Events meticulously dovetailed and calculated were poised now, like a tight row of dominoes, waiting for the first one to tilt into the second until, too fast to stop, they would knock each other down — one after the other. Today, Jihad Wahid — Holy War One — would be unleashed upon the world, starting with the Americans.
He had never forgotten 1986: the raining carnage from fighter-bombers roaring by overhead, dropping canisters of death on the city. A loving mother dedicated to him and a hard-working father, more dedicated to the revolution, both died that night. His relatives never let him forget who killed his parents. When he reached seventeen he joined the Libyan Army — family prestige obtaining him a commission as an officer. Since then, over thirty-five years ago, all his plans and schemes had been to avenge the dishonor done to his country. And that dishonor would be avenged in the next few days.
Installed at equal intervals where the top of the whitewashed walls met the fake ceiling tiles of the operations room were six-inch-wide glowing green lights. The colonel looked at each, mentally counting until he reached the total of seventeen.
He leaned back in the raised chair at the center of the room and rested his feet on the metal stanchion that ran around the platform. He flicked the cigarette butt away. It was time to start.
Colonel Alqahiray rose and walked to where Major Walid waited. The major reminded the colonel of a weasel, with the too narrow eyes, crooked teeth, and explosive, nervous energy that burst forth at the most unexpected moments.
Walid’s short, badly cropped hair did little to dispel the weasel image that Alqahiray had developed of Walid. Look how scared the man had been earlier.
“Walid, I know it’s your duty to transmit the package, but to mark the beginning of this historical moment I will assume responsibility for initiating Jihad Wahid. One day our sons and daughters will celebrate this moment in Arab history.” Without waiting for a reply. Colonel Alqahiray turned and shouted, “Assume stations, everyone!”
Twenty-four pairs of eyes stared intently at the green lights. Seldom were the seventeen lights green at the same time and even less were they all red. Once every three weeks for nineteen seconds they glowed red at the same time and that time was nearly here again. If they missed this window of opportunity, it would be three weeks before it would happen again. A lot could happen in three weeks. Secrets never stayed secrets long and a secret like Jihad Wahid was like water in a sieve. It was today or never.
He lit another cigarette. Taking a deep puff, he shoved himself off the chair and strode to the computer that held the package. Walid nodded as the colonel passed. A humorous thought flickered through Alqahiray’s mind as he walked by Walid that if he jumped at the weasel, the man would spring off like a pinball, bouncing off the walls.
Alqahiray found this amusing.
The Libyan colonel stopped at the console to watch attentively, along with everyone else, the green lights. His attention alternated between the clock and the lights. The screen saver blanked out the CRT. Three minutes later the first green light turned red. He butt-lit another cigarette.
His face, enshrouded in a cloud of bluish smoke, looked as if it were surrounded by a halo.
“Satellite one below horizon,” announced the sergeant monitoring the lights. He then continued for the next fifteen minutes until all the lights glowed red.
“Satellite seventeen below horizon!” shouted the sergeant.
“All lights red. Colonel!”
The decisive nineteen seconds were here. Nineteen seconds to transmit the package to the weapons site before three of the lights would turn green at the same instant.
Nineteen seconds when no Western electronic surveillance satellites monitored Libya. He casually reached down, smiling, and pressed the transmit button.
The CRT flashed an alert indicating an erroneous code word. The computer requested password reentry. The colonel’s wry smile vanished beneath the heavy graying mustache. His dark eyes flashed from their caverns with an intensity that caused Major Walid to step back.
“Colonel,” said Walid, his voice an octave higher than normal. “It needs your password! The system requires a password reentry if idle for more than fifteen minutes, sir.”
Sweat on Walid’s forehead glistened in the overhead blue light. His stomach churned again.
“A security caution,” Walid mumbled, the words tapering off.
The array of electronic systems crammed into the operations room maintained a steady hum in the background.
The colonel threw his cigarette on the floor. Walid stomped it out. Colonel Alqahiray flopped down in the seal and hurriedly typed his password into the computer. He missed a letter, causing the computer to beep ominously as another stupid Microsoft message flashed on the screen.
He glanced at the clock. Seven seconds. He rubbed his fingers against his wet palms and concentrated on the keys.
The computer beeped acceptance and loaded the last page.
He hurriedly pressed the transmit button. This time, without a covering mask, raw traffic headed toward the airways.
The compressed program raced for the microwave relay site where for the first time in its journey it entered the atmosphere and became detectable by threat sensors. It hit the first tower, where it was bent to the curvature of the earth before being sent reeling toward the second. Each of the twelve towers amplified the program and slightly changed its direction to focus its journey toward the next tower in the chain. At each tower it went through the same telecommunications cycle until it arrived at its destination-a specially built Jihad Wahid site deep within one of the numerous mountains that decorated the southern Libyan portion of the Sahara Desert.
Similar to the operations room at the main command post a suite of stand-alone portable computers awaited its arrival where the program downloaded into their system.
With four seconds remaining, the uncompressed program projected duplicates of itself along six lasers that immediately fired their beams upward. For a fraction of a second the Libyan weapons illuminated the six global positional satellites that guarded Mediterranean navigation.
The twenty-four satellites, known as GPS, circled the earth in stationary orbits. Each satellite constantly transmitted a unique radio signature and an accurate timing signal so that anyone receiving the transmissions from four or more satellites had position and speed calculated to within seventy-five feet and one knot accuracy. GPS had replaced the old LORAN system of terrestrial-based radio data transmissions and, in many ships, manual navigational calculations had long ago ceased; such was the dependence on GPS.
The laser transported the “information attack” program to the GPS satellites. A preamble code triggered dormant viral software within the GPS program. The viral software initiated several security check programs against the laser delivered trigger to ensure its validity. Satisfied, the viral software downloaded. The evolution completed, it initiated a correction to the GPS math coprocessor that caused the position read-out of GPS receivers to be off by five minutes of latitude. Ships now depending on GPS would discover, if they compared the readings to radar reckoning, or did a moving fix against land markers, that they were five nautical miles farther south than GPS showed. This was no problem if they were far enough north in the Mediterranean. When the virus completed the programmed function, it began to eat itself. Twenty-eight seconds later, it was as if the virus never existed.
“Event zero zero one implemented and functioning,” said the soldier technician monitoring a GPS receiver. An intelligence screen above the double steel doors reflected a red event notation changed to green. Colonel Alqahiray stood rigid at an attention posture, his feet at a forty-five-degree angle, heels touching.