirectly, maybe.

She damned sure wouldn’t be here if the outcome wouldn’t help Andy.

She crossed to the lounge, which wasn’t being heavily utilized, and stood in the doorway for a few seconds, looking around.

“Hey, Jan!”

Arnie Gering raised his hand high from a booth on the sidewall.

She walked over to it, waving off the waitress, and sat across from him.

He eyed her blouse.

“Good to see you, Jan. I was sure glad you called.”

“I have a proposal for you, Arnie.”

“Yeah?”

“First, I need to know who you’ve talked to.”

“About the Nebraska thing?”

God, he was dense.

“Yes, Arnie. About the Nebraska thing.”

“Well, you know, I got hold of a reporter.”

“Just one?”

“A couple, maybe.”

“How many, Arnie?”

“Three.”

“Newspaper reporters?”

“Oh, and one guy from CNN.”

“Tell me what they said.”

He squirmed on his bench seat. “Well, they were, I guess, sceptical.”

“I can see why they would be.”

“They wanted documentation. With documentation, they said, I could get some big bucks.”

“How big?”

“Well, we haven’t gotten to that stage yet. You know, you could print out some stuff from the computer for me, Jan. We could split it, like, sixty-forty.”

“I get the sixty?”

“Well, I’m the one who made the calls, after all.”

“What else did they say?”

“Just that they’d look into it. Ask around.”

Church had told her that they were, indeed, asking around, but that they weren’t finding anything substantial enough to go to print with. Unless they got curious enough to give Gering a first-class ticket to Washington.

Kramer pulled the stack of bills from her purse. They were bound with a rubber band, and she had been so angry with Church’s suggestion that she didn’t even put the sheaf in an envelope. He had called it “damage control,” but she called it bribery. She laid it on the table and kept her hand on top of it.

Gering’s eyes left her breasts and landed on the bills. “That’s ten thousand,” she said.

“It’s damned good-looking. Can I count it?”

“Trust me. You can have it.”

Immediate suspicion crossed his face. “Yeah, but what’s it cost me?”

“Your signature.”

From her purse, she took the single sheet of paper and passed it across to him.

He struggled with it for a while, then said, “This is all legalese. What’s it really say?”

“That you go to jail for fifteen to twenty years if you say one more word about… the Nebraska thing. It has to do with national security, Arnie.”

He looked up at her then, and she saw the worry in his eyes. That made her feel better.

“Uh, they wouldn’t…”

“They might pick you up any day and hold you for arraignment. What they’re suggesting here is that it might be simpler to just make a deal.”

She made liberal use of that magic “they.” Everybody always worried about “them.”

“I sign this, and I get the ten thou?”

“That’s right. Then, if you say word one to anyone, you go right to Leavenworth. There won’t be any trial involved.”

She had written the agreement, following Church’s suggestions, and used as much gobbledygook language as she could. It wouldn’t stand up for more than thirty seconds in any courtroom in the land.

“And if any of those reporters call you back, you say you were having a bad dream or you were drunk.” Gering eyed the letter of agreement, then the stack of green.

“Got a pen?” he asked.

She found one, and he signed the agreement with a flourish. She took the paper, folded it, and put it in her purse. “This will be kept in Washington, in the Department of Justice probably.”

In their trash can.

“Yeah. Can I have the money now?”

Kramer pushed the stack across the table to him, then stood up.

“Goodbye, Arnie.”

“See you in the morning.”

“No, you won’t. You don’t work for us, anymore. Remember that far back?”

He looked crestfallen.

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

She turned and walked away from him.

He called after her, “Well, hey! Do I get a letter of recommendation?”

The briefing again included all wing and squadron commanders as well as Colonel Ghazi who had come to Marada to observe Test Strike. He sat now at one side of the room with al-Qati, Major Shummari, Captain Rahman of the First Special Forces Company, and Lieutenant Hakim, the Strike Platoon commander.

Ramad was appreciative of the deference he had been shown by Ghazi. The army commander had apparently been put in his place by Farouk Salmi and others close to the Leader.

After reports by the meteorological officer in regard to conditions expected on the day of the attack and the maintenance officer as to the readiness of all aircraft consigned to the exercise, Ramad had reviewed in detail the elements of the planned strike. In flights of three aircraft, three squadrons of Su-24s would strike the three identified targets at five o’clock on the morning of August 2. Three squadrons of MiG-23s would fly combat air patrol (CAP) for the bombers and the personnel transports. After being transported to a secret staging base in the Sudan by C-130s, Shummari’s helicopters would insert the ground troops ten minutes after the initial bombardment. The villages were located in the province of Wallaga, near the border with Sudan. The troops would remain on the ground, establishing a defensive perimeter, for three hours, then be extracted. Three of the MiG-23 s in the combat air patrol would be equipped with reconnaissance cameras and would shoot videotape of the entire mission, to supplement the photographs taken from the helicopters and from cameramen on the ground. The Leader wanted a complete photographic history of the exercise, perhaps in the event that American satellites overlooked the escapade.

“We will have at our disposal,” Ramad continued, “four aerial tankers. It is important to note that our targets are twenty-two hundred kilometres away. A successful strike at that distance will certainly raise eyebrows in the right defence departments.”

Al-Qati asked, “Have we secured the permission of the Sudanese to overfly, and to land, in Sudan?”

The man kept pestering over the most niggardly details. “Of course, Colonel al-Qati. They have approved a long-range training and refuelling operation.”

The Sudanese had not approved landing, establishing a staging base, or carrying live weapons over their territory, but Ramad knew that his combat elements would be down, into Ethiopia, and then out before the Sudanese military suspected and/or could react.

“We have promised to keep all aircraft well clear of Khartoum, which we will do,” Ramad added, to increase his credibility.

Al-Qati sat back, but he did not appear particularly satisfied. Ramad would prefer to have him replaced, but part of the Leader’s approval had been based upon utilizing his elite troop, and that meant al-Qati.

“At one o’clock on the morning of August second, I will release the appropriate chemical weapons to squadron commanders,” Ramad said. “Each squadron leader will be accountable for all weapons assigned to him, and must provide a detailed report on their deployment.”

Those reports would subsequently be destroyed. There would be no written record of this mission.

There would be only the photographs.

Captain Gamal Harisah of the first squadron sat up and raised his hand.

“Yes, Captain?”

“What will the ordnance load consist of, Colonel?”

“Two weapons per aircraft, six per target. We think that should be sufficient. Your wing commander will brief you before take-off on wind conditions at the target sites so that we can strive for the best possible dispersal of the agents.”

After several more mundane and routine questions, Ramad turned toward Ghazi. “Colonel Ghazi, you wished to speak to the group?”

“Yes, Colonel Ramad. Thank you.”

Ghazi did not come to the podium, but rose from his chair and stood against the wall, careful to not get chalk from the blackboard on his uniform.

“Libyan Intelligence,” he said, “has obtained information which, to be truthful, I rate as about twenty percent reliable. However, you should know that the potential exists for a strike against you, or this base, or the chemical plant, by clandestine aircraft.”

Ramad cleared his throat. “Why was I not informed of this threat?”

“I am informing you now, Colonel. It is the primary reason I am here.”

“These are American airplanes?” Ramad asked.

“Yes.”

“And pilots?”

“That is unknown. It seems certain that the aircraft were prepared in the United States, but the operators are unknown.”

“What type of aircraft?” Ramad demanded.

“The source says they are McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantoms. That alone suggests that the operators could be of any nationality.”

“F-4 fighters?” Ramad said. “Do we know how many are involved?”

“The source says six.”

Ramad almost laughed aloud. “In its day, the F-4 was formidable. If this remote possibility proves itself out, Colonel, my MiG-23s will obliterate the threat quickly.”

“Perhaps,” Ghazi said. “All I am suggesting is that, as part of your planning, you might prepare a defensive contingency plan.”

It was ridiculous. Ghazi’s people spooked at the mere sight of a rumour on the horizon.

Al-Qati stood up. “That seems sensible to me. It would be a shame to have the glory of Test Strike overcome by world media reports that an antiquated airplane shot down another of our aircraft, even if only one.

The army man was playing with his pride of ownership of Test Strike, and Ramad was about to reject the game when he noted that his commanders were almost nodding in syncopation with al-Qati’s speech.

“Very well,” he said. “Captain Harisah, would you prepare a scenario and a reaction plan for me.”

“Right away, Colonel Ramad.”

Ramad then decided that he was not being forced into anything. If Ghazi were pleased, then others at the top would also be pleased. And if Ghazi were crying wolf at the door, and the wolf did not show up, then that was Ghazi’s problem.

Wyatt sat in seven-seven, with the throttles at idle. The sweat was pouring from his forehead into his eyes, and he frequently used the back of his hand to sluice it to one side or the other.

He looked down the line in time to see Cliff Jordan raise his hand above his cockpit in triumph. The start cart was quickly disconnected from his F-4 and trundled back aboard the C-130.

Demion started turning the props on the Here, and all four of them came on line.

Dennis Maal had taken off with the C-130F ten minutes before.

Wyatt hit the transmit stud. “Yuccas.”

One after the other, they all checked in.

“Secure weapons,” he said.

Again, they all checked in with affirmative responses. Wyatt made sure his own panel was secured. The safety pins were still inserted in the missiles and bombs, but it never hurt to be extra certain.

He leaned to the right and looked back toward the fuel trailers. Formsby emerged from his tent with a duffel bag, a bedroll, and a three-gallon can of gasoline. He crossed to the stack of crates and decorative tape, doused it thoroughly with gasoline, then struck a match.

The stack caught fire with a poof!

Formsby ran for the Hercules in his off-gaited ramble, went up the ramp, and then waved at the Phantoms before the ramp closed.

“Yucca, Wizard,” Demion said.

“After you, Wizard.”

The transport rolled slowly away, the props raising a cloud of fine dust, and Wyatt closed his canopy. The heat was intense, and his air-conditioning wasn’t very effective at idle, on the ground.

He called off the numbers, and the F-4s swung into line behind the Hercules. Wyatt went last.

They got off the ground in better fashion than they had in landing, though it seemed to take longer even in afterburner. The take-off roll was rough, bouncy, and long with the full load of ordnance. He was relieved when he felt the lift take over, and he pulled in his landing gear less than twenty feet off the ground.

He looked back once to see the bonfire raging next to the empty fuel tankers. If that fire got out of control, the fumes in those tanks would create a lot of shrapnel.

Jacque’s fifty grand, resting on Formsby’s cot, would go up in green smoke.

For Formsby’s reputation among the scum of the earth, Wyatt hoped the money didn’t burn.

He settled the Phantom in at a steady rate of climb of 150-feet-per-minute, and the whole formation ascended to twenty thousand feet. Aboard the Hercules, Kriswell and Formsby would be monitoring the threat receivers, but it was unlikely that there was a hostile, or friendly, radar set within a hundred miles of them.

Within twenty minutes, they caught up with Maal and the tanker. Wyatt eased the stick back, added power, and climbed to twenty-five thousand feet.

Looking down, he was pleased with the way the F-4s and the tanker blended into the landscape. They were damned hard to see, and if he hadn’t known they were there, he would probably have missed them.

By contrast, the transport stuck out like a hitchhiker’s thumb. The aluminium skin reflected the sun in piercing glints that hurt the eyes.

“You’re pretty obvious, Wizard,” he said.

“Not my fault,” Demion replied. “We could have used a water-based paint.”

“Shall we go back and get some?” Barr cut in.

“And miss the party?” Gettman asked.

“Okay,” Wyatt interrupted. “I’m sorry I got this started. Let’s can the chatter.”

Their transmissions were scrambled, but a listener who happened to catch their frequency while it was in use, though he wouldn’t understand the words, would certainly understand that there was something strange going on in the area.

Drifting along at 370 miles per hour, to stay with the C-130s at cruise, it took them an hour and a half to reach the border with Niger.

Formsby reported it. “That’s Niger down there, if you didn’t catch the change in landscape.”

In fact, the government of Niger really needed to draw a big black line on its borders. The slowly undulating, barren scrub land didn’t change at all.

“Yuccas,” Wyatt radioed, “I’m going to take a look ahead.”

He eased his throttles forward and gradually pulled out of the formation. Fifteen minutes later, the formation was out of sight behind him.

Wyatt used the NavStar Global Positioning System to establish his position, then checked it against the coordinates he had written in his notebook.

He eased into a left turn, taking up a heading of eighty-four degrees.

He also reduced the power setting and started a slow descent.

He was over Chad.

Directly south of him was the village of Wour. Farther south was the depressing and devastated area of the Bodele Depression.

The earth ahead of him didn’t look all that grand, either. The vegetation was almost non-existent, and as far as he could tell, there wasn’t one solid landmark that he would rely on. As soon as he locked his eyes on what he considered a hilltop, it dissolved into flatness.

He trusted to the readouts on his screen, and continued on course while he lost altitude. Libya, he was certain, was careful about patrolling its borders. The flights might be infrequent, but they would occur.

As he came within twenty miles of the Libyan border, he was flying at three hundred feet AGL, hopefully below any airborne radar coverage.

He almost missed it.

Blinking his eyes against the sunset glare off the desert, he picked it up again.

A single short airstrip.

It had been built, then later abandoned, by the French, who often found themselves assisting Chad in putting down aggression by its neighbours. There were two buildings, old hangars, but their roofs had caved in.

He flew low down the runway, noting the cracks in the asphalt and a few chuckholes along the right side. Midway down, there were a couple of gaping holes on the left side.

Incongruously, the remnants of an old wind sock still fluttered from a pole at the corner of one hangar. It hung dead still.

Wyatt leaned into a right turn.

“Wizard, Yucca One.”

“Go, One.”

“We don’t have a welcoming committee; we don’t have anything worth noting. We’re in business.”

“What kind of business?”

“Somewhat perilous. You’ll need to put down at oh-one-oh, and keep it tight to the left side of the strip. There’s a few holes on the right. Halfway down, veer slightly to the right, so you can miss the holes on the left side. Like the satellite snapshots told us, it’s short. We’ll be using the drag chutes.”

“You mind if I take a look for myself, before I try it?” Demion asked.

“Chicken,” Barr put in.

“Don’t waste fuel,” Wyatt said.

Formsby interrupted. “I happen to be on this bird, and I second your motion, James. That’s why I brought along a couple thousand extra gallons.”

Thirteen

Barr was the fourth one on final approach.

Far ahead he could see Gettman turn off the runway, dragging his arresting chute behind him.

With the sun low, the shadows were tricky. Black splotches on the earth, or on the runway, could be two inches deep or two feet deep.

He touched rudder and stick lightly and danced to the left, lining up on the left side of the runway.

Inched the throttles back and felt the fighter sag.

Selected full flaps.

The Phantom bounced upward with the added lift, but not excessively. She was carrying a full complement of weaponry, plus the drop tanks, and she was heavy. Under normal circumstances, the idea was to lose the bombs and missiles before landing.

Barr remembered an extended exercise he had taken part in when he was still an active military pilot. His squadron of Phantoms had moved to a hastily assembled training base in Panama to practice working out of a forward area airfield. The strip was short, utilizing PSP — Pierced Steel Planking — for a surface, and the landings were arrested, taking advantage of the F-4’s arresting hook. They did it like the Navy boys did it, except that the runway didn’t shift directions unexpectedly or act like a yo-yo.

On a day when they were using live ordnance — bombing a bunch of floating oil barrels chained together in the Pacific Ocean, he had a bomb hang-up. The nose of the bomb dropped, pulling the tethered cable, and allowing the small propeller on the nose to rotate and arm the bomb. The bomb’s rear hanger didn’t release from the pylon, however. His wingman told him the bomb was locked in place, with the nose at a forty-five-degree angle to the wing.

He tried everything to shake it loose. Jiggling the plane, going into negative Gs, a barrel roll. It stayed right where it was.

The wing commander got involved, telling him to ditch the plane, but Barr thought it was a pretty good airplane. He was offered one of the Army’s runways in the Canal Zone, but thought about having that bomb come loose and hit something populated. He took it into the short field which was at least isolated in the jungle.

With gear, flaps, wing slats, and arresting hook down, he floated that Phantom in toward the three sets of arresting cables. It felt feather-light to him, floating, floating. He missed the first cable, caught the second, came to an abrupt and jarring halt, and slammed the airplane on the ground. He scrambled out of the cockpit, slid to the ground, and ran about a half-mile away.

The bomb was still hanging on the pylon, but the Bomb Disposal Unit had only to lift the nose six inches to have the rear hanger release.

It felt the same way this time.

Barr floated the F-4 toward the darkening runway, felt the main gear touch down, then chopped the throttles.

Punched out the drag chute.

The chuckholes on the right side — black irregular ebony voids — whisked by in his peripheral vision.

Nose gear down.

There was sand and dirt and clods on the runway. The wheels kicked it up, and he heard the clunks against the skin of the fuselage and wings.

Easing in the brakes.

Halfway down the strip?

Started slewing the nose to the right.

The right brake pedal went soft.

A black spot leapt out at him.

Thunked into it.

The airplane tried to leap to the left.

Rocked sideways.

Keep the right wing up.

Easy now.

What the hell?

Blown left tire.

Again moving to the right.

The left gear back down on the ground.

Screeching.

Tearing up the wheel rim.

Fighting the pull to the left.

Slowing.

The aircraft bucked and fought his control, then finally slid to a stop.

“Yucca Two?” asked Wyatt from the sky above.

“Blown tire,” Barr radioed back as he opened the canopy. “Hold everyone off until I see if I can get it off the runway.”

“Roger, Two.”

“Yucca Four, Two,” Barr radioed.

“Four,” Gettman replied.

“You want to get out of your bird and run over and drop a flare in that first pothole?”

“Roger, Two. I’ll see what I can do.”

Jockeying the throttles, Barr spun the plane to the left, dragging on the wheel rim. He figured all of the rubber of the tire had shredded off. He used three-quarter throttle on the left turbojet, and the Phantom edged its way forward, then off the runway. The wheel dug a deep rut in the earth and bogged down. The tail of the F-4 was still protruding over ten feet of the runway.

He killed the engines.

“Yucca One, Two.”

“Go, Two.”

“Let’s get Wizard down next. I need a tractor and a spare tire. And Wizard, please be advised my ass-end is still on the runway.”

He turned on his navigation lights to give Demion a clear indicator of where the F-4 was located.

Just to be certain, Barr released himself from his couplings, jammed the safety pin in the ejection seat, and slipped over the coaming of the cockpit. He lowered himself down the fuselage side until he was hanging by his fingers, then released his hold. He hit the ground hard enough to sting his ankle.

He hobbled a couple hundred feet away to watch the Herc come in.

Gettman’s flare, in the bottom of the chuckhole, provided the warning Demion needed without blinding him. The big transport glided in, burned a little rubber, then veered toward the right side of the strip. When he had slowed enough, he turned left and came toward Barr, rumbling past the wounded Phantom and off the runway.

Minutes later, Win Potter drove the tractor down the ramp, hooked a tow bar to the nose gear of the F-4, and dragged it twenty feet from the strip.

Wyatt began landing the rest of the planes.

It was almost nine o’clock before they had the wheel and tire changed and the fighters and C-130s lined up near the wreckage of the two old hangars.

Wyatt forbid the use of any major lights, not wanting to attract the attention of any possible airborne border patrol. Pilots and technicians used penlights to perform their post-flight checks. They made certain that bombs and missiles had not been damaged by rock debris on the runway.

From the two drums of water they had brought along, Formsby passed out rations in small cardboard pails. That was for bathing, getting the sweat and dirt out of the pores. Hank Cavanaugh issued MREs, but few of them were very interested in eating.

It was too hot.

It stayed that way long after the sun went down and a billion brilliant stars came out. Wyatt allowed a single red light to be illuminated in the cargo bay of the Hercules, where everyone gathered, some to try and sleep. A chess game got underway, as did a four-handed game of poker.

Barr and Formsby walked up the ramp, passed through the cargo bay, and joined Wyatt in the crew compartment. A dim glow of cerise light spilled through the hatchway.

Since the bunks had been removed, they sat on the floor, leaning against the bulkheads.

“You handled that landing well, Bucky,” Wyatt said.

Barr shrugged. “Part of the territory we walk.”

“I admit to being somewhat concerned about the ordnance load you were carrying,” Formsby said.

“I thought about it some myself,” Barr said.

He really hadn’t considered it deeply, though. The reflexes and the instinct assumed command in times of crisis, and the mind kind of followed along. His responses with the stick, rudder, throttles, and brakes had been automatic; he hadn’t thought about what action to take at all.

“Did you guys have time to think about what Church wants us to do?” Wyatt asked. “About catching Ramad’s aircraft on the ground on the morning of the second?”

“I did think about it,” Formsby said. “Being an air controller with nothing to control allows a certain flexibility of time. I think he’s right.”

“Ditto,” Barr said. “If we go up against those blast doors with five-hundred-pounders, we’re only going to leave dents behind.”

“All right, then. That means we sit here through the day tomorrow and hope no stray Mirage spots us.”

“With no appreciable amount of time over target, however,” Barr said, “it would be helpful to know Ramad’s thoughts on a take-off time.”

