Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10 (38 page)

 
          
But
holding back and waiting would put him no closer to rescuing Wendy. It didn’t
matter what
Libya
was planning against
Egypt
, or if war would break out any time— for
him, the most important thing was finding and rescuing Wendy.

 
          
“Thank
you for your advice, Susan,” Patrick said. “I’ll take it into serious
consideration.”

 
          
Susan
Bailey stood, stepped toward Patrick, and touched his shoulder. “What has
happened to you, your wife, and your men is already a horrible tragedy,” she
said, “but please don’t compound the tragedy by launching off on an impossible
mission against overwhelming odds for an objective that you cannot define.”

 
          
Patrick
nodded, then opened up the door. “Dave.” Luger appeared within
seconds—obviously he was standing very close by. “Please escort Mrs. Salaam
outside.”

 
          
Susan
looked into Patrick’s eyes once more, but his deep-blue eyes were even more
dark and inscrutable than before—he might as well have been wearing the strange
high-tech helmet right now. She left without another 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-and- control 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 high- resolution 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 one-
thousand-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 comer 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 military district commander’s armored vehicle and
several dozen light tanks and heavy armored personnel carriers were stationed
outside the gate, weapons trained inside. More tanks and armored vehicles were
spread out all along the perimeter—the Night Stalkers were suddenly sealed up
tight.

 
          
“Dave,
we got trouble,” Patrick radioed to Luger. “We got a company of armor outside
the fence. They’re not coming through the fence, but they’ve got us surrounded
pretty well.”