"I think it's some kind of setup," Fazani said seriously. "I had him taken to the detention center, but I think he should be moved as soon as possible."
"Moved? Yes, he should be moved-straight to Kazakov," Zuwayy said. "This might be our chance to get back in his good graces. Where is he now?"
"The interrogation center," Fazani said. "It should be useful for us to interrogate him as much as possible before we turn him over. He might be able to give us a lot of information on Egyptian defenses as well as exactly what he used to attack all our bases. And if we can find out who he works for, maybe they'll pay even more to get him back than Kazakov will." Zuwayy got unsteadily to his feet; Fazani practically had to catch him to keep him from falling over. "Why don't you let me handle McLanahan, Jadallah? Give me some time to see what he'll do. If he's as tough as his men we captured, it might be easier just to hand him over to Kazakov; but if we can break him quickly, maybe we can explore alternate opportunities."
"Ma'lesh, ma'lesh," Zuwayy said. He returned to his chair and collapsed into it. "You and Juma take c «re of it. I'll be okay in a few hours." Fazani was thankful Zuwayy didn't put up a fight about that, and he headed for the door. But just before he left, Zuwayy shouted behind him, "Wait, Tahir! Did you say you were going to take him to the interrogation center?"
"Na'atn."
"Did you search him first?"
"Of course. We found disguises, fake travel documents, a gun…"
"What about a radio?"
"We found a radio too."
"A small one? A very small one?"
Now Fazani was getting anxious. He turned back toward Zuwayy. "Well… yes, it was small," he asked. "Palmsized, smaller than anything I've ever-"
"No, you idiot, I mean small, like a tack or brad!"
"What are you talking about, Jadallah?"
"The woman, the other McLanahan-she had some kind of transceiver implanted in her arm!" Zuwayy shouted. "If this one has one too…"
"Then they know exactly where he is," Fazani muttered. "God… he was doing a probe, and he's led his forces right to us!"
"Get that transceiver off of him-I don't care if you have to cut all his limbs off!" Zuwayy shouted. "And then evacuate this entire facility right-!"
And at that moment, the first explosion shook the Presidential Palace like an earthquake.
Sirens and alarms sounded everywhere. Zuwayy was immediately escorted-dragged might be more accuratethrough one of the myriad of escape tunnels that led from the Presidential Palace to the Ginayna, the maze of rooms, prisons, and military barracks under the city of Tripoli. He ran virtually headlong into Tahir Fazani and Juma Mahmud Hijazi, also running for their lives.
"Unidentified aircraft detected all around the city," Fazani said to Zuwayy. "It looks like a massive attackperhaps the entire Egyptian air force!"
"Get to a phone and commence the rocket attack on Sal-
imah," Zuwayy shouted. "I want Salimah destroyed! Now!"
"Forget about Salimah," Hijazi said. "Let's just get out of here and regroup at one of the alternate command centers."
"I will tell the world that the Americans are conducting a preemptive, unprovoked attack on the kingdom," Zuwayy shouted. "I must make a television broadcast to the entire nation immediately! And I want the attack on Salimah started right now. I'm going to evacuate and flee the country before everything is destroyed!"
Hijazi looked at Fazani-and they made a silent agreement. "Good idea, Jadallah," Hijazi said carefully. "Tahir will call in the rocket attack. But… before the Americans freeze all our assets and destroy our communications, I should transfer cash from the treasury to our personal accounts. I can do that from the command center. I just need your account numbers and passwords."
"I can do that myself after I get out-"
'There's no time, Jadallah! You can't use a cell phone to call the banks, and if the Americans take down all the communications facilities, we'll be stuck. If I get your account numbers and pass codes, I can transfer funds right now." Zuwayy hesitated. Another explosion shook the walls and sent dust sprinkling down on their heads. "For God's sake, Jadallah, we're running out of time! Their next action will be to cut off all communications!" Hijazi handed him a pen and a pad of paper. "Hurry, Jadallah! It could be our only chance."
To the two henchmen's immense relief, Zuwayy scribbled something down on the pad, then handed it back to Hijazi. Hijazi tried to read his writing-it was all numbers. "What is this, Jadallah?" he asked.
"The combination to my safe upstairs in my bedroom," Zuwayy replied. "Do you think I've memorized all those bank account numbers and passwords? The numbers are locked in the safe."
"And you didn't think of taking it with you before you ran off, Jadallah?" Hijazi asked incredulously. +
"Go get it," Fazani told him. "I'll call in the rocket attack. Jadallah, get going-we'll be right behind you." Zuwayy needed no more prompting to get out. Hijazi gulped fearfully but returned the way they had come.
There were only two words that could describe the performance of the Russian missiles that were loaded onto the lead EB-52 Megafortress-and those words were "dead weight."
"Another alignment failure message, dammit!" Kenneth "KK" Kowalski, the mission commander aboard the lead EB-52 Megafortress, cursed. "That's the fifth failure!" He was trying to fire one of the Kh-15 inertially guided missiles from the aft bomb bay; but like one of the Kh-27 antiradar missiles and three of the other Kh-15 missiles he tried to launch, this latest one failed as well. "I'll power it down and bring it back up and see if it'll realign."
"Good thing the Libyans can't seem to shoot straight," the aircraft commander, Randall "Fangs" Harper, commented. "Otherwise we'd be Swiss cheese by now." They had successfully fired two Kh-27 missiles at Libyan surface-to-air missile sites; one site was apparently destroyed, and the other shut down before the missile hit and never came back on the air again. Out of six attempts to launch Kh-15 attack missiles from the aft bomb bay, only two were successful, and of the four unsuccessful launches, they had to emergency-jettison two of them because their internal chemical batteries had overheated and threatened to blow the missiles-and the Megafortressup with them. They had to stay at high altitude, above thirty thousand feet, to stay out of range of antiaircraft artillery and short-range antiaircraft missiles-the Libyans even still used searchlights to try and find the bombers.
Their mission was pretty much a bust, thanks to the unreliable Russian standoff weapons-except for the FlightHawk unmanned combat aircraft. Although they were not armed, they still had enough gadgetry and magic in them to affect the outcome of this mission.
"Coming up on the release point, sixty seconds… now," Kowalski announced. "Both birds are in the green and ready."
"It's about time something we're carrying works," Harper mused.
At the planned launch point, Kowalski launched both FlightHawks within two minutes of each other. Their thirty-minute flights would take them on a zigzag track within ten miles either side of an ingress corridor they had planned for the second EB-52 Megafortress. The cruise missiles descended to fifteen thousand feet aboveground, powering up their turbofan engines and unfolding their wings as they fell from altitude.
The FlightHawks were small and stealthy enough that they were almost invisible to Libyan search radars. At irregular intervals along their flight, however, they would suddenly begin sending out bursts of radar and radio energy and deploying small radar reflectors that would instantly make them appear on radar as if they were the size of Boeing 747s. When the Libyan air defense radars popped on, the FlightHawks would instantly plot their position and type of system, transmit the enemy threat locations to the Megafortresses, then deactivate the reflectors and emissions to virtually disappear from radar. In just a few minutes, the FlightHawks had flushed out almost a dozen new antiaircraft threats. The tactic worked great…