No, none has the courage to oppose the man who possesses the weapon and the will to use it, he told himself, believing it absolutely, believing it with all his heart and soul.
I will bring down the decadent unbelievers and the misguided imams, like Khomeini, who understand so little of the ways of the world. Khomeini, that fool! He thought he could build a pure, holy nation on the insatiable thirst of the infidels for that stinking black liquid. The old imbecile is almost as bad as the Saudi princes, Saddam Hussein, and all those others who lust so for the goods of the West. Their greed is a travesty of the Koran.
Praise Allah, I am not like them. I have the courage and strength to live according to the Word. With the bomb will come all power, so I can purchase only what is really needed.
I will defend the Faith.
I will purify my people.
Mecca will be my capital in a united Arab world.
He started from his thoughts and glanced at Qazi, who was examining the photographs. Yes, he thought, Qazi is ambitious and competent and almost as ruthless as I. Unconsciously El Hakim flicked his hand as if at a fly.
“Ring for coffee.” He composed himself as the servant moved about, the only sound the faint clink of china.
After the servant departed, El Hakim seated himself across from the colonel. “What is your plan?”
4
Captain Jake Grafton held his F-14 Tomcat level at six thousand feet in a steady left turn as his wingman came sliding in on a forty-five-degree line to rendezvous. The other plane crossed behind and under Jake and settled on his right wing. Jake leveled his wings and added power as he tweaked the nose up.
He keyed his radio mike and waited for the scrambler to synchronize. “Strike, Red Aces are joined and proceeding on course.”
“Roger, Red Ace Two Oh Five. Report entering patrol area Bravo.”
“Wilco.”
It was a cloudless night with a half moon, now just above the eastern horizon. To the west a layer of low haze over the sea limited visibility, but Jake knew that there was nothing to see in that direction anyway. The Lebanese coast was a mere thirty miles to the east, and as the two fighters climbed on a northerly heading toward their assigned altitude of 30,000 feet, Jake searched the blackness in that direction. Nothing. No lights. Jake scanned the night sky slowly in all quadrants for the lights of other aircraft. They seemed to be alone.
“Keep your eye peeled for other planes, Toad,” he told the RIO in the rear cockpit.
“Uh, yessir,” came the answer, sounding slightly puzzled. Normally the pilot performed routine lookout duties while the RIO worked the radar and computer. Well, thought Jake Grafton, let him wonder.
“What’s on the scope, anyway?”
“Not a daggone thing, CAG. Looks like one big empty sky to me.”
“When’s that El Al flight from Athens to Haifa scheduled to be along?”
In the back seat of the Tomcat, Lieutenant Tarkington consulted the notes on his kneeboard. “Not till twenty-five after the hour.” He slid back the sleeve of his flight suit and glanced at his luminous watch. He matched it with the clock on the panel in front of him. “About fifteen minutes from now.”
“When will we reach area Bravo?”
Tarkington checked the TACAN against the chart on his kneeboard. “About two minutes.”
“We’ll make a turn west then, and you see if you can pick up that airliner. Let me know when you see him.”
“Yessir.”
“In the meantime, let’s get some data link from the Hummer.” The Hummer was the slang nickname for the E-2 Hawk-eye radar reconnaissance plane that Jake knew was somewhere about.
Toad made the call as Jake checked the Tomcat on his right wing and noticed with satisfaction that Jelly Dolan was right where he should be, about a hundred feet away from Jake. Jelly was a lieutenant (junior grade) on his first cruise and flew with Lieutenant Commander Boomer Bronsky, the maintenance officer for the fighter squadron that owned these airplanes. Jake knew that Boomer liked to complain about the youth of the pilots he flew with—“Goddamn wet-nosed kids”—but that he had a very high opinion of their skills. He bragged on Jelly Dolan at every opportunity.
“Battlestar Strike,” Toad said over the radio, “Red Ace flight entering Bravo at assigned altitude.”
“Roger.”
Jake keyed the mike. “Left turn, Jelly.”
Two mike clicks was the reply.
One minute passed, then two. Jake stabilized the airspeed at 250 knots, max conserve. He scanned the instruments and resumed his visual search of the heavens.
“I’ve got him, CAG,” Toad said. “Looks like a hundred and twenty miles out. He’s headed southwest. Got the right squawk.” The squawk was the radar identification code. “He’s running about a mile or so above us.”
Jake flipped the secondary radio to the channel the E-2 Hawkeye used and listened to the crew report the airliner to the Combat Decision Center (CDC) aboard the carrier. He knew the radio transmissions merely backed up the data link that transmitted the Hawkeye’s radar picture for presentation on a scope in CDC. The watchstanders aboard ship would watch the airliner. If the course changed to come within fifty miles of the carrier, Jake’s flight or the flight in area Alpha would be vectored to intercept. They would close the airliner and check visually to ensure that it was what they thought and that it was alone. The fighters would stay well back out of view of the airliner’s cockpit and passenger windows and would follow until told to break off.
Jake yawned and flashed his exterior lights. Then he turned north. Jelly Dolan followed obediently. In a few moments he turned east to permit Toad and Boomer to use their radars to scan the skies toward Lebanon. If any terrorists or fanatics attempted a night aerial strike on the carrier task group, it would more than likely come from the east.
“Nothing, CAG. The sky’s as clean as a virgin’s conscience.”
“How come you’re always talking about women, Toad?”
“Am I?” Feigned shock.
“After three months at sea, I’d think your hormones would have achieved a level of dormancy that allowed your mind to dwell on other subjects.”
“I’m always horny. That’s why they call me Toad. When are we going into port, anyway?”
“Whenever the admiral says.”
“Yessir. But have you got any idea when he might say it?”
“Soon, I hope.” Jake was very much aware of the toll the constant day-and-night flight operations had taken on the ship’s crew and the men of the air wing. He thought about the stresses of constant work, work, work on the men as he guided the Tomcat through the sky.
“We’re approaching the eastern edge of the area,” Toad reminded him.
Jake glanced toward Jelly. The wingman was not there.
“Jelly?”
He looked on the other side. The sky was empty there, too. He rolled the aircraft and looked down. Far below he saw a set of lights.
“Red Ace Two Oh Seven, do you read?”
Jake rolled on his back and pulled the nose down. “Strike, Red Ace Two Oh Five, I’m leaving altitude.” The nose came down twenty degrees and Jake pointed it at the lights. “Jelly, this is CAG. Do you read me, over?”
“He’s going down,” Toad informed him.
“Boomer, talk to me.” Jake had the throttles full forward: 450 knots, now 500, passing 21,000 feet descending. The aircraft below was in a gentle right turn, and Jake hastened to cut the turn short and intercept.
“Red Ace Two Oh Five, Strike. Say your problem.”
“My wingman is apparently in an uncontrolled descent and I can’t raise him on the radio. Am trying to rendezvous. Have you got an emergency squawk?”