“Ahmed…”
He broke the connection.
He could not know whether or not she would believe either him or his information.
She now knew that he knew.
And that was that.
Ibrahim Ramad walked slowly through the underground hangars, moving from one to another as the preparations continued. The ground crews were slowly coming awake after being jarred out of sound sleep. The ordnance men worked as if they walked on eggs, and perhaps they did.
Ramad had released the chemical warheads earlier. He had not signed for them, since no record was to exist of their deployment. Even the fuel requisitioned for the aircraft involved was to remain unaccounted for and charged to evaporation.
In two of the hangars, nine of the Su-24 bombers were being fitted with the bombs on the inboard pylons. The outboard pylons, on the pivoting wings, would carry four AA-8 air-to-air missiles in the event of an attack on the bombers. Ramad thought the missiles would go unused.
The nine planes were formed into three squadrons, to be called Red, Green, and Purple for this mission. Each squadron carried one type of chemical bomb, toxin, psychological, or nerve agent. The advance party in the C-130s was codenamed Black, and the escort for the bombers, composed of eight MiG-23s, was to be called Orange.
Before the infantry company left, Ramad would personally select one man in each platoon to carry and use the sealed still and video cameras. The photographic record was to be complete and close to the action.
Ramad’s nine MiG-23s would stay in-country, securing Marada Air Base with round-the-clock patrols of four aircraft each, two patrolling to the west and two to the south. Four MiG-23s would stay on full alert at the end of the runway, prepared for instantaneous launch.
He stopped to watch the loading of AA-6 and AA-7 missiles on the pylons of a MiG-23, part of the Orange air cover. These, too, would not be used, he was certain.
His personal MiG-23 was already outfitted with AA-8 missiles and a full magazine for the twin-barrelled 23 millimetre cannon. It would be moved up to the runway, with the avionics warmed up, and be instantly available the moment he decided to leave. He stopped beside it and gazed at his name stencilled below the cockpit canopy.
Ramad almost hoped that the rumour proved to be grounded in fact and was not simply a scare tactic. The Americans frequently did that — leak threats that never came to fruition.
An F-4 did not frighten him. His J-band radar, which NATO called “Jay Bird,” had a search range of twenty-five kilometres and was nearly the equivalent of that in the F-4. With radar range comparisons nullified, he was confident that the MiG-23 could outfly and out-manoeuvre the F-4.
He saw Gamal Harisah preflighting his aircraft and crossed the hangar to join him.
“Good morning. Colonel.”
“Good morning, Captain. What do you think?”
“They do not even look like bombs, Colonel.”
The canisters were almost blunt-nosed, and they were three hundred millimetres in diameter, perhaps two meters long. They were finished in a matte grey. It was almost ludicrous how such unassuming cans could contain such a fatal substance.
The ordnance specialist moved with careful precision as he connected the arming tether between the bomb and the pylon. Once the bomb dropped, the arming pin would be extracted, starting the internal clock. After the clock registered ten seconds, the bomb would be fully armed. Its barometric altimeter was set for two thousand meters, six hundred meters above ground level at the target site for the Purple Squadron. When the bomb reached that altitude, a one-kilogram explosive charge would detonate, destroying the canister and releasing the nerve agent to the winds.
“The meteorologist,” Harisah said, “told me to expect ten-knot winds along the foothills near the target. With a half-kilometre spacing between airplanes, we are going to release four kilometres upwind from the village. The dispersal should achieve a wide range from that point.”
“Good, good,” Ramad said.
Purple Target, an unnamed village, was not even a village. The camp was a collection of tin and fabric tents, goats, camels, dogs, and at last count, thirty-two hundred emaciated and diseased people. The last photographs, taken two weeks before, showed several white United Nations trucks parked near the camp, so there might be some UN workers there. Then again, there might not be. Ramad was not going to worry unduly about it at this point.
He crossed the hangar to the back, entered the tunnel, and double-checked that the doors to the chemical weapons stores were locked before walking back to his office.
He was getting impatient.
Test Strike was going to be a huge success, insuring his participation in the policy development group that surrounded the Leader.
In fact, he was so confident of the exercise that he found himself daydreaming about Americans or Israelis insane enough to attack Marada Air Base.
He wanted so much for it to be true. He needed the diversion.
He was still daydreaming when Colonel Ghazi appeared in his doorway.
Startled, he looked up. “Oh. Colonel Ghazi. Please come in.”
“There was just one thought I wished to share with you, Ibrahim.”
“Certainly.”
“What defensive precautions have you taken for the chemical plant?”
“The chemical plant? They have their own air defence system of antiaircraft guns and missiles.”
“Do you suppose that is sufficient?”
“It does not matter, Colonel. It is not my jurisdiction.”
“It is now,” Ghazi told him.
At six-fifteen in the evening, Martin Church was thinking seriously of going home early and crawling in bed. Tomorrow night was going to be a long one, and he wanted to be as fresh as possible.
He got up and took his suit jacket from its hanger on the hall tree behind the door.
He was shrugging his way into it when the phone in the outer office rang.
He called through the doorway, “I don’t want to take that, Sally.”
“Right, boss.” She answered, then called back to him, “It’s for you.”
“I just said…”
Through the doorway, she mouthed, “The Director.” Church crossed to his desk and picked up.
“Martin, you’ve got your go-ahead.”
His sigh of relief was almost audible. “Thank you, sir.”
“Your information had better be accurate. This cost me two years’ worth of political points.”
“I believe in it.”
“Good. I’ll try.”
The Director hung up.
The man might even earn Church’s respect, if he kept this pace up.
He dialled Embry’s office.
“You’ve got your go-signal, George.”
“It’s about damned time.”
“You can cancel the abort.”
“I never bothered to abort. I trusted you, Marty.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Come on down here,” Embry said.
“What now, George?”
“Come on down here. Quick!”
With that much urgency in Embry’s voice, Church just slapped the phone down and headed for the elevator.
When he got there, he found a dishevelled Embry hunched over his table before the monitors, scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad.
The scene on the screen didn’t seem to have changed much until he looked closer. There were large aircraft on the runways at Marada Air Base.
“What’s going on?”
“Those are C-130s, Marty. Right now, they’re loading helicopters.”
“Whose helicopters?”
Embry pointed at the blue phone. “NSA tells me they go with al-Qati’s First Special Forces Company.”