"What is happening?" Saddam Hussein demanded of his coterie of subordinates. "Why are they not grinding those Kurdish dogs beneath their treads?"
Haste was made to learn the reason for the lack of tank movement in the field of battle.
Far below, the Kurds were hesitating, unsure this wasn't some kind of trick.
When the lack of movement continued for another handful of minutes, Hussein knew that it had gone on too long. Something was desperately wrong.
The Kurds sensed it, as well.
There came a fearsome cry from the belly of the great valley. Hundreds of Kurd mouths let flow whoops of explosive rage. Knives raised above their heads, they swarmed toward the row of inert tanks.
Behind the Kurds, the armed men in the trenches didn't act. They were a safety measure to keep the Kurds in line, yet they did nothing to stop them. When Hussein swung his binoculars over, he saw that the men in the trenches were struggling with their guns.
"Shoot them!" Hussein shouted into the valley.
He wheeled on the men nearest him. "Order those fools to fire!"
The man nearest him slammed the portable phone with his fist. "The radio does not work, my president."
Hussein whirled back around. The slaughter had already begun.
Men fell to the sand. His men. Saddam Hussein's vaunted and feared Republican Guard.
Men clutched bellies and throats. Blood flowed into the sand of their forefathers.
The soldiers in the trenches still had not fired. Hussein realized with a horrid, sinking feeling that the only reason they would not shoot was because they could not shoot.
The Kurds finished with the tank soldiers in less than three minutes. Charged with the thrill of victory-knives dripping blood-they raced back for the men in the trenches.
The Republican Guard soldiers had already stripped off their trousers. Naked from the waist down, they waved their pants in the air atop the barrels of their useless guns.
The Kurds did not recognize their surrender. They had for too many years been victims of Iraq's celebrated Republican Guard.
It was a massacre. In minutes, pools of dark blood stained the powdery sand in the trenches. Sickened by the spectacle, Hussein turned to his men, his face ashen.
"Let us leave," Hussein intoned hollowly.
"The jeeps do not work, my President!" a frantic aide announced.
Hussein's head whipped to the valley.
Below, the Kurds were almost finished with the slaughter. There was only one place left for them to go. And with a sinking feeling, Hussein knew where that was.
Throwing his binoculars to the sand, Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council Saddam Hussein spun from the field of battle and ran like a jackrabbit for home. In his haste to run back to Baghdad, he did not even bother to pick at his wedged underpants.
THE TWO SOVIET-BUILT MiG-23s raced along the sticky black tarmac of the Syrian Arab People's Airport in the low-lying hills south of Damascus.
Fuselages shuddered as the cooler mountain air grabbed the swing wings of both planes. With a piercing cry, the airport fell away and the powerful jets screamed into the heavens.
At one time, the Syrian air force had seventy of the aircraft. But in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse came a serious equipment shortage. Parts were being scavenged from donor planes just to keep the dwindling aircraft of the Syrian air force aloft. These were two of the last complete multirole all-weather fighters of this type still in service.
The MiGs left Damascus far behind, soaring along the lower hills of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains.
In the distance, Mount Hermon rose majestically from amid the lesser mountains. At more than nine thousand feet, it was the highest point in the country. According to the history of the area, Hermon was the site of Christ's transfiguration before his disciples.
Of course, the Syrian pilots did not believe such nonsense. Hermon was a mountain that, along with the rest of the Anti-Lebanon range, separated the Syrian Arab Republic from its geographical neighbors. That was all.
Hugging the mountains to the east, the MiGs soared in the direction of the disputed Golan Heights. Sunlight glinted off the cockpit domes.
In spite of speeds nearly exceeding fifteen hundred miles per hour, Mount Hermon seemed not to move. It stayed patiently beside the roaring fighters as they flew, an ancient, watchful sentry.
The routine patrol continued south as far as As Suwayda, then looped north for home.
As the bleak terrain raced beneath the bellies of the twin planes, one of the pilots thought he saw something in his peripheral vision. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of Mount Hermon.
The mountain seemed to shiver.
Behind his goggles, the pilot blinked his eyes. When he looked back, Hermon was stationary once more, as if nothing had happened. But something had-
Perhaps it was a problem with his goggles. Or perhaps there was fog on the interior of his cockpit dome. At this height and in this climate, ice should not have formed on the exterior of the craft, but that was a possibility. It might have even been an earthquake. Whatever had happened, there had to be some explanation.
The pilot thought to report the strange phenomenon once he landed. He would never get the chance. All at once, a stiff breeze blew in out of the west, engulfing his aircraft.
The nose of the MiG seemed to wobble. Just as Mount Hermon had.
The wind passed.
Another bizarre occurrence to report. The pilot adjusted the stick slightly. It failed to move.
Concerned, he tugged harder. Nothing. It was locked in place.
Checking the other systems, he found to his horror that they were all the same. Frozen solid.
The MiG began to lose altitude.
Looking over, the pilot saw that his sister craft was in the same predicament. Nose dipping forward, it had begun an inexorable screaming dive for the lowland mountains.
No way to pull out of the dive. Controls frozen.
Nothing more he could do. The plane was going down.
The pilot hit the eject switch. Nothing happened.
He hit it again. Still nothing.
Ground racing up now. Faster, faster.
Pounding the switch. Banging hands against the dome above his head.
Nothing moved. Everything fused.
Ground visible on the other side of the dome. In front of the nose.
Too fast ...too fast...
The two MiGs impacted against the rolling base of Mount Hernion twenty seconds later. Twin explosions of yellow and orange gouted a spray of metal and stone.
And though the crashes and ensuing fires were fierce, through it all Mount Hermon stood. Unchanged.
THE SCENE PLAYED OUT the same way from Cyprus to Saudi Arabia, from Egypt to the west of Iran. Afterward, some claimed they had felt something. All said they saw something. A strange shimmering of the land, followed by a warm wind.
Guns seized up at a rally in Lebanon. King Abduilah's plane nearly crashed during takeoff in Jordan. Elevators, automobiles, kitchen appliances, construction equipment-indeed all metal-on-metal hardware within at least a seven-hundred-mile radius around Israel's disputed West Bank-became inoperative. As if clenched in a powerful, invisible fist. And around the world, stunned governments nearly tripped over one another as they sprang to sudden action. All of them with the same goaclass="underline" to gain a foothold in the suddenly powerless region.
Chapter 29
Their car suddenly seized up on the road into Hebron.
Behind the wheel, Bryce Babcock desperately turned the key, at the same time pressing his foot on the gas.
Nothing happened. Not an engine struggling sound, not a feeble click. Nothing.
"The peace bomb," Babcock exhaled, nodding anxiously.
Nossur Aruch leaned over the front seat. "Give it more gas," he instructed angrily.