Purpose of Evasion

35

A thin sheet of sand was blowing across the runway as a Lear jet with Syrian markings touched down at Beirut International Airport.

The time was 4:23 P.M.

Yasser Arafat bounded down the steps, bracketed by bodyguards. It had been a long day and his khaki twill fatigues had lost their creases. A Magnum revolver slapped at his side as he crossed the tarmac at a brisk pace and entered an armored Mercedes limousine.

Just over three hours had passed since he left his residence near Worldwide PLO Headquarters in Tunis for the 1,600-mile flight. His fear of Israeli hit squads had turned him into a jet-setting nomad who rarely slept in the same place on consecutive nights, deciding at the end of each day where he would stay that evening.

But this night had been planned for weeks.

Indeed, Arafat had been quietly fuming over the failure to exchange the hostages for a sanctuary in Libya. Now that Abu Nidal had been released from the hospital and had had time to convalesce, Arafat would confront him on the matter. Despite Nidal’s withdrawal from the PLO and reports of deep personal animosity between the two, they had been playing a shrewd game of good cop — bad cop for years: Arafat the ever reasonable negotiator, piously warning he wouldn’t be able to keep extremist factions in check unless certain concessions were made, then throwing up his hands and pointing to Nidal’s acts of terrorism as proof whenever they weren’t.

The limousine made its way through the city, heading north on the coastal highway toward Casino du Liban. Arafat stared out the window at the tapestry of rubble that resembled ancient ruins. The buildings might have been new, but the ruins were ancient, he thought, reminded of Abba Eban’s infamous quip, “The PLO never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” The hostage debacle was a perfect example and it galled Arafat that the former Israeli foreign minister would be laughing out loud if he knew.

The square-edged limousine pulled through the casino’s entrance gates and was escorted by sentries down the long approach road to the arched portico.

Abu Nidal observed Arafat’s arrival from a second-story balcony. Soon after aborting the hostage exchange, he was released from the hospital and took up residence here in an opulent suite once reserved for the casino’s highest rollers. He looked tan and robust, but he had yet to hear from either his gunboat or the group he had sent to abduct Katifa, and was in a foul mood.

“Were you part of the conspiracy or just blind to it?” Nidal challenged icily when Arafat joined him on the balcony. He knew what was coming and had fired the first volley to gain the advantage.

“Conspiracy?” Arafat flared, his nostrils contracting at the insult. “Assad called you. I was there. So was Qaddafi. You agreed to—”

“I didn’t agree to anything,” Nidal exploded, going on to inform Arafat about the doctored insulin.

“I had no idea,” the PLO chairman replied truthfully, concealing he found it bold and rather amusing.

His bull-necked silhouette framed against the sun, Nidal took a moment to regain his composure. Then he asked calmly, “Katifa said I favored the proposal, didn’t she?”

“No,” Arafat replied without hesitation, pretending he was surprised Nidal had asked. “She made your opposition known, and forcefully so.” He had given Moncrieff the ammunition to turn her; Katifa was an ally now; and he saw no reason to contribute to her demise.

“You’re certain?” Nidal said, puzzled.

Arafat nodded emphatically.

“But she was the only one who had access to the insulin. She had to be involved somehow,” Nidal reasoned. Shaking his head in dismay, he lamented, “I raised her as my own. I can’t believe she turned against me.”

“The Saudi is quite shrewd,” Arafat said slyly. “It’s possible it was his doing, not hers.”

“For her sake, I hope you’re right. She’ll have her chance to prove her loyalty when I get my hands on her.”

“Since we’re drawing lines,” Arafat said, holding Nidal’s look, “be advised I supported the proposal.”

“So the Saudi told me,” Nidal replied; then in a tone that left no doubt he found the idea reprehensible, he challenged, “A sanctuary in Libya?”

“Yes, in Libya,” Arafat retorted, uncowed. “Our people are scattered, our leaders exiled. Reunification is long overdue. It’s time to forsake this patchwork of territories and bring Palestinians together.”

Nidal scowled in disgust, his eyes darting to Arafat’s elegant wristwatch, visible below the cuff of his fatigues. “Rolex? Cartier? How much? Five thousand? Ten?”

“Close enough,” Arafat replied, not the least embarrassed. His wealth — the result of partnerships in several Kuwaiti construction companies — had always been a source of pride; as was the fact that he had never taken money from the PLO or Fatah organizations.

“Perfect copies that keep perfect time can be had for far less,” Nidal declared pointedly. “Of course, as someone very bright once said, there is nothing like the genuine article if you can afford it.”

Arafat winced and grunted in capitulation.

“And we can,” Nidal went on. “We have the currency to bring Palestinians together in Palestine.”

Several hours later, they were dining in Nidal’s suite when he glanced at his watch. “I have to take a call,” he explained to Arafat. “Come along if you wish.”

Arafat followed him down the main staircase, and through the amphitheater to the backstage communications center where the call from the Romeo came in each evening at 9:00 P.M. sharp.

This routine was dictated by the fact that all submarines, from the most primitive diesel to nuclear-powered missile-launcher, are essentially out of contact with command centers when dived. The most modern are equipped for reception of very low and extremely low frequency radio transmissions to depths of 100 meters. However, these bands lack sufficient width to support voice communication, require the boat move at slow speed, demand special antenna be deployed, and are painfully slow, ELF taking 30 seconds for the transmission of a single character. As a result, most navies transmit submarine fleet orders continuously; and each boat on its own schedule copies all messages, acting only on those addressed to it. To initiate communications, a submarine must either float a plastic buoy containing an antenna or come to periscope-antenna depth, putting one of several radio masts above the water. Voice communications demand the latter.

Like many early model submarines, the 35-year-old Romeo did not have VLF or ELF capability, which meant that when the submarine was dived, Nidal could not contact it at will, via voice or cable. Therefore, each day at this hour, the Romeo came to periscope-antenna depth, her hull just 3 meters below the surface, and contacted him on the gunboat or, as of late, at Casino du Liban.

“This is the Exchequer,” the terrorist in charge of the hostages said. “Your currency is secure.”

“I may make a withdrawal soon,” Nidal said.

“I understand. Can you specify a date?”

“Not yet. But I expect it shall be sometime in the near future,” Nidal replied, ending the transmission to prevent detection of the submarine’s position.

“What does that mean?” Arafat challenged as they left the backstage communications center and entered the amphitheater, where the trapeze hung ominously in the cold glare of the kliegs. They were walking beneath it when Nidal whirled, his heel scraping in a crusty pool of dried blood.

“It means,” he shot back, “that it’s time the Zionists in Washington and Tel Aviv felt the full might of the Intifada.”

Arafat groaned, dismayed. “The timing is all wrong. The air strike has played right into our hands. It’s turned world opinion. Now the Americans are being—”

“You never learn,” Nidal scoffed angrily.

“They’re being called terrorists now,” Arafat went on in a rush. “The tide is swinging in our favor unless we do something rash and reverse it.”

Nidal’s lips tightened grudgingly. Arafat had always been an unwelcome but valuable check on his impulsiveness. He was on the verge of accepting his counsel when the radio man appeared.

“The gunboat,” the young guerrilla enthused.

Nidal hurried to the radio console and took the microphone. “Yes, yes? Where are you? What happened?”

The captain briefed him on the encounter with the SEALs, explaining that the gunboat had been adrift in the Mediterranean ever since. Unable to repair the damaged propellers or the radio that the SEALs had destroyed before departing, his crew had nearly run out of food and water by the time a Turkish freighter spotted them and offered assistance. He was calling from the freighter’s bridge.

Nidal’s face dropped as he listened, his expression hardening into an angry mask at the report of the assault. “You’re certain they were Americans?”

“Their leader spoke in phonetic Arabic,” the captain replied. “A European would have spoken French.”

“Yes, and an Israeli would have said nothing. We await your return. Godspeed.” His soft eyes were ablaze with anger. He strode boldly onto the stage of the amphitheater, bent to the floor, and scooped up a palmful of dried blood, then held the crumbly, blackish mound out to Arafat, and hissed, “Intifada now.”

36

After leaving the Ras Jdyar border crossing, Abdel-Hadi’s Krazz headed east into Libya on the Al Kurnish Road.

Shepherd sat next to the taciturn SHK chief as the vehicle hurtled toward Tripoli at extremely high speed: first Bu Kammash, then Zurwarah, Sabratah, Az Zawiyah, Janzur; the towns and miles flashed past; a tableaux of boats, fishermen, and drying nets on one side; stunted wheat, cracked irrigation ditches, and farmers bent to plows on the other; and everywhere, children watching and waving with wide-eyed innocence, as would his own, Shepherd thought, wondering if he would ever see them again.

A short time later, Tripoli’s rooftops edged the expanse of neon-blue sky. The ornate domes and spired minarets of ancient civilizations were crowded out by the concrete boxes that had sprung up in recent decades.

The Krazz had just passed the People’s Congress, a modern structure on the western outskirts of the Old City, when the driver made a right into Al Jala Road, a broad, eucalyptus-lined motorway that angled inland from the coast. It bordered the Christian Cemetery and the people’s shopping precinct, cutting through an industrial district to a rural area, where the Krazz negotiated the rows of concrete dragon’s teeth that lined As-Sarim Street, and approached the Bab al Azziziya Barracks.

A squad of infantry flanked a Soviet-made tank parked sideways across the entrance, blocking it. Shepherd was looking right down the barrel of the T-55’s cannon, its turret positioned to fire on any hostile vehicle that might approach.

The sentry recognized Abdel-Hadi and signaled to the tank with a wave. It roared to life and backed up, allowing the Krazz to enter the compound. Abdel-Hadi’s driver snaked around bomb craters and rubble in the unpaved road, coming upon a tent of coarse brown fabric that lay across the earth like an immense, dusty camel.

Abdel-Hadi issued some orders in Arabic to guards stationed outside the tent. They frisked Shepherd, and swept a metal detector over him, confirming he was unarmed. Then, the SHK chief ushered him inside.

Shepherd’s eyes darted to the multicolored pattern that swooped overhead, in startling contrast to the exterior. A few seconds passed before he sensed a presence and turned to see Muammar el-Qaddafi slouched inconspicuously behind a plain desk.

General Younis was standing next to him.

Qaddafi’s cape was tossed rakishly over one shoulder, his large head cocked slightly to one side, eyes glancing up at Shepherd in a curious stare.

Shepherd smiled thinly and nodded, thinking that the colonel’s positioning wasn’t accidental, but calculated to allow him to gauge his visitors’ stature and intent, and seize the initiative.

Finally, Qaddafi stood and came around the desk.

Shepherd held his ground as the impact of being face-to-face with the notorious Libyan registered. He was taller than Shepherd had imagined; barrel-chested and muscular; his leathery face was stippled by a five o’clock shadow that caught the bluish cast of the fluorescents; his eyes were hard like polished obsidian.

“Major Shepherd,” Qaddafi said softly in English, extending a hand. Twenty years ago as a young cadet, he had attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, England, and was surprisingly fluent when it suited him.

“Colonel,” Shepherd said, judging from the handshake and roughened palm that Qaddafi was as strong and physically capable as he looked.

Qaddafi introduced Younis; then, addressing Shepherd, he said, “I have always admired men with the courage to follow the dictates of their conscience.”

“I did what I thought was right, sir,” Shepherd drawled humbly, playing his part. “I took an oath that I’d never carry out an order I knew to be wrong, and I stuck by it. Our nations aren’t at war. My government had no justification for military action.” It was killing him to say it but he had little choice.

“You paid a high price.”

“It could’ve been higher.”

“I understand all too well, Major,” Qaddafi replied, his eyes darting about warily at Shepherd’s allusion to personal safety; then he opened his cape, revealing a bulletproof vest girdling his torso. It was a lightweight Kevlar model with Velcro fasteners. “Now, since we’re speaking of price,” Qaddafi resumed, somewhat effusively, “the question, as you Americans say, is ‘what’s in this for us’?”

“A combat pilot,” Shepherd said pointedly; an F-111 pilot and you damn well know it, he thought, having no doubt this accounted for the secret police escort and audience with Qaddafi. Indeed, he had counted on it, not only to get him into Libya, which it had, but also into the cockpit of his F-111 bomber.

Qaddafi arched his brows and flicked a look to General Younis, who was standing off to one side. “In other words, Major, you wish to trade your knowledge and flying skills for asylum in the People’s Jamahiriya.”

“That’s correct.”

“Be advised, Major,” Younis warned, stretching to full height, “we would require specific knowledge.”

“For example?”

Younis broke into a sly smile. “Just enumerate the systems with which you’re familiar.”

“Certainly. I have no problem with that,” Shepherd replied nonchalantly, not wanting to appear eager. “APQ forward-looking attack radar, APQ terrain-following radar, ASQ digital fire control computer, ANITA — that stands for alphanumeric input for target acquisition — and of course all the standard navigational, avionics, and armament systems, including laser-guided Pave Tack.”

“You have a thorough working knowledge of them,” Younis prompted, secretly delighted at the development.

“I’ve been flying one-elevens for over fifteen years, General,” Shepherd answered, relieved it was going as planned. “I’m sure we can work something out.”

“Well, Major,” Qaddafi said in an insidious tone, “I wouldn’t take that for granted if I were you.”

Shepherd hadn’t expected that.

Neither had Younis, who stiffened with concern. He had seen it happen before and dreaded what was coming next.

Shepherd knew the deal he proposed made perfect sense. Was it possible Qaddafi hadn’t made the connection? Or had his people developed ANITA on their own? “I’ll be more than happy to take you through any one of these systems step by step,” he offered.

“That’s what bothers me.” Qaddafi’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, carving deep gorges in his forehead. “I’ve always found it difficult trusting men who change allegiance so quickly.”

“There’s been nothing quick about it, sir,” Shepherd responded, assuming Qaddafi was testing his resolve. “I’ve been thinking about nothing else since I was assigned to the mission; and no matter how I came at it, it came up wrong. The truth is, I knew all along I had no choice but to take the action I did.”

Qaddafi studied him thoughtfully. “You could be the man you claim, or" — he paused, splaying his hands—"you could very well be a spy.”

“A spy,” Shepherd echoed; he realized where Qaddafi was headed now.

So did Younis. As he had surmised, Qaddafi’s paranoia had hold of him. They finally had their hands on ANITA, and the colonel was about to throw it away.

“Yes, yes, a disgruntled patriot, a man without a country, it’s the perfect cover,” Qaddafi went on, envisioning the conspiracy. “And not the first time CIA used such a ruse to set up an operative. You see it, Younis?” he prompted, descending further into the abyss. “You see how clear it becomes once pointed out?”

“Well, it’s certainly possible, sir; but I don’t think this man is an intelligence operative. I—”

“I do,” Abdel-Hadi interrupted in Arabic, having long ago realized that his power grew along with Qaddafi’s paranoia, real or imaginary threats notwithstanding. “Kiley is very shrewd, very clever.”

“You deny Kiley is your commander?” Qaddafi suddenly challenged, locking his eyes onto Shepherd’s to drive the accusation home.

“Yes, I do,” Shepherd shot back, holding the colonel’s penetrating stare unblinkingly.

“You deny that this despicable shetan sent you here to assassinate me?” Qaddafi shouted, gripped by the mania that had put Libyan Air Force markings on the F-111s.

“I’m not an assassin, sir,” Shepherd replied evenly.

“Liar! He sent you here to kill me because the air strike didn’t. Yes, yes. Despite our agreement he conspired against my life and…” Qaddafi paused, whirling to face Shepherd again. “Or could it be that he decided to exact vengeance because he didn’t get what he wanted? Because we didn’t—”

“Excuse me, sir,” Younis interrupted in Arabic. He had little hope of reaching him, but thought it best Qaddafi be stopped before revealing the arms for hostages deal. “I really don’t think that’s the case here. I suggest we give him a chance to—”

“That is a matter for our courts,” the colonel retorted in Arabic; then in English he said, “Islamic justice is uncomplicated and swift, Major. Murderers are executed; thieves have their hands cut off; political assassins…” He let the sentence trail off ominously.

“Why not give him a chance to prove what he says?” Younis suggested gently. “Let him demonstrate this knowledge that he claims he—”

“I have all the proof I need right there,” Qaddafi snapped, indicating Shepherd’s eyes. He was caught up in a fit of raging madness now, one hand clawing at his wiry hair, the other pointing accusingly at Shepherd. “See? See how he looks at me? Take him away!” he ordered, with an abrupt wave of his hand. “Take this emissary of Satan from my home!”

These last exchanges were in Arabic.

Shepherd had no idea what had been said, but Qaddafi’s anger was unmistakable, as was the general’s dismay. Suddenly Abdel-Hadi nodded to the two secret police officers stationed at the entrance to the tent.

They cuffed Shepherd’s hands behind his back and dragged him outside into swiftly falling darkness.

When they were gone Qaddafi took a few moments to collect himself; then he turned to Younis with a strangely serene expression. “Do you really think he is bona fide?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” Younis answered contritely, uncertain if Qaddafi would take offense at the reply.

Qaddafi nodded thoughtfully. “Take whatever steps are necessary to confirm it.”

37

Having failed to prevent Shepherd from entering Libya, Larkin decided to fly to Tunis, where a United States consulate, CIA support personnel, and a secure communications link to Langley awaited.

He drove the Al Kurnish Road back over the causeway to D’Jerba, continuing north on the MC-117 to the airport. The time was 2:34 P.M. when he returned the rented Peugeot.

As the colonel headed for the terminal, the clerk at the car rental desk routinely checked his name against a computer alert that had come in earlier from police headquarters. It had been sent to all car rental agencies, airlines, hotels, and customs in response to Stephanie’s complaint. The clerk set the papers aside and called airport security.

Larkin purchased a ticket on the 4:20 flight to Tunis, then went to a phone booth to alert the station chief to his arrival. He didn’t see the rental clerk pointing him out to the two D’Jerban police officers.

“Colonel Richard Larkin?”

“Yes.”

“Our report states you possess a firearm,” one of the officers said, his right hand cradling an Uzi submachine gun that hung from his shoulder.

Larkin nodded and glanced to his left armpit.

The second officer deftly slipped the Baretta from Larkin’s shoulder holster and confiscated it.

“Passport, please?”

Larkin reached to a pocket and gave it to him.

“You will come with us now.”

“Why?” Larkin asked warily. “What’s the problem?”

“Accusations of certain crimes have been made against you,” the officer replied stiffly.

Larkin studied him for a moment, deciding. He knew the military mentality all too well; they had orders to bring him in, and neither argument nor resistance would convince them otherwise. “Okay,” he said calmly.

After reporting that Larkin had been apprehended, they led him outside to a white Land Rover that had POLICE in French and Arabic on the doors, and drove to police headquarters in Houmt Souk, D’Jerba’s capital.

Larkin was taken directly to the provost’s office, where Al-Qasim and Stephanie were waiting. There were no line-ups viewed from behind one-way mirrors here; defendant and plaintiff were brought together for direct eye-to-eye confrontation in the Arab manner.

Stephanie stared at him, seething with animosity.

“Is this the man?” the provost asked. He was slender and well-groomed, with a thoroughly professional demeanor. Like many North Africans, he spoke English with a French accent.

“It certainly is,” Stephanie replied sharply.

Al-Qasim nodded in confirmation. He had just returned to his office from the border checkpoint when the provost called with news of Larkin’s capture.

“Colonel Larkin?” the provost said calmly. “Did you break into this woman’s hotel room and threaten her with a pistol as she has charged?”

“Yes, sir, I did,” Larkin replied shrewdly, deciding the truth would serve him best. The charges against Shepherd were public knowledge, he reasoned; conversely, he was an officer of the law, clearly in the right. “I was sent here by my government to apprehend a fugitive. Mrs. Shepherd was helping him escape.”

“You have no legal jurisdiction here, Major.”

“I realize that, sir,” Larkin said in his most deferential tone. “I intended to contact you but there wasn’t time. As you know, Major Shepherd escaped.”

“What are the charges against him?”

“He deserted from his squadron and killed an American military officer.”

The provost nodded. “In the United Kingdom. Yes, yes, I recall that incident now.”

“Being accused doesn’t make my husband guilty,” Stephanie protested, bristling with frustration.

“His actions speak louder than your words, Mrs. Shepherd,” the provost intoned. “I’m afraid they tend to undermine any claim of innocence.”

“I’m aware of that,” Stephanie said grimly, aching to explain; but she knew it was futile, knew from the provost’s reply that, as Walt had predicted, appearances were what counted.

The provost shifted his look to Al-Qasim. “As I understand it, you drove Major Shepherd to the border?”

“Oui. Je n’etais pas au courant de ces accusations,” Al-Qasim explained, pretending he was bewildered. “Elle a dit que le Majeur était consultant—”

“En Anglais, s’il vous plaît,” the provost admonished.

“I didn’t know of these charges,” the attaché lied with an anxious glance to Stephanie. Diplomatic immunity notwithstanding, involvement in criminal activity could result in his expulsion from Tunisia. “I was under the impression her husband was a technical consultant interested in doing business in Libya.”

“Mrs. Shepherd,” the provost prompted.

Stephanie studied Al-Qasim for a long moment before answering. “That’s correct,” she finally said, deciding there was no reason to betray him; then, shifting her look to Larkin, who held it coldly, she added, “He’s the one who’s lying.”

“Since we’re speaking of deception,” the provost said, his tone sharper now, “your husband used false identification to enter Tunisia. Are you aware of that, Mrs. Shepherd?”

It was a matter of record. There was no sense denying it, Stephanie thought, nodding resignedly.

“Identification he took from the officer he shot and killed,” Larkin added.

The provost’s expression darkened, leaving no doubt the remark had the effect Larkin intended. “Are you aware of that as well, Mrs. Shepherd?”

Stephanie’s lips tightened in a thin line; then, shoulders slackening in defeat, she nodded again.

“I appreciate your time, Colonel,” the provost said after a short silence. “I’m sorry for any inconvenience.”

“Not at all, sir,” Larkin said, checking the time. “If you have no further questions, there’s a slim chance I can make my flight.”

The provost nodded and shook Larkin’s hand.

The colonel left the office, retrieved his pistol at the front desk, and headed for the airport.

“What happens now?” Stephanie asked apprehensively.

“Having allegedly helped a fugitive to escape, the law requires you be detained,” the provost replied; he watched Stephanie’s face fall at the specter of imprisonment; then, after a calculated pause, he added, “You’ll be released on your own recognizance and remain on the island until your guilt or innocence can be determined. May I have your passport, please?”

Larkin arrived at D’Jerba’s Melita International shortly after his flight to Tunis had departed. On learning there were no others that evening, he checked into a hotel at the airport and called the U.S. Consulate in Tunis. He identified himself to the CIA station chief and, prompted by the gravity of the situation, he disregarded the unsecured line between D’Jerba and Tunis, and asked the call be routed on a secure net to Langley.

The time in Washington, D.C., was 8:58 A.M.

The DCI had just come from a breakfast meeting with the president when his secretary told him Larkin was on the line.

“You think he can pull if off?” Kiley wondered, on hearing that Shepherd had gained entry into Libya.

“I don’t know. Qaddafi isn’t just going to let him waltz in there and walk off with a one-eleven. I figure we’ve got a little time.”

“Any ideas?”

“There’s a Libyan diplomat who helped Shepherd get in. I think we can use him.”

“Can we trust him?”

“I doubt it, but he can be leveraged. He’d look pretty bad if his boy ripped off one of Qaddafi’s new toys. We’d be doing him a favor.”

“Good.” Kiley grunted. “Keep me posted as to—”

The intercom buzzed interrupting him.

