would be officially leaving the ship soon. Four agents had worked the bars and nightclubs of Naples under Qazi’s supervision during two port calls by the USS
It had been a good operation, Qazi reflected as he watched the cassette reels turn. The sailor had known the answers and his absence would not be missed for a reasonable time. He would appear to be a deserter and only a cursory investigation would be made, one which, Qazi was reasonably certain, would fail to uncover even a hint of the sailor’s real fate.
A reasonable time and a reasonable certainty were all he could hope for. This business — one had to be so careful and yet there were so many unknowns. Chance or the unforeseen could betray one anywhere. So one moved in a perpetual paranoid fog, weighing the incalculable against the unknowable, forever tensed against contact with an obstacle that might or might not be there. And the nations that bordered the Mediterranean were awash in foreign agents, as thick as fleas on a camel. The Soviets were the most numerous and the Israelis the most energetic and efficient. Qazi was certain the Mossad had a voluminous file on his activities. If El Hakim approved this operation, it would have to be his last, for he was already a marked man.
El Hakim’s fingers twitched and Qazi stopped the tape. The dictator sat silently for several moments before he spoke. “The bombs will alter forever the balance of power in the Mideast.” He rose and strolled around the apartment examining objects with eyes that were opaque.
The Jews would have to come to terms or risk obliteration, El Hakim assured himself. That fact alone would make him the strongest man in the Arab world. Perhaps he should drop a bomb on Tel Aviv before he began to talk. Even Egypt would grudgingly yield to his leadership. He would be a hero to the masses and he would have the bomb: that combination would melt the most reluctant heart.
He had thought deeply on this subject. Nuclear weapons were the power base that would allow him to force the world to its knees. The Americans, the Soviets, the French and the British all have these weapons, many of them, and one walked softly in their presence because the weapons could conceivably be used. Even the Israelis had them, though they refused to admit it.
And every time he had tried to obtain them in the past he had been thwarted! Immense quantities of time, money and prestige had been expended, all to no avail. This time there would be no necessity to obtain some foreign government approval for a reactor sale, no secret deals to siphon processed fuel from an Indian reactor, no negotiations with the Chinese — no necessity to reveal information to foreign officials that they could sell or give to the Americans or the British for their own purposes.
He would use one of the weapons as soon as he got it, so the question would not be, Will he use the bomb? The question would be, Will he use it again?
His influence and prestige in the Arab world would rise astronomically.
None of the superpowers has the courage to use the ultimate weapon, El Hakim assured himself, as he had a hundred times before. The Americans excoriate Truman for using two on the Japanese and luxuriate in their guilt. The Communists are too fearful of losing their privileges to ever let one of their number pull the trigger. The French? That nation of decadent sensualists whom the Algerians defeated with rifles and pistols? Conceivably the British under that maniac Thatcher, they might. But not for the Jews. Not for the Americans. And the Israelis? If they ever used nuclear weapons they would have to live with the holocaust as perpetrators, not victims.
No, none has the courage to oppose the man who possesses the weapon and the will to use it, he told himself, believing it absolutely, believing it with all his heart and soul.
I will bring down the decadent unbelievers and the misguided imams, like Khomeini, who understand so little of the ways of the world. Khomeini, that fool! He thought he could build a pure, holy nation on the insatiable thirst of the infidels for that stinking black liquid. The old imbecile is almost as bad as the Saudi princes, Saddam Hussein, and all those others who lust so for the goods of the West. Their greed is a travesty of the Koran.
Praise Allah, I am not like them. I have the courage and strength to live according to the Word. With the bomb will come all power, so I can purchase only what is really needed.
I will defend the Faith.
I will purify my people.
Mecca will be my capital in a united Arab world.
He started from his thoughts and glanced at Qazi, who was examining the photographs. Yes, he thought, Qazi is ambitious and competent and almost as ruthless as I. Unconsciously El Hakim flicked his hand as if at a fly.
“Ring for coffee.” He composed himself as the servant moved about, the only sound the faint clink of china.
After the servant departed, El Hakim seated himself across from the colonel. “What is your plan?”
4
Captain Jake Grafton held his F-14 Tomcat level at six thousand feet in a steady left turn as his wingman came sliding in on a forty-five-degree line to rendezvous. The other plane crossed behind and under Jake and settled on his right wing. Jake leveled his wings and added power as he tweaked the nose up.
He keyed his radio mike and waited for the scrambler to synchronize. “Strike, Red Aces are joined and proceeding on course.”
“Roger, Red Ace Two Oh Five. Report entering patrol area Bravo.”
“Wilco.”
It was a cloudless night with a half moon, now just above the eastern horizon. To the west a layer of low haze over the sea limited visibility, but Jake knew that there was nothing to see in that direction anyway. The Lebanese coast was a mere thirty miles to the east, and as the two fighters climbed on a northerly heading toward their assigned altitude of 30,000 feet, Jake searched the blackness in that direction. Nothing. No lights. Jake scanned the night sky slowly in all quadrants for the lights of other aircraft. They seemed to be alone.
“Keep your eye peeled for other planes, Toad,” he told the RIO in the rear cockpit.
“Uh, yessir,” came the answer, sounding slightly puzzled. Normally the pilot performed routine lookout duties while the RIO worked the radar and computer. Well, thought Jake Grafton, let him wonder.
“What’s on the scope, anyway?”
“Not a daggone thing, CAG. Looks like one big empty sky to me.”
“When’s that El Al flight from Athens to Haifa scheduled to be along?”
In the back seat of the Tomcat, Lieutenant Tarkington consulted the notes on his kneeboard. “Not till twenty-five after the hour.” He slid back the sleeve of his flight suit and glanced at his luminous watch. He matched it with the clock on the panel in front of him. “About fifteen minutes from now.”
“When will we reach area Bravo?”
Tarkington checked the TACAN against the chart on his kneeboard. “About two minutes.”
“We’ll make a turn west then, and you see if you can pick up that airliner. Let me know when you see him.”
“Yessir.”
“In the meantime, let’s get some data link from the Hummer.” The Hummer was the slang nickname for the E-2 Hawk-eye radar reconnaissance plane that Jake knew was somewhere about.
Toad made the call as Jake checked the Tomcat on his right wing and noticed with satisfaction that Jelly Dolan was right where he should be, about a hundred feet away from Jake. Jelly was a lieutenant (junior grade) on his first cruise and flew with Lieutenant Commander Boomer Bronsky, the maintenance officer for the fighter squadron that owned these airplanes. Jake knew that Boomer liked to complain about the youth of the pilots he flew with—“Goddamn wet-nosed kids”—but that he had a very high opinion of their skills. He bragged on Jelly Dolan at every opportunity.
“Battlestar Strike,” Toad said over the radio, “Red Ace flight entering Bravo at assigned altitude.”
