Keith Douglass
The Art of War
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to freelance writer and naval aviation analyst Brad Elward for his assistance with the air combat scenes. Brad writes regularly for Combat Aircraft magazine and World Air Power Journal and his book, The McDonnell Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, published by Crowood Press, was released in July 2000.
ONE
Heat blistered up through the soles of his worn boots, seeped through two layers of socks, and drenched his feet in salty sweat. Ali ben Wadi could feel his feet baking in their own juices under the desert sun. The rest of his body was parched and broiled. The fine sand crept into every opening, sifting through clothes, clogging his nose, mouth, and eyes with gritty pain.
For all the discomfort, he reveled in the feelings, letting the pain and physical challenge wash over him like a cooling bath. Hell on earth it might be to some, but it was his hell, his home. As hostile as the desert climate was, it was a familiar inferno, one that he had grown up knowing and come to respect.
In contrast, the climate of the northeastern part of the United States would never be familiar, no matter how many years he spent in it. Four years at Harvard for his undergraduate degree, another two for a master’s degree, and then the final six months starting his doctorate degree, and every second of the time he’d longed for the harsh reality of his desert home.
Yes, it had been a sacrifice, but one he’d undertaken willingly. His government asked him to go, asked him to apply himself as best he could to knowing the ways of the United States, soaking up the knowledge, making contacts and learning to pass as a native — and then to return home, bringing with him his knowledge like a motherlode more precious than the oil beneath his feet. Over the last several decades of conflict and a return to traditional ways, there was one lesson that Iran had learned the hard way — to take advantage of what was offered by the incredibly naïve United States.
Wadi was considered a rarity in some circles. This experiment had been tried too many times with weaker men — never women, always men. Few women of any character or ability would have shamed themselves by choosing to live in such a decadent, sinful society, as evidenced by the fact that so few chose to return to their homeland after a taste of the American lifestyle. Even the men, his brothers and cousins born to this hard land had succumbed, whining from a distance about being allowed to remain in the West, advancing flaccid arguments about how they could better serve their people by remaining on station inside the Western world and insinuating themselves into the fabric of the culture as spies and subversive elements. Wadi had listened to their whining and vowed never to be the same.
A memory cropped up, seductive and enticing. The smell of Boston streets after a rain, the first scents of spring curling through the still-chilly air. He pushed it away, determined to divest himself of those weaknesses. To have enjoyed it while there was simply a matter of acculturation, of better coming to understand the weak and foolish people that made up that land. To reflect on it now, with hot sand under his boots and hard sun beating down on his shoulders was simply indulgence.
No, not indulgence, because that implied that there was anything at all pleasant about the experience. No, it was weakness, a sin of pride, and one that must be routed out at all costs. There was too much to do in the weeks and months ahead, too much at risk. He would not allow the petty temptations of physical comfort to distract him from his destiny.
His cousin, Jemal Hassan, turned to him. “Here, do you think?”
Wadi surveyed the area. To a Westerner, one patch of desert looked like the next. Flat, hot, sand — what more was there to understand about the country?
But to Wadi and Hassan, there was a richness to the subtlety of this land. There were prevailing winds to consider, the patterns of sand accumulation, the probability of a sandstorm whipping through and transforming this landscape overnight from hard-baked clay and sand into an ever-shifting dunescape.
“Yes.” Wadi made an impatient gesture. “The council has already approved it. This is merely a formality and a final chance to detect any problems.”
“Even so. I would wonder that we are so far from the ocean.” Hassan shifted a bit, as though a trickle of sweat was coursing down inside his traditional garb. Wadi allowed himself a moment of self-satisfaction. So long away from this land, and yet he tolerated it better than his weaker cousin.
“Irrelevant. We could be practically on the eastern border and still have the plan work.” The reaction times were so short on the scale that the Americans understood that a few minutes here or there made no difference.
“Yes, but—”
“Have you any valid points to offer?”
Hassan fell silent, but Wadi could feel his seething frustration. Not everyone had welcomed him back to Iran with open arms. His return had rearranged power structures and alliances that had grown in his absence, the way water flows in to fill a void, and the process of reestablishing his position within the family was still going on.
“I thought not.” Wadi hammered the point home, allowing a few moments for his cousin to feel his disdain. “Then we are done here.”
They walked back to the military vehicle in silence, each preoccupied with his own thoughts. For Wadi’s part, he was pleased with the encounter.
A few days to allow their report — his report, since he would ensure that his cousin’s name appeared nowhere on it — to circulate, and then the construction would begin. The foreign crews were already standing by, along with their equipment. It was a pain working with them, but few Iranians were willing to soil their hands with physical labor. If the riches that flowed from the black oil underfoot had one drawback, it was that easy wealth seemed to have eroded the willingness to work to survive that had characterized his people before.
Or was that a faulty perception, one that he’d picked up in the West? Yes, that was it. The wealth now allowed his people to take their natural place in Allah’s great plan, leading this part of the world into a return to traditional values, to following his sacred commands. It was not that his people were lazy or unwilling, it was simply that greater matters occupied them now. A man could not be expected to spend his days in hard physical labor when he had his leadership responsibilities to the rest of the world to consider. Let the lesser races take their appropriate place, working to redeem themselves from their sinful ways, sweating out their evil for the good of Iran. Yes, they died. Died from heatstroke, from snakebite, from what they complained of as poor nutrition and sanitation. Yet were these not the very conditions that had tempered the Iranian spirit, fired them into the proud and indomitable people that they were now? The days of toadying to American interests were gone, the interest of the oil companies nationalized, and Iran was moving steadily toward her proper role in the world.
Within a few weeks, this would no longer be empty desert. Concrete and tarmac would bloom like flowers after a rain. Metal would fill the skies, hard and clean under the sun. And eventually…
“Vengeance,” he whispered. “Vengeance will be ours.”
The slight coolness of early evening, if it could be called such, was welcome.
Just forty miles to the north, the hulks waited on the desert to answer his call. The low humidity was an excellent factor in their preservation, and although the avionics and weaponry were outdated, money could cure that. Money could cure so many ills in the world, when properly applied. It was distasteful to have to deal with the foreign curs who had such expertise, and the prices that they gouged from this holy mission were an evil unto themselves, but all would be repaid eventually. The aircraft would fly again, harder, faster, and into danger’s path, piloted by the brave Iranian pilots that had been trained by the very people that they would soon challenge in the skies.