The sun setting over distant mountains cast a warm, red-gold glow across the room, lighting up the wall where a large flat-panel TV showed an Italian soccer match in progress.
Bashar sipped a sherry from a cut-crystal goblet and his guest caught the flash of gold from the band of the Rolex Oyster on his wrist. Bashar set the glass down and continued speaking. The guest of the son of Mozafferreddin, who had spent the most part of several months at a smaller and somewhat less sumptuously appointed villa within the palace grounds, sat in an easy chair facing his host. He did not drink, but instead smoked a filterless Turkish cigaret.
Dr. Jubaird Dalkimoni, terrorist bombardier supreme, inhaled the pungent smoke as he carefully listened to Bashar's words. It was important to pay close attention whenever one of Mozafferreddin's trusted associates addressed him, he had learned this during his stay as the Iranian president's guest.
With Mozafferreddin himself — who Dalkimoni had spent almost an hour with on two separate occasions since his arrival in Baghdad — it was also important to think the right thoughts, or at least appear to be thinking the right thoughts.
Mozafferreddin could be charming or he could be brutal, or again, he could be something in between. But Mozafferreddin was always paranoid, no matter how he might act, and on top of this he was convinced he possessed the omniscient power to detect treachery in the hearts of men merely by looking them in the eyes.
If Mozafferreddin saw the wrong thing, that was all you needed. Mozafferreddin would issue an order and you would be taken away to meet your fate — sometimes even shot by the Iranian president himself. Dalkimoni had been warned that the best way to act in Mozafferreddin's presence was to keep your mouth shut and say yes to everything Mozafferreddin said.
Dalkimoni had found that this was equally good advice with Bashar, who had increasingly taken over many of Mozafferreddin's projects in recent years. So Dalkimoni listened attentively, smoking his cigaret while Bashar spoke.
"I envy you, Jubaird, I truly do," Bashar said, his eyes not on the bomb-maker but on the Italian soccer team on who he had bet a million dollars to win against their German opponents. "Very soon your — "
Suddenly Bashar stopped speaking and stared at the screen. Then, with a curse, he flung his unfinished drink at the wall. An aide almost magically appeared, and began wiping at the stain while Bashar punched a quick-dial button on a compact SATCOM phone he unclipped from his belt.
With pretended unconcern, Dalkimoni listened to Bashar berate someone on the other end of the line about how his team was losing, and on certain punishments that would await certain parties unless certain things were done immediately to drastically change certain events on the soccer field.
Almost instantly, time was called in mid-play. A few minutes later, play resumed, but this time it was the Bashar's team that was winning. Dalkimoni heard Bashar promise someone a bonus, and then he put away the phone, his aide handing him a fresh drink before disappearing back into the woodwork.
Still intent on the TV screen, and without so much as once having glanced Dalkimoni's way, Bashar picked up where he had left off before the interruption.
"Your name shall be numbered among those mighty heroes of legend. You, Dalkimoni, hold the keys to the universe in your hands. For it is you who will shepherd the Winged Bulls to glory."
"Thank you," Dalkimoni replied. "Yes, it is truly an honor as you say it is."
"Have all the preparations been made? Is everything in order for your journey? There must be no mistakes, no slip-ups. Failure cannot be tolerated. You know this."
"There shall be none, Excellency," Dalkimoni replied. "All is in readiness. The Winged Bulls shall be unchained and permitted to take flight. The prophesy made many thousands of years before shall be fulfilled."
"Excellent. That is all I wanted to hear from you, Dalkimoni," Bashar said and turned back to the television. Dalkimoni saw that he was again caught up in the action of the soccer match and had already forgotten all about him. The bomb-maker stubbed out his cigaret in the ashtray on the end table by the side of the chair, rose and then left.
They had been talking about nuclear bombs.
Breaux's parasail detachment continued to glide toward its mission objective. Although still distant by the better part of a mile, their rate of descent had increased as their altitude dropped. Breaux, at the lead of the airborne shock force, checked his wrist chronometer whose luminous dial showed him that his troops were meeting their timetable.
He decided to break EMCON to ask for a situation report from his ground commander. He would do it by burst transmission over the Defense Tactical Internet. The encrypted data packets would travel up to a satellite then bounce down again, and would produce a random pulse of noise to anybody listening.
Breaux used the wrist-top keypad linked by cable to the SATCOM phone nestled in a MOLLE pouch and encoded a message. It was addressed in conventional email format to the operation's domain name: sgt.death@operation.viper.mil. Minutes later the message was received and an answer flashed on the wrist-top's screen.
"Am in position. Good to go. Attack to commence at 4030 hours."
Breaux keyed back, "Affirm."
The strike was proceeding as planned. The timetable was being met. All operational elements were coming together. The Fat Lady was warming up her act.
Breaux's parafoil team now could see the muted lights of the presidential palace growing closer and brighter. Each descending sky trooper knew that final preparations for landing needed to be made.
Within minutes, the team got in close enough to clearly make out the guards in the towers surrounding the base and the missiles ready for launch at SAM batteries here and there on the grounds. They saw too the gleam of the artificial lake and the stands of plane trees along three sides of the vast estate's circumference.
Of course the guards below soon spotted the down-dropping American soldiers as well, but the sighting had come too late to do the Iranians much good. At this stage the Gorilla ground element with its helo air support had already initiated contact with the enemy. As Breaux's parasail team came dropping in for the kill, new sights and sounds overwhelmed the stillness of the night. They were the sounds of battle, the strobing flashes of rocket strikes and belching muzzle flames of automatic small arms fire. And in the midst of it all, the sounds of men dying.
Barry White and Chaka Khan were fifteen minutes outbound from Zebra Talon at Jauf and cruising at eighty thousand feet. At that altitude whether or not the search-and-track radars of Iranian SAMs painted them or not was immaterial.
They flew beyond the lethality envelope of all but the very best SAMs that the Pasdaran fielded, and as far as these latter went, they were at the very edge of their envelopes too.
But the chances of their being caught by radar were slender at best. Both aircraft had radar cross-sections as small as the F-117A Nighthawk, but they were a hell of a lot faster and more maneuverable than the now mothballed stealth fighter.
The planes could afford to come in high, and it was also tactically advantageous to do this. Coming in high they would have a better chance of spotting any Iranian fighter assets that might be scrambled before the unfriendly planes saw them.
Then the Raptors would bare their claws.
Balls swept in toward its strike objective as Boogie converged on the mission's secondary target. Code-named Ripped, the complex at Kermanshah was a medium-sized installation that had recently been identified as engaged in missile warhead and artillery projectile manufacturing. It also served as a storage entrepot for finished product.