“Hang on, Dick.” He put the colonel on hold and tapped the intercom button. “Yes,” the DCI growled, annoyed at the intrusion. “Oh. Okay, thanks,” he said, his tone softening at the message; then he switched back to Larkin and announced, “Arafat’s on the tube.” Kiley turned on the television with a remote control and searched the channels, finding the PLO leader surrounded by journalists. While Arafat fielded questions in emotionally ncharged Arabic, a CNN correspondent turned to the camera and reported:

“PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat has just accused the United States of cold-blooded murder. The alleged killing of three Palestinian seamen occurred weeks ago when U.S. Navy commandos assaulted a PLO gunboat in search of American hostages. Arafat was quick to point out that none were found aboard the vessel. Then, in a stunning admission, he revealed that all Americans taken hostage in the Middle East in recent years were abducted, not by extremist Muslim factions, who had served as a ploy to deter rescue attempts, but by terrorist Abu Nidal for the purpose of ransoming Palestine. Furthermore, angered by the deaths of his countrymen, Nidal has now accelerated his timetable and demanded a Palestinian state be created in Israel no later than the start of Ramadan, the Muslim New Year. He is threatening to kill one hostage for each day beyond the deadline.”

Kiley slumped dejectedly in his chair. “Bastards,” he finally said, bitterly.

“Sir?” Larkin said.

“They’re going to kill them all if they don’t get a homeland in Israel by Ramadan.”

Larkin groaned and muttered an expletive.

The DCI sat there in silence for a long moment. “As soon as you finish with the Libyan,” he finally said, “you’ll have to go see Moncrieff.”

“I thought the bastards got him. Where is he?”

“Jeddah. He called last night. He and the lady made it to the family palace; but he’s pissed off over being left behind in Tripoli. He wants out.”

“I don’t blame him.”

“Nor I. The trouble is we need an insurance policy on this now; and he’s the key to it.”

“I understand, sir.”

After briefing Larkin on the details, Kiley went to the White House, where the president and his advisers were meeting in the cabinet room to formulate a response to Arafat’s announcement. En route, he considered revealing the upcoming rescue attempt but, fearful the news might be leaked to the media, he decided against it.

“Tel Aviv’s just told Arafat to take a hike,” the secretary of state reported in his methodical cadence. “I gave the prime minister every assurance that we weren’t involved in this incident.” He swept his eyes over the group and, lowering his voice, added, “I hope I wasn’t misleading him.”

“No, sir,” the CJC replied truthfully.

“Ken? Bill?” the president prompted, picking up on the secretary’s lead.

“I authorized no such action, sir,” Kiley replied, choosing his words carefully while looking his commander-in-chief straight in the eye. He had Duryea’s UNODIR locked in his office safe and if push came to shove, at least technically, he could argue he had been truthful.

“Ditto, Mr. President,” Lancaster replied.

The speechwriters were already at work when the meeting concluded. That evening the president went on television, branding Arafat’s claims outright lies and denying that the attack on the gunboat ever took place. “Furthermore,” he concluded, “the United States does not make deals that reward terrorism and encourage hostage taking; nor will we ask others to do so. We fully support the decision of the government of Israel to reject this outrageous demand. The United States never has and never will negotiate with terrorists.”

Larkin spent the night at the airport hotel.

In the meantime, CIA personnel at the consulate in Tunis worked with the Saudi Arabian Embassy to obtain a visa, cutting the processing time from the customary weeks to hours. The following morning a CIA courier flew to D’Jerba and delivered the documents to Larkin. Then the colonel went to the Libyan People’s Bureau to meet with Al-Qasim. He arrived well after midday and was informed the attaché was hosting a luncheon for a group of German businessmen.

Larkin waited until he returned.

“I have nothing to add to what I said yesterday,” Al-Qasim said defensively, assuming Larkin was there to press the matter. “Major Shepherd misrepresented himself and there is nothing I can—”

“More than you know,” Larkin interrupted sharply, going on to brief Al-Qasim on Libya’s acquisition of the F-111s and Shepherd’s intention to steal one.

The Libyan was stunned; he sat in silence assessing the implications. “You’re certain?”

Larkin nodded gravely.

“Why should I believe you?” Al-Qasim challenged. “Or any of this, for that matter?”

“Because you’re smart enough to realize you have nothing to gain and everything to lose if you don’t,” Larkin replied pointedly.

Al-Qasim’s face stiffened with concern.

“Well,” he finally declared, brightening slightly at a thought, “he won’t have an easy time of it. The last time I saw Major Shepherd, he was in the custody of the secret police.” He took the phone and dialed SHK headquarters in Tripoli. A brief conversation in Arabic followed; then he hung up and, with relief, announced, “Major Shepherd is the unhappy occupant of a cell in Bab al Azziziya prison.”

Larkin broke into a relaxed smile.

“I assure you, I’ll make sure he stays there.”

“Dies there,” Larkin said in a cold whisper.

38

A damp, bone-chilling draft blew through the prison beneath the Bab al Azziziya Barracks on As-Sarim Street in Tripoli.

The maximum-security dungeon was a filthy, windowless hellhole where men and time passed without notice. There were no dawns, no dusks, only the glare of incandescent lights that burned twenty-four hours a day, and the intricate Arabic graffiti that served as epitaphs for its countless victims.

After his encounter with Qaddafi, Shepherd was taken here by the secret police and locked in a fetid cell. He stood in the narrow concrete box and shuddered as the steel bars clanged shut behind him. He had no idea if he was being held for trial, extradition, or, as the crazed Libyan had cruelly hinted, for punishment via some hideous Islamic ritual. He swallowed hard, fighting a nausea brought on by the putrid stench of human waste that came from a hole in the floor. An eternity passed before he could bring himself to sit on the edge of the filthy cot. His emotions ran the gamut from paralyzing fear to seething anger to an overall numbness. Only thoughts of Stephanie and the children sustained him.

Overhead, a bare bulb, enclosed in a wire cage, threw a pattern of harsh shadows across the cell. A gigantic spiderweb, Shepherd thought, deciding it was a more than fitting metaphor.

He lay awake for hours, finally getting some fitful sleep. The sounds of coughing and defecation woke him. He sat up feeling disoriented: this wasn’t an ugly nightmare as he had hoped but a dehumanizing reality. He waited until his bladder was ready to burst before he stepped to the opposite corner, straddled the rancid hole, and urinated.

Moments later, a guard appeared and set a wooden bowl on the floor outside his cell.

“What is this stuff?” Shepherd called after him, eyeing the repulsive contents, which resembled a sponge floating in beige house paint.

The guard ignored him and went about dishing out breakfast to the other prisoners.

“Is bread and camel’s milk,” a voice called out after the guard had gone.

Shepherd looked up to see a young prisoner with wary eyes peering at him from between the bars of a cell across the corridor.

“Thanks.” Shepherd gingerly plucked the chunk of bread from the milk.

“The colonel’s own breakfast regimen, they claim.”

“Figures.”

“You are from U.K.?”

“United States.”

The prisoner’s eyes narrowed in suspicion as he found the only sensible explanation for an American being in a Libyan jail. “A shetan.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” Shepherd drawled, sipping some of the bitter-tasting milk.

“How do you say? An espionage?”

“You mean a spy?”

“Yes, spy.”

“No. I’m a pilot.”

“Ah,” the prisoner intoned, thinking he understood now. “One of those shot down bombing.”

“In a manner of speaking.” Shepherd decided it was neither wise nor possible to explain. “Where did you learn English?”

“University.”

“In Libya?”

“Gaza.”

“Israeli?”

“Palestinian,” the prisoner replied sharply; then, deciding the slur was unintended, his expression softened and he asked, “You know of Bir Zeit?”

Shepherd shook his head no.

“I study for political science there. Now I fight to liberate Palestine.”

“PLO?”

The Palestinian nodded.

“What are you doing in here?” Shepherd asked, unable to imagine why the Libyans would imprison him.

“Exterminating rats,” the Palestinian quipped proudly, going on to boast that he had beaten the Libyans and their torture; the rats had torn his flesh but not his will or belief in Islam, which fortified him even in moments of total despair. Like Qaddafi and Abdel-Hadi, the Palestinian had no way of knowing that CIA had learned the hostages were hidden on the Romeo and he steadfastly refused to reveal their whereabouts. The SHK chief had decided to give him a taste of the good life before torturing him further. His rat bites had been cleansed and bandaged, and he had been removed from solitary confinement.

“What do they want from you?” Shepherd asked.

“The place of hiding for American hostages,” the Palestinian replied matter-of-factly.

Shepherd hadn’t expected that and took a moment to think. “You know where?”

The Palestinian nodded smugly. “But I am not telling to you,” he taunted with a cocky smirk. “I stopped them from being released.”

Shepherd’s eyes narrowed as the ugly truth dawned on him. “You get a perverse kick out of kidnapping and murdering innocent people?”

“No. I fight for my homeland; my people—”

“No. Armies fight for homelands. You’re a terrorist.”

“Yes,” the Palestinian replied, undaunted. “Yes, just like Shamir and Begin. Both were once wanted by Interpol. We have learned from the Zionists that rights won’t be coming to you unless you take them.”

“What rights?”

“To identity as Palestinians.”

“You blew that when you started slaughtering women and children.”

“Why not to kill them?” the Palestinian retorted. “The child will become an enemy soldier; and the woman will bear more.”

“I rest my case.”

“What is ‘rest my case’?” the Palestinian demanded.

“It means, you proved my point. You’re nothing more than animals.”

“We only want what is rightfully ours.”

“You’re sure as hell going about it the wrong way.”

The Palestinian spat at Shepherd’s feet.

“I rest my case,” Shepherd countered pointedly.

They stood there, faces framed by the bars, eyeing each other with hatred, finally deciding to tend to their empty stomachs.

Several hours later, a guard came lumbering down the corridor and charged into the Palestinian’s cell. The guard, who carried the flabby bulk of a once avid weightlifter, yanked the Palestinian from his cot, hooked a massive arm under his chin, and dragged him off like a sack of grain.

Soon a plaintive wail reverberated off the concrete walls. This was no accident. Abdel-Hadi had purposely located the interrogation chamber within the cell block so the inmates could hear what happened to those who didn’t cooperate.

And, indeed, the Palestinian still staunchly refused to give Abdel-Hadi the information he wanted. The cocky terrorist had been stripped naked, his ankles and wrists strapped to a straight-backed chair beneath a blazing spotlight.

“Where are they?” Abdel-Hadi demanded in Arabic, shouting over the high-pitched whine of an electric motor that came from the darkness. “Where?”

The Palestinian stared at him defiantly.

The guard lunged forward threateningly, the whine growing louder in the young terrorist’s ears.

“No,” Abdel-Hadi said sharply, holding the huge man off. “A rat retreats once its hunger is satisfied,” he said to the Palestinian in his gravely voice, “but this animal" — he paused, gesturing to the guard—"he never gets enough. Now, the hostages, where are they?”

“Fucking your mother,” the Palestinian taunted.

The SHK chief’s eyes flared; he turned as if to walk away, but whirled suddenly. The back of his hand connected with the Palestinian’s face with a loud smack. Then he stepped aside and nodded to the guard.

The obese fellow grabbed the prisoner’s hair and brutally yanked his head forward. He waited before commencing the torture, allowing the unnerving whine to heighten his victim’s anxiety.

The young terrorist was trying not to imagine what would happen next when the guard pressed a 2,000-watt hair dryer against the back of his neck. The metal nozzle, modified just for this purpose, produced a disgusting hissing sound as it seared his flesh, sending wisps of smoke curling into the air. The Palestinian writhed in silent agony until the pain and smell overwhelmed him, then he erupted in a blood-curdling yell.

The screams grew louder and longer as the guard went about blistering more delicate parts of his anatomy. Despite the intense pain, the rough-cut terrorist continued to insist he didn’t know where the hostages were hidden.

“Enough!” Abdel-Hadi finally shouted, yanking the power cord from the socket. More than once, he had warned that the Palestinian must be kept alive, a fact their victim had shrewdly deduced when days of torture lengthened into weeks, encouraging his defiance.

The screaming stopped as suddenly as it had started. An eerie silence fell over the prison.

Shepherd was lying on his cot thinking that they had probably killed him when the guard trudged down the corridor dragging the Palestinian behind him. He shoved the naked terrorist into his cell, throwing his clothing after him. Shepherd recoiled at the sight of the man’s blistered torso, at the perfectly circular burns covering the body that lay on the concrete floor.

The son of a bitch got what he deserved, Shepherd told himself in an effort to suppress his compassion. But as he watched the Palestinian struggle to all fours and crawl onto his cot, as he listened to the plaintive moans, Shepherd knew that — deny it as he might, as he had—he and the Palestinian shared a basic human drive. Despite CIA’s insidious conspiracy, which he attributed to the zeal of misguided patriots, his faith in his homeland remained intact.

Several hours later, Shepherd was lying on his cot, eyes shut tightly against the glare of the incandescents, when he heard the thud of heavy footsteps coming down the corridor. The huge guard stopped just outside the Palestinian’s cell. Had they come for him again? So soon? Shepherd wondered. He was turning onto his side to steal a look at what was going on when he heard the key being pushed into the lock and the metallic creak of the door swinging open. But this time the sounds were sharper and closer. He glimpsed a hulking shadow stretching across the wall above him and broke into a cold sweat.

This time the guard had come for him.

39

Almost 36 hours had passed since Duryea, Cooperman, and Reyes met with Larkin on the USS America.

Upon returning to the Cavalla, Duryea began hunting for the submarine that contained the hostages. The coordinates of the submarine-gunboat rendezvous had placed it east of the line of underwater hydrophones that stretched from Sicily to Misratah; but it could be in any of the world’s oceans by now. Duryea sent the following cable to SOSUS Control in Norfolk, Virginia, in an attempt to narrow the search area.

In Norfolk, a SOSUS technician immediately went to work on the Illiac-4 processor used to collate and analyze hydrophone-collected data. A powerful system of sixty-four computers in parallel alignment with a one-billion-bit memory, it made short work of Duryea’s query.

A short time later, the Cavalla’s assistant radio operator delivered the reply to the command center:

To Duryea’s relief, this eliminated any chance that his target had gone through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Atlantic. The Suez Canal to the Red Sea was also a possibility; but the 100-mile journey would have to be made on the surface and would become a matter of record. Duryea discounted it, deciding his target was still in the Mediterranean, somewhere east of the SOSUS hydrophone line.

The eastern Mediterranean was a huge basin, an abyssal plain free of deep trenches and uninterrupted by undersea ridges and seamounts. There were few places where a submarine could hide.

“What do you think?” Dureyea challenged McBride. “If you wanted to disappear, just stay dived and on the move and never be found, where would you go?”

“The Aegean,” McBride replied, referring to the sea that bulges northward from the Mediterranean between Greece and Turkey.

Duryea nodded sagely. “Bet your ass; perfect topology, and barely five hundred miles from home.”

Indeed, unlike the eastern Mediterranean, the Aegean was a roller coaster landscape of seamounts, escarpments, and ridges interconnecting the Greek islands. Nearly a hundred in number, these formations soared from the ocean bottom and punched through the surface like truncated mountaintops, the underwater terrain rising and falling from Spetses to Hydra to Kithnos, Siros, Mykonos, Paros, Crete, Rhodes, ad infinitum throughout the Aegean. This undulating landscape was the perfect place to avoid sonar detection. Though sound travels through water four times faster than air, and can be detected at vast distances from the source in a contiguous body of water, the island-dotted Aegean was anything but contiguous. Here, despite being equipped with the most sophisticated sonar arrays, a submarine on one side of a narrow island wouldn’t be able to detect the presence of a second on the other side. Though just miles apart, neither boat would be aware of the other’s presence. Unless, as Duryea and Larkin had decided, one of those boats took advantage of aerial anti-submarine warfare reconnaissance.

ASW aircraft from the 6th Fleet regularly seeded the Aegean with sonobuoys, keeping track of Redfleet submarines proceeding south through the Dardanelles toward the Mediterranean; and in the 24 hours it took for the Cavalla to reach its present position 100 miles west of Crete, a Viking from the carrier America had been hunting the Romeo.

Flying in an expanding spiral that began near the centrally located island of Naxos, the Lockheed S-3A dropped hundreds of sonobuoys into the choppy waters. The 36-inch-long, 6-inch-diameter cylinders were launched from a 60-cell honeycomb in the plane’s underbelly. Lowered in proper orientation to the sea by a tiny parachute, each sonobuoy sank to operating depth and began collecting sonar data, transmitting the coordinates, depth, and bearing of each contact to the Viking by radio link.

Now in an electronics bay behind the Viking’s cockpit, the tactical coordination officer sat at his console monitoring the sonobuoys he had deployed. He was switching through the various frequencies when his oscilloscope came alive with a sonar pattern. He patched it into the on-board computer, a Univac digital processor that evaluated data as it was collected, and instructed it to run a comparative signal analysis.

At the same time, 350 miles west of the Viking’s position, the Cavalla was approaching the Mediterranean Ridge. This rugged undersea mountain range cupped the mouth of the Aegean in a looping arc from the Greek Peloponnisos to the southwest coast of Turkey, skirting the islands of Crete and Rhodes. The submarine was proceeding slowly just beneath the surface at periscope-antenna depth to keep in voice communication with the Viking.

In the captain’s cabin just aft of the control room, the soft hum of a computer fan came from a terminal that was tied in to the boat’s BC-10. Commander Duryea sat beneath the network of pipes, ducts, and electrical chases that formed the cabin’s ceiling, staring at the monitor. He was picking at his lunch while reviewing charts that delineated the treacherous terrain ahead when McBride called.

“ASW contact, skipper.”

“On my way,” Duryea fired back. He hurried from the cabin, turkey sandwich in hand, and sprinted up the short companion-way into the control center.

“Commander Duryea here,” he said, taking the phone from McBride. “What do you have?”

“A Romeo, sir,” the Viking’s tactical coordination officer replied.

“Where is he?”

“Just west of the Turkish channel off Kalimnos.” The Tacco recited the coordinates for longitude and latitude, adding, “Course one four zero; depth sixty feet.”

“Not exactly next door,” Duryea observed, knowing the coordinates put the Greek islands and 300 miles of tricky underwater terrain between the Cavalla and the target submarine. “Are you positive it’s a Romeo?”

“Affirmative. Acoustic signature comparison verifies,” the Viking’s Tacco replied, studying two frequency patterns that were now tracing across his oscilloscope: the upper being the sonar contact, the lower the computer library profile. “We’ve seen this guy before, sir. He’s been plying the Aegean for a couple of weeks now. Somebody’s got him on a tight leash. Every day at twenty-one hundred, he dead stops, comes to periscope depth, and puts up a radio mast.”

Duryea’s brows went up. “Every day?”

“Affirmative. Twenty-one hundred.”

Duryea smiled thoughtfully and filed it away. “Okay, good going,” he enthused. “Better get your butts out of there.”

“Roger, willco,” the Viking’s pilot replied, accelerating onto a heading for the America.

McBride already had the chart up on the electronic table when Duryea joined him. “Any chance he’s heading for the Dardanelles?” he asked, indicating the narrow straits that cut through the northwest corner of Turkey to the Bosporous and Black Sea beyond.

“Not as many places to hide up there,” Duryea said. “Why leave the Aegean? I figure he’s probably on a random track, snaking between the islands.” He turned to his keyboard, and encoded. A pulsing cursor appeared on the monitor, marking the Romeo’s position. “Judging from his current position and course, I think he’ll proceed until he hits Patmos or Ikaria, somewhere in here, then come to a southwest heading and get lost in the Cyclades,” Duryea explained, referring to the group of twenty-seven islands in the center of the Aegean.

“If it’s our Romeo,” McBride countered.

A few minutes later, Duryea was still hovering over the chart table plotting an intercept course when the phone twittered.

McBride scooped up the receiver. “Conn. Yeah, yeah, I’ll put him on. Sat-link from Kubark, skipper.” He handed Duryea the phone.

“This is the director,” Kiley said; the direct voice communication was possible because the Cavalla was at periscope-antenna depth to communicate with the Viking.

“Good to hear your voice, sir.”

“You won’t think so after you hear what I’ve got to say,” the DCI retorted dourly, going on to brief Duryea on the PLO’s threat to kill the hostages.

“It may not be as big a problem as you think, sir,” Duryea responded, pleased to have some good news to report. “We have a high-potential contact and expect to verify shortly.”

“You just made my day, Commander.”

“Maybe you can make mine, sir.”

“Do my best. What do you need?”

“The status of Project Twilight,” Duryea said, using the code name the DCI had given his plan to incapacitate the personnel aboard the Romeo.

“Stand by,” Kiley grunted, buzzing his secretary. “I need OTS right away,” he growled, referring to the Office of Technical Services. “This is the director,” Kiley said when the project administrator came on the line. “I need an ETA for Twilight. You’re sure? I’m going to hold you to it.” He mumbled, “Thanks,” then tapped one of the flashing buttons on his communications console, switching back to Duryea.

“Operational,” the DCI reported buoyantly. “You can expect delivery within twenty-four hours.”

“We’ll be waiting, sir.” Duryea turned to his keyboard, typed an instruction, and entered some data. A small window appeared in the upper right-hand corner of the electronic chart table. It read:

— to Ramadan and counting

“When that comes up all zeroes,” Duryea said grimly to Mc-Bride, “they start killing hostages.”

40

Water exploded from the nozzle of the fire hose with incredible force. It caught Shepherd square in the center of his chest and knocked him to the floor of the interrogation chamber. Stark naked, he went tumbling across the rough concrete, the high pressure deluge ricocheting off his body, splattering over the walls and ceiling, and swirling down the rusted drain that Shepherd was certain had carried off the lifeblood of countless torture victims.

The guard clutched the unwieldy hose with both hands, bracing it against his torso, and came at him.

Shepherd scrambled to his feet, trying to elude the ice-cold blast that pummeled him; but the guard’s pursuit was relentless. There was no place to hide in the windowless room, no protection from the stinging onslaught. The stream of water pounded Shepherd’s body with punishing force, trapping him in a corner. The powerful jet knocked his hands aside and smashed into his groin. He howled in pain, spinning around to protect himself, and yelped as the water surged between his buttocks, trying to penetrate him. Then it slammed into his back, the extreme pressure pinning him flat against the wall. The roar from the gleaming nozzle was deafening. He felt as if he was drowning, certain the high-powered jet would soon be stripping the flesh from his bones.

Suddenly the guard pulled back on the nozzle’s cutoff valve. The vicious flow stopped abruptly.

Shepherd slumped against the wall, coughing up water as if he had been pulled from the sea. To his relief, the guard set the hose aside, dragged him to his feet, and directed him to an anteroom where SHK Chief Abdel-Hadi and his two young thugs were waiting.

Shepherd’s eyes darted to some clothing on a table, his clothing. It had been laundered and folded neatly. When the swarthy guard threw a bath towel at him, Shepherd realized he had just been treated to a shower, Libyan prison style.

The SHK chief watched stone-faced and silent as he toweled off and began pulling on his clothes.

“What happens now?” Shepherd knew from experience it would be a waste of time, but asked anyway. “Am I being extradited, executed, what?”

“What does it matter?” Abdel-Hadi replied slyly. “In your case, they would be one and the same.”

The son of a bitch is right, Shepherd thought. If ever two men were soulmates, it was Abdel-Hadi and Larkin; and as he was led through the maze of corridors and security doors — leaving the foul stench of excrement and unwashed bodies behind — the horrid idea that the colonel had gained entry into Libya and would now take custody of him grew stronger with each step.

They went up a concrete staircase to the central processing area where, at Abdel-Hadi’s instructions, the officer on duty made an entry in his ledger. Then they went out the main entrance of the prison.

It was mid-afternoon. The sun blazed, unchallenged by a single cloud, the searing heat intensifying the suffocating odor of camel dung. They led Shepherd to Abdel-Hadi’s Krazz and opened the door to the prisoner’s compartment behind the cab, where the Akita waited.

The powerful canine sprang to a standing position and growled, its black lips curling back to reveal lethal fangs that dared Shepherd to enter. Abdel-Hadi uttered a command in Arabic and the dog backed off. The SHK officers grabbed Shepherd’s arms, shoved him inside, and slammed the doors shut.

Shepherd sat on the wooden bench, his face crosshatched with harsh shadows from the heavy wire mesh that separated the prisoner’s compartment from the cab.

