The Fist of God Read online

  “The key will lie in the chemical blending equipment,” said Martin. “This is high-tech chemistry. You can’t mix these things up in a bathtub. Find the people who supplied the turnkey factories and the men who assembled them. They may huff and puff, but they’ll know exactly what they were doing when they did it. And what it was for.”

  “Turnkey factories?” asked Laing.

  “Whole plants, built from scratch by foreign contracted companies. The new owner just turns the key and walks in. But none of this explains our lunch. You must have access to chemists and physicists. I’ve only heard of these things because of a personal interest. Why me?”

  Laing stirred his coffee thoughtfully. He had to play this one carefully.

  “Yes, we have chemists and physicists. Scientists of all kinds. And no doubt they’ll come up with some answers. Then we’ll translate the answers into plain English. The Americans will do the same. We’re working in total cooperation with Washington on this, and we’ll compare our analyses. We’ll get some answers, but we won’t get them all. We believe you have something different to offer. Hence this lunch.

  Do you know that most of our top brass still take the view that the Arabs couldn’t assemble a kid’s bicycle, let alone invent one?”

  He had touched on a nerve, and he knew it. The psycho-portrait he had ordered on Dr. Terry Martin was about to prove its worth. Martin flushed deep pink, then controlled himself.

  “I really do get pissed off,” he said, “when my own fellow countrymen insist the Arab peoples are just a bunch of camel-herders who choose to wear tea towels on their heads. Yes, I have actually heard it expressed that way. The fact is, they were building extremely complex palaces, mosques, ports, highways, and irrigation systems when our ancestors were still running around in bearskins. They had rulers and lawgivers of amazing wisdom when we were in the Dark Ages.”

  Martin leaned forward and jabbed at the man from Century with his coffee spoon.

  “I tell you, the Iraqis have among them some brilliant scientists, and as builders they are beyond compare. Their construction engineers are better than anything for a thousand-mile radius around Baghdad, and I include Israel. Many may have been Soviet or Western trained, but they have absorbed our knowledge like sponges and then made an enormous input themselves.”

  He paused, and Laing pounced.

  “Dr. Martin, I couldn’t agree with you more. I’ve only been with Century’s Mid-East Division for a year, but I’ve come to the same view as you—that the Iraqis are a very talented people. But they happen to be ruled by a man who has already committed genocide. Is all this money and all this talent really going to be put to the purpose of killing tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people? Is Saddam going to bring glory to the people of Iraq, or is he going to bring them slaughter?”

  Martin sighed.

  “You’re right. He’s an aberration. He wasn’t once, long ago, but he’s become one. He’s perverted the nationalism of the old Ba’ath Party into National Socialism, drawing his inspiration from Adolf Hitler.

  What do you want of me?”

  Laing thought for a while. He was close, too close to lose his man now.

  “George Bush and Mrs. T have agreed that our two countries put together a body to investigate and analyze the whole area of Saddam’s WMD. The investigators will bring in the facts as they discover them. The scientists will tell us what they mean. What has he got? How developed? How much of it?

  What do we need to protect ourselves against, if it comes to war—gas masks? Space suits? Antidote syringes? We don’t know yet just what he’s got or just what we’ll need—”

  “But I know nothing of these things,” Martin interrupted him.

  “No, but you know something we don’t. The Arab mind, Saddam’s mind. Will he use what he’s got?

  Will he tough it out in Kuwait, or will he quit? What inducements will make him quit? Will he go to the end of the line? Our people just don’t understand this Arab concept of martyrdom.”

  Martin laughed. “President Bush,” he said, “and all the people around him will act according to their upbringing. Which is based on the Judeo-Christian moral philosophy supported by the Greco-Roman concept of logic. And Saddam will react on the basis of his own vision of himself.”

  “As an Arab and a Moslem?”

  “Uh-unh. Islam has nothing to do with it. Saddam doesn’t care a fig for the hadith , the codified teachings of the Prophet. He prays on camera when it suits him. No, you have to go back to Nineveh and Assyria. He doesn’t mind how many have to die, so long as he thinks he can win.”

