Wings of Fire

CHAPTER 4

The flight had originated from Arkansas International Airport, Blytheville, Arkansas. The crew had filed an ordinary IFR flight plan with the FAA, with Bangor, Maine, as its destination and McDonnell Douglas DC-10 as its aircraft type. About twenty minutes before reaching Bangor, with unusually good weather all across the northeast United States, the crew descended below eighteen thousand feet, canceled its Instrument Flight Rules flight plan, and elected to proceed using Visual Flight Rules. The handoff was routine. Once the flight descended below three thousand feet it disappeared off radar, lost in the ground clutter of the White Mountains of eastern New Hampshire. As far as American air traffic controllers were concerned, it was a successful and completely routine trip. They did not check to see if the flight made it to Bangor, nor were they required to do so. -» In fact, the aircraft never descended at all. The crew was able to electronically alter the Mode C altitude readout of its air traffic control radio transponder, making the controllers think it had descended for landing. The controllers never had a "skin paint," or hard radar return, on the aircraft-they were relying only on the transponder to get the aircraft's position. The aircraft actually stayed at thirtynine thousand feet, heading eastward on a great circle route to take it over the north Atlantic Ocean.

Once the transponder was turned off, the aircraft became invisible-because it was not really a DC-10, but a modified U.S. Air Force B-52H Stratofortress bomber nicknamed the EB-52 Megafortress, owned and operated by Sky Masters Inc. as a government research and testing aircraft, designed as a stealth technologies demonstration aircraft. Its skin and major structural components were made of composite fibersteel, not metal, covered with radar-absorbent materials; instead of a large cruciform radar-hungry tail, its control surfaces were smaller, swept backward, and radically tilted in a low V-shape to minimize radar reflections. Even though the aircraft weighed nearly half a million pounds and its wingspan was longer than the Wright Brothers' first airplane flight, it had the radar cross-section of a bird.

A few hours later, the Megafortress rendezvoused with a real Sky Masters Inc. DC-10 aircraft that was modified for aerial refueling. Within half an hour, the B-52 was fully topped off with fuel. With the DC-10 in loose formation, the B-52 made its way across the north Atlantic, using bursts of its Laser Radar system to be sure it was well out of visual range of other aircraft. The DC-10 was on a standard over-water flight plan, en route to Glasgow, Scotland. About an hour prior to landing, the B-52 again hooked up and filled its tanks from the DC-10. The big converted airliner headed immediately for landing in Scotland-it was now dangerously low on fuel, even though a conventional DC-10 can make the trip across to Europe easily with plenty of fuel reserves. Its stealth wingman had nearly sucked it dry.

The EB-52 continued right across Europe, overflying countries without clearance. The reason was simple: No conventional radars could see it, so no one knew it was up there. It flew across a dozen western and central European nations without a hint of its presence. Even in crowded airspace, it was able to keep its distance so no other aircraft could see it, changing altitudes or maneuvering far enough away to keep out of sight.

John "Bud" Franken, Commander, U.S. Navy, Retired, thoroughly enjoyed the danger of what they were doing. As the aircraft commander aboard the Sky Masters test bed aircraft, he had seen his company's planes do some amazing things-but even when the EB-52 was doing nothing but flying straight and level nearly seven miles above the Earth, it was still amazing. Franken was a former U.S. Navy test pilot and test squadron commander, and he had flown in every Navy aircraft design, both operational and ones that never made it past "black" status, over the past twenty years-but he was truly awestruck by the EB-52.

In his soul he would always be a Navy fighter pilot, but his heart now belonged to the experimental EB-52 Megafortress.

His mission commander, sitting in the right seat across the wide cockpit, was as young as Franken was old, as operationally inexperienced as the pilot was combat-tested. Twenty-five-year-old Lindsey Reeves was simply a natural-born systems wizard. It didn't matter if the system was a complex, high-tech flying battleship like the EB-52 Megafortress or her pride and joy-a 1956 Aston-Martin DB4 GT Sanction I convertible, which she restored herself, including rebuilding the engine-she could look at it, experiment with it for a few minutes, and instantly figure out how it worked. Sky Masters Inc.'s worldwide team of headhunters had recruited her at the age of sixteen at a county science fair in her hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, where she had won the competition by modifying a radio receiver to pick up Global Positioning Satellite navigation signals-at a time when GPS was still a classified military program. -

Franken was a systems guy too-you had to be to fly the 'Megafortress. It was so different from all other aircraft that it was best to let the computers do the flying, watch the computers like a hawk, and be ready to take over if they rolled over and died. But Lindsey was from another dimension when it came to machines. She wasn't much of a flier-she got airsick at the slightest hint of turbulence and used almost every non-narcotic airsickness remedy known, from wristbands to ginger tablets, to help her get through it. But when it was time to go into action, she was ready-usually.

"Three minutes to low-level entry point," Lindsey reported. She had two overhead air vents blowing cold air on her face, plus she was breathing pure oxygen to try to settle her stomach. "All birds reporting ready."

"Then try to relax a little, Lindsey," Franken suggested. 'Take off the gloves and loosen your fingers." Lindsey always wore gloves-she said it was easier to find them that way in case she needed something to throw up in. "You're too tense."

"I've never flown into… into combat before," she murmured.

"The exercises we do back in the ranges are much more intense than we'll see here," Franken assured her. "You're a good crew dog, Linds. Relax and take it easy."

"Okay," Lindsey said. But it was no use-a few moments later, she was holding a barf bag at the ready. She was nervous, Franken thought-usually within three minutes time-to-go, she was fine.

"Give me the leg brief, Linds," Franken said.

"I don't feel so good…."

"The leg brief, me," he ordered sternly. "Right now."

The voice got her attention, and the discipline and routine got her mind off her churning stomach. "First heading one-nine-five, leg time twelve minutes fifteen seconds, auto TF descent," Lindsey recited. "Level-off altitude two thousand feet… set and verified. The SA-10 site at SAM is our first threat. I've got only air traffic control search radars up now."

At the initial point, Franken issued voice commands to the EB-52 Megafortress's flight computer, and the big aircraft responded-it started a ten-thousand-foot-per-minute descent, automatically retarding the throttles to keep the airspeed under the red line. All he had to do was monitor the computers, keep up with his ears as the cabin pressurization changed, and watch out for floating objects as the fast descent created some negative Gs, almost like being weightless. Franken kept an eye on Lindsey-if she was going to hurl, it would be now. But she was wearing her combat face now, and nothing would interfere with it-he hoped.

The pilot's side of the instrument panel had three sixteen-color multifunction displays (MFDs) that showed the route of flight, flight instruments, engine instruments, and system status readouts; Franken could switch between the displays with simple voice commands. Three more MFDs in the center instrument panel had fuel, electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, threat, and weapon status readouts, with conventional backup instruments and gauges underneath. The mission commander's instrument panel was dominated by a supercockpit display, a huge one-by-twofoot computer screen that showed a variety of information, all selected by the mission commander and controlled by voice commands or by a trackball on the right side. Two more MFDs on either side of the supercockpit display showed systems readouts and warning messages.

Their course was depicted on Lindsey's display as a roadway, with the road as the computer-recommended altitude. Symbols showed known and detected threats and obstacles. Two large upside-down green cones either side of course represented the search radars in eastern Libya, with the "roadway" threading precisely between and underneath the edges of the cones; more cones represented Egyptian and naval search radars. Colored symbols all along the Libyan coastline represented the location of known antiaircraft threat sites, but so far none were active.

"Our first threat is an SA-10 site, two o'cloak, forty miles," Lindsey reported. "We should be underneath it in five minutes. We've got two Egyptian Roland sites at eleven o'clock-search radars only. We should be outside detection range. Egypt also has a Patriot site at extreme range, nine o'clock, fifty miles-we should be well clear. No fighters detected yet. LADAR coming on-our course is clear so far. We might have Libyan fighters at three o'clock, seventy miles-they're moving pretty fast, but they don't have radars on so we can't identify yet." Lindsey kept up a constant litany of reports and observations. Although Franken had all that information right in front of him as well, it was reassuring to hear Lindsey reciting it all-two pairs of eyes scanning the instruments was always better than one, especially when the action got hot and heavy.

The computer-generated "road" started to rise up to meet the aircraft depiction on their navigation displays, so both crew members monitored the level-off carefully. They performed a fast terrain-following system check, verified that everything was working normally. They were over water right now, forty miles off the Libyan coast. The Libyan coastal air defense sites were all around them, but right now they were quiet-no radar emissions at all.

"Want to step it down, Bud?" Lindsey asked.

Franken studied the threat display. They knew the position of the nearest SA-10 site-it just wasn't transmitting yet. At two thousand feet, they were right at the edge of lethal coverage at this range. They could descend well below the missile's engagement envelope, but then risk being heard from the ground. Only government and military aircraft were allowed to fly at night over Libya, and a big plane like a B-52 flying low to the ground well away from an airport would certainly attract attention. "Let's leave it here for now," Franken replied. "We'll give it a few minutes and then-"

Suddenly a female voice from the threat warning receiver spoke: "Caution, search radar in acquisition mode, nine o'clock, thirty-seven miles, Patriot SAM."

