Unable to concentrate, Hafez left his tent and walked out into the desert. He wandered for the better part of an hour, pondering what he would tell his wife and sons. Again, his indecision confused the issue. Finally, his mind muddled and confused, Hafez returned to his tent, sat down, and started to write his wife a simple love letter. In his expression of love, written in flowing prose, he found escape from the troubles he faced.
It was past midnight before he finished.
The signal and electronic traffic from Libya was anything but routine. Since midnight, the search radars of air defense units across the border from Egypt had been fully operational. All the Egyptian collection and monitoring stations strung across western Egypt were alert and actively collecting information on the type of signal, the strength of the signal, the direction of the signal, and the number of active emitters. This information was relayed to the headquarters of the Western Military District. There electronic warfare intelligence officers received and processed the information by putting the pieces together like pieces of a mosaic. This mosaic provided them with a clear and accurate picture of the air defense capability of the Libyan forces facing them.
Each type and model of radar has its own distinct signature. The Egyptian electronic warfare officers, trained to distinguish the radars and assisted by computers, had no problem identifying, classifying, and counting the radar units in use. With this information, they were able to study the coverage of the search, or surveillance, radars used to find and identify incoming threats. From that study, gaps in radar coverage could be found. The target acquisition radars used to guide surface-to-air missiles onto targets were also found. When the target acquisition radars were activated to illuminate, or "paint," Egyptian aircraft on patrol over Egypt's Western Desert, they were identified and located. From that information, the location of the actual surface-to-air missile launchers, slaved to the target acquisition radars, could be determined and classified.
The windfall of intelligence was welcome but, at the same time, troublesome. When informed of the activity, the commander of the Western District asked the inevitable question: why? Except in time of national emergency, the Libyans had never activated all their systems as fully as they now were. What was motivating them to do so puzzled both the commander and his chief of intelligence and led to a lively debate. While the maneuvers currently being conducted would prompt the Libyans to increase their vigilance, they could not account for such an all-out effort. Concerned that there was more involved than a simple test of the system or paranoia over the current maneuvers, the commander ordered his intelligence chief to double his collection and monitoring of Libyan command and control nets. If they were equally active, perhaps they could provide a clue as to what the Libyans were up to.
fust prior to 0300 hours, a series of short, encrypted burst transmissions were recorded on a high frequency normally used for command and control. Because they followed a pattern similar to those used by Libyan forces before, and since the point of origin of the initiating signal was near Tripoli, the recording was sent on to headquarters for analysis. A hasty analysis forwarded by the intelligence officer at the collection and monitoring station indicated that the second station, though not accurately located, appeared to be somewhere to the east, possibly within Egypt itself. It would be another twelve hours before this recording and its hasty analysis were received and reviewed by electronic warfare officers at the Western Military District headquarters. Six more hours would lapse before another copy, recorded at a different collection and monitoring station, provided enough data to accurately pinpoint the transmission. Its location was just west of Cairo.
The distant beating of helicopter blades through the hot desert air announced the arrival of the Egyptian helicopters. Cerro stood, adjusted his gear, and called out, "Mount up!"
The men began to stir, standing up, like their commander, and adjusting their gear. Cerro turned and surveyed his company, already divided up into small groups and spread out at fifty-meter intervals off to one side of a dirt landing strip. In less than a minute, the Egyptian MI-8 helicopters would touch down, one on each of the international orange panels staked into the ground opposite each of Cerro's small groups. On signal from the crew chief of each helicopter, the groups of soldiers, crouching low to avoid the helicopter's blades and the driving sand thrown up by the blades, would sprint out to the helicopter and climb in. Once the last man was in, each helicopter would, in its turn, lift off, circle to the west, and form up into formation. The drill that B Company, 1st of the 506th Airborne was about to execute had been practiced, and practiced, and practiced, to the point where the helicopter crews and the soldiers could do it in their sleep in the middle of a moonless night. As with all such exercises, the men looked forward to doing it this time, for they knew that, regardless of the results, it would be the last time they would have to do it. This was, after all, show time.
As Cerro watched, he counted the helicopters. There were ten choppers, enough for his unit and two backups just in case one or more experienced a maintenance failure en route to the pickup zone. If there was a maintenance failure between the PZ and the landing zone, one of the spare helicopters would touch down, police up the squad of soldiers, and join the assault. This contingency had been practiced several times and had actually occurred once during one of the many rehearsals.
As soon as the lead helicopter touched down and the side door slid open, Cerro was on his feet and headed for the aircraft, his command group behind him. They were in a hurry. The sooner they were in the helicopter, the sooner they would be out of the manmade dust storm being kicked up by the helicopters. As before, each man scrambled for his seat, buckled in, and clamped his weapon between his knees with the muzzle pointed down. The Egyptian crew chief watched as each paratrooper did so, ensuring that each man was in his place and secure. When the last man was in and set, he turned toward the pilot, gave him the signal that all was ready, then strapped himself in. The whole process, from touchdown to skids up, took less than thirty seconds.
Once in the air, Cerro could relax. For the next five minutes there was nothing he could do to influence anything. He and his company were at the mercy of the helicopter pilots. It was their job to get them where B Company needed to go. Once they were on the ground again, there would be a flurry of activity — a scramble as men deployed and the initiation of the live fire exercise. Cerro, like his men, looked forward to the end of this exercise. Its completion would be the signal to begin preparation for redeployment.
As if on cue, the helicopters bearing the two presidents, their entourage, and the security personnel responsible for the immediate security of the VIP party touched down on the landing pad marked with three orange panels in the shape of an H. Unlike the helicopters dispatched to pick up Cerro's company, these helicopters immediately began to shut down their engines. No one approached until the huge blades of the Mark II Commandos stopped spinning. Thus the VIPs would not be peppered by the sand that pelted those awaiting them on the ground.
From a distance Dixon watched in amusement. The show no longer belonged to him or to Colonel Hafez. Other officers, "better" suited to handle such matters, had been flown in and were now in charge. Both Hafez and Dixon, relegated to secondary roles, sat in an Egyptian army jeep behind the platform, out of sight and, if all went well, out of mind. Their purpose now was to monitor, via tactical FM radio, the progress of all the various elements participating in the demonstration. From here on in the operation was supposed to happen automatically in accordance with the master time line, just as they had rehearsed it. If, however, something went wrong, if someone missed his cue or was delayed, Hafez or Dixon would be able to react and issue appropriate instructions to recover from the error.