Phantom Strike

by William H. Lovejoy

  Twenty kilometres beyond the town, he veered off the road, which was not actually a courageous act. The road was quite similar to the non-road. It was composed of hard-packed earth, and the dried-out weeds and shrubbery — akin to miles and miles of skeletons — suggested that vehicles did not normally travel there. The region was hilly, if three-or four-meter-high mounds could be called hills.

  Keeping an eye on his rear-view mirror, so as not to lose any of his charges, Formsby wheeled the Land Rover several kilometres to the north, weaving around the mounds. When he found a place that was relatively flat and isolated from every other living thing on earth, he stopped and parked. Shutting off the engine, he got out and stretched.

  The sun beat mercilessly on his head, and he reached back in the truck for his wide-brimmed safari hat. His physical movement felt restricted by the build-up of dirt that had stiffened his jacket and pants. His boots barely cracked the surface crust of the earth.

  “This is it?” his companion asked, as he too exited the truck.

  “I believe it may well be the place, Jacque.”

  Jacque — his only name — claimed to have served in the French Foreign Legion, and it may have been true. His appearance was disreputable enough that Formsby had kept his 9 millimetre Browning automatic holstered by his side for the entire trip. His sleep had come in gasps.

  Jacque went off to guide the semi-trucks into a militarily rigid parking line, and Formsby took a long walk northward, stopping to urinate on a bush that begged for any kind of moisture.

  After gauging the area in all directions with his sharp eyes, Formsby decided it would do, then walked back to the trucks.

  “All right, Jacque, we can unload.”

  It took almost an hour for the men to unload and set up the canvas wall-tent, the single cot, the cooking table and propane grill, the propane-powered refrigerator, and the portable shower. He got his boxes of provisions and his M-16 rifle out of the Land Rover and put them inside the tent.

  Formsby thought the shower a nice touch, and he was not worried about water. He had brought along ten thousand gallons of water, figuring the Central Intelligence Agency would not balk at the cost so long as they did not know about it.

  When the campsite was finished, the single canvas tent appearing rather forlorn alongside the big trucks, Jacque approached him.

  “I think that does it, Mr. Jones.”

  Formsby was going by the name of Nevada Jones, a superlative touch of The Carpetbaggers and Indiana Jones, he thought.

  “I believe it does, Jacque.”

  He pulled the envelope from inside his shirt, and handed it to the former Legionnaire.

  Jacque counted it. “Ten thousand American. That is correct, Mr. Jones.”

  He had arranged to pay Jacque in ten thousand dollar increments, at intervals of every five hundred miles. Jacque knew he had a money belt wrapped around his waist, but Jacque also knew he had the Browning automatic, and Formsby had refused to allow any of Jacque’s colleagues to carry weapons on this journey.

  “Very well,” Formsby said. “Now, you may take the tractors and the Land Rover and go back to Quallene. On the seventh of August, when you return here, you will receive the final fifty thousand.”

  “Plus the water?”

  “And whatever is left of the water.”

  While the men were unhitching the tractors from the trailers, Formsby went inside the tent, dug around in one of his cardboard boxes, and came up with four square plastic boxes. He also found ten fragmentation grenades.

  When he emerged from the tent, Jacque studied him for a few minutes before asking, “What are those?”

  “These are infrared beam and motion detectors. I shall put them on my perimeter, and anyone who gets close receives the gift of explosively propelled shrapnel.”

  “I see,” said Jacque.

  And Formsby was certain that he did. Their agreement was that Formsby would be left without a vehicle, to insure that he would be present on the seventh of August with the balance of the payment. Formsby was adding to that agreement by insuring that neither Jacque nor any of his seventeen friends came calling in the night prior to the seventh.

  He was relieved when the truck tractors and the Land Rover finally departed. He had not slept well during the long days of the journey.

  As soon as the last truck disappeared, Formsby went to the refrigerator standing next to the tent, unlocked it with a key, and unwrapped the air-bubble packaging from a bottle of Molson ale.

  He drank it in three long swallows, then opened another bottle.