The two officers got in, followed by Abdel-Hadi, who uttered another command in the same tone he had used with the dog. One of the officers responded by unbuckling a heavy canvas shade that rolled down over the wire mesh, plunging Shepherd and the Akita into almost total darkness. The engine started and the vehicle drove off across the Bab al Azziziya compound.

Shepherd heard the clank of tank treads as the T-55 that was parked in front of the entrance backed up to let the Krazz exit. He realized they were leaving the grounds. A series of turns, stops, and starts accompanied by the sounds of traffic ensued; the cacophony was followed by a high-speed drive that Shepherd reckoned meant they were traveling on a highway outside the city.

About three-quarters of an hour later, the driver backed off the gas and began down-shifting through the gears. The Krazz slowed and finally stopped.

Shepherd heard a few words of Arabic before the throaty engine came to life and the vehicle started down a sharply curving road that caused him to lean into the turn, followed by another series of sharp lefts and rights.

Throughout the drive, the Akita had been too busy clawing at the steel deck with its huge paws to compensate for the vehicle’s movement to pay any attention to Shepherd. Now the powerful animal stood expectantly, sensing the journey was over.

Shepherd heard the engine shut off, the ratchet of the hand brake being applied, then doors opening and slamming closed as the SHK officers got out.

The harsh guttural mumble of Arabic followed; then footsteps approached the rear of the Krazz.

The doors were yanked open.

The Akita lept to the ground and bounded off.

Shepherd recoiled at the sudden blast of light as the officers took his arms and pulled him out. Temporarily blinded, he stumbled, then straightened, squinting to determine where he was, to resolve the amorphous figures that seemed defined by the sharp edges of weapons, of rifles and bayonets. His eyes strained against the whiteness, unable to discern if it was Larkin and a group of government representatives or a firing squad. Finally a compact figure slowly emerged from the haze.

It was General Younis.

Several armed guards were posted behind him.

They stood in an immense hangar on an immaculate, glossy white floor that was boldly slashed by red, yellow, and green stripes used to position aircraft.

“Major Shepherd,” the general said, striding forward with a smile.

“General,” Shepherd replied apprehensively.

“As you can see, Major,” Younis began, gesturing behind him, “it would be to our advantage if you are who you say you are.”

Shepherd turned to see the two F-111s parked side by side. He knew the Libyans had acquired them, but was still taken by the sight; indeed, they were the last thing he had expected to see.

“Where did you get them?” Shepherd wondered, knowing Younis would expect him to ask.

“I wouldn’t tell you even if I knew,” the general replied with a sly smile. “Besides it’s hardly relevant to our arrangement.”

“Our arrangement…” Shepherd echoed flatly.

“Yes, the colonel decided to abide by it.”

“Just like that.”

“Hardly. As you observed, he has an obsessive concern for his safety that sometimes triggers these ‘episodes.’ Fortunately, he’s quite rational when he comes out of them, almost contrite, at which time we review decisions made under the stress. Sometimes I win; sometimes I lose.” He paused and pointed to the Libyan Air Force markings on the bombers. “In your case, he decided to accept your offer to share your knowledge and skills with us.”

Shepherd mulled it over, concealing his elation, and decided a challenge was the most natural response under the circumstances. “That’s all well and good,” he said. “But I’d like some assurances that I won’t end up back in that hellhole as soon as I do.”

“You have my word, Major,” the general said.

“And his?” Shepherd asked, inclining his head toward Abdel-Hadi.

The SHK chief responded with several phrases delivered in sharp, rapid-fire Arabic.

“He said you can be assured that’s exactly what will happen if you don’t.”

Shepherd stiffened and nodded resignedly. “Nothing like having a clear choice,” he said, reinforcing the impression that they had coerced him.

“I knew you’d make the right one,” Younis replied. He and Abdel-Hadi watched as Shepherd crossed to one of the F-111s and began a walk-around, working his way along the fuselage to the nose gear. He crouched to inspect it, then stole a glance at the doors. The vague outline of stenciled lettering that had once proclaimed AC MAJ SHEPHERD was still slightly visible, despite being painted over. A surge of adrenaline went through him. He remained there for a moment, then moved to the adjacent bomber.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing a little more tail droop,” he observed, indicating the trailing edge of the stabilizers. “I’d have my crew chief fine-tune the flight control system, if you don’t mind me suggesting it.”

“Not at all. We’d like to hear whatever you have to say, Major,” Younis replied, impressed by how Shepherd handled himself. When he had finished the inspection, the general directed him into the office, where his technical staff had assembled with several Libyan flight crews.

“We have flown both aircraft and have a working knowledge of the flight systems, Major,” the East German avionics expert said in his clipped cadence. “ANITA is where we stumbled. Unfortunately, none of the codes we developed proved operative.”

“Tough without the entry key,” Shepherd said, jotting the alphanumeric table on a chalkboard:

“Let’s say you want to enter a hundred-and-seventy-eight degrees, fifty-three minutes north latitude. Well, the first digit of each number is encrypted as a simple letter equivalent; the second as a numerical equivalent of that digit written out in Roman letters without vowels; then you alternate as you go. In other words…” He wrote on the board:

The East German’s brows went up. ANITA was neither complex nor brilliant; it wasn’t based on top-secret prime numbers or on the polyalphabetic substitution tables commonly used for com- munications cyphers. Unlike them, ANITA didn’t have to withstand enemy interception and subsequent scrutiny by expert code breakers who, working from a purloined cipher, might eventually crack it. No, his technicians had only the Pave Tack entry keyboard, blank screen, and microprocessor with a protected internal entry program that defied them to literally guess what alphanumeric input format it would accept. There were no clues, no intercepted samples to study, only infinite, random possibilities.

When Shepherd finished, Younis produced maps marked with the location of the desert practice target the Libyan crews had been unable to destroy.

They gathered round Shepherd as he encrypted the data, writing the alphanumerics on a programming sheet that he had drawn up; it listed all ANITA functions — longitude, latitude, range, angle of attack, air speed, among others — that the Pave Tack computer required to locate a target and destroy it with laser-guided bombs.

“Encrypting ANITA and entering it is the easy part,” Shepherd observed. “Flying to it — that’s something else. Now the Pave Tack console has two sets of function readouts.” He turned to the chalkboard, writing as he continued. “PRESENT — the actual position and attitude of the aircraft in flight, and SELECTED — the target acquisition data. The trick is—”

“Getting the two to match,” the East German interrupted. “We’re quite aware of the problem.”

“There’s only one way,” Shepherd declared, about to utter the words that he hoped would literally put him in the cockpit of his plane. “Expert instruction. Lots of it. Each crew member has to fly a lot of hours with an expert one-eleven driver next to him.”

“I don’t doubt it, Major, but as you might imagine, one doesn’t place a want ad for one-eleven instructors.”

“Now that you’re here, now that we finally have ANITA,” General Younis chimed in, “I suggest that we reassemble here at eleven hundred tomorrow and plan a mission; a training mission which you and one of our aviators will fly after nightfall.”

Shepherd nodded coolly, suppressing his delight; not only would he soon be flying his F-111, but he also would have some time to plan just how he would steal it, how he would overcome the Libyan who would be in the cockpit with him, elude the inevitable fighter escort, and fly the bomber to D’Jerba. “See you on the flight line,” he replied in a flat professional tone.

41

More than a week had passed since Moncrieff and Katifa had escaped from Tripoli and flown to Jeddah, a port city on the eastern shore of the Red Sea 600 miles south of Suez. Though Riyadh was Saudi Arabia’s capital, Jeddah had long been the center of banking and commerce, and the royal family maintained a palatial residence there.

Set against a background of craggy mountains, the palace stood majestically on a bluff above the sea. Its numerous domed buildings were masterful examples of Middle Eastern architecture, replete with intricate tilings and delicate mushrabeyeh latticework.

Katifa had been taken directly to the royal infirmary where she was attended by court physicians. After a few days they removed her bandages and prescribed that she swim to rehabilitate and strengthen her weakened muscles. Prior to discharging her, the Infirmary’s chief of staff — an aging, Harvard-educated physician who had brought Moncrieff into the world and had no qualms about voicing his opinion — took Moncrieff aside for a brief discussion.

“What’s the problem?” Katifa prompted after the old fellow had left.

“The Koran,” Moncrieff replied, knowingly.

“I don’t think I’m going to like this.”

“Nor am I,” the Saudi said, explaining that the physician had concerns about where she would be living. Though not radical hard-liners like their Iranian neighbors, Saudis were fundamentalist Muslims: women were forbidden to smoke, drive, or drink, and were strictly segregated from men; they neither worked nor dined with them, let alone exposed their bodies to them in public. Even the wives of Western businessmen spent the evening in the women’s quarters while the men dined alone. The idea of Katifa living with Moncrieff and swimming in the palace pool was unacceptable.

Undaunted, Moncrieff arranged for them to move into the royal guest house. Located in Al Hamra, the city’s most fashionable area, it was a high-security estate with an immense pool reached by a marble staircase that descended from the main building.

Now Moncrieff sat at a table on a palm-shaded terrace above, watching Katifa’s lithe body gliding effortlessly through the water. The instant her fingertips touched the wall, she did a graceful swimmer’s turn, her long hair streaming behind her as the momentum propelled her through the sparkling water. She had grown up with political activisim and violence; had advocated them; but now, the shock of bullets tearing into her flesh along with her narrow escape from Nidal’s hit squad had given her pause. Indeed, though predisposed to reject the privileged opulence of Moncrieff’s world, she found the security and the time she had spent with him in this idyllic place more and more to her liking.

Moncrieff had been dividing his time between the guest house and his office in downtown Jeddah. Despite the problem created by Nefta Dam, Libya’s Great Man-made River Project was proceeding as scheduled: wells were being drilled and pipeline manufactured and laid, and several other projects were in development as well.

Moncrieff was primarily an intelligence observer; the encounter in Tripoli had been his first and, he had since decided, last field operation. Life was back to normal; and with each day, he was becoming more and more confident that as he had hoped, as he had conspired, he and Katifa would be spending their lives together.

“Excuse me, Your Highness,” one of the Filipino servants said, pulling Moncrieff out of his reverie. “A Colonel Larkin is here.”

“Here?” Moncrieff echoed with a surprised scowl.

“Yes, sir, in the entry. Shall I show him in?”

Moncrieff glanced thoughtfully to Katifa in the pool, then shook his head no. He left the terrace, hurrying through the house to the entry chamber where Larkin was waiting. The colonel wore civilian clothes; he stood next to a magnificently carved fountain that was centered beneath the soaring dome.

“Colonel,” Moncrieff said, crossing toward him.

“Good to see you,” Larkin replied brightly. Indeed, despite almost a month of wearying travel, his fighter pilot’s conditioning had kept him from becoming fatigued.

“I’m sorry we missed each other in Tripoli,” Moncrieff said facetiously. He forced a smile and led the way outside, where they wouldn’t be overheard. “Really, you should have called,” he went on in his British-flavored English as they walked in the gardens that radiated from the domed buildings with geometric precision. “I would have sent a car.”

“I barely made my flight,” Larkin replied in a bold lie. Yesterday, having been forced to wait until late afternoon to meet with Al-Qasim, he had missed his flight to Saudi Arabia. He spent a second night at the airport hotel on D’Jerba and could have easily called; but he knew Moncrieff was angry and wanted out; he also knew that a royal prince could block his entry into Saudi Arabia with a phone call of his own, and purposely hadn’t notified Moncrieff he was coming. “You see Arafat’s speech?” he asked, getting to business.

“Yes, I did,” Moncrieff replied cautiously.

“It hit the old man pretty hard. But he’s worked out an insurance policy and he’s counting on you to—”

“I’m out of the loop, Colonel,” Moncrieff interrupted. “I told him that.”

“I know. We need the lady.”

“Katifa?”

Larkin nodded.

“What for?”

“I’d prefer to go through it once. Is she here?”

“Yes. I don’t know what you have in mind, Colonel, but the old man briefed me on the hostages. If this has anything to do with the rescue, if it’s fieldwork, something dangerous, I’m unalterably opposed to her taking it on. She’s just getting back to normal; just starting to enjoy life, and I…” He paused, seeing the amused smile that broke across Larkin’s face.

“Am I picking up on something here?” Larkin asked.

“Maybe.”

“Then maybe you’re not the best judge of this.”

Moncrieff nodded grudgingly and led the way to the pool area. They arrived on the terrace just as Katifa was getting out of the water. She waved as a servant handed her a towel, then draped it over her shoulders, lit a cigarette, and started up the marble staircase toward them. The bikini did little to hide the freshly healed bullet wounds that dotted her tawny flesh.

“You can thank Nidal for this,” Larkin began after Moncrieff had made the introductions. “We had high hopes for this hostage rescue until he threatened to kill them. We still do. But there’s no guarantee the Cavalla can pull it off before the deadline. The old man figures Nidal won’t kill them on the sub because he’d have to dump the bodies at sea. No proof that way; no media hype.”

“I agree,” Moncrieff said.

“We’d have a chance to stop him if we knew where the executions would be carried out.”

“His headquarters,” Katifa replied, exhaling a steady stream of smoke. “Casino du Liban.”

“You’re certain — beyond any doubt?”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible with Abu Nidal.”

“Then we’ll need someone on the inside,” Larkin said, leaving no doubt he was talking about Katifa.

“I hasten to point out we’re not on the best of terms these days,” she protested.

“He tried to abduct her,” Moncrieff chimed in. “I briefed the old man. Didn’t he mention it?”

Larkin nodded. “He thinks we can use it; and do what we did with Yevchenko,” he said, referring to a high-ranking KGB officer who, several months after defecting to the West, claimed he had been abducted and held against his will; he subsequently returned to Moscow.

“I recall that incident,” Moncrieff said, puzzled at the analogy. “The old man looked like a fool; people thought he had lost his touch, and perhaps more.”

“Which thoroughly convinced Moscow that Yevchenko’s story 5 was bona fide,” Larkin explained with a sly grin. “He’s back at Moscow Center now, running his own section; with our blessing, of course.”

Katifa thought about it for a long moment and nodded. “I can see how something like that might work,” she finally said, “but why should I take the chance?”

“Because you and I both know there isn’t going to be a homeland in Israel by the start of Ramadan, this year or any year; and if Nidal kills those hostages, there’ll never be a sanctuary in Libya either.”

“I think you’re wrong. The hostages aren’t part of the equation anymore,” Katifa explained. “Qaddafi acquired the planes without them.”

“Which means,” Larkin countered, “he has no incentive to turn over a couple of thousand square miles of desert to anybody.”

“Of course he does,” Katifa retorted. “You must understand that he wants more than military hardware or water out of this. It’s no secret that Arab unity and the destruction of Israel are his goals. A Palestinian sanctuary would be a perfect start; the stature and power he would gain are sufficient incentives to provide one.”

“Maybe; but not without ANITA.”

“Anita?” she asked, puzzled.

“It’s an acronym for a computer entry key,” Moncrieff explained. “The F-111s are useless without it.”

“And Qaddafi won’t get it until we get the hostages,” Larkin said.

“There’s no other way he can get this entry key?”

“None.” Larkin lied, not because he knew Shepherd had already voluntarily revealed them, which he didn’t; but because he knew there was a chance the secret police might force him to do so. It was the perfect leverage to manipulate her and he would have used it regardless.

Katifa pondered his reply for a moment, looking out over the grounds and pool that shimmered in the light to the Red Sea beyond. Two thousand years, she thought, two thousand years since Moses parted it, since the Israelis fled the Egyptians; it hadn’t even been forty since Palestine was partioned by the British. “Will you excuse us?” she said to Larkin, leading Moncrieff aside.

“He’s right, isn’t he?”

“Don’t do this, Katifa,” the Saudi pleaded.

“I don’t have any choice.”

“You’ll be shot on sight.”

“No. You just said it yourself. Abu Nidal tried to abduct me in Tripoli, not kill me. Believe me, I’d already be dead if that’s what he wanted.”

“I doubt he would ever trust you again.”

“You’re forgetting something,” she said firmly. “I’ve been like a daughter to him for almost twenty years. He’ll hear me out.”

Moncrieff saw the determination in her eyes and knew he had no chance of convincing her otherwise. “I was hoping we had put all this behind us.”

“So was I,” she said sadly.

42

Shepherd had spent the night billeted in officers quarters at Okba ben Nafi Air Base. He had gotten a good night’s sleep, devoured several square meals, and, for the first time in weeks, was feeling reasonably healthy; indeed, the prospect of finally retrieving his F-111 had contributed mightly to his recovery and sharpened state of mind.

“Where’s the weight room?” he inquired on arriving that morning at hangar 6-South. He frowned, feigning disappointment when told there wasn’t one; in truth, he was much more interested in the physical conditioning of Libyan aviators, than in working out, and was quietly delighted to learn their natural G-suits had gone undeveloped. He spent the day planning a practice mission and reviewing the various flight and attack systems with the East German, his technical staff, and the Libyan flight crews assigned to theF-111s.

Early that evening, after being fitted for flight gear, Shepherd was directed to a locker room where the Libyan aviator General Younis had selected as his first pupil was waiting.

This is the man I have to beat; kill if need be, Shepherd thought, as they shook hands and began suiting up: first the Nomex flight suit, then the G-harness that went over it, sheathing calves, thighs, and torso. Made of a double-walled fabric that inflated like a blood pressure cuff during high G-force maneuvers, it squeezed blood from the lower extremities upward to the brain, helping to keep an aviator from blacking out.

Shepherd pulled the last of the zippers that ran up the inseams of the G-suit, then slipped on his flight helmet, closed the visor, and adjusted the oxygen mask. He couldn’t remember the last time he had gone a week without suiting up, without flying, let alone a half dozen. It was a strange feeling; strange and distant. He had just raised the visor when he noticed the Libyan take a small pistol and holster from his locker, and strap it to the inside of his left calf below his kneeboard, which held a list of fly-to-points.

They left the locker room, oxygen and G-suit hoses swaying in front of them, General Younis trailing behind.

“Will we have escort aircraft?” Shepherd asked offhandedly, as they crossed the hangar toward the F-111s.

“Certainly,” Younis replied. “Why do you ask?”

“I was thinking, if we treated them as bogies we could work on some evasive maneuvers en route to the target,” Shepherd explained earnestly. He hadn’t wanted to ask, hadn’t wanted to risk alerting them; but he knew he would be monitored on radar, knew any unexpected move would trigger suspicion, and needed to keep them at bay for as long as possible. “Our people do it all the time during practice missions.”

“Of course,” Younis replied smartly. “I expect you to teach our men everything you can, as quickly as you can. Make use of every minute of flight time.” He paused, then addressed the Libyan aviator. “You’ll be working on tactical evasion en route to the target.”

They exited the hangar, striding a short distance through the darkness to the sleek bomber, then began a walk-around inspection in the glare of the work lights that illuminated the area.

“The way we do it,” Shepherd said matter-of-factly, making certain he didn’t appear too anxious to get into the air, “the aircraft commander does the detailed inspection; the wizzo checks external stores and the like. Mine always paid special attention to the BRUs and Pave Tack pod.”

After the inspection, they climbed boarding ladders to the cockpit and slipped beneath the gull-wing canopies. Each had a copy of the ANITA programming sheet Shepherd had made up earlier.

Younis joined Abdel-Hadi and the East German on a platform that was positioned adjacent to the cockpit. They watched intently as the Libyan turned on the Pave Tack computer, and went to work on the NDEP, the console-mounted keyboard, entering the alphanumeric data under Shepherd’s supervision. When finished, the two aviators buckled in and latched the canopies closed.

The hydraulic platform lowered and pulled away.

The ground crew coupled a hose from an air blower to the starter breech on the left side below the SOAP door; five minutes later, both engines were over the horn and spinning at 17,000 RPM.

Shepherd lifted the throttles. Fuel flow and ignition were instantaneous. The high-pitched whine sent a chill through him as the blower was disconnected and he began a check of flight systems.

Then the Libyan took the controls. He released the wheel brakes, slowly advanced the thottles and began guiding the bomber through the taxiways toward the runway.

Younis, Abdel-Hadi, and the East German climbed into the Krazz. “Well, we no longer have any use for the Palestinian,” Abdel-Hadi observed coldly as they drove off, heading across the air base to the control tower.

They took the elevator to the cab and crossed to the angled windows that overlooked the airfield. Far below, two SU-22 fighters that would escort the F-111 roared down the runway, taking off into the darkness.

“We’re on the mark,” Shepherd reported moments later, when the F-111 arrived at the top of the runway. He took over the controls, turned onto the center markings, set the brakes, and tested flaps and stabilizers. One at a time, he ran the engines up to full military power, then into afterburner range. “Burners and MIL are optimum,” he said. “We’re ready to roll.”

“You have immediate CTO,” came the reply. “Winds are one-four-five at twelve knots.”

Shepherd homed the throttles and released the brakes. The F-111 lurched forward and began racing down the long concrete ribbon.

Shepherd’s mind was racing along with it, reviewing the moves he had worked out to elude the fighter escort, overcome the pilot, and steal the plane: it would begin with a swept-wing, supersonic TFR dash 200 feet above the desert, which would be followed by the key maneuver, a sudden pull into a high-G afterburner climb. At eight to ten times the pull of gravity, the Libyan’s lack of physical fitness coupled with being caught completely unawares would cause him to black out.

“Clueless and useless in the furball” was what aviators called the phenomenon. GLC ambushed the most experienced of them on occasion, lasting as long as 30 to 60 seconds, precious seconds that Shepherd would use to dump the cabin pressure and disconnect the unconscious Libyan’s oxygen and G-suit hoses. Deprived of all respiratory support, he would, at the least, remain comatose, allowing Shepherd to disarm him, shoot him if necessary, and take control of the aircraft.

The F-111 was 10 seconds into its takeoff roll now.

The 1,500-foot marker flickered past in a blur.

Shepherd was monitoring inlet pressure, fuel flow and ratio, pounds of thrust, takeoff trim, and air speed. When the latter reached 145 knots, he eased back on the stick, rotating the nose up.

The sleek bomber leapt off the runway and began climbing into the blackness. D’Jerba was a mere 200 miles away; at top speed the F-111 could cover the distance in under 10 minutes.

While the F-111 streaked skyward, Adnan Al-Qasim’s BMW sedan came down Al Jala Boulevard in Tripoli and turned into As-Sarim Street, its headlights playing across the concrete dragon’s teeth that lined the approach to the Bab al Azziziya Barracks.

The previous afternoon, after Larkin informed him of Shepherd’s intention to steal an F-111, Al-Qasim had quickly realized the matter could destroy him if wrongly perceived; on the other hand, properly finessed, he could orchestrate Shepherd’s demise without bringing about his own. Shepherd couldn’t very well steal an F-111 while in prison, Al-Qasim had reasoned; so he spent the evening evaluating the situation, deciding it was too delicate to be handled via phone. He called Abdel-Hadi’s office and, refusing to divulge his agenda, made an appointment for late the following afternoon. He would be driving executives of a Dutch electronics company to Tripoli for meetings at several ministries and would go to the barracks compound when finished.

Now, on arriving, he presented his credentials to the guard, then proceeded across the grounds to secret police headquarters and asked to see Abdel-Hadi.

“Something came up,” the duty officer replied. “He canceled all his afternoon appointments and won’t be returning. Do you wish to reschedule for tomorrow?”

Al-Qasim scowled and nodded. “Ten o’clock.”

The phone rang.

The officer answered it and jotted down a message, then noticed Al-Qasim heading for the door and called out, “Al-Qasim. This meeting; it is in regard to what?”

“A top-secret matter, as I explained yesterday.”

“It would still be best if I tell Abdel-Hadi something. There’s a chance he won’t see you otherwise.”

“Tell him it’s regarding the American prisoner,” Al-Qasim replied grudgingly. “He’ll know because he—”

“Major Shepherd?” the officer interrupted.

Al-Qasim nodded emphatically.

“He was released this morning.”

“Released?” Al-Qasim echoed with apprehension.

“Transferred,” the officer corrected, glancing to his log. “Crew quarters; Okba ben Nan Air Base.”

The F-111 was streaking high above the desert now, the infinite blackness broken only by the horizon, where a faint amber glow separated sand from sky.

