word.
Patrick put on his flight suit and flying boots and went into the command center, where he met up with Hal Briggs. 'Glad you got some shut-eye, Muck,' he said. He motioned to a stack of CD-ROM disks inside an open metal briefcase. 'Mrs. Salaam brought over tons of intel for us-some of it's only a few hours old. I doubt if even the U.S. government has this data.' He looked at Patrick closely. His longtime friend was staring at the doorway where Susan Salaam had just exited. 'What'd she have to say, Patrick?'
'Same as you-don't try going into Libya.'
'Well, then I'll give her credit for more than being a drop-dead stone fox,' Briggs quipped. 'What are you going to do?'
Patrick picked up a few of the CD-ROMs and looked at their index labels. He chose a couple of them and headed for the portable computer terminals. 'I'm going to do a little target study,' he said.
'What does she want with us, Muck?' Hal asked.
'Same thing that the Central African Petroleum Partners want-to fight and die for them,' Patrick replied. 'I don't know if she wants revenge for her husband's assassination, or something else-but I've got my own agenda first.'
It appears that Zuwayy has ignored our warning,' Patrick McLanahan said grimly as he began the briefing a few hours later, 'so we're going to put the strike plans in motion in about two hours.'
His entire group of Night Stalkers were inside the semiunderground bunker reserved for them by Susan Bailey Salaam and General Baris, south of the airfield in an isolated part of the sprawling Egyptian joint forces base. Patrick was wearing his battle armor with the helmet on the table nearby, the power pack and electromagnetic rail gun plugged in and ready to go in just a few moments. He was definitely ready for battle.
'The primary target area will be the command-andcontrol center at Benina, ten miles east of Benghazi,' Patrick went on. 'It is located at a Libyan air force base, with a large mix of Russian and French fighters and transports based there, plus antiaircraft systems of all sizes. Our target is the air operations center.' He displayed a highresolution image of the air base, with one building outlined with a red triangle. 'This building is the headquarters of Libyan air combat operations in the eastern half of the country, and it is also an alternate national military command center. It forms the junction of all communications from the eastern half of the country to Tripoli.
'The attack will commence with a flight of three Wolverine cruise missiles, launched from over the Med,' Patrick continued. 'They will spread out and perform a coordinated multiaxis attack on the air defenses north of the city of Benina. Each Wolverine will attack three air defense sites with cluster munitions, followed by 'suicide' attacks on the air traffic control radar site, the northern security headquarters here, and the southern security headquarters, here. -
'The main attack will follow thirty seconds later-a flight of three more Wolverine cruise missiles. They will use a flight path cleared for them by the preceding Wolverine suppression attacks, but they will be programmed to divert if necessary to avoid any air defense sites missed or pop-up threats not targeted by the first flight.' He switched slides to a close-up of a small cluster of buildings on the northeast side of the large two-runway airfield. 'This is the Benina Command Center, headquarters of Libya's Eastern Joint Operations Center and Eastern Air Defense Sector. The heart of the facility is two stories underground, protected by twelve-inch reinforced concrete on each floor.
'Each Wolverine will carry two different warheads: a deep-target penetrating warhead using a rocket- propelled one-thousand-pound warhead, followed by a onethousand-pound thermium nitrate high-explosive warhead. Each Wolverine will travel a different flight path but will be programmed to hit the same spot; each missile will perform a pop-up push-over maneuver to drive the first warhead down through the roof to the subfloors, followed by the thermium detonation. The weapons should have no problems going through each level to the command center level, even if they put armor in we don't know about.
'As you know, the thermium warhead has the explosive power of five tons of TNT,' Patrick went on, 'so if the FlightHawk can determine if the target has been destroyed, we may divert the other Wolverines, probably the third one, to a secondary target, which is the military communications facility at Benina. If we need a tertiary target, we'll switch to the combination petroleum-fired power plant and desalination plant just east of Benghazi-that should turn out the lights and shut off the taps in Benghazi for quite some time.'
