auto from less than five meters away. The figure flinched and made a half-step backward but did not go down. Another bolt of electricity made Zuwayy cry out in pain. The Z84 felt as if it was a live two-hundred-volt wire, and he dropped it with a scream. 'Who the hell are you?' Zuwayy shouted, half in pain, half in sheer terror.
The strange figure said nothing. Zuwayy was about to repeat his demand when the figure responded in an electronically synthesized voice, 'I am called Castor, Zuwayy. I am the instrument of your death.' Zuwayy was surprised to hear the electronic voice speaking Arabic.
'You can't kill me. I am the king of united Libya. This is my country, and we are standing on holy ground.'
A bolt of electricity made Zuwayy stagger to his knees. The figure stepped forward. 'You are no king, and this is not your country. You are an impostor and a murderer. Judgment has been passed. You are found guilty of murder. Your sentence is death. It shall be carried out immediately.'
Mekkawi trotted through the escape tunnel, through the storage room, and into his security office. One of his officers, alerted earlier, already had the joint operations command center in Tripoli on the line. While Mekkawi was talking to the senior controller, receiving a force status report and issuing Zuwayy's orders, the duty officer received a radio message: 'Sir, the king's helicopters have been shot down!'
'My God…' He gasped. He thought quickly. Zuwayy was in grave danger-it could be a matter of minutes before the area was invaded-or destroyed. 'I want the best helicopter available, any kind, fueled and ready to fly as soon as we arrive on the flight line!' Mekkawi shouted. 'And I want an armored personnel carrier brought around to take the king to the base. Hurry!' He turned back to the secure telephone: 'You heard me, Major. The king has ordered that all Area A targets be attacked immediately if there is any indication that a general attack is under way… Yes, with all available rocket and air forces designated to strike Area A targets, including special-weapons forces. He has also ordered that sorties be generated immediately for follow-on attacks on Area B targets on his command… yes, stand by for authentication.' Mekkawi pulled out a decoding document from a chain around his neck, quickly computed the code using the formula plus the current date and time, then read it to the senior controller. 'I also want…'
'Sir!'
'What the hell is it? I'm on the line to headquarters.'
'Look!'
Mekkawi turned to a bank of security monitors.
'The security camera to the rectory in the mosque-it is off!'
'What?' Mekkawi grabbed the phone, but it was dead.
He dropped the phone and drew his side arm. 'Have all available palace security forces converge on the mosque and cover all exits, and I mean now!'
Muck, it's me,' Hal Briggs radioed via their secure command channel. 'We're waiting for you at the exfil point. Check your datalink, brother. We're showing lots of troops on the move, heading your way. Bug out immediately!'
'Roger,' Patrick replied. It was too late, Patrick realized. The plan was to kidnap Zuwayy and hold him until all the prisoners were set free-unfortunately, it didn't look as if he'd be able to get him out of Jaghbub. 'I want Plan B set in motion, Hal. T minus two minutes.'
'You haven't got two minutes, Muck.'
'Two minutes,' Patrick said, and he terminated the connection.
'You can't kill me!' Zuwayy screamed, half out of terror but hoping someone outside would hear him. 'What have I done to you?'
In response, Patrick picked Zuwayy up, carried him outside, then jet-jumped up to the roof of the rectory, beside the green dome of the Great Mosque. Patrick held Zuwayy up by his bedclothes in one hand, turning him so he faced west, toward the military base.
It was a spectacular sight. Over and over again, strings of explosions rippled across the ground as the Wolverine cluster bomb attacks continued. Antiaircraft artillery fire continued, with tracers streaking across the sky like incandescent snakes. Occasionally there was a large secondary explosion as the last of the Wolverine missiles suicidedived into their last targets. Burning tanks, trucks, and buildings lit the night sky everywhere, like dozens of camp fires. Men were shouting, calling out, screaming and firing in confusion.
'Sixty seconds, Muck,' Briggs radioed.
Patrick glanced to the northwest, following the datalinkgenerated cues displayed in his electronic visor. The Sky
Masters EB-52 was right on time, coming in at medium altitude-now that the Wolverines had destroyed all of the area defenses, it could climb higher to stay away from the surviving optically guided antiaircraft artillery units still operating.
'I am going to destroy your military base, Zuwayy,' Patrick said in his computer-synthesized voice. A microphone was picking up Zuwayy's voice, broadcasting it via satellite back to Mersa Matruh, where it was instantly translated by computer; Patrick's voice was similarly translated from English to Arabic the same way. 'You will watch it all burn. And then I am going to destroy you.'
'Whoever you are, I have powerful friends, and I have money,' Zuwayy said. 'Spare my life, and I'll pay you. Ten million dollars. A hundred million dollars. You don't have to kill me. We can make a deal.'
This last statement intrigued Patrick. 'Who are your friends?'
'Powerful international arms merchant and black marketers,' Zuwayy said. 'Let me go and I'll tell you everything.'
'Talk or you die.'
'Thirty seconds, Patrick. You've got heavy armored vehicles on their way to you. Best way out is to the east. Move it.'
'Talk!' Patrick shouted. 'This is your last chance.'
'He is a Russian,' Zuwayy shouted. 'He has access to nuclear weapons, missiles, aircraft, oil, anything you want. Just let me live and it's all yours.'
It couldn't be, Patrick thought. It was impossible. The Turks convicted him of murder and crimes against the state. He got the death penalty-and in Turkey, there was no appeal process. He was supposed to have been executed months ago….
'Ten TG, Muck,' Briggs warned him. 'Find a place in the shade and hold on.'
Eight miles to the north, the EB-52 Megafortress opened the aft portion of its bomb bay doors, and one by one four bombs dropped from a rotary launcher exactly twelve seconds apart. These were GBU-28F JDAMs, or joint direct attack munitions-two-thousand-pound gravity bombs guided by satellite navigation signals that could glide as far as ten miles and still hit their targets with great accuracy. But instead of simple high-explosive warheads, these bombs were fuel-air explosives-the most devastating non-nuclear weapon devised. At a precise altitude above the ground, the bombs split open, releasing a large cloud of vapor. The vapor mixed with oxygen in the air to form a highly explosive gas. At the right moment, three small incendiary bomblets ejected into the gas cloud were ignited.
The resulting explosion of each JDAM was equivalent to a hundred tons of TNT, creating a fireball a half-mile in diameter and a shock wave that crushed everything aboveground for a mile in every direction. Spaced exactly two miles apart, the four fuel-air explosive bombs created a blinding wall of fire over the Jaghbub airfield. Detonated on the mostly uninhabited west side of the airfield, the fireballs themselves did relatively little damage-but the tremendous overpressure caused by the explosion overturned vehicles, blew out windows, burned wooden buildings, and scorched the sand black all across the reservation, right to the walls of the Green Palace and the Great Mosque where Patrick stood with his captive.
Zuwayy screamed as the huge wall of fire blossomed out toward him, but his screams were drowned out by the roar of rushing fire and burning air. The overpressure that roiled over them was like a one-second superhurricane, tossing Zuwayy around like a puppet. Patrick kept him facing into the rushing wall of sand and red- hot wind until the air, now needing to fill in the vacuum created by the burnt air near the fireballs, reversed direction and rushed back outward.
Patrick jumped down off the roof of the rectory, went back inside, and tossed Zuwayy on the floor. All of Zuwayy's hair on his face, head, and the back of his hands had burnt off, replaced by a beard and hair made of gray ash. He found a pitcher of water on the desk and dumped it on Zuwayy's face to keep him from passing out. 'Can
