The resulting explosion of each JDAM was equivalent to a hundred tons of TNT, creating a fireball a half-mile in diameter and a shock wave that crushed everything aboveground for a mile in every direction. Spaced exactly two miles apart, the four fuel-air explosive bombs created a blinding wall of fire over the Jaghbub airfield. Detonated on the mostly uninhabited west side of the airfield, the fireballs themselves did relatively little damage-but the tremendous overpressure caused by the explosion overturned vehicles, blew out windows, burned wooden buildings, and scorched the sand black all across the reservation, right to the walls of the Green Palace and the Great Mosque where Patrick stood with his captive.
Zuwayy screamed as the huge wall of fire blossomed out toward him, but his screams were drowned out by the roar of rushing fire and burning air. The overpressure that roiled over them was like a one-second superhurricane, tossing Zuwayy around like a puppet. Patrick kept him facing into the rushing wall of sand and red-hot wind until the air, now needing to fill in the vacuum created by the burnt air near the fireballs, reversed direction and rushed back outward.
Patrick jumped down off the roof of the rectory, went back inside, and tossed Zuwayy on the floor. All of Zuwayy's hair on his face, head, and the back of his hands had burnt off, replaced by a beard and hair made of gray ash. He found a pitcher of water on the desk and dumped it on Zuwayy's face to keep him from passing out. "Can you hear me, Zuwayy?" Patrick asked. Zuwayy was trembling so hard that Patrick thought he might be having a seizure. "Answer me, you coward! Can you hear me?"
"Yes… yes, I can hear you," Zuwayy cried. "Don't kill me, please, don't kill me!"
"You have one chance to live, Zuwayy," Patrick said in Arabic. "You captured some prisoners off some vessels your military forces sank…."
"I know nothing of this! What are you accusing me of? This is not-"
Patrick silenced him with another shot of electricity. "Be quiet, Zuwayy. There is no doubt that your forces attacked those vessels-the only question now is whether or not you will die for doing so."
"Do not kill me! Do not kill me!" Zuwayy bleated. "What do you want? Tell me!"
"You will turn them over to the Egyptians immediately," Patrick said. "If they are not delivered within twelve hours, I will hunt you down and execute you before the entire world. And if any of them are harmed in any way, I will find you and crush you like an insect." The stranger hammered the desk in the rectory with a gloved fist, and the heavy cedar-and-burl desktop smashed into pieces as if a wrecking ball was dropped on it. "I will burn your houses, destroy your bunkers, tap into your computer systems, and wipe out everything you own. Twelve hours. I'll be waiting. If they are not returned, you die." To punctuate his order, Patrick reached down, took Zuwayy's nose between two fingers, and crushed it. Blood spurted everywhere, and Zuwayy howled in pain. The figure departed through the door to the mosque itself.
Moments later, Mekkawi returned through the secret tunnel entrance, his side arm in his hands, followed by three heavily armed soldiers. "Highness, there have been more attacks. I have relayed your orders-" He stopped in sheer horror when he saw Zuwayy lying on the floor, his hair burnt off, blood covering his face and chest. "My God, what happened?" He was going to call for the outside guards, but then he saw them, lying on the ground, still twitching from the voltage discharging through their bodies.
"Find out… find out…"
"Find out what, Highness?"
"Find out where the prisoners that were captured off the vessels sunk in the Mediterranean are," Zuwayy gasped, blood flowing from his mouth and shattered nose. "Find them all, alive or dead; round them up, and get them ready to move out of the country. Truck them… no, bus them… no, fly them… oh hell, just get them out of my country immediately! I don't want one hair on their heads touched. Contact that peacock Khan in Egypt and tell him to get ready to pick up those prisoners."
"Prisoners? Khan? Who did this to you, sir…?"
"Just do it," Zuwayy cried, spitting blood. Mekkawi helped him up. "Do it now!" Zuwayy found a liquor bottle, poured, and downed a glass, his hands shaking uncontrollably.
"What in hell is going on out there, Zuwayy?" Pavel Kazakov asked angrily on the secure phone. This time, Kazakov put the call on the speakerphone, so his aide Ivana Vasilyeva could hear how the great "king" of Libya bleated and whined like a sheep being led to slaughter. Kazakov knew how Vasilyeva, a former commando and trained intelligence officer in the Russian army, hated weak menJadallah Zuwayy, the man who claimed to be a descendant of Arab kings, would infuriate her. "Why are you calling me now?"
"Hey, Kazakov, this was your idea to begin with!" Jadallah Zuwayy retorted. "This is your fault!"
"My fault?"
"It was your suggestion to retaliate against the commandos that attacked Samah," Zuwayy said. "That's what I did.
They somehow found out where I was, broke into my sanctuary, and threatened to kill me! He smashed my nose! He threatened to kill me, my entire family, break into my computers, and destroy my military bases."
"They sound like extremely powerful, efficient, and well-informed commandos," Kazakov commented dryly. I could use an entire battalion of them, he said to himself. Something that Zuwayy said nagged at his brain… "Or your soldiers need more security training."
"How could he have found out where I was? That information is top secret!"
"Zuwayy, the entire world knows about your pleasure palace in Jaghbub," Kazakov said. "They know that it is the entrance to your escape route if there is ever a coup against you; they know it is where you bring young girls for whatever perverted pleasure you get out of screwing children. Besides, Jaghbub is less than forty kilometers from the Egyptian border-any good special-operations team can get in and out of the area in there hours. You ought to try a security back-trace on yourself some time, Zuwayy-you might be surprised to learn some of the things anyone can find out about you if they tried."
"This is outrageous!"
"Just shut up, Zuwayy," Kazakov said. "Nothing has changed. You should have just killed all those captives, then set a trap for those commandos when they returned to finish you off. You should have never turned them over to the Egyptians. At least you had the brains to turn them over to Khan and not to Salaam."
"That commando said he was going to kill me if I didn't turn them over to the Egyptians," Zuwayy said. "He got into the sanctuary so easy, I didn't-"
"Hold it," Kazakov interrupted him. "You said, 'that commando.' Do you mean to say there was only one commando?"
"I told you there was only one!"
"But you said a minefield and your military base were also hit."
"They were, but only one commando got into my sanctuary," Zuwayy said. "He neutralized the guards and was waiting for me when I-"
"He 'neutralized' the guards? How? Did he kill them?"
"No. He had no weapons-he didn't even touch them."
Kazakov nearly choked on the cognac he was sipping. He rose slowly to his feet, his throat suddenly dry, his ears ringing. It couldn't be, he thought wildly. No, it couldn't be… I
"Did you hear me, Kazakov?"
"This commando-he was wearing a black outfit, a full helmet with large eyeholes, and a slim backpack? Did he paralyze you with an electric shock that traveled from electrodes on his shoulders to you, without projectiles or wires?"