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
“He can’t win, not against America. Nobody can.”
“Wrong. You use the word
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
