'Scorpions are ready,' Lindsey reported weakly.
'How about you, kiddo?'
'I'm hungry,' she said. 'Let's do our thing so we can go home and get a couple burgers.'
'Warning, airborne search radar tracking, three o'clock, thirty miles, MiG-25,' the computer reported.
'The weapons pylons are making our radar crosssection as big as a friggin' barn,' Franken said. 'Looks like we're going to pop some Scorpions after all.' The AIM-12 °C Scorpion air-to-air missile was the Megafortress's main defensive weapon-a radar-guided supersonic missile capable of hitting enemy fighters as far as thirty miles away. The EB-52 carried four on each wing, mounted on launch rails attached to the sides of the weapon pylons.
'Let's step it down to COLA,' Lindsey suggested. 'Maybe he won't want to come down that low.'
'Roger. He we go. Hold on to your lunch.'
'My lunch is long gone,' Lindsey shot back. Franken shoved the throttles to full military power and ordered the computer to COLA mode. COLA, or computer-generated lowest altitude, used both the terrain and cultural data in the terrain-following computer and combined it with occasional bursts from the laser radar and air data information to compute the absolute lowest altitude the EB-52 bomber could fly, depending on airspeed, terrain, obstructions, and flight performance. The faster the bomber flew, the more aggressively the autopilot would hug the ground- literally flying at treetop level if it could. Over water, the computer could take the bomber right down to fifty feet above the surface of the water-only a very tall sailboat mast could stop them.
'Threat report,' Lindsey asked.
'MiG-25 tracking four o'clock, twenty miles, altitude ten thousand feet,' the computer reported.
'They're trying to get on our tail,' Franken said. 'Let's do it, Linds. Ready?'
Reeves froze for a few long moments, then looked over at Franken. 'Let's do it,' she repeated. She pressed the voice command button. 'Attack MiG-25,' she spoke.
'Attack MiG-25, stop attack,' the computer responded, offering her the command that would stop the attack. When she did not respond within three seconds, the computer said, 'Launch commit Scorpion right pylon.' There was a slight rumble from the right wing and then a streak of light from Lindsey's windscreen. The ATM-120 Scorpion missile flew an 'over-the-shoulder' launch profile, arcing over the EB-52, then back toward the Libyan MiGs. The laser radar array automatically activated for two seconds, updating the Scorpion's autopilot with the fighters' flight path. The missile climbed above the MiGs, then descended rapidly toward the spot where the missile predicted the MiGs would be at impact. Ten seconds before impact, the LADAR flashed on again, updating the missile's autopilot for the last time. Five seconds before impact, the Scorpion's own radar activated and locked onto the lead MiG-25 fighter.
That was the first indication-an immediate 'MISSILE LOCK' warning-the Libyan pilots got that they were under attack.
The wingmen did exactly what they were supposed to do, executing a textbook formation breakaway, climbing and turning away from each other and giving their leader room to maneuver. But the lead pilot- concentrating on the attack, just moments away from firing his first radarguided missiles-didn't react fast enough, or didn't believe the indication, or chose to ignore it, hoping for a lucky break, the two-in-three chance that the attack was against one of his wingmen.
The thirty-seven-pound shaped warhead detonated like a shotgun blast a fraction of a second before the missile hit the MiG right above and to the left of the starboard engine nacelle. The MiG-25's heavy steel hull, reinforced with titanium-the MiG-25 was designed to fly at nearly three times the speed of sound-deflected most of the energy of the blast. But the missile still had enough punch to crack the fuselage, rip open the fuselage fuel tank, and smack the starboard engine. Running at one hundred percent power, the engines didn't need much of a hit. The engine's turbine blades, knocked out of their precisely engineered highspeed orbits, shot through the engine case like atomic particles flying into space after a nuclear explosion; the extreme heat from the engines ignited the fuel from the ruptured fuel tank, causing a fire. The MiG-25 pilot had only seconds to react-but again, he was concentrating too hard on his quarry to pay attention to the warning lights, telling him he had only a few heartbeats to punch out-before the MiG blew itself into a ball of fire and spun into the Mediterranean Sea.
'Good going, kiddo,' Franken said flatly-killing someone was never cause for celebration, even if it meant saving your own skin. 'You got him.'