"The Egyptian Patriot got us," Lindsey said. "If the

Libyans detect the Patriot system fired up, they'll fire up their own radars."

"Stepping down," Franken said. He hit the voice command button on his control stick: "Set clearance plane to one thousand."

"Clearance plane set one thousand feet, pitch mode auto TF," the flight control computer responded. Just then the computer reported, "Warning, Patriot SAM tracking, nine o 'clock, thirty-six miles… Patriot SAM acquisition mode… warning, Patriot SAM tracking, nine o 'clock, thirty-five miles…"

"Dam it, he got us, he locked on," Lindsey reported. "Let's step it down to five hundred feet."

"Caution, Patriot SAM acquisition mode…" But that brief lock-on, just three or four seconds, was all it took for the Libyan air defense sites to be alerted. "Caution, SA-10 SAM at ten o 'clock, thirty miles, acquisition mode.. warning, SA-10 SAM height-finder at ten o'clock, thirty miles…"

"Trackbreakers active," Lindsey verified. "Let's take it down to two hundred."

"I didn't expect to be flying hard TF so far out," Franken said. "Here we go." He issued commands, and the big bomber rumbled down until it was two hundred feet above the Mediterranean Sea.

"SA-10 SAM in acquisition mode," the computer reported.

"He knows we're out here, but he can't find us… yet," Franken said. "Linds, where are those fighters you saw earlier?"

Reeves activated the laser radar for a few seconds. "They're on their way now," she said. "Three aircraft headed our way at six hundred thirty knots, twenty-nine thousand feet. Less than six minutes out. No identification

"Not exactly burning up the program here, are we?" Franken deadpanned. "So much for the stealthy approach. We might end up fighting our way in." There was no response from Lindsey-and when Franken turned to find out why, he noticed Lindsey vomiting into her barf bag. He reached across and grasped her shoulder. "You okay, Linds?"

Her eyes were wet with tears-obvious even in the dim red glow of the EB-52's cockpit. "I… I don't know," she said weakly. "I'm…"

"I need you, Linds. I can't do this without you."

"I'm so scared," she cried. "My stomach… I don't know if I can do this."

"Lindsey…" He waited a few moments while she retched in her bag again; her trembling fingers dropped the bag somewhere on the center console. She was so rattled that she couldn't refasten her oxygen mask. "Lindsey, listen to me-"

"Warning, airborne search radar in acquisition, three o'clock, forty-seven miles, MiG-25," the threat computer reported.

"I… I can't do this," Lindsey sobbed. "I'm sorry, I can't-"

"Listen to me, Lindsey-listen to me!" Franken shouted. "If we turn around, the Libyans will chase us all the way across the Mediterranean Sea. When we run out of missiles, they'll shoot us down. We might make it out-but our guys on the ground probably won't. We have to keep going. Do you understand?"

"I don't know if I can."

"You have to!" Franken said. "There are three guys on the ground who won't stand a chance unless we help. But I can't do this alone, not even with the computers." He grasped her shoulder tightly and shook it. "You've got to hang in there, Linds. Just think of this as a simulator ridea very, very intense simulator ride. Okay?"

It didn't look good at all. Lindsey's head lolled back and forth, slowly at first, then faster, as if she was looking for something. She started to pull off her left flying glove. "Here," Franken said. "Go to town-and then let's get to work." He pulled off his right glove and passed it to her. She barely got it up to her face before the torrent quickly filled the black Nomex glove. Franken couldn't believe that tiny little stomach of hers still had anything left in it to regurgitate.

Reeves was hunched down, her head almost between her knees, her hands holding on to the eyebrow panel for support, as if she was going to puke right on the deckFranken thought she might pass out. But to his relief, Lindsey pulled her oxygen mask up to her face, fumbled and finally snapped the bayonet clip in place, then took several deep breaths of pure oxygen. Her right hand disappeared onto the right console, and soon her supercockpit display started dancing as the displays changed with everincreasing speed.

"Scorpions are ready," Lindsey reported weakly.

"How about you, kiddo?"

"I'm hungry," she said. "Let's do our thing so we can go home and get a couple burgers."

"Warning, airborne search radar tracking, three o'clock, thirty miles, MiG-25," the computer reported.

"The weapons pylons are making our radar crosssection as big as a friggin' barn," Franken said. "Looks like we're going to pop some Scorpions after all." The AIM-12 °C Scorpion air-to-air missile was the Megafortress's main defensive weapon-a radar-guided supersonic missile capable of hitting enemy fighters as far as thirty miles away. The EB-52 carried four on each wing, mounted on launch rails attached to the sides of the weapon pylons.

"Let's step it down to COLA," Lindsey suggested. "Maybe he won't want to come down that low."

"Roger. He we go. Hold on to your lunch."

"My lunch is long gone," Lindsey shot back. Franken shoved the throttles to full military power and ordered the computer to COLA mode. COLA, or computer-generated lowest altitude, used both the terrain and cultural data in the terrain-following computer and combined it with occasional bursts from the laser radar and air data information to compute the absolute lowest altitude the EB-52 bomber could fly, depending on airspeed, terrain, obstructions, and flight performance. The faster the bomber flew, the more aggressively the autopilot would hug the ground-literally flying at treetop level if it could. Over water, the computer could take the bomber right down to fifty feet above the surface of the water-only a very tall sailboat mast could stop them.

"Threat report," Lindsey asked.

"MiG-25 tracking four o'clock, twenty miles, altitude ten thousand feet," the computer reported.

"They're trying to get on our tail," Franken said. "Let's do it, Linds. Ready?"

Reeves froze for a few long moments, then looked over at Franken. "Let's do it," she repeated. She pressed the voice command button. "Attack MiG-25," she spoke.

"Attack MiG-25, stop attack," the computer responded, offering her the command that would stop the attack. When she did not respond within three seconds, the computer said, "Launch commit Scorpion right pylon." There was a slight rumble from the right wing and then a streak of light from Lindsey's windscreen. The ATM-120 Scorpion missile flew an "over-the-shoulder" launch profile, arcing over the EB-52, then back toward the Libyan MiGs. The laser radar array automatically activated for two seconds, updating the Scorpion's autopilot with the fighters' flight path. The missile climbed above the MiGs, then descended rapidly toward the spot where the missile predicted the MiGs would be at impact. Ten seconds before impact, the LADAR flashed on again, updating the missile's autopilot for the last time. Five seconds before impact, the Scorpion's own radar activated and locked onto the lead MiG-25 fighter.

That was the first indication-an immediate "MISSILE LOCK" warning-the Libyan pilots got that they were under attack.

The wingmen did exactly what they were supposed to do, executing a textbook formation breakaway, climbing and turning away from each other and giving their leader room to maneuver. But the lead pilot-concentrating on the attack, just moments away from firing his first radarguided missiles-didn't react fast enough, or didn't believe the indication, or chose to ignore it, hoping for a lucky break, the two-in-three chance that the attack was against one of his wingmen.

The thirty-seven-pound shaped warhead detonated like a shotgun blast a fraction of a second before the missile hit the MiG right above and to the left of the starboard engine nacelle. The MiG-25's heavy steel hull, reinforced with titanium-the MiG-25 was designed to fly at nearly three times the speed of sound-deflected most of the energy of the blast. But the missile still had enough punch to crack the fuselage, rip open the fuselage fuel tank, and smack the starboard engine. Running at one hundred percent power, the engines didn't need much of a hit. The engine's turbine blades, knocked out of their precisely engineered highspeed orbits, shot through the engine case like atomic particles flying into space after a nuclear explosion; the extreme heat from the engines ignited the fuel from the ruptured fuel tank, causing a fire. The MiG-25 pilot had only seconds to react-but again, he was concentrating too hard on his quarry to pay attention to the warning lights, telling him he had only a few heartbeats to punch out-before the MiG blew itself into a ball of fire and spun into the Mediterranean Sea.

"Good going, kiddo," Franken said flatly-killing someone was never cause for celebration, even if it meant saving your own skin. "You got him."

"Thanks," Lindsey said-then promptly whipped off her oxygen mask, lowered her head between her knees, and vomited on the deck.

The two remaining MiGs spent several minutes rejoining-they were obviously spooked by the unexpected threat warning and having to do an evasive maneuver so low to the ground at night-and then several more minutes trying to locate their leader. By the time they resumed the search for the EB-52, it had changed headings and proceeded on course to its target area.

Within a few minutes, the picture had changed considerably. Where before it was relatively quiet, now it seemed every air defense radar in both Libya and Egypt was up and operating. Lindsey kept busy steering the Megafortress around a variety of antiaircraft weapon systems, and every few minutes a fighter radar would sweep past them. They were forced to stay at low altitude to avoid all the threats.

"Headbanger, this is Stalker One, say status," Patrick McLanahan radioed.