Patrick displayed another map, this one of northwestern Egypt. Hal Briggs noted that Patrick's briefing was cool, calm, professional, and well under control. He had seen Patrick give countless reports and briefings over the fourteen years he had known him, and despite everything that had happened to him and everything they were, facing now, he seemed like the same emotionless all-business guy he'd always known. Yet in a way, this mission was much different: Although Patrick planned this mission as a strike against a very-high-value military target, Hal reminded himself, it was still a punitive strike-Patrick was simply lashing out at the Libyans. That was not like him at all.
'We'll position ourselves at three principal border crossings in western Egypt-Salum, Arasiyah, and Shiyah,' Patrick went on. 'We'll have Egyptian Mi-8 and Chinook CH-47 helicopters with us, enough to take at least fifty survivors with us, along with Egyptian security forces and some of our own commandos. In case the prisoners are turned over after the attacks commence, we'll be ready to take them or go in and rescue them if the Libyans have a change of heart. If the prisoners show up anywhere along the border, the other helicopters can respond to help. Questions?'
The telephone in the briefing room rang; all heads turned, because they knew that the Charge of Quarters would not allow any calls through during a briefing unless it was absolutely urgent. David Luger picked it up immediately; he listened, then snapped his fingers at the television set bolted in one corner of the room. 'CQ says turn on the TV right now,' Luger said.
Patrick couldn't believe his eyes. There, on Egyptian national TV, was Ulama Khalid al-Khan, giving a press conference. The caption at the bottom of the screen, written in both Arabic and English, read 'LIBYAN PRISONERS RELEASED TO EGYPT.'
'The men were rescued from the Mediterranean Sea by the Libyan Navy,' Khan was saying, replying to a reporter's question. 'I have no details as to why or how their ships were sunk. The Libyan government detained the survivors until their identities could be verified-apparently there were some survivors whose identities or even their nationalities could not be verified, so it took longer than usual. But once all of the survivors were identified and questioned on the incident, King Idris of the United Kingdom of Libya ordered their release. He requested that I assist-in providing transportation and medical care for the survivors, and I immediately agreed. He asked me to assist in processing the survivors and seeing to their care and repatriation.
'Yes, there are casualties,' Khan said, replying to another question. 'Several dozen men were fatally injured in the incident. In addition, several men were injured while being detained by the kingdom of Libya, apparently because they refused both to reveal their identities and also to cooperate with Libyan authorities. They were suspected of engineering the attacks on friendly, neutral shipping in the Mediterranean. When they resisted while in detention, they were dealt with harshly, as any detainee who lashes out at his rescuers deserves.'
'Yeah? Let's have a look at some of those 'resisters,' ' Hal Briggs scoffed. 'I'll bet the Libyans tortured the hell out of them.' He saw Chris Wohl glaring at him disapprovingly-it wasn't until then that he realized with horrified embarrassment that Wendy and some of the Night Stalkers might be some of the ones killed while in captivity. He looked at Patrick with a silent apology, but Patrick's attention was riveted on the television.
'Despite the unfortunate loss of life, the incident is now at an end, thanks to the king of United Libya,' Khan went on. 'The prisoners will be taken to a location where they will receive medical care and then released. This spirit of cooperation between Libya and Egypt also paves the way for further talks between our two countries in other matters, such as the cessation of attacks against suspected terrorist training centers in southern Egypt and Chad, and the resumption of talks aimed at bringing more cooperation in planning mutual petroleum production contracts.'
The interoffice phone rang again, and Luger answered it right away again. This time, he looked panicked as he slammed the phone down. 'The Egyptian base commander, Vice Marshal Ouda, is outside the compound with a force about the size of an armored company. He wants to talk with you upstairs, on the liaison freq.'
Patrick donned his helmet, unplugged his fully charged battle armor, and went upstairs to the front of their halfunderground concrete facility. From the topmost security room, Patrick could look outside without being seen. There was a twelve-foot-high fence surrounding their building, topped with razor wire, about fifty feet away. The