  “He can’t win, not against America. Nobody can.”

  “Wrong. You use the word win as a Britisher or an American would use it. The way Bush and Scowcroft and the rest are using it even now. He will see it differently. If he quits Kuwait because he is paid to by King Fahd, which might have happened if the Jeddah conference had taken place, he can win with honor. To be paid to quit is acceptable. He wins. But America will not allow that.”

  “No way.”

  “But if he quits under threat, he loses. All Arabia will see that. He will lose, and probably die. So he will not quit.”

  “And if the American war machine is launched against him? He’ll be smashed to bits,” said Laing.

  “It doesn’t matter. He has his bunker. His people will die. Not important. But if he can hurt America, he will win. If he can hurt America badly, really badly, he will be covered in glory. Dead or alive. He will win.”

  “Bloody hell, it’s complicated,” sighed Laing.

  “Not really. There’s a quantum leap in moral philosophy when you cross the Jordan. Let me ask again: What do you want of me?”

  “The committee is forming, to try and advise our masters on the question of these weapons of mass destruction. The guns, tanks, airplanes—the Ministries of Defence will deal with those. They’re not the problem. Just ironmongery—we can destroy it from the air.

  “Actually, there are two committees, one in Washington and one here in London. British observers on theirs, American observers on ours. There’ll be people from the Foreign Office, Aldermaston, Porton Down. Century has two places. I’m sending a colleague, head of the Iraq desk, Simon Paxman. I’d like you to sit with him, see if there’s an aspect of interpretation that we might miss because it’s a peculiarly Arab aspect. That’s your forte—that’s what you can contribute.”

  “All right, for what I can contribute, which may be nothing. What’s it called, the committee? When does it meet?”

  “Ah, yes, Simon will call you with the when and where. Actually, it’s got an appropriate name. Medusa.”

  A soft and warm Carolina dusk was moving toward Seymour Johnson Air Force base that late afternoon of August 10, beckoning the sort of evening for a pitcher of rum punch in the ice bucket and a corn-fed steak on the grill.

  The men of the 334th Tactical Fighter Squadron who were still not operational on the F-15E, and those of the 335th TFS, the Chiefs, who would fly out to the Gulf in December, stood by and watched. With the 336th Squadron, they made up the Fourth Tactical Fighter Wing of the Ninth Air Force. It was the 336th who were on the move.

  Two days of frenzied activity were at last coming to an end; two days of preparing the airplanes, planning the route, deciding on the gear, and stashing the secret manuals and the squadron computer—with all its battle tactics locked in its data bank—into containers to be brought by the transports. Moving a squadron of warplanes is not like moving a house, which can be bad enough. It is like moving a small city.

  Out on the tarmac the twenty-four F-15E Strike Eagles crouched in silence, fearsome beasts waiting for the spidery little creatures of the same species who had designed and built them to climb aboard and unleash with insignificant fingertips their awful power.

  They were rigged for the long flight across the world to the Arabian Peninsula in one single journey. The fuel weight alone—thirteen and a half tons—was the payload of
five Second World War bombers. And the Eagle is a fighter.

  The crews’ personal gear was packed in travel pods, former napalm pods now put to more humane use, canisters below the wings containing shirts, socks, shorts, soap, shaving gear, uniforms, mascots, and girlie magazines. For all they knew, it might be a long way to the nearest singles bar.

  The great KC-10 tankers that would mother-hen the fighters all the way across the Atlantic, and on to the Saudi peninsula, all four of them feeding six Eagles each, were already aloft, waiting out over the ocean.

  Later, an air caravan of Starlifters and Galaxies would bring the rest, the small army of riggers and fitters, electronics men and support staff, the ordnance and the spares, the power jacks and workshops, the machine tools and the benches. They could count on finding nothing at the other end; everything to keep two dozen of the world’s most sophisticated fighter-bombers up and combat-ready would have to be transported on that same odyssey halfway around the world.