"We're sixty seconds to initial point, Stalker," Franken responded on the secure satellite command channel. Thankfully Lindsey was feeling all right now, because Franken had now run out of flying gloves-he hoped he wouldn't have to eject now. "We were chased by Libyan MiGs a while ago, but we're clear. Unfortunately every air defense site in eastern Libya and western Egypt is looking for us, and both sides are on full alert. We had to go low and stay low, so our time in the box will be much less. I estimate only twelve minutes until we bingo. Sorry, Stalker."

"No sweat, Headbanger," Patrick replied. "I don't plan on staying very long anyway. We're in position and ready for some fireworks. We're glad you're here."

"Glad to help, Stalkers. Watch the skies. Headbanger clear."

The Libyan town of Jaghbub was located one hundred and twenty miles south of Tobruk. Jaghbub was an oasis fed by an occasionally dry river, which for most of its two thousand years of history never had more than a few hundred persons living there. But the area was one of the best farming regions in the northern Sahara, with many different types of fruits, vegetables, and nut trees in abundance, and travelers and nomads going across northern Africa found Jaghbub to be a rich and inviting place to stop and rest before continuing their trek across the wastelands. It had therefore developed over the centuries as a crossroads of many different nationalities, religious sects, political identities, and schools of thought from all over the known world.

So when an obscure descendant of the Prophet Muhammad was forced to flee his home in Fez, Morocco, by French colonists in the early nineteenth century, he escaped across the burning sands of the northern Sahara desert, following the ancient nomadic routes over fifteen hundred miles back toward the holy land, and came upon this little oasis. There he found a home for his own particular style of Islam. Instead of the wild, untamed "whirling dervish" being practiced in many Islamic sects, this holy man, who called himself Sayyid Muhammad ibn 'Ali asSanusi, preached a return to strict Muslim practices-abstinence, prayer, and strict adherence to the words of the prophet in the Quran. He built a mosque, then a university, and finally a fortress on the banks of the little river, and the holy city of Jaghbub was born.

For the next one hundred and forty years, Jaghbub was the birthplace of some of the most powerful and revered kings of Africa. The Sanusi dynasty became the lords of northern Africa and the ghosts of vengeance of the Sahara. They ruled the oases with an iron fist, tempered with justice through the laws of Islam. Travelers and pilgrims from any nation were welcome and treated with extraordinary kindness and generosity; anyone who preyed on a traveler or pilgrim was dealt with equally extraordinary swiftness and cruelty, usually by being buried up to the chin in the sand outside an oasis where insects and vultures could pick at the robber's head for a day or two.

They were never conquered. Despite invasions from the French, British, Turks, Italians, Germans, and Americans, the Sanusi dynasty survived and prospered. On December 24, 1951, Sayyid al-Hasan ibn 'Abdullah as-Sanusi, the fourth Grand Sanusi and the first to be chosen amir of each of the three kingdoms of Libya, proclaimed the independence of Libya from post-World War II British rule and himself ruler of the United Kingdom of Libya. The Sanusi family moved the capital of then- new kingdom to Tripoli, keeping the family stronghold at Jaghbub as a retreat and family mosque; soon, Jaghbub became a destination for Muslim pilgrims from all over the world who vfiited and prayed at the tombs of the great nomadic kings of early Libya.

The newly independent kingdom survived mostly by borrowing money from its Arab neighbors and the United Nations, until British geologists discovered oil in the desert southeast of Tripoli in 1958. Virtually overnight, Libya became one of the richest and most strategically vital countries in the world, almost on a par with Egypt and its famous Suez Canal. First the British, and then the Americans, built some of their largest and most important overseas military bases in Libya, all to ensure the delivery of the seemingly endless supply of oil being pumped from its deserts. With its newfound wealth, the king of Libya improved the cities, built large and modern ports and rail lines, improved education and health care, and made Libya an attractive destination for people and investors from all over the world. Once again, travelers and pilgrims were welcomed and protected by the as-Sanusi family.

All that changed in September of 1969, when a group of young army officers led by Muammar Qadhafi staged a bloodless coup against the monarchy. The king himself was out of the country, recovering from eye surgery in Turkey. He abdicated and named his second son Muhammad heir to the throne; the rest of the family fled the palace. The family retreated to Jaghbub, thinking that even Qadhafi would never dare violate a sacred mosque or try to destroy the Muslim university.

When Qadhafi's rule became more bloodthirsty, violent, and repressive, and Libya was distancing itself not just from the West but from many of its Arab neighbors, the people began to call for a return of the Sanusi dynasty to rule Libya as a constitutional monarchy. Jaghbub started to become the symbol of the once and future Libya, the root of Libya's past greatness and the source of leadership of the new Libya, should the military dictatorship fail or be overturned.

Crown Prince Sayyid Muhammad ibn al-Hasan asSanusi of Libya was welcomed into the capitals of many countries, and he made it clear that, with the right support from outside his country as well as within, he would assume the throne once again. Muhammad was born in 1962, the king's second son. Officially he, like most of the Sanusi men before him, was born in the holy sanctuary at the Great Mosque at Jaghbub-in reality, Muhammad was born at the American base hospital at Wheelus Ah" Force Base, which had far better medical equipment and medical professionals than at Jaghbub. His family had learned thenlesson from the birth of the first son, al-Mahdi, who really was born at Jaghbub but had suffered dehydration and circulation problems during delivery.

Muhammad began his schooling at the Royal Military Academy in Tripoli at the age of four and learned the basics, the Libyan "Five 'R's"-reading, writing, arithmetic, religion, and riding-with extraordinary speed. Although his future, chosen by his father, was as a religious scholar and teacher, his real love was the military. He loved hearing stories of his grandfather, a general in the Turkish Army when Libya was still part of the Ottoman Empire, harassing the Third Reich's Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Panzers all across the Sahara. But he soon realized that tanks in the present day, like horses in World War II, were obsolete-a strong air force was the best way to secure a nation as large as Libya, on a continent as large as Africa.

After the military coup in 1969, Muhammad attended elementary and high school classes conducted at the university in Jaghbub, then was accepted to Harvard University in 1980 and graduated in 1983 with a double major in political science and international relations. He was admitted to Harvard Law School hi 1983 and was the first foreign first-year student ever named as an editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

But Muammar Qadhafi wasn't done with the as-Sanusi family-he needed a scapegoat, and they were perfect targets. Qadhafi had suffered an embarrassing defeat in a brief war with former ally Egypt in 1977; he failed in his attempt to occupy neighboring Chad and Sudan, he failed in his attempt to support his friend Idi Amin in Uganda; and he suffered an embarrassing loss of four Libyan MiG-25 fighters when they tangled with two U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcat fighter planes defying Qadhafi's "Line of Death" over the Gulf of Sidra. There had already been several assassination attempts against Qadhafi, and there was a brief but violent military uprising in Tobruk, organized and funded by the deposed King Idris and his newly formed Sanusi Brotherhood. Qadhafi charged the Sanusis with sedition, treason, and inciting revolution-all crimes punishable by death. In 1984, Qadhafi ordered the entire asSanusi family arrested, the Jaghbub university closed, and the tombs of the Sanusi kings opened, destroyed, and the remains thrown out into the desert.

But he knew it would be too politically costly to turn the Sanusis into martyrs, so he allowed them all to escape. The king himself remained in Istanbul; the other family members fled, mostly to Egypt or Saudi Arabia, never to return. Once they were out of the country, though, Qadhafi pursued them relentlessly. His assassination squads fanned out over most of Europe and Africa, under orders to kill all Libyans who refused to return to Libya-and the Sanusis were tops on their lists. The Crown Prince first met his family in Egypt and publicly denounced the desecration of the Sanusi tombs; when being public exiles in Egypt became too dangerous, the family scattered.

The historic buildings, mosque, tombs, and university at Jaghbub lay baking in the hot Saharan sun, virtually unused. The university was turned into a military headquarters; the fortress was turned into a winter palace for Qadhafi and a convenient but isolated place to hold propaganda events. To cover up the desecration of the holy place, the river that fed the oasis was dammed, flooding the plain and covering up all traces of the destroyed historic buildings and tombs. It appeared as if the legacy of the kings of Libya was at an end.

But another ambitious, treacherous Libyan army officer resurrected the memories of the as-Sanusi kings of Libya-but for all the wrong reasons. Jadallah Salem Zuwayy was an officer assigned to a Special Forces unit at

Jaghbub in the early 1990s. When Qadhafi Lake-the lake covering the Sanusi tombs-was low one extraordinarily hot summer, he was able to view the ruins of the tombs of the Sanusi kings that lay exposed in the mud from the low water level. Although he and his officers were forbidden to go near the tombs, he went anyway-but even after he was discovered, the fear of retribution from Qadhafi was so strong that no one dared bring him up on charges. That fear of the Sanusi dynasty is what inspired Zuwayy to begin his claim as a descendant of the Sanusi line.

It was easily researched: Sayyid al-Hasan as-Sanusi, the first king of united Libya, had six sons and three daughters. Actually, the records showed only five sons, but the Sanusi kings usually had three or more wives, and they adopted many children, so why couldn't there be a sixth-or seventh, for that matter? The second son, Muhammad, was appointed the heir apparent. The entire family fled the country after the desecration of the tombs at Jaghbub-all, went the new story, except Jadallah, the youngest son of King Idris. Instead of fleeing, Jadallah decided to join Qadhafi's army, not only to learn his weaknesses but also to learn from him how to be a leader in the modern world.