  Just in case Jacque had doubled back to check on him, Formsby spent some time playing out his role of security manager by siting the motion detectors and grenades at four corners around his campsite. The detectors did not really set off the grenades, but their transmitters would alert him if intruders entered the area.

  And he knew how to set off grenades on his own.

  The shower was erected next to the water tanker, and Formsby connected a hose from the tanker’s pump to the holding tank above the shower. He filled the tank with the gasoline-powered pump, then stripped off his clothes and took a shower that lasted twenty minutes and cost seventy gallons of a commodity very precious in the desert. Then he shaved and took another short shower.

  Padding naked across the hot sand to the tent, he entered and dressed in fresh Levi’s and a white sport shirt. He felt immensely better, recharged, and ready for action.

  The action was confined to stripping the M-16, cleaning it, and priming it with one of twenty magazines he had with him. Then he cooked himself a dinner of brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes and brown gravy, and rare roast beef. He topped it off with a bottle of 1978 cru bourgeois red Bordeaux. The CIA had paid for it, and he enjoyed it.

  On the twenty-sixth of July, Formsby emerged from the mosquito netting protecting his cot, made coffee and a poached egg for breakfast, then unchained the Caterpillar tractor and got it running after several false starts. He climbed down to lower the ramps from the flatbed trailer, then backed the bulldozer off and tested his rusty knowledge of the controls for both the tractor and the bulldozer blade.

  While the Cat idled, he broke ice cubes from four of the trays in his refrigerator and made up a jug of iced tea. He refilled the trays with water, put them back in the freezer, then got his safari hat.

  Formsby spent eleven hours driving the Cat east and west, then had liver and sautéed onions for dinner.

  On the twenty-seventh, he devoted another seven hours to levelling a two-kilometre-long, thirty-metre wide strip through the mounds of earth. To Formsby, the rough airstrip looked like a scar on a land that knew far too many scars. In a month, no one would ever know it had been there. When he was done, he parked the Cat back on its trailer and chained it down again. Formsby might not have been a superb craftsman, but he liked to put his tools back in their proper places.

  He had particularly tender veal chops for dinner, accompanied with an excellent St. Emilion. After dinner, he set up his radio and connected it to an antenna he erected outside the tent. At midnight, he turned on the radio, tapped in a frequency on the digital keys, pressed the transmit button, and said, “Paper Doll, Degas. In position.”

  He did not expect, nor wait for, a reply. Punching a new frequency into the radio, he shut it off and considered that the next nine days were going to be full of one-sided conversations.

  Though he was up early on the twenty-eighth of July, it was to be a day composed mostly of leisure. He ate a breakfast of eggs, bacon, waffles, and muffins, then showered for the first time that day. He was managing four showers a day.

  He stayed in the tent for the morning, lounging on his cot, and reading Proust. He perspired a great deal.

  At ten minutes past noon, the radio barked.

  “Goya.”

  He rolled off the bunk and picked up the microphone. “Degas.”

  “’K, fella, gimme somethin’ to home on.”

  Formsby held t
he transmit button down, so the pilot could use his direction finder.

  When he lifted his thumb, the pilot said, “’K, guy, be there in about ten.”

  Formsby prepared by buckling his holster in place, then slinging the M-16 over his shoulder.

  One never knew quite who was coming to lunch.

  The airplane — a De Haviland DHC-5 Buffalo without any national or corporate markings — appeared low out of the east and made one pass over the primitive runway. The pilot was apparently happy enough with what he saw for he made one circle, then brought the cargo plane in.

  It landed with two bounces and a short rundown, then turned toward the parked trailers.

  Formsby waved merrily and pointed to a place next to the flatbed trailer. The pilot goosed the throttles, shot toward the spot, then whipped around in a tight 180- degree turn. The engines died with several burping backfires.

  Walking across the hot soil toward the plane, Formsby felt his muscles tensing up.

  The pilot and another man emerged from a side door. Formsby figured the raw-boned, cowboy-hatted pilot for an American.

  His muscles relaxed a trifle.

