“But of course,” Formsby said. “Andrew told me a minimum of thirty-one thousand gallons, forgetting that I must negotiate in litres, naturally. I have five five-thousand-gallon tankers and one eight-thousand-gallon tanker.”
“The way we’ll handle it,” Wyatt said, “we’ll refuel all of the aircraft here, which eats up twenty-five thousand gallons, and load the balance in the C-130F. After we fly to the staging base, the C-130 will top off all the fuel cells again.”
“Neil,” Barr said, “I have one little question. How’d you get all that junk here without tractors?”
Formsby explained his arrangement with the paranoid and greedy Jacque. “But that brings up a point I’d like to discuss, Nelson. Originally, I had planned to return to Rabat with Jacque and his fellow travellers. After considering the man’s demeanour and my suspicion that he may well think I have more dollars than I have, I believe the better course would be for me to accompany you to Libya.”
“Libya is safer than Jacque?” Barr asked.
“You haven’t met Jacque.”
“It’s just as well, Neil,” Tom Kriswell said. “I can use you as an assistant air controller.”
“I would be pleased to serve,” Formsby said.
“What about the fifty grand you owe Jacque?” Wyatt asked.
“Why, I’ll leave it for him. It wouldn’t do to skip out and have my reputation tarnished. And I might well have to do business with him again in the future. Especially if Andrew keeps lining up these contracts.”
Wyatt looked at his wristwatch. “All right, guys. Anything else?”
The pressing matters appeared to have been met.
“Let’s go to work,” Wyatt said.
With a few groans and a few profane comments about the temperature, the men levered themselves from the ground and spread out to the aircraft. Formsby pitched in, helping to strip the red tape, logos, and N-numbers from all of the aircraft.
Two men went from plane to plane with a large roll of brown paper and masking tape and masked off canopies, air intakes, exhausts, and the lower side of the wings and fuselage. Two more men rolled compressors and gasoline generators from the cargo bay of the Hercules. Stepladders with broad plates on their legs, to prevent them from sinking into the earth, were carried out of the C-130, and the two men — Littlefield and Cavanaugh, Formsby thought — donned face masks and began to spray paint the first F-4.
Not much effort was given to precision and finish for this paint job. Random patterns of brown, tan, and beige were sprayed over the original cream, mixed with drops of perspiration from the two artists. With the low-visibility grey of the undersides, the new camouflage colours would make the F-4s hard to pinpoint from above or below. The C-130F would also get camouflage, but the transport was being left in its prim, unadorned aluminium finish.
Nelson Barr ran back and forth, supervising the spray job, claiming he was in charge of decorations. Littlefield tried to shoot him with a spray gun, but Barr dove beneath a wing just in time.
Two more teams of men laid out hoses between the fuel trailers and aircraft, powered up the pumps, and started refuelling. The mixed aromas of JP-4 and catalysed paint drifted on the breeze.
Jim Demion and two others hauled tools from one airplane to another, making adjustments and quick-fixes listed on a clipboard he carried.
Formsby gathered all of the red tape remnants and stacked them in a pile.
Then he went to help Wyatt and Ben Borman pull the tarpaulins from the ordnance pallets. With tin snips, they went around each pallet, cutting the steel strapping that held the crates and cradles in place.
Wyatt and Formsby used crowbars to pry the lids off crates while Borman climbed into the Hercules, then returned with a small tow tractor pulling a train of mobile bomb cradles and a small crane. He started transferring bombs from the pallets to the cradles with the crane.
As soon as all of the aircraft were masked off, those two men — Maal and Vrdla? — started hauling weapons pylons from the C-130, distributing them to the Phantoms.
Formsby was suitably impressed by the efficiency of Wyatt’s team. No one complained, except good-naturedly, and generally the complaints were related to the heat. All had a job to do, or a series of jobs, and all took on their chores without orders from a superior.
As the crates came apart, revealing missiles, bombs, and countermeasures pods, Formsby carried the cast-off crates over to his pile of tape and stacked them on top. Just before they took off, he would set fire to the stack.
The pylons were mounted, including a pair each on the underside of the wings of both Hercules aircraft. Wyatt explained to him that the upgraded Phantoms had internal countermeasures derived from the F-15. The C-130s were each designated for a pair of countermeasures pods, and Kriswell and Vrdla dropped what they were doing to inspect and test the ALQ-72 countermeasures pods after they had been hoisted into place and fastened to the pylons.
By four o’clock, they had accomplished all they were going to accomplish in Algeria.
Each F-4, with paint barely dry to the touch, was outfitted with six five-hundred-pound bombs on the pylons and four Super Sidewinder missiles semi-recessed on the underside of the fuselage. With the external fuel tanks in place, they appeared almost too heavy for take-off.
All that was left on the pallets were ninety kilograms of plastic explosive and cotton-packed detonators, and they were carefully loaded aboard the transport by Borman, who had the experience with ordnance-handling.
Formsby had saved his best for last. At three o’clock he had wrapped big Idaho potatoes in tinfoil and shoved them into newly fired charcoal briquettes. He served them at four-thirty with fresh butter, sour cream, and chives, alongside sixteen-ounce sirloin steaks, grilled to perfection.
He thought it was very American.
They got to wash it down with two cases of Coca-Cola that had been on ice for four hours.
“Neil,” Barr asked, “how would you like to move to America?”
Colonel Ghazi, the army commander, arrived at Marada Air Base at five o’clock.
Ahmed al-Qati walked up the long ramp from the hangar to meet his airplane. He wanted a private discussion with his superior before the two of them met with Ramad.
The airstairs were lowered from the door of the Lockheed JetStar, and al-Qati climbed them quickly, before Ghazi could deplane.
He found the colonel still seated in one of the plushly cushioned swivelling chairs. His uniform shirt appeared freshly pressed, and it was pressed also from the inside-out by his large torso.
“Good, Ahmed. I am glad you came to meet me. Please take a seat.”
Al-Qati sat across the aisle. “I thought perhaps we should have a few moments to talk between ourselves, Colonel.”
“Yes, I had thought the same thing.”
Al-Qati leapt right into what was bothering him. Bothering him? It was nearly killing him. Only Sophia helped him keep his sanity.
“This… this Test Strike is foolishness beyond comprehension. I fear the outcome will not be what is envisioned.”
“The leadership feels otherwise, Ahmed. They firmly — very firmly — believe that the Israelis and Americans will view our country with heightened respect. Even with dread, which the Leader appears to desire more than respect.”
“The world will damn us, Colonel Ghazi.”
“I doubt the world will ever know. The Leader is certain that the Israelis will want to bury the incident. They are so beleaguered now, they will not want to admit publicly to another threat. And we know that the United States always goes along with them.”