Hypersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (26 page)

O’Malley slammed the phone down.

“You’ve flew with the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing, didn’t you?”

“We called it the 1st Fighter Interceptor Wing in those days—a great outfit.”

“We’ll have the whole wing, forty-eight F-15s, in Saudi Arabia by the end of the week! If we don’t, your pal Saddam Hussein will scoop up Saudi Arabia like he’s copped Kuwait.”

Rodriquez was silent, for O’Malley was probably right. Iraq had borrowed billion of dollars from Kuwait to finance the bitter eight-year war with Iran. Instead of paying its debt, it now claimed that Kuwait had been slant-drilling oil from Iraqi fields. The huge Iraqi army was poised on the border of Saudi Arabia, with nothing to keep it in check—yet.

“This couldn’t be better from my point of view. This puts their intentions out in the open, and we can hammer them as hard as we want.”

Rodriquez said, “It may not be easy. They’ve got the fourth largest army in the world, and their air force has had lots of experience.”

He was dissembling by habit. Rodriquez did not have much respect for the bulk of the Iraqi forces. Saddam had imposed a Sunni regime upon a Shiite majority, and there was dissension in the ranks. His most valuable troops were in the Republican Guard. The rest were more suited to police work than an armored campaign. The Iraqi Air Force
had at times fought fairly well against the Iranian Air Force, but would not survive for two days in action against the American Air Force.

O’Malley frowned. “We’re still in a bind. If he launched his attack today, there’s nothing to stop him from taking the most important Saudi Arabian oil fields. He won’t have to go all the way to Riyadh. But we’ve got to get enough forces over there to stiffen the Saudis’ spines, and we’ve got to get the United Nations on our side for once. It’s not going to be easy.”

He paused and went on. “This is where the congressional penny-pinching hurts us. We don’t have the sealift or the airlift to fight a full-fledged war in Iraq. It will take us six months to build up, just because Congress has cut back on the funds we need for logistic support.”

Rodriquez said, “We’re stepping off a cliff here. If we station large American forces in Saudi Arabia, the Arab world may well rally to Iraq’s side. Certainly the Muslim fundamentalists will. But there’s no way out. Iraq owes Saudi Arabia twice as much as it owed Kuwait. The only way Saddam Hussein can salvage his country from the expenses of the war with Iran is to seize the Saudi oil fields as well.”

O’Malley looked kindly at Rodriquez, wondering how much he had suffered all these years, and what privations he had endured to get the information the CIA needed. He represented the best in “humint”—human intelligence. As the United States’ intelligence-gathering capability had increased through satellites, “humint” had been de-emphasized. Now it was something the country badly needed and almost totally lacked.

“Bob, you were brought up as a good Catholic boy, just like I was. How was it living as a Muslim, performing their rituals? What kind of insight did it give you into Islam?”

Rodriquez was silent for a while. Finally he said, “Steve, I was a fallen-away Catholic, so I’m probably not the one to make a comparison. Islam would function better as a religion if the Muslim world was not so bitterly impoverished, if there was not such a tremendous difference between a very few obscenely rich families and the hundreds of millions of poor people. There’s so much corruption, and they waste half of their assets by treating women like slaves.”

O’Malley leaned forward in his chair, saying, “Exactly. Let me read you something that Winston Churchill wrote, back before the turn of the century.”

He picked up a walnut plaque from his desk and showed Rodriquez the bronze engraving. Then, reluctantly, ashamed that he needed them, he put on his recently acquired reading glasses and read:

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

“Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities—but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”

O’Malley removed his glasses, and placed the plaque reverently on his desk, saying, “Churchill wrote that in his book
The River War
in 1899. It is as true today as it was then. Perhaps even more so, for now they have access to means they’ve never dreamed of before—not just swords for cutting off heads, but nukes for cutting off cities.”

Rodriquez shook his head. “I wish you were overreacting. I’ve met many interesting and worthwhile Arabs, people I would like to have as friends, but their system is corrupt. Their treatment of women is abominable. And life is so miserable for the masses that a bright,
healthy young man can choose to die as a suicide bomber and think it is a smart career move. The poverty leverages religion so that the fundamentalists, the fanatics, can turn it into a weapon of self-destruction.”