  “You’re Jones?” the pilot asked.

  “Nevada Jones.”

  “Yeah, I read the book and saw the movie. What’s with the rifle?”

  “I’ve been told that there are many wild things in the desert,” Formsby said.

  “I guess there are. You want us to dump all of it right here?”

  “I surely do.”

  Thirty minutes later, fourteen pallets had been floated down the rollers of the ramp and left in the dirt next to the flatbed. Each pallet was covered with a tarpaulin.

  Formsby untied the tarps and inspected the contents of every pallet.

  “That what you ordered, Jones?”

  “Exactly, my good man, exactly.”

  “We try to please,” the cowboy said.

  “Could I offer you gentlemen luncheon?

  The pilot looked up at the sky, around at the horizon, and then at his wristwatch. “Yeah, I don’t see why not.”

  Formsby made a half-dozen thick ham sandwiches and got out a six-pack of ale.

  *

  They had changed the tires on all of the airplanes, substituting the widest, softest tires they could mount and still get into the retract wells. Nitrogen gas was used to inflate them.

  All of the pylons for the F-4s, and a pair for the Hercules, had been refurbished, painted grey, and stored aboard the transport.

  Wyatt held up his clipboard, with the checklist clamped onto it, toward Demion. “That’s the last tick-off on my sheet, Jim.”

  Demion’s eyes scanned his own list. “Mine, too. There were a few times, Andy, when I didn’t think we were going to get here.”

  “We’re a day ahead of schedule.”

  “Except for the fuel and the training schedule,” Demion said.

  They had had to refill their rental tanker truck six times, to meet the requirements of the test and training flights and to fill the fuel cells of the C-130 tanker. Winfield Potter was in Lincoln once again for another load. The Noble Enterprises charge card for fuel was getting a workout, and Wyatt hoped that someone on the other end was paying the bills.

  The two of them walked slowly through Hangar 5, watching the activity as tools and equipment were loaded aboard the Hercules transport. In the morning, the transport was making a quick turnaround trip to Albuquerque to return the equipment they weren’t taking with them: engine cradles, compressors, extra tool sets.

  Huge, hand-lettered signs were spread all over the place. “NO SMOKING” was the rule since the tanker had been fuelled.

  Wyatt spotted Arnie Gering and Lefty Harris and waved them to the sidewall.

  “What’s up, Andy?” Harris asked.

  Wyatt had their envelopes prepared. He handed one to each of them. “You guys get to ride back to Albuquerque with the Herc in the morning. I want to tell you how much I appreciate your putting in the overtime.”

  Gering opened his envelope and counted the twenty one-hundred-dollar bills.

  “Be careful how you spend it, Amie. You don’t want to attract any unnecessary attention.”

  Gering stuffed the envelope in his back pocket. “Yeah, Andy, thanks. You sure you don’t need some more help wherever you’re going?”

  “We’ve got it covered,” Wyatt said.

  Gering looked to Demion, who nodded his agreement.

  “Well, I can always use the extra bucks.”

  “There might be some other special projects in the future,” Wyatt said.

  “When?”

  “We never know when they’re going to come up,” Demion told him. “We’ll let you know.”

  Gering and Harris wandered back to the transport to help load boxes.

  Both of the C-130 aircraft appeared nearly identical, except for the fuselage numbers. The tanker, numbered 61043, had a few feet of the retracted fuel line protruding from the trailing edge of her port wing. The transport, 54811, had several new antennas and a plastic bulge mounted on the top of the fuselage, connected to the interior console that had been installed three days before. The tactical coordinator’s console had been stripped from a Grumman E-2 Hawkeye and refurbished by Kriswell and Vrdla. The sonar, armament, and sonobuoy deployment functions had been discarded since they didn’t plan on hunting for subs where they were going. In place of the antisubmarine gear were enhanced radar, voice, and data communications, and electronic countermeasures controlling gear. While they didn’t have the massive radome of the E-2, with the equipment Kriswell had rigged, they were going to have a limited early warning capability in the Hercules.

