Thirty minutes later, there was still no sign of the tankers. Wiggins asked, "Where the hell is our flying gas station?"
Satherwaite was reading from the mission orders and didn't reply.
Wiggins kept listening for the code signal over the radio that would announce the approach of the tankers. After all this time in the air and all this preparation, he didn't want to wind up in Sicily.
They flew on without speaking. The cockpit hummed with electronics, and the airframe pulsed with the power of the twin Pratt and Whitney turbofans that propelled the F-111 F into the black night.
Finally, a series of clicks on the radio told them that the KG-10 was approaching. After another ten minutes, Wiggins saw the contact on his radar screen and announced the approach to Satherwaite, who acknowledged.
Satherwaite pulled off power and began to slide out of the formation. This, Wiggins thought, was where Satherwaite earned his pay.
In a few minutes, the giant KG-10 tanker filled the sky above them. Satherwaite was able to speak to the tanker on the KY-28 secured and scrambled voice channel, which could be used for short-range transmissions. "Kilo Ten, this is Karma Five-Seven. You're in sight."
"Roger, Karma Five-Seven. Here comes Dickey."
"Roger."
The KG-10 boom operator carefully guided the refueling nozzle into the F-1l1's receptacle, just aft of the fighter's cockpit. Within a few minutes the hookup was completed, and the fuel began to flow from the tanker to the fighter.
Wiggins watched as Satherwaite finessed the control stick in his right hand and the engine throttles in his left to maintain the jet fighter in exact position so that the refueling boom would stay connected. Wiggins knew this was an occasion for him to stay silent.
After what seemed like a long time, the green light near the top of the tanker's boom flicked off and an adjacent amber light came on, indicating an auto disconnect. Satherwaite transmitted to the tanker, "Karma Five-Seven clearing," and eased his aircraft away from the KC-10 and back toward his assigned spot in the formation.
The tanker pilot, in acknowledgment that this was the last refueling before the attack, transmitted, "Hey, good luck. Kick ass. God bless. See you later."
Satherwaite responded, "Roger," then said to Wiggins, "Luck and God have nothing to do with it."
Wiggins was a little annoyed at Satherwaite's too cool jet-jockey crap and said to him, "Don't you believe in God?"
"I sure do, Chip. You pray. I'll fly."
Satherwaite tucked them back into the formation as another jet peeled off for its refueling.
Wiggins had to admit that Bill Satherwaite was a hell of a pilot, but he wasn't a hell of a guy.
Satherwaite, aware that he'd ticked off Wiggins, said, "Hey, wizo," using the affectionate slang term for a weapons officer, "I'm going to buy you the best dinner in London."
Wiggins smiled. "I pick."
"No, I pick. We'll keep it under ten pounds."
"Figures."
Satherwaite let a few minutes go by, then said to Wiggins, "It's going to be okay. You're going to drop them right on target, and if you do a good job, I'll fly right over that Arch of Augustus for you.";
'Aurelius."
"Right."
Wiggins settled back and closed his eyes. He knew he'd gotten more than Satherwaite's quota of non-mission words, and he considered that a small triumph.
He thought ahead a bit. Despite the small knot in his empty stomach, he was really looking forward to flying his first combat mission. If he had any qualms about dropping his bombs, he reminded himself that all their mission targets, his own included, were strictly military. In fact, the briefing officer at Lakenheath had called the Al Azziziyah compound " Jihad University," meaning, it was a training camp for terrorists. The briefing officer had added, however, "There is a possibility of some civilians within the military compound of Al Azziziyah."
Wiggins thought about that, then put it out of his mind.
CHAPTER 14
Asad Khalil struggled with two primitive instincts-sex and self-preservation.
Khalil paced impatiently across the flat roof. His father had named him Asad-the lion-and it seemed that he had consciously or unconsciously taken on the traits of the great beast, including this habit of pacing in circles. He suddenly stopped and looked out into the night.
The Ghabli-the hot, strong southerly wind from the vast Sahara-was blowing across northern Libya toward the Mediterranean Sea. The night sky appeared misty, but in fact the distortion of the moon and stars was caused by airborne grains of sand.
Khalil looked at the luminous face of his watch and noted that it was 1:46 A.M. Bahira, the daughter of Captain Habib Nadir, was to arrive at precisely 2:00 A.M. He wondered if she would come. He wondered if she had been caught. And if she'd been caught, would she confess to where she was going and with whom she was going to meet? This last possibility troubled Asad Khalil greatly. At sixteen years old, he was perhaps thirty minutes away from his first sexual experience-or he was several hours away from being beheaded. He saw an uninvited mental image of himself on his knees, head bowed as the massively built official executioner, known only as Sulaman, swung the giant scimitar toward the back of Khalil's neck. Khalil felt his body tense, and a line of sweat formed on his forehead and cooled in the night air.
Khalil walked to the small tin shed on the flat rooftop. There was no door on the shed, and he peered down the staircase, expecting to see either Bahira, or her father with armed guards coming for him. This was lunacy, he thought, pure madness.
Khalil moved to the north edge of the roof. The concrete rooftop was surrounded by a shoulder-high, crenellated parapet of block and stucco. The building itself was a two-story-high structure built by the Italians when they controlled Libya. The building was then, as it was now, a storage facility for munitions, which was why it was safely removed from the center of the military compound known as Al Azziziyah. The former Italian compound was now the military headquarters and sometimes residence of the Great Leader, Colonel Moammar Gadhafi, who this very night had arrived at Al Azziziyah. Khalil and everyone else in Libya knew that the Great Leader made a habit of changing locations often, and that Gadhafi's erratic movements were a safeguard from either assassination or an American military action. But it was not a good idea to comment on either possibility.
In any case, Gadhafi's unexpected presence had caused his elite guards to be unusually alert this night, and Khalil was worried because it seemed that Allah himself was making this assignation difficult and dangerous.
Khalil knew beyond a doubt that it was Satan who had filled him with this sinful lust for Bahira, that Satan had made him dream of her walking naked across moonlit desert sands. Asad Khalil had never seen a naked woman before, but he had seen a magazine from Germany, and he knew what Bahira would look like unveiled and undressed. He pictured each curve of her body as he imagined it would be, he saw her long hair touching her bare shoulders, he recalled her nose and mouth as he'd seen them when he and she had been children, before she was veiled. He knew she looked different now, but strangely the child's face still sat on a wonderfully imagined woman's body. He pictured her curving hips, her mound of pubic hair, her naked thighs and legs… He felt his heart beating heavily in his chest and felt his mouth become dry.
Khalil stared out to the north. The lights of Tripoli, twenty kilometers distant, were bright enough to be visible through the blowing Ghabli. Beyond Tripoli lay the blackness of the Mediterranean. Around Al Azziziyah was rolling arid land, some olive groves, date trees, a few goatherd shelters, an occasional watering hole.