“On the Nebraska end,” Embry said, “I’ve arranged for a team that will hit there in the morning. By nine o’clock, there won’t be any evidence that you were ever there.”
“Except for eyewitnesses,” Wyatt said.
“Can’t avoid that, can we?”
“I don’t think anyone will ever have to testily,” Barr said. “And if they do, they’ll only remember us as hardworking gentlemen who spread a few bucks around.”
“Let’s hope so,” Embry said. “Okay, brief me on the mission.”
“I thought we’d done that a couple months ago,” Wyatt told him.
“There’s not a doubt in my mind that you’ve made some changes in the tactics, and Church wants to be fully aware of every phase.”
“There’s just one, well maybe two, little alterations,” Barr said.
Wyatt explained, point-by-point and chronologically, the plan he and Barr had prepared subsequent to the skeletal mission profile he had previously laid out for Church.
“Hot damn!” Embry said. “I like your changes. If the computers back at Langley knew about them, they’d up your chances a bit.”
“You ran a game scenario on us?” Barr asked.
“Of course. Standard procedure.”
“How did it come out?” Barr wanted to know.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Come on, George. You can count on me to overcome the odds anyway.”
“The machine suggested a seventy-four percent success ratio.”
“Before we made the changes,” Wyatt said.
“Before you made the changes. I’ll bet you upped it by ten or fifteen percent.”
“Comforting,” Barr said.
“Any time you’re ready,” Wyatt said, “we’d like to hear about this new and urgent deadline. You also mentioned some fatalities.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got a source inside the country, and she’s gotten close to an army lieutenant colonel.”
“Army?” Wyatt asked. “We aren’t going up against the army, are we?”
“His name is al-Qati, and he heads up their special forces unit. They’ve been training with the bomber command that apparently will deploy CW weapons. The commander is a guy named Ibrahim Ramad, a full bird. They’re doing coordinated air and ground attack exercises.”
“Are these the Sukhois?” Wyatt asked.
“Su-24s, right. So, this is the major change I’ve got for your mission.”
Damn. Jan was right about last-minute changes.
Embry unrolled a large reconnaissance map and spread it over the table.
“This is the base at Marada, or near Marada.”
“You want us to hit an air base?” Barr said. “What the hell happened to the chemical plant?”
“You get to do both of them now.”
“We’re short about four aircraft, in that event,” Wyatt said.
“It can’t be helped, Andy. Hell, I didn’t know about this until this morning, a couple hours before I called you, and we’re flat out of time.”
Wyatt studied the map, which was actually a blown-up recon photo. There wasn’t much to be seen except for an antenna complex and a runway.
“It’s underground,” Barr said.
“Right. See these shadows here, look like wide lines?
Those are the entrance doors to the subsurface hangars. You can barely make them out, but there are six ramps, leading down to the doors, see here? The runways are painted in camouflage, but we’ve known about this base for years. You’ll be able to locate it, as well as the chem plant, by geographical coordinates. They’re listed right here.”
“Those hangar doors will be blast doors,” Wyatt said. “We’d have to catch them when they’re open if we want to slip a couple heavyweights in there.”
“Yeah, I know. This is the way it goes. Your primary objective is the chemical plant, which is about ten miles north of Marada Air Base. The secondary target is any Sukhoi you can catch on the ground. We’d like to put a dent in their long-range bombing capability. Third target, if the opportunity presents itself, is the base.”
Wyatt looked at Barr.
“Why not?” Barr said. “I’m bound to have a couple bombs left over after I knock out the chemical plant.”
“You sound like you’re doing the whole damned thing alone,” Embry said.
“I could, but these other hot-shit pilots wanted to come along.”
“All right,” Wyatt said. “The decision to target the planes and the air base means that there’s a new development somebody in your building doesn’t like.”
“Ahmed al-Qati told my source that Ramad intends to hit three Ethiopian refugee camps with nerve, toxic, and psychological agents.”
“Shit,” Barr said.
“It’s supposed to prove to outsiders what they can, and will, do, which is deliver CW over a long range. I guess they’re also interested in evaluating the results of each agent.”
“What camps?” Wyatt asked.
“Unknown.”
“On August second. What time?”
“Also unknown. My agent will attempt to learn the take-off time, but she can’t probe too deeply without risking herself.”
“Do you have independent corroboration?”
“No,” Embry admitted. “We’re trying, but my source is reliable, and we don’t want to wait and risk having her be right and us be wrong.”
“You going to the UN with it?”
“I don’t play at those levels, Andy. My guess is that the time line is too tight for a round of high-level diplomatic discussions and less-than-veiled threats.”
“We’re not set up, not armed, for an interdiction mission,” Wyatt said.
“I know, and we’re not suggesting that you go play dogfighter with a bunch of MiGs and Sukhois. We figure if we can cause enough damage at the plant and the base, they’re going to forget about Ethiopians, at least for a little while.”
“That’s good,” Barr said, “because I’m not a dog-fighter. Lover and wild horse rider, yes, but dogfighter, no.”
Wyatt studied the map for awhile, then said, “I don’t think we need to know the take-off time. I’d hate to go in there and hit a bunch of them on the take-off run, yet allow one or two bombers to escape and light out for Ethiopia. Or when they know they’re under attack, they just might divert them to Tel Aviv. The best bet is to hit them early and hard enough to shake them out of the fantasy.”
“I second that thought,” Barr said.
Embry licked his lips. “Church thought it would be good to catch them in the open, on the ground. You cause some secondary explosions of CW ordnance, and we’d have gas all over the area, maybe sucked into the underground ventilation system. Goodbye Marada Air Base.”
Barr whistled through his teeth.
Wyatt sagged back in his chair. “That is an interesting thought, George.”
“We knew we’d have casualties hitting the chemical plant,” Embry reminded him.
“Yeah, but a whole air base? What’s the composition?”
“The Sukhoi bomber wing and a fighter/interceptor/ strike wing of four squadrons. MiG-23s and MiG-27s.”
“That’s a lot of people,” Wyatt said.
“Look what they’re planning, just for a test, Andy. And keep in mind that we’re targeting military capacity, not poor, damned hungry people.”
“You haven’t confirmed it, yet,” Wyatt said.
“Look, Wyatt. I don’t think we’ll find a confirmation. We just don’t have enough assets in the area. And we’re not here to debate the targets. You’re the contractor; we pay the freight and you do the job.”
“We’re not backing out, George. But as the commander on site, I’m going to reserve judgement relative to the final attack profile. We’ll buy the three targets, but we’ll remain flexible about the approach. Let’s not forget that we’re the ones with our asses on the line and that time-over-target is going to be damned slim. Bucky?”