After a while Maxwell powered up the Compaq notebook on his desk. He logged onto the net and, a minute later, saw the flashing notice that he had mail waiting.
Subj: Port Visit
Date: 18 May
From: Claire.Phillips@MBS.com
To: SMaxwell.VFA36@USSRonaldReagan.Navy.mil
Dear Sam,
You sure know how to get a girl worked up, don’t you? I should be exhausted after staying up all night. But I wasn’t the least bit tired the next day. To borrow from Shakespeare, perhaps the sweeter rest was ours.
Of course I’ll be happy to meet you at your next port visit. Do you really think it might be Bahrain?
I don’t want you to think I’m worrying out of turn, but please be careful out there. With the political situation this tense, God only knows what could happen. For what it’s worth, I have a bad sense about your CO as well. I just don’t want anything to happen to my favorite boy fighter pilot.
I am proud of you, Sam Maxwell. You know you’ve always been my hero.
Love,
Claire
Through a blur of tears Maxwell read the note. A swarm of mixed feelings spilled over him. He gazed again at the photograph, at the smiling, happy girl with the new scarf.
He felt something tugging at him, dragging him out of his black mood. Admit it, Maxwell. You want to see her.
He went back to the computer and began typing a reply.
Chapter Sixteen
The Trailblazer
(Commonwealth News Service, 19 May, Baghdad
by Christopher Tyrwhitt)
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Eleven schoolchildren were reported killed during an early morning attack by United States warplanes against civilian targets in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. According to reliable sources, U.S. Navy F/A-18s from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan fired radar-guided missiles at the clearly marked Al-Humbhra school complex, destroying one building and killing or injuring more than a hundred Iraqi children.
Though officials of the United States State Department quickly issued a denial, claiming that the objective of the attack was an anti-aircraft missile site, photographic evidence from the site strongly suggests that the Al-Humbhra school was, in fact, the focus of the raid.
In a terse statement to his assembled cabinet, an angry Iraqi President Saddam Hussein declared that the cowardly American murderers of Iraqi children would be punished.
Jabbar awoke bathed in sweat. He sat upright in his bed. His pulse was still racing from the vividness of the dream.
He could still see the rippled surface of the sea skimming beneath his jet, the high cloudless sky over the Gulf. And in the distance, that great, gray death slab on the horizon.
It looked so benign.
The MiG was flying at only a hundred feet above the sea at nearly twice the speed of sound. Somehow he had come this far without being killed by American jets. He didn’t know why. Surely their airborne sentry ship — the AWACS — would have detected him. At any second he expected to hear the shrill chirp of his Sirena radar-warning receiver announcing the threat of an air-to-air missile.
Jabbar had no illusions about his own survival. He knew his death had been pre-ordained when he locked gazes with the riflemen of the firing squad. But he would die like a warrior. Also mounted to his MiG was a cluster of air-to-air missiles. His final act as a fighter pilot would be to engage as many of his enemies as possible before he was blown out of the sky.
As the angular silhouette of the great ship swelled on the horizon, Jabbar’s finger went to the launch button on the control stick. Mounted beneath the right wing of the MiG was the Krait. Jabbar knew that even today the American navy had nothing that could intercept a low-flying, supersonic missile.
He knew what would happen when he pressed the button. The Krait would leap from beneath the MiG’s wing and streak toward the demon ship out there on the horizon. The missile would pierce the double-layered steel hull, not detonating until it had penetrated the vital organs of the warship. When the warhead exploded, the USS Reagan would erupt in a hellish mushroom of fire and molten steel. America’s most powerful warship — and its 5,000-person crew — would be vaporized.
Jabbar knew he should feel a hatred for the Reagan. From its deck had come the Hornet fighters that killed Captain Al-Fariz — the incident that ignited this new war. But Jabbar could also admit the truth: The goat-brained Al-Fariz had been ripe for killing anyway, blundering as he did into the forbidden territory.
Jabbar had often wondered why he too had not been shot down in the same engagement. Still burned into his memory like an indelible scar was that moment of terror, hearing the shriek of his Sirena, waiting for the Hornet pilot to kill him with another missile.
But the missile hadn’t come, and Jabbar didn’t know why. Did the American lose his nerve? Did he decide that shooting Al-Fariz was a mistake? Did he feel merciful?
Jabbar was sure that he would never know the facts, only that an American fighter pilot had spared his life. And now Jabbar had been ordered by Saddam Hussein to launch a nuclear-tipped missile against the American aircraft carrier.
It was insane, thought Jabbar. Saddam was a maniac. But like many maniacs, this one possessed a demented genius for retribution. Jabbar knew that other missiles — launched simultaneously from surface vehicles — would be en route to targets in Israel, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. The cities were even more defenseless against the Krait than the American fleet. The much vaunted Patriot missile had been a great joke during the Gulf War, doing more damage to the territory it was defending that to the incoming Scud. Even its successor, the Revere, was ineffective against the lethal Krait.
It would be a slaughter. A very ugly slaughter, because for most of the intended targets the Krait warheads transported Anthrax toxin and Sarin gas. Saddam did not wish his enemies a merciful death.
The Middle East would become a biological and nuclear wasteland.
Jabbar sat upright in his darkened room, wet with perspiration. Outside, the dawn had not yet come to Baghdad. Saddam’s war was still only a bad dream.
He still had time. He had to do something.
“Listen carefully,” the man said.
Tyrwhitt listened. They sat at adjoining tables in the sprawling al-Amarz coffee house. Swarms of passersby jostled each other, shuffling past the tables and the harried waiters.
The man’s features were now familiar to him — the hawk-like nose, the intense brown eyes that drilled into him like lasers. No question, he was the colonel from the reception at the Ministry of Information. Tyrwhitt wondered again about him. What motivated the man? What did he do in the Iraqi military? Why was he taking such a terrible risk?
“Latifyah,” said the informant in a low voice. “It is the assembly plant as well as the Krait missile propellant factory. Each building is fortified with a minimum of a meter of concrete. The complex has not only anti-aircraft and SAM defenses, it is within the protective umbrella of the Al-Taqqadum fighter interceptor base. Now pay very close attention. I will give you the current air defense order of battle.”
He stopped and peered at Tyrwhitt with his piercing brown eyes. “Are you sure you can remember this?”
Tyrwhitt sighed and gave him a withering look. “As I told you before, I remember everything.”
He caught the Iraqi’s humorless smile. Obviously he didn’t believe it. But it happened to be true. Even after half a dozen scotches, Tyrwhitt still possessed his computer-like ability to retain reams of arcane data. It was the single attribute that made him an effective journalist. And spy.