Ahmed warmed to his tale. “And unknown to our grandfather, there would also be those abroad who would see this as an opportunity to import Land Rovers and teach the other tribes to drive them instead of camels. So even if Grandfather fought hard and spent a lot of money defending his camels, in a little while no one would want them because they would all have Land Rovers and Mercedes.” The men laughed.
“So what is your point, Ahmed, you who drive a BMW these days, I am told?” Muhammad asked, looking at Abdullah.
“Your scorpion fears: go ahead, brother, explain them to us,” Abdullah encouraged.
“My point is that the remaining oil will attract all sorts of scorpions, like America and China. We will be a target and a pawn in many games. Meanwhile, some of the other countries will finally be developing alternatives to oil, and after they have waged war in our land to get their oil, they will not need the last fifty years’ supply. It will be worthless, like camels.”
“Camels are not worthless!” one man called out in protest.
“Ahmed, I respect you as a doctor but not as an economist,” Muhammad shot back. “They have been fooling around with alternatives for years. Their hydrogen fuel cells for cars take more energy to make the same power than gasoline-burning cars. They can’t fly their planes or sail their ships on hydrogen or solar power. Nuclear power creates radioactive waste that is dangerous. The American oil imports have gone up at almost two percent a year and the Chinese at over ten percent a year.”
“Perhaps, ’Hammad, but Ahmed is right that if we end up being the only country with a large amount of oil, the scorpions will come for it,” Abdullah said slowly as he stirred the ash of his tobacco.
“But that is where you come in,” Khaleed said. “You are now in charge of our defenses and I have complete faith in you. As a defender at football, I could never get by you to shoot on goal,” Khaleed teased, sensing that the conversation had grown too serious for this time and place.
“If only our enemies were as easy to block as you were, Muhammad,” Abdullah joked back. “But maybe we should ask the doctor to develop a new scorpion trap like that American thing for the roaches — what is it?”
“The Roach Motel,” one man offered in English. “They check in, but they don’t check out.”
“Yes, but we don’t want them to get in, Jassim, that’s the point” Abdullah replied, laughing. “Ahmed, what we need you to develop is a gate to keep them out, a scorpion’s gate.” All the room laughed at the sheik’s humor, and as they did, Abdullah playfully threw his arm around his brother and whispered to him. “Think about it. I will think about what you said, about the UN report. You give me a plan.”
The room settled down. “Now, Jassim, let’s hear your report on the security of the oil infrastructure and then we’ll talk about the workers who have replaced the Americans,” Abdullah said, laying out the rest of the night’s agenda.
“Attention on deck,” the sergeant barked as the CinC, the Commander in Chief of U.S. Central Command, entered the darkened war room. Forty-two officers, including admirals and generals, stood up from their seats in the little amphitheater. On the twelve large flat screens in front of them, computer displays showed the current status of forces in the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, from the top of the world in the Hindu Kush Mountains to the bottom at the Dead Sea.
“Be seated,” U.S. Army four-star general Nathan Moore mumbled, as he dropped down into the oversized chair reserved for the CinC. There was a shuffling and scraping sound as the officers were seated and pulled their chairs forward to the desklike countertops in front of each row. “We are delighted to be joined today by the deputy chief of staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces, Marshal Fahmi. Welcome, sir. We look forward to this week’s Combined Planning Conference and, more important, to the largest Bright Star exercise yet. Please, begin.”
The basement Command Center of the United States Central Command was in a nondescript office building on an Air Force base sticking out into Tampa Bay. When Central Command was formed in 1981 to coordinate the few U.S. forces in the Middle East, no country in the region would permit America to create a headquarters for the command. In frustration, the Pentagon had temporarily placed the headquarters at an F-16 base in Florida. Special Operations
Command had also moved its headquarters onto the base. Now, three or four wars later, the F-16s and other flight activity at MacDill AFB had gone, but CENTCOM was still there. It also now had a sophisticated “forward” headquarters in Qatar and a naval headquarters in Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf (or, as the Pentagon calls it, the Arabian Gulf).
As a young Air Force officer walked to the podium, the CENTCOM logo (an American eagle flying over the Arabian peninsula) faded from the main screen and was replaced by a large weather map. What followed was a lot like the weather report on the International Edition of CNN. “Heavy rains continue in Mumbai…Six inches of snow in Kabul… Eighty-two and sunny in Dubai… Five-foot seas off Alexandria…” The audience, heads down, were examining their briefing books.
Next up was an Army one-star general, the J-2, head of CENTCOM’s intelligence branch. Because of the presence of the Egyptians, the intelligence briefing was short, devoid of the usual close-up satellite pictures the J-2 called “Happy Snaps” or the juicy intercepted messages with which he liked to punctuate his morning briefings. “And now to Bahrain,” the J-2 said as a picture of the ornamental main gate of Brad Adams’s headquarters flashed onto the main screen. Adams thought he could hear eyeballs click as, he was sure, everyone in the darkened theater looked at him. “Investigation continues into the identity of the terrorists who hijacked the liquid natural gas tanker Jamal in an apparent attempt to explode the ship inside the CENTNAV Administrative Support Unit, Fifth Fleet Headquarters. Initial reports indicate the hijackers were Iraqis, otherwise unidentified. Defense Intelligence in the Pentagon speculates that they were working for the Riyadh regime called Islamyah….”
Sensing the tension in the room, the CinC interrupted. “Let me just say this about that, ah, episode: Admiral Adams’s team did an outstanding job stopping this attack, outstanding. Those SEALs and Marines… and, ah, of course, the Coasties who died, Captain Barlow, where is he?” The CinC looked around in the dark for the Coast Guard liaison officer. “Tremendous job. Thousands of lives saved. This is how to do force protection. Admiral,” he said, looking down the row of seats to where Adams sat with an Egyptian navy officer on his left, “you should be proud of how you trained your forces, drilled them, planned, so that you could get that sort of outcome without you even being there. Well done.”
Adams swallowed. “Thank you, sir.” As the director of operations, the J-3, an Army two-star general walked to the podium to begin the Bright Star Exercise briefing, the officer on Adams’s right slipped a folded note under the Fifth Fleet commander’s briefing book. Unfolding it, Adams read, “Was that a compliment or a reprimand?” The author, Marine Major General Bobby Doyle, was the new director of policy and plans, the J-5. He had also gone to the National War College with Adams five years earlier, where the two had competed for the class tennis trophy. Doyle had won.
“As you know, sir, the Bright Star series of U.S.-Egyptian exercises began in the early 1980s… ” The J-3 was proudly showing a short documentary film of the early exercises. He finally moved on to the plans for the upcoming operation. “Largest ever, incorporating amphibious and airborne insertions of multiple brigade-size American units, supported by bombers from CONUS and tacair from the carriers,” he said, pointing to symbols that were appearing on the large map of the Red Sea on center screen, “marrying up with Egyptian armor divisions and moving inland….”