“Dawn is likely,” Formsby said. “I don’t think many Libyan pilots like to fly at night.”

“If all we had to do was intercept the flight, we could hide out over the Sudan and pounce on them,” Wyatt said. “But half our mission is delivering HE against the chem plant. We’re a little short of aircraft and ordnance type for what we’re facing.”

“Do you want to change the roles for the C and D models, Andy?” Barr asked. “We could load bombs on the centre-line and move their missiles to the E models.”

“It’s a thought, Bucky. Let’s keep it on the desk for the time being.”

“The crucial point,” Formsby said, “is still Ramad’s take-off time. Do you suppose your spies have determined anything more?”

“Not my spies. But we can call ’em and find out,” Barr said. “With all of the risks currently involved, I think we can add the risk of a short radio call. I should think they’ve got their satellites still in position unless they’ve given up on us.”

“They received my transmission a couple days ago without apparent trouble,” Formsby said.

“Hokay,” Wyatt said and got his feet under him. “It’s still afternoon in D.C.”

He went to the console and powered up the radios. Selecting the Tac One set, he punched in the frequency numbers that Embry had given him.

Barr got up and went to stand beside him.

Wyatt depressed the transmit button and said, “Paper Doll, this is Yucca Flight.”

The response was immediate. The NSA people were monitoring them closely.

“Yucca, this is Doll.”

“I need to talk to Paper Doll One or Two.”

That was Church or Embry.

“Stand by, Yucca, I’ll see what we can do.”

It was twenty minutes later before they heard Church’s voice.

“Yucca Flight, Paper Doll One.”

“I’ve been waiting for this,” Barr said. “Can I talk to him?”

Wyatt waved him toward the desk microphone.

Barr picked it up and said, “Hello, Dolly.”

Formsby laughed.

A very sober Church said, “I trust you’re in place.”

“Righto,” Barr said. “We have a need for data.”

“What data?”

“The Test Strike launch time.”

“We haven’t gotten anything yet, but I’m hopeful. I’ll call as soon as I know anything, but at least by 4:00 A.M. your time.”

“0400 on the first of August?” Barr asked. “It’s almost that, now.”

“0400 on the first,” Church confirmed.

“Yucca out,” Barr said, dropping the mike back on the console. “Hell, I might as well go find an oasis.”

“See if they’ve got take-out, will you, Bucky?” Formsby said.

For the duration of the exercise, Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed al-Qati had established the encampment for the First Special Forces Company one kilometre east of the Marada Air Base. Major Khalil Shummari’s helicopter crews were also stationed at the cantonment area.

The tents were aligned in neat rows, and many of his enterprising soldiers had suspended parachute canopies inside the tents, to trap a layer of insulating air between the canopy and the tent roof The construction detracted several degrees from the forty degree Celsius temperatures that were being achieved during the day.

The first tent in the first row was utilized as the headquarters tent, and al-Qati met there with Shummari and Captain Rahman late at night.

“With the information leakage that takes place in Tripoli,” he told them, “I would not be at all surprised if Test Strike is common knowledge in the West.” Shummari nodded.

“And since I prefer to be prepared for all contingencies, I am going to assume that an air assault by — it doesn’t matter by whom, is an imminent possibility.” “That would fall to the province of the air defence organization, would it not?” Rahman asked.

“It should, yes, Ibn. However, I am also concerned that Colonel Ramad does not take the threat seriously. His staff and pilots are preparing a plan, but I believe that their hearts are not in it.”

“We must work from assumptions,” Shummari said. “Yes, we must. First, I assume that the attack would be launched as pre-emptive of Test Strike, and therefore, must come prior to the morning of August second.

“Second, I assume that aircraft of the American Sixth Fleet will not be utilized, as being too obvious. This assumption is partially supported by the intelligence report of F-4 aircraft being prepared.”

“Not by the Israelis?” Rahman asked.

“That is possible, but I think no one will want to point fingers at the Americans or the Israelis — that is, to the sea, or to the east. The attack will come from the west or from the south.”

“It may not happen,” Shummari said.

“It may not, and we will be all the happier. However, in the event that it does, what can we do?”

“I will keep my SA-7 air defence missiles on alert,” Rahman said.

“And I can load air-to-air missiles aboard the four Mi-28s,” Shummari added.

“Good. And I am afraid that is the extent of our air defence capability. But I want to think beyond that. With Ramad’s MiG-23 interceptors ranged against the F-4s, it is likely that one, or perhaps two, of the intruders will be shot down. Ibn, I want your Strike Platoon ready to take off at any moment. Khalil, we will need to assign two of your Mi-8s to them. We want to be the first on the scene of a downed aircraft, to gather evidence, hopefully to capture a pilot alive.”

“I see where you are going with this,” Shummari said.

“Yes. If the attack occurs prior to Test Strike’s launch time, perhaps we can prove to our superiors that knowledge of the exercise is widespread.”

“You would like them to call it off?” Rahman asked.

“Absolutely.”

“I would like that, also,” the captain said.

Al-Qati looked to Shummari.

The aviation company commander nodded his approval.

The two officers left him alone with his thoughts, which was not particularly good for him. His mind was divided along two paths lately, and he was never certain which path he would travel.

He was extremely tired of worrying about Ramad’s ambitious designs.

He preferred wandering the path of Sophia.

And he looked to the back of the tent, where the radio set was located on a spindly-legged table.

Rising from the camp stool he sat on, he carried it back to the radio.

He called his battalion headquarters in El Bardi and had the radio operator dial the telephone number for him, then connect him with the landline.

She was waiting, as she always was. Al-Qati thought that a statement in itself. Any time he called, she was waiting. It elated him.

“Yes?”

“Sophia, it is Ahmed.”

“Wonderful! You are here?”

“Alas, no. I just have a few minutes, and I wished to fill them with your voice.”

“Ahmed, you are too charming.”

“That is not the image I have of myself,” he admitted.

“Nonsense. When will I see you again?”

“As soon as this exercise is completed. I think that it should be soon.”

“When does it begin? So that I might count the hours.”

He almost told her, but then remembered he was on an open radio link.

Also, a little question mark popped into his mind.

It was on the path labelled, “Sophia.”

Wyatt had difficulty getting to sleep. The interior of the Hercules had become stifling, and he had moved his sleeping bag outside, under the transport, and sprawled out on top of it, draping his mosquito net over his head. The heat of the earth seeped through. There wasn’t a whisper of a breeze.

All around him, others had also unrolled their sleeping bags and wrapped their mosquito netting around them. They had brought tents with them, but no one was eager to erect one.

Night in the desert brought with it creeping, crawling animation, and several times, he felt, or thought he felt, something walking on his legs. He shook it off, real or imagined.

He wasn’t alone. Occasionally, he heard someone slapping at clothing.

A few had given up and gone back into the Hercules, preferring heat to insects.

The only real positive was that, with no pollution to taint the air, the starscape was a dazzler. He could see infinity, and he could believe in it.

He was worried about the air strike and all of the things that could go wrong. He was halfway amazed that they had made it to the staging base with only the loss of one tire.

Though he felt relatively confident in the upgraded F-4s, he didn’t want to become overconfident. The MiG-23 was still a worthy adversary. Barr had made some sense in suggesting they turn the C and D models into strict bombers and use the F-4Es as air superiority fighters, rather than try to accomplish both missions with one platform.

But he still thought his strategy would work against the MiGs, and that would be their salvation. Zimmerman’s F-4C and Jordan’s F-4D were expendable and would remain that way.

He rolled over onto his side and pillowed his head on his forearm.

On the faraway horizon, in the stars, he saw Jan’s face.

He was glad he had been forced into finally admitting his love to her. He had known it for some time, of course, but he had had as much difficulty making the realization known to himself as he had had in making it known to her.

If he had a regret, it was that this mission interfered with his emotional awakening. It didn’t help him, and it certainly wouldn’t help her if his Phantom went out from under him. He hated raising false hopes for her.

He had almost closed his eyes when a bulky shadow crawled across the sand toward him.

“Andy, you asleep?”

He whispered back, “Wouldn’t it be better to ask if I were awake, Bucky?”

“Same coin,” Barr said, scooting around to sit back on his broad buttocks. “Got a question for you.”

“Is it answerable?”

“Maybe not.”

“Shoot.”

“I’ve been worrying about Kramer.”

“Don’t. Worry about Ibrahim Ramad.”

“Go to hell. I know what her problem is.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. I think you’re screwing her over.”

“Why is that, Bucky?”

“I mean, everybody knows you two have a thing for each other.”

“Do they?”

“No secrets around our place. Now, goddamn it, I want you to treat her right. Either marry her or break it off.”

“I haven’t heard your question yet, Bucky.”

“You going to do what I say?”

“You want to be best man?”

Barr pored over that one for a full second. “Good night, Andy.”

“Night, Bucky.”

Despite his scepticism over the rumour of some silly effort to interfere with his plans by antiquated fighter aircraft, the report had chaffed at Ibrahim Ramad all day long.

He conceded to himself that it was possible.

His proposal had been making the rounds of the military and political hierarchy for three months. Someone may have slipped, a loosened tongue dropping hints that analysts loved to manipulate and decode. Perhaps a People’s Bureau minister in some foreign city. He did not know all of those to whom the Leader may have confided the plan.

It was possible.

He sat in his office most of the evening, worrying about the possibility and the possible outcomes if it were true. It did not matter who the opposition was. If they knew the date and time, and if he were them, he would certainly attack before Ramad’s aircraft took to the air.

That meant tomorrow.

Early in the morning, he would place the interceptors on twenty-four hour alert.

Or, if they knew the time, and he were them, he would attack while the bombers were on the ground, out of the hardened hangars.

Six F-4s?

His pilots would down six F-4s in a matter of minutes. What was he worried about?

He would order his personal MiG-23 prepared, and he would lead the counterattack. It could not hurt his career aspirations.

But what if one of the attackers got through and destroyed an Su-24 on the ground, detonating chemical warheads? The gas would permeate Marada Air Base, sucked into the ventilators. He would be remembered, not for developing a successful strategy and forcing the Israelis to cower in their comer of the world, but for his culpability in the deaths of Libyan airmen and base personnel.

Allow this thought: some clandestine fighter-bombers would attack Marada Air Base between, say, four o’clock in the morning and eight o’clock on the morning of August 2.

It could happen.

It might not happen.

But even the possibility could be circumvented.

Ramad smiled to himself.

Then called the sergeant at the duty desk. “I want all wing and squadron commanders in the briefing room immediately. Notify Colonel Ghazi of the meeting. Send a truck to the encampment for Colonel al-Qati and Major Shummari.”

He made some other calls.

It was eleven-twenty at night before they were all assembled in the briefing room next to his office.

Ramad stood at the podium and smiled.

“I have put my mind to the problem raised by Colonel Ghazi, and I have determined the solution.”

Some of his subordinates smiled their appreciation. Ghazi and al-Qati waited stoically.

“This base is now on full-alert. I have ordered tanker aircraft from Tripoli. We will put the first defensive cover squadron into the air within the horn. Given the possibility of information leaks, I have shut down the telephone system. No phone calls may be made from here, or accepted from elsewhere, for the next forty-eight hours.

“Test Strike is moved up one day. We will launch the C-130s with Colonel al-Qati’s company and Major Shummari’s helicopters at precisely,” — he glanced at his watch — “four-twenty-seven. The bombers will depart at five-forty.

“I would advise all commanders to leave here now and prepare your units.

“Are there any questions?”

There were quite a few.

Martin Church accepted the call on his secure line. It was the DCI.

“Martin, I’m afraid I have bad news.”

“What is that, sir?”

“We just don’t have enough to go on, and I can’t convince the right people. Icarus is cancelled.”

“But, sir…”

“Get hold of your team and turn them back.”

Fourteen

George Embry’s office was not as large as Church’s, and it was made even smaller by the dominant, double-sized poster of Madonna in a classic Marilyn Monroe pose on one wall.

“Jesus, George. Why did you put that up there?”

“To remind me of the love of my life.”

“Not Madonna?”

“No, Marty. Women.”

Church skirted the corner of the square conference table, which had been shoved against the wall opposite Madonna, and sat in a chair next to Embry.

“Welcome to the high-tech African desk, Marty.”

“I see.”

There were two high-resolution monitors on the table, along with a blue telephone and a green telephone.

“I want you to understand that this stuff isn’t in my budget, Marty. I cajoled them out of the NSA’s rent-to-own program.”

“We could have just driven out to Fort Meade.”

The National Security Agency, which was responsible for the monitoring and interception of electronic communications, was located at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. It was the largest agency in the intelligence community, and, though it was an agency of the Department of Defence, worked closely with the CIA on the development of foreign intelligence.

“I’ve got other irons in the fire, too, Marty. I don’t want to sit around out there for two days. Look, the blue phone is a direct link to NSA, so Cummings can reach me.”

Marianne Cummings had a tiny transceiver concealed somewhere in her hotel room. It had a range of only a mile but a relay and satellite up-link was emplaced in one of Tobruk’s derelict buildings within that range.

“The green phone is hooked into the Air Force’s CRITICOM satellite communications system, which we’re borrowing for our link with Wyatt.” He pointed to a blank monitor. “That one is decorative, I think. They tell me I can get maps and the like if I ask for them, but I haven’t asked. The other monitor is giving us a live, near real-time shot of the region from a KH-11 they’ve moved into geo-stationary orbit.”

“I can’t tell shit from that,” Church said.

“Well, the orbit is over the equator, some twenty-two hundred miles south of Wyatt’s position. Then, too, you’re seeing light-enhanced, night-vision video. Plus, the lens is at the limit of its telescopic ability, and the angle and the distance make things a little fuzzy. See this dark blue stuff at the top of the screen? That’s the Med.”

“I picked right up on that, George.”

“Then, down here, where they’ve superimposed a red circle? That’s Marada. The runway is painted in camouflage colours, but the high-tech tinkerers have outlined it for us with white lines. They’re great guys over there.”

“And the yellow circle is Wyatt?”

“You’ve got it, Marty. Go to the head of the photo analysis class. One other thing, they can get us infrared, also.”

“For what?”

“Live video of camouflaged aircraft against the desert may not show us anything. If it doesn’t, we can pick up on their heat trails.”

“All right. So what are they doing?”

“Nothing. Same thing they’ve been doing for lo, these many hours. Actually, I can call and have them put up earlier tapes on the other monitor, if you want to see a flight of MiGs take off from Marada or Wyatt’s people landing at the staging base. They all look like the little airplanes you see on computer games.”

“I’ll pass. What were the MiGs doing?”

“Normal recon or air defence patrol, I think. They flew the border with Egypt, then returned to base.” Church leaned back in his chair, and Embry got up to refill his mug from a drip coffee maker on the credenza behind his desk.

“Want some, Marty?”

“No, I’m coffeed out. Did you get anything from Cummings on a time line?”

“Not yet. I have to wait until she calls. Won’t do to ring her up, if someone’s in the room with her, you know.”

“I promised to contact Wyatt at four his time with any new data. That’ll be eight o’clock tonight our time.”

“I can count, Marty.”

“You don’t want to break policy and call her?”

“No. I want her to live through this. Oops.”

“What?” Church asked.

“Look here,” Embry said, pointing to the red circle on the screen.

Two aircraft had appeared, as if out of nowhere. Church understood that they had been underground. They rolled onto the outlined runway and paused.

The two men waited.

The jets began moving, gathering speed quickly, then rising from the runway and moving out of the red circle.

“MiG-23s I think,” Embry said.

“They make many night flights, George?”

“Not very many.”

“So this is unusual.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t like unusual, George. Or surprises.”

“Am I going to get a surprise?” Embry asked.

“Yes. You can send all this stuff back to Meade. Call Wyatt and tell him his vacation is over.”

“Bullshit.”

“No. The DCI can’t get sign-off.”

“I am going to call the son of a bitch,” Embry said.

“No, you’re not.”

Embry’s eyes burned hot. “Marty, get on that fucking phone and stand your ground. If I recall this mission, I walk.”

Church studied him for a full two minutes, then walked his castered chair over to the desk, picked up the phone, and asked Embry’s secretary to locate the Director.

When somebody found him, he said, “Yes, Martin?”

“Mr. Director, the time for politicking is over. I want an executive order for Icarus, and I want it on my desk in the next two hours.”

“Martin? What the hell?”

“You started this shit, and you’d better damn well finish it. We’re not playing one-upmanship in this room. You go, you beg, you borrow, you spend your favours, you do what you have to do to back up what you started.”

“Martin…”

Church hung up.

He felt good.

He also felt unemployed.

Ahmed al-Qati and Khalil Shummari drove directly back to their cantonment area from Ramad’s briefing. The whining roar of a second pair of MiG fighters taking off from the base deferred any talk. Shummari got out of the truck beside one of his Mi-28 assault helicopters.

He leaned back into the cab. “Well, Ahmed?”

“There is no choice to be made, Khalil. I will give my men another hour’s sleep, then wake them and have them prepare their gear.”

The major nodded. “I will begin moving my helicopters to the base soon. We will need to fuel them, fold the rotors, and load them aboard the transports.”

“Go with God, Khalil. And be prepared for the devil to strike.”

Al-Qati drove on to the headquarters tent, shut off the ignition, and walked inside. An older sergeant manned the duty desk, which was composed simply of a folding table and a telephone.

“Sergeant, take a few minutes’ break, then, at one-thirty, awaken the officers. At two o’clock, begin waking the rest of the company.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

The sergeant left the tent, and al-Qati went to sit on the camp stool behind the desk.

He thought Ramad’s decision precipitous and foolish. Accelerating the launch time would only heighten the problems. There would be mistakes made, and they would be costly mistakes. As far as it went, the exercise was well-planned, but throw in a few unexpected developments, and many things would go wrong. The cost could be counted in lives.

Al-Qati thought that Ramad was exchanging lives for his own advancement.

Worse, he was certain that Colonel Ghazi was also aware of Ramad’s self-interest, but Ghazi was apparently powerless. He would not speak up against the sycophants surrounding the Leader, Salmi and Amjab.

It would be far better, in al-Qati’s view, to delay Test Strike for a week and see if the suspected incursion took place first. The country would best be served by devoting her resources to defence at this moment, rather than to boasting her offensive capabilities.

And far worse, he thought, could be the international consequences of the folly to be executed in Ethiopia. The demonstration of offensive strength might well have gone as Ramad envisioned — unattributed, yet faintly identifiable — had the information not leaked from some source in Tripoli.

Or from Tobruk, as he had come to suspect.

Sophia.

Al-Qati called Ramad foolish, and even Ghazi, but he knew in his heart that the most foolish of all was himself. He had disgorged everything, or almost everything, he knew to the gorgeous creature in the Seaside Hotel.

And he loved her. He knew that he did.

But she used him, abused him, probed in catlike ways for the secrets he held.

And he coughed them up so willingly!

How she must laugh at him.

He was heartsick and humiliated.

And responsible for the deaths that would come.

He heard the whine of helicopter turbines starting. Shummari was moving his company to Marada.

The gases would writhe like maddened snakes across the barrenness of Ethiopia.

But he need not be the root of that evil, of innocents sent to the slaughter.

Rising from the stool, he walked back to the radio, dialled the frequency for the battalion radio, and asked for a connection with the telephone system.

She was always there, of course, and at one-twenty in the morning, likely sound asleep. The telephone rang three times before she answered.

“Yes?”

“I am sorry to awaken you, Sophia.” His voice sounded flat and dead, even to himself.

“Ahmed! Where are you?”

“I call only to tell you that you may start counting the hours from four-thirty this morning.”

“What?”

“Are you awake? Did you understand me? Four-thirty this morning.”

“Ahmed…”

He broke the connection.

He could not know whether or not she would believe either him or his information.

She now knew that he knew.

And that was that.

Ibrahim Ramad walked slowly through the underground hangars, moving from one to another as the preparations continued. The ground crews were slowly coming awake after being jarred out of sound sleep. The ordnance men worked as if they walked on eggs, and perhaps they did.

Ramad had released the chemical warheads earlier. He had not signed for them, since no record was to exist of their deployment. Even the fuel requisitioned for the aircraft involved was to remain unaccounted for and charged to evaporation.

In two of the hangars, nine of the Su-24 bombers were being fitted with the bombs on the inboard pylons. The outboard pylons, on the pivoting wings, would carry four AA-8 air-to-air missiles in the event of an attack on the bombers. Ramad thought the missiles would go unused.

The nine planes were formed into three squadrons, to be called Red, Green, and Purple for this mission. Each squadron carried one type of chemical bomb, toxin, psychological, or nerve agent. The advance party in the C-130s was codenamed Black, and the escort for the bombers, composed of eight MiG-23s, was to be called Orange.

Before the infantry company left, Ramad would personally select one man in each platoon to carry and use the sealed still and video cameras. The photographic record was to be complete and close to the action.

Ramad’s nine MiG-23s would stay in-country, securing Marada Air Base with round-the-clock patrols of four aircraft each, two patrolling to the west and two to the south. Four MiG-23s would stay on full alert at the end of the runway, prepared for instantaneous launch.

He stopped to watch the loading of AA-6 and AA-7 missiles on the pylons of a MiG-23, part of the Orange air cover. These, too, would not be used, he was certain.