The real Idris the Second, Muhammad, hadn't been heard from since 1992, when he became King Idris the Second upon the death of his father in Istanbul. From his hiding place-no one knew for certain where it was-he had proclaimed a Libyan constitutional monarchy in exile, formed a Royal War Council, and was raising money and building an army. Rumors spread like wildfire: Some said he was a spy for the American Central Intelligence Agency, for the British MI6, or for the Israeli Mossad. Most knew he was the leader of the Sanusi Brotherhood, a secret counter-assassination group, hunting and killing first Qadhafi's, then Zuwayy's assassins worldwide on behalf of his family and all exiled Libyans. Others claimed he had been assassinated, or just deep in hiding, probably in South America. In any case, he or his followers hadn't been heard from in years. -

He was a coward, or so the story went-it was Jadallah who had the courage to dare to try to retake the government of Libya from Qadhafi. As an officer at Jaghbub, Jadallah secretly preserved "his" family's heritage and assembled his army, and from his ancestral home, launched the attack on Tripoli that eventually brought Qadhafi down. Although Muhammad as-Sanusi was in reality the second king of Libya, Jadallah Zuwayy proclaimed himself the true King Idris the Second and chieftain of the Sanusi Brotherhood.

It was a ridiculous story. The most superficial examination of official records showed Zuwayy's real birthplace and lineage-he was definitely no Sanusi. There was ample evidence that King Idris had only five sons, not six; Zuwayy's concocted evidence was disproved immediately. But Zuwayy stuck to his story, and eventually the people of Libya accepted it. He turned Jaghbub back into a holy city and announced the reincarnation of the United Kingdom of Libya, to the delight of the people of Libya and the amused relief of most of the rest of the world. He then went about having all the Arab history books changed to reflect his fictional lineage.

In fact, Jadallah Zuwayy, the self-appointed and totally fictional king of Libya, hated Jaghbub. Yes, it was beautiful and fertile. But it was well within artillery range of Egyptian forces, just fifteen miles away. Although he had built a modern stronghold there, with the most Modern air defense network surrounding it and a force of ten thousand troops and a couple hundred armor, artillery, and mechanized infantry pieces in place, it was still over a hundred miles from civilization and reinforcements, and could be easily overrun or infiltrated. But its weaknesses made it a good hideout. No military forces would ever touch Jaghbub, especially the Great Mosque, for fear of scorn by the rest of the Muslim world-it was considered as holy a shrine as Mecca or Medina. And it was far enough away from the Mediterranean coast to give him ample warning of an attack or invasion from the sea.

It was Zuwayy's alternate headquarters, his safest hiding place in all of Libya-and the entrance to his preferred es-

cape route, should his plans fail and his little self-conceived revolution dissolve. It was an easily concealed flight from there to Sudan, Yemen, then Saudi Arabia or Syria, all of whom might give him safe passage or asylum. Besides, occasionally he would do a prayer service or celebration at Jaghbub, televised throughout the Arab world, and the people of Libya would delight in seeing the historic mosque and Green Palace in use once again.

The mosque and the Green Palace, the home of the asSanusi kings, were located inside a sixty-acre ancient sundried brick walled fortress. The original three-meter-high walls were heightened an extra four meters, reinforced with steel, and topped with motion detector probes, with a catwalk on the inside and guardposts installed every ten meters around the perimeter. The original wooden gate was reinforced with Kevlar and steel, with an extra set of electrically operated steel antitank doors inside. Along with the mosque and the palace, there was a small security building, an eight-horse stable and barn, a covered riding arena with bleacher seats, and a short equestrian show-jumping course. North of the compound out as far as two kilometers, antitank and antipersonnel mines were laid across the open desert. Guards patrolled the oasis and the area to the south, and more guards patrolled by boat on Lake Jaghbub.

The military base was located to the west and south, spread out over several hundred acres, including an airfield large enough to accommodate light to medium transport planes. The entire area was defended by radar, numerous antiaircraft artillery batteries, roving patrols with manportable SA-7 antiaircraft missiles, and a wide variety of low- and medium-altitude-capable mobile surface-to-air missile systems, including several SA-6, SA-8, SA-9, and SA-13 units deployed in random patrols over two hundred square miles around Jaghbub. The Libyan army practiced artillery and mortar fire missions in the desert beyond the airfield.

There was at least one squadron of attack helicopters stationed at the air base, including ex-Soviet Mil Ml-24 heavy helicopter gunships and French-made SA342 Gazelle light helicopter gunships, and one full armored battalion with ex-Soviet main battle tanks and armored personnel carriers. The base was considered too close to the Egyptian border to base a large number of fixed-wing combat aircraft there, but a few ground attack and air defense aircraft played a "shell game," hiding in one of a dozen reinforced concrete shelters located on the base. There was even a road-mobile Scud missile battalion located there, with a dozen SS-1 Scud missiles deployed all over the region at presurveyed launch points, ready to strike at preprogrammed targets in Egypt, Chad, Kenya, or Ethiopia, or targets of opportunity passed along by reconnaissance forces.

The Egyptian intelligence data Patrick had received from Susan Salaam and Ahmad Baris gave precise details on all of this-and all had been passed along to Patrick's mission planners in Blytheville. Now the Night Stalkers were on the attack.

The EB-52 made the turn at the bomb run initial point. Most threats were several miles ahead or far behind them, so Franken and Reeves risked a slight climb to two thousand feet above the desert just as the computer began the first launch countdown. "Computer counting down," Lindsey reported. "Release switches to 'CONSENT.'"

Franken made sure his red-guarded switch was up and the switch inside was up. In this highly automated digital cockpit, he noted with a trace of humor, it was always amusing that Patrick McLanahan and the other designers always kept these Cold War-era "two-man control" switches in place. Both switches had to be set to release a weapon. It was of course possible for one person to activate both switches-but the idea was for one of two persons to overrule the other if the need arose. Some things-some mind-sets-never change.

At zero, the port-side FlightHawk detached itself from its wing pylon and fell two hundred feet while it unfolded its wings and flight controls and started up its small turbojet engine. Once it had stabilized itself, it began a climb to its patrol altitude. A minute later, the second FlightHawk launched as well. Both unmanned combat aircraft carried air-to-air weapons, long-range surveillance sensors, and electronic jammers and decoys, all to protect the Megafortress while it was in the target area. At the flight planned point, the Megafortress started a right turn in its racetrack orbit area, which allowed the FlightHawks time to fly into their patrol positions east and west of the racetrack.

"Computer started the countdown to bomb bay weapon release," Lindsey reported several minutes later. "FlightHawks are on patrol and ready."

"Get ready, Linds," Franken said. "We might be getting busy again."

She hurriedly took a big sip of water from a plastic bottle. "Then I better get something in my stomach to barf up," she said. But judging by the way she said it, Franken was sure she would be ready if things started to heat up again.

When the computer counted down to ten seconds, the forward portion of the EB-52's bomb bay doors swung open and a Wolverine cruise missile dropped free, followed by seven more in twelve-second intervals. The Wolverine missiles resembled fat surfboards, with a small turbojet engine in the tail. They had no wings or flightcontrol surfaces, but used mission-adaptive skin technology to reshape the entire missile body to create lift and steer itself with far greater speed and precision than conventional flight controls.

Each Wolverine missile had four weapon sections, including three bomb bays and a fourth weapon section right behind the sensor section in the nose. Using an inertial navigation system updated by satellite navigation, the Wolverine missiles flew to preprogrammed bomb run initial points, then activated infrared and millimeter-wave radar sensors, looking for targets. Their small size and low profile meant they were almost invisible to the air defense radars surrounding them-but they were all able to detect, analyze, classify, and lock onto the radars themselves.

The Wolverine missiles then worked together with the FlightHawks to analyze and correlate the radar transmissions and then locate the associated missile launchers. The radar units for most air defense units were set up far away from the missile launcher so antiradar missile attacks would not destroy the missiles or launchers; they were usually connected by some sort of electronic link, usually a microwave system or cable. Many times the enemy would set up decoy radar transmitters, hoping the antiradar weapons would go after the decoys. But the FlightHawks were able to determine from the type of radar detected what kind of air defense system it was, and if it had a remote launcher setup it would listen for the data transmission between the radar unit and the missile launch unit in a surface-to-air missile battery, compute the location of the launcher, and pass its location to the Wolverine missiles. In this way, their weapons wouldn't be wasted on nonlethal radars or on decoys.