  Wyatt and Demion climbed through the port side door and found Kriswell tinkering at the console, which had been bolted to the bulkhead in place of the two crew bunks.

  “You seen Bucky, Tom?” Wyatt asked.

  “He and Lucas went to town for party-makings. He’s calling it a wrap-up party.”

  “We still have a few days of training to go.”

  “Yeah,” Kriswell said, “but that’s the fun part. The hard stuff’s over.”

  Wyatt hoped it went that way.

  *

  Colonel Ibrahim Ramad flew his personal MiG-27 into Tripoli to meet with his superior. He landed at night, when it was relatively cool, and was picked up by a truck and taken to Farouk Salmi’s office at base headquarters.

  Salmi’s aide, a captain by the name of Mufti, was the only other in attendance at the meeting.

  “Ibrahim, it is good to see you,” Salmi said.

  “And you, my Colonel.”

  Salmi waved him to a seat in front of his desk. “How are your exercises proceeding?”

  “Exceptionally well,” Ramad boasted as he sat down.

  “And al-Qati’s soldiers?”

  “I must admit, Colonel, that Colonel al-Qati’s troops are well-conditioned and well-disciplined. They have adapted quickly.”

  “That is good to hear,” Salmi said. “I had feared that al-Qati’s reputation was as much smoke as substance.”

  “No, he lives up to it.”

  The air force commander lit a cigarette and relished his inhalation.

  Ramad waited patiently.

  Salmi asked, “Do you suppose that the good Colonel is also prepared to engage in Test Strike?”

  Test Strike was the live exercise that Ramad had designed three months and eleven days before.

  “Probably not, once he hears about it.”

  “He must be told by tomorrow morning,” Salmi said.

  Ramad let his lips broaden into a smile.

  “Test Strike has been approved?”

  “It has.”

  “That is wonderful,” Ramad said. “However, as I said, al-Qati will drag his feet. We have discussed before what we think his true mission to be, spying on our operations at Marada Base for Ghazi. He will want to talk to Ghazi before he makes a commitment. And Ghazi will balk.”

  Salmi
, whose pockmarked, narrow face rarely smiled, offered a yellow-toothed grin. “The concerns of Colonel Ghazi have been taken care of, Ibrahim.”

  “How can that be?”

  “The Leader, advisor Amjab, and I met with Ghazi this morning, and he has been given his orders. He agreed to cooperate completely.”

  Rather than lose his command of ground forces, Ramad thought.

  “And therefore,” Salmi continued, “al-Qati’s objections are curtailed even before he makes them.”

  Ramad hoped that he would be in a position to see al-Qati’s face when the man learned that Colonel Ghazi could no longer protect him.

  “Now,” Salmi said, “it is your plan, and you must make the final decision. Your name alone will appear on the recommendation.”

  The documentation would be self-protective of higher authority. Ramad understood that.

  “My decision was made, Colonel Salmi, when I prepared the proposal.”

  Salmi nodded, “Captain Mufti, if you would?”

  Mufti pushed a cart containing a television and a videocassette recorder into position next to Salmi’s desk. He turned both on.

  The screen blossomed into a view of a cell. Concrete walls and a steel door could be seen. The camera angle was from high in one corner. A man in stained clothing sat on a small stool in the centre of the cement floor.

  The camera looked down on him, but he was apparently unaware of it, or he no longer cared. He sat with his head hung down, his lanky black hair falling forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He was dejected.

  “The subject?” Ramad asked.

  “All of the subjects are condemned persons. It does not matter how they die.”

  “And this test?”

  “This one utilizes the psychological agent. PD-86, I believe,” Salmi said.

  Of the five types of chemical agents — incapacitating, defoliant, psychological, nerve, and toxin — they had not concerned themselves with the short-acting incapacitating agents such as tear gas, nor with defoliants.

  PD-86, Ramad knew, was based on lysergic acid, the LSD of the American hippies.

  On the screen, the cell began to mist. It was unobtrusive at first, just a slight blurriness to the environment. The prisoner seemed unaware of it.