His personal MiG-23 was already outfitted with AA-8 missiles and a full magazine for the twin-barrelled 23 millimetre cannon. It would be moved up to the runway, with the avionics warmed up, and be instantly available the moment he decided to leave. He stopped beside it and gazed at his name stencilled below the cockpit canopy.

Ramad almost hoped that the rumour proved to be grounded in fact and was not simply a scare tactic. The Americans frequently did that — leak threats that never came to fruition.

An F-4 did not frighten him. His J-band radar, which NATO called “Jay Bird,” had a search range of twenty-five kilometres and was nearly the equivalent of that in the F-4. With radar range comparisons nullified, he was confident that the MiG-23 could outfly and out-manoeuvre the F-4.

He saw Gamal Harisah preflighting his aircraft and crossed the hangar to join him.

“Good morning. Colonel.”

“Good morning, Captain. What do you think?”

“They do not even look like bombs, Colonel.”

The canisters were almost blunt-nosed, and they were three hundred millimetres in diameter, perhaps two meters long. They were finished in a matte grey. It was almost ludicrous how such unassuming cans could contain such a fatal substance.

The ordnance specialist moved with careful precision as he connected the arming tether between the bomb and the pylon. Once the bomb dropped, the arming pin would be extracted, starting the internal clock. After the clock registered ten seconds, the bomb would be fully armed. Its barometric altimeter was set for two thousand meters, six hundred meters above ground level at the target site for the Purple Squadron. When the bomb reached that altitude, a one-kilogram explosive charge would detonate, destroying the canister and releasing the nerve agent to the winds.

“The meteorologist,” Harisah said, “told me to expect ten-knot winds along the foothills near the target. With a half-kilometre spacing between airplanes, we are going to release four kilometres upwind from the village. The dispersal should achieve a wide range from that point.”

“Good, good,” Ramad said.

Purple Target, an unnamed village, was not even a village. The camp was a collection of tin and fabric tents, goats, camels, dogs, and at last count, thirty-two hundred emaciated and diseased people. The last photographs, taken two weeks before, showed several white United Nations trucks parked near the camp, so there might be some UN workers there. Then again, there might not be. Ramad was not going to worry unduly about it at this point.

He crossed the hangar to the back, entered the tunnel, and double-checked that the doors to the chemical weapons stores were locked before walking back to his office.

He was getting impatient.

Test Strike was going to be a huge success, insuring his participation in the policy development group that surrounded the Leader.

In fact, he was so confident of the exercise that he found himself daydreaming about Americans or Israelis insane enough to attack Marada Air Base.

He wanted so much for it to be true. He needed the diversion.

He was still daydreaming when Colonel Ghazi appeared in his doorway.

Startled, he looked up. “Oh. Colonel Ghazi. Please come in.”

“There was just one thought I wished to share with you, Ibrahim.”

“Certainly.”

“What defensive precautions have you taken for the chemical plant?”

“The chemical plant? They have their own air defence system of antiaircraft guns and missiles.”

“Do you suppose that is sufficient?”

“It does not matter, Colonel. It is not my jurisdiction.”

“It is now,” Ghazi told him.

At six-fifteen in the evening, Martin Church was thinking seriously of going home early and crawling in bed. Tomorrow night was going to be a long one, and he wanted to be as fresh as possible.

He got up and took his suit jacket from its hanger on the hall tree behind the door.

He was shrugging his way into it when the phone in the outer office rang.

He called through the doorway, “I don’t want to take that, Sally.”

“Right, boss.” She answered, then called back to him, “It’s for you.”

“I just said…”

Through the doorway, she mouthed, “The Director.” Church crossed to his desk and picked up.

“Martin, you’ve got your go-ahead.”

His sigh of relief was almost audible. “Thank you, sir.”

“Your information had better be accurate. This cost me two years’ worth of political points.”

“I believe in it.”

“Good. I’ll try.”

The Director hung up.

The man might even earn Church’s respect, if he kept this pace up.

He dialled Embry’s office.

“You’ve got your go-signal, George.”

“It’s about damned time.”

“You can cancel the abort.”

“I never bothered to abort. I trusted you, Marty.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Come on down here,” Embry said.

“What now, George?”

“Come on down here. Quick!”

With that much urgency in Embry’s voice, Church just slapped the phone down and headed for the elevator.

When he got there, he found a dishevelled Embry hunched over his table before the monitors, scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad.

The scene on the screen didn’t seem to have changed much until he looked closer. There were large aircraft on the runways at Marada Air Base.

“What’s going on?”

“Those are C-130s, Marty. Right now, they’re loading helicopters.”

“Whose helicopters?”

Embry pointed at the blue phone. “NSA tells me they go with al-Qati’s First Special Forces Company.”

“So they’re moving them somewhere?”

“Apparently. Sit down, Marty.”

Church dropped into one of the straight-backed chairs at the table.

“I got a signal from Cummings.”

“Okay, good.”

“They’re going at 0430 hours.”

“That soon?”

“Today. Today in Libya, anyway.”

“Shit.”

“You want to call Wyatt, or should I?”

“I’d better do it.”

Ben Borman woke Wyatt.

“What?”

Borman turned the penlight on his own face.

“Hey, Ben, what time is it?”

“0223 hours, Andy. You’re wanted on the radio.”

“Damn. He wasn’t going to call until four.”

Wyatt rolled over, pushed himself onto his knees, and slipped out from under the Hercules. Now, it was cold. Either that, or he couldn’t adapt to the range of temperature change in this desert.

He followed Borman through the hatchway into the crew compartment and picked up the desk microphone on the console. A red light for night work had been rigged above the unit.

“Yucca One.”

“Paper Doll One, Yucca. I’ve got some new and hot data for you.”

“How hot?”

“This is just off the wire. They’re jumping off at 0430 hours.”

“Okay, we’ll be ready.”

“That’s 0430, one August.”

“Goddamn it!” Wyatt said, involuntarily checking his wristwatch. “What happened?”

“They may have tumbled to you, and moved up the deadline to get a jump on you.”

“That’s nice to know.”

“Also, our source thinks she’s been uncovered. She’s going to get on the first plane out of the country.”

“This only gives us a couple hours,” Wyatt said.

“Maybe more. The analysts think, because of the distance involved, the transports will leave with the infantry first. As a matter of fact, we can see them loading choppers now. Paper Doll Two has made some calculations here, if I can interpret his handwriting. He thinks the transports have to have about an hour-and-a-half lead over the bomber force, in order to set down somewhere and deploy the choppers.”

“Hell,” Wyatt said, “they could leave two days early, if they wanted to.”

“The source thinks not.”

“Okay, so that puts the bombers on the runway at 0600 in the morning.”

“At the latest.”

“If we leave here at 0500 and hit them an hour later, we miss the bombers if they go half an hour early.”

“I know, Yucca. It’s a judgement call.”

“They need tankers. Are they coming out of Marada?”

“We don’t think so. It’ll probably be Tripoli, but we don’t have an eye in the area.”

“I’m stretching it to get five minutes on-target,” Wyatt said. “I can’t hang around longer than that.”

“Your call, Yucca. Suggest something.”

“Hell, we’ll split the difference. We’ll hit the target at 0545 hours.”

“Go with it,” Church said. “Anything else?”

“I’ve got as much as I’m going to get, I think.”

“Hold on. Two wants a word.”

Embry took over on the other end. “Yucca, I’ve got a request from my asset.”

“You allow that in your business?”

“She’s special.”

“What’s she want?”

“Don’t shoot al-Qati.”

Jesus Christ.

“Don’t shoot him. Damn it, I don’t even know what he looks like.”

“I’m just passing it on, Yucca.”

Wyatt signed off.

Borman said, “You want me to ring the chow bell?”

“Yeah, Ben, let’s get them up and around. We’re about to go visiting.”

Fifteen

One of the effects of Church’s last-minute alteration of their timing, Wyatt thought, was that it circumvented a build-up of anxiety. If they had had to wait around in the heat for another twenty-four hours, thinking about the coming fight, their nerves would have achieved jangled status.

Everyone rolled out of their sleeping bags, bitching in expected ways, and dove into the chores that had been originally scheduled for later in the afternoon.

“Flashlights, Andy?” Win Potter asked.

“Why not? If a roving patrol hasn’t spotted us by now, maybe our luck will hold.”

Kriswell and Vrdla made a circuit of the aircraft, performing final checks on the avionics, especially the critical data-links and the video-links between aircraft.

Potter and Littlefield topped off the fighter and transport fuel cells to within a quarter-inch of the caps.

Borman, with Dave Zimmerman’s reluctant help, retrieved the C-4 plastic explosive from the Hercules and started cutting it into smaller blocks and shaping it into small cones. They carried the small charges from plane to plane, attaching it to the super-secret electronic black boxes, to instrument panels, and to fuel cells. All eight aircraft received a liberal dose of plastique. Then Borman, without a very relieved Zimmerman’s assistance, inserted detonators in each charge and wired them into already installed wiring harnesses according to a schematic he had designed. Two switches were part of the harness. One, controlled by the pilot, initiated either a thirty-second or a forty-five-second timer, hopefully giving the pilot time to eject after he closed the circuit or to get a long way away from the plane if he was on the ground. In the event that a pilot was unable to flip the toggle on his own, an impact switch — requiring five-hundred foot-pounds of force — was installed in the nose.

If any F-4, or either of the C-130s, was hit or went down, there wouldn’t be enough left of it for salvagers to reconstruct key components.

The downside of the self-destruct precaution was that flying the aircraft was like piloting a volatile fuel cell while smoking half-a-dozen Havanas. Borman had been thorough in his design, however. All of the charges were in protected spots, behind titanium panels or in structural members, so that a few rounds from a hostile gun was unlikely to set off the sensitive detonators. The plastique itself, Borman liked to say when he was juggling balls of the stuff, was completely harmless.

Jim Demion and Cliff Jordan spent their time removing the plunger-type impact fuses from the twenty-four Mark 84 bombs slung beneath the E-model Phantoms. There were three bombs on each pylon, six per plane. The bombs on the C and D models would remain in their factory configuration.

In place of the impact fuses, they installed the nose cones that Kriswell, Vrdla, and Borman had modified in Nebraska and brought with diem. The cones contained the avionic heads from the HOBOS two thousand-pound guided bomb. Though the three designers had not had a MK 84 available as a model, the cones slipped into place perfectly, substituting an electronic impact fuse, and giving the bomb eyes. The nose cone and trailing antennas were taped into place with duct tape. The additional wiring harness plugged directly into a receptacle already installed in the pylon.

Wyatt, Gettman, Hackley, and Barr preflighted each airplane, paying particular attention to weapons hardware connectors and firing up the computers and radars for software checks.

Dennis Maal and Hank Cavanaugh installed the final linkages and examined and tested all of the new solenoid-activated controls. They tested the electronic consoles built into the transport and into the backseat areas of Yucca Three and Yucca Four.

They had completed four dry runs of the procedures while still in Ainsworth, and the live exercise came off without a hitch. They were finished by 0410 hours.

Formsby, who had not had an assignment, contented himself with tending the radio and positioning the two start carts before Borman rigged them with plastic explosive.

Then, whether they wanted them or not, they dug into their stash of MREs, heated whatever they drew over flaming Stemo cans, and chased it down with mugs of the hot coffee Formsby had brewed.

Barr, in standard form, consumed the contents of four of the MRE packages.

Sitting on the ramp of the transport, Barr said, “You know, I don’t think Yucca Two has more than five or six brake cycles left.”

“You really think you’re going to need brakes Bucky?” Jordan asked. “You want brakes, I’ll trade you airplanes.”

“No way, man. Yours flies like a Navy hog.”

“You haven’t even flown it.”

“I can tell by looking at it,” Barr insisted.

Wyatt forced down the last of his biscuit, swigged some coffee, then climbed into the Hercules to find a mirror and a paper cup of water. He discovered his razor in his duffel bag — someone had straightened out all of the personal belongings en route to Africa. The soft rubber seal of his oxygen mask chafed his face red if he had a stubble, and he quickly cut it down.

Formsby stood next to him, with his own cup of water, sharing the mirror. He probably shaved out of habit, Wyatt figured.

“Are you expecting to have to impress someone, Andy?” Formsby asked.

“Not today, unless it’s my Maker, and I’m not planning on that.”

“Amen.”

With the chores completed, many of the men were thinking about their future. Or lack of it.

He shed his jeans, dressed in his dove grey Noble Enterprises flight suit, and went back to the cargo bay to sit on the ramp.

Cavanaugh, Littlefield, Vrdla, and Potter had started a card game.

The temperature was starting to come up.

Ben Borman had collected the drag chutes from yesterday’s landings and stacked them on top of the start carts, weighting them in place with pieces of broken two-by-fours from the ruined hangars. When the start carts went up in flames, so would the parachutes.

Barr emerged from the cargo bay, also dressed in his flight suit, and sat down beside him.

“Going to miss this place,” Barr said.

“For how long?”

“Maybe twenty seconds.”

“How you doing, Bucky?”

“Good, I think.” Barr held out both hands, steady as granite. “I hope to hell they stay that way, come bomb delivery time.”

“I hope to hell the technology substitutes for practice,” Wyatt said.

None of them had dropped a bomb in years. Their flight skills were still honed by their daily work, but civilian chores didn’t always involve placing MK 84s in tender spots. Kriswell had argued that the guidance system was all they would need. He had run them through some simulations in Nebraska, connecting the HOBOS heads to the aircraft computers.

“My fear,” Barr said, “is that the technology is soon going to substitute for humans in the cockpit. Hell, it already has. Where am I going to get a job?”

“Maybe they’ll make you president of Yale?”

“They should. Look how I turned out. How many of my classmates can be found sitting in the sand of Chad, waiting for some jerk in Washington to say go?”

“I don’t know. How big was your graduating class?” “I didn’t pay attention. I think most of them are lawyers by now. Either that or cat burglars.”

Dawn was pinking the horizon now. The drab top-sides of the fighters took on a glow, their silhouettes slowly becoming defined.

“I like that airplane,” Wyatt said.

“Me, too, buddy. There’ll never be another like her, or one that acted so many roles.”

The F-4 had been used as a fighter, a bomber, a Wild Weasel — attracting SAM launches in order to strike the SAM radars, a photographic reconnaissance platform. She had taken to the air in 1958, and she was still flying combat missions in reconnaissance form during Desert Storm in 1991.

After the work they had put into them, Wyatt was almost reluctant to force them into their next roles. “Andy?”

“Yeah?”

“You mean what you said last night?”

“Probably. What’d I say?”

“You going to ask Janner?”

“She already said yes.”

“Damn. I knew I should have called earlier.”

They sat and waited for the sun to come up or for something else to happen.

There was not enough space in the subterranean hangars for the C-130 transports, and the six of them were lined up next to the runway. The first four contained Shummari’s helicopters, and the last two were now loading the First Special Forces Company. Al-Qati divided the company evenly between the two transports. If one went down, he didn’t want to lose all of his fighting capability.

He stood with Shummari near the last airplane, and listened as, one by one, they began to start their engines. The crescendo grew steadily.

“I do not feel as confident as I should about this mission,” Shummari said.

“You are in good company, Khalil.”

Al-Qati had a sudden inspiration relating to his survival. “We should have a contingency plan.”

“Such as, Ahmed?”

“Give me a codename.”

Shummari had to speak louder, as the roar of engines increased. “Moonglow.”

The colonel grinned. “I am surprised, Khalil. You are a romantic.”

“I wish that I were.”

“I will be Sundown. This is in the event that we need to change the plans made for us.”

“We do not control the transports, Ahmed, and that bothers me. I prefer having my helicopters free to roam.”

“Is your side arm loaded, Khalil?”

Shummari patted his holster. “Yes, of course.”

“That is all the command you need.”

“But, Ahmed…”

“Very likely, it will not be necessary. Still, we must think ahead. I will be in the fifth aircraft, with the first and second platoons. I think you should fly with the two Mi-8s.”

“As you wish, Ahmed.”

Al-Qati regretted that the mission did not allow for him to bring along any of the armoured personnel carriers. He would hate to be stranded in the Sudan or in Ethiopia without motorized transport.

Shrugging his shoulders in the web gear, he patted Shummari on the back, then trudged slowly across the tarmac toward the transport.

Embry yelped, “They’re moving!”

Church was reclined in Embry’s high-backed desk chair, his shoeless feet propped on the desk, and his head lolling from side to side as he drifted in and out of sleep.

He sat up abruptly, slid his feet off the desk, and stood up. He nearly fell down when he determined that his left leg had gone to sleep without him.

Rounding the desk, he reached the table and leaned on it, shaking his leg to get the circulation going again.

With a ballpoint pen, Embry pointed out a silver airplane on the screen. “That’s the first one airborne. The others are moving into take-off position.”

“Let’s keep track of them.”

Embry grabbed the blue phone, and someone on the other end answered immediately.

“We want a fix on their course, speed, and altitude,” he told the desk person on the NSA end of the line. “Don’t lose them.”

Church picked up the green phone.

“Captain Murphy, sir,” the man at the Pentagon said.

“Captain, hook me into Yucca, please.”

“Right away, sir.”

Several minutes went by before a voice with a British accent came on the air. Church figured it was Formsby, though he had never met the man.

“This is Paper Doll One. Who is this?”

“Yucca… oh, I must be about Fifteen. Give or take a digit or two.”

“The transports are taking off now, Yucca.”

“Roger that,” Formsby said. “We will be going shortly, then.”

“Give me a rundown, please.”

“Time to target at selected cruise is fifty-seven minutes, and we need eleven minutes from engine start to take-off. We plan to reach the target at 0545 hours.”

“You’ve got it calculated that closely?” Church asked.

“Who in the world knows? The boss feels good if we use odd numbers.”

Formsby came through the hatchway from the crew compartment into the cargo bay and yelled, “Andy!”

Wyatt turned to look back.

“The C-130s are off.”

Wyatt climbed to his feet. “Anything else, Neil?”

“That’s all the man gave me.”

The pilots and technicians began to stir out of their resting positions on the ramp and in the bay.

“Okay, guys, we’re on,” Wyatt said. “Let’s do it like we drilled it.”

Demion said to Kriswell, “Come on, Tom. You can play with the throttles while I see if this big mother will start.”

The two of them headed forward to the flight deck with Kriswell saying, “I want to see if I can retract the wheels this time. Would that be okay?”

“I’ll tell you what, Tom,” Demion said, “I’ll think about it.”

Dennis Maal and Hank Cavanaugh headed for the Hercules tanker.

Wyatt walked out to Yucca One with Win Potter, who carried a ladder. When they reached the plane, Wyatt slipped into his G suit, then checked his survival pack. The survival packs had been specifically provisioned for this mission, and he took out the most important item, the radio, and checked it for operation. He made certain he had extra batteries for it. Uncomfortable under his left arm was the holster for his Browning 9-millimetre automatic. He didn’t plan on using it.

“Good luck, Andy.”

“Thanks, Win. I’ll be seeing you soon.”

“Maybe we can have lunch,” Potter grinned.

“Plan on it.”

Wyatt went up the ladder and into the cockpit. He strapped into his parachute, then into the seat. Potter came up and helped out with the umbilicals.

Lifting his helmet from the floor, he slipped it on and fastened the chin strap. Potter grabbed the comm cord and snapped it in place.

Wyatt gave him a raised thumb, and Potter went down the ladder.

Borman was ready with the start cart, and, in three minutes the twin turbojets were turning.

They waved at him, and moved the start cart over to crank Gettman’s F-4.

In a short time, the turboprops of both Hercules aircraft were idling, as were all twelve turbojets.

“Formation lights,” Wyatt said.

The dim wingtip lights started popping on.

Wyatt sat in his cockpit watching the ballet.

After extending flaps to the full-down position and synchronizing the engines, Maal and Cavanaugh climbed out of the tanker and ran for the transport scrambling up the ramp.

Dave Zimmerman and Cliff Jordan slid out of their F-4s, Yuccas Five and Six — the C and D models, and scampered up the ladders and into the backseats of Yuccas Three and Four. They left their jets idling with the flaps down.

Grabbing ladders and a few scattered tools, the remaining mechanics sprinted for the Hercules.

Ben Borman was last. He set the timers on the start cart explosives, then rambled his way to the transport.

As soon as he was aboard, Wyatt touched the transmit stud. “Okay, Wizard, you’re gone.”

Demion said, “I may be slow, but I’m ahead of you.” While raising its ramp, the big Hercules released its brakes and headed for the end of the runway.

Because of the way they had been lined up, Barr was the last one off the ground. He took off in the same direction he had landed, dodging holes with a drift to the right as he shot down the runway in afterburner, necessary because of the short field and the take-off weight.

Ahead of him, the twin exhausts of Hackley’s Phantom burned bright, like two flares in the false dawn, slowly climbing away to the right.

As soon as the wheels quit rumbling, and the wonder of flight took over, Barr retracted his gear, keeping an eye on the airspeed indicator. He eased into a right turn, behind Yucca Three, got the speed up, and pulled the throttles out of afterburner.

The F-4s all had their formation lights on in the hopes of avoiding a collision with anyone except the Libyans. He continued to circle right, gradually gaining altitude to one thousand feet AGL.

