On the second floor, three men sat waiting for him. None wore a uniform. Their questions were simple and followed a pattern that Murdock quickly sensed. Had he been mistreated? Was he given adequate food? Was he in an unheated small cell with no furniture or sanitary facilities? Had his release come about due to help from General Nassar? Had he been forced to wear wrist and leg irons during his time at the airport in Bengasi and on the plane?
His answers were quick, pointed, and soon they both realized that he had nothing of value for them. They thanked him and called in captain Utts, who took him back to the Air Force base where a COD waited for him with its engines warmed up.
Four hundred eighty miles later, the COD landed on the deck of the Enterprise, and Murdock let out a long-pent-up breath. Home again… well, for a time.
Ed Dewitt and Senior Chief Dobler were on the flight deck to welcome him.
They shook hands, and Ed grinned. “Damn, good to get you back here, Skipper. This bunch of wild men have been driving me crazy.”
“Ed, Ed, Ed. I’ve told you before about this. It’s a matter of command presence. You must make the men understand that you’re in command at all times, and they must want to follow you. Of course, the easy way is to dump all the tough stuff off on the senior chief.”
He shook hands with the man. “Dobler, good to see you again. Thanks for keeping the JG in line.”
They grabbed a white shirt and were led off the flight deck without getting anyone killed.
“Is the dirty mess still open? I’m starved. I could go for about three sliders right now with all the trimmings.”
“Sliders?” Ed asked. “Skip, you have been away too long. How about a nice, thick T-bone steak?”
“Nope, sliders. That was all I could think of in the damn Libyan jail. Sliders it’s gonna be.”
Three sliders it was.
19
Saddam Hussein paced the twelve-by-fourteen-foot room. This one was on the sixth subbasement floor of the concrete-and-steel bunker built far belowground to prevent entry by any of the American smart penetrator bombs. He had seen the result of them daggering through three floors of concrete and steel before they exploded, but never six.
He no longer worried about his personal safety. He was angry, nearly furious with the state of his campaign to take over the Persian Gulf. He stared hard at his top adviser and friend of twenty years.
“Jarash, my right hand. Where have we gone wrong? What is there left for us to do to throw off this yoke of the U.N. restraints once and for all and be a free nation again?”
Colonel Jarash Hamdoon rubbed his face and took a long breath. “I don’t know what to say. Your plans were good. Our best military and governmental minds put together the master plan that would bring all of the gulf states under our control.
“Perhaps we overestimated the dedication of our people and confederates in these small nations. We still maintain control of only one of them, Bahrain. I don’t like to say it, Mr. President, but we are quickly approaching our final option.”
The phrase made Hussein look up sharply at his top aide. He stopped pacing and sat in the leather swivel rocker behind the large desk. “Yes, the final option. It would have been so much better to persuade one or two of the smaller emirates and kingdoms to move into line on our side of the marker. Now we will have to strike quickly and decisively before the big powers can react.
“We have had success in the hated no-fly zone. After three days, we have shot down six enemy planes. They will pay dearly for coming over our territory. As we predicted, they have not launched any kind of a missile or bombing attack on our cities in retaliation. Yes, they are weak, divided, indecisive. Now may be the time for our strike.”
“At that time, will we use the red-tipped artillery shells and red-nosed missiles?” asked Colonel Hamdoon.
“Absolutely. We built them. We will use them.”
“That will bring a great outcry.”
“What will be, will be.”
The telephone on his desk chimed softly. Hussein picked it up. He said “Yes,” and listened. Slowly he put down the phone, anger building in his face, his forehead flushed, his eyes wide, and fury rumbled in his throat.
“We will do it now! We have just lost Bahrain. The United States sent in Marines and collapsed our control there in less than eighteen hours. Our man there bargained his way to safe passage to fly the royal jet to Libya. I’m sure his Swiss bank account is fat.”
Saddam paced again. “Yes, it has to be soon. Tomorrow morning at dawn. No, not enough time to get ready. Begin massing the troops and tanks and motorized men for the attack. Knock heads out there, Colonel, and have the men and the support units ready as quickly as possible. No more than forty-eight hours.”
Colonel Hamdoon came to attention, saluted smartly. “It will be done, my President.” He did an about-face and hurried to the only door in the room that led to the series of stairs that went up through a separate shaft in various stages and emerged at ground level fifty yards away. There was no way a bomb could penetrate the bunker by working down the stairs. There was no elevator.
Saddam weighed the odds. He had 390,000 men under arms in his active-duty roster. He had 650,000 lightly trained men in his army reserve. He had the use of 2,700 tanks that could slice through poorly defended territory at thirty miles an hour. There were 4,000 other armored vehicles to carry troops, help protect the tanks, and hold territory already captured.
Artillery would surprise the Great Devil America. He had over 2,500 artillery pieces that he would use to reduce any hard site of opposition. They would be the first to be heard from, softening up any defenses that might be in the way.
His ace in the hole that the West was not sure about were his 350 combat aircraft. Many were older fighters, some Fishbed MiG-21bis, but he also had two wings of the newer MiG- 23UB Flogger-C jets. They had Mach 1 plus speed and air-to-air missiles as well as air-to-ground, a 23mm cannon with 200 rounds, rocket launchers, and bombs carried on six external hardpoints.
He was pleased with his aircraft. His pilots had not had enough training, but that was always so. They would do well when called upon. His close-support aircraft included 300 helicopters, many fitted with machine guns and cannon. It would be an interesting time.
Now he looked forward to getting the attack under way.
There had long been a master plan for the first strike. The target had been and always would be Syria.
It would be a good fight. Syria claimed to have over 400,000 men under arms, but Hussein had always doubted that. They had over fifteen million people as against Iraq’s twenty-two million. The element of surprise would be on his side. He expected great things quickly and perhaps could strike all the way into Damascus, only 120 miles from the Iraqi border.
With his thirty-miles-an-hour attack, he might even get there the first day. His hopes soared. He had a long drink of ice water from a small refrigerator in the corner of the room, and he smiled.
He had asked for reports. He would get them as men and machines began moving toward the border with Syria when it was dark. Syrian lookouts might even notice the movement of troops with daylight tomorrow, but by morning of the next day, everything would be in place.
Praise be to Allah.
Praise be to Saddam Hussein.
The tall, dark man smiled at his own audacity.
In one of the small buildings on the forty-acre site above the underground bunker, Colonel Jarash Hamdoon put his carefully honed plans into action. He called three men on an action tree; these three men called six more, then those called six, and soon the selected men in the armed forces were alerted to the plans for the next forty-eight hours. It was a double-redundant system, so each man was notified twice, eliminating any chance for one branch of the tree not to receive the message.