Two metal suitcases in hand, Dublowski left the Ranch in his pickup truck.
Thorpe felt in his element for the first time since he'd put his uniform back on. The throbbing roar of turboprop engines from the nearby combat Talon filled his ears. The smell of JP-4 fuel burning was a familiar one that brought back memories of being at many other airfields preparing to deploy.
The twenty men of the Delta forward element wore black fatigues with no markings. They were loading their gear onto the plane, MP-5 submachine guns slung over their backs.
Thorpe walked up to the man directing the loading. "You in charge?"
The soldier, a tall black man with a completely shaved head, checked Thorpe out, taking in the SOCOM patch on the shoulder, the Special Forces branch insignia on the collar, the combat infantry, scuba and master airborne patches on his chest, and lastly the name tag.
"No, sir. I'm Master Sergeant Grant. Major Dotson is in charge." Grant pointed to a younger white man standing near the back ramp of the plane.
Thorpe walked over. "Major Dotson."
"Yeah?" Dotson looked over Thorpe in the same manner as Grant. "So you're Thorpe. Heard you screwed the pooch in the Ukraine and we've got to close this out."
"I'll be coming with you," Thorpe said.
"Great," Dotson muttered. "What am I, a cruise ship director?"
"The Israelis lost four men 'screwing the pooch,' as you say," Thorpe said. "We stopped two-thirds of the shipment. I would like to be there to help finish the job."
Dotson sighed. "All right. See Grant to get some gear. Make sure you're sterile. Last thing we want is to leave a body that can be identified as American on Saudi soil."
Thorpe noticed something he had never seen before on a combat Talon — two pods bolted to the body of the plane, just forward of the wheel wells.
"What's that?"
Dotson followed his pointing finger. "Hummingbirds. Mixture of high-explosive and diversionary loads."
Thorpe almost laughed. It had come full circle from the rig in the Gulf of Mexico to here. He hoped their assault went better than the previous one.
"They're staying over Egyptian soil," Parker noted.
"They're not stupid enough to even get close to Israeli airspace," Gereg said. "What's the status on Delta?" she asked Giles.
"They'll be wheels up in two minutes."
"What else do we have on call?" Gereg asked.
Dilken ticked off the firepower. "The U.S.S. John C. Stennis just finished transiting the Red Sea en route to relieving the Lincoln in the Persian Gulf." Dilken hit a key and the small image of an aircraft carrier's silhouette appeared in the Gulf of Aden, just out of the Red Sea. "It has a full complement of combat aircraft along with its battle group, armed with cruise missiles."
"Scramble some air support to be on station farther north in the Red Sea."
"Yes, ma'am."
Everyone turned as the back door to the ops center opened and the director walked in. He went directly to Gereg. "We have National Command Authority Sanction for this mission. However, we must avoid escalation to direct conflict with Saudi troops."
"That might be hard to do, sir," Gereg noted.
"I don't care how hard it is, you make sure we don't start World War III here or piss off the number one oil-producing country in the world."
Terri had made her decision and when she heard the door clang open at the end of the corridor, she quickly padded across her cell to a position to the right of her cell door. She heard another door open, a yell from Leslie as she was dragged out of her cell. Then Cathy's door opening. Both girls were dragged away and still Terri waited, pressed against the hard concrete, her eyes on the door, her ears listening for any movement.
Two men were speaking in a foreign tongue; they laughed; then heavy boots walked away, the door at the end of the corridor slamming shut. Then a lone set of boots came down the corridor.
She heard the key in the lock, then the door swung wide, covering her behind it. A man in sand-colored camouflage stepped in, pistol leading.
Terri pounced, grabbing the arm holding the gun and biting down just above the wrist, her teeth tearing through flesh and bringing a yelp of pain from the man. The gun hit the ground with a clank.
The soldier turned toward her, but she was already moving, pushing off the wall with all her strength, knee leading directly into his groin. A gargled yell came out of the man's throat, but Terri continued as her father had taught her, slamming the knee twice more into his groin. Then she swung her left elbow, hitting him in the face, snapping his head against the door.
The soldier staggered as Terri dropped to her knees, hands grabbing, wrapping around the butt of the pistol. She brought it up, business end pointing at the soldier's face. He was still moaning, hands over his groin.
Terri's finger curled over the edge of the trigger. She realized that the sound would bring others. She pushed forward, shoving the barrel into the man's ample stomach, and pulled the trigger, the flesh muffling the sound.
The man's eyes went wide, both in disbelief that a woman would shoot him and from the pain. Terri stepped back. She pulled back the slide — the pressure against the man's body having kept it from working properly after the first shot — and put another bullet in the chamber.
The man dropped to his knees, hands over his stomach, blood flowing over them. Terri waited, watching.
"This is the route we will take to the Red Sea." Major Dotson ran his finger along the map.
Glancing out the window to the left, Thorpe could see rocky outcroppings along a ridge at a height equal to that at which they were flying. The combat Talon was less than eighty feet above the ground, the plane bobbing and weaving to follow the contour of the earth along a canyon.
Dotson's finger had traced a route across southern Israel, where the country grew narrower and narrower until just a tiny part of it touched the Gulf of Aqaba between Egypt and Jordan.
"We go feet wet," Dotson continued. "The pilots will put us just about on the wave tops through the Gulf of Aqaba until we touch the Red Sea. Then we have to see exactly where our target goes."
"Won't we get picked up by Saudi radar when we go by Aqaba?" Thorpe asked.
"The Israelis run training flights along this route every day," Dotson answered. "The flights stay at least twelve miles from each shore, in international airspace. We'll get picked up, but the Saudis will assume we are just another training flight." The officer shrugged. "One aircraft — a transport plane, at that — flying alone will not raise much interest."
The Talon was indeed a transport plane, but probably the most sophisticated one in the world. Built on the classic C-130 Hercules transport airframe that has been in service around the world since the late 1950s, the combat Talon was updated in every area. Four powerful turboprop engines pulled it through the air at 340 miles per hour. A large bulbous protrusion under the nose held sophisticated imaging equipment that allowed the pilots to fly low-level even in the worst conditions.
The twenty men of the Delta team were crowded into the rear half of the cargo hold, with about enough space to hold three cars end to end. The front half of the hold was blocked from them by heavy black curtains. Behind those curtains were the stations for the electronic warfare specialists who manned the equipment that helped them evade, confuse and, if need be, jam enemy radar.
Ungainly and slow, the Talon was often mocked by other pilots, especially those who flew jets, but the aircraft had proved its worth time and time again. Talon crews pointed to the fact that a Talon had once penetrated the U.S.S. United States' battle group unnoticed to within fifty meters of the massive carrier.