He leaned right and looked down at the field.

The C-130F was on the move, headed for the end of the runway. As he watched, Yucca Five began rolling away from Yucca Six, then turned jerkily and followed the tanker.

“Be tender, guys,” Wyatt said, “we don’t want to pile them up right there.”

“Trust Thirsty, Yucca,” Dennis Maal said. “I’ve done this before.”

“With a C-130?” Barr asked.

“Well, no. But it did have a forty-five-inch wingspan and a top end of sixty miles an hour.”

“I’m impressed, Thirsty,” Formsby said. Formsby had taken Cavanaugh’s seat as co-pilot of the Hercules.

Utilizing the data down-link, the ex-E-2 AWACS console aboard the transport had some control over its subordinate aircraft through the autopilot. Kriswell and Vrdla had added some functions — full throttle arc, landing gear and flap retraction — in order to enhance the remote control. In addition, some data feedback — altitude, attitude, heading, speed — was displayed on the controllers’ screens.

In the past, Barr had had an AWACS controller, with more powerful down-looking radar available, actually do his flying for him, taking him up through cloud formations that had blinded Barr but appeared perfectly clear to the high-flying AWACS.

Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPVs) had been used for a long time, as target drones and as reconnaissance platforms, but they weren’t generally as large as F-4s or C-130s.

From the backseat of Yucca Three, Zimmerman would attempt to fly Yucca Five, and Cliff Jordan had control of Yucca Six from the backseat of Gettman’s Yucca Four. Additionally, Zimmerman and Jordan had a view. Cameras in the noses of the remote-controlled Phantoms transmitted their images to the instrument panel screens of the backseaters. That feature had not been incorporated into the tanker.

If they got the F-4 RPVs as far as Marada, Wyatt wanted Zimmerman and Jordan to be able to target well enough, through the camera lens, to fly the planes right into the targets. Modem day electronic kamikazes without the benefit of cultural and spiritual upbringing.

Barr and Wyatt, when they had developed the concept, had discussed M.E. Morris’s intriguing novel, The Last Kamikaze, but they couldn’t figure out a way to program the computers with the same dedication demonstrated by Hirohito’s pilots.

In any event, Barr didn’t think the RPVs were going to make it to the target. Crashing them into the chemical plant had become the second of their priorities.

Gettman came on the air. “Hey, Thirsty, if you’re going to dump that big toy, dump it off the runway, will you? I still want a chance to get airborne.”

“Shut up, Four,” Maal said.

Wyatt wasn’t killing the banter this morning, and Barr figured it was because they were only a few minutes away from being discovered anyway.

He continued his circle, staying behind Hackley’s formation lights. On the far side of the field, he could see Wyatt’s and Gettman’s Phantoms, but he couldn’t tell which was which. The Hercules was higher, coming in from the south, directly above the runway so Formsby or Demion could coach Maal on the ICS, the Internal Communications System.

The C-130F was now on the runway, lined up. In the gathering dawn, Barr could see the exhaust from her four engines building.

She began to roll, picked up speed quickly since her fuel load was now confined to what was in the wing tanks. Barr passed the south end of the runway as the tanker began swerving to the right, too hard.

Maal corrected, she straightened out, achieved lift, and rose slowly from the airstrip. Maal, with his experience with flying models, had tutored all of the pilots — since any of them might end up flying the RPVs — to not make abrupt moves with the remote controls. It could rapidly translate into stalls, lost lift, and pancaked airplanes. A radio controller didn’t feel the attitudinal changes made by RPVs. Maal had admitted crashing six or seven models while learning to fly radio control, and he was a pilot. The revelation was not a morale builder.

There were a few cheers on Tac Two as the C-130 gained altitude.

Maal reported, “The data feedback says I’ve got gear up and airspeed. I’m taking it cool, and we’re out of here.”

“Nice job, Thirsty,” Wyatt said. “Wizard, we’ll see you on the other side.”

The two C-130s would join up, climb for altitude, and head north.

By the time Barr had reached the northern end of his circle, Yucca Five was on the runway.

“I’ve got a nice picture on the screen,” Zimmerman said. “That is, the resolution is nice. The view is dismal.”

“Any time you’re ready, Five,” Wyatt said.

“Going to afterburner.”

The end of the runway lit up, and the F-4C leapt away. She built momentum quickly, missed the chuck-holes, and rotated.

The F-4D was off the airstrip, retracting gear and flaps, by the time Barr completed his next circle.

“All right, Yuccas, let’s form up,” Wyatt said.

Barr ran in some throttle and closed on Hackley as they eased into a heading of 010. Seconds later, the two of them joined with Wyatt and Gettman in a finger formation. They climbed for two thousand feet AGL, providing enough control-correction tolerance for the RPVs, and staying low enough to avoid radar for awhile.

“Let’s kill the formation lights, Yuccas. Heading zero-one-three, speed four-zero-zero knots.”

Barr reached out and flipped the toggle on his lighting panel. The wingtip lights blinked out. As they gained altitude, however, the day brightened. He could make out the silhouettes of the Phantoms ahead on his left.

Somewhere, fifty miles ahead, and at the same altitude, were the Hercs.

Somewhere, a half-mile ahead of them, were Yuccas Five and Six, flying point for the combat formation. The two RPVs were supposed to be flying about two miles apart to prevent an accidental collision.

The red-lit chronometer on his instrument panel read: 0454.

“You notice, One,” Barr said, “that we’re six minutes off schedule. Pretty sloppy, that.”

Formsby asked, “Does the CIA give out demerits?”

“Only for spending Uncle’s money on champagne,” Barr told him.

“Does this parachute work?” Forrnsby asked.

Sixteen

Janice Kramer was zapping burritos in the microwave at seven o’clock in the evening.

The telephone rang.

She gave up watching the burritos to step to the opposite counter and pick up the phone. Through the window, she could see the shadows lengthening, slowly overcoming the day.

“Yes.”

“Miss Kramer, this is your friend on the East Coast, returning your call.”

She thought it was Church’s voice, and she wouldn’t yet, if ever, describe him as a friend. At least, he had called after she left her message on the machine.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“I want a status report.”

“Miss Kramer, we can’t…”

“Those are my people” she said. “I want to know if they landed safely.”

Church, sighed, hesitated, then said, “It’s underway.”

“What! But it…”

“Yes. There’s been a change. At any rate, it’ll be over in a couple of hours.”

Her stomach clenched up on her. “Will you call me as soon as you know?”

“I will.”

He hung up, and she carefully placed the receiver in its cradle.

She wasn’t hungry.

Cancelling the microwave’s timer, she went into the living room and curled up on the couch.

She curled up in a foetal position. Her stomach hurt.

God. She had thought it was five days away.

Another change.

Another chance for error.

Turn back, Andy. Come home to me.

“You want to take her for awhile, Neil?” Demion asked.

“Marvellous, James! I would like that.”

Outside of a few small aircraft he rented on weekends, Formsby did not often get a chance to fly. He especially did not get a chance to fly military aircraft, even the lumbering, four-engined Hercules.

“Would a barrel roll be appropriate?” he asked.

“I think you’d get some complaints,” Demion said, crawling out of the pilot’s seat.

“Some people just have no sense of adventure.”

Demion descended from the flight deck, found the pot of coffee Littlefield had made, and brought two mugs back to the cockpit.

“You might have thought about me,” Kriswell said.

He was seated in the flight engineer’s position, leaning forward to peer out the windscreen at the C-130F. The tanker was a half-mile ahead of them, at the same flight level of two thousand feet AGL.

“You’re too busy, Tom,” Demion said, “and my hands are too full.”

“I haven’t told Denny to make a correction in thirty or forty seconds,” Kriswell said.

Maal, seated at the joystick controls down at the console, was flying the tanker with the telemetry feedback plus oral instructions from Kriswell over the ICS.

Demion gave him one of the mugs, then went back down to the crew compartment for another.

Sam Vrdla, also at the console, was in charge of the radar, and he asked, “Command pilot, can I have a radar check?”

Demion told him, “Two sweeps, Sam. But keep the power down.”

“Roger.”

A few seconds later, when Demion was back in his seat, Vrdla reported over the intercom, “All systems check out, Jim. We should get our one-ninety-mile scan at thirty-five thousand.”

Aboard the original E-2, with its massive radar antenna enclosed in the radome, the search area could be extended to 250 miles. With the modified antenna protected by a fiberglass bulge on the C-130’s fuselage top, they had managed only 190 miles. It was not quite what they had hoped for, but Wyatt felt that it was adequate.

The MiGs they were going up against had a radar range of twenty-two miles, less than that of a production F-4. The modified radar in the fighter, Kriswell had told him, gave them a hundred-mile edge. That ability to say, “I see you” first might be all that was necessary to insure success. Even though, for weight and range considerations, the Phantoms were carrying short-range missiles, the radar superiority would increase the preparation time or the evasion advantage.

Formsby felt, rather than saw, a shadow on his right, and he glanced out the side window to see the F-4s pulling alongside. Wyatt was in the lead plane, with the three others in echelon off his right wing. He looked up and saw the two RPVs several hundred feet above and spread far apart.

“Actually, James, this is rather exciting. I am glad I decided to come along.”

“Actually, Neil I’m amazed that we’ve got all eight planes in the right configuration at this point in time. My better instincts and a few laws of probability say we should have lost at least one to equipment failure by now.”

“Speaks worlds for the design team,” Formsby said.

“It does, doesn’t it?”

The intercom chatter died down as they flew on through a brightening day. Tension was building within the Hercules crew, Formsby knew, even though this aircraft would not approach within 220 kilometres (175 miles) of the targets. That was an exceptionally short distance for a MiG-23. Especially when their defences would be limited to what the countermeasures pods could provide. They would soon lose their fighter-bomber protection.

Thirty minutes later, Wyatt came on the air. “Wizard Three, Yucca One.”

“Go One,” Vrdla, who was Wizard Three, said.

“I’m showing two-two-zero from the IP.”

The Initial Point for the bomb run was seventeen miles west of Marada Air Base and the chemical factory.

“Roger that, One. We match up.”

“All right.” Wyatt said. “Wizard, Thirsty, go to your stations. Yuccas Five and Six, initiate your run.” Demion said, “Wizard, wilco.”

From the console below, Maal called, “Thirsty’s on her climbout.”

Zimmerman replied, “Five.”

And Jordan said, “Six moving out.”

“I’ll take her back now, Neil.”

“Just when I was getting to know her better,” Formsby said. “Story of my life.”

When he felt Demion’s touch on the yoke, Formsby released his grip and took his feet off the rudder pedals. His ankle was aching some, but it was not something with which he could not live.

“Let’s take the power to ninety percent,” Demion said to him.

“Nine-zero coming up.”

Formsby worked the throttles, keeping an eye on the tachometers so as to not get too far out of synchronization. When he had them adjusted, he fumbled for his oxygen mask, slipped the straps over his head, and let it hang around his neck. At thirty-five thousand feet, a stray missile could result in a sudden decompression, if not total annihilation.

“You’ve got to move a little faster than that, Denny,” Kriswell said over the ICS.

The tanker had fallen well below them, and Maal added more power from his remote controls in order to increase the rate of climb.

“That better, Tom?”

“Much better,” Kriswell said. “How about the rest of the crew? You all have your oxy handy?”

Potter, Borman, Cavanaugh, and Littlefield all checked in with affirmative responses.

They left the tanker at twenty-five thousand feet, its autopilot circling it in a three-mile-diameter circle. Maal was finally able to give up the joysticks and relax.

Depending upon one’s definition of relaxation, Formsby reminded himself.

The Hercules kept climbing toward the north.

Ibrahim Ramad stood with Colonel Ghazi in his control centre watching the grease-painted blips change position on the Plexiglas wall. Al-Qati’s C-130s, Black Squadron, were over the Kufra Oasis, in south-eastern Libya. They were about three hundred kilometres away from penetrating Sudan airspace. Orange Squadron, the air cover for the transports, was ranged above and ahead of them. The tankers were moving into position.

“It will not be long now, Colonel Ghazi.”

“No.” Ghazi seemed to be quite withdrawn this morning. His face reflected morose thoughts within.

“Are you certain you would not like to accompany the mission?” Ramad offered. “We could find you a seat in one of the bombers.”

“I will see everything I need to see from right here,” Ghazi said.

On the secondary tactical channel monitor, they could hear the eight MiG-23s conversing with the tankers out of Tripoli. They would have to refuel in about forty minutes. Then they would begin their descent to one thousand meters, staying ahead and above the transports, which would transit the Sudan at five hundred meters of altitude, simulating a low-profile, radar-avoidance attack.

Two MiG-23s — Alif Flight — were six hundred kilometres to the west. They were supposed to be patrolling

against any incursion of hostile aircraft from that direction, but he had listened to their radio conversations and was certain they were playing games with a flight out of Tripoli. He had issued a stern order against that nonsense.

The MiG-23s flying under the call sign of Ba that had flown surveillance along the southern border were now in their landing approach. They would land for refuelling.

Four MiG-23s, call sign Ta, were about to take off. They would patrol the region around the base until the bombers were well under way, then join the bombers. By then, Ba Flight would be refuelled and again be in the air. The bombers and Ja squadron would meet the tankers over Sudan.

It was all proceeding so smoothly.

Alongside the see-through map, the status board showed him that the nine Su-24s were now being towed from the hangars. From the overhead speaker, he heard the ground controller telling them to line up on the taxiway behind the MiG-23.

Several minutes later the controller said, “Ta Lead, Marada. Incoming craft are now down and clear of the runway. You have clearance for take-off.”

“Ta Lead, with a flight of four, proceeding.”

Ramad crossed the room to stand behind the radar operator. The supervisor, in contact with the aircraft through his headset, also stood behind the corporal. On the radar screen, Ramad saw the first two aircraft make their take-off runs toward the north, then start into a right turn. Shortly thereafter, the second pair followed.

He was about to turn away from the radar scope when he noticed two small blips near the bottom edge of the screen, about 150 kilometres away. They had to have been there for some time because the radar was set for a 220-kilometre scan.

“What are those, Corporal?” he demanded.

“Uh, where, Colonel? Oh. They just appeared.”

“Idiot! Identify them!”

“I, uh, we don’t have an aircraft in that region right now, Colonel.”

The supervisor was already on the radio, demanding identification from the pair on the primary frequencies. Airplanes flying in pairs were not accidental tourists.

“They are not transmitting IFF, Colonel,” the corporal said.

“Get me a position, you pig!”

“They are bearing almost directly on us, Colonel. One-four-eight kilometres, altitude two-thousand meters.”

Merciful Allah! Ghazi could be correct! But no, he could not be!

“How fast?” he demanded.

“Ah, closing at nine hundred knots, Colonel.”

Supersonic!

Ramad glanced over at Ghazi, who was watching the activity at the radar with passive disenchantment.

The incoming airplanes suddenly began to emanate radar emissions, the pulses showing up vividly on the screen. Every eye in the vicinity of the radar set was drawn to them.

“Radiating,” the corporal said.

“I can see that!”

Ramad’s mind immediately went into a defensive posture. He ripped the headset from the supervisor and spoke into it.

“Ta Leader, Marada.”

“This is Ta Leader.”

“You have a flight of two unknowns at your heading one-nine-two, altitude two-zero-thousand, distance one-four-zero, speed nine-zero-zero. Take them!”

“Uh, Marada, do you want us to identify them?”

“Ta Leader, I want you to shoot them down!”

Ramad dropped the headset and ran for the door, yelling, “Tell my crew to have my airplane ready!”

Ghazi stopped his flight with one raised hand. “Are you notifying Tripoli, Colonel?”

“I will take care of this, Ghazi.”

“Yes. I am certain that you will.”

“Keep me apprised, Yucca Five,” Barr heard Wyatt demand of Zimmerman.

“The RPVs are sixty miles ahead of us,” Zimmerman said, “and seven-five out. My feedback says five is being hit with search radar.”

“Won’t be long now,” Jordan said.

“Hell, even by long-distance, I’ll give ’em a run for their money,” Zimmerman promised.

Barr scanned his instrument panel and HUD. All nice readings. >He was itching to fire up the radar and find something to track.

“Yucca One, Two,” Barr said, “I think it’s time.”

“It’s close enough,” Wyatt agreed. “Let’s lock open the channel.”

Barr flipped the toggle on the communications panel which kept his transmit mode open. It made for easier interplane conversation during hectic manoeuvring.

“Four, you with me?” Barr asked.

“Roger, Two. Lead the way.”

Barr made a slight correction with his stick and rudders, dropped out of the formation, and veered off on a more northerly route. Gettman, with Zimmerman in the backseat, followed and fell in on his right wing.

He could imagine the intensity of concentration Zimmerman and Jordan were having to maintain. They would have to ignore attitudinal changes made by the aircraft they were in and keep their minds attuned to what was happening in the RPVs.

The desert below was now fully, though hazily, lit. It appeared no less forbidding. He saw a few lights off about ten miles to the west and pinpointed them as the village of Zella. It was not, he thought, a tourist attraction.

They were way the hell into it now. The southern border was so far behind, it could have been in another atlas. Barr wondered why they hadn’t considered high-tailing it for the Med, ditching the aircraft, and getting picked up by someone’s luxury yacht.

Then remembered that yachts were slow, and someone might catch them.

And learn some true names.

Which wasn’t supposed to happen.

He glanced to his right. Wyatt and Hackley had disappeared. They were probably less than two miles away, but the camouflage blended them right into the desert below.

He was still holding two thousand AGL, and he was pretty certain the bad guys hadn’t spotted him yet.

“One,” he said, “can we have an AWACS check?”

“Go, Wizard Three,” Wyatt said.

“Going.”

Two seconds.

Three.

“I’m showing four bandits, bearing zero-four-three, coming hot on the RPVs. Four-five miles on them, and closing.”

“Roger,” Wyatt said. “Keep Five and Six alerted from here on in.”

Five and Six were emitting radar energy to attract attention only. Their radars could not be read by Zimmerman and Jordan.

“Yucca Five and Six are five-eight from target,” Vrdla said. “Can you guys see anything?”

Zimmerman reported, “I’ve got a nice, clear picture on the camera, but I can’t see anything but dirt.”

“All Yuccas, One. Weapons are free. Arm ’em up.”

Barr reached for his armaments panel and switched off the safety. He no longer had a backseater, and he selected “Pilot” for triggering. Just to be prepared for an airborne attack, he selected a Super Sidewinder for the time being.

The Ford Aerospace/Raytheon AIM-9L missile had an eleven-mile range at a cruising speed of Mach 3. Compared to the sixty-two-mile maximum range Sparrow, with which the F-4 was normally equipped, it was like using a knife in a street fight rather than a sniper rifle. Wyatt and Barr had elected to switch to the Sidewinder, however, for two reasons. For targeting, it utilized infrared homing, rather than semi-active radar guidance, and lacking backseaters, the infrared was preferable to them. Additionally, they saved twelve hundred pounds per plane in weight, which boosted their crucial performance data: speed and/or fuel consumption.

With its twenty-five-pound warhead, instead of the Sparrow’s eighty-eight-pound warhead, the Sidewinder could still destroy enough of an enemy aircraft to temper its aggressiveness. As an infrared-seeker, the missile usually found a hot exhaust pipe to home on, and when that was the case, that was all it took.

“One and Three jumping off,” Wyatt said. “Go afterburner, Three.”

“Sure you don’t want some help?” Barr asked.

“Hell, Bucky. there’s only four of them,” Hackley came back. “Andy can wait here if he wants to, and I’ll be right back.”

“Two and Four going hot-shit for the coast,” Barr said. “Can we pick you up a hotdog or a girl in a bikini?”

“I rather doubt,” Formsby said, “that you’re going to find either.”

“What a downer,” Barr said as he kicked in the afterburners.

Checking his right side, he saw Gettman accelerating with him, grinning widely.

Ramad was in his cockpit, performing his final pre-flight checks. The wings were extended and locked in their sixteen-degree configuration. The armaments panel showed him the availability of three hundred rounds of 23 millimetre cannon shells, two AA-7 missiles, and four AA-8 missiles. The AA-7 missiles, called Apex by NATO, were good at medium ranges, sixteen to thirty-two kilometres. The AA-8 missiles were designed for high-manoeuvrability targets at close range. They had only a seven-kilometre effective kill range, but they were very accurate. All of his missiles were infrared-homing.

He looked to the east, where the sun had now ascended just above the horizon. There were a lot of men standing around on the ramp, trying to figure out what was happening. To the west, the Su-24s were stretched along the taxiway, awaiting their orders.

“Marada Ground Control, Vulture,” he said.

“Proceed, Vulture.”

“I am ready for take-off.”

“Vulture, the bombers are now in position for take-off.”

“Move them. I am going first.”

He waved away his ground crew and released the brakes, heading quickly for the taxiway and closing his canopy as he went.

As he approached them, he saw the Su-24s sidling ahead and easing to the right, to allow him passage along the left side of the taxiway.

He had barely turned onto the runway when he heard Ta flight on the tactical radio.

“Tas, Ta Leader. Targets two-five kilometres. I have a lock-on.”

“Ta Two, lock-on.”

“Ta Three. I also have a target.”

