That night, participants in the actual raid on Al Fasher were ordered to report by exception only. In English, that meant that only someone who missed a scheduled check point or event would report. Silence meant all was going well. It was a simple concept and very effective. But to the participants in the operation, it had the tendency to be unnerving at times. Reporting — positive confirmation that something has actually happened — was far preferable. Despite training and incessant drilling, there was always the nagging fear that perhaps something had gone wrong and the reports hadn't gotten sent or couldn't be sent. Perhaps the other guy's radio was out and he couldn't transmit. Or maybe his battery power was low and he didn't know that his transmission wasn't reaching anyone. And what if he walked into an ambush and everyone was taken out before anyone could report. There could even be a problem with the station intended to receive the message. The receiver could be out, or he could be in dead space when the message was sent. Chatter on the radio, though frivolous at times, is a useful means of relieving tension and building confidence. Like the lonely truck driver using his CB on the highway at night, soldiers sometimes talk on the radio to relieve fears, real and imagined.
Radios, however, are dangerous. The enemy operates on the same wavelengths. That leaves the sender open to accidental detection through the sheer bad luck commonly referred to as "mutual interference": it would not take a genius to figure something was wrong when radio broadcasts in English started to bleed over onto Soviet radio nets in Sudan. Additionally, electronic warfare units, operating with sophisticated scanning and detection equipment, sweep the electronic spectrum, looking for radio, radar, and other electronic signals, locking onto whatever source they find. They then can locate it, study it to determine who or what is generating the signal, and block or jam it. If the resources such as artillery or aircraft are available, the source of the signal can also be attacked.
Though the pilot and the copilot-gunner in Apaches were hooked in by intercom, conversations between Mennzinger and his pilot were short, often confined to functional necessity. They were within feet of each other and operating within the same environment. Both were deprived of any news from the outside world other than what their instruments and sights provided to them. The copilot-gunner had the same displays as the pilot, so there was no need for the exchange of even basic information. And, like most copilot-gunners and pilots, Mennzinger and his pilot had little new and exciting to discuss: after all, they had been together for three weeks, living under the same conditions, in the same tent, eating in the same mess hall for the past twenty days. Idle chatter just to make noise can also have the effect of heightening loneliness and the sense of isolation.
So the crews of most of the Apaches flew on in silence. The crews could control their aircraft but, at that point, nothing else. Inside their cockpits they had the soft glow of instruments and the green images of the world as seen through the eye of a thermal imaging device to provide security and relief from their fears. Outside, there was only darkness and the unknown. In that darkness outside the canopy, the enemy sat at Al Fasher, perhaps alerted and ready, waiting for their arrival. Refuel crews were on the ground, busily gathering up the fuel blivets and setting up their refuel points, maybe. F-111s would be landing at Cairo to refuel, if they had made it from Britain. It was conceivable that the Navy's demonstration was drawing Soviet surveillance aircraft and fighters off to the east. And the Special Forces team at Al Fasher was watching, preparing to send their final report on the situation there, provided the team could still do so.
These things, and many more, Mennzinger could only guess at. What he did know was that his Apache was moving due south along its prescribed course at a rate of 120 knots and at an altitude of 100 feet. Everything else rested in the hands of others, who, like him and his pilot, were speeding forward in time toward the same point.
From his desk in the center of the war room, Dixon looked up at the cluster of clocks. There were four of them hanging over the operations map on the wall opposite him. He scanned them, from left to right, looking at the times they showed. Each one told Dixon something different. On the far left the clock, set on ROMEO time, showed 1605 hours. Under it hung a sign that read "Washington, D. C." The masses of office workers in that city would be preparing to leave their offices to brave the commute home. Paramount in their minds would be what was for dinner and getting that last-minute Christmas shopping done. The next clock, showing 2105 hours, was labeled "ZULU," representing the base time used for the operation and the actual time in Britain. The wives of the F-111 pilots now landing on a military airfield outside Cairo would be putting their children to bed in Britain. As far as they knew, their husbands were on another training flight, buzzing about in the darkness wherever pilots go to do such things.
The third clock was passing 2305 hours. Labeled "BRAVO/ LOCAL," it showed the time for Egypt and Sudan, the eye of the storm. And like the eye of a storm, things were, for the moment, deceptively quiet. Forces, however, were in motion. The 3rd Brigade of the 16th Armored Division had just begun its move from assembly areas it had occupied for the last eleven days. It was headed west down the coastal road to a new assembly area on the high ground south of El Imayid. The three infantry and one artillery battalion of the 2nd Brigade, 11th Airborne Division (Air Assault) were already there, flown in by their own aircraft earlier that evening. A nice, clean one-by-two-inch blue symbol on the operations map showed where the 3,500 soldiers and 1,500 vehicles of the 3rd Brigade were at that moment.
A thousand miles south of the symbol for the 2nd Air Assault and 3rd Armored brigades was a blue circle north of the Meidob Hills with the letters FARP written in it. There, the fuel handlers of the 1st of the 11th Attack Helicopter Battalion would be finishing setup of the refuel point within the next twenty-five minutes. The Apache strike force, represented by a blue box with a symbol that looked like a bow tie with a nail driven up through the center of it, was eighty-five minutes out from the refuel point. Further south, another symbol just east of Al Fasher, a blue box with "SF" in the center, showed where the Special Forces team was. They would be preparing their final report on the situation at the airfield.
The last clock showed five minutes past midnight. In Moscow and Addis Ababa, it was now December 19. Passing from the Gulf of Aden into the Red Sea just after dusk, ships of the 6th Fleet's Mid-East Squadron were increasing the tempo of their operations. The ships, carrying a Marine amphibious expeditionary unit, had just turned west and began their run in toward Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Aircraft launches from the carrier USS Hornet were increasing. Radio traffic, all part of the deception plan, was beginning to crowd the airwaves over the Red Sea as well as the coastal regions of Sudan and Ethiopia. Within thirty minutes, Dixon had no doubt, phones would be ringing throughout Moscow.
That was, Dixon thought, provided everyone was hitting their marks. Lifting his right arm with an exaggerated motion, he checked his own watch. As usual, it was two minutes ahead. To those who had known him as a second lieutenant, the two-minute difference was a joke. Always worried about being late for a meeting, Dixon maintained his watch ahead of the official time. Not that it ever made a difference. Knowing he had two extra minutes, Dixon normally procrastinated them away, arriving at his appointed meetings and duties just in time. With nothing better to do than wait, he wondered how many people out there were using his own personal time zone.