Chapter 4
Don Walker eased down on the brake pedal and the '63 vintage Corvette Stingray paused for a moment at the main entrance to Seymour Johnson Air Force base to let a couple of campers pass before emerging onto the highway. It was hot. The August sun blasted down up ahead on the small North Carolina town of Goldsboro so that the tarmac seemed to shimmer like moving water. It was good to have the top down and feel the wind, warm though it was, running through his short blond hair. He maneuvered the classic sports car over which he had lavished so much attention up through the slumbering town to Highway 70, then pulled onto Highway 13 heading northeast. Don Walker, that hot summer of 1990, was twenty-nine years old, single, a fighter jockey, and had just learned that he was going to war.
Well, maybe. Apparently it would depend on some weird Arab called Saddam Hussein. That same morning the wing commander, Colonel (later General) Hal Hornburg, had laid it out: In three days, on August 9, his squadron, the 336th Rocketeers of the Ninth Air Force of Tactical Air Command was shipping out to the Arabian Gulf. The orders had come through from TAC command at Langley Air Force base in Hampton, Virginia. So it was on. The elation among the pilots had been ecstatic. What was the point of all those years of training if you never got to fire the goodies?
With three days to go there was a mess of work to get through, and for him as squadron weapons officer more than most. But he had begged for just twenty-four hours' furlough to go and say good-bye to his folks, and Lieutenant Colonel Steve Turner, chief of weapons, had told him if there was one tiny detail missing on August 9 when the F-15E Eagles rolled, he--Turner--would personally kick ass. Then he had grinned and told Walker if he wanted to get back by sun-up, he had better get moving. Walker was hammering up through Snow Hill and Greenville by nine that morning, heading for the chain of islands east of Pamlico Sound.
He was lucky his parents were not back in Tulsa, or he could never have made it. Being August, they were taking their annual vacation at the family beach house near Hatteras, a five-hour drive from the base.
Don Walker knew he was a hotshot pilot, and he reveled in it. To be twenty-nine and do the thing you love best in the world and do it supremely well is a good feeling. He liked the base, he liked the guys, and he adored the exhilaration and power of the McDonnell Douglas F- 15E Strike Eagle that he flew. It was, he thought, the best piece of airplane in the whole U.S. Air Force, and the hell with what the men on the Fighting Falcons said. Only the Navy's F-18 Hornet might compare, or so they said, but he had never flown the Hornet, and the Eagle was just fine by him.
At Bethel he turned due east for Columbia and Whalebone, which was where the highway turned into the island chain; with Kitty Hawk behind him to his left, he turned south toward Hatteras, where the road finally ran out and the sea was on all sides. He had had good vacations at Hatteras as a boy, going out to sea in the early dawn with his grandfather for bluefish, until the old man got sick and could not go anymore.
Now that his dad was retiring from the oil job in Tulsa maybe he and Mom would spend more time at the beach house and he could get down there more often. He was young enough that the thought that he might not come back from the Gulf, if there was a war, did not cross his mind.
Walker had graduated from high school in Tulsa at the age of eighteen with only one burning ambition--he wanted to fly. So far as he could recall, he had always wanted to fly. He spent four years at Oklahoma State, majoring in aeronautical engineering, and he graduated in June 1983. He had done his time with the ROTC, and that fall he was inducted into the Air Force.
He underwent pilot training at Williams AFB, near Phoenix, flying the T-33 and the T-38, and after eleven months, at wings parade, he learned he had passed as a distinguished graduate, fourth out of forty pupils. To his abiding joy, the top five graduates went to fighter leadin school at Holloman AFB, near Alamagordo, New Mexico. The rest of the pupils, he thought with the supreme arrogance of a young man destined to fly fighters, would be sent to become bomb-droppers or trash-carriers.
At the replacement training unit at Homestead, Florida, he finally quit the T-38 and converted to the F-4 Phantom, a big, powerful brute of a plane, but a real fighter at last.
Nine months at Homestead terminated with his first squadron posting, to Osan in South Korea, flying the Phantoms for a year. He was good and he knew it, and so apparently did the brass. After Osan, they sent him to the Fighter Weapons School at McConnell AFB in Wichita, Kansas.
Fighter Weapons runs arguably the toughest course in the USAF. It marks out the high-fliers, career-wise. The technology of the new weapons is awe-inspiring. Graduates of McConnell have to understand every nut and bolt, every silicon chip and microcircuit of the bewildering array of ordnance that a modern fighter plane can launch at its opponents, in the air or on the ground. Walker emerged again as a distinguished graduate, which meant that every fighter squadron in the Air Force would be happy to have him.
The 336th Squadron at Goldsboro got him in the summer of '87, flying Phantoms for a year, followed by four months at Luke AFB in Phoenix, then converting to the Strike Eagle with which the Rocketeers were being reequipped. He had been flying the Eagle for more than a year when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The Stingray turned just before midday into the island chain; a few miles to his north stood the monument at Kitty Hawk where Orville and Wilbur Wright had hauled their string-and-wire contraption into the air for a few yards to prove that man really could fly in a powered airplane. If they only knew ...
