Shepherd brought the Transportpanzer to a stop about a quarter of a mile from the road. They waited until the pinpoints of distant headlights couldn’t be seen in either direction, then continued their journey.
The time was 7:14 A.M. when they arrived at the patch of heavily forrested terrain Brancato had spotted on the maps, and concealed the TTP in the cool shade of a stand of cedars and pines nourished by a nearby oasis.
Okba ben Nafi Air Base lay 30 miles due north.
“You sure you want to do this?” Shepherd asked as they shrouded the Transportpanzer with a camouflage net they had found in one of the storage compartments.
“Hell of a time to ask.”
“We can wait until dark, turn right around and—”
Brancato shook his head no. “I can.”
Shepherd shrugged forlornly and stretched out on the ground beneath the trees, exhausted. “I mean the chances of pulling this off are pretty damn remote.”
Brancato nodded, then sat opposite him.
“I just keep thinking about Steph and Marie and the kids. No sense both of us—”
“And my dog. You forgot my dog.”
“Al, I’m serious,” Shepherd said in weary protest.
“So am I. If I don’t run him, nobody does. Marie said he put on ten pounds while I was in the hospital. I miss him, you know? I mean, jogging every morning with those big paws padding along next to me, slobbery mouth drooling all over everything. God, it’s just… I don’t know, there’s a bond there. Of course I’m the only one who understands him. Really, he’d be lost without me. You ever see a dog laugh? This dog laughs — at jokes. I was thinking of trying to get him on David Letterman, but he’s…” Brancato paused and laughed to himself.
Shepherd was sound asleep.
They spent the day taking turns sleeping and rummaging through the compartments, removing the items they would use — handguns, walkie-talkies, military clothing among them.
As the sun began dropping toward the horizon they removed the camouflage net and started the Transportpanzer rolling across the desert.
About an hour later darkness had fallen, and Okba ben Nafi loomed in the distance, a dusty mirage enclosed by an endless chainlink fence topped with razor wire.
Brancato directed Shepherd to a desolate corner of the airfield, well beyond the end of the runways. Shepherd let the TTP inch forward until the leading edge of its angled snout was flush against one of the pipes that supported the miles of chainlink; a little more gas and the 40,000-pound vehicle began advancing, gradually bending the pipe toward the ground until the adjacent sections of fence lay flat against the sand and the eight huge combat tires rolled over them onto the air base.
Shepherd kept the running lights off until he left the sand for a paved road that cut across the taxiways with geometric precision. Soon the ribbed texture of sheetmetal hangars marched to the horizon. The TTP rumbled past them in the direction of hangar 6-South, where the F-111s were housed.
Shepherd and Brancato exchanged anxious looks at the sight of one of the bombers. It was being towed through the open sliders onto the tarmac for its preflight check. They circled the hangar toward the personnel entrance, which was guarded by armed sentries.
In Beirut, a chilling scream echoed through Casino du Liban’s marble corridors. It was Katifa’s scream; a scream of horror and forlorn protest. Upon returning to the amphitheater, she discovered Moncrieff once again suspended upside down above the stage. As the Saudi had suspected, Abu Nidal had no intention of sparing his life. On the contrary, as the terrorist leader had planned when postponing the Romeo’s departure for Beirut, he would be the first hostage executed and delivered to the United States Embassy.
Now Katifa stood but several feet from Moncrieff. Two women held her arms; one of the men clutched fistfuls of her hair, keeping her from looking away. But as Nidal slowly inserted the knife into the cut he had made in Moncrieff’s flesh earlier, Katifa struggled free, smashed an elbow into the face of one of the women, and went for Nidal. The guerrilla who had hold of her hair yanked backwards, stopping her abruptly, and brought the grip of his pistol down hard across the side of her head. She screamed and fell to the floor, unconscious.
The next scream was Moncrieff’s.
Beneath the Aegean, the Cavalla was concealed behind a basaltic ridge that crested just north of the Crete-Karpathos gap.
Cooperman had the BQS-6 bow array in passive mode, using the computer-linked DIMUS program to separate frequency ranges, when he heard the faint hiss on his headsets. He straightened in his chair, pressed a hand to an earphone, and was soon listening to the telltale beat of twin propeller cavitation; he ran an acoustic signature comparison, then buzzed the control room.
“Lover boy’s heading for Beirut, skipper,” he reported. “ETA our position twenty-one hundred.”
“You’re positive it’s him?”
“Ac-sig’s a perfect match.”
Duryea turned the conn over to McBride and went up the companionway to the SEALs’ quarters on A-deck. The bulkhead adjacent to the door still displayed the pictures of the hostages; the one opposite was covered with the construction drawings of the Romeo.
Four salvage/rescue valves on the exterior hull had been circled in yellow and numbered. They allowed air to be injected into an incapacitated submarine to save the crew and/or float the vessel, and were spaced out the length of the hull in the event bulkhead doors had been closed, sealing off compartments. On another drawing, the salvage hatch forward of the sail, through which divers could enter the vessel, had been outlined in red. Passageways leading to compartments where the hostages might be quartered had also been marked. The plastic shipping container from the Office of Technical Services at Langley was on the floor in front of the drawings. Lieutenant Reyes was sitting on it, refining his plan, when Captain Duryea came through the joiner door.
“Target coming in, Lieutenant.”
A thin smile tugged at the corners of Reyes’s mouth. “Showtime,” he called out to the members of his team, who came surging into the compartment in response. The SEALs went directly to their equipment lockers and began suiting up as Reyes opened the shipping container.
The interior was divided into a six-section egg crate. Each contained a steel pressure vessel, delivery hose, and valve assembly. Reyes removed one from its cushioned sleeve. Painted bright yellow, it resembled a scuba tank; but its gaseous contents would have a far different effect on human consciousness.
Halothane was a general anesthetic that acted on the central nervous system. Commonly used for surgical procedures, the odorless gas was a benign compound with negligible aftereffects. It induced a deep state of unconsciousness within 30 seconds of inhalation.
The SEALs prepared with an economy of movement and conversation. They had already rehearsed every step of the mission; each man had his assignment; each knew individual scuba tanks would be used and carried in standard two-bottle rigs with the tank of halothane.
“Black fitting goes in the regulator, yellow in the sub; black in the regulator, yellow in the sub,” Reyes recited, making certain no one had inadvertently connected the wrong hose to his breathing apparatus. “I don’t want any of you guys getting off on this stuff.”
“I’ll wake you just prior to launch,” Duryea joked, heading for the communications room.
The time was exactly 7:54 P.M.