Shepherd was enjoying the incredible silence, the reassuring pressure of the G-suit against his body, and the tingling sensation that was rising in his stomach. He was flying instinctively now; had the moves planned out; had each precious second down cold. He was so close he could taste it: Stephanie, the children, his name cleared, life at long last back to normal.

His eyes darted to the radar screen; two blips were closing on his position. “Looks like a couple of baby-sitters coming in,” he observed, enjoying the calmness that had come over him. He was in the zone, in total command; cool, calculating, flying a mission.

Soon distant streaks of light cut huge arcs in the darkness, as the two SU-22 fighters began moving into escort position off the F-111’s wings.

“I think it’s time for that lesson in tactical evasion,” Shepherd said in a friendly tone intended to relax the Libyan. “Hang on.”

“You propose to outrun them?”

“Nope. We’re going to do something you can’t do with any other bomber on earth,” Shepherd replied, knowing the maneuver would soften him up.

At that, he hit the brakes — spoilers up, flaps down, throttles back — causing sudden, rapid deceleration. Air whomped against control surfaces in protest; shoulder harnesses dug painfully into muscle.

The SU-22s were caught unawares and went rocketing past into the darkness.

Shepherd trimmed the bomber’s attitude and headed for the deck. He leveled out 200 feet above the desert floor, then engaged the terrain following radar.

TFR relied on two low altitude radar altimeters that scanned 1,000 feet ahead. Via a computerized link to the autopilot, the two LARA channels compared data, automatically commanding the aircraft to follow land contours. It emitted an aural tone, beeping on climb, booping on descent. How precisely it mirrored the rise and fall of the landscape was determined by setting a switch on the TFR panel to soft, medium, or hard.

Shepherd set the ride for hard, which meant the bomber would hug the ground, conforming to every rise, ripple, and dip, well below the scanning range of tower radar; then he slammed the throttles to the stops. The afterburners kicked in, belching blue-orange flame and the F-111 rocketed forward.

The Libyan emitted an excited yelp as the acceleration slammed him back into his seat.

“They call this a fighter-bomber,” Shepherd said, keeping up the friendly charade. “But just between us, I usually put the emphasis on fighter.”

In the tower at Okba ben Nafi, the radar operator straightened in his chair as the F-111’s blip vanished from his screen. Younis, Abdel-Hadi, and the East German were staring at it in amazement and concern when the phone rang.

One of the air traffic controllers answered it. “Phone, sir,” he said in Arabic, crossing to Abdel-Hadi.

“Who is it?”

“Your duty officer.”

“Not now,” Abdel-Hadi said, annoyed at the intrusion.

“He says it’s an emergency, sir.”

Abdel-Hadi scowled and snatched up the phone.

Shepherd had the F-111 in supersonic dash now: wings at maximum sweep, 72.5 degrees; speed Mach 1.75. The TFR began beeping as it detected a sudden rise in the desert floor and automatically, abruptly, increased altitude to compensate; the instant the ridge crested the TFR detected the slope and pitched the nose down sharply, hugging the backside of the mountain, the tone booping as it put the plane back down on the deck.

The sleek bomber was nearing the point where Shepherd planned to suddenly pull into a high-G climb. His hands were poised to move swiftly and precisely, from pistol to cabin pressure dump switch, to oxygen disconnect, to G-suit disconnect when the radio came alive with a sharp crackle.

Several phrases in Arabic followed.

Shepherd recognized General Younis’s voice.

“Naam yasidi,” the Libyan replied, pretending he’d received a routine instruction. He calmly made a notation on his kneeboard, then deftly reached to the ankle holster just below it, removed his pistol, and leveled the muzzle at Shepherd’s flight helmet.

“You will reduce speed, Major,” he said sharply.

“Why? What’s the problem?” Shepherd asked, hit by a rush of terror-charged adrenaline, his mind racing. He was tempted to carry out the high-G maneuver but realized the Libyan could easily put a bullet in his head before he could.

“The mission is over,” the Libyan replied coldly.

Shepherd’s heart sank as he nodded, eyeing the pistol, still evaluating, still deciding; then he eased back the throttles and leveled off, coming onto a heading for Okba ben Nafi.

43

That same afternoon, a U.S. Navy supply plane took off from Naples and headed south over the eastern Mediterranean. Several hours later, it circled the 6th Fleet on station off the west coast of Malta and landed on the flight deck of the USS America.

An orange-vested traffic control officer directed the plane to an unloading area aft of the superstructure. Crewmen moved in with wheel chocks and cargo-handling gear and removed a large container. They wheeled it across the deck to a Sea King helicopter and loaded it aboard.

The molded plastic container measured 24 inches wide, 36 inches long, and 30 inches deep, and was devoid of markings, save for a bright red priority routing ticket that read:

As soon as the container had been secured, the gray and white helicopter rose at a slight angle from the carrier’s deck into the hazy sky and came onto a heading for the Aegean Sea.

Three hundred twenty-five miles due east of the America’s position, the Cavalla was 80 feet below the surface proceeding through a shallow undersea valley in the Mediterranean Ridge between the islands of Andikithira and Crete at a speed of 12 knots.

After obtaining a fix on the Romeo’s position from the Viking, Duryea summoned Cooperman from the sonar room.

“See that?” the captain prompted as they studied the track he had plotted on the electronic chart table. “If I’m right, Romeo’s going to be proceeding through here about sixteen hundred.” He marked a point between two islands on the Romeo’s course. “Now, if we’re here when he is…” He marked the Cavalla’s course and drew a line between the two marks that was uninterrupted by islands or undersea terrain.

“We have a sonar window,” Cooperman said, smiling at the chance to determine if the target was their Romeo.

That was hours ago.

Now the Cavalla was in position.

Cooperman had the BQS-6 bow array in passive mode listening for cavitation. The sound was made by air bubbles collapsing as they spiraled off the tips of propeller blades and radiated mainly at right angles from the source. Though the submarines were far apart, the Cavalla was proceeding at 90 degrees to the Romeo’s course, which put the spherical transducer in her bow directly abeam of the target’s propellers. Cooperman’s ears soon perked at the distinctive hiss; it intensified as the Romeo moved into the window between the two islands. He patched the contact into the oscilloscope, comparing it to the one he had recorded en route to Tripoli weeks before. When identical patterns began tracing across the screen, he called the control room.

“I got him, skipper,” Cooperman reported. “It’s our boy.”

“Good going,” Duryea replied. He stepped to his chart table and went about predicting the Romeo’s course. Working back from its need to be in Beirut by the start of Ramadan, he calculated when the submarine would have to leave the cover of the Aegean for the Mediterranean and plotted an intercept point. “Even at a prudent fifteen knots we’ll be at the IP more than eight hours before lover boy arrives,” he said to McBride. “Get Lieutenant Reyes up here, will you?”

“Way to go, skipper,” the Chicano enthused when told the contact had been confirmed as the Romeo. “When do we take him?”

“Twenty-one hundred tomorrow; right there,” Duryea replied, circling a mark on the chart table centered in the basin cradled by Crete, Karpathos, and Rhodes. “That’s our intercept point.”

Reyes’s brow furrowed with concern. “That’s open water, sir; he’s going to be moving pretty damn fast.”

“Big problem, huh?” Duryea asked, deadpan.

Reyes nodded. “He’s too powerful to stop and there’s no way my guys could stay with him.”

Duryea pretended to wrestle with it. “In other words, it would be easier if he was dead in the water putting up a mast.”

“Sure, then we could—”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Reyes grinned, getting the message. “A dead stop.”

“Every day, at twenty-one hundred, Lieutenant,” Duryea explained, breaking into a cagey smile. “Like clockwork.”

Half an hour later, he was still smiling when McBride took a call from the communications officer. “Chopper from the America coming in,” he announced.

“Periscope-antenna depth,” Duryea ordered.

The Sea King was circling the rendezvous area when the pilot spotted the wake from the periscope. Soon the Cavalla punched through the surface, water cascading from her sail in torrents. Several miles to the south, the island of Crete cut a pale triangle out of the sky.

The deck was still awash when an aft hatch, located between the sail and dry deck shelter, which housed the SEALs underwater assault vehicle, swung open. Lieutenant Reyes and several members of his team climbed out and guided the helicopter into position.

While the Sea King hovered, the plastic shipping container was lowered to the submarine by a winched cable. Within minutes, the container was on deck and being wrestled through a cargo hatch into the Cavalla’s hold.

Duryea ordered the boat to periscope depth.

The planesmen went to work and the submarine began slipping beneath the surface. It had just leveled off when the phone buzzed.

McBride answered it. “Sonar has a contact on the towed array. Says he’s pretty sure it’s a Redfleet boat.”

Duryea responded with a thoughtful scowl, then crossed to the sonar room forward of the navigation console and stuck his head in the door.

Cooperman was sitting there, head cradled by thick headphone cushions, staring at the frequency pattern tracing across the oscilloscope.

“Twin screws,” Duryea observed on seeing it.

“Yes, sir,” Cooperman replied, putting the contact through the speakers so the captain could hear the rhythmic hiss. “Coming real fast.”

“How fast?”

“Forty-plus knots.”

Duryea’s lips tightened. “I’ve got a nasty hunch.”

“Me too, sir.”

Duryea mulled it over, then contacted ASW on the America. “Captain Duryea, Cavalla,” he said. “I need a contact verification.” He reported the target’s coordinates, concluding, “Request that be a MAD flyover.”

The acronym stood for magnetic anomaly detector, a device used to measure disturbances in the earth’s magnetic field. In a nonmetallic sea, a large metal object such as a submarine created a significant anomaly. MAD was normally used to locate a target precisely prior to ASW attack, but Duryea had another reason.

Within minutes of his call, an S-3A Viking was launched from the America’s starboard catapult. Dusk was falling as it soared over the Mediterranean, closing on the contact. A long tubular probe telescoped from beneath its empennage, like the stinger of a blue tail fly, as it made a low pass over the choppy sea.

“I’ve got dead needles back here,” the Tacco said. “You sure we’re on the mark? Hold it,” he corrected as the needles began moving off the pins. “I got him now. Barely a wrinkle, though; must be an Alpha.”

The extremely low reading left no doubt. Unlike any other submarine afloat, the Alpha’s titanium hull and structure left only ferrous fittings and propulsion machinery to create a magnetic disturbance.

In the Soviet boat’s control room, Captain Aleksandr Solomatin took a long, satisfied drag on his pipe. His long hunt was over.

The wily Russian hated being bested, hated being fooled by Duryea’s false radio transmission and had backtracked through Gibraltar, combing the Mediterranean for the Cavalla. He knew he could find it; knew his target’s special outfitting sacrificed a degree of stealth; indeed, his sonar technicians were hunting for a unique acoustic signature — a rhythmic whoosh made by the bulbous dry deck shelter atop the Cavalla’s hull — that distinguished it from every other submarine afloat.

“Damn,” Duryea growled when the Viking’s pilot radioed the news. “It’s an Alpha—the Alpha.”

“Man’s got an axe to grind,” McBride said. “Could cost us the intercept.”

Duryea nodded grimly. He loved challenges; loved playing underwater hide and seek; but it was the last thing he needed now. He had the Romeo set up; had the personnel and the technical means aboard to carry out the hostage rescue mission; but there was no way it could commence until he lost the Alpha; no way he could chance Redfleet surveillance or the possibility that the Russian captain might directly interfere with the operation or alert the Romeo. He glanced at the chart table. The clock in the upper right-hand corner of the screen read:

— to Ramadan and counting.

44

A cool desert breeze blew through the streets of downtown Tripoli. The time was 9:17 P.M. when three empty buses rolled into the plaza in front of the Al Kabir Hotel on Al Fat’h Street.

The doors hissed open and a Libyan Army officer stepped from the lead bus and strode toward the hotel. He hurried beneath the curved sunscreens and arched window openings that gave the facade the look of a huge pipe organ, and through the angular concrete lobby, where a banner displaying a slogan taken from Qaddafi’s infamous Green Book proclaimed: THE PARTY SYSTEM ABORTS DEMOCRACY.

The slogan was one of many that adorned everything from the cellophane wrapper on rolls of toilet paper to the coffee lounge, renowned for its gloomy decor, salty cappuccino, and the crowd of reporters and camera crews who gathered there each night.

The din forced the officer to unleash several blasts on his whistle to get their attention. “Brother leader summons you,” he announced.

This was standard procedure; and as they had many times before, the reporters rounded up colleagues and equipment and filed into the bright yellow buses. They had no idea where they were going, what Qaddafi wanted, or if, as was his habit, he would fail to appear.

The convoy wound through the city, leaving a trail of blue diesel smoke in the darkened streets, which were empty of pedestrian and vehicular traffic due to a government-imposed curfew. In less than 20 minutes, the buses turned into As-Sarim Street and were lumbering past the T-55 battle tank and squad of infantry deployed at the entrance to the Bab al Azziziya Barracks. They continued across the grounds, stopping opposite Qaddafi’s tent, where squads of soldiers herded the reporters to a podium that had been set up in front of the colonel’s sway-backed domicile.

Moments later Qaddafi came through the tent flaps and strode to the podium. His white officer’s uniform, bedecked with campaign ribbons, gold braid, and red piping, glowed luminously in the flash of strobes and halogens.

General Younis, SHK Chief Abdel-Hadi, and the Akita followed and stood next to him.

“Once again,” Qaddafi began in a self-righteous tone, “the People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya has beaten the insidious shetans of America. Yes, yes, barely an hour ago, our brave and vigilant forces captured one of the world’s most wanted criminals. After deceitfully claiming he had refused to take part in an illegal attack on the Jamahiriya, after deceitfully asking for political asylum and accepting the goodwill and hospitality of the Libyan people, this vile emissary of Satan was caught, red-handed, conspiring to commit murder, larceny, and espionage against them and their leaders.” He paused, then nodded to Abdel-Hadi, who snapped his fingers twice in response.

The tent flaps behind Qaddafi parted again.

Shepherd shuffled into view, flanked by Libyan secret police officers. He was gagged and blindfolded; shackles bound his ankles and wrists. He recoiled as Abdel-Hadi brusquely removed the blindfold and the cameras and lights bore in on him.

“Now you will tell the world,” Qaddafi addressed the media, “that the People’s Jamahiriya has the notorious deserter and murderer, United States Air Force Major Walter Shepherd in custody.”

A barrage of questions erupted: “Exactly what did Major Shepherd do to cause your government to file these charges against him?” one of the reporters called out, “Can you be more specific?” another asked.

“No. It is a highly classified matter and not for media consumption,” Qaddafi replied with finality, dismissing further queries with a wave of his hand.

Abdel-Hadi and the Akita began walking toward the reporters, who parted as the fierce animal approached. The SHK officers followed, marching Shepherd through the middle of the crowd toward the prison on the other side of the compound. The reporters surged after them but were held back by the soldiers, who forced them to return to the podium where Qaddafi droned on.

The underground prison was ablaze with light when the group arrived with Shepherd. The obese guard was waiting for them. Abdel-Hadi briefed him in Arabic, then headed down into the prison with the Akita. The SHK officers removed Shepherd’s shackles and left him in the huge guard’s custody. He marched Shepherd down the staircase, through the security doors, and into the network of foul-smelling corridors to the cell he had occupied previously. It was unlocked. The guard grabbed Shepherd by the back of the neck like a puppet and propelled him into it.

Shepherd maintained his balance and turned as the guard kicked the door closed. It slammed in his face with a deafening clang. The guard stabbed his key into the tumbler and locked it. Shepherd caught sight of the Palestinian peering through the bars of the cell across the corridor. He was standing in a cocky slouch, sporting a broad grin. It vanished when, instead of leaving, the guard turned toward his cell, unlocked it, and went in after him.

The Palestinian resisted, assuming he faced another round of torture. He didn’t know that Shepherd had given the Libyans ANITA; that they didn’t need the hostages anymore; didn’t need him.

But Shepherd knew; he also knew that it wasn’t torture the Palestinian faced but execution; and that he had signed the death warrant.

“You want to know where the hostages are?” the Palestinian taunted in Arabic as the repulsive Libyan dragged him from the cell. “Fucking your mother.”

The guard sneered, grabbed a handful of the Palestinian’s hair, slammed him up against the bars, and drove a fist into his stomach.

The Palestinian doubled over and wretched.

The big man recoiled, shuffling backwards across the corridor to get out of the way. Nonetheless, the vomit splattered over his trousers and boots. He became enraged, shouting a stream of expletives in Arabic. The Palestinian had been devastated by the blow and was on his knees, clutching his midsection. Just as the guard went for him again, Shepherd impulsively shoved an arm between the bars of his cell and got hold of the Libyan’s collar, putting an abrupt stop to his charge; then he yanked back with all his might.

The guard’s feet went out from under him. His massive head was much too large to fit between the bars of Shepherd’s cell. It smashed into them with a loud crack and bounced off. Shepherd still had hold of his collar and yanked him back again, this time with more calculated intent. The guard unleashed a primal bellow, then his eyes rolled up behind his lids and he crashed to the floor and lay there, unmoving.

The Palestinian sagged with relief.

The pounding of boots on concrete echoed through the corridors.

The Palestinian crawled to the guard and removed the pistol from his holster; then quickly went through his pockets, taking his flashlight and a small zippered pouch that contained his money.

“The keys,” Shepherd hissed in a tense whisper, pointing to the chain on the guard’s belt, which was just out of reach.

The Palestinian hesitated for an instant, then he unhooked it and put it in Shepherd’s palm. Their eyes locked in a brief moment of camaraderie and triumph; enemies bound together by circumstance, they were equals now, just two men fighting to stay alive.

Shepherd let himself out of the cell and tossed the keys to another prisoner as he and the Palestinian took off down the corridor.

Prisoners began pouring into the corridor, engaging the guards who responded to the commotion.

Outside, in front of Qaddafi’s tent, the press conference had broken up and the reporters were being herded toward the buses when a siren began wailing. The officer in charge of the infantry shouted an order. The soldiers broke ranks and headed for the prison, leaving the media unattended.

Abdel-Hadi was in the interrogation chamber waiting for the Palestinian, waiting to oversee his execution, when the siren went off; he drew his machine pistol and stepped into the corridor with the Akita.

“Lamarikan wil Phalestineen harbou!” a guard shouted, racing toward him.

Abdel-Hadi stiffened, then crouched to the dog. “Yalla, yalla laoueg houm,” he ordered in a tense whisper. “Jib houm.”

The huge dog began straining at the leash, dragging Abdel-Hadi through the corridors. The animal had made the journey from Okba ben Nafi Air Base in the Krazz with Shepherd and soon several powerful lunges signaled that it had detected his scent.

The SHK chief removed the leash. “Yalla,” he prompted. “Yalla, katal.”

The animal raced down the corridor in a frenzy.

Elsewhere in the maze of underground corridors, Shepherd and the Palestinian approached a set of double doors that led to the barracks kitchen; there were no personnel working at this hour. The two fugitives ran past the preparation tables and ovens, following a wall of refrigerators to an open door on the other side, exiting into a corridor lined with trash pails.

Shepherd heard the scratch of claws on concrete behind him and turned to see the Akita bounding toward them. It covered the distance with several strides, then its powerful hindquarters launched it through the air.

The Palestinian whirled with the pistol but Shepherd was between him and the animal, blocking his line of fire.

At the last instant, Shepherd swept a lid off one of the trash pails and used it as a shield, slamming it hard into the charging animal, deflecting it off to one side and past him.

The dog landed on its side with a loud thud and went skittering through the open door beyond the trash pails into the kitchen, its massive paws clawing at the concrete in vain as it slid across the floor. It finally got to all fours and charged again.

Shepherd was lunging for the door to slam it shut and trap the crazed animal inside the kitchen when the Palestinian fired. The dog emitted a pathetic yelp and dropped at Shepherd’s feet like a charging rhino.

“What the hell were you waiting for?” Shepherd demanded angrily.

“You were in the way,” the Palestinian retorted; then he grinned at a thought that occurred to him and pointedly added, “Maybe I am thinking twice about killing my relative.”

Shepherd’s cold stare softened; he looked at the dog and said, “Not all animals have that luxury.”

They moved off, the Palestinian leading the way to a junction where two corridors intersected.

“Akif,” a voice ordered sharply “Akif, ouarmi slahek al ardth!”

The Palestinian stopped in his tracks and turned slowly to see Abdel-Hadi standing in the adjacent corridor, pointing his machine pistol at him.

“Slahek al ardth!” the SHK chief repeated.

The Palestinian complied with the order and tossed his pistol aside.

Shepherd was around the corner in the other corridor, out of Abdel-Hadi’s line of sight. He pressed himself against the wall and slowly, silently slid into a crouch, wrapping his fingers around the grip of the pistol that the Palestinian had thrown at his feet. Shepherd waited as Abdel-Hadi advanced toward the Palestinian, waited until he had passed the corner that shielded him, then slipped behind the SHK chief.

“Hold it,” Shepherd said sharply, jabbing the pistol into his back. Abdel-Hadi froze.

The Palestinian wrenched the machine pistol from the SHK chief’s hands, then slammed him against the wall. With an angry twist, he screwed the pistol up against the underside of Abdel-Hadi’s chin.

The Libyan groaned, eyes bulging with terror.

“No!” Shepherd shouted.

“Why? He is animal, yes?” the Palestinian demanded, his eyes ablaze with vengeance. “Yes?”

“Yes, but he’s—”

The Palestinian pulled the trigger, firing a burst that blew the top of Abdel-Hadi’s head up across the wall in a pulpy shower of gore.

“He was our ticket out of here,” Shepherd replied angrily, wincing at the sight, as the sound of the gunfire echoed through the corridors.

The Palestinian shrugged and released Abdel-Hadi, who slid to the floor, painting the concrete with a bloody smear.

They hurried down the narrow corridor to a service door. It opened into a long tunnel that zigzagged beneath the compound.

The pounding of boots rose in the distance.

They went back through the door and waited as the clatter came closer and closer.

Shepherd noticed that the Palestinian was standing near some electrical panels on the opposite wall. He had opened them and was about to throw the circuit breakers, plunging the prison into darkness.

“Hold it,” Shepherd cautioned. “I’ll tell you when.” He listened at the door until he heard the soldiers run past, then cracked it open slightly, waiting while the footsteps died out. “Okay. Now.”

The Palestinian pulled the breakers.

The corridors went black.

They used the guard’s flashlight to make their way through the pitch-black tunnel to a door that was now unguarded. It was locked.

The Palestinian blew the lock with a burst from the machine pistol. He and Shepherd went through it into an underground garage.

A hulking, canvas-covered vehicle stood alone in the reinforced concrete bunker. They peeled back the shroud, discovering an armored personnel carrier beneath. It was Muammar el-Qaddafi’s personal Transportpanzer, the emergency escape vehicle that had spirited him and his family out of Tripoli the night of the air strike.

Shepherd opened one of the thick steel doors in the rear of the hull, and they clambered inside the lushly carpeted troop compartment. While the Palestinian latched the door and climbed to the shielded machine gun turret atop the roof, Shepherd went forward to the cab, got behind the wheel, and turned the ignition switch.

The powerful Mercedes diesel started up with a roar.

Shepherd found a remote control in the cab, and opened the steel doors that sealed the bunker. He engaged the transmission and guided the lumbering 8 × 8 across the garage and up a ramp that led to a street several blocks from the compound.

Shepherd floored the throttle; the eight huge combat tires bit into the tarmac and sent the Transportpanzer rumbling forward to an intersection.

The cross street was a broad eucalyptus-lined motorway that Shepherd recognized as Al Jala Road, the street that the Krazz had taken inland from the coast on the trip from Tunisia. It was poorly lit and deserted. He made a sharp left and accelerated.

A jeep carrying several soldiers rocketed into view behind them. One was radioing to units up ahead. Another manned the front-mounted machine gun and opened fire. The rounds smacked into the TPP’s armor-plated hull, sparking aside harmlessly.

