Jack could rationally accept everything the colonel was saying, but an inner fire drove him on, making him want to hurt the enemy, to keep hitting, not to back away. “Colonel Waters, I think I know how we can prowl around and prey on the bastards without getting hosed down.”
“Prowl like a wolf, Jack?”
“Exactly, sir. Let me work on it.”
Gillian’s shop was unusually full now, many of the patrons being Americans; it kept her and her staff of stylists happily busy. Gillian was less happy about the level of gossip that swirled around the place, especially gossip about the way the Air Force notified next of kin when a man had been lost in combat. Talk about the number of trips that General Shaw had made in his staff car to base housing struck her at times as the lucky ones keeping score on the less fortunate. She thought a little more of the “there but for the grace of God go I” might be in order.
On the other hand, she had to admit some of her reaction was intensely personal, having more to do with Jack and her failure so far to hear from him. Not even a note about how he was doing, where he was… God, she missed him, no use denying it. She concocted stories for herself about why she hadn’t heard from him, that he was too busy, that he was, after all, a combat pilot… At least there hadn’t been any word that the worst had happened, and for that she had to be grateful.
Margaret, her oldest-in-service employee, asked her why she didn’t talk to her American friend Francine; surely she’d heard from Thunder. But, of course, she would have done that if she could have… Francine had gone back to the States, not able to stand the waiting and anxiety. Gillian had no place to go, no place to hide her emotions. How much longer, she wondered, could she take it…?
The sergeant laid the folder on General Mashur Darhali’s ornate desk. The United Arab Command in Dhahran had assigned Darhali an office with furniture and staff that befitted a prince of the Saudi Arabian royal family. “The list you asked for, sir.” The sergeant stood back from the desk at attention and waited for the general’s next order.
“I need a map to understand this. Get one and an intelligence officer up here to explain this moving target.” When the sergeant had bolted from his office, Mashur walked over to the copying machine in the far corner and ran a copy of the only target the 45th would be receiving in forty-eight hours. Prince Mashur Ibn Aziz al-Darhali calmly folded the copy and buttoned it into the breast pocket of his tailored uniform shirt, then sat and waited for the sergeant to return as he scanned the list. He wondered why his contact wanted the list so far in advance. When the sergeant returned with the intelligence officer he directed the man to plot the target on the map, playing out his charade. He briefly scanned the map before turning both list and map over to the sergeant and dismissing the two men. He noted it was one P.M., the time he normally quit for the day.
That afternoon Mashur made his way through a fashionable jewelry store to a table displaying heavy gold chains and necklaces. The casual disarray on the table did not indicate the value of each chain, most of which cost more than a car. He fingered one after another until he was joined by his contact. They did not speak to each other but examined the chains. When Mashur left, a folded note was lying under a chain. The contact picked the note up with the chain and made his way to the counter, casually throwing sixty thousand riyals on the counter and not bothering to wait for his change. Neither Mashur nor his contact noticed the women who followed them out of the store.
The men gathered around the table did not have the crisp look associated with high-ranking officers, and the chaos in the villa they were occupying bore little resemblance to a military headquarters. But their determination matched that of any professional soldier in the Middle East. “It’s a good plan,” the commander of the PSI said. “As Allah wills, tomorrow the Americans will attack the slow-moving convoy we have prepared as a lure. We must use this opportunity to destroy them. Prepare the Fedayeen for battle as the Americans will inflict casualties among our martyrs. But these foreigners will in turn be destroyed.” Carefully the men selected locations for their SAMs and Triple A, creating a trap for any aircraft that might attack the convoy.
The air-group commander was the only pilot among them and approved of the overlapping rings of defensive fire surrounding the trap they were setting. “Your missileers and gunners must not fire after the Phantoms come off the convoy,” the pilot repeated, worried that his pilots would fall victim to their own ground defenses. He had been insistent that the ground defenses work separately from his Floggers.
The men surveyed their handiwork. Every air-defense resource they possessed was marshaled in defense of the long convoy carrying men and supplies southward to the Strait of Hormuz. The commander of the PSI spoke in a low voice. “We will lose some of our soldiers and valuable trucks when the Americans attack. I know many will penetrate our rings of fire. But they will come and we will be waiting. We will receive messages when the Americans take off and our MiGs will be able to launch at the proper moment to meet and attack them.” He did not tell the hushed men that one launch-warning would come from the Soviet trawler and another from a coastal watch-team that was moving into place disguised as fishermen. Some things were better kept secret even from the faithful.
Because the 45th had three air crews for every two Phantoms, Waters had established a rotation order for assigning crews to fly combat sorties. Jack’s and Thunder’s name had not come up for the wing’s fourth mission against the convoy and so they found themselves sitting on the sidelines. Jack had suggested they try using corridor tactics, his only input to the mission. He and Thunder occupied their time by working on Jack’s latest idea for a small group of aircrews to roam at night and prey on selected targets. He was thinking of calling it “Wolf Flight.”
When the crews had moved to the aircraft Jack walked into the makeshift command post at the rear of the COIC and found an empty seat next to the acting DO, Lieutenant Colonel Steve Farrell. His impatience grew as the crews checked in on status, ready to start engines and taxi. He admired Waters’ cool and tried to imitate his relaxed attitude. He glanced at the big situation plot map, where two airmen were marking the location of friendly and hostile aircraft along with the day’s targets. His worry even slackened a notch when one airman plotted an orbit over the Gulf and marked it “CAP-UAC.”