O’Malley said, “Bob, I’ve got a raft of photographs and clippings for you to take with you. But I’ve got to ask you, what are your plans now? Is your cover still secure?”

Rodriquez shook his head. “I think I could go back to Egypt and reopen my business there without too much difficulty. But frankly, I’m sixty-two and too old for this. Some time I’ll tell you what I’ve gone through. Right now I’m going to concentrate on spending time in the United States, making amends to some of the people hurt even though I loved them. I know Mae won’t have me . . .”

O’Malley put up his hand. “Don’t say that, Bob. She never remarried, and she could have in an instant if she had wanted to.”

Rodriquez’s deeply tanned face seemed to change color and he choked before going on. “But I can see my son, and try to make up with him what I’ve cost the family. And the Shannons, too. I was crazy, trying to hurt them because of Mae. I wouldn’t recommend spending weeks alone in the desert to anyone—but it does give you time to think. I’m still in pretty good health, and although I know Tom Shannon is long dead, I can apologize to Harry and the rest of them.”

“You won’t have to apologize, Bob. They know you were disturbed. I’ve never heard any of them, even Tom, say anything bad about you after you left. They were worried, they figured you were . . .”

“Off my rocker? They were right.”

“Well, yes, that’s right. They knew you well enough to know that something had happened to you mentally. And much later, when we finally got word that you were doing something important, they understood. They assumed you had recovered or were recovering, and doing like you always did, immersing yourself in your work. Can I ask a personal question?”

“You might as well, we’re carving at my heart right now.”

“How are you fixed for funds?”

“Steve, I’ve got no idea. I left everything with a trustee at the Bank of America, telling them to be conservative. I’m probably very wealthy, I should be. And if I’m not, what the hell, I’m old, but I can still work. Somebody needs a camel driver somewhere, I’m sure.”

“I figure the Shannons will have more than one camel for you to drive.”

January 17, 1991
En Route to Baghdad

T
HIS WAS IT
. Tonight the stealth fighter was going to prove whether Ben Rich or Kelly Johnson was right. Johnson had died just the previous month and was considered by many to be the greatest aeronautical engineer of the twentieth century. He had always insisted that the F-117A was a mistake, that its angular-faceted shape was an aerodynamic monstrosity. He felt it would never be useful as a warplane. Fortunately Ben Rich, another improbably creative engineer, knew, for one of the few times of his life, that his longtime mentor was wrong.

V. R. Shannon fervently hoped Rich was indeed correct. He’d taken the Nighthawk into combat once before, in Panama, and things had not gone as well as he wished. Tonight they were beginning Operation Desert Storm, attacking one of the toughest integrated air defense systems in the world. They would prove—or disprove—the value of stealth once and for all.

His Nighthawk was one of the ten Lockheed F-117As of the 415th Tactical Fighter Squadron that had rumbled down the runway at 0022 hours. His fellow pilots called the isolated field at Khamis Mushait in Saudi Arabia “Tonopah East” for its sixty-eight-hundred-foot-high elevation and the uncanny similarity of the surrounding mountains.

The Nighthawks were one part of a simultaneous one-two-three punch designed to take out Iraqi air defenses. At sea, mixing the past and the future, a battleship and two cruisers stood by ready to launch Tomahawk surface-to-surface cruise missiles. At the same time, Task Force Normandy, a lethal joint strike force of Air Force Pave Low and Army Apache helicopters, was ready to attack key air defense positions deep in Iraq. All three of the assault units were pathfinders, opening the electronic gate to Iraq for the heavy assault forces—B-52s, F-15s, F-16s, and many others.

The first refueling had gone well. The tankers, airborne since just after midnight, orbited dangerously close to Iraqi airspace, just as they had done so many nights before, always with the intent of lulling Iraqi defenses. Tonight would be a night just like any others for the Iraqis—until the attack began.