The Palestinian swiveled the gun turret around, tracking the jeep as the distance between the two vehicles closed, and fired a sustained burst. The rounds stitched across the hood. The jeep veered out of control and flipped over, spilling the soldiers across the pavement.

Shepherd had the Transportpanzer barreling down the deserted motorway at 65 MPH. In minutes, it had passed the Christian Cemetery, crossed Al Nasar, and was approaching Umar Al Mukhtar, a main east-west conduit that teed across Al Jala Road, which meant the TPP would be forced to turn either left or right.

Several Libyan Army trucks were blocking the right side of the intersection. Soldiers opened fire.

The Palestinian was crouching behind the gunshield, which was clanging like a church bell, raking the street with bullets, the tracers glowing in the night.

Shepherd was about to turn left when a lightweight battle tank, stationed at the People’s Congress a short distance away, came rumbling down Bab Qarqarish, machine gun blazing, catching the Transportpanzer in a crossfire. Shepherd steered the TPP across the grounds of the Girl’s Military College on Al Mukhtar. He exited onto the Al Kurnish Road, crossed it, plunging down a steep embankment to the beach. Knobby tires churned up the sand as he drove into the surf. The fully amphibious vehicle settled into the sea; then two propellers at the rear of the hull came to life and sent the dark green Transportpanzer into the enveloping blackness.

Shepherd sagged with exhaustion and relief; then he looked back over his shoulder to the troop compartment, and grimaced at what he saw.

The Palestinian was lying on the carpeted floor beneath the gun turret, his shirt soaked with blood.

45

Following the meeting at the royal guest house with Moncrieff and Katifa, Larkin was shown to the Saudi’s study. The regal, book-lined room was equipped with a state-of-the-art computer system, facsimile machine, and secure communications gear. Larkin used the latter and called Kiley at home.

The time in Washington, D.C., was 7:32 A.M.

The DCI had been up for nearly an hour; a cup of cold coffee was at his elbow, red folders and briefing books spread out on the floor around his armchair.

“Good work, Colonel,” the DCI replied, relieved that Katifa had agreed to work for them. “How do you plan to handle backup and liaison?”

“The lady’s leaving for Beirut tomorrow. I’ll do the same and work out of the embassy.”

“Not operative,” Kiley replied. “Ever since they kidnapped Fitzgerald we’ve had a hell of a time getting new people in. It could take weeks, maybe months. We’ll have to rely on personnel already in place. I’ll set it up. She should know the name. Stengel.”

“Stengel… I’ll take care of it.”

“Does she smoke?”

“Yes, sir, she does.”

“What brand?”

“Those French ones — blue hard pack — Gaulois.”

Kiley grunted, making a note of it. “Now, what happened with Shepherd?”

“Libyan secret police locked him up,” Larkin answered, briefing him on his meeting with Al-Qasim.

That was twelve hours ago.

Now, after a long day at Langley, Kiley was packing up his briefcases before heading home when — more than eight hours after Qaddafi’s news conference — the first wire service report of Shepherd’s escape came in.

The lengthy interlude was no accident.

On a direct order from Qaddafi, who thought Shepherd would be quickly captured, the correspondents had been herded into the buses and driven around the city for several hours to prevent them from filing their stories. When it became clear Shepherd had eluded his pursuers, the reporters were returned to the Al Kabir, only to discover the hotel’s phone system had mysteriously broken down. Several European reporters eventually made it to their embassies and contacted their bureaus.

In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the time was 5:16 A.M. when one of the Filipino servants knocked on Larkin’s door, waking him. “Excuse me, Colonel. You have a call,” he said, explaining it had come in on the secure line in Moncrieff s study and couldn’t be transferred.

Larkin pulled on a robe and went downstairs.

“Hold for the director, please,” Kiley’s secretary said when he came on the line.

“Dick?” the DCI barked. “Shepherd’s on the loose.”

Larkin groaned, a sinking feeling growing in his stomach. “Do we know how?”

“We’re faxing you what we have on the other line.”

Larkin shifted his glance to the facimile machine on a sideboard behind the desk, where a single sheet of paper was already emerging from the delivery slot. It was a copy of the wire service report:

“You have it yet?” Kiley prodded impatiently at the silence on the line.

“I’m reading it now, sir.”

“I thought this situation was being terminated. What went wrong?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“See what you can find out. If Shepherd surfaces and starts talking before Duryea can make his move, who knows what might happen. We’re too close to have anything screw this rescue operation up.”

“I’ll get on it right away, sir,” Larkin replied as the DCI ended the call. The colonel slipped the wire service report into the pocket of his robe and went to the window, which overlooked the Red Sea.

The sun was beginning to creep over the horizon, the low rays catching the flecks of red plankton that floated in abundance just beneath the surface, imparting the legendary crimson glow to the water.

Larkin stood there working the problem; aside from hoping the Libyans caught Shepherd and killed him, there was one base he could cover. He knew Shepherd had escaped by sea and that his wife was still on D’Jerba, which was the nearest safe port. He also knew it would take a long time to get there from Tripoli in an armored personnel carrier.

Several hours later, Moncrieff, Katifa, and Larkin were driven in one of the royal limousines to King Abdul Azziz Airport just north of Jeddah.

Larkin’s flight to D’Jerba was the first to depart. After dropping him off, Moncrieff and Katifa went to the Middle East Airlines boarding lounge.

“I wish I could think of something to say I haven’t said before,” Moncrieff whispered when her flight was called.

They embraced hurriedly, awkwardly, acknowledging they had indeed done this before. Katifa felt her eyes starting to fill, slipped from Moncrieff s grasp, and hurried off. He watched her go down the boarding ramp, just as he had that day in Boston five years ago. He waited until the plane had pulled away, then returned to the limousine, certain he would never see her again.

The Boeing 737 flew on a northwesterly heading, crossing Jordan and Syria, to Beirut International Airport, covering the 900 miles in just under two hours.

Katifa deplaned with a carry-on bag and hurried through the shabby terminal to the arrivals ramp.

“Taxi, right here,” the dispatcher said, directing her to a vehicle parked forward of the queue.

Katifa climbed into the old Citroen and pulled the door closed. “Number twenty-eight Tamar Mallat,” she said, lighting a cigarette.

The cab left the airport and headed north on the express motorway that runs along the broad coastal plain at the base of the Lebanon Mountains.

“Cigarette?” the driver said, holding the pack back over his shoulder.

“I have my own. Thanks,” Katifa replied.

“Your brand, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“That’s what Mister Stengel thought,” the driver said pointedly.

Katifa took the package of Gaulois from him and examined the blue, square-edged box. It was unopened and the cellophane wrapper was intact.

“It contains a radio transmitter,” the driver explained. “The unit broadcasts on a dedicated channel that’s monitored twenty-four hours a day at the embassy’s com center. Casino du Liban is well within range.”

Katifa nodded and slipped it into her purse.

The taxi continued north on the motorway to where it branches into several thoroughfares that crisscross the city. The driver took Avenue Camille Chamoun through the Wata and Tallet Khayat districts to the cluster of white stucco buildings on Tamar Mallat.

The street was quiet; a few vehicles lined the curb. Several children were playing as the Citroen pulled to a stop.

Katifa got out and glanced about cautiously, suddenly aware of the pungent scent of cordite, which always hung in the air; then she hurried up the steps of her building. She had noticed the abandoned van across the street; it had been there for months. Like so many of the vehicles on Beirut’s streets it was up on blocks, stripped of all usable hardware and parts. Furthermore, like the other vehicles on Tamar Mallat, it appeared empty.

The two men who slipped out the rear door as soon as Katifa was out of sight had been watching the building through a small window in the van’s sidewall.

Katifa was entering her apartment when she heard footsteps behind her and turned to see the Palestinians coming down the corridor. She recognized them from Casino du Liban and knew they had been sent by Abu Nidal. One brandished a pistol. The other swung a Skorpion into view from beneath his jacket.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Katifa protested indignantly, as they took hold of her. “What do you—”

“Save your complaints for Abu Nidal,” the one with the pistol interrupted.

“Gladly,” Katifa replied, relieved. “Casino du Liban was my next stop. Though I didn’t expect an escort.”

“You have no choice in the matter, believe me.”

“Please,” she said with disdain, gesturing toward the weapons. They ignored her remark and, pistol pressed to her side, marched her to their car, which was parked a short distance down the street.

It was late afternoon when they arrived at Casino du Liban. The entrance gates were closed. Heavily armed sentries materialized from nearby cover and surrounded the car, their fierce eyes peering at Katifa in condemnation. One of them opened the door, pulled her from the car, and began searching her. She stood unflinchingly while rough hands ran over her torso and breasts, then up her legs and between her thighs; but she stiffened when the other sentry dumped the contents of her purse onto the hood of the car and began sorting through the contents. He picked up one of the boxes of cigarettes. The flicker of the cellophane wrapper caught her eye.

“The other one is open,” she said. She deftly slipped the box from his hand and dropped it into her purse; then she casually took the open pack from the hood, removed two cigarettes, and pushed one between his lips; the other was for herself. He smiled, produced a butane lighter, and lit them both.

When the sentries were satisfied she was unarmed, Katifa put the rest of her belongings back into her purse. Then one of the gates was opened, and the armed escort led her down the long approach road and through the casino to the marina.

The gunboat was tied up in one of the slips. The Soviet-made Zhuk had been towed to an offshore moorage by the Turkish freighter. From there, it had been winched into the marina, where repairs were made to the tangled propellers, gutted interior, and radio.

Now Abu Nidal stood on one of the floating docks supervising as the captain and crew prepared to put to sea. Several Palestinian seamen were stowing stores and ordnance; others were filling the auxiliary tanks with diesel fuel. The terrorist leader heard the sentries coming down the gangway behind him and turned, freezing when he saw Katifa was with them.

“Binti el-amin,” he finally said sarcastically, locking his eyes onto hers in a seething stare. “No doctored insulin this time?”

“What? What are you talking about?” she asked, appearing genuinely puzzled. “What’s going on? Why were they at my apartment? I don’t understand.”

“Someone put water in the vials,” Nidal snapped, his tone leaving no doubt whom he suspected.

Katifa was silent, as if wounded by the accusation. “How could you even think such a thing?”

Nidal studied her, his eyes boring into her soul. “Then tell me how?” he challenged. “You picked the insulin up and brought it here directly. It couldn’t have happened without your compliance.”

“Why not? Someone could have easily bribed the pharmacist or arranged to have the vials switched before I picked them up. Believe me, after that meeting in Damascus, I wouldn’t put it past any of them.”

Nidal took a moment, digesting the reply. “What about Damascus?”

“They all betrayed you,” Katifa said angrily. “I told them you were opposed to the idea, but they wouldn’t listen.”

“That’s not what Arafat said,” Nidal countered slyly, twisting the truth to test her.

“Then he lied,” Katifa declared. “It was he who favored the plan; he, Assad, and Qaddafi, of course. I suppose Arafat claimed otherwise?”

“No,” Nidal replied grudgingly. “He admitted to arguing in favor of it.”

“Well?” Katifa said, implying she’d been vindicated. “Why do you think I insisted Assad call you?” she went on in a bold lie. “I was stunned when you reversed your position. But who was I to argue? I looked like a fool; not to mention, I was nearly killed. Frankly, I think I’m owed an explanation.”

“Assad spoke with the Saudi, not I.”

Katifa stiffened, pretending she was shocked.

“We found out he was in the room below,” Nidal explained. “He must have intercepted the call somehow.”

Katifa shook her head, dismayed. “That bastard,” she said with as much acrimony as she could muster. “Well, at least now I understand.”

Nidal mused, then gestured she follow as he strolled down the dock toward the gunboat. “How did you escape from Tripoli?” he asked rather offhandedly.

“With the Saudi,” Katifa answered, knowing Nidal was trying to catch her in a lie. She had little doubt that the nurse had reported back to him and that like a clever trial attorney, Nidal knew the answer before he asked the question. “I recuperated and left Jeddah as soon as possible.”

Nidal was weighing her reply when the gunboat’s captain appeared at the railing. “We’re ready to cast off,” he called down to them.

“Good luck and Godspeed,” Nidal called out over the throb of the engines, as the Zhuk put to sea. Then, turning to Katifa, he challenged “Why should I believe you?”

“Why else would I have come back to Beirut?” she responded spiritedly; then she let her posture slacken, and stared at him like a hurt child. “I haven’t forgotten who raised me,” she said, her voice quivering with emotion. “Have you, Abu-habib?”

Nidal’s expression softened.

“Nor have I forgotten who taught me to fight,” Katifa went on. “I’ve spent my life fighting to liberate Palestine, and I intend to continue.”

Nidal nodded and broke into an enigmatic smile. “You’ll have a chance to prove it soon,” he said, glancing off to the gunboat, which was vanishing in the afternoon mist.

46

The Thyssen-Henschel Transportpanzer rode very low in the water — which came up to the bottom of the divided windshield — putting the eight huge tires and two-thirds of the hull beneath the surface. This made for a low visual and radar profile.

Shepherd had turned the running lights off and proceeded on a northerly heading in almost total darkness save for the pale glow of a crescent moon. It was approximately 150 miles to D’Jerba. At a maximum water speed of 10 MPH he figured the amphibious vehicle could be safely inside Tunisian waters by dawn.

The Palestinian was alive but unconscious and breathing laboriously. He had been struck in his left arm and chest; Shepherd deduced that one lung had been punctured. He lifted him to the bunk built into the customized interior, propping his body at an angle to prevent blood that might be leaking into his chest cavity from collecting around the undamaged lung and encumbering its function; then he began searching the storage lockers for first aid gear. In the process he found food, clothing, weapons, walkie-talkies, and maps. He disinfected and bandaged the wounds as best he could and returned to the cab.

The TTP was outfitted with extensive navigation equipment, similar in nature to aviation electronics, and Shepherd had had little trouble activating the TTP’s autopilot and surface search radar systems. The latter, a RASIT surveillance unit, was mounted on a hydraulic arm above the roof and had a programmable inner defense zone.

Shepherd followed the coastline, staying close to shore to elude the Libyan Navy’s coastal patrol, which was confined to deeper waters. He had no way of knowing it was a small, thinly spread fleet of seven vessels, two of which had been hauled out for routine maintenance, leaving five to cover more than 1,400 miles of coastline and a dozen major harbors. He used the light that came from vehicles traveling the Al Kurnish Road atop the palisades, and the light from the numerous towns it connected as guideposts to measure progress and plot his position.

Several times during the night, the surface search radar picked up small vessels putting to sea from fishing villages along the coast. Shepherd studied the blips tracing across the screen until he was certain the vessels were going about their business.

Now, nine hours after Shepherd had first driven the Transportpanzer into the Mediterranean, it was nearing the Libya-Tunisia border and the imaginary line that extended seaward for three miles. The maps he had found indicated that just east of it, on his side of the border, a peninsula of rocky shoals and sandbars jutted into the sea.

A short time later, as dawn broke over the Mediterranean, he spotted the whitecaps and rolling breakers that heralded its presence. He changed course and was angling further out to sea to circle the shoals when he heard loud, guttural wheezes coming from the compartment behind him.

Shepherd put the TTP back on autopilot and went aft to check on the Palestinian. The young terrorist had rolled over onto his stomach and his condition was clearly the worse for it. Shepherd was adjusting his position when the RASIT unit started beeping, indicating a vessel had penetrated the envelope he had set.

A thousand yards to starboard, a Libyan Navy patrol boat was cruising the imaginary Libya-Tunisia border. Like her sister ships, the aging British-made vessel carried primitive surveillance electronics that were supplemented by lookouts.

The seaman in the bow spotted something moving on the surface; something boxlike and low to the water, clearly not a fishing vessel. He used a walkie-talkie to report the sighting to the bridge.

A moment later a spotlight on the patrol boat’s mast came to life and sliced through the early morning darkness, reflecting off the Transportpanzer’s two rectangular windshields, which sat atop the water like the eyes of a huge frog.

The beam of light swept past, streaming through the windshield into the cab, then again as the Libyan on the spotlight glimpsed the TTP and swept back.

“All ahead full,” the Libyan captain ordered.

The patrol boat’s diesels roared to life and the vessel began closing on the target.

Shepherd had the Tranportpanzer’s throttle to the floor; and though it could do 65 MPH on land, its sluggish pace in amphibious mode was no match for the 20 knots the patrol boat could make at sea. Shepherd was trapped: gunboat to starboard, steep palisades to port, rocky shoals forward, Libya aft. Then it struck him — the long journey on water had him thinking boat; but this boat had wheels.

It also had stealth.

Shepherd reached to a bank of six switches on the console and threw them in rapid succession. A rack of dischargers mounted on the left side of the hull began belching thick smoke. It streamed behind the Transportpanzer, spreading rapidly over the water like heavy black fog.

Several Libyan seamen ran to the machine gun mounted in the patrol boat’s bow; but by the time they were ready to fire, they had nothing more than a wall of billowing smoke for a target.

Shepherd spun the wheel and aimed the TTP at the rocky shoals, heading directly for a rippling patch of calm water between the breakers, which he reckoned was a barely submerged sandbar. A rolling swell crested and broke against the side of the Transportpanzer, knocking the 50,000-pound vehicle about like a piece of driftwood. Shepherd fought the wheel, trying to keep from being smashed against the rocks that thrust upward from the boiling surf.

The patrol boat proceeded through the smokescreen, closing the distance; but the instant it emerged into the clear, the captain was forced to reverse his engines to avoid running aground.

The Transportpanzer was still partially submerged when it finally made it through the breakers to the sandbar. The eight huge tires began biting into the hard-packed sand and rock beneath, driving the vehicle up the underwater gradient. Shepherd kept the pedal to the floor. The needle on the speedometer jumped to 20 MPH, then 30 as the TTP crawled out of the sea and accelerated across the peninsula.

The Libyan gun crew fired several bursts as the patrol boat backed away from the barrier, and began to circle the shoals; but soon the TTP was a distant speck safely inside Tunisian territorial waters.

Shepherd proceeded north, keeping the Tunisian coastline in sight. Several hours later, a squared superstructure rose on the horizon. The hulking profile turned out to be the ramparts of Borj Castille, at the southeasternmost point of D’Jerba Island.

The rectangular Spanish fortress was perched on the tip of a desolate finger of sand that split the sea. A dense forest of trees and tall marsh grass had grown up along its north wall.

Shepherd beached the lumbering craft, driving it deep into the thickly grown cover to conceal it, and shut the engines down.

The Palestinian’s wheezing filled the silence; he was gasping for breath now, barely clinging to life.

Shepherd took the money pouch that the young terrorist had confiscated from the Libyan prison guard. Before leaving the TTP, he raised the steel hatches over the window openings, letting fresh air circulate through the compartment, then made his way through the marsh grass and trees and along the wall of the castle to the beach, continuing on about a half mile to the coastal road.

Larkin’s flight from Jeddah landed at D’Jerba’s Melita International airport at 9:58 A.M. having gained an hour due to the change in time zones. Since leaving Washington, he had flown to Naples, then on to the USS America, D’Jerba, Jeddah, and now back to D’Jerba. The bone-wearying schedule and change of time zones had finally taken their toll and the colonel was running on pure adrenaline now. After deplaning, he picked up a rental car he had reserved and headed for the road that paralleled the shoreline. It ringed the tiny island without a break as did the broad, flat beaches, which were free of rock caves and dunes, free of hiding places. Larkin began driving south, scanning the shallows and open stretches of sand for the Transportpanzer.

Shepherd had walked about a mile down the road when he noticed a telephone service line coming from one of the poles that lined the shoulder. It led to a small structure perched on a hill overlooking Borj Castille. The castle was one of the island’s tourist attractions, and the masonry structure turned out to be a souk, a cluster of vendor stands where food, souvenirs, and local crafts were sold.

The souk was closed now, rarely opening before noon, if at all, this early in the season; but the phone in the booth next to it hummed when Shepherd lifted the handset. He kept thumbing coins into the slot until he got a dial tone and called the Dar Jerba Hotel.

In the beachfront cottage, the phone jarred Stephanie from a fitful sleep. She squinted at the sunlight streaming in from the deck, then to the clock on the nightstand.

It read 10:27.

Late the previous evening, she had heard an English-language broadcast on one of the hotel’s four radio stations about her husband’s capture and escape. The upsetting news had kept her up most of the night; it was after 5:00 A.M. when she finally fell asleep in her clothes.

Stephanie lunged across the bed and grabbed the phone.

“Hello,” she answered in a dry, anxious voice.

“Babe, it’s me,” Shepherd said.

“Walt,” she exclaimed, bolting upright. “God, oh, my God; are you okay?”

“Yes. I made it back to D’Jerba. Someone escaped with me; he’s badly wounded.” Shepherd replied in a rush of words, glancing apprehensively at several cars that passed on the nearby road.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine; but he has to get medical attention soon.”

“There must be a doctor in the hotel. I’ll—”

“No, no, I don’t want anyone but you coming here. You’ll have to rent a car,” he instructed, giving her directions to the castle. “Got it?”

“Uh huh,” she said, jotting them down.

Shepherd glanced anxiously at another vehicle that roared past. “As fast as you can. Okay?”

“Okay. Oh, listen…” Stephanie paused, hearing a click on the line. “Walt? Walt, you still there?” He had already hung up; she pressed the disconnect button, then dialed another room in the hotel. “It’s Stephanie,” she said, her voice filled with urgency. “Walt just called… Yes, yes, he is. Meet me in the lobby at the car rental desk.” She hung up, went into the bathroom, and washed her face, then hurried from the cottage.

Shepherd was following the road back to Borj Castille when a reflection coming from the overgrowth caught his attention. It was the Transportpanzer’s flat rectangular windshield. He realized that despite being concealed in the marsh, the TTP was clearly visible from the high vantage point provided by the road, as was the broad swath it had cut through the tall grass, which pointed to it like an arrow.

Shepherd left the road, taking a shortcut down a steep bluff, then made his way through the marsh grass to the Transport-panzer. The round trip had taken almost two hours. He entered through the rear hatch and was heading to the cab to move the TTP to more secure cover when he paused, struck by the silence.

The laborious breathing had stopped.

Shepherd hurried to the Palestinian’s side and checked for vital signs. His eyes were fixed in a blank stare, pupils dialated and unresponsive. He had no pulse and no heartbeat. His skin was pasty and cold.

Shepherd sagged defeatedly and stared at him for a long moment; then he shouldered the young terrorist’s corpse and carried it from the vehicle, pausing to pull a foxhole shovel free of the snap latches that held it to the TTP’s hull. He made his way through the towering marsh grass to a small clearing, where he lowered the Palestinian to the ground and started digging. The moist topsoil quickly turned to rocky, hard-packed stratum that resisted each thrust of the shovel. Shepherd stopped and changed the orientation of the adjustable blade, locking it at a 90-degree angle to the handle, which enabled it to be used like a pickaxe. He worked slowly, methodically, his mind adrift — excited that Stephanie would soon join him, depressed over his failure to retrieve his F-111, and at a loss to cope with the implications.

“Make it big enough for two, Major,” a man’s voice said, snapping him out of his reverie.

Shepherd looked up to see Larkin emerging from the wall of grass that encircled him, pointing a pistol at his head. The colonel had continued driving along the coast until he came upon Borj Castille, easily spotting the Transportpanzer from the road.

Shepherd held Larkin’s icy stare in silence. “Are you following orders too, colonel?” he finally taunted. “Or do you just get a kick out of killing your own people in cold blood?”

“I have my reasons, Major.”

“The hostages?” Shepherd asked sardonically.

Larkin nodded. “Two for seven; it’s an acceptable kill ratio in any war.”

“You didn’t even get one.”

“We got their location,” Larkin countered sharply. “They’re being rescued tomorrow. Keep digging.”

Shepherd hadn’t expected that; he weighed Larkin’s reply for a long moment before he began hacking at the earth with the shovel, his mind racing, searching for a way to use it as a weapon. But the colonel was standing too far away; Shepherd couldn’t come close to hitting him with it. He had been digging for about 15 minutes when Stephanie’s voice shattered the silence.

“Walt? Walt, where are you?” she called out from somewhere within the thicket of trees and tall grass that surrounded the clearing.