Through Nag's Head he followed the crawl of campers and trailers until they finally petered out and the road emptied past Cape Hatteras onto the tip of the island. He ran the Stingray onto the driveway of his parents' timber-clad frame house just before one. He found them on the porch that faced out over the calm blue sea.
Ray Walker caught sight of his son first and let out a shout of pleasure. Maybelle came out from the kitchen, where she had been preparing lunch, and rushed into his embrace. His grandfather was sitting in his rocking chair, looking at the sea. Don walked over and said: "Hi, Grandpa. It's me, Don." The old man looked up and nodded and smiled; then he looked back at the ocean. "He's not so good," said Ray. "Sometimes he knows you, sometimes he doesn't. Well, sit down and tell us the news. Hey, Maybelle, how's about a couple of beers for some thirsty guys?"
Over the beers, Don told his parents he was off to the Gulf in five days. Maybelle's hand flew to her mouth; his father looked solemn.
"Well, I guess that's what it's for, the training and all," he said at length.
Don swigged his beer and wondered not for the first time why parents always had to worry so much. His grandpa was staring at him, some kind of recognition in his rheumy eyes.
"Don's going off to war, Grandpa," Ray Walker shouted at him. The old man's eyes flickered with life.
All his career he had been a Marine, joining the Corps straight out of school many, many years before, in 1941 he had kissed his wife goodbye and left her with her folks in Tulsa, along with their newborn baby, Maybelle, to go to the Pacific. He had been with MacArthur on Corregidor and heard him say, "I shall return," and he had been twenty yards away from the general when MacArthur did return. In between he had fought his way through a dozen miserable atolls in the Marianas and survived the hell of Iwo Jima. He carried seventeen scars on his body, all from combat, and was entitled to wear the ribbons of a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and seven Purple Hearts on his chest.
He had always refused to take a commission, happy to stay a master sergeant, for he knew where the real power lay. He had waded ashore at Inchon, Korea, and when they finally sent him to finish his Corps days as an instructor at Parris Island, his dress uniform carried more decorations than any other piece of cloth on the base. When they finally retired him after two deferments, four generals showed up at his last parade, which was more than normally show up for another general. The old man beckoned his grandson toward him. Don rose from the table and leaned over. "Watch out for them Japanese, boy," the old man whispered, "or they'll gitcha." Don put an arm round the old man's thin, rheumaticky shoulders. "Don't you worry, Grandpa. They won't get anywhere near me."
The old man nodded and seemed satisfied. He was eighty. It was not, finally, the Japanese or the Koreans who had gotten the immortal sergeant. It was old Mr. Alzheimer. These days he spent most of his time in a pleasant dream, with his daughter and son-in-law to look after him because he had nowhere else to go.
After lunch Don's parents told him about their tour of the Arabian Gulf, from which they had returned four days earlier. Maybelle went and fetched her pictures, which had just arrived back from the developer.
Don sat by his mother's side while she went through the pile, identifying the palaces and mosques, sea-fronts and markets of the chain of emirates and sheikhdoms she and Ray had visited.
"Now you be careful when you get down there," she admonished her son. "These are the kind of people you'll be up against. Dangerous people--just look at those eyes."
Don Walker looked at the picture in her hand. The Bedouin stood between two sand dunes with the desert behind him, one trailing end of his keffiyeh tucked up and across his face. Only the dark eyes stared suspiciously out toward the camera.
"I'll be sure and keep a look-out for him," he promised her. At that she seemed satisfied.
At five o'clock he decided he should head back to the base. His parents escorted him to the front of the house where his car was parked.
Maybelle hugged her son and told him yet again to take care, and Ray embraced him and said they were proud of him. Don got into the car and reversed to swing into the road. He looked back.
From the house his grandfather, supported by two canes, emerged onto the veranda. Slowly he placed the two canes to one side and straightened up, forcing the rheumatism out of his old back and shoulders until they were square. Then he raised his hand, palm down, to the peak of his baseball cap and held it there, an old warrior saluting his grandson who was leaving for yet another war. Don, from the car, brought up his hand in reply. Then he touched the accelerator and sped away. He never saw his grandfather again. The old man died in his sleep in late October.
It was already dark by then in London. Terry Martin had worked late, for although the undergraduates were away for the long summer vacation, he had lectures to prepare, and because of the specialized vacation courses the school also ran, he was kept quite busy even through the summer months. But that evening he was forcing himself to find something to do, to keep his mind off his worry. He knew where his brother had gone, and in his mind's eye he imagined the perils of trying to penetrate Iraqi-occupied Kuwait under deep cover.
At ten, while Don Walker was beginning his drive north from Hatteras, Terry left the school, bidding a courteous good night to the old janitor who locked up after him, and walked down Gower Street and St. Martin's Lane toward Trafalgar Square. Perhaps, he thought, the bright lights would cheer him up. It was a warm and balmy evening.
