Hypersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age

by Boyne, Walter J.

  Tonight’s raid was not as long as the strike on Libya—but long enough. The F-117As needed to tank up from their two accompanying KC-10A tankers at least five times for the round-trip. V. R.’s target was a Panamanian army base at Rio Hato, just sixty-five miles southwest of Panama City. It was the least important of the two missions, another sign of Tobin’s lack of confidence. The other four Nighthawks were tasked to support the special operations forces who were to capture Noriega himself and bring him to justice.

  There had been so many briefings that even V. R., with his attention diverted, knew the mission by heart. At Rio Hata there was a big barracks complex where Battalion 2000, some of Noriega’s elite troops, was quartered. The mission planning called for the Nighthawks to drop two BLU-109 bombs, not on the barracks, but in the open field beside them. On the last briefing Tobin had jokingly called their two-thousand-pound bombs “the world’s biggest stun guns” for they were designed not to kill the sleeping soldiers, but simply stun them so they could not react to the simultaneous parachute landings by the U.S. 2nd Ranger Battalion. The bombs were fused to explode on impact to make the most noise and do the least damage possible.

  As zero hour approached, V. R. felt more comfortable. He had gone through the preliminary “switchology” as they called the long checklists that prepared the aircraft to drop. The only thing that bothered him was an unusual last-minute switch in the target coordinates.

  Dammers began his attack, and V. R. followed; intuitively he knew that something was wrong, they were much closer to the coast than the briefings had called for. The bombs released, the doors opening and closing almost instantly, and the two Nighthawks pulled up for the long trip back as gunfire lit up the sky. Apparently the “stun-gun bombs” had failed, for the sky erupted with small-caliber gunfire as the Panamanians tried to fight off the attacking paratroopers.

  As he headed back toward the first refueling track, V. R. reproached himself. If he had been himself, at the top of his form, if he had been doing what he should have been doing instead of wallowing in despair, he would have caught the error and corrected it. Now it looked like they had dropped their bombs far from the Rio Hato barracks. He hoped they hadn’t killed any innocent civilians. Worse, they had smeared the F-117A’s reputation. People were already calling it an expensive failure; a half-dozen articles by congressmen had “proved” it was a waste of money. Now he and Dammers had made them right and placed the whole stealth program in jeopardy. What the hell difference did it make that the enemy couldn’t see you coming if, when you got there, you couldn’t hit the enemy?

  Sweating, stomach constricted, V. R. realized that Tobin had been exactly right when he told him that he had to make a decision. He was either going to be a flyer or a mourner. He couldn’t go on doing both. Now maybe he had the worst of worlds—Ginny was gone forever and he had flown himself out of the Nighthawk program.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE PASSING PARADE: The Internet is created; Nelson Mandela freed in South Africa; Hubble Space Telescope launched, flaws discovered; Oliver North’s conviction overturned on appeal; Dr. Jack Kevorkian assists in suicide; Johnny Carson departs The Tonight Show; Baltic countries declare independence from Soviet Union; Iraqi troops seize Kuwait; East and West Germany reunited; Poland elects Lech Walesa President; Judge Clarence Thomas accused of sexual harassment; smoking banned on domestic airplane flights; Soviet Union disbanded, eleven separate republics form Commonwealth of Independent States; Boris Yeltsin becomes President of Russia; Mount Pinatubo erupts in Philippines, Clark Air Force Base covered in ashes.

  August 3, 1990

  The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

  By God, you were right! Hussein isn’t kidding around. Iraqi troops have already overrun Kuwait. It’s just as you said, there’s been no resistance worth mentioning—the Kuwaitis were asleep at the switch.”

  Steve O’Malley beamed across his desk at a man he had not seen for a decade, a man whose looks did not seem so much to have changed as intensified. Bob Rodriquez had always been fit, and now his thin wiry musculature spoke of long years of effort and denial. O’Malley knew that Bob was over sixty, but his dark hair and beard were barely flecked with gray. His face was lined and his eyes were almost lost in the habitual squint imposed by desert life.

  Once staunch friends and business partners, they had fallen out when Rodriquez had attempted a hostile takeover of the firm Vance Shannon had founded. Shortly after the takeover attempt failed, Rodriquez disappeared into a murky world where rumors ranged from his death in a dope-smuggling flight to totally improbable stories of his working for the CIA. Now, tan and unusually dapper in a light tan summer suit, blue shirt, and red tie, Rodriquez seemed almost frail, dwarfed by O’Malley’s imposing desk.

  One of his several phones rang and O’Malley excused himself to take the call. Rodriquez sat there, uncomfortable in his Western clothes, nervously playing with the plastic visitor’s tag affixed to the lapel of his suit. He had started out the morning early, giving two briefings at the State Department. O’Malley had picked him up and drove him to the Pentagon, where he had briefed twice again, once to the Joint Chiefs and once to a group of top Air Force officers specializing in Middle Eastern affairs.

  Now he wanted more information from O’Malley about his ex-wife, Mae, his son, the Shannons, and all the rest of the people he had forsaken. O’Malley had already given him some of the most significant details on the ride over from State, and thoughtfully had a huge album of family pictures ready for him. It was not enough, he was hungry to know more.

  O’Malley’s enthusiasm about at last coming to grips with the Muslim world in combat was very evident, and it troubled him. Rodriquez had spent more than eight years in that world, first perfecting his Arabic, then using his business acumen to gain commercial credibility. The CIA had started him out small and tentatively in a business he knew well, air-to-air missiles. He had provided contacts first, then moved into the illicit shipping of key parts. As he became known and trusted, he expanded into banking operations. With CIA approval, he had laundered millions of dollars for terrorist groups.

  It was a double-edged sword. The money he laundered was intended to do harm to the Western world. The CIA believed this danger was more than offset by the intelligence he provided on the terrorists and their likely targets. He never tried to infiltrate a terrorist cell—it would be extraordinarily difficult for any non-Arab. But his dark complexion, facial features, and surprising language skills had enabled him to function in the terrorists’ world, where, as everywhere else, if you followed the money, you got to the source of the problem. He was a conduit to many sources, from a simple, dedicated jihadist seeking immortality with a suicide bomb to the intricately layered corruption of Saudi royalty.

  Rodriquez thought O’Malley’s attitude was simplistic. O’Malley’s solution was a massive attack on the Muslim world, one that would generate such damage and such fear that the Arab national and religious leaders would be forced to seize control of the terrorist movement and end it. Yet Rodriquez, even after his years of intimate acquaintance with Islam, could not offer a better solution. The masses of the Muslim world were passive, and the fanatic minority dictated not only religious policy, but secular political policy. In many ways it was not unlike Germany when the Nazis took over in 1933. Even among the Nazis the number of fanatics was comparatively small, but they exerted such control over their party, and over the nation, that they were able to force the world to go to war.

  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

  THIS 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, a
nother 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.