“You’re not attacking a nation, you’re taking out a terrorist stronghold! Paint a hammer and sickle on one of your A-sixes and get on with it.”
“Sir, I’d fly the mission myself if I could, but under the circumstances I respectfully suggest there is no point in carrying this conversation any further.”
Shepherd and Brancato exchanged looks. No discussion was necessary. On Brancato’s nod, Shepherd made an abrupt change in course. While Brancato went about transposing the coordinates to ANITA for entry into the Pave Tack computer, Shepherd climbed into cloud cover 13,000 feet above the sea, pushed the throttles to the stops, and swept the wings back to 72 degrees.
The F-111 bolted forward on a heading for Beirut.
The mach gauge swiftly climbed to 2.5.
Soon the sleek bomber was streaking through the pitch blackness at 1,650 MPH. At 28 miles a minute it could cover the 1,225 miles in under 44 minutes; and though Tripoli was geographically aligned with Western Europe — almost 30 degrees latitude west of Beirut — both cities, along with the Greek Islands, were in the same time zone. It was 8:11 P.M.
At CIA headquarters, Kiley left communications and went to the lobby, clutching the UNODIR; he stood gazing at the memorial wall, seized by an overwhelming sense of failure and depression. Push would soon come to shove. Technically, the UNODIR would cover him, but the responsibility was his, and he took no solace in it. He returned to his office, went to the wall safe behind the Chinese screen, and encoded the combination on the keypad. The safe held cash, top-secret code books, a standard CIA issue pistol, and numerous red file folders. Duryea’s first UNODIR lay atop a pile of cables. Kiley removed it, leaving the safe open, and went to the shredder next to his desk. The first UNODIR went into the laser-honed blades with a precise whirr, spilling in ribbons into the burn bag below. He fed in the second; then, his hands shaking uncontrollably, he took the Polaroid of Fitzgerald from his desk. “I’m sorry, Tom,” he said, eyes glistening with emotion.
On the Cavalla, the SEALs had suited up, clambered through the hatch into the dry deck shelter atop the Cavalla’s hull, and settled in the SDV’s cockpits.
Duryea sealed the hatch and filled the DDS with seawater. Reyes opened the aft bulkhead but, instead of piloting the swimmer delivery vehicle into the depths, he waited until the Romeo was abeam of the basaltic ridge that concealed the Cavalla from its sonar.
Now with the sound of the Romeo’s propellers and diesels to mask the noise of the launch, Reyes turned on the hydroelectric propulsion system and the SDV, its searchlight piercing the cobalt depths, rocketed into the Aegean in pursuit of the submarine.
The plastic-hulled vessel and its six passengers offered imperceptible profiles to radar and active sonar; furthermore, by approaching directly aft in the submarine’s blindspot, Reyes ensured any ambient sound would blend with that made by the Romeo itself. He guided the SDV into position below and behind the hull as it began slowly surfacing to periscope-antenna depth in preparation for contacting Abu Nidal.
The time was 8:41 P.M.
Five minutes later in Casino du Liban, Nidal clambered down the grand staircase from his quarters and strode purposefully through the gaming room and amphitheater to the backstage communications center.
“Have you tried communicating with the submarine?”
“No, sir. Exchequer never calls this early.”
Nidal bristled with frustration at the limitations of submarine communications and the Romeo’s archaic system, which ruled out any contact with the vessel when submerged. “Isn’t it possible that he has already surfaced and is waiting until twenty-one hundred to initiate communication?”
“Yes, sir,” the radioman replied apprehensively.
“And if he is, doesn’t that mean we could contact him right now?”
The radioman nodded. “It is also possible his transmitter is turned off.”
“Try anyway.”
“Come in, Exchequer,” the radioman said into his microphone. “Come in, Exchequer. Do you read?” To Nidal’s consternation, there was no reply. The radioman tried several more times with the same result.
The F-111 was streaking down the center of the Mediterranean 175 miles north of the Egyptian coast.
Shepherd was keeping a wary eye on the systems caution panel, where the sensor that monitored the bomber’s skin temperature was flashing intermittently, indicating heat buildup would soon begin to affect various parts of the airframe and electronics.
“Time to go, six plus thirty,” Shepherd said, pressing the front of his helmet against the HUD cushion to steady his vision. They were approximately 250 miles from the target as he put the plane into a dive. At 1,500 feet, he began pulling out, easing onto level flight barely 200 feet over the sea; then he reached to the center console, activated the terrain following radar, and looped a fore-finger around the paddle switch on the backside of the control stick. This was a safety device that, if released, would automatically and instantly put the plane into a 4-G climb should the TFR malfunction.
The bomber was in all-out supersonic dash now, its speed and altitude making it virtually impossible for Lebanese defense radar to skin-paint it.
“What do we have left?” Shepherd asked.
“Four GBU-fifteens, on three through six.”
“Three through six, it is; let’s ripple them off.”
“Select three, four, five, and six,” Brancato echoed, punching in the data. “Ripple salvo.”
“We’re approaching the mark,” Shepherd intoned, eyes riveted to the rapidly changing data on the video display system — longitude, latitude, altitude, angle of attack, air speed, and time to release. “TTR two plus thirty,” he announced, watching the latter count down.
Brancato thumbed a button on the attack radar console. The Pave Tack pod rotated out of its bay in the F-111’s belly and began scanning the terrain below.
“One minute,” Shepherd said, scrutinizing the VDS as he punched the ECM button, releasing chaff and flares into the bomber’s slipstream.
Brancato’s eyes were riveted to the two images on the multi-systems display, where the alphanumerics and the infrared image of the sea were visible. Soon the craggy Beirut coastline moved into view.
“Thirty seconds,” Shepherd said. “Twenty… ten…”
“Target acquired,” Brancato replied seconds later as the columns of alphanumerics coincided and the image of the casino moved onto the crosshairs. He used the control handle to align it, then locked on and hit the laser button. A pencil-thin beam of red light pulsed from the Pave Tack pod, sliced through the blackness, and locked onto Casino du Liban.
Shepherd turned over control of the bomb release mechanism to the computer, keeping the pickle button depressed, as the time to release counted down.
At all zeroes, four GBU-15s automatically rippled off 3-6-4-5 from the BRUs and began tracking on the laser.
Shepherd put the bomber into a sharp toss to avoid the upcoming explosion, but the gimbaled Pave Tack pod rotated on its mount, keeping the pulsing laser locked on the casino. The bombs lined up nose to tail like lemmings and began following it to the target.
The time in Beirut was 8:57 P.M.
Abu Nidal was hovering over the communications console, awaiting the Romeo’s call when he heard the telltale whistle and froze; seconds later, the first bomb scored a direct hit on the marina, blowing the floating gangways and 50-ton gunboat to pieces. He was dashing through the amphitheater when the second hit.