At St. Martin-in-the-Fields, he noticed that the doors were open and the sound of hymns came from inside. He entered, found a pew near the rear, and listened to the choir practice. But the choristers' clear voices only made his depression deeper. He thought back to the childhood that he and Mike had shared thirty years earlier in Baghdad.
Nigel and Susan Martin had lived in a fine, roomy old house on two floors in Saadun, that fashionable district in the half of the city called Risafa. Terry's first recollection, when he was two, was of his darkhaired brother being dressed up to start his first day at Miss Saywell's kindergarten school. It had meant shirt and short trousers, with shoes and socks, the uniform of an English boy. Mike had yelled in protest at being separated from his usual dish-dash, the white cotton robe that gave freedom of movement and kept the body cool.
Life had been easy and elegant for the British community in Baghdad in the fifties. There was membership in the Man-sour Club and in the Alwiya Club, with its swimming pool, tennis courts, and squash court, where officers of the Iraq Petroleum Company and the embassy would meet to play, swim, lounge, or take cool drinks at the bar. He could remember Fatima, their dada or nanny, a plump gentle girl from an up-country village whose wages were hoarded to make her a dowry so that she could marry a well-set-up young man when she went back to her tribe. He used to play on the lawn with Fatima until they went to collect Mike from Miss Saywell's school. Before each boy was three, he was bilingual in English and Arabic, learning the latter from Fatima or the gardener or the cook. Mike was especially quick at the language, and as their father was a keen admirer of Arab culture, the house was often full of his Iraqi friends. Arabs tend to love small children anyway, showing far more patience with them than Europeans, and when Mike would dart about the lawn with his black hair and dark eyes, running free in the white dish-dash and chattering in Arabic, his father's Iraqi friends would laugh with pleasure and shout: "But Nigel, he's more like one of us!" There were outings on the weekends to watch the Royal Harithiya Hunt, a sort of English foxhunt transported to the Middle East, which hunted jackals under the mastership of the municipal architect Philip Hirst, with a "mutton grab" of kuzi and vegetables for all afterward.
And there were wonderful picnics down the river on Pig Island, set in the middle of the slow-moving Tigris which bisected the city.
After two years Terry had followed Mike to Miss Saywell's kindergarten, but because he was so gifted they had gone on together to the Foundation Prep School, run by Mr. Hartley, at the same time.
He had been six and his brother eight when they turned up for their first day at Tasisiya, which contained some English boys but also Iraqi lads of upper-class parents. By then, there had already been one coup d'閠at in Iraq. The boy king and Nuri as Said had been slaughtered and the nee-Communist General Kassem had taken absolute power.
Though the two young English boys were unaware of it all, their parents and the English community were becoming worried. Favoring the Iraq Communist Party, Kassem was carrying out a vicious pogrom against the nationalist Ba'ath Party members, who in turn tried to assassinate the general. One of those in the group that failed to machine-gun the dictator was a young firebrand called Saddam Hussein.
On his first day at school Terry had found himself surrounded by a group of Iraqi boys. "He's a grub," said one. Terry began to cry. "I'm not a grub," he sniffled.
"Yes, you are," said the tallest boy. "You're fat and white, with funny hair. You look like a grub. Grub, grub, grub."
Then they all took up the chant. Mike appeared from behind him. Of course, they were all talking Arabic. "Do not call my brother a grub," he warned. "Your brother? He doesn't look like your brother. But he does look like a grub."
The use of the clenched fist is not part of Arab culture. In fact, it is alien to most cultures, except in certain parts of the Far East. Even south of the Sahara the closed fist is not a traditional weapon. Black men from Africa and their descendants had to be taught to bunch the fist and throw a punch; then they became the best in the world at it.
The closed-fist punch is very much a western Mediterranean and particularly Anglo-Saxon tradition. Mike Martin's right-hand punch landed full on the jaw of the chief Terry-baiter and knocked him flat. The boy was not so much hurt as surprised. But no one ever called Terry a grub again.
Surprisingly, Mike and the Iraqi boy then became the best of friends. Throughout their prep school years, they were inseparable. The tall boy's name was Hassan Rahmani. The third member of Mike's gang was Abdelkarim Badri, who had a younger brother, Osman, the same age as Terry. So Terry and Osman became friends as well, which was useful because Badri Senior was often to be found at their parents' house. He was a doctor, and the Martins were happy to have him as their family physician. It was he who helped Mike and Terry Martin through the usual childhood ailments of measles, mumps, and chicken pox. Abdelkarim, the older Badri boy, Terry recalled, was fascinated by poetry, his head always buried in a book of the English poets, and he won prizes for poetry reading even when he was up against the English boys. Osman, the younger one, was good at mathematics and said he wanted to be an engineer or an architect one day and build beautiful things. Terry sat in his pew on that warm evening in 1990 and wondered what had happened to them all.