Shepherd froze at the sound; he had hoped her arrival would distract Larkin long enough for him to somehow gain the advantage.

“Answer her,” Larkin ordered in a tense whisper. “Answer, dammit,” he insisted, threatening him with the pistol.

“Walt?” Stephanie called out again. “Walt, you hear me? Where are you?”

“Over here,” Shepherd finally shouted in reply.

Larkin’s attention was riveted on the thicket; then he heard a rustling behind him. His reflexes dulled by jet lag, the colonel was a split second slower in reacting than he otherwise might have been. He turned just as a figure lunged out of the marsh grass and swung a tire iron at Larkin’s head. He saw the movement out of the corner of his eye and ducked, causing the bludgeon to graze its target and strike his arm instead, knocking the gun from his hand.

Larkin went after it. As he scooped it up and whirled to fire, Shepherd took several quick steps toward him and swung the shovel like a baseball bat, swung it with all his might. It struck Larkin with a sickening thud; the sharp, V-shaped end of the blade buried itself deep in the center of his chest. He emitted a muffled groan and stiffened, his weapon leveled at Shepherd; but the life went out of him before he could fire and the pistol fell from his hand. Shepherd jerked the shovel. It came loose and Larkin went over backwards. Shepherd let out a long breath and turned to the man who had come out of the marsh grass.

It was Brancato.

Shepherd stared at him in stunned silence, his mind racing with questions as Stephanie emerged from the thicket and wrapped her arms around him. They clung to each other for a long, silent moment. Then Stephanie’s eyes drifted to Larkin and the Palestinian. She cringed at the grotesque sight, prompting Shepherd to lead her through the marsh grass to the Transportpanzer. Brancato followed.

“Al,” Shepherd finally rasped as they arrived, his voice hoarse from exhaustion. “Al. God, what the hell—”

“I kept hearing about what a great time you were having,” Brancato replied wryly.

Shepherd stared at him numbly, appreciating his attempt at levity but beyond response.

“Like I told Stephanie,” Brancato went on, “I was still in the hospital when that desertion bullshit hit the fan. I tried calling a couple of times but couldn’t get her. I finally reached her dad; he told me you guys were here. I got in last night.”

Shepherd nodded, his eyes adrift with uncertainty. “How did you know Colonel Larkin was here?”

“There’s a car parked back there. This was on the seat,” Stephanie explained, producing a rental folder. The bold printing across the top proclaimed: LARKIN.

Shepherd took another foxhole shovel from the TTP’s hull. He and Brancato left Stephanie behind, returned to the clearing, and finished the job Shepherd had started. They dug in silence, burying Larkin and the Palestinian side by side.

“Steph fill you in on what happened?” Shepherd asked as they walked back to the Transportpanzer.

“Yeah, I listened to that tape too,” Brancato replied. “Unbelievable.” He paused thoughtfully, then asked, “You know about Ramadan?”

Shepherd shook no.

“They’re going to kill the hostages.”

“Bastards. When?”

“One a day starting tomorrow if they don’t get a homeland in Israel. Which everyone knows they ain’t.”

“Larkin said there’s a rescue in the works.”

Brancato brightened. “Let’s hope he was right.”

Shepherd nodded grimly. “You know, when I found out what this was all about…” He paused and shook his head in dismay.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Brancato offered, sensing the irony. “You would’ve been the first guy to put it on the line for them.”

“What military officer wouldn’t?”

Brancato nodded emphatically. “What now?”

Shepherd shrugged, wracked with exhaustion. He slumped to the ground, his back against one of the TTP’s huge tires. “Go get my plane, I guess.”

“No, no, don’t say that,” Stephanie protested.

“Why? Nothing’s changed.” Shepherd groaned forlornly. “I still can’t prove my story; I’m still on the run. I don’t see that I have much choice.”

“One thing’s different…” Brancato said, letting the sentence trail off.

“What’s that?” Stephanie asked.

“He won’t be going in alone.”

Shepherd shook his head no emphatically. “No. No way. This one’s mine.”

“There are two names stenciled on that one-eleven.”

“Al,” Shepherd admonished.

“Name the Italian wizzo from Bensonhurst who won’t take no for an answer?” Brancato challenged.

Shepherd thought about it for a moment, then broke into a tired smile.

47

After picking up the Soviet Alpha on sonar, the Cavalla remained on course and spent the night proceeding beneath the choppy Aegean to the area of open sea cradled by Crete, Karpathos, and Rhodes, where Commander Duryea planned to intercept the Romeo. He had purposely zigzagged en route to test the Soviet boat’s intentions.

The submarine was completing the maneuver when Cooper- man called from the sonar room. “I just picked up the Romeo on the bow array, sir,” he reported, having already conducted an acoustic signature comparison that removed any doubt. “Range seventy-five miles. ETA our position twenty-one hundred.”

Duryea glanced to his watch. “Seven hours.”

“Aye, sir.”

The captain turned to his chart table and marked the Romeo’s position. It had embarked on its journey to Beirut and was just emerging from the Cyclades between Thira and Anafi. “Where’s the Alpha?”

Cooperman switched to the towed array. The fingertips of one hand were dancing over the AEP keys, palm of the other working the TD ball. “Bearing one eight zero, range eight miles,” he replied, confirming the Soviet submarine was closely tailing the Cavalla.

“Stay on both of them,” Duryea ordered softly. He hung up and turned to McBride. “Romeo’s right on schedule,” he said with mixed emotions.

“And the Alpha?”

“Still right on our tail,” Duryea replied, clearly annoyed. “What do you figure our Redfleet friend thinks we’re doing out here?”

“Based on our course and configuration”—McBride said, referring to the dry deck shelter atop the Cavalla’s hull—“he’s got to be thinking we’re going through the Dardanelles into the Black Sea to do some serious snooping around his bases.”

“Which means he’d be expecting us to try and lose him,” Duryea said, thinking aloud, his eyes riveted to the Romeo’s course and the point of intercept he had drawn on the chart table. “What if we proceed due east to the Turkish channel?” He drew a line across the Aegean, past the intercept area, to the easternmost chain of islands: Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Lipsi, Leros, Kalimnos, Kos, Nisiros, Tilos, Hakis, and Rhodes, which ran in a tight north-to-south line. “At first, it would look like we’re running for cover; but I bet Alpha’s captain just might notice we’ve come onto a course that’s an alternate route to the Dardanelles.”

McBride nodded and smiled.

“What would he do? Pursue or leapfrog?”

“Leapfrog,” McBride answered.

“Why?” Duryea asked, in a professorial tone.

“Because the terrain is dangerous and sonar’s totally useless in there. I’d sprint ahead and be waiting for us at the mouth of Dardanelles.”

“Me too.”

“Once we lose him,” McBride said, picking up on Duryea’s lead, “We can circle Rhodes, sprint back to here”—he indicated an area in the Mediterranean south of the Crete-Rhodes gap—“and be waiting for Romeo when he moves into the Med. Even at top speed, which he’ll never make through that terrain, he couldn’t get there before we…” He trailed off with a scowl, realizing he had overlooked something in his enthusiasm. “Only one problem—”

“We blow the twenty-one hundred intercept,” Duryea said.

McBride nodded grimly.

Duryea thought about it for a moment, then brought the Cavalla to periscope-antenna depth, and went down the passageway to the communications room.

The time in Washington, D.C., was 8:46 A.M.

Bill Kiley was in a breakfast meeting with his staff when his secretary informed him Duryea was on the line. He left the French Room and went to his office across the corridor to take the call.

Duryea briefed him on the situation. “We have the Alpha set up,” he concluded, “but we can’t lose him in time to carry out the rescue as scheduled.”

Kiley groaned. “When were you planning to make your move?”

“Twenty-one hundred today, sir. Romeo stops and comes to periscope-antenna depth each day at that hour,” he went on, anticipating the question. “We’re tracking him on sonar now, but I’m thinking we lay back and tail him until twenty-one hundred tomorrow.”

Kiley paused, briefly calculating the time, then winced. “That’s three hours before the deadline.”

“Yes, sir, I know; but based on Romeo’s need to be in Beirut by Ramadan, we can predict his course and position with a high degree of accuracy.”

“Any options?” Kiley pressed. “Any at all?”

“Other than ignoring the Alpha, no.”

“What’s the down side if you do?”

“The Alpha spots us making the move, warns the Romeo, and the crazies kill all the hostages.”

“Better to chance cutting it close than chance losing them all,” Kiley calculated glumly.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good luck, Commander,” Kiley said, ending the call.

Duryea hung up and glanced to McBride. “All ahead full,” he ordered, putting the new plan into action.

The facade of the National Commercial Bank headquarters in downtown Jeddah glowed pale mauve in the twilight, the triangular shaft of white marble rising majestically from reflecting pools, giving it the illusion of being twice its height.

The time was 7:10 P.M.

Moncrieff had spent the day in his twenty-fifth-floor office. He made several phone calls to distant time zones where the business day was just commencing, then left for the day, taking the high-speed elevator to the lobby. His heels clicked on the polished marble as he crossed to an exit that led to a ramp where a Mercedes limousine with the royal crest on the door was waiting.

The Saudi had been working long days in anticipation of the period of reduced productivity during Ramadan; it also helped keep his mind off Katifa’s return to Beirut. He was preoccupied with the details of several projects and had reached the limousine before realizing the chauffeur was behind the wheel instead of poised to open the door for him. He scowled and opened it himself, climbing into the backseat.

“I thought Ramadan commenced tomorrow,” he said facetiously, referring to the shortened work hours.

“Don’t move,” the Palestinian replied sharply as he turned in the driver’s seat and leveled a pistol at Moncrieff s forehead. Two more Palestinians emerged swiftly from the darkness and got in, flanking him. The limousine was the only vehicle on the ramp at this hour and they had had little trouble overcoming the chauffeur.

Moncrieff tensed and glared at them as they drove off in the darkness, heading north on Al Madinah Road. There was no need to ask who they were or what they wanted, nor any need to fear for his life; he knew he would already be dead if they had intended to kill him.

One of the Palestinians held a pistol on Moncrieff as the other produced a hypodermic syringe and, with practiced ease, stabbed the needle through Moncrieff s trousers into his thigh, depressing the plunger.

Within five seconds the Saudi was unconscious, and a piece of duct tape had been stretched over his mouth.

The limousine angled east to Andulus Street, leaving the city, and headed north into the desolate terrain that bordered the Red Sea. Twenty minutes later the driver turned onto a dirt road, following it to a rocky slope that tumbled toward the surf below.

A flashlight blinked in the darkness, where two more Palestinians were waiting. The Pentothal had plunged Moncrieff into a deep state of unconsciousness and he offered no resistance as they strapped him facedown to a stretcher; then they carried him to a cove at the base of an outcropping, where the refurbished gunboat was anchored. Once aboard, the stretcher was taken to the compartment where the hostages had been concealed.

The captain ordered Moncrieff be covered with blankets and posted an armed guard inside the compartment; then he closed the hidden bulkhead, returned to the bridge, and gave the order to cast off.

The twin diesels rumbled to life and the rust-stained Zhuk cut through the water on a heading for Port Taufiq and the Suez Canal 600 miles north. The Red and Mediterranean seas were at nearly identical levels and the man-made waterway that joined them had been built without locks, providing swift passage, especially for small vessels.

After setting his course, the captain radioed Casino du Liban. “Cargo aboard and en route,” he reported when Abu Nidal came on the line.

“When do you estimate delivery?”

“Within thirty-six hours.”

“Very well.” Nidal clicked off and glanced to his watch. It was 7:51 P.M; more than an hour before the Romeo was due to check in. He left the communications center, his head tucked between his shoulders like a turtle’s, deep in thought.

Duryea had proceeded due east through the southern Aegean, with the Soviet Alpha on his tail, for more than eight hours. This was hazardous terrain. The bottom was a craggy range of seamounts and escarpments, the passage between them made all the more difficult by the crosscurrents that surged like underwater rivers.

Now the Cavalla was north of Rhodes, approaching Simi, when the Alpha’s captain figured it out. “The Turkish channel,” Solom-atin mused, hovering over his chart table. “The Turkish channel to the Dardanelles.”

“Continue pursuit, Comrade Captain?” his starpom wondered. “Through that topology?” Solomatin admonished, detecting his eager tone. “Remember what happened to Borzov?” he asked, referring to a colleague who ran his boat aground in a Swedish fjord a decade earlier. “He has been captain of a desk in Polyarnyy ever since.”

Indeed, as Duryea had predicted, Solomatin decided to avoid hazardous pursuit and sprint northward on a parallel track toward the entrance to the Dardanelles.

“Alpha’s dropping off, sir,” Cooperman reported.

Duryea sat deep in thought. The whole thing would fall apart if the Alpha’s captain hadn’t really gone for the fake but was just playing a clever game of hide-and-seek; and the numerous hiding places the terrain afforded made it hard to be sure he wasn’t. Duryea contacted ASW on the America and requested a flyover.

“We’ve had an S-3A tracking him since we made that MAD run,” the ASW duty officer reported. He put Duryea on hold and contacted the Viking in flight; 30 seconds later he came back on the line. “Viking reports he just changed course and is sprinting north.”

“That’s what I want him to do. Make sure your guys let him know they’re up there,” Duryea instructed, deciding ASW harassment would further convince the Alpha’s captain he was endangering the Cavalla’s mission and encourage the leapfrog tactic.

“We’ll keep a blowtorch to his tail, sir.”

The Cavalla entered the Turkish channel and curled, not north around Simi toward the Dardanelles, but south around the eastern tip of Rhodes, sprinting at 25 knots into the Mediterranean on a southwesterly course. It covered the 150 miles to the new intercept point south of the Crete-Rhodes ridge in just under six hours, arriving an hour ahead of schedule to pick up the Romeo.

Duryea lifted the phone. “Sonar? Conn. Anything?”

“No, sir. I just did a sweep. We’re in clear water.”

Duryea pursed his lips thoughfully. “It’s probably taking Romeo longer to proceed through that terrain than I thought. Hang in there.”

For the next hour and a half Cooperman sat in his compartment, listening to the sounds of the Aegean. Most of the ferries, hydrofoils, and fishing vessels that ran between the countless islands were stilled at this hour and he was left with the melodic swish of an immense school of sardines riding the fast-moving current.

Duryea kept the Cavalla on station, nudging slowly northward into the gap between the islands. He had a cool, patient temperament, which served him well when it came to waiting, to letting a situation develop. But this one didn’t; his target never showed. The Romeo had to be out there somewhere. It lacked the speed and stealth to elude him. Despite logic, despite technology, he was haunted by the hollow feeling that the Romeo had somehow managed to get past him and was on its way to Beirut.

48

“I hate to say it, babe, but you better get back to the hotel,” Shepherd suggested when Stephanie briefed him on her run in with the D’Jerban police. “Just do whatever you were doing before I got here.”

She protested but knew he was right and drove back to the Dar Jerba in the car she and Brancato had rented.

Shepherd, who had been up almost thirty-six hours, spent the afternoon in the Transportpanzer sleeping.

Brancato had spent it thinking.

A pink-tinged glow still hung over the Gulf of Bougara as Brancato made his way through the towering marsh grass to the road. He drove Larkin’s rented sedan to the far side of Borj Castille, circling to a flat outcropping of rocks that jutted out into the sea. He rolled down the windows, put the transmission in neutral, released the handbrake, and started pushing.

“Good idea,” Shepherd intoned, joining him. He had just awakened and his eyes were still a little glazed.

They got it rolling and pushed it off the edge into the sea. The interior quickly filled with water and it disappeared beneath the surface with a tired gurgle.

“When do we go into Libya?” Brancato prompted, as they returned to the Transportpanzer and brought several cans of touajen, a North African version of lamb stew, to life in the tiny galley.

“The sooner the better; but we’re looking at a very narrow window. They only fly the one-elevens at night.”

Brancato nodded sagely. “We get there too soon and the machines aren’t fueled; too late and they’ve gone flying. How do we travel?”

“We have a choice — wheels or wings.”

“Wings? What kind of aircraft?”

“Mooney two fifty-two. But I vote for wheels,” Shepherd said.

“Why drive when you can fly?”

“For openers, the Mooney’s at the airport. Just getting our hands on it would be risky; and even if we could, the one-elevens are based at Okba ben Nan, which means we’ll be flying right into the teeth of their radar and SAM installations — without weaponry, electronic jamming gear, or TFR. Even if we defeat the perimeter radar, we’d still have to land out in the desert, which puts us in the middle of nowhere without ground transportation.”

“Yeah, and anywhere on or near the air base they’ll be waiting for us when we touch down.”

“With that,” Shepherd went on, indicating the Transportpanzer, “we have weapons, armor, and wheels. Besides, there are all kinds of goodies in there: radios, handguns, clothes, food. And whether we’re in the middle of the desert or driving across the air base, that thing looks like it belongs.”

Indeed, Qaddafi had specified his escape vehicle be unidentifiable as such, and the Transportpanzer’s exterior was of basic military finish and unadorned.

“Take yes for an answer,” Brancato pleaded genially. “Okba ben Nafi’s on the Mediterranean. We can shoot right down the coast and—”

“Not so fast,” Shepherd interrupted. “I had a run-in with one of their patrol boats. They know what I want; they might be waiting for me to come back.”

“So we take the scenic route,” Brancato suggested. “Must be maps in there.”

Shepherd nodded.

Brancato set the bowl of stew aside and made his way to the cab. A rack of shallow drawers, like a dentist’s tool cabinet, was built into the console between the seats. Each contained a set of plastic laminated sector maps labeled in Arabic. It took Brancato a few minutes to find the revelant charts, which he laid out across the console. They were for Qaddafi’s use and clearly delineated not only the terrain but also the location of Libyan military outposts in the desert, as well as border patrol zones.

“See this area here,” Brancato said as Shepherd joined him. “There isn’t a road, town, or military outpost on either side of the border for miles. We can leave soon as it gets dark, work our way south along the coast in the water. Then we cut inland about here and make our way through the desert. If we cross the border between these mesas and head due east, it’d put us right on a beeline for Okba ben Nafi.”

“Lot of ground to cover,” Shepherd cautioned, digesting the plan. “And it has to be done at night. You have a fix on mileage?”

Brancato studied the chart for a moment. “Hundred seventy-five max.”

“How many in water?”

“Forty, give or take.”

“Twelve hours of darkness,” Shepherd said, thoughtfully, “figure average speed — water, desert — twenty miles an hour; doable.”

Brancato nodded. “What about fuel?”

“Tanks are still more than half full,” Shepherd said, checking the gauges for the two 50-gallon tanks, which gave the TTP its 485-mile range. “The days are getting longer,” he went on, glancing outside where the sun was still hanging on the horizon. “It doesn’t get dark now until after nineteen hundred. We’ll have a lot of time to kill once we get there.”

“According to these, there’s a patch of heavily forested terrain around this oasis about thirty miles south of the air base. We can hang out until, say, eighteen-thirty, then start moving in. It’ll be dark way before we get anywhere near Okba ben Nafi.”

“Okay, we go tonight.”

Brancato tilted his head thoughtfully. “Or we wait a day and go tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow? Why?”

“Name the holy month that celebrates the victory of Muslims over the Makkans at the battle of Badr and commemorates the revelation of the Koran?”

“Something tells me we’re talking about Ramadan, again,” Shepherd answered.

Brancato nodded. “Starts tomorrow. It’s similar to Lent. Muslims fast; they work shorter hours; businesses close early; and there’s lots of churchgoing. Their state of mind would be working for us; they’ll be less vigilant; less aggressive; and there’ll be less of them around. And since they can’t eat until sunset, they’ll be busy chowing down about the time we’re making our move on the air base.”

“Not these guys,” Shepherd countered. “Qaddafi’s pushing them hard, real hard.”

“We still have to get there. It can’t hurt.”

While Shepherd considered it, Brancato added, “Besides, you look kind of crummy. An extra day’s rest would do you good.”

“Sounds like you have all the angles figured.”

“Yeah,” Brancato said, with a thin smile. “Right up to where you radio the tower for clearance in Arabic.”

49

The Romeo’s mysterious disappearance had pinned the Cavalla in the Crete-Karpathos-Rhodes gap. Duryea had sent a cable to Kiley at CIA headquarters, briefing him on the situation. Several hours later he received a terse reply:

Duryea immediately brought the boat to periscope-antenna depth and deployed a radio mast, then went to the communications room and contacted the DCI.

“I had Romeo’s twenty-one hundred wake-up calls put on surveillance priority,” the DCI began. “Keyhole made an intercept last night that sheds some light on why he didn’t show. I’m cabling you a copy of the translation.” He nodded to his secretary, who activated a fax machine that was patched into the phone line.

Seconds later, a fax machine in the Cavalla’s communications room came to life. The duty officer took the pages from the delivery tray and handed it to Duryea.

“What do you think Nidal’s up to?” Kiley prompted.

“I don’t know, sir,” Duryea replied, scanning the cable. “Do you have Romeo’s location at the time the transmission was intercepted?”

“The southern Aegean,” Kiley replied, reciting the coordinates, which confirmed the Romeo had started to Beirut and stopped at 2100 hours to contact Nidal at the point where the Cavalla would have intercepted. “ASW follow-up indicates he backtracked to the Cyclades.”

“For what it’s worth, sir,” Duryea said, clearly relieved, “there’s no way Romeo can make it to Beirut by the deadline now.”

“I don’t find that at all comforting, Commander,” Kiley growled. “Nidal doesn’t make idle threats. He promised to execute a hostage by Ramadan and believe me, he’ll find a way to do it.”

“They’ll have to get past us first, sir.”

Kiley grunted, far from mollified, and hung up.

Duryea returned to the control room and kept the Cavalla on station for the remainder of the day, waiting for the Romeo. Twenty-one hundred came and went without any sign of it. It was almost midnight when he glanced to the countdown clock in the upper right corner of the electronic chart table. It read:

Duryea watched until it read all zeroes.

Ramadan had begun.

That same evening, on the southeastern tip of D’Jerba, the glow of dusk was fading to star-dotted darkness as the Transportpanzer rolled out of the marsh grass and past Borj Castille into the sea.

Shepherd and Brancato proceeded south, following the distant causeway to el-Kantara on the mainland, then continued along the Tunisian coast in light surf. They made their way past Zarzis, then cut through the inlet at Bin Qirdan, heading inland across the calm waters of the bay.

Several hours later they guided the Transportpanzer through the rolling breakers onto the beach, crossed the Al Kurnish Road into the desolate, southernmost part of Tunisia, and set off across the desert, well west of the Ras Jdyar border checkpoint.

As the charts had indicated, there were no roads here, no towns in this harsh land that defied even the iron will of desert nomads to inhabit it.

They traveled 30 miles south, then angled east toward the Libyan border, entering an unpatrolled area of steep sandstone palisades that formed a natural barrier between the two nations.

Brancato left the Transportpanzer and went ahead on foot to scout the area. The TTP’s halogens illuminated the craggy terrain as he made his way along the base of the ridgeline to a spot where the vehicle could climb the near vertical wall. He guided Shepherd into position, ensuring that the front tires were properly aligned with a narrow canyon he had found on the charts, and returned to the cab. Then, Shepherd shifted the Transportpanzer into the lowest gear and eased the throttle down slowly.

The eight independently driven tires bit into the crumbly surface, sending rooster tails of sand into the air as the TTP accelerated toward the ridgeline and began its ascent. Capable of scaling a 70 percent gradient, it steadily fought its way up the slope onto a desert plateau of parched scrub brush and wind-burnished sand. Libyan sand.

It was just after midnight.

The Muslim holy month had begun.

Okba ben Nafi Air Base lay 130 miles due east.

Abu Nidal had spent the evening in his suite at Casino du Liban, monitoring news broadcasts for signs of a response to his ultimatum. It was a futile vigil.

At precisely midnight, he shut off the radio and television, turned toward Mecca, and fell to his knees, touching his forehead to the ground; joining Muslims throughout the Middle East, he recited to himself the traditional call to prayer for the start of Ramadan as prescribed by the Koran.