Six of the Wolverine missiles were programmed for SEAD, or suppression of enemy air defenses. As they flew over each air defense weapon site they detected, they scattered cluster bombs across the missile launchers. Each of the Wolverine's three bomb bays held seventy-two onepound high-explosive fragmentary bomblets, which covered an area of about thirty thousand square feet with shrapnel. If a Wolverine attacked a particularly lethal SAM site but the FlightHawks determined that the site was still active, it would command the Wolverine to turn around and reattack the target. Two of the Wolverines were hit by antiaircraft artillery fire, both by gunners who, with thenradars turned off so they wouldn't be targeted by the radarseeking weapons, merely swept the skies with their guns blazing, hoping to get lucky. Once all three bomb bays were empty, each surviving Wolverine missile would perform a suicide dive into a fourth target, where an internal two-hundred-pound high-explosive warhead would destroy one last target and hopefully all remnants of the missile itself.

The remaining two Wolverines were programmed to hunt down vehicles instead of antiaircraft sites. Instead of bomblets, they carried devices called sensor-fuzed weapons, or SFWs. There were eight SFW canisters per bomb bay in the Wolverine. When the infrared sensor in the Wolverine's nose detected large vehicles nearby, it flew toward them and ejected two SFW canisters overhead. The canisters floated down on small parachutes, spinning as they descended. As they spun, tiny heat-seeking sensors spotted the location of vehicles on the ground. At a precise altitude above the ground, the canisters exploded, sending dozens of one-pound slugs of molten copper at the vehicles. The copper slug was like a sabot round from a tank or artillery piece-the hypervelocity slug was powerful enough to punch through three inches of solid steel. Once inside a vehicle, however, the slug cooled enough where it couldn't penetrate the other side-so the slug simply exploded and spattered inside, creating thousands of tiny white-hot copper bullets that shredded anything in its path in the blink of an eye. Like the other Wolverines, these tank-killing cruise missiles located, attacked, and reattacked targets until all of their SFWs were expended; then they suicide-dived into preprogrammed targets-one into the base command post, the other into a communications building.

Hal Briggs marveled at the intelligence information they received from the Egyptians-it was all up to date and incredibly detailed. As he scanned the area with his battle armor's electronic sensors, the satellite datalink connecting him with the temporary headquarters at Mersa Matruh filled in details of what the sensors picked up-guard posts, boundaries of minefields, fence positions, even locations of doghouses and latrines were pointed out. He was kneeling just to the north of the minefield, scanning the compound, when suddenly he heard a ripple of explosions. "Nike, looks like our little buddies are on the job," Hal radioed on the secure command satellite network. He heard several secondary explosions as a Wolverine cluster bomb attack destroyed a pair of SA-10 antiaircraft missiles, sending a balloon of fire into the night sky. The Libyans began firing antiaircraft artillery into the sky, tracers arcing everywhere, but judging by the wild, random sweep of the tracers across the sky, it didn't appear as if they were locked onto any of the Wolverines yet. "What's it look like to you?"

"Why do you ask me these things, sir? You can see everything I see." Chris Wohl was stationed on the south side of the military compound, keeping watch on the main access road between the military base area and the Jaghbub compound.

"Relax, Sarge. It looks quiet out here."

"That's because you've got five hundred mines between you and the bad guys," Wohl said. "I've got two T-55 tanks less than a hundred meters away from me. This looks pretty damned suspicious to me, sir-the Libyans look like they're on full alert."

"I don't blame them-we're only fifteen miles from the Egyptian border." Just then they heard three beeps come over their communications network. "Here we go, guys."

Briggs raised and adjusted a device that looked like a small, fat mortar launcher. He double-checked the settings on the mount, armed it, and then used his boot thrusters to jet-jump away from the area. Thirty seconds later, the launcher activated, shooting a projectile with a onethousand-foot-long piece of half-inch-thick rope behind it. As the rope reached its full length, the projectile detached itself, and the rope sailed through the sky, eventually fluttering gently to the sand in a wavy snakelike pattern. Ten seconds later, the rope-which was actually a detonatorlike cord-automatically exploded.

The shock of the explosion caused every mine within a hundred feet either side of the detonator rope to explode, creating an incredible light show across the desert as an entire three hundred thousand cubic feet of sand simultaneously blew into the sky. The vibrations and shock waves rushing across the desert set off even more mines in a spectacular ripple pattern, like waves from a rock thrown into a still lake.

"Yeah, baby, yeah" Briggs exclaimed as the rolling ex-

plosions washed over him like a brief but violent minihurricane. "Talk to me, honey!"

"Don't get yourself shot while you're patting yourself on the ass, sir," Wohl said.

"Hey, you got the job I wanted-just make sure you don't miss."

"I've got this job for one reason, sir-I never miss," Wohl said. At that, he hefted a huge rifle that looked like a cross between a big Barrett.50-caliber BMG sniper rifle and something out of a science-fiction movie. The weapon was plugged into his belt with a short fiber-optic data cable, and with a simple voice command it was activated and Wohl started searching for targets.

It did not take long. Vehicles started rolling out of a security building inside the tall fence less than a minute after the explosions in the minefield. The first out was an armored car with only two men in it, probably officers; Wohl let it pass. His intended targets: The two ex-Soviet T-55 tanks sitting near the entrance, both small, fast, and still powerful despite their age, following closely behind the armored car.

Wohl didn't want to wait until the first one cleared the gate, so he had it in the electronic sights of the big gun as soon as he saw it move out. About ten meters before it reached the gate, Wohl pressed the trigger. Silently, with the recoil electromagnetically dampened out, a sausage-sized depicted-uranium projectile weighing about three pounds shot out from the muzzle of the electromagnetic rail gun at over twenty thousand feet per second. There were no explosives in the projectile-its effectiveness was in mass times velocity, pure momentum. In about a second, the sabot round hit the tank in the right side just below upper track level. It pierced the thick outer hull and passed completely through the tank's diesel engine and transmission and out the other side without losing more than twenty percent of its velocity. The projectile didn't even begin a ballistic flight path for another two miles, and it finally buried itself thirty feet diagonally in the sand after flying more than five miles.

For a few seconds, it appeared as if Wohl had missed-

there was nothing at all to indicate that the tank had been hit except it had stopped suddenly and one track drive sprocket and drive shaft was sliced into pieces. But inside, the tank's engine was disintegrating with incredible speed and destructive force. It was as if a hundred parts inside the engine, instantly dislodged from their bearings and mounts, simply decided to fly apart at the same instant. The big diesel engine simply split apart and became a deadly cloud of shrapnel, killing the four crewmen inside instantly. The T-55's gun turret popped off the top of the tank like a champagne cork, spinning twenty feet in the air before landing against the fence. Smoke and flames spewed out the opening like an upside-down rocket engine.

Wohl immediately targeted the second T-55, and seconds later it too was a burning mass of metal, blocking the base entrance. Wohl jet-jumped twenty yards east, retreating to a spot where he could fire inside the base. He sent one projectile into the security building through the front door, hoping to take out some communications equipment. But he was only waiting for his real target.

It came less than five minutes later: an Italian-made Agusta A109 VIP transport helicopter, escorted by a Mil Mi-8 transport helicopter. Their intelligence information was right on: The Agusta was Libyan president Zuwayy's personal helicopter, and the Mi-8 carried his security staff, twelve heavily armed Republican Guard troopers. Wohl didn't have to lead either helicopter with the rail gun at such short range: one shot each, and both helicopters came down hard.

But by now security forces and infantrymen had started streaming out of the base, and they were even starting to walk automatic weapons fire in his direction-time to leave. "Nike is evacuating," he radioed.

"Taurus is on the move too," Hal Briggs reported. "Let's get the hell out of Dodge."

Wohl turned to leave-but before he could use his thrusters to jump away, suddenly the sand around him disappeared in a blinding cloud of fire. Out of nowhere, a third T-55 tank had raced around the two stricken tanks, lo-

cated Wohl's hiding place, and had opened fire with a 101millimeter round that exploded just a few feet away-if he had been hit by the round, at this range, it might have killed him. Wohl was blasted off his feet and thrown twenty feet in the air.

'Taurus… Taurus…" The blast had stunned Wohlhe could make his arms and legs move, but he couldn't get his legs under him well enough to run or jump away. He could hear the T-55 moving closer, and he desperately tried to crawl behind a sand dune or into a ditch-anything to avoid a direct hit by a tank shell. Alarms were ringing in his suit-most of the energy in his suit was already gone.

No answer. Briggs was already gone. Even if he heard him, he couldn't get back in time.

Wohl could now feel the T-55's treads moving closer. He picked up the electromagnetic rail gun, hoping to get one last shot off-but it was already a tangle of broken parts in his hands. The hypervelocity rail gun rounds were nonexplosive-he couldn't even fashion a grenade or smoke screen out of the now-useless rounds. His electronic stunbolts were useless against a tank, and even if he was confronted by infantrymen, he might have one or two bolts left before his power drained out completely.

Crap. In his entire military career, he hadn't gotten more than a scratch or a few minor cuts and bruises in combatunless he was dealing with the Tin Man battle armor. Every time he had anything to do with it, the damned suit had managed to bite him in the ass. This time, he had relied on it too long. The one weakness in the suit is that you started to believe you were invulnerable, and that's when you got into trouble, getting too cocky and getting into worse and worse scrapes.