While they studied at Tasisiya, things around them in Iraq were changing. Four years after he came to power by murdering the King,
Kassem himself was toppled and butchered by an Army that had become worried by his flirtation with Communism. There followed eleven months of rule shared between the Army and the Ba'ath Party, during which the Ba'athists took savage revenge on their former persecutors, the Communists. Then the Army ousted the Ba'ath, pushing its members once again into exile, and ruled alone until 1968.
But in 1966, at the age of thirteen, Mike had been sent to complete his education at an English public school called Haileybury. Terry duly followed in 1968. In late June that summer, his parents took him over to England so they could all spend the long vacation together there before Terry joined Mike at school. That way they missed by chance the two coups, on July 14 and 30, that toppled the Army and swept the Ba'ath Party to power under President Bakr, with a vice-president called Saddam Hussein.
Nigel Martin had suspected something was coming and had made his plans. He left the IPC and joined a British-based oil company called Burmah Oil, and after packing up the family's affairs in Baghdad, he settled the family outside Hertford, from where he could commute daily to London and his new job.
Nigel Martin became a keen golfer, and on weekends his sons would often act as caddies when he played with a fellow executive from Burmah Oil, a certain Mr. Denis Thatcher, whose wife was quite interested in politics.
Terry loved Haileybury, which was then under the head-mastership of William Stewart; both boys were in Melvill House, whose housemaster then was Richard Rhodes-James.
Predictably, Terry turned out to be the scholar and Mike the athlete. Scorning having a go at a place in university, Mike announced early that he wanted to make a career in the Army. It was a decision with which Mr. Rhodes-James was happy to agree. If Mike's protective attitude toward his shorter and chubbier brother had begun at Mr. Hartley's school in Baghdad, it was confirmed at Haileybury, as was the younger boy's adoration of his sibling.
Terry Martin left the darkened church when the choir practice ended, walked across Trafalgar Square, and caught a bus to Bayswater, where he and Hilary shared a flat. As he passed up Park Lane, he thought back to the school years with Mike. And now, by being stupid when he should have kept his mouth shut, he had caused his brother to be sent into occupied Kuwait. He felt close to tears with worry and frustration.
He left the bus and scurried down Chepstow Gardens. Hilary, who had been away for three days on business, should be back. He hoped so; he needed to be comforted. When he let himself in, he called out and heard with joy the answering voice from the sitting room.
He entered the room and blurted out the stupid thing he had done. Then he felt himself enfolded in the warm, comforting embrace of the kind, gentle stockbroker with whom he shared his life.
Mike Martin had spent two days with the Head of Station in Riyadh, a station that had now been beefed up with the addition of two more men from Century.
The Riyadh station normally works out of the embassy, and since Saudi Arabia is regarded, as a most friendly country to British interests, it has never been regarded as a "hard" posting, requiring a large staff and complex facilities. But the ten-day-old crisis in the Gulf had changed things.
The newly created Coalition of Western and Arab nations adamantly opposed to Iraq's continued occupation of Kuwait already had two appointed co-commanders-in-chief, General Norman Schwarzkopf of the United States and Prince Khaled bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz, a fortyfour-year-old professional soldier, trained in the States and at Sandhurst in England, a nephew of the King, and son of Defense Minister Prince Sultan. Prince Khaled, in response to the British request, had been as gracious as usual, and with remarkable speed a large detached villa had been acquired on the outskirts of the city for the British embassy to rent.
Technicians from London were installing receivers and transmitters with their inevitable encryption machines for secure usage, and the place was about to become the headquarters of the British Secret Service for the duration of the emergency. Somewhere across town, the Americans were doing much the same for the CIA, which clearly intended to have a very major presence. The animus that would later develop between the senior brass of the U.S. armed forces and the civilians of the Agency had not yet begun.
In the interim, Mike Martin had stayed at the private house of the Station Head, Julian Gray. Both men agreed there would be no advantage in Martin being seen by anyone in the embassy. The charming Mrs. Gray, a career wife, had been his hostess and never dreamt of asking who he was or what he was doing in Saudi Arabia. Martin spoke no Arabic to the Saudi staff, just accepted the offered coffee with a smile and a thank you in English. On the evening of the second day, Gray was giving Martin his final briefing. They seemed to have covered everything they could, at least from Riyadh.
"You'll be flying to Dhahran tomorrow morning. Civilian flight of Saudia. They've stopped running direct into Khafji. You'll be met. The Firm has set up a dispatcher in Khafji; he'll meet you and run you north. Actually, I think he's ex-regiment. Sparky Low--do you know him?"
"I know him," said Martin.