The three strike forces were but the tip of the massive United Nations’ spear. At other bases all across Saudi Arabia and other supportive nations in the Gulf, hundreds of fighters, bombers, reconnaissance, electronic countermeasure, and support aircraft were airborne. A flight of Boeing B-52Gs was inbound from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, flying the longest combat mission in history, ready to fire their air-launched cruise missiles at Baghdad. The crowded decks of huge Navy aircraft carriers in the Red Sea and the lower Persian Gulf were alive with action as they prepared for the assault. AWACS aircraft, another of Bob Rodriquez’s great contributions, orbited just as they did every other night, also looking perfectly routine to the sleepy Iraqi observers, but ready to orchestrate the attack.

There was an hour to go before bombs away and V. R. had to force himself to think of other things than the capability of Baghdad’s air defenses. Israel’s 1981 attack on the Osirak nuclear facility had so enraged Hussein that he funded the creation of an amazingly sophisticated defense system. It was conservatively rated as seven times more powerful than the system that had defended Hanoi during the Vietnam War. The critical command and control facilities were buried underground, his aircraft were in shelters designed to withstand a nuclear blast, and there were more than seven thousand antiaircraft guns and sixteen thousand surface-to-air missiles, most of them deployed around Baghdad.

It was tough to think of “other things” and not think about his beloved Ginny. Her death over Lockerbie, Scotland, gave this mission a visceral touch, for he knew that Saddam Hussein funded terrorists. He had not recovered from the loss and lived a monastic life, centered only on flying, and on revenge. To him, as to O’Malley, the war against the terrorists was a personal one.

To escape thoughts of Ginny, he forced himself to think briefly of Kelly Johnson, again hoping him to be wrong about the F-117A, but mentally praising him for all he had done for the nation. Johnson’s U-2s were part of the attack team tonight, and the newest Air Force
fighter, the Lockheed F-22A, had just won the fighter competition over Northrop’s F-23A. Others had fathered the F-22, but Johnson had fathered the Skunk Works culture that made it possible. On a more personal note, Kelly had been solicitous about both Vance and Tom Shannon, and had helped V. R. on more than one occasion.

Tonight was going to be tough. He had two pinpoint targets in Baghdad that he had to identify in quick succession with his forward-looking infrared system. He would have to track the first target, designate it with a laser beam, and release the bomb with the downward-looking infrared system. Then he had to make a thirty-degree turn, and repeat the act a few seconds later on the second target. All the while he had to fly the aircraft, watch out for missiles, and be sure that all of the things that kept the Nighthawk stealthy were functioning correctly.

V. R. had been in Iraqi airspace for thirty minutes when a pitch-black Baghdad loomed ahead. He eased his fighter in broken-field turns around the effective range of the defensive radars just as a halfback would elude tacklers, then acquired his first target, the huge telecommunications center that had been dubbed the “AT&T building” by planners. He kept the crosshairs of his laser designator on the building that served as the central communications center for the Iraqi war machine. At precisely the correct interval, the weapons bay snapped open, and a two-thousand-pound GBU-27 Paveway III laser-guided bomb streaked toward its target, diving toward a tiny spot of laser light fixed on the roof of the building. The bomb burst through the laser spot, plummeting into the building and destroying it. The world knew before V. R. did that his mission was a success for all radio communications, including those of CNN, ceased immediately.

Pumped with adrenaline, certain that he had already proved the Nighthawk in combat, V. R. turned immediately toward his second target, another slightly smaller communications center. Once again his crosshairs stayed locked on until the Paveway released to plunge with an eerie accuracy into the communications center. Exultant, V. R. immediately headed for his post-strike refueling from a waiting tanker. Then there would be the long trip back to Khamis Mushait, for landing. As his excitement ebbed, he realized how glad he was that Kelly Johnson had been wrong and that Bob Rodriquez had pioneered the Paveway III. Stealth and precision guided munitions—this was the
way to fight the war. As he flew back the adrenaline rush of the attack was slowly succeeded by a building fatigue. Underneath these sensations, there was one constant, a percussive Bolero-like beat signaling his aching, never-ending memory of his dead wife Ginny.