“Ta Four, target on the screen. Now, lock-on.”

“Two missiles each, Tas,” Ta Leader said.

Ramad shoved his throttles forward and sagged into the seat as the gravitational force mounted.

Save one for me.

As he rotated and retracted his landing gear, he found himself becoming excited by the prospects.

If Ghazi’s reports were correct, there were another four hostile aircraft somewhere, and he was going to get one of them for himself.

“Yucca Six. Missile lock-on,” Jordan said easily. It was easier to say when he wasn’t sitting inside the target.

“Ditto with Five. They’re infrared seekers. I’m still shutting down radar.”

“Six shutting down.”

Wyatt checked his HUD. He was making 1040 knots, over the barrier, consuming fuel like it was hot chocolate on a wintry Nome night.

“Back off a little, Three.”

“Wilco,” Hackley said.

He worked the throttles back a little. They were still at two thousand feet AGL.

He tried to imagine what was happening with the RPVs. They had initiated their radar to make them attractive targets, and they had been fired on by infrared-homing missiles. Switching the radars to passive mode didn’t make a lot of difference.

“Five and Six,” he said. “Go ahead and launch all of your missiles.”

“Five, roger.”

“Six.”

They couldn’t actually aim the missiles, but it was a shame to waste them. If nothing else the eight missiles would scatter the Libyan formation.

“Wiz Three, here. I got missiles all over the damned sky. The homeboys are breaking up. No hits yet on either side.”

“Sitrep, Five?”

“I’m doing things I can’t believe I’m doing without being there, Andy,” Zimmerman said. “Loops and rolls. Showed ’em my tail for a few seconds without planning it. The image on the screen is crazy. I don’t know if I’m up or down. I lost feedback on the airspeed indie…”

“Five?”

“I think I’m dead. Everything went blank and zero.”

“Six?”

Jordan reported. “I’m inverted at five hundred AGL. I think I’ve dodged about six hundred missiles. Upright, now, pulling for altitude. Oh, shit! Threat warning on IR missiles. Maybe two of them. Rolling.”

“Wizard Three, report!” Wyatt ordered.

“Three,” Vrdla said from the Here. “All my blips have gone crazy. I think that’s Five spinning in. Gone. Okay, showing five bogies. That must be Yucca Six near the ground. Missiles all over hell, but they’re blinking out. Yeah, Six go hard right and climb.”

“Going hard right,” Jordan called. “Hell, I’m losing airspeed bad. Got to put the nose down.”

“Hard left.”

“Left. Stalling out.”

“Their formation is a shambles.” Vrdla reported. “They’re all over the sky. I see you at two-zero from contact, Yucca One.”

“I got it back, I think,” Jordan said. “Airspeed coming up.”

Wyatt said, “Three, lose the drop tanks.”

“Roger.”

He hit the external tank jettison and felt the slight rise of lift through the stick as the tanks fell away.

Wyatt pulled back on the stick and the nose leapt upward. He shoved in the throttles, checked to his right.

Hackley was right with him.

The adrenaline was pumping. His eyesight seemed sharper. The clarity of everything, in and out of the cockpit, was amazing. The airplane moved with his thoughts. They were one being, and he hadn’t felt that in a long time.

“Yucca One, Wizard Three. I’ve got another bandit just off the runway at Marada, and I’m reading eleven aircraft on the ground.”

“Those are the ones we want,” Wyatt said.

“Should we take these out first?” Hackley asked. “Why not?”

Wyatt felt like anything was possible.

Ramad monitored the action of Ta Flight on the radio as he rolled out on a heading of 194 and urged the MiG into supersonic flight with the afterburners.

He switched in his search radar and found five blips immediately. Four of them were converging on one from different angles.

He attempted to shove the throttles forward, but they were already end-stopped. He had broken the sonic barrier, and the airspeed indicator revealed Mach 1.8.

“One unknown destroyed,” Ta Leader reported.

Ramad thought that atrocious. One airplane downed after firing eight missiles, all of them AA-7s judging by the distance involved when they were ignited.

One of Ta Flight’s pilots shouted, “Son of a goat!” as his missile apparently missed its target.

Ramad was fifty kilometres from the engagement. He armed his AA-7 missiles.

Then glanced again at the screen.

There were suddenly two new targets to be seen, coming from the southwest and vectoring on the dogfight. They had been flying low and were now gaining altitude rapidly.

He was about to alert Ta Lead when Marada Air Base broke in. “Vulture, Marada. We have radar contact with an unknown aircraft emitting radar energy two-two-zero kilometres, your bearing 178 degrees, altitude ten thousand meters.”

Involuntarily, he looked at the screen, but the target would be beyond his radar range.

He would ignore it for the moment.

“Ta Flight, Vulture. You have two unknowns attacking from your bearing two-six-zero,” he reported. “Disengage and meet the threat. I will assume your present target.”

“But…” Ta Leader complained.

“Now!” Ramad ordered.

He was closing fast on the target, and his radar screen showed him Ta Flight peeling away from it. He selected an AA-7, armed it, then rolled right to centre the target on the screen.

The missile’s warhead began to hum in his earphones as the infrared seeker attempted to lock-on to the target. He was approaching it broadside, and was not yet close enough to obtain a strong heat source.

And then he noted two more blips appear on his screen. They were to the north heading almost directly east.

Toward the chemical factory.

Almighty Allah! They come from everywhere!

In the back of his mind, he was counting. There were now seven unidentified aircraft.

Where Ghazi had said there would be six.

Something was wrong.

This was a massive invasion. There would be more, appearing from all points of the compass.

Switching to the secondary tactical channel, he called the squadron overflying the transports. “Orange Squadron, Vulture. Return to base immediately!”

“Uh, Vulture, we cannot. We must first refuel.”

Ramad cursed under his breath. “Refuel en route. Do it now!”

Back on the tactical one channel, he told Marada Air Control, “Recall Alif Flight.”

“At once, Vulture.”

The high-toned pitch in his earphones told him the missile had locked-on to the target.

He triggered it, and the missile leapt from its rails, a bright, hot exhaust almost blinding him.

He pulled the nose up and began to climb, so as to avoid the debris when his missile struck.

“Yucca One, eight miles to target,” Vrdla said. “They’re at angels seven and climbing.”

“Roger, Wizard.”

Wyatt cut in his search radar and scanned the HUD. Altitude 12,500 feet AGL. Speed Mach 1.1. Heading 086.

He put the nose down.

The desert rolled through his HUD, speeding quickly beneath him. He could see six targets in the immediate path of his search radar. Four, in apparent disarray, were closing on him from widely scattered positions. The fifth was apparently Yucca Six on an eastern course, attempting to gain altitude. The sixth was streaking across the screen on a perpendicular course to the north at almost double Mach. He saw the missile launch.

“One coming at you, Six.”

“Roger,” Jordan said. “I’m cutting throttle.”

Jordan would attempt to fool the missile attacking the RPV by reducing the heat source, then turning into the missile to get his hot tail pipe out of its infrared vision.

“Jesus!” Jordan said. “I can see the damned thing on camera.”

Wyatt blanked out Jordan’s voice as he concentrated on the four targets coming at them.

“I’ve got the left two, Yucca Three.”

“Roger, One. Taking the two on the right.”

He expected to hear his missile threat warning sound off at any moment. The MiGs were two thousand feet below them, climbing, six miles away.

He guessed they had used their medium-range Apexs on the RPVs and were now left with the short-range Aphids.

Which meant that his and Barr’s tactics were paying off. The RPVs’ primary role was to draw the long-and medium-range weapons. Beyond that, if they survived, anything they accomplished was icing.

He had a solid lock-on tone from the first Sidewinder. The words “LOCK-ON” appeared on the HUD.

And now the targets were visual, black dots against the terrain.

“Tally ho, Three!”

“I see ’em,” Hackley said.

They were taking on the enemy aircraft head-on, which wasn’t the most effective configuration for heat-seeking missiles, which preferred a hotter energy source. The Super Sidewinders, though, were being operated at a longer wavelength of 10.6 microns, and they “saw” whole targets whose skin was heated by the friction generated from passing through the atmosphere.

Depressing the release stud, Wyatt closed his eyes for an instant, to avoid the exhaust glare as the missile dropped from its semi-recess in the fuselage, ignited, and shot away.

Kicked in a little left rudder.

Selected the second Sidewinder.

Heard an immediate lock-on tone, and fired.

Checked back to the right.

Eased in some rudder and aileron.

Closing so fast, the seconds screamed by.

His missile was streaming vapour toward the target, which he could clearly identify as a MiG now.

The MiG pilot knew he was in jeopardy. Even in his firing sequence, he hauled the nose up to dodge the Sidewinder.

Wyatt selected his third missile.

The MiG pilot evaded the Sidewinder, but his two missiles launched on a crazy angle and headed for nowhere.

“LOCK-ON.”

Wyatt fired number three.

Number two impacted the MiG on his far left.

A bright yellow-orange blossom burst into bloom, spewing segments of shrapnel out of its centre.

One mile away.

Wyatt hauled back on the throttles, kicked in left rudder and aileron, and slid across the sky to avoid the head-on rush of his first MiG. With its ton-and-a-half of bombs still on the pylons, the Phantom felt heavy. He hoped the bombs stayed with him. The G-meter numbers ascended toward eight.

The Sidewinder slammed into the MiG’s air intake, detonated, and the MiG lost its entire right side and wing. What was left went immediately into a spiralling, tumbling descent.

“Dodged my missile attack,” Jordan yelled on the air. “Six’s going to original heading. Wizard, help me out.”

Vrdla gave him some headings.

“Got two of the bastards,” Hackley said with a great deal of jubilation and adrenaline in his voice.

“I count four down,” Vrdla said.

“Roger, four down,” Wyatt said.

His vision had dimmed with the high-G turn, but was coming back.

He rolled out to the right, checked his position against the programmed coordinates for Marada Air Base on his HUD, and settled into a heading of 095. They had drifted northward during the engagement.

The fuel state wasn’t impressive.

His altitude of nine thousand feet AGL was sufficient. He wouldn’t waste fuel trying for more.

The speed had dropped to 660 knots. That would do, also.

Hackley moved in next to him.

“Very nice,” Formsby said from the Hercules. “I wish I were with you.”

“Let us not forget,” Vrdla said, “that you’ve got another bogie out there. Plus, the aircraft on the base are starting to move.”

Seventeen

Ramad could not believe his poor luck.

It had to be luck that allowed that perfect pigeon in his sights to go unharmed.

He eased back the stick, turning and bleeding off speed. Perhaps he had been going too fast.

As he turned back to the south, he became aware that the excited chatter of pilots on the tactical channel had ceased.

He searched his radar screen.

They were gone.

His four MiGs were gone.

All that remained was the low, fast blip of the airplane he had targeted — he had seen that it was indeed an F-4 — headed for the base.

And it was followed by an additional two blips some twenty kilometres behind.

He was alone against them.

“Vulture! Vulture!” cried an anguished controller.

“Marada this is Vulture. Order the bombers to take off immediately. Ba Flight is to follow them.”

Ghazi’s voice came on the air. “Vulture, you have made a most regrettable mistake.”

He did not need an army man to tell him that.

Ghazi continued, “I have ordered the defensive batteries to full alert. We will be able to stop the intruders.”

The way the pilot of that first F-4 flew, Ramad was not certain, but he was also running short of alternatives.

“More important,” Ghazi said, “is the chemical factory. They do not have an equal number of surface-to-air missiles. You must stop the attackers.”

Without realizing he was accepting an order from an army man, Ramad lifted his left wing and went into a tight turn to the right. Seconds later, his radar picked up the two fighters moving almost directly east toward the chemical factory. He estimated that they were making nearly nine hundred knots at three thousand meters of altitude, and they were but seventy kilometres from their target.

He was thirty-five kilometres southeast of their flight path.

Ramming the throttles into afterburner, he selected his last AA-7 missile. That would do for the first target, but he would have to get closer for the second.

And the timing was going to be critical.

Ahmed al-Qati rested against the bulkhead in the flight compartment, standing behind the pilot and next to the flight engineer. His helmet was clipped to his web belt, and he wore a headset.

The pilot had just reported to his superiors, the airlift command in Tripoli, that their MiG-23 air cover had just turned back, along with the tankers.

That seemed to be creating some consternation in the military headquarters in Tripoli.

Al-Qati had listened to the clipped, low-descriptive dialogue on the primary tactical channel since the attack had begun. It was confusing, but he had deduced that four MiGs had been shot down, that their air cover was racing to the rescue, and that the bombers were only now taking off.

And Tripoli was just now waking up to the crisis.

He tried not to think that Sophia had been successful. He longed to talk to her. If he used the airplane’s radio, he could reach her through his headquarters in El Bardi, but that would endanger her as well as himself. He would point no one in her direction.

“What am I to do?” the pilot asked for perhaps the third time. “We will be crossing the Sudan border in minutes.”

After a moment’s dead air, the controller from Tripoli radioed, “You are to continue your mission.”

Sophia had been successful, but not successful enough. The idiots were still going to go through with the farce.

But not all of them were idiots.

Al-Qati unsnapped his holster, slipped the automatic from its sheath, and laid the barrel almost gently on the pilot’s shoulder.

Startled, the man whipped his head around, saw the muzzle of the gun, and looked up at al-Qati, his mouth agape, and his eyes twice as large as they should be.

He said to the co-pilot, “Switch the radio to the secondary channel.”

The man hesitated until al-Qati rubbed the pilot’s throat with the automatic.

He glanced at the engineer, but that man had backed up as far as he could in his seat.

Reaching up to depress the transmit button on his cantilevered microphone, al-Qati said, “Moonglow.”

“Sundown,” came back to him.

“I am going.”

“And I will follow,” Shummari said.

Over the roar of the engines, al-Qati said, “No one will touch the radios. Co-pilot, return to the primary channel so that we may listen to Marada.”

The man reluctantly changed the switch position.

“Pilot, drop out of the formation, then turn west. I want a heading of two-eight-zero degrees.”

Al-Qati had a pretty fair picture of where he was geographically. If the raiders returned to the south, he might be in a position to intercept them.

He was even prepared to ram their airplanes, which would likely be unarmed by the time of their return leg, with this C-130. Al-Qati might not relish the chemical bombing of civilians, but he was a patriot, and he would not let this incursion into his national territory go unchallenged.

It took a nudge of the pistol against the pilot’s ear to urge him into compliance. He eased the yoke forward, and the transport fell away from its place in the formation, then rolled into a right turn.

When he bent over and peered through the side window, he saw Shummari’s transport following along.

Within a minute of their departure from the group, a battery of queries rained upon them from the other transports.

As long as he held the gun, no one was going to respond.

Belatedly, Barr tightened his harness.

He had heard the elated reports of downed MiGs on the open channel, but had refrained from entering the repartee. He might need a clear channel soon.

He decided to use it now.

“Four, let go the tanks.”

“Roger,” Gettman said.

He had switched to his main tanks earlier, when the drop tanks had coughed up the last of their precious liquid, and he abandoned them now without regret.

“Four, you have the lead.”

“Roger.”

Yucca Four drew alongside, then eased into the lead. Zimmerman, having lost his RPX had reverted to his Air Force role of backseater, and he would guide both Phantoms onto the target.

Barr selected two of his three bombs from each pylon. He wanted to save two of the five-hundred-pounders for a second pass if it was necessary, or for a drop on the air base on their outbound run.

“IP on my mark,” Zimmerman said.

The Initial Point was an abandoned township some seventeen miles west of Marada Air Base, but south of their line of flight toward the factory. Zimmerman was making his bomb run based on navigational extensions.

“Mark.”

Seventeen miles out.

Air speed 845 knots.

They had to start reducing speed soon. The optimum speed for the bomb release was 450 knots in order to improve the accuracy.

“Let’s everybody come right to zero-nine-three,” Zimmerman ordered.

Barr eased into the turn, then locked-on the heading.

“Hate to mention this,” Zimmerman said, “but I’ve got a bogey twelve miles south, on intercept.”

“He’s mine,” Barr said.

He reselected a Sidewinder as he brought the nose up, then boosted the throttles. He was no longer thinking about fuel conservation.

The bogey was clear on the radar screen, and after he turned a few degrees to the right, appeared on the HUD.

Thirteen miles to target.

The bogey turned toward him.

At their combined rates of speed, they would meet in about thirty seconds.

The Sidewinder began to moan.

The MiG released a missile. Barr guessed it was an Apex.

Threat warning howl.

“MISSILE LOCK-ON” blinking on the HUD.

He ignored it.

Ten miles to target.

Sidewinder screaming happily.

He punched the stud.

The missile dropped and whisked away.

Barr tugged the stick back and right, kicked in the right rudder, pulled up, then rolled inverted.

He launched two infrared countermeasures flares.

Yanked the stick back again, and shot for the earth.

The Apex chasing him lunged upward toward the flares, changed its simple mind, reversed itself, and went down for him, but too late.

It sailed over his tail, detonating a quarter-mile beyond him.

He came back up, looping, and rolled out at the top, back on course for the factory.

The MiG had veered off toward the north and was dancing a ballet, attempting to evade the Sidewinder.

And he saw another missile coming at him. A short-range job this time, he supposed.

He rolled hard to the left.

Brought the nose down.

“Missile off!” Gettman called. He had fired on the defender also.

Rolled upright.

The missile was swerving toward him.

He turned into it.

Fired two flares.

Then turned past it.

The missile missed a direct impact with the Phantom.

But its proximity fuse detonated it off his wingtip.

The F-4 shuddered at the concussion.

And immediately rolled to the right.

Barr caught it, forced his way upright, and looked out at his left wing.

What was left of it.

About three feet of the wingtip was shredded.

“You okay, Bucky?” Gettman asked.

“We’re supposed to use call signs,” he said.

“Fuck that. What’s your status?”

“Flying. These old buckets are tougher than grandpa.”

“Goddamn it! Give me a sitrep.” That call was from Formsby.

“I’ve lost some wingtip,” Barr reported. “I can still unload my ordnance, provided the bogey stays away.”

He balanced his throttles, putting more power on the right engine to match the drag created by having more wing on that side.

“The bandit’s gone north,” Gettman reported.

“Wizard Three here,” Vrdla said. “Your bogey outran both Sidewinders, but he’s out of the plan for about fifteen seconds. Do your stuff.”

“Call it, Yucca Five,” Barr said.

Zimmerman said, “We’re right on course. Two, come left three degrees. Let’s get the speed down.”

“Forget the speed,” Vrdla said. “Your bogey will catch you.”

“Maintain eight-zero-zero knots,” Zimmerman said.

Maintain eight hundred? Barr was down to 670. He worked the throttles up, keeping more power on the right engine.

The landscape ahead was still barren. If there was a chemical factory out there, it had been painted to match Barr’s colour scheme for the Phantoms.

The plant’s geographical coordinates had been pre-programmed into the computer, and Barr called them up.

He got exactly nothing.

“This is Two. My adding machine went on strike.”

“Stay with me,” Gettman said.

Yucca Four had pulled ahead of him as he fought to regain airspeed and he could see her a quarter-mile to his left.

He forced in some more turn. The extra drag on the right made all of his manoeuvres tougher.

Considering that he might not make it as far back as the air base, and considering that he needed to be as light as possible, as soon as possible, Barr selected all of his bombs. He switched on the electro-optical targeting system. It seemed to be working because a target reticule immediately appeared on the HUD.

“Targeting computer is still earning a paycheck,” Barr reported.

“That’s the American work ethic in action,” Formsby told him.

He checked the chronometer, urged it to greater speed. The seconds seemed to be dragging.

He looked ahead and maybe saw a few blockish shapes forming on the horizon.

“There ’tis!” Zimmerman said.

They had been losing altitude without his realizing it since he had been following Gettman’s lead. The radar altimeter reported thirty-five hundred feet AGL.

Barr found the plant a few seconds later, sighting through the HUD. The computer wasn’t generating a target for him, but he saw the plant live. It was a complex of eight or nine buildings, and he suspected from the construction style that there were several subterranean levels below the single story showing above ground.

He used the joystick to centre the reticule on the structure second from the right, then locked it on. He pressed the pickle button to commit the drop.

From that point on, the computer — if it was working — would accept what it was seeing from the bomb’s point of view, add to that the altitude and speed factors, and release the load at the proper moment.

No matter what Barr did with the airplane.

Maybe.

“I’ve got four miles to target,” Zimmerman said. “Four’s committed.”

“Two’s committed.”

“Your bogey’s on your ass,” Vrdla added.

“SAMs coming!” Gettman yelled.

Barr saw three surface-to-air missile launches, but they were too late. The Phantoms were moving low at nearly twice their bombing speed, and the SAMs whistled harmlessly by them to the rear.

Closer to the target, five or six antiaircraft guns opened up, their high-explosive shells erupting in grey-black blossoms all around them.

They would just tough out the AAA.

The image of the chemical plant grew quickly in the windscreen.

A set of Lego toys.

A playhouse in the backyard.

A white vapour floated on the air above it.

And there it was, just disappearing under the nose.

The Phantom leapt a little as the bombs dropped away.

And then the plant was gone, and he was flying over desolation once again.

Ramad could not believe it.

