For a second their gazes met. Maxwell’s face was a frozen mask. Claire was suddenly aware that Tyrwhitt’s hand was still on her knee.
Maxwell turned and walked away.
“Oh, damn!” she said, and yanked Tyrwhitt’s hand off her knee. She walked quickly over to the entrance of the bar. “Sam?” she called, looking around.
He was nowhere in sight.
The bus that took them to the strike conference was the same one that had delivered them to the hotel yesterday. But instead of the smiling young Bahraini at the wheel, their driver was a Marine gunnery sergeant. He wore a sidearm and a UHF radio headset. Two more Marines in full combat gear, each carrying an M-16 and wearing their own headsets, occupied the front and the rear rows of the bus.
The bus wound through a labyrinth of back streets, while the guards maintained a watchful lookout. Not until they stopped did the pilots realize they were back at the old American embassy, an under-used facility that contained the only SCIF — Special Compartmentalized Intelligence Facility — this side of Riyadh. The SCIF had a blast door and another squad of armed guards. The exterior shell of the facility was shielded against monitoring or electronic intrusions.
Maxwell took a seat with the other pilots in the large, windowless briefing room. A half dozen tiers of seats faced a narrow dais with a lectern and a row of folding chairs. Behind the lectern sat a khaki-clad admiral with two stars on his collar, and two civilians. By their ubiquitous button-down shirts and wingtips Maxwell knew they had to be spooks — either CIA or Defense Intelligence.
Next to the admiral, wearing his own khaki outfit, sat another civilian — the Undersecretary of the Navy. Whitney Babcock smiled and came over to shake hands with Boyce and DeLancey.
Rear Admiral Dinelli, whose title was a convoluted military acronym, COMUSNAVCENT — Commander U.S. Naval Forces Central Europe — took the lectern and opened the conference. “As you know, gentlemen, the Iraqis have been scaling up their threat posture steadily since last month. It began, as you might also suspect, precisely on the afternoon of 25 April.”
Several pilots nodded. “When Killer flamed the MiG,” someone volunteered.
“Correct. But not just any MiG. It happened to be a jet flown by a pilot named Al-Fariz, who, we have determined, was the nephew of the president of Iraq.”
Someone in the room whistled. Several cast sideways glances at Killer DeLancey. DeLancey, for a change, was not grandstanding. He maintained a stoic expression.
“Since that day,” the admiral went on, “things have heated up. They’ve been lighting up their air defense radars. On the 17 May, they managed to bring down the F-16 at Az Zubayr. We have reason to believe they may have more ambitious plans than ever before.”
The admiral turned to the wall behind him. “Chart, please,” he said, and an eight-foot-square illuminated map of Iraq lowered from the overhead. The admiral aimed a laser pointer at the map, positioning the beam directly over a spot to the south of Baghdad.
“Latifiyah,” he said, making a tiny circle around the spot. “Iraq insists the facility is a pharmaceutical plant. They have, of course, denied United Nations inspectors access to the facility. The admiral aimed the laser again. “Here, at Al Fallujah, and another one five kilometers south of Baqubah.” He pointed to a spot in the fertile valley northeast of Baghdad.
“Excuse me, sir,” said a lieutenant commander from the Blue Tail squadron. “I remember Latifiyah from the Gulf War. I know for a fact we nailed that place.”
The admiral nodded. “You did. It was gutted. Now they’ve rebuilt and gone deep underground. We have evidence that Latifiyah is the most heavily bunkered facility in the country with the exception of Saddam’s own headquarters in Baghdad. Baqubah and Al Fallujah were also bombed and have been totally reconstructed with fortified storage containers.’
“Storage for what, sir?” asked CAG Boyce.
The admiral seemed to consider the question, then he nodded to the seated civilians. “I’ll let Mr. Ormsby of the Central Intelligence Agency take that one.”
Ormsby took the lectern. His plump face was punctuated with round oyster-shell framed glasses beneath a receding hairline. “For the past six years, after the first U. N. inspection team was thrown out, Latifiyah was developed as a chemical and biological weapons plant. We have new evidence that it is being used as a rocket propellant facility and probably a missile assembly shop.”
“What kind of missile?” asked Burner Crump, the F-14 squadron commander. “The new Scud?”
The spook shook his head. “Not a Scud, and not even a Silkworm, though the Iraqis would have no trouble obtaining them. Something not seen before in the Middle East.” Ormsby turned to the screen behind him. The map of Iraq vanished and was replaced by a projected color image of a long, tapered missile cradled in a mobile launcher. The missile had sharply swept-back guide vanes and a concave indentation in its body.
“The Krait,” he said. “Developed in China, brokered and sold by North Korea. Uses cheap and efficient global positioning satellite guidance — courtesy of our own Defense Department. The surface-launched version of the Krait has a range of three hundred miles and a speed in excess of mach three.”
Murmurs came from the assembled pilots. Each was doing the same quick calculation.
“That’s right,” said Ormsby. “Operating in the extreme northern Gulf, the Reagan battle group could be within range of the surface-launched version.”
“You said ‘surface-launched version,” said Gordon. “Does that mean—”
“It does. Our sources report that they are reconfiguring several Fulcrums at Al-Taqqadum as strike fighters. We’ve observed what appears to be extensive low-altitude pilot training being conducted in the north, in the Mosul area. If they use the Fulcrum as a launch vehicle for the Krait, then every target in the Middle East will be vulnerable. Including the Reagan.”
Tyrwhitt emerged from the windowless gloom of the SCIF. He stood for a moment on the curbside, blinking in the sudden brilliant sunlight. Even with the dark glasses it was painful.
The blue Toyota was waiting. “Hilton Hotel,” Tyrwhitt said as he climbed in the back. He recognized the driver — a young Bahraini in the employ of the American consul.
As the Toyota headed down the road that paralleled the access to the SCIF, Tyrwhitt looked back at the front entrance. He saw the bus that had just delivered the American Navy pilots. They were getting their own briefing, most of it based on the information he had just delivered to his handler.
The pipeline of secrets, he thought. It flowed through the Middle East like crude oil.
His handler, Ormsby, was a pompous twit. He had conducted the debriefing as if it were a therapy session, delivering all this professional wisdom to the amateur spy. He even saw fit to admonish Tyrwhitt about drinking and exercising discretion with local women. The slightest lapse in discipline, you know, could jeopardize the balance of power.
For nearly three hours Ormsby had grilled him about the reports from the Iraqi military informer. What did the informer want? He didn’t know. What was his job? No idea. Why was he willing to inform? He didn’t say. Did he want to defect? Apparently not. Could he be trusted? Of course not. Could anybody?
The trouble with Ormsby, Tyrwhitt finally concluded, was that he was a prude. But so were most of the Americans he had encountered in the espionage business. Tyrwhitt was sure that Ormsby had never gotten drunk or laid in a shithole like Baghdad. Ormsby had probably never been in a whorehouse, at least in the Middle East. The pink-cheeked twit knew nothing about real life.
Now they were in the end game. Though Ormsby hadn’t said as much, they both understood that Tyrwhitt’s return trip to Baghdad was probably his last. The danger level had ratcheted off the scale. It would soon be time to effect the egress plan.