The Libyan tank sounded as if it was right beside him. Wohl pulled himself up with his arms, but he still couldn't get his legs to work. He commanded his jump-jets to firehopefully they would blast him away from the area, giving him a precious few moments to hide or get to his feet, but the thrusters weren't responding-all he got was" power level warning message. He frantically tried to issue override commands, to use the last bit of "housekeeping" power in the suit to fire the thrusters, but the computer ignored his commands. Damn machine…

A big white searchlight on the tank blinded him. Wohl could now see the muzzle of the T-55's big main gun trained on him, less than thirty yards away. Would they actually use the main gun on him? Wouldn't they realize it would blow him into tiny pieces, like a double-barreled shotgun blast a few inches away from a little bird sitting on a fence? They probably weren't looking for prisoners at this point….

Wohl saw the bright flash of light from the tank. "Hal…," he muttered weakly, for the last time. "Hal, help me."

Strange, but he didn't expect to hear the noise or feel the heat from the blast, but he did. Would he see the round flying out and striking him as well? Or would they just use the thirty-millimeter cannon on him, save some ammo? Then there was an impossibly loud, impossibly bright flash of light and a deafening roar, and it was all over…

… except it wasn't over. Wohl realized a few moments later that the burst of light he saw wasn't the main gun going off, or even its coaxial machine gun-it was the tank itself. Then he heard the faint whine overhead, and he knew what happened: the first burst of light he saw was a sensorfuzed weapon canister dropped from a Wolverine attack missile going off, followed moments later by the T-55 tank exploding as the SFW's copper slugs blasted it apart.

A few moments later, Wohl was able to roll and crawl away from the fierce heat and flames shooting from the T-55. He tried again to get to his feet when he felt his body levitated off the ground as if he suddenly weighed as much as a handful of sand. What the hell…?

"You all right, Sarge?" Hal Briggs asked. His exoskeleton made it as easy to lift him up as a child lifting a stuffed toy.

"Jesus, sir," Wohl retorted, "didn't you ever hear of checking the wounded over before lifting them up like that? You ever hear of spinal injuries, concussions, broken bones?"

"You were trying to get to your feet already-I figured I couldn't do any more harm," Briggs said. "Sheesh-maybe I should just gently set you down again and let Zuwayy's boys give you a hand when you're feeling better."

"Just shut up and let's get out of here, sir," Wohl said. He extended a thin cable from his backpack and plugged it into Briggs's backpack, and immediately he could send and receive datalink information and reactivate his suit's environmental controls. The "buddy power" also reactivated Wohl's exoskeleton, allowing him to walk on his own again. "Let's go. This way."

"You needed me," Hal said.

"What?"

"You needed me. You called my name-my real name, not my rank or 'sir.' I think that's the first time you ever did that."

"Don't let it go to your head, sir," Wohl said. "I thought I was dead-I was desperate. Now let's get out of here."

As Wohl reached around Briggs's shoulder to support himself as Briggs carried him away, the big ex-Marine patted his partner's shoulder with an armored hand. Briggs knew he couldn't say "thank you" any more sincerely.

As they were instructed and trained, the Republican Guard security forces entered Zuwayy's private apartment without knocking-but they did not dare to go more than a step inside. "Your Highness, there is an emergency," the officer in charge shouted.

A few moments later, Colonel Osama Mekkawi, chief of security of the Republican Guards and Zuwayy's personal bodyguard, dashed into the room, hurriedly buttoning his uniform tunic. He pushed past the security guards. "Don't just stand here gawking! Get out of here and secure the hallways and escape tunnel for our departure!" Mekkawi shouted. He went to the door of Zuwayy's bedchamber. It was locked. With a thrill of panic, he drew his side arm, stepped back, then kicked the door open.

Jadallah Zuwayy was sitting upright in his bed, startled out of a deep sleep. Curled around him were two young girls, members of Zuwayy's equestrian staff, the younger no more than thirteen or fourteen years old. Mekkawi learned long ago not to look or act shocked at anything he saw or heard coming from Zuwayy's bedchamber. "Highness, there's an emergency," Mekkawi shouted. The younger girl began to whine for her mother; the older one, still half asleep, began kissing Zuwayy's face. "You must evacuate."

Zuwayy practically stomped the younger girl in his haste to get out of bed, and he hastily put on a pair of trousers, robe, and sandals, the two girls forgotten. Mekkawi escorted Zuwayy outside to the evacuation route; a guard stayed behind, guarding the apartment door to make it appear as if the room was still occupied.

"What is happening?" Zuwayy asked

"We are under attack, Your Majesty," Mekkawi said breathlessly. "Action in the minefield-several hundred square meters of minefields exploded, probably a mineclearing operation, in preparation for attack. Then cluster bomb and missile attacks against antiaircraft emplacements and armored vehicles all across the base. Could be a prelude to a large invasion force. We must evacuate."

"Who could it be?"

"With firepower like that? Israelis or Americans, I'd guess."

"How in hell could such a force get that close without being detected?"

"Perhaps it is a stealth bomber attack, Highness," Mekkawi said. "It is not important now. We must get you to safety. I will ask you to wait in the Great Mosque until your transports arrive, then we will evacuate you to a safe location immediately."

Mekkawi escorted Zuwayy down into the basement of the palace; in a storage room filled with old furniture, he pressed a hidden switch. A secret door swung open on electrically activated pistons. The door led to an escape tunnel. They passed one security checkpoint along the twohundred-meter tunnel, then climbed a spiral staircase. They emerged in a janitor's room in the Great Mosque. Zuwayy was escorted to a rectory, and the guards were posted outside. The rectory, inside the mosque, was believed to be immune from attack from almost any nation in the world, even the Americans. This one had been specially modified to protect its occupants from chemical, biological, and even low levels of nuclear weapons, and the walls had enough armor in them to withstand a forty-millimeter rocket-propelled grenade.

Mekkawi placed a satchel with a shoulder strap on a desk and opened it. He withdrew a I agent detector from the bag and activated it. "You remember how to don your protective mask and hood, Highness?" Mekkawi asked. Zuwayy nodded, his lips taut with fear. "Good. If the alarm goes off, you will have about thirty seconds to do so. Take your time and do it correctly, and you'll be all right. There is the mask, a weapon, atropine injectors, a first-aid kit, and other items in this bag-don't hesitate to use any of it. The helicopter will be here within three minutes to take you into hiding. I recommend the alternate command center at Sawknah; if it's a. general attack, we can coordinate all our forces better from there."

"If it's a general attack, I don't want to wait until I arrive in Sawknah-I want a full rocket barrage started against all Area A targets," Zuwayy said angrily. "Then scramble all alert bombers and commence the follow-on attacks against both A and B targets. Understood?"

"I will need to issue those orders by coded radio from my office, Highness."

"Then go. I will wait here."

"Very well, Majesty. I have guards posted outside both entrances if you require anything."

"All I require are the heads of anyone who dared attack this facility!" Zuwayy shouted. "Go!" Mekkawi dashed off.

Zuwayy sat at the desk and picked up the chemical warfare mask. He saw his fingers starting to tremble He had donned one of these many times in the past, of course-all Libyan Special Forces troops were very proficient in their use, because every unit had chemical and biological weapons in their arsenals-but he was so nervous right now that he doubted if…

"Es salaem alekum, Captain Zuwayy."

Zuwayy nearly jumped out of his skin-he leapt to his feet, nearly stumbling backward over his chair. There, standing before the desk just a few meters away, was a strange figure in some sort of futuristic costume. He could not see a face, or eyes-the figure was wearing a full-face helmet with large bug-eyed visors. He carried no weapons. "Bolts! Bolis! Ilha 'uni! Ilha 'uni!" he screamed, his voiced as high-pitched and trembling as those of the young girls he had just finished raping.

To their credit, both guards stationed outside the two doors to the rectory burst in immediately-unfortunately, they didn't think about calling out an alarm before they did. One had a radio in one hand and a pistol in the other; the other guard had his rifle at the ready. Both were immediately stunned off their feet by a blast of lightning from the stranger's shoulders. The stranger dragged the guards inside the rectory, secured the doors, men stepped toward Zuwayy.

Zuwayy reached into, the satchel, pulled out a Spanish Star Z84 autopistol, cocked it, and opened fire at full auto from less than five meters away. The figure flinched and made a half-step backward but did not go down. Another bolt of electricity made Zuwayy cry out in pain. The Z84 felt as if it was a live two-hundred-volt wire, and he dropped it with a scream. "Who the hell are you?" Zuwayy shouted, half in pain, half in sheer terror.

The strange figure said nothing. Zuwayy was about to repeat his demand when the figure responded in an electronically synthesized voice, "I am called Castor, Zuwayy. I am the instrument of your death." Zuwayy was surprised to hear the electronic voice speaking Arabic.

"You can't kill me. I am the king of united Libya. This is my country, and we are standing on holy ground."

A bolt of electricity made Zuwayy stagger to his knees. The figure stepped forward. "You are no king, and this is not your country. You are an impostor and a murderer. Judgment has been passed. You are found guilty of murder. Your sentence is death. It shall be carried out immediately."

