“I can’t tell shit from that,” Church said.
“Well, the orbit is over the equator, some twenty-two hundred miles south of Wyatt’s position. Then, too, you’re seeing light-enhanced, night-vision video. Plus, the lens is at the limit of its telescopic ability, and the angle and the distance make things a little fuzzy. See this dark blue stuff at the top of the screen? That’s the Med.”
“I picked right up on that, George.”
“Then, down here, where they’ve superimposed a red circle? That’s Marada. The runway is painted in camouflage colours, but the high-tech tinkerers have outlined it for us with white lines. They’re great guys over there.”
“And the yellow circle is Wyatt?”
“You’ve got it, Marty. Go to the head of the photo analysis class. One other thing, they can get us infrared, also.”
“For what?”
“Live video of camouflaged aircraft against the desert may not show us anything. If it doesn’t, we can pick up on their heat trails.”
“All right. So what are they doing?”
“Nothing. Same thing they’ve been doing for lo, these many hours. Actually, I can call and have them put up earlier tapes on the other monitor, if you want to see a flight of MiGs take off from Marada or Wyatt’s people landing at the staging base. They all look like the little airplanes you see on computer games.”
“I’ll pass. What were the MiGs doing?”
“Normal recon or air defence patrol, I think. They flew the border with Egypt, then returned to base.” Church leaned back in his chair, and Embry got up to refill his mug from a drip coffee maker on the credenza behind his desk.
“Want some, Marty?”
“No, I’m coffeed out. Did you get anything from Cummings on a time line?”
“Not yet. I have to wait until she calls. Won’t do to ring her up, if someone’s in the room with her, you know.”
“I promised to contact Wyatt at four his time with any new data. That’ll be eight o’clock tonight our time.”
“I can count, Marty.”
“You don’t want to break policy and call her?”
“No. I want her to live through this. Oops.”
“What?” Church asked.
“Look here,” Embry said, pointing to the red circle on the screen.
Two aircraft had appeared, as if out of nowhere. Church understood that they had been underground. They rolled onto the outlined runway and paused.
The two men waited.
The jets began moving, gathering speed quickly, then rising from the runway and moving out of the red circle.
“MiG-23s I think,” Embry said.
“They make many night flights, George?”
“Not very many.”
“So this is unusual.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t like unusual, George. Or surprises.”
“Am I going to get a surprise?” Embry asked.
“Yes. You can send all this stuff back to Meade. Call Wyatt and tell him his vacation is over.”
“Bullshit.”
“No. The DCI can’t get sign-off.”
“I am going to call the son of a bitch,” Embry said.
“No, you’re not.”
Embry’s eyes burned hot. “Marty, get on that fucking phone and stand your ground. If I recall this mission, I walk.”
Church studied him for a full two minutes, then walked his castered chair over to the desk, picked up the phone, and asked Embry’s secretary to locate the Director.
When somebody found him, he said, “Yes, Martin?”
“Mr. Director, the time for politicking is over. I want an executive order for Icarus, and I want it on my desk in the next two hours.”
“Martin? What the hell?”
“You started this shit, and you’d better damn well finish it. We’re not playing one-upmanship in this room. You go, you beg, you borrow, you spend your favours, you do what you have to do to back up what you started.”
“Martin…”
Church hung up.
He felt good.
He also felt unemployed.
Ahmed al-Qati and Khalil Shummari drove directly back to their cantonment area from Ramad’s briefing. The whining roar of a second pair of MiG fighters taking off from the base deferred any talk. Shummari got out of the truck beside one of his Mi-28 assault helicopters.
He leaned back into the cab. “Well, Ahmed?”
“There is no choice to be made, Khalil. I will give my men another hour’s sleep, then wake them and have them prepare their gear.”
The major nodded. “I will begin moving my helicopters to the base soon. We will need to fuel them, fold the rotors, and load them aboard the transports.”
“Go with God, Khalil. And be prepared for the devil to strike.”
Al-Qati drove on to the headquarters tent, shut off the ignition, and walked inside. An older sergeant manned the duty desk, which was composed simply of a folding table and a telephone.
“Sergeant, take a few minutes’ break, then, at one-thirty, awaken the officers. At two o’clock, begin waking the rest of the company.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
The sergeant left the tent, and al-Qati went to sit on the camp stool behind the desk.
He thought Ramad’s decision precipitous and foolish. Accelerating the launch time would only heighten the problems. There would be mistakes made, and they would be costly mistakes. As far as it went, the exercise was well-planned, but throw in a few unexpected developments, and many things would go wrong. The cost could be counted in lives.
Al-Qati thought that Ramad was exchanging lives for his own advancement.
Worse, he was certain that Colonel Ghazi was also aware of Ramad’s self-interest, but Ghazi was apparently powerless. He would not speak up against the sycophants surrounding the Leader, Salmi and Amjab.
It would be far better, in al-Qati’s view, to delay Test Strike for a week and see if the suspected incursion took place first. The country would best be served by devoting her resources to defence at this moment, rather than to boasting her offensive capabilities.
And far worse, he thought, could be the international consequences of the folly to be executed in Ethiopia. The demonstration of offensive strength might well have gone as Ramad envisioned — unattributed, yet faintly identifiable — had the information not leaked from some source in Tripoli.
Or from Tobruk, as he had come to suspect.
Sophia.
Al-Qati called Ramad foolish, and even Ghazi, but he knew in his heart that the most foolish of all was himself. He had disgorged everything, or almost everything, he knew to the gorgeous creature in the Seaside Hotel.
And he loved her. He knew that he did.
But she used him, abused him, probed in catlike ways for the secrets he held.
And he coughed them up so willingly!
How she must laugh at him.
He was heartsick and humiliated.
And responsible for the deaths that would come.
He heard the whine of helicopter turbines starting. Shummari was moving his company to Marada.
The gases would writhe like maddened snakes across the barrenness of Ethiopia.
But he need not be the root of that evil, of innocents sent to the slaughter.
Rising from the stool, he walked back to the radio, dialled the frequency for the battalion radio, and asked for a connection with the telephone system.
She was always there, of course, and at one-twenty in the morning, likely sound asleep. The telephone rang three times before she answered.
“Yes?”
“I am sorry to awaken you, Sophia.” His voice sounded flat and dead, even to himself.
“Ahmed! Where are you?”
“I call only to tell you that you may start counting the hours from four-thirty this morning.”
“What?”
“Are you awake? Did you understand me? Four-thirty this morning.”