"He's got all the things you said you needed. And he's found a young Kuwaiti pilot you might like to talk to. He'll be getting from us all the latest pictures from the American satellites showing the border area and the main concentrations of Iraqi troops to avoid, plus anything else we get. Now, lastly, these pictures have just come in from London." He spread a row of large, glossy pictures out on the dining table. "Saddam doesn't seem to have appointed an Iraqi Governor-General yet; he's still trying to put together an administration of Kuwaiti quislings and getting nowhere. Even the Kuwaiti opposition won't play ball. But it seems there's already quite a Secret Police presence there. This one here seems to be the local AMAM chief, name of Colonel Sabaawi, quite a bastard. His boss in Baghdad, who may visit, is the head of the Amn-al-Amm, Omar Khatib. Here." Martin stared at the face in the photograph: surly, sullen, a mix of cruelty and peasant cunning in the eyes and mouth. "His reputation is pretty bloody. Same as his sidekick in Kuwait, Sabaawi. Khatib is about forty-five, comes from Tikrit, a clansman of Saddam himself and a longtime henchman. We don't know much about Sabaawi, but he'll be more in evidence."
Gray pulled over another photograph. "Apart from the AMAM, Baghdad has sent in a team from the Mukhabarat's Counterintelligence wing, probably to cope with the foreigners and any attempt at espionage or sabotage directed from outside their new conquest. The CI boss is this one here--got a reputation as cunning and nobody's fool. He may be the one to be careful of."
It was August 8. Another C-5 Galaxy was rumbling overhead to land at the nearby military airport, part of the vast American logistical machine that was already in gear and pouring its endless materiel into a nervous, uncomprehending, and extremely traditional Moslem kingdom.
Mike Martin looked down and stared at the face of Hassan Rahmani.
It was Steve Laing on the phone again. "I don't want to talk," said Terry Martin. "I think we should, Dr. Martin. Look, you're worried about your brother, are you not?" "Very much."
"There's no need to be, you know. He's a very tough character, well able to look after himself. He wanted to go, no question of it. We gave him absolute right to turn us down."
"I should have kept my mouth shut." "Try and look at it this way, Doctor. If worse comes to worst, we may have to send a lot of other brothers, husbands, sons, uncles, loved ones out to the Gulf. If there's anything any of us can do to limit their casualties, shouldn't we try?" "All right. What do you want?" "Oh, another lunch, I think. Easier to talk man to man. Do you know the Montcalm Hotel? Say, one o'clock?" "Despite the brains, he's quite an emotional little blighter," Laing had remarked to Simon Paxman earlier that morning.
"Good Lord," said Paxman, like an entomologist who has just been told of an amusing new species discovered under a rock.
The spymaster and the academic had a quiet booth to themselves--Mr. Costa had seen to it. When the smoked salmon cornets had been served, Laing broached his subject.
"The fact of the matter is, we may actually be facing a war in the Gulf. Not yet, of course; it will take time to build up the necessary forces. But the Americans have the bit between their teeth. They are absolutely determined, with the complete support of our good lady in Downing Street, to get Saddam Hussein and his thugs out of Kuwait."
"Supposing he gets out of his own accord," suggested Martin.
"Well, fine, no war needed," replied Laing, though privately he thought this option might not be so fine after all. There were rumors in the wind that were deeply disturbing and had in fact given rise to his lunch with the Arabist.
"But if not, we shall just have to go in, under the auspices of the United Nations, and kick him out." " 'We'?" "Well, the Americans mainly. We'll send forces to join them; land, sea, air. We've got ships in the Gulf right now, fighters and fighterbomber squadrons heading south. That sort of thing. Mrs. T is determined we'll not be seen to be slacking. At the moment it's just Desert Shield, stopping the bastard from getting any thoughts of moving south and invading Saudi Arabia. But it may come to more than that. You've heard of WMD, of course?" "Weapons of mass destruction. Of course."
"That's the problem. NBC. Nuclear, bacteriological, and chemical. Privately, our people at Century have been trying to warn the political masters for a couple of years about this sort of thing. Last year the Chief presented a paper, 'Intelligence in the Nineties.' Warned that the great threat now, since the end of the cold war, is and will be proliferation. Jumped-up dictators of highly unstable aspect getting hold of seriously high-tech weaponry and then possibly using it. 'Top marks,' they all said, 'jolly good'--then did bugger-all about it. Now, of course, they're all worried shitless." "He's got a lot of it, you know: Saddam Hussein," remarked Martin. "That's the point, my dear fellow. We estimate Saddam has spent fifty billion dollars over the past decade on weapons procurement. That's why he's bankrupt--owes fifteen billion to the Kuwaitis, another fifteen to the Saudis, and that's just for loans made to him during the Iran-Iraq war. He invaded because they refused to write it all off and bung him another thirty billion to get his economy out of trouble.
"Now, the meat of the problem is that one-third of that fifty billion--an incredible seventeen billion greenbacks--has been spent acquiring WMD or the means to make them." "And the West has woken up at last?"
"With a vengeance. There's a hell of an operation going on. Langley's been told to race around the world to trace every government that's ever sold anything to Iraq and check out the export permits. We're doing the same."