Mekkawi trotted through the escape tunnel, through the storage room, and into his security office. One of his officers, alerted earlier, already had the joint operations command center in Tripoli on the line. While Mekkawi was talking to the senior controller, receiving a force status report and issuing Zuwayy's orders, the duty officer received a radio message: "Sir, the king's helicopters have been shot down!"

"My God…" He gasped. He thought quickly. Zuwayy was in grave danger-it could be a matter of minutes before the area was invaded-or destroyed. "I want the best helicopter available, any kind, fueled and ready to fly as soon as we arrive on the flight line!" Mekkawi shouted. "And I want an armored personnel carrier brought around to take the king to the base. Hurry!" He turned back to the secure telephone: "You heard me, Major. The king has ordered that all Area A targets be attacked immediately if there is any indication that a general attack is under way… Yes, with all available rocket and air forces designated to strike Area A targets, including special-weapons forces. He has also ordered that sorties be generated immediately for follow-on attacks on Area B targets on his command… yes, stand by for authentication." Mekkawi pulled out a decoding document from a chain around his neck, quickly computed the code using the formula plus the current date and time, then read it to the senior controller. "I also want…"

"Sir!"

"What the hell is it? I'm on the line to headquarters."

"Look!"

Mekkawi turned to a bank of security monitors.

"The security camera to the rectory in the mosque-it is off!"

"What?" Mekkawi grabbed the phone, but it was dead.

He dropped the phone and drew his side arm. "Have all available palace security forces converge on the mosque and cover all exits, and I mean now!"

Muck, it's me," Hal Briggs radioed via their secure command channel. "We're waiting for you at the exfil point. Check your datalink, brother. We're showing lots of troops on the move, heading your way. Bug out immediately!"

"Roger," Patrick replied. It was too late, Patrick realized. The plan was to kidnap Zuwayy and hold him until all the prisoners were set free-unfortunately, it didn't look as if he'd be able to get him out of Jaghbub. "I want Plan B set in motion, Hal. T minus two minutes."

"You haven't got two minutes, Muck."

'Two minutes," Patrick said, and he terminated the connection.

"You can't kill me!" Zuwayy screamed, half out of terror but hoping someone outside would hear him. "What have I done to you?"

In response, Patrick picked Zuwayy up, carried him outside, then jet-jumped up to the roof of the rectory, beside the green dome of the Great Mosque. Patrick held Zuwayy up by his bedclothes in one hand, turning him so he faced west, toward the military base.

It was a spectacular sight. Over and over again, strings of explosions rippled across the ground as the Wolverine cluster bomb attacks continued. Antiaircraft artillery fire continued, with tracers streaking across the sky like incandescent snakes. Occasionally there was a large secondary explosion as the last of the Wolverine missiles suicidedived into their last targets. Burning tanks, trucks, and buildings lit the night sky everywhere, like dozens of camp fires. Men were shouting, calling out, screaming and firing in confusion.

"Sixty seconds, Muck," Briggs radioed.

Patrick glanced to the northwest, following the datalinkgenerated cues displayed in his electronic visor. The Sky

Masters EB-52 was right on time, coming in at medium altitude-now that the Wolverines had destroyed all of the area defenses, it could climb higher to stay away from the surviving optically guided antiaircraft artillery units still operating.

"I am going to destroy your military base, Zuwayy," Patrick said in his computer-synthesized voice. A microphone was picking up Zuwayy's voice, broadcasting it via satellite back to Mersa Matruh, where it was instantly translated by computer; Patrick's voice was similarly translated from English to Arabic the same way. "You will watch it all burn. And then I am going to destroy you."

"Whoever you are, I have powerful friends, and I have money," Zuwayy said. "Spare my life, and I'll pay you. Ten million dollars. A hundred million dollars. You don't have to kill me. We can make a deal."

This last statement intrigued Patrick. "Who are your friends?"

"Powerful international arms merchant and black marketers," Zuwayy said. "Let me go and I'll tell you everything."

"Talk or you die."

"Thirty seconds, Patrick. You've got heavy armored vehicles on their way to you. Best way out is to the east. Move it."

"Talk!" Patrick shouted. "This is your last chance."

"He is a Russian," Zuwayy shouted. "He has access to nuclear weapons, missiles, aircraft, oil, anything you want. Just let me live and it's all yours."

It couldn't be, Patrick thought. It was impossible. The Turks convicted him of murder and crimes against the state. He got the death penalty-and in Turkey, there was no appeal process. He was supposed to have been executed months ago….

"Ten TG, Muck," Briggs warned him. "Find a place in the shade and hold on."

Eight miles to the north, the EB-52 Megafortress opened the aft portion of its bomb bay doors, and one by one four bombs dropped from a rotary launcher exactly twelve seconds apart. These were GBU-28F JDAMs, or joint direct attack munitions-two-thousand-pound gravity bombs guided by satellite navigation signals that could glide as far as ten miles and still hit their targets with great accuracy. But instead of simple high-explosive warheads, these bombs were fuel-air explosives-the most devastating non-nuclear weapon devised. At a precise altitude above the ground, the bombs split open, releasing a large cloud of vapor. The vapor mixed with oxygen in the air to form a highly explosive gas. At the right moment, three small incendiary bomblets ejected into the gas cloud were ignited.

The resulting explosion of each JDAM was equivalent to a hundred tons of TNT, creating a fireball a half-mile in diameter and a shock wave that crushed everything aboveground for a mile in every direction. Spaced exactly two miles apart, the four fuel-air explosive bombs created a blinding wall of fire over the Jaghbub airfield. Detonated on the mostly uninhabited west side of the airfield, the fireballs themselves did relatively little damage-but the tremendous overpressure caused by the explosion overturned vehicles, blew out windows, burned wooden buildings, and scorched the sand black all across the reservation, right to the walls of the Green Palace and the Great Mosque where Patrick stood with his captive.

Zuwayy screamed as the huge wall of fire blossomed out toward him, but his screams were drowned out by the roar of rushing fire and burning air. The overpressure that roiled over them was like a one-second superhurricane, tossing Zuwayy around like a puppet. Patrick kept him facing into the rushing wall of sand and red-hot wind until the air, now needing to fill in the vacuum created by the burnt air near the fireballs, reversed direction and rushed back outward.

Patrick jumped down off the roof of the rectory, went back inside, and tossed Zuwayy on the floor. All of Zuwayy's hair on his face, head, and the back of his hands had burnt off, replaced by a beard and hair made of gray ash. He found a pitcher of water on the desk and dumped it on Zuwayy's face to keep him from passing out. "Can you hear me, Zuwayy?" Patrick asked. Zuwayy was trembling so hard that Patrick thought he might be having a seizure. "Answer me, you coward! Can you hear me?"

"Yes… yes, I can hear you," Zuwayy cried. "Don't kill me, please, don't kill me!"

"You have one chance to live, Zuwayy," Patrick said in Arabic. "You captured some prisoners off some vessels your military forces sank…."

"I know nothing of this! What are you accusing me of? This is not-"

Patrick silenced him with another shot of electricity. "Be quiet, Zuwayy. There is no doubt that your forces attacked those vessels-the only question now is whether or not you will die for doing so."

"Do not kill me! Do not kill me!" Zuwayy bleated. "What do you want? Tell me!"

"You will turn them over to the Egyptians immediately," Patrick said. "If they are not delivered within twelve hours, I will hunt you down and execute you before the entire world. And if any of them are harmed in any way, I will find you and crush you like an insect." The stranger hammered the desk in the rectory with a gloved fist, and the heavy cedar-and-burl desktop smashed into pieces as if a wrecking ball was dropped on it. "I will burn your houses, destroy your bunkers, tap into your computer systems, and wipe out everything you own. Twelve hours. I'll be waiting. If they are not returned, you die." To punctuate his order, Patrick reached down, took Zuwayy's nose between two fingers, and crushed it. Blood spurted everywhere, and Zuwayy howled in pain. The figure departed through the door to the mosque itself.

Moments later, Mekkawi returned through the secret tunnel entrance, his side arm in his hands, followed by three heavily armed soldiers. "Highness, there have been more attacks. I have relayed your orders-" He stopped in sheer horror when he saw Zuwayy lying on the floor, his hair burnt off, blood covering his face and chest. "My God, what happened?" He was going to call for the outside guards, but then he saw them, lying on the ground, still twitching from the voltage discharging through their bodies.

"Find out… find out…"

"Find out what, Highness?"

"Find out where the prisoners that were captured off the vessels sunk in the Mediterranean are," Zuwayy gasped, blood flowing from his mouth and shattered nose. "Find them all, alive or dead; round them up, and get them ready to move out of the country. Truck them… no, bus them… no, fly them… oh hell, just get them out of my country immediately! I don't want one hair on their heads touched. Contact that peacock Khan in Egypt and tell him to get ready to pick up those prisoners."

"Prisoners? Khan? Who did this to you, sir…?"

"Just do it," Zuwayy cried, spitting blood. Mekkawi helped him up. "Do it now!" Zuwayy found a liquor bottle, poured, and downed a glass, his hands shaking uncontrollably.

