"What makes you think they will?" Sanusi asked. "Who will lead them-Thomas Nathaniel Thorn, the so-called leader of the free world? He's too busy having seances so he can communicate with the spirit of Thomas Jefferson.
"Patrick, no one cares about Libya or Egypt-all they care about is the oil," Muhammad Sanusi said. "It's been that way since the Brits discovered oil here. The world will deal with anyone who will sell oil to them-they don't care if it's Salaam, Zuwayy, Khan, or Bozo the Clown. And when the oil runs out, the world will turn its back on this entire continent. All Arabs know the score, PatrickI'm surprised you don't. Do you really believe you're here fighting for justice or to protect the weak? You're here because of the oil-how to get it, how to keep it coming. I don't care who your employer or commander is-you're here because of the oil. Am I right, my friend?"
Patrick didn't answer-he didn't have to. King Idris the Second, the true king of Libya, nodded knowingly. "You want to fight for Susan Bailey Salaam? Well, I don't blame you-she is definitely one hot babe, even after taking one in the face in Cairo." He paused for a moment; then: "Sure is lucky she survived that blast, wasn't it?" Patrick said nothing-he couldn't, because he didn't know anything about her or the incident at the mosque. "You're sure you want to do this?"
"I'm sure."
"Okay. But I still contend: Why go back to Cairo? That's where the action's going to be soon. Either Zuwayy will chew it to pieces with his army, or it'll collapse under the pressure of its own loss of identity. Why would you, an American, hang around for that?"
"You gotta fight for something."
"Sure you do. Home, family, God. I'm out here in the
Sahara with my men instead of back at The Resort at Squaw Creek up in Lake Tahoe or my three-bedroom suite that my buddy Mohammed al Fayed owns at the Hotel Bel Air because Qadhafi chased my family out of our own country, and Zuwayy is busy raping what's left." Then he stopped and looked knowingly at Patrick. "Unless you've already lost those things-then you fight for whatever captures your heart-or your soul. Has Susan Bailey Salaam done that for you, Mr. McLanahan?" Patrick did notcould not-answer.
Muhammad as-Sanusi looked carefully at Patrick; then, apparently noticing something in the man's face, he smiled and winked. "Man, you are one out-of-place dude," he said. "I'm not sure exactly where you're supposed to be, but it is not here in the desert, wearing metal pajamas and carrying a Buck Rogers space gun." Again, Patrick couldn't respond. "Whatever. I still think it would be suicidal for you and your men to go back to Cairo or anywhere in Egypt. But I have the perfect place. If you agree to work with me and my soldiers, I'll bring you there and you guys can set up and work there."
"Where is this place?"
"Not far. About a half-day drive, assuming we don't run into any patrols." He looked at Chris and Hal, still in their battle armor, smiled that boyish smile again, then added, "But I think we can probably handle any patrols we run across out here. Let's go."
"You have a base right on the Egyptian-Libyan border that's secure from Zuwayy and his troops?"
"I didn't until today," Sanusi said with a chuckle. "Min fadlak. Let's go."
They hadn't moved far before alarms started going off in the Tin Man battle armor. "Radiation warning, Muck," Hal Briggs reported.
"How convenient-radiation detectors in that armor," Sanusi said to Briggs. "You must tell me all about that system. My men and I might be in the market for a few dozen." He turned to Patrick. "The Libyans are broadcasting that the Zionists set off an American nuclear device at Jaghbub," he said, "to kill Zuwayy. Did you have such a device?"
"You know we didn't," Patrick replied.
Sanusi just smiled. "But all of Libya and most of the world believe this is so," Sanusi said. "It'll make Libya's next move easier to justify."
"The invasion of Egypt?"
"Well, I think that's pretty obvious," Sanusi said. "The question for you is: What's the objective?"
"You said it yourself: oil."
"Libya has oil. Lots of it."
"Then Libya either wants more, or it wants to control what it doesn't have-or destroy it."
Sanusi smiled. "I think I know where you belong now, Mr. McLanahan-or is it General McLanahan? It's still not out here in the desert, though."
Soon the effects of the electromagnetic pulse in the atmosphere from the explosion at Mersa Matruh were subsiding, and shortly after that, they started receiving position data. "We're only twenty miles from Jaghbub," Patrick pointed out.
"Correct."
"The radiation levels are getting higher," Briggs said. "They'll reach danger levels soon."
"The radiation levels are high enough to affect normal radio communications," Sanusi said. "If a Libyan patrol doesn't have radiation detectors-and by now, all of them do-the disruption of radio communications would get their attention." Patrick wondered why Sanusi would bother to offer that unusual detail.
By the time they were within five miles of Jaghbub, the radiation levels had reached danger levels. From here they could see the base-and there was no doubt that the base had suffered a tremendous attack. The sand was scorched black, like the ruins of Mersa Matruh; armored vehicles, buildings, helicopters, and all sorts of objects, most unidentifiable, lay bent and smoldering. Bodies, charred black and burned almost to the skeleton, could be seen scattered everywhere, along with the carcasses of vultures and other desert scavengers who tried to feed off them. The Libyans had erected signs on every road and path, warning in Arabic and English to stay away from the area because of deadly radiation. Obviously many Libyans had ignored the warning, because they could see abandoned Libyans armored vehicles everywhere-they imagined they were filled with the bloated, rotting corpses of radiationpoisoned soldiers.
"My ancestral home," Sanusi said, "or at least what remains of it after Qadhafi and Zuwayy desecrated and perverted it."
"I'm sorry it's been destroyed," Patrick said.
"You should be-you did most of it, at least to the base," Sanusi said. He smiled, nodded, then added, "Nah, don't be sorry. The base was an abomination to the spirit of my ancestors. They created a place of worship and a place of learning here-Qaddafi and Zuwayy turned it into an armed fortress and a den of sin. You only did what I've wanted the power to do-flatten it. Come on."
"You're going there!"
"Of course," Sanusi said. Some of his men dismounted to examine the new armored vehicles; shots rang out, indicating that some half-dead soldiers were being dispatched by Sanusi's men. But then, to Patrick's surprise, the soldiers started up the vehicle and drove it off-not away from the base, but toward it!
"Patrick…"
"It's okay-I get it now," Patrick said. Muhammad Sanusi just smiled and nodded as they continued on.
As they got closer to the carnage that was once the holy Islamic town of Jaghbub, the details became clearer: Some of the corpses were real, but most of them were faked plaster or wooden mannequins. Some of the armored vehicles had been destroyed not from a nuclear blast but by regular antitank or RPG rounds or by the Wolverine cruise missile's Sensor-Fuzed Weapon rounds blowing through the weaker upper hull. The blackness surrounding the base Tvas dark sand, gravel, or charcoal, not the vaporized remains of buildings. "You faked a nuclear blast here?" Hal Briggs asked incredulously.
"It wasn't hard to do after what you guys did here," Sanusi said. 'The base had been pretty much evacuated by morning-we cleaned up a few security patrols, captured a bunch of good equipment, blew up several thousand pounds of high explosives and ammunition for realism, and used the dead and destroyed vehicles to create the look of a decimated base."