Amanda smiled for the first time that day, then winced as she opened the cut on her chin further. “Never been better, Lieutenant! You and your guys definitely rock!”
— 8 —
The long, desolate boundary between Syria and Iraq had long ago turned into an open doorway for jihadists to cross from Syria into Iraq. Faced with growing internal conflict, the Syrian president, along with his council of ministers, had turned a collective blind eye to the activities of all but those directly opposing them.
Thirty-five minutes before daylight, eight cells of insurgents, each ranging from twenty-four to thirty-nine men, began crossing into Iraq. They were spaced at approximately one-mile intervals, near Jabal at Tanf, halfway between the Dead Sea and the Euphrates River.
High overhead the barren landscape, an unmanned Global Hawk reconnaissance aircraft sent a video feed to a command center at Lajes Air Base in the Azores, several hundred miles off the coast of Portugal. There, the drone operator determined the coordinates of the infiltrators and fed them to a flight of two United States Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas. Flying in trail, the sharklike supersonic aircraft were hugging the ground at two hundred feet as they snaked their way toward the targets.
The early-morning air seemed eerily still, with not a sound to be heard in the wide, arid Syrian Desert. While the terrorists smoked cigarettes and discussed their immediate plans, they were unaware of the two four-engine bombers rapidly approaching.
With their swing-wings swept back, the dark gray camouflaged planes were impossible to detect close to the ground. Like a supersonic lawn dart, the sleek bombers stalked their unsuspecting prey. There would be no sound, no warning for the terrorists. The enemy would suffer a triple shock: first from the sudden and mind-numbing sonic boom, second from the roar of the four powerful afterburners, and third, from the concussions of the massive carpet-bombing. With the second B-1B five miles behind, the lead bomber would overfly the first two cells and drop conventional MK 82 500-pound bombs on the third and fourth groups. The second B-1B aircraft commander would unload his string of bombs on the first and second cells.
When the lead bomber rocketed over the first two targets, the explosive, eardrum-splitting sonic boom literally knocked the terrorists in the second cell to their knees. The stunned, temporarily deaf insurgents watched in horror as bombs rained down less than a mile away. Whatever it was, the flying demon disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Feeling euphoric that they had dodged the massacre, the terrorists barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief before they literally ceased to exist. Delivering tons of astonishing destruction, the second B-1B had added forty-one dead to the thirty-one from the lead bomber.
Fifty-five seconds later, the first of two B-52 heavy bombers rolled in for their run over the terrorists. The formidable “Buffs” dropped conventional bomb loads on the insurgents, killing an additional fifty-five terrorists and severely injuring seventeen.
Following the heavy bombers, a two-plane section of Air Force A-10 Thunderbolts hunted the survivors who tried to escape in every direction. Suffering from shock and fear, many of the terrorists sprawled on their stomachs and pretended to be dead. The attack “Warthogs” killed an additional fourteen jihadists, and made high-speed, low-altitude passes over the terrified survivors. Any who escaped would not forget the horrific, buzzing sound of the 30 mm, seven-barrel cannon carving ten-foot-wide tracks on the rocky terrain.
The A-10s orbited overhead until three Marine Corps AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopters arrived on the scene. The “Snakes” would loiter over the area and wait to see if anyone tried to make a break.
The Marine aviators were not going to gun down the terrorists. They wanted the survivors to carry the message back to their fellow terrorists. Not only could the Americans track them anywhere, anytime, but the terrorists wouldn’t even see or hear them coming.
The warehouse by the private pier swarmed with guards from three different nationalities. Prince Omar Al Saud had brought his own men, a half dozen professional operatives dressed like businessmen, carrying 9 mm Micro Uzi submachine guns under their jackets.
General Deng Xiangsui always traveled with an entourage of PLA Special Operation Forces as his private security detail, all armed with a mix of JS 9 mm submachine guns and QSZ-92 pistols.
And the third party in the negotiations, Ivanovich Zyubov, former Soviet general and GRU operative, arrived at the pier with his own protection, a dozen members of the Russian Mafia, some former Spetsnaz—Russian special forces — armed with enough weapons to start a revolution.
All of which led to a very tense atmosphere as the three negotiators waited for Dr. Ayman al-Rouby to inspect the contents of the case that two of Zyubov’s men had hauled from a truck to the warehouse.
Neither Deng nor Al Saud had ever seen a tactical nuclear weapon — or “suitcase nuke”—before, so they stood behind Dr. al-Rouby, while Zyubov, a trim, grim-faced man with dark circles around his equally dark eyes, waited patiently for the suitcase full of cash being guarded by Al Saud’s men.
“It is the real thing, yes?” Zyubov said before checking his watch.
Deng ignored him, as did Al Saud, listening to Dr. al-Rouby speak in an almost forensic tone. “This is an implosion-type weapon using conventional explosives as the firing charge, an electronic trigger mechanism connected to a digital counter, plus two sets of uranium-235 rings. Based on its size, I’m estimating a yield of around two kilotons.”
Deng and Al Saud looked over at the Russian, who gave them a thumbs-up and said, “Good. Yes?”
But they ignored him again as Dr. al-Rouby used a laser pointer to identify the components of the three-foot-long weapon. “The rings of the projectile have been properly stacked against the conventional charge, and the correct distance separates it from the rings of the target. Upon firing, the projectile will impale the target and reach the desired critical mass to achieve fission, thus the term implosion-type device. Very simple and very effective.”
He spent another ten minutes measuring the uranium rings, as well as using a variety of instruments, including a Geiger counter, to inspect the weapon. “I assure you,” he said, “that the radioactive exposure from the weapon is negligible.”
Finally, he looked up and said, “It is acceptable.”
“And the blast radius, Doctor?” Al Saud asked.
“I’m estimating an effective radius of just under a kilometer, destroying an area approximately two kilometers in size.”
The Saudi prince looked at his guards flanking the suitcase and gave them a subtle nod.
It took Zyubov just a couple of minutes to inspect its contents before zipping it shut. “Good business, yes?” he said.
“Yes, General,” Al Saud replied. “Good business.”
After the Russians were gone, Al Saud’s team closed the case and carried it to a pier along the far end of the warehouse, where the prince approached a stocky man with dark hair dressed in gray coveralls. He stood quietly by the short gangway connecting the pier to a motorsailer yacht with the name Santo Erasmus painted in blue across its stern.
The large Cheoy Lee transoceanic vessel registered to a private charter company out of Bilbao, Spain, monopolized almost eighty feet of waterfront.