  Each Strike Eagle that evening represented $44 million worth of black boxes, aluminum, carbon-fiber composites, computers, and hydraulics, along with some rather inspired design work. Although that design had originated thirty years earlier, the Eagle was a new fighter plane, so long does research and development take.

  Heading up the civic delegation from the town of Goldsboro was the mayor, Hal K. Plonk. This very fine public servant rejoices in the nickname awarded him by his grateful twenty thousand fellow citizens—“Kerplunk,” a sobriquet he earned for his ability to amuse sober delegations from politically correct Washington with his southern drawl and fund of jokes. Some visitors from the capital have been known, after an hour of the mayor’s rib-ticklers, to leave for Washington in search of trauma therapy.

  Naturally, Mayor Plonk is returned to office after each term with an increased majority.

  Standing beside the wing commander, Hal Hornburg, the civic delegation gazed with pride as the Eagles, towed by their tractors, emerged from the hangars and the aircrew climbed aboard, the pilot in the forward seat of the dual cockpit and his weapons systems officer, or wizzo, in the rear. Around each airplane a cluster of ground crew worked on the prestartup checks.

  “Did I ever tell you,” asked the mayor pleasantly to the very senior Air Force officer beside him, “the story of the general and the hooker?”

  At this point, Don Walker mercifully started his engines and the howl of two Pratt and Whitney F100-PW-220 turbo-jets drowned out the details of that lady’s unfortunate experiences at the hands of the general. The F100 can convert fossil fuel to a lot of noise and heat and 24,000 pounds of thrust and was about to do so.

  One by one the twenty-four Eagles of the 336th started up and began to roll the mile to the end of the runway. Small red flags fluttered under the wings, showing where pins secured the underwing Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles to their pylons. These pins would only come out just before takeoff. Their journey to Arabia might be a peaceful one, but to send an Eagle aloft with no means of self-defense at all would be unthinkable.

  Along the taxiway to takeoff point were groups of armed guards and Air Force police. Some waved, some saluted. Just before the runway, the Eagles stopped again and were subjected to the final attention of a swarm of ordnance men and ground crew. They chocked the wheels, then checked over each jet in turn, looking for leaks, loose fittings, or panels—anything that might have gone wrong during the taxiing.

  Finally, the pins on the missiles were pulled out.

  Patiently, the Eagles waited, sixty-three feet long, eighteen high and forty across, weighing 40,000

  pounds bone dry and 81,000 at maximum takeoff weight, which they were close to now. It would be a long takeoff run.

  Finally, they rolled to the runway, turned into the light breeze, and accelerated down the tarmac.

  Afterburners kicked in as the pilots rammed the throttles through the “gate,” and thirty-foot flames leaped from the tail pipes. Beside the runway the crew chiefs, heads protected by helmets from the fearsome noise, saluted their babies away on foreign assignment. They would not see them again until Saudi Arabia.

  A mile down the runway, the wheels left the tarmac and the Eagles were airborne. Wheels up, flaps up, throttles pulled back out of afterburn and into military power setting. The twenty-four Eagles turned their noses to the sky, established a climb rate of five thousand feet per minute, and disappeared into the dusk.

  They leveled at 25,000 feet, and an hour later saw the position lights and navigation strobe of the first KC-10 tanker. Time to top up. The two F100 engines have a fearsome thirst. With afterburner running, they each go through 40,000 pounds of fuel per hour, which is why the afterburn or “reheat” is only used for takeoff, combat, or emergency let’s-get-out-of-here maneuvers. Even at normal power settings, the engines need a top up every one and a half hours. To get to Saudi Arabia they would need their KC-10s, their gas stations in the sky, desperately.

  The squadron was by now in wide formation, each wingman formatting on his element leader in line abreast, about a mile between wingtips. Don Walker, with his wizzo behind him, glanced out to see his wingman holding position where he should be. Flying east, they were now in darkness over the Atlantic, but the radar showed the position of every aircraft, and their navigational lights picked them out.

  In the tail of the KC-10 above and ahead of him, the boom operator opened the panel that protected his window on the world and gazed out at the sea of lights behind him. The fuel boom extended, waiting for the first customer.

