At that point an officer from the communications center entered. He had a message flimsy that he passed to the President who read it and handed it to the Seer. “What do you make of this?”
It was a long description of the interrogation of one of the German prisoners taken in the fighting the night before. The Seer read it and lifted an eyebrow. It wasn’t quite what he had been expecting.
“Well, Mister President, that explains a lot. It also gives us a little bit more leverage I think. We’d better modify that ultimatum before we send it out. And also we’re going to have to change the curtain-raiser a little.”
LBJ nodded and took a deep breath.
“Make the changes and send the ultimatum. Then execute the operational plan described. Launch the bombers in two hours time, send them out but tell them to hold at their fail-safe points until I give the order to go.”
Chapter Ten: Reprisals
South Main Street, Brandon, Maryland.
Officer Frank Delmar believed that, for this time of year, evening was about the best time there was. Dawn was pretty good as well, but in the evening, the remainder of the day’s heat mixed with the dusk breeze to make things just about perfect. He’d stopped his patrol car on South Main and was leaning up against the hood, keeping an eye on the street and just being seen. That was the real core of his job, he thought, just being seen.
Over in the west, the sun was setting, the bottom edge of the great orange bail just kissing the horizon, when he heard a rumble. It was familiar, almost routine, the sound of one of the B-52s from the local airbase. Taking off. Only it wasn’t, quite, it sounded different somehow. Delmar caught sight of it suddenly, it was angry crimson, the giant bomber’s silver skin reflecting the light of the setting sun, the white paint on its belly giving a more gentle and peaceful red. But it was lower, much lower than usual and the smoke behind it was black, stained blood-red and ugly by (lie sunset. With a sinking feeling Del mar understood why the aircraft sounded different. Its eight engines were straining hard, fighting to lift a full load of bombs and fuel up into the stratosphere where the bomber would be safe.
The B-52 passed over, the vibration from its laboring engines causing his car to shake in its wake. The noise was enough to make the local people, out to enjoy the peace of the evening, look up. Behind the first bomber was another, its engines also striving to get their load up high and fast. The first bomber’s passage was still shaking South Main when its companion passed over and the third was approaching fast. As each one passed, more people came out of their homes and left the shops to look up and the sky filling with the streams of smoke from the engines, the brilliant reflected shades of red from the bombers passing overhead.
They stood silently and watched the B-52s reaching into the sky as the roar of their passage filled the town. As each aircraft passed, it seemed to be a little redder, a little darker, the smoke cloud from its engines a little less obvious as the sun set. Then, just as the last of the stream of B-52s passed, its fuselage and smoke trail hardly visible in the gathering gloom, the last edge of the sun dipped below the horizon. ‘And on a pale horse rode death,’ Delmar thought as the first of the bombers vanished into the growing twilight.
“God Be With You, Boys.”
Thomas Hardy owned the town drugstore. If he had been east into a Hollywood Western, there would he no doubt as to the part he would play. The kindly town merchant Now he was looking at the bombers fading into the dusk, the sound of their passage ebbing. Suddenly the evening had a chill to it and it wasn’t only the coming of night. Up and down the east coast of America, along its northern border with Canada, other people in other small towns stood and watched their bombers head out to their targets in a country far away.
“Amen” said Officer Frank Delmar
Aviano Italian Air Force Base, Italy
“Gentlemen. We have a go. About thirty minutes ago, the strategic bomber and reconnaissance wings in CONUS started to take off. They will be crossing the Atlantic tonight ready to launch the planned series of attacks tomorrow morning. We have received word from the Russians that the airfields designated as SAC staging points are ready. In addition, a regiment of Russian long range bombers, Tu-22s, will be supporting our attack. That brings me to the first point. We have received a message from that regiment, the 35th Guards Long Range Aviation. Could I have the picture please?”
The lights dimmed and a picture came up, a large, ungainly-looking bomber with a small cockpit well forward and two large engines mounted on top of the fuselage by the tail.
“This is a Tu-22. If you see one of these, don’t shoot at it, they’re on our side. The Russians will be operating well to the North of us, their bombers haven’t got much range so they’ll not be going beyond northern Iran. One thing, second slide please.”
The picture changed to the nose of one of the Russian Tupolevs, showing the name painted under the cockpit. The Cyrillic letters took a little deciphering but were clear enough. For Marisol.
“Second thing. Earlier this evening, we were briefed on the one attack that will take place before the main raid strikes. We have now received new instructions, instead of launching that attack on the base complex around Gaza, we will be hitting a smaller complex around Yaffo further to the north. There are three reasons for this. One is that the coastal defense batteries at Gaza have fired their missiles, they are no longer a threat and, because they are relatively mobile, they may already have moved away. The missiles at Yaffo are still in place. Another is that there is apparently a high value target of opportunity in Gaza that we do not wish to destroy unless we cannot avoid doing so. Last, but not least, President Johnson himself has a personal distaste for the inhabitants of Yaffo.
‘There are two coastal defense, anti-ship missile batteries in the target area, four surface-to-air missile batteries and an airfield. We believe there to be at least 16 enemy fighters there, Irenes, Chipanese-built Kawanishi J12K4 Shindens. They are fast-climbing and can reach B-58 operational altitudes. The strike force dedicated to taking down the Jaffo base complex consists of four RB-58s and will be escorted by four F-108s. If the fighters come up, the F-108s will send them back down again.
“The remaining F-108s and RB-58s will hit assigned targets to assist the penetration of the B-52s. Unlike the Yaffo strike they will wait on Presidential authorization before executing their missions.
“Fly high gentlemen. But before that, get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a very busy day.”
The Ruling Council Conference Room, Jerusalem, The Caliphate.
For the first time in more years than he cared to remember, Field Marshal Walther Model was frightened. That was just one part of his emotional mix, but it was the one he was unfamiliar with. He was, indeed, sick-scared but also furiously angry and seething with hatred for the morons whose bombastic arrogance and purblind stupidity had driven them all into this mess. The worst feeling of all was complete helplessness. He was here at this meeting by courtesy only, he didn’t have a vote in its deliberations and his presence was simply to give information and take orders. Give information? To these brainless, arrogant, conceited, came!-humping offspring of a pox-doctor’s douche-bag? They saw what they wanted to see and heard what they wanted to hear and woe betide anybody who disagreed with them.
They just didn’t understand what was descending on them. They were now crowing about the fight on the beach, almost 36 hours ago. The Satrap of Egypt had worked himself up into a fine frenzy describing how the American Marines had poured ashore in their thousands to be defeated by a handful of gallant Believers. Lurid accounts of how the massacre of the invaders had been so complete that the infidels had left the water covered with their bodies packed so densely one could walk out of sight of land by stepping from one to the next and still see no end of them.