God is greatest. God is greatest. I testify there is no god save God and that Mohammed is the apostle of God. Up to prayer, up to salvation, prayer is better than sleep. God is greatest. God is greatest. There is no god, but God.

Then he took a vial of insulin from the small refrigerator in his suite, shot the medication into the roll of flesh at his abdomen, and went to bed.

The following morning, the sun streamed across the Mediter-ranean with customary brilliance.

Katifa had kept to herself, spending time in her quarters, which overlooked the marina and entrance road; this allowed her to quietly monitor arrivals and departures. Now she heard the throb of diesel engines and went to the window. Far below, the gunboat was nosing into one of the concrete slips. Crewmen were throwing housers to Palestinians on the dock, who lashed them to pilings.

Abu Nidal strode down the gangway from the casino. Perfect timing, he thought, glancing at his watch. Washington, D.C., was seven hours behind Lebanon and he had planned that the first hostage would be executed and delivered to the United States Embassy in Beirut not immediately upon the onset of Ramadan but midway through the first day. This ensured sufficient time for the media — who had been notified in advance and therefore would be present to witness the gruesome discovery — to write and transmit their stories, photographs, and videotapes for the evening television news programs.

Nidal watched as the blanket-covered stretcher was carried from the gunboat and down the gangway; then he followed it across the dock to the casino.

Katifa left the window and locked her door; then she took the unopened pack of cigarettes from her purse. She quickly removed the cellophane wrapper, hinged the top, and removed the foil closure, revealing the radio transmitter beneath: black plastic fascia, minuscule anodized microphone grille, and antenna — which she telescoped out before pressing the single control button. In a tense whisper she said, “Tell Mr. Stengel the first hostage has arrived. I repeat, the first hostage has arrived at Casino du Liban.” She compressed the antenna, closed the top, and slipped the pack into her jacket pocket.

Later that afternoon she was summoned to the amphitheater. Nidal was standing on the stage surrounded by several dozen guerrillas. The crowd of young men and women parted as Katifa approached. She felt the weight of their eyes, then sensed a figure hanging from the trapeze apparatus above the stage. It sent a macabre chill through her.

“The deadline has passed; long passed,” Nidal announced. “We have had no response to our demands. It is time for Intifada to become more than just a word that the Western media uses to add spice to their headlines; indeed, it is time for the person who gave our uprising its name to give it meaning.”

Nidal took a knife from his pocket and snapped the blade open. “The weapon that killed your brother,” he said, offering it to Katifa.

She stepped forward, knowing that, this time, she had little choice but to play out the scenario.

The instant her fingers closed around the knurled grip, the kliegs came on, illuminating the trapeze with a blast of cold light. And there directly in front of her, hanging upside down and naked, his legs lashed to the ornate, velvet-sheathed apparatus, was Moncrieff.

Katifa recoiled and gasped. “No! No!” she shouted in an anguished plea, the knife slipping from her hand.

Nidal smiled slyly and picked it up. “Now, loyal daughter,” he said evenly, “you will tell your brothers and sisters why you are really here.”

Moncrieff’s eyes widened; he squirmed on the apparatus and muttered something from beneath the tape that was stretched across his mouth.

“You wish to speak?” Nidal taunted. He grasped the tape and tore it from his face.

The Saudi screamed in pain. Blood oozed from his lips where the tape had stripped them raw. “Don’t… don’t tell him,” he groaned.

Katifa winced, averting her eyes. The thought of what would happen next made her skin crawl. She shuddered as Nidal put the point of the blade to Moncrieff’s waist, and flicked his wrist, sending the first half inch of gleaming steel into the Saudi’s flesh. Blood oozed from the cut and ran along the edge of the blade. Nidal looked sideways at Katifa. “Why are you here?” he prompted, as the group of young Palestinians closed in around her.

“No,” Moncrieff protested through painfully clenched teeth. “Don’t tell him.”

“His life for information?” Nidal prompted. “Why did you return? What are you doing here?”

Katifa’s lips tightened as she wrestled with it.

“No, they’ll kill me anyway,” Moncrieff warned.

“I guarantee it if you don’t,” Nidal hissed coolly.

“Please take him down from there.” Her voice cracked with emotion. “Please. I’ll tell you.”

Nidal nodded to the guerrilla who was working the controls. The apparatus slowly lowered Moncrieff to the stage. He lay there, bloodied and exhausted, staring up blankly at Katifa, who had rushed to his side. Nidal brusquely pulled her to her feet and took her to the communications room backstage.

“I’m listening,” he said, glowering at her.

“The Americans,” she replied haltingly. “They… they wanted to know where the hostages were going to be taken for execution.”

The implication dawned on Nidal. “They’re planning a rescue?”

“Yes.”

“Here?”

“The submarine.”

“They know about it?”

She nodded apprehensively.

“When?”

“I don’t know. I don’t.”

Nidal was shaken but he knew the Exchequer would have contacted him at the first sign of trouble. He cursed that he had no way of initiating communication. The time was 6:14 P.M.

In two hours and forty-six minutes, the Romeo would check in and Nidal would warn him.

50

Shepherd and Brancato had spent the night driving the Transportpanzer across the bleak landscape of the Libyan desert. They crossed four north-south roads en route. The first three were narrow, little-used ribbons of macadam broken by drifting sand. The last was Pepsi Cola Road, a motorway connecting Tripoli and the industrial city of Ghariyan 75 miles to the south. It was primarily used by trucks ferrying raw materials and finished products to and from the factories.

Shepherd brought the Transportpanzer to a stop about a quarter of a mile from the road. They waited until the pinpoints of distant headlights couldn’t be seen in either direction, then continued their journey.

The time was 7:14 A.M. when they arrived at the patch of heavily forrested terrain Brancato had spotted on the maps, and concealed the TTP in the cool shade of a stand of cedars and pines nourished by a nearby oasis.

Okba ben Nafi Air Base lay 30 miles due north.

“You sure you want to do this?” Shepherd asked as they shrouded the Transportpanzer with a camouflage net they had found in one of the storage compartments.

“Hell of a time to ask.”

“We can wait until dark, turn right around and—”

Brancato shook his head no. “I can.”

Shepherd shrugged forlornly and stretched out on the ground beneath the trees, exhausted. “I mean the chances of pulling this off are pretty damn remote.”

Brancato nodded, then sat opposite him.

“I just keep thinking about Steph and Marie and the kids. No sense both of us—”

“And my dog. You forgot my dog.”

“Al, I’m serious,” Shepherd said in weary protest.

“So am I. If I don’t run him, nobody does. Marie said he put on ten pounds while I was in the hospital. I miss him, you know? I mean, jogging every morning with those big paws padding along next to me, slobbery mouth drooling all over everything. God, it’s just… I don’t know, there’s a bond there. Of course I’m the only one who understands him. Really, he’d be lost without me. You ever see a dog laugh? This dog laughs — at jokes. I was thinking of trying to get him on David Letterman, but he’s…” Brancato paused and laughed to himself.

Shepherd was sound asleep.

They spent the day taking turns sleeping and rummaging through the compartments, removing the items they would use — handguns, walkie-talkies, military clothing among them.

As the sun began dropping toward the horizon they removed the camouflage net and started the Transportpanzer rolling across the desert.

About an hour later darkness had fallen, and Okba ben Nafi loomed in the distance, a dusty mirage enclosed by an endless chainlink fence topped with razor wire.

Brancato directed Shepherd to a desolate corner of the airfield, well beyond the end of the runways. Shepherd let the TTP inch forward until the leading edge of its angled snout was flush against one of the pipes that supported the miles of chainlink; a little more gas and the 40,000-pound vehicle began advancing, gradually bending the pipe toward the ground until the adjacent sections of fence lay flat against the sand and the eight huge combat tires rolled over them onto the air base.

Shepherd kept the running lights off until he left the sand for a paved road that cut across the taxiways with geometric precision. Soon the ribbed texture of sheetmetal hangars marched to the horizon. The TTP rumbled past them in the direction of hangar 6-South, where the F-111s were housed.

Shepherd and Brancato exchanged anxious looks at the sight of one of the bombers. It was being towed through the open sliders onto the tarmac for its preflight check. They circled the hangar toward the personnel entrance, which was guarded by armed sentries.

In Beirut, a chilling scream echoed through Casino du Liban’s marble corridors. It was Katifa’s scream; a scream of horror and forlorn protest. Upon returning to the amphitheater, she discovered Moncrieff once again suspended upside down above the stage. As the Saudi had suspected, Abu Nidal had no intention of sparing his life. On the contrary, as the terrorist leader had planned when postponing the Romeo’s departure for Beirut, he would be the first hostage executed and delivered to the United States Embassy.

Now Katifa stood but several feet from Moncrieff. Two women held her arms; one of the men clutched fistfuls of her hair, keeping her from looking away. But as Nidal slowly inserted the knife into the cut he had made in Moncrieff’s flesh earlier, Katifa struggled free, smashed an elbow into the face of one of the women, and went for Nidal. The guerrilla who had hold of her hair yanked backwards, stopping her abruptly, and brought the grip of his pistol down hard across the side of her head. She screamed and fell to the floor, unconscious.

The next scream was Moncrieff’s.

Beneath the Aegean, the Cavalla was concealed behind a basaltic ridge that crested just north of the Crete-Karpathos gap.

Cooperman had the BQS-6 bow array in passive mode, using the computer-linked DIMUS program to separate frequency ranges, when he heard the faint hiss on his headsets. He straightened in his chair, pressed a hand to an earphone, and was soon listening to the telltale beat of twin propeller cavitation; he ran an acoustic signature comparison, then buzzed the control room.

“Lover boy’s heading for Beirut, skipper,” he reported. “ETA our position twenty-one hundred.”

“You’re positive it’s him?”

“Ac-sig’s a perfect match.”

Duryea turned the conn over to McBride and went up the companionway to the SEALs’ quarters on A-deck. The bulkhead adjacent to the door still displayed the pictures of the hostages; the one opposite was covered with the construction drawings of the Romeo.

Four salvage/rescue valves on the exterior hull had been circled in yellow and numbered. They allowed air to be injected into an incapacitated submarine to save the crew and/or float the vessel, and were spaced out the length of the hull in the event bulkhead doors had been closed, sealing off compartments. On another drawing, the salvage hatch forward of the sail, through which divers could enter the vessel, had been outlined in red. Passageways leading to compartments where the hostages might be quartered had also been marked. The plastic shipping container from the Office of Technical Services at Langley was on the floor in front of the drawings. Lieutenant Reyes was sitting on it, refining his plan, when Captain Duryea came through the joiner door.

“Target coming in, Lieutenant.”

A thin smile tugged at the corners of Reyes’s mouth. “Showtime,” he called out to the members of his team, who came surging into the compartment in response. The SEALs went directly to their equipment lockers and began suiting up as Reyes opened the shipping container.

The interior was divided into a six-section egg crate. Each contained a steel pressure vessel, delivery hose, and valve assembly. Reyes removed one from its cushioned sleeve. Painted bright yellow, it resembled a scuba tank; but its gaseous contents would have a far different effect on human consciousness.

Halothane was a general anesthetic that acted on the central nervous system. Commonly used for surgical procedures, the odorless gas was a benign compound with negligible aftereffects. It induced a deep state of unconsciousness within 30 seconds of inhalation.

The SEALs prepared with an economy of movement and conversation. They had already rehearsed every step of the mission; each man had his assignment; each knew individual scuba tanks would be used and carried in standard two-bottle rigs with the tank of halothane.

“Black fitting goes in the regulator, yellow in the sub; black in the regulator, yellow in the sub,” Reyes recited, making certain no one had inadvertently connected the wrong hose to his breathing apparatus. “I don’t want any of you guys getting off on this stuff.”

“I’ll wake you just prior to launch,” Duryea joked, heading for the communications room.

The time was exactly 7:54 P.M.

At Okba Ben Nafi Air Base, a sentry stationed outside hangar 6-South noticed the Transportpanzer approaching. It drove past him and rumbled to a stop near the personnel entrance, where another sentry, cradling an AK-47, stood guard.

Two Libyan military officers exited the massive vehicle and strode boldly toward him. Both wore desert camouflage fatigues, sidearms, maroon berets, and sunglasses; security badges were clipped to their pockets. Two gold stars and an eagle on their epaulets identified them as aqids, or colonels. The sentry snapped to attention and saluted. The officers returned it and entered the hangar through the personnel door.

Once inside the hangar, they proceeded down a corridor lined with offices. Though normally staffed with technicians and clerical personnel, most were empty since the workday had been shortened due to Ramadan, as Brancato had predicted.

In the life-support room, two Libyan aviators who were about to fly a practice mission in the F-111 were at their lockers suiting up when the door half-opened. A colonel appeared, snapped his fingers, pointed to the aviator nearest the door, and gestured authoritatively that he join him outside. The Libyan stepped into the corridor, the door closing behind him. The last thing he remembered was a rustle of clothing before Brancato, who was concealed behind the door, brought the grip of a pistol down hard across the back of his head.

Boldness, conviction, and the element of surprise.

Boldness, conviction, and the element of surprise.

Boldness, conviction, and the element of surprise.

The instructor at survival-training school had drummed it into all his pupils and now Shepherd and Brancato knew why. They repeated the scenario with the second aviator, then dragged both back into the life-support room and stuffed them inside empty lockers.

A short time later, on the tarmac just outside the hangar, the crew chief and assistant crew chief, who were preparing the F-111 for flight, heard the ear-shattering clang of a fire alarm. They left the plane, hurrying through the hangar into the corridors outside the life-support room and offices, where smoke billowed.

Shepherd and Brancato, suited up in flight gear from the life support room, were concealed in an ordnance storage bay nearby. As soon as the Libyans had passed, they slipped into the hangar and split up: Shepherd headed for the F-111 on the tarmac, Brancato for the one still in the hangar, intending to destroy it via a built-in self-destruct mechanism. Activated by setting a delayed-action timer in the cockpit, it would literally fry all the electronics, avionics, and weapons systems.

Inside the life-support room, flames were roaring up a wall from the trash barrel in which Shepherd and Brancato had started a fire before pulling the alarm. The Libyans were battling the blaze with extinguishers. A sentry who had also responded to the alarm heard a pounding from within a steel locker. He discovered one of the Libyan aviators, who had regained consciousness. A brief exchange sent the sentry dashing down the corridor toward the hangar.

Brancato had just reached the bomber and was about to climb the ladder to the cockpit when he heard the hangar door opening behind him. He whirled, pistol in hand, and opened fire. The sentry went down. Brancato spotted another Libyan through the glass panel in the door, who was running down the corridor toward the hangar. He fired several shots, shattering the glass. The sentry kept coming. Brancato left the hangar, running toward the F-111 on the tarmac.

Moments earlier, Shepherd had crouched to the main landing gear and reached up inside the wheel well, removing a khaki-colored can that contained a starter cartridge. Manufactured by Morton-Thiokol, it was a slow-burning explosive device used to start the engines when pneumatic blower units weren’t available. Shepherd had a far better reason for using it — the standard pneumatic start took 5 minutes; a cart start took 20 seconds. He opened the left side SOAP door and inserted the cartridge into the starter breech, moistening the pins with saliva to ensure electrical contact; then he secured the door and went up the ladder to the cockpit.

Shepherd already had the battery turned on and the starter switch in cart when he heard the gunshots and saw Brancato running from the hangar. He lifted the throttle on the number one engine, sending voltage to the starter breech and fuel to the engines simultaneously. The cartridge exploded, ballistically winding the engine to start speed.

Brancato was climbing into the cockpit as the pursuing sentry neared the bomber. The Libyan paused and jacked his AK-47; then, uncertain about blasting one of Qaddafi’s prized F-111s with the machine gun, he dashed to the ladder that lay against the fuselage and started climbing.

Brancato reached over the side of the cockpit and fired his pistol. The bullet hit the Libyan in the center of the chest with tremendous force and knocked him backwards. The ladder went with him, saving Brancato the task of shoving it aside.

The tachometer had just ticked 17,000 as Brancato dropped into the seat next to Shepherd. “I couldn’t pull the plug,” he said. “They were all over me.”

“We’ll just have to find another way,” Shepherd said with a thin smile as he started the bomber rolling.

While guiding it through the darkness, they went about hooking up oxygen and G-suit hoses and plugging in com-cords. By the time they had finished, the air that was being forced through the second engine by the plane’s forward momentum had the turbine winding at high speed, and Shepherd lifted the throttle, starting it.

“Master arm on,” Shepherd said, throwing the switch that energized the bomber’s weapons systems. “Manual release; select two and seven.”

“Manual; select two and seven,” Brancato echoed, reaching to the stores select panel in the right console. The plane was approaching the top of the runway as he pressed the numbered keys, arming the Mark 82 bombs that hung from pylons below the wings.

In Beirut, television camera crews were waiting outside the U.S. Embassy when a van turned into Avenue de Paris. As it went past, two Palestinians, faces masked by kaffiyehs, pushed a rolled carpet out the sliding door onto the macadam. Marine sentries cordoned it off and radioed for a bomb disposal unit.

Minutes later, the specially attired and equipped crew came from within the compound. They carefully unrolled the richly colored Persian that once graced a suite in Casino du Liban, discovering Moncrieff’s skinned carcass inside.

Soon after, in the embassy’s communications center, the dedicated radio channel crackled to life.

“Tell Mr. Stengel that Abu Nidal knows about the rescue operation,” Katifa reported in a shaky voice. After Moncrieff’s execution, she had been carried to the basement and locked in a stone-walled cavern that had once been the casino’s wine cellar. She regained consciousness several hours later and, fighting to shut out the memory of the horrifying events, took the cigarette-packaged transmitter from her jacket. “I repeat, Abu Nidal knows about the rescue operation.”

“What action does he plan to take?” came the reply.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know if the submarine has been warned?”

“No, it hasn’t. Nidal can’t make radio contact until nine o’clock.”

The time in Washington, D.C., was 1:05 P.M.

Early that morning Bill Kiley had awakened to news reports of Moncrieff’s kidnapping. Some fishermen had found his abandoned limousine on the banks of the Red Sea; the chauffeur’s corpse was in the trunk. A short time later the U.S. Embassy in Beirut relayed the message that the first hostage had arrived at Casino du Liban, and the DCI knew to his horror just how Nidal proposed to carry out his threat.

Now the DCI was in his office, waiting for the rescue mission to commence when his intercom buzzed.

“CNN’s on the line sir,” his secretary said. “They want to know if you’re interested in commenting on a special bulletin they’re about to air.”

Kiley turned on the TV; an anchorman reported that a Saudi businessman had been executed and delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut; the letters CIA had been carved in what was left of his naked corpse.

“No,” Kiley hissed, infuriated. “Get the embassy.”

“They’re calling on the other line, sir.”

“Why does the media always know before I do?” Kiley bellowed into the phone. The Beirut station chief ignored the tirade and briefed him on Katifa’s message. The DCI was convinced beyond doubt that if the Romeo was warned prior to the rescue attempt, all the hostages would be executed.

Kiley left his office, went to the communications center in the subbasement, and commandeered one of the technicians and his console. “I need Captain Duryea on the Cavalla. Flash priority; voice channel; code red.”

The com-tech doubted that the Cavalla had a radio mast or buoy deployed but tried a voice channel anyway, to no avail. Next he typed up the alert and cabled it. “No acknowledgment, sir,” he said, failing to get the signal tone that meant it had been received.

“We’ve got fifty million bucks worth of radio equipment in here and you can’t reach a submarine?” Kiley snapped. “This is an emergency. Find a way!”

“Yes, sir,” the harried technician replied. He sent the same cable on several bands with the same result. “Still no response, sir.”

“Which bands have you tried?”

“UH and VHF, sir. ELF would take an hour just to—”

“What about HF?” the DCI demanded, referring to the high frequency band, commonly used for intrafleet communications. “You try that?”

“No, sir.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“That’s an unsecured net, sir.”

“I don’t give a damn what it is. Lives are at stake here! Lives. Do it!”

Moments before the DCI had arrived, a printer in an adjacent room had come to life. The technician had torn off the incoming cable and was in the process of routing it to the DCI’s office when she glimpsed Kiley through the glass partition. She retrieved the cable and went through the door into the communications room.

“From the Cavalla, sir,” she said, delivering it.

Kiley eased slightly, assuming it would acknowledge receipt of his message, but to his dismay it read:

Kiley paled; the UNODIR meant the Cavalla’s radio had been shut off. His mind raced frantically in search of options and found one. “Get me the fleet admiral on the America,” he ordered the com-tech. “Come on, come on.” He was on the verge of losing control.

At Okba Ben Nafi Air Base, Shepherd had the F-111 barreling down the runway: blow-in doors open, wing-sweep at 16 degrees, flaps at 25, slats down, spoilers up, and throttles homed, disregarding the angry voices of control tower personnel coming over the radio. Brancato muttered an expletive and shut it off as Shepherd rotated the nose up and the bomber leapt into the darkness. Shepherd immediately banked right, aligning the bomber with the hangar where the second F-111 was still housed. His eyes were locked on the HUD, where light spilling across the tarmac far below moved onto the cross arrows of the optical gunsight, then he pressed the red button on his control stick, pickling off the preselected ordnance.

Two Mark 82 low level attack bombs dropped from the BRUs. The arming wires set the fuses and deployed tiny parachutes that slowed their descent to the target, giving the F-111 time to exit the area prior to impact.

Shepherd pulled the stick back slightly and pushed hard left, putting the aircraft into a high-G turn as the two 500 pounders turned the hangar and the remaining F-111 into a fireball. Shepherd leveled off, keeping the plane at low altitude, well below the range of Libyan air defense radar.

“Piece of cake,” Brancato hooted.

“Yeah, the hard part comes next,” Shepherd said, heading directly over Tripoli toward the Mediterranean, which was the quickest route out of Libyan air space.

“What’re you driving at?”

“We’re coming out of Tripoli with Libyan markings and an outdated transponder code smack into the Sixth Fleet’s front yard,” Shepherd replied, concerned that fleet commanders might mistake the F-111 for an attacking Libyan jet and launch interceptors or surface-to-air missiles to destroy it. “Better pull up your HF buttons and see if anything’s going on.”

“Fleet common, eagle-one,” Brancato responded, switching on the high-frequency radio to monitor fleet operations. “Usual ops chitchat,” he reported. “Sounds quiet otherwise.”

Shepherd was just starting to relax when the radar, scanning on open priority, skin-painted a raw return. The lack of an IFF symbol next to the blip left no doubt it was hostile. “Bogie at six miles,” he announced, realizing it was one of the Libyan SU-22s that had taken off earlier to escort the bomber.

Brancato fine-tuned the attack radar scope, targeting the interceptor. “Okay, I got him. He’s jinking onto our nose… five miles… four.”

“Select fox one, fox one,” Shepherd barked, referring to one of four Aim-9 Sidewinder missiles carried on sidemounts affixed to the outboard pylons.

“Fox one,” Brancato echoed, his eyes now glued to the moving target indicator, the graphic aviators call the death dot, which was chasing the SU-22’s signal. “Okay,” he said as the MTI became fixed on the blip. “He’s locked up. He’s locked up.”

“I’ve got a tone,” Shepherd said, pickling it off.

The Sidewinder rocketed from the mount with a loud whoosh and left a fiery 1,900 MPH trail in the darkness. Seconds later a distant explosion lit up the sky.

On the USS America, the fleet admiral was being briefed on the situation via radio by Kiley. He was puzzled by the DCI’s desperate tone and use of the HF band, unaware that the com-tech had been bullied into using it to contact the Cavalla and had unthinkingly remained on it when calling the carrier. “Excuse me, sir,” the admiral interjected softly, “but it behooves me to point out that we’re on an unsecured channel.”

“I don’t care what we’re on, Admiral,” Kiley snapped. “My point is, the only way to stop Nidal from warning that Romeo is to take out his headquarters.”

“You’re suggesting an air strike?”

“Damn right.”

“That’s an act of war, sir,” the admiral replied warily. “It will require a declaration by Congress or a direct order from the president. I have neither.”

