"Headbanger, this is Stalker One, say status," Patrick McLanahan radioed.
"We're sixty seconds to initial point, Stalker," Franken responded on the secure satellite command channel. Thankfully Lindsey was feeling all right now, because Franken had now run out of flying gloves-he hoped he wouldn't have to eject now. "We were chased by Libyan MiGs a while ago, but we're clear. Unfortunately every air defense site in eastern Libya and western Egypt is looking for us, and both sides are on full alert. We had to go low and stay low, so our time in the box will be much less. I estimate only twelve minutes until we bingo. Sorry, Stalker."
"No sweat, Headbanger," Patrick replied. "I don't plan on staying very long anyway. We're in position and ready for some fireworks. We're glad you're here."
"Glad to help, Stalkers. Watch the skies. Headbanger clear."
The Libyan town of Jaghbub was located one hundred and twenty miles south of Tobruk. Jaghbub was an oasis fed by an occasionally dry river, which for most of its two thousand years of history never had more than a few hundred persons living there. But the area was one of the best farming regions in the northern Sahara, with many different types of fruits, vegetables, and nut trees in abundance, and travelers and nomads going across northern Africa found Jaghbub to be a rich and inviting place to stop and rest before continuing their trek across the wastelands. It had therefore developed over the centuries as a crossroads of many different nationalities, religious sects, political identities, and schools of thought from all over the known world.
So when an obscure descendant of the Prophet Muhammad was forced to flee his home in Fez, Morocco, by French colonists in the early nineteenth century, he escaped across the burning sands of the northern Sahara desert, following the ancient nomadic routes over fifteen hundred miles back toward the holy land, and came upon this little oasis. There he found a home for his own particular style of Islam. Instead of the wild, untamed "whirling dervish" being practiced in many Islamic sects, this holy man, who called himself Sayyid Muhammad ibn 'Ali asSanusi, preached a return to strict Muslim practices-abstinence, prayer, and strict adherence to the words of the prophet in the Quran. He built a mosque, then a university, and finally a fortress on the banks of the little river, and the holy city of Jaghbub was born.
For the next one hundred and forty years, Jaghbub was the birthplace of some of the most powerful and revered kings of Africa. The Sanusi dynasty became the lords of northern Africa and the ghosts of vengeance of the Sahara. They ruled the oases with an iron fist, tempered with justice through the laws of Islam. Travelers and pilgrims from any nation were welcome and treated with extraordinary kindness and generosity; anyone who preyed on a traveler or pilgrim was dealt with equally extraordinary swiftness and cruelty, usually by being buried up to the chin in the sand outside an oasis where insects and vultures could pick at the robber's head for a day or two.
They were never conquered. Despite invasions from the French, British, Turks, Italians, Germans, and Americans, the Sanusi dynasty survived and prospered. On December 24, 1951, Sayyid al-Hasan ibn 'Abdullah as-Sanusi, the fourth Grand Sanusi and the first to be chosen amir of each of the three kingdoms of Libya, proclaimed the independence of Libya from post-World War II British rule and himself ruler of the United Kingdom of Libya. The Sanusi family moved the capital of then- new kingdom to Tripoli, keeping the family stronghold at Jaghbub as a retreat and family mosque; soon, Jaghbub became a destination for Muslim pilgrims from all over the world who vfiited and prayed at the tombs of the great nomadic kings of early Libya.
The newly independent kingdom survived mostly by borrowing money from its Arab neighbors and the United Nations, until British geologists discovered oil in the desert southeast of Tripoli in 1958. Virtually overnight, Libya became one of the richest and most strategically vital countries in the world, almost on a par with Egypt and its famous Suez Canal. First the British, and then the Americans, built some of their largest and most important overseas military bases in Libya, all to ensure the delivery of the seemingly endless supply of oil being pumped from its deserts. With its newfound wealth, the king of Libya improved the cities, built large and modern ports and rail lines, improved education and health care, and made Libya an attractive destination for people and investors from all over the world. Once again, travelers and pilgrims were welcomed and protected by the as-Sanusi family.
All that changed in September of 1969, when a group of young army officers led by Muammar Qadhafi staged a bloodless coup against the monarchy. The king himself was out of the country, recovering from eye surgery in Turkey. He abdicated and named his second son Muhammad heir to the throne; the rest of the family fled the palace. The family retreated to Jaghbub, thinking that even Qadhafi would never dare violate a sacred mosque or try to destroy the Muslim university.
When Qadhafi's rule became more bloodthirsty, violent, and repressive, and Libya was distancing itself not just from the West but from many of its Arab neighbors, the people began to call for a return of the Sanusi dynasty to rule Libya as a constitutional monarchy. Jaghbub started to become the symbol of the once and future Libya, the root of Libya's past greatness and the source of leadership of the new Libya, should the military dictatorship fail or be overturned.
Crown Prince Sayyid Muhammad ibn al-Hasan asSanusi of Libya was welcomed into the capitals of many countries, and he made it clear that, with the right support from outside his country as well as within, he would assume the throne once again. Muhammad was born in 1962, the king's second son. Officially he, like most of the Sanusi men before him, was born in the holy sanctuary at the Great Mosque at Jaghbub-in reality, Muhammad was born at the American base hospital at Wheelus Ah" Force Base, which had far better medical equipment and medical professionals than at Jaghbub. His family had learned thenlesson from the birth of the first son, al-Mahdi, who really was born at Jaghbub but had suffered dehydration and circulation problems during delivery.
Muhammad began his schooling at the Royal Military Academy in Tripoli at the age of four and learned the basics, the Libyan "Five 'R's"-reading, writing, arithmetic, religion, and riding-with extraordinary speed. Although his future, chosen by his father, was as a religious scholar and teacher, his real love was the military. He loved hearing stories of his grandfather, a general in the Turkish Army when Libya was still part of the Ottoman Empire, harassing the Third Reich's Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Panzers all across the Sahara. But he soon realized that tanks in the present day, like horses in World War II, were obsolete-a strong air force was the best way to secure a nation as large as Libya, on a continent as large as Africa.
After the military coup in 1969, Muhammad attended elementary and high school classes conducted at the university in Jaghbub, then was accepted to Harvard University in 1980 and graduated in 1983 with a double major in political science and international relations. He was admitted to Harvard Law School hi 1983 and was the first foreign first-year student ever named as an editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.
But Muammar Qadhafi wasn't done with the as-Sanusi family-he needed a scapegoat, and they were perfect targets. Qadhafi had suffered an embarrassing defeat in a brief war with former ally Egypt in 1977; he failed in his attempt to occupy neighboring Chad and Sudan, he failed in his attempt to support his friend Idi Amin in Uganda; and he suffered an embarrassing loss of four Libyan MiG-25 fighters when they tangled with two U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcat fighter planes defying Qadhafi's "Line of Death" over the Gulf of Sidra. There had already been several assassination attempts against Qadhafi, and there was a brief but violent military uprising in Tobruk, organized and funded by the deposed King Idris and his newly formed Sanusi Brotherhood. Qadhafi charged the Sanusis with sedition, treason, and inciting revolution-all crimes punishable by death. In 1984, Qadhafi ordered the entire asSanusi family arrested, the Jaghbub university closed, and the tombs of the Sanusi kings opened, destroyed, and the remains thrown out into the desert.