He had almost reached firing range of his last three AA-8s when the bombs dropped from the airplanes ahead of him.

The clock stood still while he counted the hits. Ten of the twelve bombs struck the second, third, and fifth buildings. It seemed as if the bombs holed the roofs, counted to ten, then erupted.

A visible concussion ring rose from the buildings, followed by great geysers spewing blackened vapour and debris. The walls bulged outward, the roofs collapsed, and the walls caved in on them. The first, fourth, sixth, and eighth buildings began to buckle also.

The bombs that entered building five must have gone through the first floor into the subsurface level, where the warheads were constructed, for a secondary blast gushed red-orange flames chased by a yellow fireball.

He had to swerve to the left to avoid the detritus filling the air.

He wondered if the fire would consume all of the released chemicals before they invaded the nerves and minds of his countrymen.

And he became furious at the destruction. Libya’s future, in his hands, had become shaky. He must kill the infidels, any of them.

All of them.

And he realized that the still unidentified radar blip to the south would be their airborne control.

One of the two Phantoms ahead of him was damaged badly. From what he knew of their range, he did not think either of them would reach the borders of Libya. The pilots could be captured at will.

He would strike down the damnable commanders.

“Marada Base, Vulture.”

“Vulture, they are attacking!”

“Give me a vector for the southern target, Marada.”

“But Vulture… uh, take a heading of one-nine-six.”

Neil Formsby was feeling antsy, listening to the chatter on the radio, and trying not to put his two cents worth in. He had dozens of extremely positive suggestions, but he wasn’t on the scene.

“Damn, damn, damn,” Demion said. “Come on, somebody! Report something!”

“Wizard, Two,” Barr called. “One chem plant down in the dirt.”

“Damage estimate?” Formsby asked.

“Call it ninety percent, Neil. There’s still two smaller buildings standing, but I don’t think they’re part of the main plant.”

“Good show, Bucky.”

“Hell, Karl got two buildings. I only got one.” “How’s your structural damage?” Formsby asked. “The damage is all right. I don’t know about the plane. In any event, I’ve elected to head south. I believe I’ll skip the party at Marada.”

“Stay with him, Four,” Demion ordered.

“Tight as ticks on a hound,” Gettman said.

“This is Wizard Three,” Vrdla broke in. “Your bogey’s going to leave you alone, Two.”

“Good news,” Barr said.

“Not so good. He’s coming after us.”

“I’ve been hit!” Jordan yelped.

The report startled Wyatt for a moment, until he remembered Jordan wasn’t in Yucca Six. The RPV operators tended to think of themselves as being in their craft.

Wyatt and Hackley were eleven miles from the target, past their IP, and catching up with Yucca Six, which should have been about two miles from the target.

His radar screen was going crazy, reporting SAM radars lighting up all around the base. When he checked the windscreen, in the distance he could see antiaircraft guns opening up on Yucca Six.

In the back of his mind, he worried about Bucky Barr. He had heard the exchanges with Wizard.

“How bad, Six?” Formsby asked.

“Hold a sec. I think I’m under control. I don’t think I’ve got a right aileron. Shaky as hell.”

“Please tell me what you see, Clifford,” Formsby said. “I’m not getting much out of my role as a vicarious kibitzer.”

Wyatt selected all of his bombs, as well as the electro-optical targeting system. All of the correct green LEDs came to life.

“I think I’m about five hundred AGL,” Jordan said. “The altimeter’s fucked up, but my picture is clear. I’ve got the base in view.”

“Bombs are armed?” Formsby asked.

“I don’t know. I hit the switches, but I’m not getting feedback. I think I took shrapnel through the fuselage. I can’t tell about distance. Coming up fast. Oops. She tried to roll right. Oh, Christ!”

“What! What do you see?” Formsby yelled.

“Su-24s. Two of them are on roll out. I’m pulling left. She doesn’t want to go. There. Closing. Nose down. Two bombers on my screen. I…”

“What’s up, Six?” Wyatt called.

“It all disappeared, Andy. I probably took a SAM.” “You’re a backseater again. Start calling it.”

It took a few seconds for Jordan to reorient himself, then he said, “Three, come right two degrees. One, back off a few hundred yards.”

“Roger,” Wyatt answered and quickly reduced his throttle setting.

Through the windscreen, he saw a column of dark grey smoke rising in the distance, ascending from a ball of reddish flame. That would be the wreckage of Yucca Six.

“That’s a formidable fucking array of SAMS,” Jordan said. “Take it down five hundred feet. Let’s go to six hundred knots.”

Wyatt backed off on the throttles some more. The altimeter read three thousand feet AGL.

Six miles to target.

“Yucca One, how many missiles do you have left?” Jordan asked.

“One lonely Sidewinder.”

“We’ve got three. Let’s launch them all, and see if we can screw up some SAM radars.”

“Give me the word,” Wyatt said, resetting the armaments panel.

At four miles out, with antiaircraft flak beginning to burst around them, Jordan said, “Now!”

Wyatt launched his Sidewinder straight ahead and reselected his bomb load, taking four bombs for the first release and two for the second.

Gettman’s missiles zipped off right behind his own.

A few of the SAM radar operators were apparently alarmed by the sudden new echoes on their screens and half-a-dozen missiles whipped off their launchers. Missile vapour trails crisscrossed in the skies ahead. The Sidewinders swirled around, looking for the best heat sources, then dove toward the earth. Wyatt lost track of them and didn’t know where they hit.

Wyatt worked the stick gently, jigging back and forth to the sides to put the AAA gunners off-stride. Ahead of him, Hackley was doing the same.

“Goddamn!” Jordan called. “Look at that!”

Wyatt rotated the thumbwheel and zoomed his video lens in on the base.

The magnified view on the HUD showed him a single runway that appeared to be in utter chaos.

Yucca Six must have impacted the runway right on top of the two Su-24s taking off. The whole north end of the runway was a carpet of burning chunks of fuselages and wings and engines. Rubble was spread everywhere. The separate fires contributed dark smoke to the single funnel climbing to the sky. A whitish haze was spreading quickly from the wreckage, dissipating in all directions except upward.

He wondered what kind of gas it was.

On the south end of the runway were another seven bombers, all lined up nicely on the runway and the taxiway. A couple hundred yards away from the taxiway were two MiG-23s being tended by fuel trucks. They were also being abandoned as figures ran away from them.

The bombers’ route to freedom and the skyways was blocked by the destroyed aircraft on the runway.

If the ant-like things he could see scurrying about on the screen were men, they were leaving the bomber aircraft where they sat, taking off in panicked flight for the desert, probably upwind. More ants were streaming up the ramps from the underground hangars.

Wyatt centred the reticule on the first three bombers in the line-up and pickled the bombs off.

The HUD reported, “BOMBS COMMITTED.”

There was suddenly a hangar opening on the screen. He quickly locked the reticule in place, then clicked the release button again.

“BOMBS COMMITTED,” blinked twice.

Waited two seconds.

Wheeled the magnification down to normal.

Closing on the target.

The ants became terrified men, running at top speed for the open desert.

“Bombs away,” Jordan reported.

The tail pipes of the Phantom ahead of him suddenly

turned white-hot as Gettman went to afterburner and turned the nose skyward.

Another second.

Tha-WHUMP!

The F-4 lurched sideways as an antiaircraft shell burst right alongside him.

Despite his tightened harness, Wyatt was thrown hard against the right side of the cockpit.

The first stick of bombs released.

The Phantom tried to go over on its left side, and he fought the control stick back to the right.

The second stick of bombs released.

Wyatt’s ears rang from the concussion of the antiaircraft shell.

The airplane danced a jig.

A terrible rending noise erupted behind him on the right side.

He glanced down at the instrument panel. His vision seemed dimmer than normal.

The right turbojet was coming apart, spitting up turbine blades like a new-born. He had a whole bank of red lights blinking at him.

He shut it down.

The Phantom steadied.

He checked the rear-view mirror.

Marada Air Base, what was left of it, was several miles behind him. Dozens of fires raged now.

He eased into a right turn.

His speed was coming down drastically.

“My God, Andy,” Gettman said, “you must have gotten a couple inside the hangar. There’s secondary explosions just rocking the ground. The desert floor is caving in in about a hundred places.”

“How about the bombers, Karl?” Wyatt was forgetting his own fiat regarding call signs.

His head felt thick and sluggish.

Concussion. Mild concussion. That was all.

“What bombers? They got a scrap heap there. We can count eleven kills on the surface and take a wild-assed guess as to what was below ground.”

“They’ll rename it Ramad’s Salvage and Recycling Centre,” Gettman said.

Wyatt tried to assess the damage he had sustained. The fuselage skin on the right side was shoved into the cockpit by five or six inches.

Down near his feet, he could see three rips in the skin. The wind shrieked through them.

He seemed to have all of his flight controls. He carefully tested each.

The engine monitors for the left turbojet were still operating, as was the engine. His airspeed indicator was gone, however, and he had to estimate that he was maybe holding three hundred knots.

That wouldn’t last for long.

No altimeter either.

Looking through the right side of the canopy, which had a major and expanding crack in it, he saw that the leading edge of the right wing was peppered with holes. One hole, maybe two feet in diameter, went clear through the wing. The camouflage paint blended nicely with what he could see through the hole.

He wondered if he was thinking irrationally.

The right side of his face felt numb. The hearing in his right ear seemed to be gone.

He unclipped the oxygen mask and felt his right cheek. There was no blood, but he had definitely just left the dentist’s chair.

“Hey One, Three.”

“One.”

“You coming up here with me?”

“I don’t think so,” Wyatt said.

Martin Church was still in Embry’s office.

He had tired of studying Madonna.

Embry had sent out for a large pizza, but each of them had only had one slice out of it.

After number six, he had lost count of the cups of coffee he had poured down.

“If I’d been thinking ahead,” Embry said, “I’d have put a descrambler into our satellite circuits so we could listen to what was going on.”

“You think there’s much going on, now?”

“All you have to do is look at that,” Embry said, pointing to the monitor.

The heavy smoke over the chemical plant and Marada Air Base was very apparent in the satellite picture. After careful scrutiny of the screen and checks with the analysts at NS A, both Church and Embry were certain that none of the bombers had gotten off the ground.

The satellite lens couldn’t capture the camouflaged aircraft in near real time, actual imagery, so they weren’t sure which airplanes were still aloft. Embry had called the NSA and had them switch to infrared tracking for a few moments, and they had been able to count five infrared tracks, all headed south. In addition, the camera angle gave them the infrared tracks of the two C-130s circling about two hundred miles south of the target zone.

There were three alarming aspects, as far as Church was concerned.

First, there were two apparently heavy aircraft approaching from the east.

Second, a flight of eight aircraft, identified by their infrared signatures as probable MiG-23cs, had turned back from original courses, though they were apparently headed directly for Marada Air Base.

Third, he was deeply saddened by the loss of two of Wyatt’s airplanes.

“George, do you suppose we can do something for the families of those pilots? Quietly, of course.”

Embry’s eyes narrowed, then he said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you, Marty. There weren’t any pilots in those planes.”

“You son of a bitch!”

Embry grinned. “I’ve got to have one card up my sleeve when I’m dealing with you, Marty.”

Eighteen

Nelson Barr found that his Phantom still had almost six hundred knots left in her. He used all of them, found a heading of 210 degrees, and climbed to fifteen thousand feet.

The F-4 seemed to prefer flying in a slewed fashion, canted to the right, and he used practically all of the left rudder trim available to counter the drag of the extra three feet of wing on the right side.

Karl Gettman moved in on his left wing and surveyed the damage.

“What do you think, Karl?”

“You’ll dance again, Bucky. You’re dangling some cabling and what looks like the hydraulic jack for the leading edge slat. Where the slat used to be.”

Barr tried his navigational computer.

Negative.

But he had all the basics, and that was what he had learned to fly with.

“Where’s that MiG, Dave?”

“About sixty miles south, burning fuel like he’s got his own oil well,” Zimmerman said.

“You guys go on ahead. The Herc may need help.”

“You sure?” Gettman asked.

“Go.”

Formsby had been listening. He said, “We’re quite all right, you know.”

“So am I,” Barr said. “Take off, Four.”

Gettman climbed upward, got away from Barr’s Phantom, and kicked in the afterburners. He wasn’t worrying about fuel at this stage, either.

Barr was beginning to worry about it.

“One,” he said, “I haven’t heard from you.”

“We’re plugging along,” Wyatt came back. “Three’s joined up with me.”

“How plugged are you?” Barr asked.

“There have been better days. I’ve lost the starboard turbojet, but I’m managing what, Three?”

Hackley said, “Two-seven-oh knots. Right now.”

“You drop all your ordnance?” Barr asked.

“I’ve thrown away everything I can throw away.”

“Give me some coordinates, Norm. I’ll find you.”

“To hell with that,” Wyatt said. “You go where you’re supposed to go.”

Barr shut up.

He was passing south of the air base, and he wished he had brought a camera along. The damage was spectacular. There was burning wreckage all over the runway and taxiway. The ground had sagged deeply in a half-dozen spots over the subterranean hangars, and smoke and flames had broken through in several spots. A ground fog of white mist hung over everything. He saw men grouped together in clusters out in the desert away from the complex, and more people were still running, attempting to get away from the base.

There were a number of bodies spread around also, and he tried to skip over those.

But he couldn’t.

Wyatt had full power on his remaining turbojet and he was watching the temperatures closely. He had trimmed the controls out as far as he could to balance the aircraft, but he still had to maintain pressure on the left rudder. The calf of his left leg was going to know about it soon, he thought.

Hackley had told him he was holding thirty-two hundred feet AGL, and he was beginning to believe he could maintain that for awhile. Fuel wasn’t a problem at the moment; he had lost half of his consumption end.

“Can you come right a bit more?” Hackley asked.

“Sure.”

Wyatt released pressure on the left rudder, and the Phantom obediently swung right.

“There you go, Andy. That puts you on two-one-five.”

“Take off, Norm.”

“Not on your life, which is what we’re talking about, right? When you go down, I want your coordinates, and you don’t have anything left to tell you what they are.”

That point was difficult to argue.

“Wizard Three,” Wyatt said.

“Go, One.”

“What are you showing in the area? Anything coming out of Tripoli or Benghazi?”

“If they are, I haven’t seen them. We’re showing that MiG about a hundred out, and that’s all.”

“You guys skedaddle.”

“We’ve got this one covered,” Demion said. “You just pay attention to what you’re doing.”

Wyatt concentrated on his flying.

Ramad tried calling Marada Air Base, but no one answered his call. The fools were probably hiding under the tables. He thought about diverting Orange Squadron from its Return to Base command, but knew he would not need them for an attack on a slow-moving target.

He thought about tuning in the Tripoli command frequency, and decided against that. He didn’t want to talk to anyone from the staff until after he had finished this.

The altimeter read ten thousand meters.

His airspeed was Mach 1.7.

Abruptly, a target appeared on the top edge of his radar screen. It was thirty-five kilometres away, and it appeared to be flying in a large circle.

It was definitely their command plane, and he would blow it out of the sky.

He checked his armaments panel. His three remaining AA-8s were indicating availability.

Reducing his throttle settings, he remembered someone with whom he should talk. He used the secondary tactical channel.

Ahmed al-Qati heard Ramad calling.

After the fourth try, he responded. “Vulture, this is Colonel al-Qati.”

Ramad ignored the use of his name. “What is your position?”

“Colonel, the C-130s have been recalled and are returning to El Bardi. Some of the MiGs are still refuelling. Tripoli has recalled the entire operation.”

Al-Qati did not mention that the transports he and Shummari now commanded were no longer part of the group of C-130s retreating to the coast. They were now one hundred kilometres west of the border, heading west-south-west.

“That is impossible! I have not called off Test Strike.”

“There is no more Test Strike, Colonel. Your bombers are destroyed on the runway. Your air base is destroyed. The casualties are high. The last report said seventy dead and many more than that wounded. Colonel Ghazi has been killed.”

Al-Qati realized he was talking to no one. Ramad had given up listening.

But then, he had done that many months before.

“You won’t be needing me here, will you, James?”

“Go ahead, Neil,” Demion said.

Formsby removed his headset and disconnected his oxygen mask, then pushed himself up out of the co-pilot’s seat.

Demion had already taken the Hercules out of its programmed circle and was on a heading of 190 degrees. The four turbine engines were churning out one hundred percent power.

Formsby was no more out of the seat than Kriswell was into it.

Kriswell said, “I’ve always wanted to fly a combat mission.”

“You can fly it, Tom. Just don’t touch anything,” Demion told him.

Sliding down the ladder to the crew compartment, he found a crowd. Potter, Borman, Cavanaugh, and Littlefield had not been able to wait it out, sitting in the cargo bay. They were ranged around Maal and Vrdla, who were seated next to each other at the console.

Potter had rigged up an oxygen distribution hose for all of the extra people, and Formsby plugged into it. Borman handed him an extra headset. They were all conversing over the aircraft’s internal communications system.

“Thank you, Benjamin.” He was still trying to remember everyone’s names.

He peered over Vrdla’s shoulder at the screen.

“Tell me, please, Samuel.”

Vrdla used a stubby forefinger to point to each blip on the screen. They were not using the Identify Friend or Foe equipment, so none of the blips was automatically tagged by the computer.

“This is Andy and Norm. They’re making two-seven-zero, and they’re a hundred-and-forty-five miles north of us. Over here,” — about forty miles west of Wyatt — “is Bucky. He’s doing all right, and he’s a hundred-and-twenty out. Ahead of him, here, is Karl and Dave. They’re a hundred out. This fucker here is the MiG. He’s slowing some, but he’s still hauling ass. He’s twenty-one away. Here, south of us, is the tanker.”

“No chance that Gettman will catch the MiG, is there?” Formsby asked.

“Not in this world,” Vrdla said.

“What do you think, Neil?” Maal asked.

“I think it is time. Perhaps past time.”

“Jim?” Maal asked.

“Let’s go with Neil’s timing, Denny,” Demion said.

Maal sat up straighter in his seat, worked his shoulders, then placed his hands on the twin joysticks in front of him. The right one controlled ailerons and elevators. The left controlled rudders and throttles. A small Bakelite box in front of the joysticks had several toggle switches identified with black labelling tape — LNDG GEAR, FLAPS, AUTOPIL, FUEL SEL. There were a couple of additional controls for setting the autopilot.

Set into the console was a cathode ray tube that displayed the C-130F’s pertinent data via a radio feedback. Airspeed, heading, altitude, attitude (turn-and-bank indicator), and rate-of-climb were the primary readouts, but engine tachometers and oil pressure relays were also shown.

A similar setup had been used to control the RPV F-4s with the addition of the video relay.

Maal reached forward and flipped off the autopilot. Using the sticks, he kept the RPV in its turn.

“Where do we want to go, Neil?”

Formsby glanced at the aircraft positions on the radar screen. “I think about oh-five-oh should do it, Dennis.”

Maal eased out of his turn as the heading came up. “Five-zero, right on.”

Formsby checked the tanker’s altitude. Twenty-five thousand feet.

“Then, I’d like to see you put it in a slightly nose-down altitude.”

“We want speed, right?”

“Exactly.”

“I think I can get about four hundred knots out of her,” Maal said.

He eased the nose down until the rate-of-climb indicator showed a negative twenty-five-feet-per-minute. Then he pushed the left stick full forward.

“We’re not getting the same revs out of each engine,” he said. “She’s probably shaking pretty good.”

Formsby looked at the tachometer readouts and found them differing by as much as a couple of hundred revolutions.

“If it gets to be a problem,” he said, “go ahead and back off.”

The five men standing in the compartment behind the console operators remained quiet staring at the readouts and the radar screen.

“What’s it look like, Sam?” Demion asked from his pilot’s station.

“Denny’s got her up to three-nine-zero knots,” Vrdla said. “I’m showing her six miles away, closing fast. She’s ten thousand below us.”

“And the MiG?”

“One-seven.”

“From my reading of the combat action,” Formsby said “I believe the MiG will only have Aphids left. He’s got to position himself within five miles of us.”

“I think he can do that,” Kriswell said.

“Tanker’s three miles away,” Vrdla said.

“I’m going now,” Demion said. “Grab onto something solid.”

The men standing in the compartment reached for grab bars. Formsby gripped the back of Maal’s seat, which was bolted to the deck.

Abruptly, Demion put the nose down and began a steep dive.

“He saw that,” Vrdla reported. “And I don’t think he liked it. He’s coming on a little faster. I read him at Mach one-point-five. One-two out.”

“Lucas, you ready?” Demion asked.

“Ready, boss,” Littlefield said.

He held a cable with a handgrip and two thumb switches on the end of it. The switches controlled the chaff and flare dispensers on the countermeasures pods.

“I do not think he has radar-guided missiles,” Formsby said, “but it wouldn’t hint to be cautious.”

“Jam him,” Demion said.

Vrdla clicked on the radar-jamming transmitters in both countermeasures pods.

“The tanker just went under us, Jim,” Vrdla said. “We had about a two-thousand-foot clearance.”

“Glad to hear it,” Demion said.

“I’ve got the tanker up to four-hundred-and-six knots,” Maal said. “But the jamming is interfering with my control.”

“Let’s not worry about control at this very minute,” Formsby said.