'Thanks,' Lindsey said-then promptly whipped off her oxygen mask, lowered her head between her knees, and vomited on the deck.
The two remaining MiGs spent several minutes rejoining-they were obviously spooked by the unexpected threat warning and having to do an evasive maneuver so low to the ground at night-and then several more minutes trying to locate their leader. By the time they resumed the search for the EB-52, it had changed headings and proceeded on course to its target area.
Within a few minutes, the picture had changed considerably. Where before it was relatively quiet, now it seemed every air defense radar in both Libya and Egypt was up and operating. Lindsey kept busy steering the Megafortress around a variety of antiaircraft weapon systems, and every few minutes a fighter radar would sweep past them. They were forced to stay at low altitude to avoid all the threats.
'Headbanger, this is Stalker One, say status,' Patrick McLanahan radioed.
'We're sixty seconds to initial point, Stalker,' Franken responded on the secure satellite command channel. Thankfully Lindsey was feeling all right now, because Franken had now run out of flying gloves-he hoped he wouldn't have to eject now. 'We were chased by Libyan MiGs a while ago, but we're clear. Unfortunately every air defense site in eastern Libya and western Egypt is looking for us, and both sides are on full alert. We had to go low and stay low, so our time in the box will be much less. I estimate only twelve minutes until we bingo. Sorry, Stalker.'
'No sweat, Headbanger,' Patrick replied. 'I don't plan on staying very long anyway. We're in position and ready for some fireworks. We're glad you're here.'
'Glad to help, Stalkers. Watch the skies. Headbanger clear.'
The Libyan town of Jaghbub was located one hundred and twenty miles south of Tobruk. Jaghbub was an oasis fed by an occasionally dry river, which for most of its two thousand years of history never had more than a few hundred persons living there. But the area was one of the best farming regions in the northern Sahara, with many different types of fruits, vegetables, and nut trees in abundance, and travelers and nomads going across northern Africa found Jaghbub to be a rich and inviting place to stop and rest before continuing their trek across the wastelands. It had therefore developed over the centuries as a crossroads of many different nationalities, religious sects, political identities, and schools of thought from all over the known world.
So when an obscure descendant of the Prophet Muhammad was forced to flee his home in Fez, Morocco, by French colonists in the early nineteenth century, he escaped across the burning sands of the northern Sahara desert, following the ancient nomadic routes over fifteen hundred miles back toward the holy land, and came upon this little oasis. There he found a home for his own particular style of Islam. Instead of the wild, untamed 'whirling dervish' being practiced in many Islamic sects, this holy man, who called himself Sayyid Muhammad ibn 'Ali asSanusi, preached a return to strict Muslim practices-abstinence, prayer, and strict adherence to the words of the prophet in the Quran. He built a mosque, then a university, and finally a fortress on the banks of the little river, and the holy city of Jaghbub was born.
For the next one hundred and forty years, Jaghbub was the birthplace of some of the most powerful and revered kings of Africa. The Sanusi dynasty became the lords of northern Africa and the ghosts of vengeance of the Sahara. They ruled the oases with an iron fist, tempered with justice through the laws of Islam. Travelers and pilgrims from any nation were welcome and treated with extraordinary kindness and generosity; anyone who preyed on a traveler or pilgrim was dealt with equally extraordinary swiftness and cruelty, usually by being buried up to the chin in the sand outside an oasis where insects and vultures could pick at the robber's head for a day or two.
They were never conquered. Despite invasions from the French, British, Turks, Italians, Germans, and Americans, the Sanusi dynasty survived and prospered. On December 24, 1951, Sayyid al-Hasan ibn 'Abdullah as- Sanusi, the fourth Grand Sanusi and the first to be chosen amir of each of the three kingdoms of Libya, proclaimed the independence of Libya from post-World War II British rule and himself ruler of the United Kingdom of Libya. The Sanusi family moved the capital of then- new kingdom to Tripoli, keeping the family stronghold at Jaghbub as a retreat and family mosque; soon, Jaghbub became a destination for Muslim pilgrims from all over the world who vfiited and prayed at the tombs of the great nomadic kings of early Libya.
The newly independent kingdom survived mostly by borrowing money from its Arab neighbors and the United Nations, until British geologists discovered oil in the desert southeast of Tripoli in 1958. Virtually overnight, Libya