“You have a direct order from the director of Central Intelligence, dammit!”

“I understand that sir, but…”

The F-111 was streaking low over the Mediterranean on a heading for D’Jerba when Brancato, still monitoring the HF band, switched it to Shepherd’s headset. “Hey, listen to this.”

“Then do it, Admiral,” Kiley’s voice demanded. “Target coordinates are three four/zero one/five two, north; three five/three eight/two zero, east. Got it?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” the admiral replied. “There’s nothing I’d like better than taking out that son of a bitch, believe me; but I’m forced to—”

“Nidal’s already killed one hostage! If Casino du Liban isn’t turned into a parking lot by nine o’clock, they’re all going to die! All of them!”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the admiral replied, agonizing over the decision. “I can’t order an air strike on another nation without proper authorization.”

“You’re not attacking a nation, you’re taking out a terrorist stronghold! Paint a hammer and sickle on one of your A-sixes and get on with it.”

“Sir, I’d fly the mission myself if I could, but under the circumstances I respectfully suggest there is no point in carrying this conversation any further.”

Shepherd and Brancato exchanged looks. No discussion was necessary. On Brancato’s nod, Shepherd made an abrupt change in course. While Brancato went about transposing the coordinates to ANITA for entry into the Pave Tack computer, Shepherd climbed into cloud cover 13,000 feet above the sea, pushed the throttles to the stops, and swept the wings back to 72 degrees.

The F-111 bolted forward on a heading for Beirut.

The mach gauge swiftly climbed to 2.5.

Soon the sleek bomber was streaking through the pitch blackness at 1,650 MPH. At 28 miles a minute it could cover the 1,225 miles in under 44 minutes; and though Tripoli was geographically aligned with Western Europe — almost 30 degrees latitude west of Beirut — both cities, along with the Greek Islands, were in the same time zone. It was 8:11 P.M.

At CIA headquarters, Kiley left communications and went to the lobby, clutching the UNODIR; he stood gazing at the memorial wall, seized by an overwhelming sense of failure and depression. Push would soon come to shove. Technically, the UNODIR would cover him, but the responsibility was his, and he took no solace in it. He returned to his office, went to the wall safe behind the Chinese screen, and encoded the combination on the keypad. The safe held cash, top-secret code books, a standard CIA issue pistol, and numerous red file folders. Duryea’s first UNODIR lay atop a pile of cables. Kiley removed it, leaving the safe open, and went to the shredder next to his desk. The first UNODIR went into the laser-honed blades with a precise whirr, spilling in ribbons into the burn bag below. He fed in the second; then, his hands shaking uncontrollably, he took the Polaroid of Fitzgerald from his desk. “I’m sorry, Tom,” he said, eyes glistening with emotion.

On the Cavalla, the SEALs had suited up, clambered through the hatch into the dry deck shelter atop the Cavalla’s hull, and settled in the SDV’s cockpits.

Duryea sealed the hatch and filled the DDS with seawater. Reyes opened the aft bulkhead but, instead of piloting the swimmer delivery vehicle into the depths, he waited until the Romeo was abeam of the basaltic ridge that concealed the Cavalla from its sonar.

Now with the sound of the Romeo’s propellers and diesels to mask the noise of the launch, Reyes turned on the hydroelectric propulsion system and the SDV, its searchlight piercing the cobalt depths, rocketed into the Aegean in pursuit of the submarine.

The plastic-hulled vessel and its six passengers offered imperceptible profiles to radar and active sonar; furthermore, by approaching directly aft in the submarine’s blindspot, Reyes ensured any ambient sound would blend with that made by the Romeo itself. He guided the SDV into position below and behind the hull as it began slowly surfacing to periscope-antenna depth in preparation for contacting Abu Nidal.

The time was 8:41 P.M.

Five minutes later in Casino du Liban, Nidal clambered down the grand staircase from his quarters and strode purposefully through the gaming room and amphitheater to the backstage communications center.

“Have you tried communicating with the submarine?”

“No, sir. Exchequer never calls this early.”

Nidal bristled with frustration at the limitations of submarine communications and the Romeo’s archaic system, which ruled out any contact with the vessel when submerged. “Isn’t it possible that he has already surfaced and is waiting until twenty-one hundred to initiate communication?”

“Yes, sir,” the radioman replied apprehensively.

“And if he is, doesn’t that mean we could contact him right now?”

The radioman nodded. “It is also possible his transmitter is turned off.”

“Try anyway.”

“Come in, Exchequer,” the radioman said into his microphone. “Come in, Exchequer. Do you read?” To Nidal’s consternation, there was no reply. The radioman tried several more times with the same result.

The F-111 was streaking down the center of the Mediterranean 175 miles north of the Egyptian coast.

Shepherd was keeping a wary eye on the systems caution panel, where the sensor that monitored the bomber’s skin temperature was flashing intermittently, indicating heat buildup would soon begin to affect various parts of the airframe and electronics.

“Time to go, six plus thirty,” Shepherd said, pressing the front of his helmet against the HUD cushion to steady his vision. They were approximately 250 miles from the target as he put the plane into a dive. At 1,500 feet, he began pulling out, easing onto level flight barely 200 feet over the sea; then he reached to the center console, activated the terrain following radar, and looped a fore-finger around the paddle switch on the backside of the control stick. This was a safety device that, if released, would automatically and instantly put the plane into a 4-G climb should the TFR malfunction.

The bomber was in all-out supersonic dash now, its speed and altitude making it virtually impossible for Lebanese defense radar to skin-paint it.

“What do we have left?” Shepherd asked.

“Four GBU-fifteens, on three through six.”

“Three through six, it is; let’s ripple them off.”

“Select three, four, five, and six,” Brancato echoed, punching in the data. “Ripple salvo.”

“We’re approaching the mark,” Shepherd intoned, eyes riveted to the rapidly changing data on the video display system — longitude, latitude, altitude, angle of attack, air speed, and time to release. “TTR two plus thirty,” he announced, watching the latter count down.

Brancato thumbed a button on the attack radar console. The Pave Tack pod rotated out of its bay in the F-111’s belly and began scanning the terrain below.

“One minute,” Shepherd said, scrutinizing the VDS as he punched the ECM button, releasing chaff and flares into the bomber’s slipstream.

Brancato’s eyes were riveted to the two images on the multi-systems display, where the alphanumerics and the infrared image of the sea were visible. Soon the craggy Beirut coastline moved into view.

“Thirty seconds,” Shepherd said. “Twenty… ten…”

“Target acquired,” Brancato replied seconds later as the columns of alphanumerics coincided and the image of the casino moved onto the crosshairs. He used the control handle to align it, then locked on and hit the laser button. A pencil-thin beam of red light pulsed from the Pave Tack pod, sliced through the blackness, and locked onto Casino du Liban.

Shepherd turned over control of the bomb release mechanism to the computer, keeping the pickle button depressed, as the time to release counted down.

At all zeroes, four GBU-15s automatically rippled off 3-6-4-5 from the BRUs and began tracking on the laser.

Shepherd put the bomber into a sharp toss to avoid the upcoming explosion, but the gimbaled Pave Tack pod rotated on its mount, keeping the pulsing laser locked on the casino. The bombs lined up nose to tail like lemmings and began following it to the target.

The time in Beirut was 8:57 P.M.

Abu Nidal was hovering over the communications console, awaiting the Romeo’s call when he heard the telltale whistle and froze; seconds later, the first bomb scored a direct hit on the marina, blowing the floating gangways and 50-ton gunboat to pieces. He was dashing through the amphitheater when the second hit.

An avalanche of equipment — the catwalks, lighting grid, winch unit, and cables of the trapeze apparatus — fell from the rafters, knocking him to the floor. He became entangled in the velvet-sheathed cables and was struggling to free himself when the third and fourth bombs came through the roof of the adjacent gaming room, where the drums of Semtex plastique and crates of ammunition were stored. They erupted in a series of massive explosions that sent a roaring fireball into the blackness above Casino du Liban.

Below, in the wine cellar, Katifa huddled in a corner as the earth shook with the terrifying fury of a castastrophic quake. The last thundering explosion shattered the stone walls that entombed her, pummeling her with debris. She heard the roaring fire and felt the rising heat and then a draft. She crawled from beneath the rubble and along the floor through the smoke, following the cool air to a section of wall that had been blown away and went out the gaping hole onto the hillside, stumbling down the steep incline to the beach.

Another blast ripped through Casino du Liban.

Katifa felt the shock wave and whirled at the sound. She stood there at the edge of the surf, the choppy surface a patina of pulsating red-orange reflections, and watched as the roaring inferno consumed what little was left of the legendary gaming palace. Her thoughts came in a numbing rush. In a matter of months she had lost her brother, her lover, and the man who had raised her. She had lost them all; and for what? Indeed, the most painful part was that they were gone and she really didn’t quite know why. Her eyes welled and sent tears rolling down her cheeks. She remained there for what seemed an eternity, feeling hollow and terribly alone, before she slipped away in the darkness.

Beneath the surface of the Aegean, the Romeo was dead in the water at periscope-antenna depth. Fifty feet astern, the SDV was approaching in line with the engine and props, and away from the bow-mounted sonar. In the submarine’s control room, the Syrian captain stepped back from the periscope and snapped up the handles. “Down scope; raise the antenna mast.”

Exchequer, the Palestinian in charge of the hostages, crossed to the radio room, accompanied by the captain.

“Ready to transmit,” the radioman reported.

The Palestinian watched the time count down and, as always, nodded at precisely 2100 hours. The operator turned on his radio and handed him the microphone. “This is the Exchequer,” the Palestinian said in Arabic. “This is the Exchequer. Do you read?” The speaker crackled and hissed with dead air. He swung a baffled look to the radioman. “You have your transmitter on?”

“Of course,” he replied, equally puzzled. “One of the amplifiers may have blown a fuse.” He crouched to an access panel and went about removing it.

Outside, underwater searchlights slashed the black depths as the SEALs left the SDV and swarmed like foraging sharks over the Romeo’s hull. One SEAL went with Reyes to the access hatch. Four swam to preassigned rescue valves.

Each affixed a suction-mounted handhold to the hull, then reached to the yellow tank on his back and unfurled the delivery hose. It terminated in a flexible plastic fitting that had been perfectly mated by OTS engineers at Langley to the valves on the Romeo’s hull, enabling the two to be coupled quickly and silently.

It was 9:08 P.M. by the time the hookups were made and each man had flashed his light, signaling he was ready. Reyes returned the signal and the SEALs simultaneously opened the valves, gradually releasing the halothane into the submarine, permeating compartments from bow to stern.

“The transmitter is functioning perfectly,” the radioman reported, feeling the effects of the halothane and shaking his head to clear it.

“Perhaps Beirut has had a power failure?” the captain offered. It happened often in the war-ravaged city and made perfect sense.

“What about their emergency generators?” the Palestinian countered.

The radioman slurred an unintelligible reply and slumped forward over the console.

“What is the matter with him?” the Palestinian asked, turning to the captain, who was bending over the radioman with concern when the phone buzzed. A machinist’s mate reported that several seamen in the engine room had passed out; others were becoming groggy.

“What is happening?” the Palestinian demanded, feeling light-headed and faltering as he spoke.

“Carbon monoxide,” the captain deduced, turning back to the phone. “Check the exhaust system; there must be an internal leak somewhere.” He paused, shaking off a growing drowsiness, then turned to the helmsman. “Surface and open all…” He bit off the sentence when he saw him hanging over the controls.

Outside in the frigid water, Reyes was poised over the salvage hatch, timing the halothane. He waited an extra 30 seconds before opening the hatch. Water poured into the air lock below. He and the other SEAL slithered inside and pulled it closed; then they pumped out the water, opened the interior hatch, and dropped into the Romeo, continuing to breathe through their scuba gear to avoid being affected by the anesthesia that hung in the air.

Seamen were lying on the deck, slumped in chairs, hanging over their equipment. One of the Palestinians who had been guarding the hostages stumbled toward them and fired a wild shot from a pistol. Reyes pulled the trigger on his spear gun. The barbed dart stabbed into the terrorist’s chest, driving him backwards. The lieutenant made his way through the passageways, checking compartments as he went, finally coming upon the hostages in the ward room. All seven were on the floor; all were chained to bulkheads; all were sleeping like babies.

The master caution light on the F-111’s instrument panel was on steady. The supersonic dash had burned fuel at an incredible rate and it was dangerously low as the bomber streaked over the Mediterranean.

“Israel? Cyprus?” Brancato asked. “What do you say?”

Shepherd considered it for a long moment. “I say either one would blow the whole thing, if you know what I mean,” he finally replied.

Brancato nodded emphatically. “Where else?”

“How about America? The USS America.”

“Oh, boy.” Brancato blanched at the prospect of a night landing on a postage stamp pitching in a rolling sea.

Shepherd contacted the carrier, identified himself and the aircraft, and requested a clear to land.

“You say a one-eleven, Viper-Two?” the America’s air ops officer replied incredulously.

“Affirmative. I’m lightweight; we carry a tail hook and have arrester experience.”

“Not on seven-hundred-foot runways. Suggest you divert to Haifa or Nicosia. Do you copy?”

“Negative,” Shepherd replied. “We’ll never make it. We’re too close to flame out.”

“Ditch, Viper-Two. We’ll fish you out.”

“Negative. I don’t have time to get into it. Tell the admiral mission accomplished and give him these coordinates if he needs convincing,” Shepherd replied, going on to recite the coordinates for Casino du Liban.

Moments later, the admiral came on the radio. “Major Shepherd?”

“Yes, sir. May I ask if you know who I am?”

“Affirmative, Major. What the hell are you doing up there in a one-eleven anyway?”

“Bringing it home to clear my name, sir.”

“And you took out that target along the way?” the admiral said, his tone a mixture of hope and disbelief.

“Yes, sir; in an aircraft with Libyan markings out of Okba ben Nafi. I suggest we have little to gain by revealing that U.S. military personnel were in the cockpit.”

“I agree. We have you on radar; we’ll put up an A-six to talk you down.”

“That’s a copy, sir. Thank you.”

A short time later the Intruder came up in the lane off the F-111’s left wing. “Okay, Air Force, I’ll take you all the way in,” the pilot said in a calm, reassuring tone. “The name of the game here is overshoot. You can always bolt, get back in the pattern, and make another approach. Copy?”

“Copy.”

“If fuel permits,” Brancato chimed in, grimly.

“You’ll pick up the glide slope at two miles, six hundred feet. We usually beam up a computer graphic as a guide. Since you’re not equipped to pick it up, you’ll have to eyeball it. What’s your air speed?”

“Two three zero,” Shepherd replied as the carrier’s lights rose at the edge of blackness far below.

“You want to be at one four five when you get there; flaps should be in take off, slats extended, gear down, hook down…”

Shepherd called out the moves as he made them. A hard pull on the yellow and black handle dropped the arrester hook from the fairing beneath the tail.

“Okay, there’s an optical landing system on the port side of the runway area. That’s the left for you Aardvark drivers. It has three lights: a yellow one called the ball and two green ones.”

“Yeah, I see it.”

“Good. The idea is to keep the ball centered between the greens. That keeps you in proper orientation to the glide path. The landing signal officer on deck is going to ask you to call the ball — if you can see it.”

“Copy that.”

“Okay. Keep the angle of attack indexer on-speed and stay on center-line. Soon as you see the drop lights dive for the deck.”

“That’s a copy,” Shepherd replied.

“I got him,” the LSO said over the radio. “Three-quarters of mile, you’re on the glide, Viper-Two, just right of the line. Call the ball.”

Shepherd dipped the left wing slightly and aligned the plane with the center of the carrier’s runway, trying to time his approach to the rise and fall of the deck. “Ball,” he said sharply, as the yellow light popped into view between the greens; but just as suddenly it was gone; all the lights were gone! He and Brancato were staring at an onrushing wall of black steel.

“Too low, too low, Viper-Two,” the LSO cautioned evenly. “More throttle.”

Shepherd hit the gas and clicked the nose up.

Still the wall of blackness.

“That’s it,” the pilot of the Intruder said. “Now time it; time the heave — better, much better.”

“Concur,” the LSO said. “Looking good.”

Shepherd and Brancato were convinced they were about to fly headlong into the carrier’s foot-thick hull when the ship fell into a valley between two swells, revealing the drop lights and deck beyond.

Shepherd pulled the stick back, slammed the throttles to the wall, and hit the speed brake.

The sleek bomber slammed onto the 700-foot runway in a controlled crash, missing the first two cables. Shepherd got the nose down on the deck just as it bounced over the third and went careening toward the sea; finally the arrester hook snagged the fourth cable and the plane jerked to a neck-snapping stop at the end of the runway, within spitting distance of the edge.

Shepherd and Brancato were thrown forward, harnesses digging into their shoulders against the sudden deceleration, then back as the plane settled down. They sat there in stunned silence watching the deck crew running toward them; then they started to laugh.

51

That evening in the United States, network news programs reported the story of the hostages’ rescue, crediting CIA with discovering their whereabouts and revealing that the rescue operation was carried out by submarine-based Navy SEALs; no mention was made of the Casino du Liban bombing. Indeed only the fleet admiral on the America, Brancato, and Shepherd had knowledge of the vital role it had played in the rescue. The following morning, newspapers the world over carried similar stories. The headline of the Washington Post read:

Two other stories on the front page were relevant and worthy of attention. One was headlined:

The second story, a smaller one at the bottom of the page, was headlined:

52

After landing on the carrier, Shepherd’s F-111 had been towed to one of the America’s elevators, taken below decks, and concealed beneath a shroud. There was no thought given to refueling and flying on to England due to the plane’s gross weight, which made catapulting off impossible. While the carrier steamed for Naples, an F-111 crew chief and team of technicians were flown in from England. They retracted the bomber’s pivot pins and removed the wings. The evening that the America made port, the disassembled aircraft was trucked to a nearby air base, loaded aboard a military transport, and flown to Lakenheath for refurbishing.

In the meantime, at the fleet admiral’s request, Brancato and Shepherd were discreetly flown back to Washington, D.C., for military debriefing.

The Joint Chiefs were stunned by Shepherd’s story.

He explained that after bombing Casino du Liban, he and Brancato had realized nothing would be gained by making the arms-sanctuary-hostage conspiracy public. The Chiefs agreed. Before adjourning, a decision as to how Shepherd’s re-emergence would be explained was made.

Immediately thereafter, the Tunisian government was informed via diplomatic channels that the charges against Shepherd had been proven false and dropped, and Stephanie was allowed to leave D’Jerba.

A week later, at Andrews Air Force Base, inside the gray brick house on Ashwood Circle, the Shepherds were packing for the move to England when the door bell rang.

Stephanie answered it.

“Congressman Gutherie,” she said, a little taken aback at the sight of him towering over her on the porch. “Come on in. Good to see you.”

“You too. I hope you won’t be offended when I tell you I’m here to see your husband.”

“He’s in the den,” she said with a smile, leading the way between the shipping cartons. “Excuse the mess.”

Shepherd was removing the military memorabilia from the walls and packing it for shipment. Laura was helping him, Jeffrey playing amid the cartons.

“I want to thank you for your help,” Shepherd said after the introductions had been made and the children directed outside. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, after all you’ve been through, maybe there’s something I can do for you,” Gutherie began. “As chairman of the Intelligence Oversight Committee, I see a lot of reports, hear a lot of rumors, and lately, well, there’s been a lot of speculation on the Hill that you had a hand in the hostage rescue.”

“Thanks. That’s very generous of you,” Shepherd replied, smiling, “but people in Washington are always speculating.”

“Not true?”

“No. I’m afraid it isn’t.”

“Really,” the congressman said. “I mean, I’ve even heard that the mysterious Libyan bomber that took out Nidal’s stronghold bore a striking resemblance to a United States Air Force F-one-eleven.”

Shepherd shrugged and feigned he was baffled. “Well, anything’s possible, I suppose. But as far as I know, there aren’t any one-elevens stationed anywhere near the Middle East.”

“So I understand. The reason I’m asking is because many of my colleagues think some recognition is clearly in order for those who participated. I’ve even heard talk of COMs,” he said, referring to the Congressional Medal of Honor.

“Good. I couldn’t be more pleased. I think the men who carried out that mission are more than deserving, Mister Congressman. I urge you to support whatever recommendations are made.”

Gutherie nodded thoughtfully, then smiled. “Well, Major, you know the truth, and just between us, I think I do too. I can only conclude you’re declining recognition because it would force you to reveal the details of your recent experience, and you’ve been ordered not to do so.”

Shepherd shook his head no. “I don’t know where you got that idea, but it couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“You’ll have to forgive me if I appear a little dense but I’m confused. You were reported killed over Libya and eulogized by the president. That same day, in this room, Mrs. Shepherd and I listened to a tape, a tape of your voice that indicated you were alive, the victim of some unspeakable conspiracy.”

“Yes, she told me about that. And I want to thank you again for assisting her in a most difficult time.”

Gutherie smiled at Stephanie, then turned his attention back to Shepherd. “I’d like to pursue this a little further, Major, if you don’t mind?”

“Not at all, please.”

“Several days after we listened to the tape,” Gutherie resumed, “Mrs. Shepherd called me from London and asked that I help you get into Libya. She said that my concerns about unauthorized covert activity were justified. She was desperate and refused to tell me more because she feared for your life.” He paused, glanced at Stephanie, and asked, “Is that a reasonably accurate account of our conversation?”

Stephanie nodded.

Gutherie challenged Shepherd with a look.

“I’ve never known my wife to lie,” Shepherd declared, putting his arm around her waist.

“Thereafter, you were branded a deserter and murderer and—”

“By the news media, yes. As a public figure, I’m sure you’ll agree just because it’s in print doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“Does it mean you’re confirming Colonel Qaddafi’s assertion that the media was used to put forth what we might call a cover story? That you were a participant in this operation and not its victim?”

“Please understand, I don’t mean to be difficult. All I can tell you is I participated in a military operation at the behest of our government,” Shepherd replied, reciting the story he had worked out with the Joint Chiefs. “Upon its completion I was assigned to serve with the Forty-eighth Tactical Fighter Squadron in England" — Shepherd paused and gestured to the boxes and disarray—"if we ever get packed.”

Gutherie nodded and forced a smile. “If I may, Major, I’d like to take another moment of your time, to impress on you that the people you’re protecting, whoever they are, are extremely dangerous; loose cannons who had their own agenda, who circumvented democratic procedures and operated outside the law.”

“You’ll have to take it on faith that I’m not protecting anyone, Mister Congressman.”

“Major Shepherd, I’m going to be forthright with you. I’m not sure anymore where you fit into all this; but be advised, it’s my job to see that those involved are brought to justice and I intend to do just that.”

“Since we’re being forthright, I can assure you that they have been brought to justice,” Shepherd said, reflecting on Kiley, Larkin, and Applegate, all of whom were dead. “Though I’m not so sure justice was properly served.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Shepherd paused thoughtfully before answering. “Well, Congressman Gutherie, I guess, if I owe anyone an explanation, it’s you. Now, off the record, and I mean I’ll deny I ever said this if I hear it repeated, these men you speak of — whoever they are — their methods were wrong, I grant you that. They were zealots. They broke all the rules. God knows they put me and my family through hell, and I certainly don’t condone their actions. But there was no personal gain involved for them.” Shepherd paused briefly, then added, “On painful reflection, I don’t think their motives were any different than yours or mine.”

“I find that very hard to accept, Major.”

“Well, it might be easier if you try looking at it from their point of view.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“That right down to their last breath, they had no doubt, no doubt whatsoever, that they had given their lives in the service of their country.”

Gutherie didn’t expect that; it stopped him; stopped him cold. “Thanks for your time, Major,” he said uncomfortably after a long silence. He let out a long breath, shook Shepherd’s hand, then nodded to Stephanie, and left.

“You think he’ll ever understand?” Shepherd asked as he enfolded Stephanie in an embrace.

“I don’t know,” she replied softly, her cheek nestled in the curve of his neck, her face aglow with the love and pride she felt for him; then she leaned away so he could see her eyes and said, “But I do.”