“Four-oh-six knots? Hell,” Demion said, “I can beat that.”

He did not pull out of his dive.

Ibrahim Ramad had picked up the second blip on his radar screen a few minutes before. Again, he was amazed. The raiders had at least eight aircraft. Ghazi’s information had been entirely incorrect.

The newest aircraft was also a slow mover, and he estimated it for a transport.

They would not actually attempt to land troops at Marada Air Base and attempt to capture it intact, would they?

Then again, he was landing troops in Ethiopia.

Anything was possible.

Distance to target: twenty kilometres.

His target was running, but slowly. It was also losing altitude.

The new target was advancing on him at a much lower altitude.

The blips merged as they passed each other, and the newest target kept coming.

A foolish, foolish pilot, he thought.

Altitude seventy-five hundred meters.

The target was now ten kilometres away.

He began easing off the throttles.

The primary target continued to dive.

The second target continued toward him.

A verifiable idiot.

He would take his original target first, then come back for the second.

Speed down to Mach 1.1. He needed to be much slower to make his turn back.

Distance to target eight kilometres.

Back on the throttles.

A burble as he passed down through the sonic barrier.

Seven kilometres. The second target had now passed below him and was behind.

His primary target began to level off at three thousand meters of altitude, then to zigzag. He knew what was coming.

Ramad grinned his pleasure.

Six kilometres.

Soon.

Airspeed six hundred knots.

Five kilometres.

Ahead, against the desert floor, he saw it. A bright and shiny C-130, banking left and right as it attempted to foil his shot.

He held the MiG steady, and when the transport slipped through his sight, triggered off two AA-8s.

He knew, deep in his heart and soul, that it was a perfect shot against an unarmed C-130. The commanders of this treacherous incursion against Ramad’s personal empire would pay dearly. They would bum in hell forever.

And he would collect the evidence which would prove their treachery, and it would exonerate him with those in Tripoli.

Exonerate?

He required no exoneration.

His duties were performed only in the advancement of his native land.

For the first time, however, he allowed the possibility that there had been some damage at Marada Air Base. Perhaps even at the chemical plant. He did not think it would be extensive, and when he showed the Leader that he had saved the day, had destroyed the commanders, he would be received in honour.

Ramad rolled to the right and pulled the control stick hard toward his crotch.

The MiG responded aggressively, turning hard back to the north.

He concentrated on finding the other transport on his radar screen.

There.

It also was diving, but at a shallow rate. It was twenty-five kilometres ahead of him, to the north, but he would catch it easily.

He glanced up at his rear-view mirror in time to catch the twin white-yellow flashes as his missiles disintegrated the C-130.

The sheer pleasure of it coursed through his veins and made him proud, a true warrior supporting the cause of Allah.

Fifteen kilometres.

Checking the armaments panel, he made certain that his final AA-8 was selected.

His thumb caressed the firing stud without setting it off.

It was most sensual.

WHOOF!

The MiG jumped slightly sideways.

The shudder in the airframe brought him out of his reverie. His head jerked back and forth as he sought the explanation from his instruments.

The left turbojet had ceased to operate. The RPMs were spinning quickly down.

WHOOF!

The right turbojet flamed out.

Ramad’s eyes darted to the fuel state indicator.

It read: 0 KILOGRAMS.

Impossible! He could not be out of fuel!

But he was.

He had utilized the afterburners for most of, too much of, his flight.

Quickly, he looked at the screen.

The target was pulling ahead, sixteen kilometres from him.

Furious, he thumbed-off the missile.

It screamed from its rail, but it was mindless, and it swirled the skies ahead of him, seeking a target, but not finding one, detonating itself harmlessly.

It could not happen to him!

The speed began to drop drastically, and he put the nose down to restore it.

Still, he was down to four hundred knots very quickly. Ignoring the automatic operation of the computer, he extended the wings from their swept-back configuration to increase his lift.

Altitude two thousand meters.

Looking frantically around, he tried to orient himself.

There was nothing. Not a road nor a hill nor a wadi for a landmark.

He checked the radar screen.

His target was now far ahead, but worse, another blip had appeared on the screen, coming at him very rapidly. It would be one of the escaping F-4s.

His glide was steep, but he could not take many evasive manoeuvres without losing lift and altitude.

Turning slightly to the right, moving toward the east, he attempted to widen the gap between himself and the approaching F-4.

Seconds later, he saw the aircraft as it neared him, slowing, and turning to match his direction.

His speed was down to 330 knots.

The F-4 descended, pulling in behind him.

He waited for the missile.

It should not have come to this, Merciful Allah. I only sought to do your bidding.

The F-4 suddenly accelerated and moved up along his left wing.

Ramad looked over at them.

There was a black face in the front seat and a white face in the rear.

The black man held up the middle finger of his right hand, then abruptly climbed away, increasing speed, performed a wing-over directly over Ramad’s cockpit, then was gone.

Ramad’s relief was so great that, for precious moments he did not realize how close to the ground he was.

When he saw the dunes ahead of him, without one flat spot available, he looked at the altimeter: 635 meters above ground level.

No more time.

He tucked his elbows in, grabbed the ejection handle between his legs, and jerked.

The ejection seat crunched his spine as it fired.

Nineteen

“I just didn’t have the heart to shoot the son of a bitch down,” Gettman said.

“Karl did give him the finger,” Zimmerman added, “so that probably got to his ego.”

“Did you see a chute?” Formsby asked.

“Yeah, he made it out,” Gettman said, “but if he walks sixty miles in any direction, he still ain’t going to find anything. That sucker better have a good radio and a hell of a lot of water with him.”

“Any asshole that can’t figure out he’s running out of gas deserves the walk,” Zimmerman said.

“What is your fuel state?” Formsby asked.

“Well,” Gettman said, “uh, come to think of it, we may be joining him shortly.”

“Conserve as well as you can,” Demion said.

“How are you guys doing?” Gettman asked.

“He blew the hell out of a bunch of flares,” Formsby said. “Lucas did us proud.”

He looked over to Littlefield, who gave him a big, wide grin and held up his flare launching control. Demion said, “We’re going to reduce speed now, so everyone else can catch up with us. I’ll hold it around two-two-zero knots.”

“Damn, Jim, you don’t have to do that,” Barr broke in. “I can catch you any day of the week. Wings or no wings.”

Maal waved Formsby close and spoke over the intercom, “Let her go now?”

“I believe she has done her job well, don’t you, Dennis? I firmly believe she diverted his attention from a thorough attack against us.”

“I hate to do this, Neil.”

“If we simply let her go, and they do not shoot her down farther north, she could reach the Mediterranean,” Formsby said. “But she might not hit hard enough to detonate the plastic explosive.”

Maal shoved his elevator stick forward and watched the readouts. At a rate-of-climb of negative five hundred-feet-per-minute, he centred the stick.

They did not have to wait long.

After a few minutes, all of the feedback readouts went blank.

Barr came up on the radio. “I saw her go in. I offered up a prayer.”

“Did the plastic detonate, Nelson?” Formsby asked.

“It must have, along with the fuel tanks. She’s an inferno.”

Maal climbed out of the seat he had occupied for so long and said, “Lucas, you have any of that rotten coffee left.”

“I don’t think so, Denny, but I’ll make more. How rotten do you want it?”

“Just as bad as you can get it.”

Most of the others settled to the deck to sit, and Formsby climbed the ladder back to the flight deck and took the engineer/navigator’s seat. He pulled on the headset but did not bother connecting the oxygen mask. They were flying at three thousand feet now.

It was pretty much quiet on the intercom and the tactical channel.

He supposed most of them were thinking about Wyatt.

Until Vrdla spoke up. “We may have a minor problem, Jim.”

“What’s that?” Demion asked.

“I just picked up two targets to our east. Range two-one-five and closing. They’re slow moving. I give ’em three-five-oh knots.”

“That’s an unexpected development,” Demion said. “I thought we’d planned it out for every contingency.”

“It has to be two of those troop transports that took off earlier,” Formsby said. “They will not be armed.”

“That’s right,” Kriswell said. “What the hell can they do?”

Martin Church had gone down the hallway to the men’s room. When he got back, he found that Embry had contacted the NSA and asked for an infrared image again.

He sat down at the table and stared at the blue-green-orange-red splotches on the monitor.

“Where are we now, George?”

Embry pressed a finger against the screen. “See that bright red spot. The tanker went in.”

“Jesus!”

“It wasn’t manned, Marty.”

“Goddamn it! George, will you quit springing this shit on me? Are any of them manned?”

“The rest of them. Everyone’s still airborne. The last hostile plane in the region went down. I don’t know whether it was shot down or not, but it didn’t burn.”

“So all these hot spots are our planes?”

“Except these two down here to the east. I’ve been watching them.”

“That’s wonderful. Can you watch them into oblivion?”

“Doubt it, Marty.”

The telephone rang, startling him. His concentration on the screen had been so intense for so long — it didn’t seem like only an hour and forty minutes — that he had blanked out the rest of the world.

Embry scooted back in his castered chair and grabbed the phone from the desk.

“Yeah, put her through.”

He handed the phone to Church.

“You get to talk to her, Marty.”

“Who is it?”

“Kramer.”

Church took the phone and pressed it to his ear.

“Yes.”

“Tell me what’s happening,” she said. The anxiety in her voice was palpable.

“There’s really not much to report just yet,” he said. Just the destruction of an air base, a chemical factory, a bomber squadron, and an interceptor squadron. Of course, none of that would ever be reported outside of Agency channels.

“You’ve got to be watching it,” she said. “You have all your secret devices.”

“Indirectly,” he admitted.

“Tell me, goddamn it!”

“Everyone with whom we are concerned is still airborne,” he said, “but that’s all I can say right now.”

“Thank you,” Kramer said and hung up.

Church looked at the screen, at the relative positions of the hot spots. Two of them were lagging far behind, but he didn’t know who was flying them, and he certainly wouldn’t pass speculation on to her.

They had scrambled defence fighters out of Tripoli and Benghazi, but from what al-Qati was hearing on the radio, those defensive forces were gathering along the coast and moving toward the Egyptian border. The three companies of his battalion left at El Bardi had also been alerted.

The Leader was expecting additional attacks from the Israelis, he supposed. That was a knee-jerk reaction and was an action al-Qati did not believe would occur. Not unless it was Israelis who were behind the attack on Marada Air Base.

That was possible.

But unlikely, given his suspicions of Sophia. He knew she spoke Italian fluently, as well as English. She was about his equal in French, which was rudimentary. Her Arabic was spartan, and the two of them had usually conversed in English. She might well speak Hebrew, but somehow, he doubted it.

He wished he could step outside of himself, outside of his body, and kick himself.

He would kick himself right in the testicles, which were what had led him to be so asinine.

But he had loved her.

Had?

He still loved her.

And she had used him.

He had used her also, to attempt to prevent the senseless attack in Ethiopia.

He had succeeded brilliantly.

So brilliantly that his nation had lost a staggering amount of her military resources and personnel. He was chagrined to think of the many that had died at the base and at the chemical plant.

His countrymen.

He knew, of course, that in war one must expect that any given situation would be infinitely worse than anticipated. But the miscalculations that had occurred this morning were inexcusable.

He could lay the blame for inadequate defence at Ramad’s door, but he could not place it all there. He should have admitted to Ghazi his involvement with the spy and accepted the death sentence he would have received.

He had not. And he would not.

All he could do was what he could do.

Fortunately, they had not heard from Ibrahim Ramad for some time.

“Where are we now?” he asked the pilot.

Al-Qati no longer held his pistol to the man’s head. The pilot and his crew appeared to have accepted their lot, especially after additional news of the attack on Marada Air Base had been disseminated.

“It is difficult, with our limited radar, Colonel. On dead reckoning, I believe we are some three hundred kilometres from where we estimated the AWACS aircraft to be. And remember, that was based on information we overheard from Marada Air Control. I suspect that the AWACS has left the region.”

“How soon until we are in radar range?”

“Perhaps another half hour, Colonel.”

“Very well. Thank you.”

Instead of threatening the co-pilot with a pistol he reached for the selector on the bulkhead next to him and switched from the intercom to the secondary tactical channel. The first channel was jumbled with orders and counter-orders emanating from Tripoli. Among the government and the military bureaus, chaos reigned. “Moonglow, Sundown.”

“Proceed, Sundown.”

“What is your status?”

“Quite relaxed,” Shummari reported. “The errors of many ways have been seen.”

“And your helicopter crews?”

“We can be off the transports and airborne within fifteen minutes. The assistance of your soldiers would probably improve that time.”

“Very good. You may expect assistance.”

Al-Qati still did not know what he would find when they got to where they were going.

He could only hope that the intruders were utilizing a staging base which he could cut off.

After what had taken place at Marada, the raiders deserved to be slaughtered, and given the chance his duty was to slaughter them.

Barr heard Wyatt’s voice for the first time in fifteen minutes.

“Let me have a status check,” Wyatt said.

All of the planes read off their fuel states. Except for the Hercules, none of the numbers were encouraging.

“Positions?” Wyatt asked.

“Four’s alongside Wizard,” Gettman replied.

“And Two’s got both of them in sight,” Barr said. He had had the bright skin of the C-130 visually for several minutes. He estimated that he was six or seven miles behind them. “We’re a bit more interested in you, Andy.”

“I’m down to under two hundred knots and fifteen hundred feet of ground clearance. I’m sending Norm on now.”

“The hell you are,” Hackley said.

“You know the course I’m on. Scoot!”

“Shit. Roger.”

“Jim,” Barr asked. “What have you got for terrain?” “Not too bad, Bucky. I saw a flat spot a couple of miles back. I can’t tell how soft it is.”

“Well, we’re sure as hell not going to make it back to Chad. You circle the wagons where you are, and I’ll tell you how soft it is. Andy?”

“Your call,” Wyatt said. “You’re the lowest on fuel.”

“Let me,” Gettman said. “I lied. I’ve got the short straw on fuel.”

“You’ve also got a passenger,” Barr said.

“Nelson,” Formsby said “why don’t you simply punch out? You could test the surface with your feet.” “I get airsick in a parachute,” Barr said.

“I understand. I happen to feel the same way myself.”

Ahead of him, he saw the transport enter into a circular pattern. A few seconds later, as he closed up on them, he saw Gettman’s Phantom tucked in tight with the transport. They stayed at around seven thousand feet as Barr began to drain off speed and altitude.

“Two, Wizard Three.”

“Come on, Sam.”

“You’ll want to take it left five degrees.”

“Going.”

After several seconds on that course, Vrdla said, “Now, Two, come to one-nine-eight.”

Barr banked into the new heading, still letting down.

When he was at fifteen hundred feet AGL, Vrdla said, “That’s it.”

Barr surveyed the surface of the ground as he swept across it at 250 knots.

“Jesus, Jim! You think that’s flat?”

“I wanted to use the dune on the west as a launch ramp,” Demion said.

“You’ve got any number of dunes to choose from,” Barr told him.

The landscape, like most all of the landscape he had seen in the last couple of days, was barren and desolate. It undulated here by several feet along a two-mile stretch. If he stopped to count, he might be able to calculate a half-dozen scrubby bushes along the whole length.

What was more important, however, the surface didn’t appear to have a totally sand composition. It seemed to be composed of crusted earth, and his job was to see how hard the lack of moisture and the heat of the sun had made the crust.

He circled back to the east.

“What do you think, Nelson?”

“Absolutely worth a try.”

He took the Phantom five miles east, then turned back to the west, deploying his flaps. With his missing wingtip, he wasn’t going to have leading edge slats for increased lift, and his landing speed would be a trifle higher than he liked.

Maybe he wouldn’t get airsick in a parachute this time?

“Nah.”

“What did you say, Bucky?” Demion asked.

“I yawned, Jim. This is a yawner.”

Demion’s flat spot was about a quarter-mile wide, bounded on the north and south by dunes that were higher than the average dune. He selected the right side of the area. If he screwed it up, he wanted the others to have room to get down.

He debated bellying it in. It would be preferable as far as he was concerned, but it wouldn’t tell the others anything about the surface’s ability to support tires.

Punching the landing gear switch, he saw three green lights.

Eased back on the throttles.

Felt the tail sag and let it.

He wanted as much flare as he could get, using his lift until the last possible moment.

The F-4 floated in.

“Like a feather,” he said.

“What?” somebody asked.

He didn’t answer.

Nose down a little.

Little dunes hopping at him.

Long, smooth, downward slope coming up.

Chopped the throttles.

The Phantom touched ever so lightly.

He was a damned choreographer…

The tires began spinning against the surface of the earth.

Then digging in.

The nosewheel touched down.

Speed well down.

The airplane rose and fell with the terrain, but the unevenness wasn’t particularly drastic.

Slowing.

He tapped the brakes.

There weren’t any.

“Fuck.”

“What?”

The F-4 dragged to a stop after maybe a mile-and-a-half.

Barr let his breath out.

Killed the turbojets.

“That was nice, Bucky,” Demion said.

He opened the canopy and felt the heat swirl inside. “Hey, Karl.”

“Yo.”

“You want to ditch the rest of your missiles before you try it? I forgot to.”

“You got to think about these things, Bucky.”

“And Jim, your goddamned brakes didn’t work.”

“You told me you didn’t need them.”

“Oh. Right.”

“So what do you recommend, Nelson?” Formsby asked.

“Drag the tails on the fighters on approach and keep the nose gear up as long as possible. Once the nose tire’s down, you aren’t going to do much steering. Also, once the Phantoms are down, they’re not taking off again.”

“What about the Herc?” Demion asked.

“Let me get unhitched and jump down there, then I’ll tell you.”

Barr unclipped his mask and chin strap, slipped off his helmet, and hooked it over the HUD.

He worked his way out of his harness, saved his survival kit by tossing it out of the cockpit, slipped over the coaming, and slid to the ground.

It felt pretty solid under his feet.

He checked the ruts behind the main gear.

And then had a hell of a time climbing back up onto the wing, over the intakes, and into the cockpit.

When he finally reached it, he pulled the helmet close and spoke into the mike. “Two, here. My calculations say you’ll make it, Jim.”

“How good are your calculations?”

“I’m the best damned consultant in a five-or six-mile radius.”

“That’s all I need.”

Barr disconnected his helmet. The United States Air Force had issued it to him, and he was damned well taking it home with him.

Within twelve minutes, they had Gettman, then the C-130 on the ground. The Hercules, with its rough-field design and big, soft tires, had less trouble than he had expected, but the low ground clearance of the fuselage managed to level a few small hillocks. As soon as it slowed enough, Demion turned it around and headed it back toward the east.

Seven minutes later, Hackley appeared low out of the east and made one pass over the strip.

He made a circuit, then his approach. The touchdown was perfect, but as soon as the nosewheel settled, it hit a soft spot, and the Phantom lurched right, put its right wing down, caught the earth, and cartwheeled.

It spun laterally, ripping off a wing and the vertical stabilizer, dug its nose into the ground, and slithered to a stop.

Upright, fortunately.

Barr was already running by the time she had stopped, and mercifully, he heard the turbojets winding down. Hackley had killed them the instant he lost control.

The rear canopy was gone, but the forward canopy slowly raised as he approached.

He slid to a stop next to the fuselage which, buried in the dirt, gave him a clear view inside the cockpit.

Cliff Jordan said, “See if I ever ride with you again, Norm.”

Both men were shaken up, and Hackley had a big bruise on his forehead, but nothing was apparently broken. Barr and Formsby got them out of their seats, and Littlefield and Potter led them away toward the Herc.

Barr sighed.

“I’d say,” Formsby agreed.

“I hope my suitcase and civvies are still aboard the Herc,” Barr said. “I’m giving up the Noble Enterprises job.”

He stripped out of his G suit and the dove grey Noble Enterprises flight suit, then tossed them both into the cockpit of the F-4.

In his shorts, he leaned over the coaming of the cockpit, found the timer, and set it.

On their walk back to the Hercules, Formsby set the timers in the other two fighters. Barr didn’t want to destroy his own bird.

Twenty

Wyatt had been sorry to see Hackley go.

In the immense wasteland surrounding him, he felt terribly alone.

Ah, Jan. I wish I hadn’t given you anything to hope for.

He didn’t think he was a particularly pessimistic man, but it didn’t look good from where he sat.

He sat about eight hundred feet above an earth churned up by some earlier sandstorm. He figured his speed was down to around 180 knots because the F-4 was struggling. He had deployed his flaps and slats earlier in the effort to increase his lift. The flaps had moved only a third of the way into position before they grated to a stop.

He also figured he was sixty or seventy miles behind the others.

That was a long way in any desert, but particularly in this one, when there might be pursuit. He was worried about the transports Vrdla had been tracking.

On the other hand, he was relieved to know that the others had landed successfully, even if a little unconventionally on Hackley’s part. No doubt, Kriswell would give Hackley a constant ribbing from this day on.

Peering as far ahead as he could see, he could find nothing that looked promising in terms of putting the airplane on the ground in a fashion that even came close to Hackley’s performance.

A quarter-mile to his right was a wadi that appeared as if it hadn’t seen water in two or three decades. It was, however, the only depression in miles, and he would feel better if he had a depression to hop into. To the south of it was a line of dunes that might serve as a secondary hiding place.

