In time.
What was happening in Washington?
When Toad woke Jake up, he had a message. “The president said Go. You’re to call General Land.”
For some reason he didn’t quite understand, Jake felt refreshed and relaxed after his nap. He followed Toad to the com center and sat drinking coffee while the technicians placed the call to Washington.
Hayden Land’s voice had a note of optimism this morning, actually midnight or after in Washington. “The White House crowd finally faced up to the fact they have no choice.”
No choice! The words echoed in Jake’s mind. It’s almost as if the grand smashup is preordained, he thought.
“Where are the Scud missiles?”
“They aren’t moving on the roads, sir,” the air intelligence officer told Jake Grafton. “And we can’t find any vehicles leaving the Samarra base that go to any of the Scud sites we know about. None. We’ve used computers to analyze satellite imagery and side-looking radar to track their vehicles. We’ve come up dry.”
“Maybe most of the warheads are still at the Samarra base.”
“Reluctantly, I come to that conclusion too, Admiral.”
It is never safe to assume that your opponent is doing what you want him to do. Jake Grafton was well aware of that pitfall, and yet… “Perhaps,” he murmured, “Saddam is having his trouble adapting the warheads to the missiles.”
“It’s possible,” Colonel Rheinhart agreed. “The Iraqis reduced the payload capability of their missiles several years ago in order to carry more fuel.”
“So where is Saddam?” Jake asked the intelligence staff.
“He rode out the Gulf War in ’91 in a camping trailer that moved randomly around Baghdad. We told the press we knew where all the command and control facilities were, which was a serious stretcher. Then we blew up a few of them with smart bombs and he concluded we were telling the truth.”
“And now?”
“Well, we’ve refined our satellite capability since the Gulf War. We have side-looking radar in the air that tracks moving vehicles so that we can find Scud sites. Now we do have all the command and control facilities spotted and we can follow Saddam for days at a time. Unfortunately, right now we seem to have lost track of him.”
“Could he be at the Samarra base?” Jake asked. “Sir, he could be anywhere.”
General Loy, Major General Serkin, and Jake Grafton reviewed the final plan together. They set H-Hour for 24:00 this night. Serkin said he didn’t think they could go sooner, and with yet another glance at his watch Jake acquiesced.
Then he went to find Toad. “Did you get anything out of Yakolev?”
“He refused to say a word. When he heard the question he looked at me like I was crazy.”
Jake Grafton sighed. “I’m jumping tonight with the SEALs,” he said after a bit. “I want you to bring the nuclear weapons experts in on choppers. Get chopper transport for Jack Yocke and a network camera team and as many other print and television reporters as you can cram in. Have Captain McElroy and the marines bring our two Russian friends and Spiro Dalworth. Bring Colonel Rheinhart, Jocko West and the other international observers. You’re in charge of that operation.”
“No, sir. I’m going with you.”
Jake Grafton did a double take. “Toad, I want you to get the press and the international people there. This is the key to the whole deal.”
“Rita can handle it, CAG. I’m going with you.”
“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear, Commander. You—”
“CAG, you can court-martial me if you like. But I’m going with you and watch your back. You are the key to this operation and if you get zapped, the rest of us are in big fucking trouble. I’d never forgive myself if that happened and Rita wouldn’t forgive me either. Now that’s that.”
“Have you ever made a delayed parachute drop?”
“I’ve done as many as you have, sir.”
“Okay, smart-ass. We’ll hold hands all the way down.”
Jack Yocke had a request of his own when Toad told him he was going in on a chopper with Rita. “I’d like to go with you and the admiral.”
“Yeah, I bet you would,” Toad said. “Forget it, pencil pilot. We’ll give you a window seat on the executive helicopter if you promise not to pee your pants.”
“No, I want to jump with you guys. It’ll be a great story.”
“You don’t seem to understand, Jack. We’ll be the first guys in. This is a twenty-eight-thousand-foot free fall at night into a concentration of enemy troops who are probably on full alert. There’ll be bullets flying around, helicopter gunships blasting tanks, the whole greasy enchilada. Get serious! Your mother wouldn’t even let you play with a cap pistol when you were a kid.”
“Let me ask the admiral.”
Grafton listened to Yocke state his case, gave Toad an evil glance, and said, “Sure you can come. Why not? The more the merrier.”
They started sweating during the suiting up at 20:00, after dinner in the main cafeteria. Camo clothing, insulated one-piece jumpsuit, jump boots, helmet, silenced submachine gun, ammo, knife, radio, canteen, flak vest—“The bullets will bounce off like you’re fucking Superman”—parachute harness, parachutes, oxygen mask, oxygen supply system, gloves, jump goggles, night vision goggles for on the ground…almost eighty pounds of equipment. They waddled when they were finally outfitted.
“I don’t want a gun,” Yocke said.
“No weapon, no jump,” Jake Grafton told him curtly. “Your choice. I’m not taking a tourist into a firefight, and that’s final.”
So they hung a submachine gun and ammo on Yocke and he kept his mouth shut. As a final indignity, Toad Tarkington smeared his face with black camouflage grease.
It was bizarre. The SEALs looked like extras from an Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick. Zap, boom, pow! No doubt he did too. And they were all grown men!
Yocke began really sweating in the lecture that followed. A chief petty officer explained each piece of gear, explained about the wrist altimeter, how they should check it occasionally but wait for the main chute to deploy automatically—“It’ll work! Honest! It’s guaranteed. If it doesn’t, you bring it back and we’ll give you another”—how they would run out of the back of the C-141 in lines, lay themselves out in the air to keep from tumbling, steer in free fall, steer when the chute opened, how they should land.
And when all the questions had been answered from the three neophytes, the final piece of advice: “Don’t think about it — just do it.”
Jake Grafton had too many things on his mind to worry about the jump. As the C-141 climbed away from the runway, he adjusted his oxygen mask, ensured the oxygen was flowing and let the jumpmaster check his equipment, all the while trying to figure out what Saddam Hussein had done with the weapons. Were they still at the Samarra base, or had The Awesome outsmarted the Americans?
Sitting beside the admiral, Toad Tarkington thought about the upcoming jump as the air inside the plane cooled. The red lights of the plane’s interior and the noise gave it the feel and sound of flight deck control, the handler’s kingdom in the bottom of a carrier’s island. And he had that night-cat-shot rock in the pit of his stomach.
He looked at the blank faces and averted eyes of the SEALs around him and thought about Rita. Would she be all right? Had he made the right decision coming with Grafton? If they shot Rita down she had no parachute, no ejection seat — if that woman died Toad wanted to die with her. This thought had tripped across his synapses when he was weighing his request to accompany Grafton. Nuclear weapons to murder millions — with Jake Grafton alive and thinking, they had a chance to pull off this crazy assault. With him dead it would be just another bloodletting and probably end up too little, too late. Although racked with powerful misgivings, Toad had elected to go with his head and not his heart.