Her name was Lady Be Good, serial number 41-24301, out on April 4, 1943 for its maiden flight with the 376th Bombardment Group from Soluch field north of Benghazi, and with a fresh new crew. They were going to bomb Naples that day, but on the return leg, the plane’s direction finder failed, and it overflew the base and continued on, south into the endless wasteland called the Calanshio Sand Sea. None of the nine men aboard were ever seen alive again, though evidence of their plight and struggle for survival would be found in the desert decades later.
It was a bombing raid that had not yet been launched in the history writing itself anew in that desert. Whether it ever would be launched remained uncertain, one of those many unwoven strands of fate in the tapestry of Time. All around that wreckage, the sun beat down on leagues of high sand dunes rising like great waves in a tempestuous sea, some well over 100 feet high. Yet hidden beneath all that sand, beneath the bones of lost soldiers, animals, and the wreckage of a war that once was, new life was found at the edge of that sea in the year 1961.
A man named Nelson Bunker Hunt, an eccentric billionaire and oil man from Texas, had a nose for shady deals in the silver markets, fast horses, and light sweet crude. He had learned he might find oil in Libya, and picked up a concession plot designated C-65 in 1957 to do some survey work and exploratory drilling. Prospects did not immediately pan out, but four years later, high gas readings were detected, and additional work discovered oil stained sand in the samples extracted from the site. Five wells were soon drilled, about 150 miles south of the bottleneck O’Connor’s troops had just pushed through, and in time it was discovered that old Bunker Hunt had found what would end up being the Sarir Oil Field, the largest in all of Libya, with reserves estimated at around 12 gigabarrels. A 34-inch pipeline was constructed to move the oil to Tobruk, where a large terminal exists today, on the southern rim of the bay that forms the harbor.
Up to 4 million barrels of crude could be stored there, where the bones of soldiers from so many armies lay buried in the sand. Tankers called from all over the world, hauling the valuable crude of China, Europe and the United States. That was what put Tobruk on the map in 2021, not the history of a war fought 80 years past. Yet all that oil would drag the storied port into the next war, painting a nice fat target on the dry desert sand around Tobruk. In the year 2021, a missile would be launched to strike that target, and blight the land with its terrible power.
The battlements and bunkers where the Rats of Tobruk once fought and fell, where Rommel’s troops huddled outside the wire, straining to push through, where artillery and machine gun fire once rattled and shook the dark desert night, would now be completely devastated. In 2021, all it would take is a single missile, but the blow struck that day was so powerful that it would have dramatic effects that no one ever anticipated. The Russian 15A18 Missile, dubbed the SS-18 “Satan” by the west, had a very heavy throw weight. It could lift and deploy up to ten 500 kiloton warheads, and one would target a place in the sky above that harbor, where a ship lay berthed that carried a most unusual gift.
The USS Destroyer Knight had been slated to support the Torch landings, but in this history it was put on convoy duty and sent round the cape to Alexandria to help keep an eye on all the tanks bound to fill O’Connor’s ranks. Its commander, Lieutenant Commander Levin, had been eager to see the famous port, and even more pleased when he learned that he was to be sent out to Tobruk on a milk run to deliver mail and other effects.
So it was, by chance or design, that the Knight was in port that day, while nearly 80 years on, Satan came calling in the skies above. The little gift that had been delivered to the ship by the daughter of the Admiral it was named for, had sat in a box on the Commander’s wardroom shelf, a useless bit of trivia, forgotten, unnoticed, overlooked—until that day. No one aboard saw it begin to glimmer and glow, the sheen of phosphorescent green surrounding it, the temperature rising as the light burned hotter. Then the skies above Tobruk opened with raging fire of another kind, for the hand of Satan had reached all the way back to that embattled year, guided there by that strange talisman, and perhaps the vengeful, jealous and hungry arm of Time itself.
It wasn’t reaching for the ship, which had every good reason for being exactly where it was that day. But there were things in the desert close by, men and machines, with no license to move on those sands. They were intruders, trespassers, an aberration in the careful scheme Time sought to play out, and now they would pay the price.
Reeves’ Squadron was the first to approach Nofilia as his unit probed north. He came in from the south, Scimitars leading, and Sergeant Williams had the lead section up front, his eyes scanning the infrared detection screens to look for residual heat of other vehicles. He had just reported what he thought was a small contact, three vehicles ahead on a low hill overlooking the wadi. Reese was in the Squadron command vehicle, a Dragon AFV with special communications and data-link equipment.
“Looks like a couple of light flak guns to my eye,” came the voice of Sergeant Williams. “I could pop them from here with the APSE rounds.”
“Save your breath,” said Reeves back again. “That British division up front is right there on the coast. They’ll have troops up to sweep that area soon enough. If they move, let me know, but otherwise just lay low and save the ammunition.”
At that moment there came a brief flutter in the electronics, and the engine stopped. Reeves saw his screens wink off, the vehicle’s internal emergency lighting kicking in from the battery. He looked over at Cobb, his driver, his eyes scanning his panel. Those screens were dark as well.
“What’s up, Cobber? I thought you said you went over the vehicle from top to bottom.”
“I did sir, didn’t find anything to fuss about.”
“You topped us off with the fuel?”
“Full tank. Checked it a moment ago sir. We’ve got plenty of range.”
“Well then, turn the engine over again, and it bloody well better start.”
Cobb hit the ignition, and got the reassuring sound of the engine restarting. He was all business now, his eyes playing over the readings on his panels. “Hello…?” He leaned in, and tapped one screen. “Here’s a wild one,” he said over his shoulder. “Got a reading on the NBC module. It says we just had a mild EMP pulse.”
“What? EMP? Not bloody likely. Nobody throws around the Hammer of God out here, except the Russians on that bloody ship, and it’s in the Pacific.”
“Just reading the screen sir. Says right here that—”
“Well enough,” Reeves cut him off. “Let me check the main data link to Brigade.”
Every unit was normally wirelessly linked into the FVS command vehicles in Kinlan’s Brigade HQ troop. When they had GPS, they could use that network to see the real-time position of each vehicle and tank on a digital map. Now, with GPS long gone, they had rigged the system out to home off the direction and range of a radio signal, almost like the Huff Duff receivers that would triangulate. Every vehicle had a broadcast code, and when it was picked up, multiple vehicles in the receiving unit would be able to triangulate and determine its approximate position. At the very least, Kinlan would be able to know that Reeves and his Squadron were X miles away on a given heading, and then that position could be represented on a digital map display. It wasn’t as accurate as the GPS finding, but it was still an order of magnitude better than the paper maps and reckoning that the locals worked with.