‘We need a name.’ The vessel looked the opposite of a warship, and giving it a warlike name would be an affront, he thought. It needed something nobler. ‘Sharia.’
The word meant ‘Islamic law’ in Arabic. It was the only true law, the law that would be restored when the jihad was won.
‘It is a good name. Fitting.’
‘Make sure your crew does not embarrass it,’ said Ali, turning to go back to the dock.
Approaching Khamis Mushait Air Base, southwestern Saudi Arabia 6 November 1997 1331
Breanna put the aircraft into a wide turn over the desert to the east of Khamis Mushait, waiting for the ground controllers to decide that she was cleared to land. The other Megafortress, Wisconsin, had landed ten minutes ago. It wasn’t clear what the hang-up was, since there were no other aircraft visible on the ramps or anywhere near the runway.
The city looked like a clump of dirty sugar cubes and miniature plastic trees stuck in a child’s sandbox. Yellowish brown sand stretched toward the horizon, as if the desert were marching toward the city and not the other way around. This was actually a relatively populous area of the country, with highways that had existed for centuries as trade routes and cities that had been shady oases before the Pharaohs built the pyramids. But from the air the land looked sparse and even imaginary.
‘What do we do if we don’t get cleared in?’ asked Lieutenant Mark ‘Spiderman’ Hennemann, her copilot.
‘Then we launch our Flighthawk, have Zen take out the tower, and settle down right behind him,’ she said.
The copilot didn’t laugh. ‘Bree?’
‘I’m kidding,’ she told him. ‘If you’re going to fly with me, Spiderman, you better get a sense of humor.’
‘I’m working on it,’ he said, as serious as if she had told him to review a flight plan or procedure.
Breanna began to laugh.
‘Did I miss another joke?’ asked Spiderman.
‘Never mind. See if you can get a hold of Colonel Bastian on the ground and find out what i hasn’t been dotted.’
‘Will do.’ Spiderman punched the flat-panel touch-screen at the right side of his dashboard. ‘We have about fifteen minutes of fuel left.’
‘Looks like that’s how long they have to decide whether we’re allowed to land or not.’
The Saudis took nearly all of them before not one but two officers came on offering their ‘most sincere and humble apologies’ and directing the Megafortress to land. Breanna brought the plane in quickly, setting the big jet down on the ample runway. She found a powder-blue Saudi Royal Air Force car waiting as she approached the far end of the runway; the car led them past a group of Saudi F-15s to the far end of the base. Well-armed Saudi soldiers were clustered around a pair of trucks parked at the side of the ramp. An Air Force advance security team had been sent down from Europe and was waiting near the revetment where they were led.
‘Ah, home sweet home,’ said Breanna as she and her copilot began shutting down the aircraft after parking.
Dog took another slug from the bottle of mineral water. He felt as dry as the desert outside, even though he’d already finished two liter bottles since landing. Commander Delaford, meanwhile, poked at the large map they had mounted on the wall of the command center the Saudis had loaned them. The facilities – built less than a year before and never used – combined living and work quarters and could have fit at least two squadrons if not more. And they weren’t little rooms either – this one was about three times the size of Dog’s entire office suite. His small team was clustered around a table that could have accommodated the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff and their assistants.
‘The problem is,’ continued Delaford, ‘the best place to launch the Piranha probe to guarantee that it won’t be spotted going in is in this area here, well off the Somalian coast and a good distance from the shipping lanes. But that puts it six hundred miles from the most likely places for the submarine to be. At forty knots, that’s fifteen hours of swim time before the probe starts doing anything worthwhile.’
‘Let’s just deploy the probe at the same place where we put the sentinel buoy,’ suggested Zen. ‘If we have to be close to land and the water anyway, let’s take the risk at one place and at one time.’
‘You’d have to go a little farther south, but not that much,’ said Delaford.
‘If Baker-Baker takes both drops, it can’t carry a Flighthawk,’ said Breanna. ‘But I think limiting ourselves to one aircraft in the target area makes it less risky that we’ll be seen visually. The moon will be nearly full.’
They discussed the trade-offs. The Somalian, Sudanese, and Ethiopian air forces were all equipped with modernized versions of the MiG-21, relatively short-ranged but potent fighters. The radar in the Megafortress would make the large plane ‘visible’ to them from no less than one hundred miles, possibly as many as 150 or 200, depending on the equipment they carried and the training the pilots received. On the other hand, the ground intercept radars that were used in the countries were limited, and it would be difficult for them to vector the airplanes close enough to the area.
‘Don’t kid yourself,’ said Dog. ‘This is probably like Bosnia – there’ll be spies all over the place. They’ll know when we take off.’
‘It’ll still be hard to track us,’ said Breanna.
‘Why don’t we fly Wisconsin with a Flighthawk over the area first, doing reconnaissance,’ said Zen. ‘Then head south over the general area where Piranha will head. We come back and hand off the Flighthawk to Baker-Baker, land, replenish, and take off for another mission in the morning.’
‘Stretching the crew,’ said Dog.
‘Just me. Ensign English can drive the Piranha on the second shift, and you can have the backup flight crew take the aircraft. ‘We can get back to twelve hours on, twelve hours off. One Flighthawk per mission.’
‘I think it’ll work,’ said Breanna.
‘Still, the turnaround on the mission times will be ridiculously tight,’ said Spiderman, who was acting as maintenance officer as well as copilot of Baker-Baker Two. ‘We’re really stretched out here. We have the backup crews, but we’re pushing the aircraft and systems. We need more maintainers and technical people, Colonel.’
‘Our MC-17 should be here with the full load in two hours,’ said Dog. ‘We’ll bring more people and equipment in as needed.’
As usual, the most difficult part of the mission wasn’t actually the objective itself, but getting the people and material into position to do the job in the first place. The so-called ‘little people’ – the guys and gals who fueled the aircraft, humped the supplies, tightened the screws – were in many ways the ones the mission actually hinged on. And Dog knew that the hardest part of his job wasn’t dodging bullets or Pentagon bullshit – it was finding a way to get his support people to the places they were needed the most.
‘All right, let’s all take a