Just in case.

She wanted to go down some more, and he couldn’t afford to lose much more altitude.

“Andy?”

“Right here, Bucky.”

“How you doing?”

“Bopping along the same course I was on. I think.”

“We’re all down.”

“I heard Sam reading it off. Everybody okay? Cliff and Norm?”

“Damn betcha. You going to make it?”

“As a matter of fact, Bucky, I’m going to punch out in about five seconds.”

“Don’t go wandering far from where you put down, okay?”

“Plan on it.”

The aircraft was humping now, wanting to drag her tail, slowing, struggling for lift. The air intakes were at full depression, attempting to maintain a clean airflow into the operating turbojet.

Wyatt reached down into the crevice next to the seat, lifted the flap on the box, and flipped the toggle on the tinier.

“Sorry, honey,” he said. “You’ve been a fine lady.”

He made sure the safety pins were out of the seat, pulled his heels back as far as they would go, let go of the stick, and pulled the ejection handle.

For a quarter-second, he didn’t think the seat was going anywhere.

Then the explosion blew him out of the cockpit, numbing his spine.

The wind blast caught him in the face and slapped his oxygen mask against his jaw.

The seat went over backwards, the sky flashing through his vision. He started counting, but knew he was counting fast, urging the release.

After a couple of eternities, the seat fell away, and the drogue chute spilled from his parachute pack, dragging the main canopy behind it.

It cracked open, abruptly slowing him, when he was less than a hundred feet above the surface. The canopy went concave for a few seconds, then filled.

The ground below appeared rough, and he grabbed the toggles and steered himself toward the wadi.

He didn’t reach it, but touched down lightly, running, then tripped on a rut, and tumbled to the earth, rolling onto his left shoulder. The Browning automatic stung his ribs. The canopy settled around him, and he rolled onto his back and lay there, feeling exhausted. Keeping the airplane in the air had been more wearing than he had thought.

The Phantom didn’t wait for the timer. When she hit the earth, the impact switch closed the circuit between the batteries and the detonators.

The explosion rumbled through the earth, gently shaking him.

He sat up and looked to the south. He couldn’t see the crash site, but a column of smoke a mile away showed him her burial place.

It saddened him immensely.

Wyatt struggled to his feet, shrugged out of the parachute harness, and spread the canopy over the ground, securing it with piles of dirt he scooped by hand from the earth. It would give the Hercules a homing landmark.

He hoped.

Slipping the helmet off, he looped the chin strap through his web belt and let it hang off his right hip.

The sun felt particularly intense. The heat increased his rate of perspiration, and his damp forehead turned muddy with the dust already on it.

He retained his survival kit and rehooked it on his web belt.

Pulling the automatic from its holster, he ejected the magazine and checked the load. Wyatt wasn’t sure why he did that; he didn’t plan on using it.

Habit.

The military taught all kinds of habits.

The survival kit had a canteen of water, and he dug it out and took one sip, just enough to wet his mouth.

Until he saw the Herc, he wouldn’t waste water.

He walked over to the edge of the wadi and looked down into it. It was about seven feet deep, he judged.

He sat down on its edge and dangled his legs over the side.

Slow day at the office, he thought.

And then thought about Jan Kramer.

He supposed she wasn’t having a great day, either, and he was sorry for that.

Kriswell lost both of his seats.

Maal took the co-pilot’s seat and Barr, now in jeans and a blue golf shirt, but still wearing his flight boots, took the engineer’s seat.

Jordan had wanted to fly the transport, but Demion told him he was suffering from shock, which may have been true, Formsby thought. Demion had consigned both Jordan and Hackley to sleeping bags in the cargo bay.

Formsby elected to hold onto a grab bar on the flight deck, so he could see through the windshield.

“You ought to tie yourself up, Neil,” Demion said.

“I have an inordinate amount of faith in you, James.”

He leaned over so he could see through the windscreen. They had something of a narrow alley to traverse between the two F-4s on the left and Hackley’s crashed Phantom on the right.

Barr looked at his watch, and Formsby knew he was thinking about the timers on the explosives.

He checked his own watch. Thirty-two minutes before the three F-4s transformed themselves into shrapnel.

Demion advanced the throttles.

The turboprops increased their pitch.

The Hercules began to move.

Rolled twenty feet, picking up speed.

And the nose settled.

The nose gear sank into a soft spot, and the transport lugged down, slowed, stopped.

Demion goosed the throttles.

Nothing.

Demion tugged the throttles back.

“Shit!” Barr said. “Okay, everybody grab a shovel and get outside.”

Kramer called again.

Church took it on Embry’s phone. He was glad his wife didn’t sit by a telephone with an automatic dialler through every crisis in his office.

“There’s nothing to report yet,” he said.

“I can count minutes,” she said. “Fuel states are critical.”

Church looked over at the monitor, which was now back on real time, since the infrared returns had disappeared. The small silver shape of the C-130 sitting on the ground was visible, though the camouflaged F-4s were not. The transport had started moving, then stopped. Embry was trying to figure out why. It hadn’t moved in fifteen minutes.

Also visible were two C-130s approaching from the east.

“They’re all on the ground,” he told her reluctantly. He didn’t mention that the NSA had reported that one Phantom had crashed seventy-three miles north of the others.

“Where?”

“In the host country.”

“But that’s not right!”

“Fuel may have been a factor. But it appears that they’re changing aircraft now.”

“Call me,” she said and hung up.

Church wasn’t certain he wanted to make the next call.

The column of smoke grew larger as the C-130 lost altitude and centred its nose on the funnel. Ahmed al-Qati stood behind the pilot’s seat and studied the ground.

When they finally came into range, their radar had tracked this airplane until its demise. Captain Rahman had yelled triumphantly the second it went off the screen.

The radar had also followed another aircraft which had been flying with this one. It had split off and flown farther to the south and then also went off the screen. Al-Qati had elected to examine this one before chasing after the other.

“There!” the co-pilot exclaimed.

Switching quickly to the windows on the other side, al-Qati peered downward and saw the parachute canopy spread on the ground.

“He got out of the airplane before it crashed,” the co-pilot needlessly explained.

They passed over the burning wreckage. Al-Qati thought that the pilot was a very lucky man. He had not seen an aircraft that had suffered so much destruction in a crash. There were thousands of small pieces spread over a half-kilometre diameter. It was impossible to tell from here what kind of airplane it had been.

“Land the airplane, Lieutenant,” he told the pilot.

“I cannot, not here.”

“Find the best place.”

The transport rolled to the right, and al-Qati was forced to brace his feet.

“Sundown?”

Pushing himself back to the opposite bulkhead, al-Qati switched to the tactical radio channel.

“Moonglow, we are going to land now and deploy the helicopters.”

“Acknowledged.”

They had to fly almost fifteen kilometres north before they found a place where the pilot would attempt to land. The landing was quite rough and could have been better, al-Qati thought, but it was certainly superior to that made by the intruder’s fighter aircraft.

When the transport finally came to a stop, he, Rahman, and the Strike Platoon’s commander, Lieutenant Hakim, were the first to deplane, exiting the crew compartment hatchway. The ramp was lowered next, and the soldiers of his First Special Forces poured out. Many of them appeared relieved.

Shummari’s transport touched down two minutes later, and almost before it stopped, the ramp started to lower. His crews were already unfastening the cables holding down their helicopters. The Strike Platoon soldiers loped over to help disembark the Mi-8s.

The officers met in the space between the two airplanes. The dust raised by the landings hung in the air, coating their faces, but not protecting them from the heat.

“Khalil, we will want one helicopter for Lieutenant Hakim and the Strike Platoon. I will go with them to find the pilot of this airplane. The rest will go with Captain Rahman in the other helicopter and search for the other bomber.”

Shummari said, “I will fly this one myself, Ahmed.”

Within ten minutes, the first Mi-8 had rolled down the ramp, unfolded and locked its rotors, and the platoon embarked. Al-Qati tossed his CW gear aside, checked the magazine of his pistol, found a canteen, and climbed aboard.

Major Shummari strapped himself into the pilot’s seat and went through the sequence of starting the turbine engines.

They lifted off in a swirling cloud of hazy dust, and the nose swung around and dipped toward the south.

They would find the pilot, and al-Qati would soon know the names and nationalities of the people who had created so much havoc in his homeland.

He could be brutal when it was necessary.

Wyatt had first heard the welcome sound of C-130 engines, stood up, and turned to face the direction from which they came, the east.

The smoke from the burning Phantom was beacon enough, he had decided, and he had left the survival radio and the locater beacon in his survival pack.

He had then heard the blended roar of additional turboprops and considered that discretion might be in order. Slipping to the ground again, he eased his legs over the lip of the wadi, rolled onto his stomach, pushed backward, and let himself slide downward.

Pressing himself tightly against the side of the crevice, he waited. His back ached from the ejection. His face felt burned by the sun. He was getting thirsty again.

The thunder out of the east approached quickly, then washed over him.

Two Hercs, and both of them carried Arabic ID.

Not good, he thought.

They flew over the wreckage a mile away then banked toward the north.

They didn’t come back.

But surely they had seen his parachute canopy.

The sound of their engines died away, and he didn’t know whether to be relieved or not.

He did think that it might be better to make up his mind in another place.

Not closer to the wreck.

He turned to his left, stepped out to the middle of the wadi, and headed east, trotting even though the concussive jarring of his heels hitting ground was transmitted directly to his lower back.

The bottom of the wadi was irregular, catching his heels at odd moments, and forcing him to stumble. Its width varied, as he ran, from ten to fifteen feet wide. Dried-out armatures of old shrubbery clung to the sides of the trench. It was deep enough that he couldn’t quite see over it.

He couldn’t help remembering one of the first movies he had seen as a child. The Bridges at Toko Ri. William Holden and Mickey Rooney in a ditch, fighting off Chinese Communist soldiers.

There hadn’t been a happy ending.

And then he heard the thrupp-thrupp of rotors.

And picked up his pace.

The pilot placed the Mi-8 on the ground near the parachute canopy, and al-Qati and his first platoon spilled out of it.

They spread out in a loose circle, moving warily away from the helicopter, sensitive to some sniper in the wadi or the hills to the south.

Nothing moved in that barren landscape.

Al-Qati examined the canopy. Fresh dirt had been piled on it to hold it down. This pilot was expecting a rescue. The prospect held promise.

They might just greet the rescue party with open and tracer-spitting arms.

He went back to lean in the pilot’s side window and yell over the roar of the engines.

“Khalil, they might attempt a rescue. Go back to the transports and wait.”

Shummari nodded, and after al-Qati bent his head and trotted out of the rotor’s arc, lifted off. The helicopter was soon gone.

“Lieutenant Hakim, take the first and second squads and work your way toward the wreckage. Notify me immediately if you find anyone. He is to be taken alive.”

The platoon commander nodded, signalled his men into a skirmish line, and started toward the west.

The earth here was hardened into a surface that did not often leave the imprint of passage. In spots, however, there was a softness that gave way to heavy boots. In the area where the parachutist had landed, for instance. The ground was trampled there from the landing impact and, apparently, from where the man had fallen to the ground.

The wadi was, naturally, suspect. It offered the most cover in the near proximity. The man could have run for the low hills to the south, but if he had, he would still be there when the search teams reached the hills.

Al-Qati walked to the rim of the wadi, then along it until he found a place where the earth had crumbled and clods had fallen to the bottom. He saw no footprints, but he did not think they were necessary.

“Sergeant,” he said to the first squad leader, “take your men to the other side of the wadi. We will walk both sides of it to the east.”

“Right away, Colonel.”

He ordered three men from the remaining squad to walk the bottom of the dry streambed, and spread the remaining four out to his right.

They moved out at double time, assault rifles at the ready, with purpose, and with some urgency.

This intruder was not going anywhere very far or very soon.

They used the broken vertical tail plane from Hackley’s F-4 to lodge under the pair of nosewheels and form a ramp back to the level of the desert. It took quite a bit of digging under the wide fuselage in order to get it in place. They couldn’t dig a wide hole without endangering the track of the main gear.

Barr was getting anxious about the timers in the F-4s. Being thorough professionals, they had designed them so they couldn’t be shut off and so that, if someone messed with them, a premature detonation occurred. The closest Phantom, his own, was less than thirty feet from the left wing of the Hercules. If it went up, the debris would slice through the wing fuel cells, and it would be all over.

Winfield Potter said, “We aren’t going to get it better than that, Bucky.”

“Okay. Let’s go.”

As the men scrambled back aboard, Bucky asked Demion, “Jim, would you take it as a personal insult if I wanted to take the controls?”

Demion stopped with his right foot inside the hatch. “What are you getting at, Bucky?”

“No criticism. This is a mission I want to fly. Need to fly.”

Demion shrugged. “No sweat. You want me in the second seat?”

“Damned right.”

They climbed inside and Borman was there to close the hatchway. As he passed behind Vrdla, Barr said, “Sam, as soon as I get a generator going, fire up the radar and see what we’ve been missing.”

“Roger that, Bucky.”

He climbed to the flight deck, eased around the control pedestal, and lowered himself into the left seat. Dennis Maal gave up the right seat in favour of Demion.

“Neil,” Barr said, “I know you like to look through the windows, but I want everyone down in the crew compartment, on the deck, backed up against the bulkhead, until after I get this mother off the deck.”

Formsby didn’t argue. He and Kriswell dropped down the ladder. Maal took the flight engineer’s position.

They went through the start-up procedure as fast as they had ever done before.

Barr checked his watch.

Nine minutes to detonation.

Hackley’s plane would go first. That was on his right, a quarter-mile down the makeshift airstrip. If the Herc was going to bog down again, he had to make damned sure he got way beyond Hackley’s crashed Phantom.

“You’ve got nice power,” Maal said over the ICS.

“How much can I have, Denny?”

“You can have it all, Bucky. Don’t sweat it. Take an even strain, as Cliff would say.”

“Jim, run ’em up.”

Demion set the pitch on the Hamilton Standard propellers, then took hold of the bank of throttles and moved them smoothly forward.

Barr stood on the brakes as the power came up. He watched the tachometers. He felt the airframe shuddering, the wings vibrating, the brakes struggling to hold.

Eighty percent.

Ninety percent.

“That’s a hundred,” Demion said.

He released the brakes.

The Hercules hesitated at her new freedom, lurched forward, and the nose came up.

A few hollers rose from the men in the compartment behind him.

Lunging forward, the nose threatened several times to dip again.

The whole airplane leaned to the left as the left main gear crunched through the surface. The outboard prop came dangerously close to touching down.

The airplane bounced over a rise.

Levelled out.

“Twenty-fucking-miles-per-hour!” Maal yelled.

And forty.

And eighty.

“That’s one-ten,” Demion said.

He was getting enough lift to take the pressure off the landing gear.

The speed came up quickly then, though the plane was rising and falling with the uneven terrain.

“Rotate,” Demion said.

Barr eased back on the yoke, and the nose gear broke free. The main gear followed.

When he had ten feet of clearance, the airspeed still building, Barr said, “Pull the gear, Jim.”

Demion retracted the landing gear.

At three hundred feet, he started a left turn.

“Una problema,” Vrdla said.

“What’s that, Sam?”

“We’ve got a UFO on our ass.”

“Shit.”

“No shit. It’s a slow-mover. Put some knots on her, Bucky.”

The throttles were already at their forward stops. Barr lowered the nose a trifle to increase his rate of acceleration, then went into a shallow right turn.

He waited for the missile.

But none came.

They came around 180 degrees, and Demion, watching through his window, said, “It’s a goddamned helicopter! Where’d that come from?”

“Can you tell if he’s armed, Jim?” Barr asked.

“I don’t think so. It’s a Hip.”

Mi-8. If they were armed, they carried rocket pods on fuselage pylons.

“Make your circle wider, Bucky,” Maal said. “We can outrun this bastard.”

Barr levelled off from the turn, then eased the yoke back again, searching for altitude.

“He’s turning inside us, but he’s losing ground,” Demion reported.

“Damn,” Maal said, “who expected that?”

“I’ll tell you, maybe,” Vrdla said. “Those transports from the east disappeared off my screen. I’ll bet he came off one of those.”

“If there’s one,” Barr said, “there’s more. What do you see around Andy’s location? And give me a damned course, Sam!”

“Go three-four-five. Nothing flying up there. Wait. I’ve got some faint return, but it’s in the ground clutter. I’m guessing when I say the transports are on the ground near Andy. Give me a couple minutes and some more altitude, and maybe I can tell you more.”

“All right,” Barr said. “We’ve got to keep our eyes open. Everyone take up stations. Neil, get on the direction finder and see if Andy’s transmitting a locater signal. Give me a time line, Sam.”

Vrdla said, “Twelve minutes to the zone.”

They had to take him alive.

If they wanted to learn from him.

That was some consolation.

But not much.

Alive, he’d scream more.

Wyatt’s mind bounced a linked thought with each slap of his boots on the earth.

He tripped and went down, his face scraping the hard, gritty soil. His back was aching fiercely, his right ear still felt numbed from the antiaircraft shell. His breath came in sobbing gasps.

He sat up. Blood oozed from a laceration in his cheek, forming drops, and dripping from his jaw.

Got to his feet.

Started trotting again.

He had heard the helicopter put down, but then it had left immediately. He didn’t think they were giving up; he thought they had a ground search underway.

His mouth was dry, and still running, he levered the canteen from his survival pack, twisted the cap off, and splashed a couple ounces in his mouth.

He slowed to a stop, catching his breath.

They would follow the wadi. There was just no other cover for him, and no other trail to follow for them.

Unless he could make a break for the hills to the south. He estimated that they were a couple thousand yards away. Fine at night, but not during the day.

Then again, he could sit down and shoot the first one or two who showed up.

He’d get two for their one.

At the moment, he didn’t think his chances were much better than that.

About to take off running again, he heard the pounding of feet behind him.

A couple of muted yells in a language that was not English.

They were breathing heavily.

Or was he imagining that?

They were getting very close.

He looked around for a depression in the side of the trench, in the bottom, anything he could fold himself inside.

There was nothing.

Wyatt pulled the Browning from its holster and slipped the safety.

In the far distance, he heard turboprops.

Were they bringing in more troops?

Thought about the radio. It had a range of a couple of miles. If the others were near, they should know.

He slipped the survival pack off his webbing and unzipped it. Pulling the harness out and tossing it aside, he found the radio.

Flicking the on switch, he immediately heard, “…back to me, Yucca One.”

Wyatt turned the volume down, then pressed the transmit.

“One.”

“Gotcha!” Vrdla said. “Saddle up! We’re coming!”

Dropping the radio, Wyatt shoved the pistol into his belt, picked up the harness, and stepped into it. He pulled it up, snugged it into his crotch, then hooked the shoulder strap fasteners. From a yoke at the top of the shoulder straps, a coiled line of cable was suspended, held in place by a plastic tie. On the other end of the one-hundred-foot line was a small pouch.

The pounding feet were coming closer.

He picked up the pouch, pulled it free of the balloon, jerked the lanyard on the aluminium cartridge, and heard the helium escaping into the bright orange balloon. It filled rapidly, rose from his hands, and trailed the thin cable behind it after he broke the plastic tie.

He was watching it rise and listening to the oncoming turboprops when the pounding boots stopped pounding.

He looked up to the top of the wadi.

A soldier, an officer, stood there, panting slightly and aiming his pistol up at the balloon.

He felt the tug when the balloon reached the end of its tether.

It was, however, a bit too late.

Al-Qati yelled to his soldiers in Arabic, “Do not shoot! We want him alive!”

The soldiers fanned out on both rims of the depression, keeping the muzzles of their AK-74s trained on the man who was wearing a soft grey flight suit. His helmet was attached to his webbing belt and looked out of place.

The three soldiers in the wadi went to their stomachs, rifles extended before them.

The pilot was holding his own pistol, aiming it directly at al-Qati.

Without letting his own aim waver from the balloon, al-Qati said in French, “Who are you?”

Al-Qati was well-versed in military strategies. He knew what the balloon meant, and he knew what the approaching airplane engines meant.

He also knew that if he shot the balloon, he would die seconds later.

The man did not answer.

He tried again, in English. “Who are you?”

“You speak English? That’s nice.”

“Give me your name, or I will shoot.”

“Your last shot,” the pilot said.

He seemed very determined, standing with his legs spread wide, the pistol aimed at al-Qati’s heart. “Perhaps. It would be yours, also.”

“I’m not too handy in Arabic,” the man said, “but does your name tag read, ‘al-Qati?”‘

“It does.”

The airplane engines were becoming louder. They raised their voices in compensation.

“I’m not sure I believe this.”

“What are you talking about?” al-Qati asked. Unbelievably, the pilot lowered his pistol, then shoved it into the holster under his arm.

“She loves you, you know,” he said.

“What! Who?”

“She specifically asked me not to shoot you. So I won’t.”

Ahmed al-Qati was stunned.

And also hopeful.

He lowered his own pistol.

And stood there as the massive C-130 came roaring down the wadi, its four propellers scattering sunlight, a hundred feet off the ground, trailing a big wire loop from its lowered ramp.

The loop snatched the balloon.

The pilot was there one second.

And gone the next.