"Shouldn't take that long if they all cooperate, and they probably will," said Martin, as his wing of skate arrived.
"It's not that easy," said Laing. "Although it's early yet, it's already clear Saddam's son-in-law Kamil has set up a damnably clever procurement machine. Hundreds of small dummy companies all over Europe and North, Central, and South America. Buying bits and bobs that didn't seem to mean much. Forging export applications, fudging the details of the product, lying about its end-use, diverting purchases through countries that were on the export certificate as the final destination. But put all the innocent-seeming bits and bobs together, and you can get something really nasty."
"We know he's got gas," said Martin. "He's used it on the Kurds and the Iranians at Fao. Phosgene, mustard gas. But I've heard there are nerve agents as well. No odor, no visible sign. Lethal and very shortlived." "My dear chap, I knew it. You're a mine of information." Laing knew all about the gas, but he knew more about flattery.
"Then there's anthrax," said Martin. "He's been experimenting with that, and maybe pneumonic plague. But you know, you can't just run up these things with a pair of kitchen gloves. You need some very specialized chemical equipment. It should show up on the export licenses."
Laing nodded and sighed with frustration. "Should, yes. But the investigators are already running into two problems. A wall of obfuscation from some companies, mainly in Germany, and the question of dual-use. Someone ships out a cargo of pesticide--what could be more innocent in a country trying to boost its agricultural production, or so it says. Another company in another country ships a different chemical--same apparent reason, pesticide. Then some smart chemist puts them together and bingo--poison gas. Both the suppliers whine, 'We didn't know.' " "The key will lie in the chemical blending equipment," said Martin.
"This is high-tech chemistry. You can't mix these things up in a bathtub. Find the people who supplied the turnkey factories and the men who assembled them. They may huff and puff, but they'll know exactly what they were doing when they did it. And what it was for."
"Turnkey factories?" asked Laing. "Whole plants, built from scratch by foreign contracted companies.
The new owner just turns the key and walks in. But none of this explains our lunch. You must have access to chemists and physicists. I've only heard of these things because of a personal interest. Why me?"
Laing stirred his coffee thoughtfully. He had to play this one carefully. "Yes, we have chemists and physicists. Scientists of all kinds. And no doubt they'll come up with some answers. Then we'll translate the answers into plain English. The Americans will do the same. We're working in total cooperation with Washington on this, and we'll compare our analyses. We'll get some answers, but we won't get them all. We believe you have something different to offer. Hence this lunch. Do you know that most of our top brass still take the view that the Arabs couldn't assemble a kid's bicycle, let alone invent one?"
He had touched on a nerve, and he knew it. The psycho-portrait he had ordered on Dr. Terry Martin was about to prove its worth. Martin flushed deep pink, then controlled himself.
"I really do get pissed off," he said, "when my own fellow countrymen insist the Arab peoples are just a bunch of camel-herders who choose to wear tea towels on their heads. Yes, I have actually heard it expressed that way. The fact is, they were building extremely complex palaces, mosques, ports, highways, and irrigation systems when our ancestors were still running around in bearskins. They had rulers and lawgivers of amazing wisdom when we were in the Dark Ages." Martin leaned forward and jabbed at the man from Century with his coffee spoon.
"I tell you, the Iraqis have among them some brilliant scientists, and as builders they are beyond compare. Their construction engineers are better than anything for a thousand-mile radius around Baghdad, and I include Israel. Many may have been Soviet or Western trained, but they have absorbed our knowledge like sponges and then made an enormous input themselves."
He paused, and Laing pounced. "Dr. Martin, I couldn't agree with you more. I've only been with Century's Mid-East Division for a year, but I've come to the same view as you--that the Iraqis are a very talented people. But they happen to be ruled by a man who has already committed genocide. Is all this money and all this talent really going to be put to the purpose of killing tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people? Is Saddam going to bring glory to the people of Iraq, or is he going to bring them slaughter?"
Martin sighed. "You're right. He's an aberration. He wasn't once, long ago, but he's become one. He's perverted the nationalism of the old Ba'ath Party into National Socialism, drawing his inspiration from Adolf Hitler. What do you want of me?"
Laing thought for a while. He was close, too close to lose his man now.
"George Bush and Mrs. T have agreed that our two countries put together a body to investigate and analyze the whole area of Saddam's WMD. The investigators will bring in the facts as they discover them.
The scientists will tell us what they mean. What has he got? How developed? How much of it? What do we need to protect ourselves against, if it comes to war--gas masks? Space suits? Antidote syringes? We don't know yet just what he's got or just what we'll need--"
"But I know nothing of these things," Martin interrupted him. "No, but you know something we don't. The Arab mind, Saddam's mind. Will he use what he's got? Will he tough it out in Kuwait, or will he quit? What inducements will make him quit? Will he go to the end of the line? Our people just don't understand this Arab concept of martyrdom."