  Each group of six Eagles had already identified its designated tanker, and Walker moved in for his turn.

  A touch on the throttle, and the Eagle swam up under the tanker, in range of the boom. In the tanker the operator “flew” his boom onto the nozzle protruding from the forward edge of the fighter’s left wing.

  When he had “lock on,” the fuel began to flow, two thousand pounds per minute. The Eagle drank and drank.

  When it was full, Walker pulled away and his wingman slid up to suckle. Across the sky, three other tankers were doing the same for each of their six charges.

  They flew through the night, which was short because they were flying toward the sun at about five hundred miles per hour over the ground. After six hours the sun rose again, and they crossed the coast of Spain, flying north of the African coast to avoid Libya. Approaching Egypt, which was a member of the Coalition forces, the 336th turned southeast, drifted over the Red Sea, and caught its first sight of that huge ochre-brown slab of sand and gravel called the Arabian Desert.

  After fifteen hours airborne, tired and stiff, the forty-eight young Americans landed at Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. Within hours they were diverted to their ultimate destination, the air base of Thumrait in the Sultanate of Oman.

  For four months, until mid-December, they would live here in conditions on which they would later look back with nostalgia, seven hundred miles from the Iraqi border and the danger zone. They would fly training missions over the Omani interior when their support gear arrived, swim in the blue waters of the Indian Ocean, and wait for whatever the good Lord and Norman Schwarzkopf had in store for them.

  In December they would relocate into Saudi Arabia, and one of them, though he would never know it, would alter the course of the war.

  Chapter 5

  The Dhahran Airport was choked. It seemed to Mike Martin as he arrived from Riyadh that most of the eastern seaboard wanted to be on the move. Situated at the heart of the great chain of oil fields that brought Saudi Arabia her fabulous wealth, Dhahran had long been accustomed to Americans and Europeans—unlike Taif, Riyadh, Yenbo, and the other cities of the kingdom. Even the bustling port of Jeddah was not accustomed to so many Anglo-Saxon faces on the street, but by the second week of August, Dhahran was reeling from the invasion.

  Some were trying to get out; many had driven across the causeway into Bahrain to fly out from there.

  Others were at the Dhahran airport, wives and families of oil me
n mainly, heading for Riyadh and a connecting flight home.

  Others were coming in, a torrent of Americans with their weaponry and stores. Martin’s own civilian flight just squeezed in between two lumbering C-5 Galaxies, two of an almost nose-to-tail air convoy from Britain, Germany, and the United States that was engaged in the steady buildup that would transform northeastern Saudi Arabia into one great armed camp.

  This was not Desert Storm; the campaign to liberate Kuwait was still five months away. This was Desert Shield, designed to deter the Iraqi Army, now increased to fourteen divisions deployed along the border and throughout Kuwait, from rolling south.

  To a watcher at the Dhahran airport, it might seem impressive, but a more intensive study would reveal that the protective skin was paper-thin. The American armor and artillery had not yet arrived—the earliest sea departures were just clearing the U.S. coastline—and the stores carried by the Galaxies, Starlifters, and Hercules were a fraction of the sort of cargo a ship could carry.

  The Eagles based at Dhahran and the Hornets of the Marines on Bahrain, plus the British Tornados that had just arrived at Dhahran and hardly cooled down from their journey from Germany, had enough ordnance between them to mount half a dozen missions before running out.

  It takes more than that to stop a determined onslaught of massed armor. Despite the impressive show of military hardware at a few airfields, northeastern Saudi Arabia still lay naked under the sun.

  Martin shouldered his way out of the milling throng in the arrivals hall, his tote bag over one shoulder, and caught sight of a familiar face among the crowd at the barrier.

  On his first selection course for the SAS, when they had told him they were not going to try and train him but instead try and kill him, they had almost succeeded. One day he had marched thirty miles over the Brecons, some of the crudest terrain in Britain, in freezing rain with one hundred pounds of gear in his Bergen rucksack. Like the others, he was beyond exhaustion, locked into a private world where all existence was a miasma of pain and only the will survived.