Talbot, the burly Air Force Combat Controller, had spent more than a year going through rigorous training on everything from advanced communications to parachuting out of airplanes to swimming underwater before being allowed near a battle zone. Four years later, he was one of the best in the business, a combat veteran, a dead shot with rifle and pistol, physically superior, fearless, and a respected brother within the tight special operations community. He had been at home watching television when he got the call to drop everything and get his ass over to Bragg.
For Bubba did something special, something none of the others could do, which was the purpose of tonight’s mission. In exactly one hour, at 0300, the Black Hawk would deliver them to a designated spot on a beach in Egypt, they would slide down thick ropes while the loadmaster simultaneously lowered extra gear, and the helo would turn and return to the carrier. Waiting on the ground as their guide would be a Marine who had been caught behind the lines when the Iranian attack had hit. Must have been on a diving vacation, Talbot thought. Wrong place at the right time.
Once proper security was established, the show belonged to Bubba, the man who could talk to the sky and make amazing things happen. With his specialized comm gear, he would organize and bring in the main assault when it happened — everything from guiding helicopters toting giant fuel bladders for building a temporary forward airstrip to calling bomber strikes on targets and targeting the thundering offshore naval gunfire. The Iranoids have no idea how much shit I can bring, thought Talbot. He had no pity for his future enemies.
The Black Hawk noisily spooled up its engines, the loadmasters finished strapping everything down, and the five men of the Pathfinder team settled in for what was going to be a long ride over a lot of water because the fleet was so far away from the target area. They were patient men who were used to such intervals, knowing that by daybreak the insertion would be complete.
Bubba ran through his mental checklists and stared at his radios that had been lashed down nearby. He would not put on that heavy pack until they were only a few minutes out from the target. Only then would he replace his beret with a helmet. OK, here comes Bubba and his boys. Finally, he settled back, closed his eyes, and jacked up the volume on his iPod to let Johnny Cash wail the “Folsom Prison Blues.”
The Black Hawk lifted away from the lighted deck, banked to starboard to reach clear space, and was soon swallowed by the darkness.
It took thirty minutes of lying prone on the bathroom floor, a time during which Major Shakuri dared not summon his aide or call for help out of fear of starting a rumor that he was a coward. He would rather be dead than disgraced. Eventually, the nerves settled and the heartbeat slowed. Convinced that he was still alive, he struggled to his feet and took a long, soapy shower to wash away the imaginary blood that seemed to cling to him like a coating of accusation. The major smeared on cologne and brushed his teeth and put on a fresh uniform. Back to work.
His spirits rose sharply about midnight, when his intelligence officer arrived with good news that helped push away the memories. One of the objects of the manhunt that had been ordered by Colonel Naqdi, the mysterious archaeologist from Great Britain, Dr. Tianha Bialy, was back on the scene, not in hiding after all but checking into the elegant Four Seasons Hotel, and under her own name. Shakuri would go see her first thing tomorrow, and that would certainly please the colonel.
So, progress was being made, despite the bloody business in the park, and he was able to enjoy a late-night salad and fish dinner that was sent up from the hotel kitchen. He finished his paperwork at two o’clock in the morning, by which time his feelings of guilt were solidly back under control, so the major retired to his suite and took another quick shower before crawling, exhausted, between the clean sheets. He immediately fell asleep.
At two thirty, detonator timers simultaneously registered 00:00 and triggered the chain of explosions throughout the Iranian ammunition dump at the airport. Brilliant and silent flashes rent the darkness as fast as an eyeblink, followed immediately thereafter by earth-jarring thumps that seemed like the old gods of Egypt were angrily stomping the planet, and a heartbeat later came the first thundering crashes that stopped time. A false sun began to coagulate above the Sharm airport.
Kyle Swanson heard it begin from miles away, as he waited for the Pathfinders beside the shoreline in the north. The sky colored with pulses of gold and yellow and red as the ammo cooked off with wild abandon, each exploding crate feeding the ignition of its neighboring containers. Rockets began to zip out of the inferno only to fall back and explode elsewhere and start other fires.
The big hangar adjacent to the stockpile of ammo was crushed by the pressure; the roof fell in, and the big Boeing transport airplane inside was blown to pieces, along with the mechanics working on it. Deadly shrapnel scythed through the air, and the wild fire churned into a concentrated inferno within the first minute, oozing a giant mushroom cloud into the night. By the time the alert sirens started screaming, they were useless. No one needed to be told that something huge was happening.
Major Mansoor Shakuri was thrown off of his bed by the harsh detonations that shook the hotel like an earthquake. An instant later, one of the big windows in his bedroom crashed inward, and a shower of glass splinters lanced across the mattress where he had been resting a moment before. His head was woozy and his ears were battered, a staccato of major explosions as he scuttled into the dark bathroom and curled up in the tub, knees to his forehead and hands over his head.
A similar experience rocked Tianha Baily awake at the Four Seasons Hotel, but her reaction was far different. She rolled onto the floor beside the bed, reached up to the night table, and grabbed her cell phone as it chirped. Omar was calling from the rooftop plaza and reported that the ammo dump was blowing sky high. “There’s no danger to us here at the hotel, but all hell’s going on at the airport. Come on up and watch the show,” he said. “Nobody’s getting any more sleep tonight.”
A peculiar-looking airplane known as an E-2C Hawkeye had been carving a long oval high in the sky far in front of the USS Kennedy for three hours, with its advanced electronics suite sweeping the sky and ocean alike, simultaneously monitoring a multitude of tasks. The Hawkeye’s crew and computers were out there to detect any long-range threats to the carrier, which was a vital mission since Iran possessed both ground-to-ship missiles and submarines. Among its other duties was to monitor the flight of the stealth Black Hawk helicopter of the Pathfinders and act as a communications relay point for the ship.
Technicians had detected a new heat bloom at the Sharm airport, which also had shown up on satellites and was being tagged for further investigation. That did not skew the total attention of a crewman tracking the inbound Black Hawk, which carried a transponder that automatically registered its position on a radar screen. Suddenly, he blinked, then fidgeted forward in his seat as much as the seat belt would allow. The blip was gone! He did an automatic reset, and the screen did an instant reactivation, but there was nothing there.