Martin laughed. "President Bush," he said, "and all the people around him will act according to their upbringing. Which is based on the Judeo-Christian moral philosophy supported by the Greco-Roman concept of logic. And Saddam will react on the basis of his own vision of himself."
"As an Arab and a Moslem?" "Uh-unh. Islam has nothing to do with it. Saddam doesn't care a fig for the hadith, the codified teachings of the Prophet. He prays on camera when it suits him. No, you have to go back to Nineveh and Assyria. He doesn't mind how many have to die, so long as he thinks he can win."
"He can't win, not against America. Nobody can."
"Wrong. You use the word win as a Britisher or an American would use it. The way Bush and Scowcroft and the rest are using it even now. He will see it differently. If he quits Kuwait because he is paid to by King Fahd, which might have happened if the Jeddah conference had taken place, he can win with honor. To be paid to quit is acceptable. He wins. But America will not allow that." "No way."
"But if he quits under threat, he loses. All Arabia will see that. He will lose, and probably die. So he will not quit."
"And if the American war machine is launched against him? He'll be smashed to bits," said Laing.
"It doesn't matter. He has his bunker. His people will die. Not important. But if he can hurt America, he will win. If he can hurt America badly, really badly, he will be covered in glory. Dead or alive. He will win."
"Bloody hell, it's complicated," sighed Laing.
"Not really. There's a quantum leap in moral philosophy when you cross the Jordan. Let me ask again: What do you want of me?"
"The committee is forming, to try and advise our masters on the question of these weapons of mass destruction. The guns, tanks, airplanes--the Ministries of Defence will deal with those. They're not the problem. Just ironmongery--we can destroy it from the air.
"Actually, there are two committees, one in Washington and one here in London. British observers on theirs, American observers on ours. There'll be people from the Foreign Office, Aldermaston, Porton Down. Century has two places. I'm sending a colleague, head of the Iraq desk, Simon Paxman. I'd like you to sit with him, see if there's an aspect of interpretation that we might miss because it's a peculiarly Arab aspect. That's your forte--that's what you can contribute." "All right, for what I can contribute, which may be nothing. What's it called, the committee? When does it meet?" "Ah, yes, Simon will call you with the when and where. Actually, it's got an appropriate name. Medusa."
A soft and warm Carolina dusk was moving toward Seymour Johnson Air Force base that late afternoon of August 10, beckoning the sort of evening for a pitcher of rum punch in the ice bucket and a corn-fed steak on the grill.
The men of the 334th Tactical Fighter Squadron who were still not operational on the F-15E, and those of the 335th TFS, the Chiefs, who would fly out to the Gulf in December, stood by and watched.
With the 336th Squadron, they made up the Fourth Tactical Fighter Wing of the Ninth Air Force. It was the 336th who were on the move.
Two days of frenzied activity were at last coming to an end; two days of preparing the airplanes, planning the route, deciding on the gear, and stashing the secret manuals and the squadron computer--with all its battle tactics locked in its data bank--into containers to be brought by the transports. Moving a squadron of warplanes is not like moving a house, which can be bad enough. It is like moving a small city.
Out on the tarmac the twenty-four F-15E Strike Eagles crouched in silence, fearsome beasts waiting for the spidery little creatures of the same species who had designed and built them to climb aboard and unleash with insignificant fingertips their awful power.
They were rigged for the long flight across the world to the Arabian Peninsula in one single journey. The fuel weight alone--thirteen and a half tons--was the payload of five Second World War bombers. And the Eagle is a fighter.
The crews' personal gear was packed in travel pods, former napalm pods now put to more humane use, canisters below the wings containing shirts, socks, shorts, soap, shaving gear, uniforms, mascots, and girlie magazines. For all they knew, it might be a long way to the nearest singles bar.
The great KC-10 tankers that would mother-hen the fighters all the way across the Atlantic, and on to the Saudi peninsula, all four of them feeding six Eagles each, were already aloft, waiting out over the ocean.
Later, an air caravan of Starlifters and Galaxies would bring the rest, the small army of riggers and fitters, electronics men and support staff, the ordnance and the spares, the power jacks and workshops, the machine tools and the benches. They could count on finding nothing at the other end; everything to keep two dozen of the world's most sophisticated fighter-bombers up and combat-ready would have to be transported on that same odyssey halfway around the world.
Each Strike Eagle that evening represented $44 million worth of black boxes, aluminum, carbon-fiber composites, computers, and hydraulics, along with some rather inspired design work. Although that design had originated thirty years earlier, the Eagle was a new fighter plane, so long does research and development take.
Heading up the civic delegation from the town of Goldsboro was the mayor, Hal K. Plonk. This very fine public servant rejoices in the nickname awarded him by his grateful twenty thousand fellow citizens--"Kerplunk," a sobriquet he earned for his ability to amuse sober delegations from politically correct Washington with his southern drawl and fund of jokes.