"What in hell is going on out there, Zuwayy?" Pavel Kazakov asked angrily on the secure phone. This time, Kazakov put the call on the speakerphone, so his aide Ivana Vasilyeva could hear how the great "king" of Libya bleated and whined like a sheep being led to slaughter. Kazakov knew how Vasilyeva, a former commando and trained intelligence officer in the Russian army, hated weak menJadallah Zuwayy, the man who claimed to be a descendant of Arab kings, would infuriate her. "Why are you calling me now?"

"Hey, Kazakov, this was your idea to begin with!" Jadallah Zuwayy retorted. "This is your fault!"

"My fault?"

"It was your suggestion to retaliate against the commandos that attacked Samah," Zuwayy said. "That's what I did.

They somehow found out where I was, broke into my sanctuary, and threatened to kill me! He smashed my nose! He threatened to kill me, my entire family, break into my computers, and destroy my military bases."

"They sound like extremely powerful, efficient, and well-informed commandos," Kazakov commented dryly. I could use an entire battalion of them, he said to himself. Something that Zuwayy said nagged at his brain… "Or your soldiers need more security training."

"How could he have found out where I was? That information is top secret!"

"Zuwayy, the entire world knows about your pleasure palace in Jaghbub," Kazakov said. "They know that it is the entrance to your escape route if there is ever a coup against you; they know it is where you bring young girls for whatever perverted pleasure you get out of screwing children. Besides, Jaghbub is less than forty kilometers from the Egyptian border-any good special-operations team can get in and out of the area in there hours. You ought to try a security back-trace on yourself some time, Zuwayy-you might be surprised to learn some of the things anyone can find out about you if they tried."

"This is outrageous!"

"Just shut up, Zuwayy," Kazakov said. "Nothing has changed. You should have just killed all those captives, then set a trap for those commandos when they returned to finish you off. You should have never turned them over to the Egyptians. At least you had the brains to turn them over to Khan and not to Salaam."

"That commando said he was going to kill me if I didn't turn them over to the Egyptians," Zuwayy said. "He got into the sanctuary so easy, I didn't-"

"Hold it," Kazakov interrupted him. "You said, 'that commando.' Do you mean to say there was only one commando?"

"I told you there was only one!"

"But you said a minefield and your military base were also hit."

"They were, but only one commando got into my sanctuary," Zuwayy said. "He neutralized the guards and was waiting for me when I-"

"He 'neutralized' the guards? How? Did he kill them?"

"No. He had no weapons-he didn't even touch them."

Kazakov nearly choked on the cognac he was sipping. He rose slowly to his feet, his throat suddenly dry, his ears ringing. It couldn't be, he thought wildly. No, it couldn't be… I

"Did you hear me, Kazakov?"

"This commando-he was wearing a black outfit, a full helmet with large eyeholes, and a slim backpack? Did he paralyze you with an electric shock that traveled from electrodes on his shoulders to you, without projectiles or wires?"

"Yes! How did you know?"

"Because I have been hunting him and his team down for the past year," Kazakov said. "These commandos are Americans. I do not believe they are government operatives-I believe they are privately organized. They fund their organization by shaking down their targets for money or weapons."

"How do you know so much about them?" Kazakov was about to tell him not to ask stupid questions, but Zuwayy came up with the answer by himself moments later: "So you've encountered this group before, eh? Perhaps they are the reason you were captured and brought to trial in The Hague?"

"Zuwayy!"

"And perhaps this private organization got part of its funding from you, eh, tovarischT Zuwayy asked, laughing. "On dal yimu pa pizde mishalkayt Did you get your ass handed to you by them? Now that I think about it, he did seem to know about you."

"Listen to me, you ignorant goat-fucker," Kazakov snarled, "you can make fun of me all you want, but if we don't stop these commandos, they'll destroy all of us. You were lucky they just broke your nose and blew up your base-they could have just as easily carried you out of Libya and destroyed your whole fucking capital!"

"What are you going to do, Kazakov?"

"I am going to find those Americans," Kazakov said, "and I'm going to capture them somehow, I'll learn all the secrets about who they are and all the secrets about their weapons and technology-and then I'm going to roast each and every one of them on a spit in my living-room fireplace." He paused for a long time, turning the few details he knew over and over and over again in his mind; then "First your missile base at Samah is attacked by an obviously high-tech force; then, your armed residence at Jaghbub is attacked by an equally effective high-tech force. The commando asks that all the detainees from your attack out in the Mediterranean Sea be released. That means that the same commandos were involved in both the attack on Samah and Jaghbub-and that you probably had some of their comrades in custody."

"Obviously. Na huya eta mn'e nuzhna? So what?"

"You idiot-you might have had the men that attacked your base," Kazakov said. "I want details, Zuwayy. I want to know everything you know about these attacks, both on Samah and Jaghbub, and I want to know everything your military forces learned before, during, and after you attacked those vessels out in the Mediterranean Sea."

"I can tell you almost everything," Zuwayy said. "Especially the last part-the part of the incident where some of our planes were shot down."

"Some Libyan attack planes… shot down! By whom?"

"By the men firing missiles from one of the ships."

"Firing missiles! And you've been sitting on this information all this time! Which ship, damn you?"

"The Lithuanian salvage ship," Zuwayy said. "We recovered eleven men and one woman from the water."

"It was them. I know it," Kazakov said. "They invaded your country to force you to release those prisoners."

"I will blast them to hell," Zuwayy said. "Khan thinks he has them surrounded. I will-"

"What did you say, Zuwayy?" Kazakov thundered. " What did you say? "

"I received a call from Ulama Khalid al-Khan, the chief justice of the Egyptian Supreme Judiciary," Zuwayy said.

"He claims that Susan Salaam and General Ahmad Baris aided and abetted a group of soldiers believed to be American comm-" He stopped, his throat completely dry, as he finally made the connection in his head. "Oh, my God…"

"You knew this?" Kazakov screamed into the phone. "You knew those commandos were on that base?"

"I"/ have been attacked!" Zuwayy shouted, not quite knowing what else to say. "I didn't know these were the men you sought. I didn't realize-"

"Are those commandos still in Egypt?" Kazakov interjected.

"I believe Khan is holding them at Mersa Matruh."

"Tell him not to let them leave under any circumstances," Kazakov said. "They must stay in Mersa Matruh. Tell Khan that you will deliver the prisoners there-that should keep the commandos in place. And you will detain all of those prisoners that have the slightest appearance of being Americans. Do not send them along with the others."

"And then what do we do?"

"This is what you will do, Zuwayy," Kazakov said. "You will do exactly as I tell you to do, and you had better not slip up, or I will see to it that a lot more than your damned nose is smashed."

"You will not speak to me this way!" Zuwayy shouted. "I am the king of united Libya-!"

"Zuwayy, the quicker you get that fiction out of your head, the better we will all be," Kazakov interjected. "You are nothing but a second-rate army officer who deceived, murdered, and bribed your way into the presidential palace. It was a brilliant scheme-until you actually started to believe the shit you were feeding your fellow Libyans. Now, you are nothing. Even Qadhafi had a better reputation than you do right now-before you had your men put a bullet in his eye and string him up from the flagpole in broad daylight. You had him and his family pleading for their lives on your living room floor, and you still didn't have the guts to pull the trigger yourself.

"Now, I will tell you what to do, and by God you had better do this mission right this time, or I'll see to it that you end up like your so-called 'ancestors'-your bones will be tossed out into the desert as vulture food." Kazakov outlined the targets he wanted struck and the way he wanted it done. Afterward, the line went dead.

Pavel Kazakov nearly turned over his entire desk in sheer fury. "That incompetent ass!" he shouted. "I want him, dead, dead, deadl I want his friends dead, his mistresses dead, and I want it public, messy, and I want it done now!"

Ivana Vasilyeva appeared-again-as if she was going to have another orgasm. She was a good aide and a fierce lover, Kazakov thought, but how could anyone with the kind of psychosexual dysfunctions that she had rise so far in the Russian army?

"Send me," Vasilyeva breathed. "Send me to Libya. I can get close to this peacock. I will pull his feathers for you-one by one, slowly and painfully-and then cook him for you."

But Kazakov wasn't paying attention to Vasilyeva's psychotic panting right now-his mind was occupied with trying to figure out who was attacking Libya.

It had to be the Tin Man organization, the same ones that had destroyed his Russian oil empire, Metyorgaz, and captured him. Kazakov's sources said most likely it was a private group, not government, with access to the latest high-tech military hardware. Well, they needed access to not just a few guns and futuristic body armor with jets in the boots to destroy two Libyan military bases-they needed access to large precision-guided bombs and the heavy, long-range aircraft to deliver them.

Mersa Matruh was the key. Zuwayy suspected they might be operating from there-if they were, he could track them down, follow them, and find a way to destroy them.

"Yes… yes, I think you would do very nicely," Kazakov said to Vasilyeva. "You shall leave immediately." But finally her orgasmic rush was too much for him to bear, and he reached out for her hard, sexy body. "Well," he said with a smile as she began to unbutton her blouse, "perhaps not immediately" -