Some visitors from the capital have been known, after an hour of the mayor's rib-ticklers, to leave for Washington in search of trauma therapy. Naturally, Mayor Plonk is returned to office after each term with an increased majority.
Standing beside the wing commander, Hal Hornburg, the civic delegation gazed with pride as the Eagles, towed by their tractors, emerged from the hangars and the aircrew climbed aboard, the pilot in the forward seat of the dual cockpit and his weapons systems officer, or wizzo, in the rear. Around each airplane a cluster of ground crew worked on the prestartup checks.
"Did I ever tell you," asked the mayor pleasantly to the very senior Air Force officer beside him, "the story of the general and the hooker?"
At this point, Don Walker mercifully started his engines and the howl of two Pratt and Whitney F100-PW-220 turbo-jets drowned out the details of that lady's unfortunate experiences at the hands of the general. The F100 can convert fossil fuel to a lot of noise and heat and 24,000 pounds of thrust and was about to do so.
One by one the twenty-four Eagles of the 336th started up and began to roll the mile to the end of the runway. Small red flags fluttered under the wings, showing where pins secured the underwing Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles to their pylons.
These pins would only come out just before takeoff. Their journey to Arabia might be a peaceful one, but to send an Eagle aloft with no means of self-defense at all would be unthinkable.
Along the taxiway to takeoff point were groups of armed guards and Air Force police. Some waved, some saluted. Just before the runway, the Eagles stopped again and were subjected to the final attention of a swarm of ordnance men and ground crew. They chocked the wheels, then checked over each jet in turn, looking for leaks, loose fittings, or panels--anything that might have gone wrong during the taxiing. Finally, the pins on the missiles were pulled out.
Patiently, the Eagles waited, sixty-three feet long, eighteen high and forty across, weighing 40,000 pounds bone dry and 81,000 at maximum takeoff weight, which they were close to now. It would be a long takeoff run.
Finally, they rolled to the runway, turned into the light breeze, and accelerated down the tarmac. Afterburners kicked in as the pilots rammed the throttles through the "gate," and thirty-foot flames leaped from the tail pipes. Beside the runway the crew chiefs, heads protected by helmets from the fearsome noise, saluted their babies away on foreign assignment. They would not see them again until Saudi Arabia.
A mile down the runway, the wheels left the tarmac and the Eagles were airborne. Wheels up, flaps up, throttles pulled back out of afterburn and into military power setting. The twenty-four Eagles turned their noses to the sky, established a climb rate of five thousand feet per minute, and disappeared into the dusk.
They leveled at 25,000 feet, and an hour later saw the position lights and navigation strobe of the first KC-10 tanker. Time to top up. The two F100 engines have a fearsome thirst. With afterburner running, they each go through 40,000 pounds of fuel per hour, which is why the afterburn or "reheat" is only used for takeoff, combat, or emergency let's-get-out-of-here maneuvers.
Even at normal power settings, the engines need a top up every one and a half hours. To get to Saudi Arabia they would need their KC-10s, their gas stations in the sky, desperately. The squadron was by now in wide formation, each wingman formatting on his element leader in line abreast, about a mile between wingtips. Don Walker, with his wizzo behind him, glanced out to see his wingman holding position where he should be. Flying east, they were now in darkness over the Atlantic, but the radar showed the position of every aircraft, and their navigational lights picked them out.
In the tail of the KC-10 above and ahead of him, the boom operator opened the panel that protected his window on the world and gazed out at the sea of lights behind him. The fuel boom extended, waiting for the first customer.
Each group of six Eagles had already identified its designated tanker, and Walker moved in for his turn. A touch on the throttle, and the Eagle swam up under the tanker, in range of the boom. In the tanker the operator "flew" his boom onto the nozzle protruding from the forward edge of the fighter's left wing. When he had "lock on," the fuel began to flow, two thousand pounds per minute. The Eagle drank and drank.
When it was full, Walker pulled away and his wingman slid up to suckle. Across the sky, three other tankers were doing the same for each of their six charges.
They flew through the night, which was short because they were flying toward the sun at about five hundred miles per hour over the ground. After six hours the sun rose again, and they crossed the coast of Spain, flying north of the African coast to avoid Libya. Approaching Egypt, which was a member of the Coalition forces, the 336th turned southeast, drifted over the Red Sea, and caught its first sight of that huge ochre-brown slab of sand and gravel called the Arabian Desert.
After fifteen hours airborne, tired and stiff, the forty-eight young Americans landed at Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. Within hours they were diverted to their ultimate destination, the air base of Thumrait in the Sultanate of Oman.
For four months, until mid-December, they would live here in conditions on which they would later look back with nostalgia, seven hundred miles from the Iraqi border and the danger zone. They would fly training missions over the Omani interior when their support gear arrived, swim in the blue waters of the Indian Ocean, and wait for whatever the good Lord and Norman Schwarzkopf had in store for them.
In December they would relocate into Saudi Arabia, and one of them, though he would never know it, would alter the course of the war.