by Greg Dinallo
“Not as many places to hide up there,” Duryea said. “Why leave the Aegean? I figure he’s probably on a random track, snaking between the islands.” He turned to his keyboard, and encoded. A pulsing cursor appeared on the monitor, marking the Romeo’s position. “Judging from his current position and course, I think he’ll proceed until he hits Patmos or Ikaria, somewhere in here, then come to a southwest heading and get lost in the Cyclades,” Duryea explained, referring to the group of twenty-seven islands in the center of the Aegean.
“If it’s our Romeo,” McBride countered.
A few minutes later, Duryea was still hovering over the chart table plotting an intercept course when the phone twittered.
McBride scooped up the receiver. “Conn. Yeah, yeah, I’ll put him on. Sat-link from Kubark, skipper.” He handed Duryea the phone.
“This is the director,” Kiley said; the direct voice communication was possible because the Cavalla was at periscope-antenna depth to communicate with the Viking.
“Good to hear your voice, sir.”
“You won’t think so after you hear what I’ve got to say,” the DCI retorted dourly, going on to brief Duryea on the PLO’s threat to kill the hostages.
“It may not be as big a problem as you think, sir,” Duryea responded, pleased to have some good news to report. “We have a high-potential contact and expect to verify shortly.”
“You just made my day, Commander.”
“Maybe you can make mine, sir.”
“Do my best. What do you need?”
“The status of Project Twilight,” Duryea said, using the code name the DCI had given his plan to incapacitate the personnel aboard the Romeo.
“Stand by,” Kiley grunted, buzzing his secretary. “I need OTS right away,” he growled, referring to the Office of Technical Services. “This is the director,” Kiley said when the project administrator came on the line. “I need an ETA for Twilight. You’re sure? I’m going to hold you to it.” He mumbled, “Thanks,” then tapped one of the flashing buttons on his communications console, switching back to Duryea.
“Operational,” the DCI reported buoyantly. “You can expect delivery within twenty-four hours.”
“We’ll be waiting, sir.” Duryea turned to his keyboard, typed an instruction, and entered some data. A small window appeared in the upper right-hand corner of the electronic chart table. It read:
02:DAYS
19:HOURS
36:MINUTES
28:SECONDS
—to Ramadan and counting
“When that comes up all zeroes,” Duryea said grimly to Mc-Bride, “they start killing hostages.”
40
WATER EXPLODED from the nozzle of the fire hose with incredible force. It caught Shepherd square in the center of his chest and knocked him to the floor of the interrogation chamber. Stark naked, he went tumbling across the rough concrete, the high pressure deluge ricocheting off his body, splattering over the walls and ceiling, and swirling down the rusted drain that Shepherd was certain had carried off the lifeblood of countless torture victims.
The guard clutched the unwieldy hose with both hands, bracing it against his torso, and came at him.
Shepherd scrambled to his feet, trying to elude the ice-cold blast that pummeled him; but the guard’s pursuit was relentless. There was no place to hide in the windowless room, no protection from the stinging onslaught. The stream of water pounded Shepherd’s body with punishing force, trapping him in a corner. The powerful jet knocked his hands aside and smashed into his groin. He howled in pain, spinning around to protect himself, and yelped as the water surged between his buttocks, trying to penetrate him. Then it slammed into his back, the extreme pressure pinning him flat against the wall. The roar from the gleaming nozzle was deafening. He felt as if he was drowning, certain the high-powered jet would soon be stripping the flesh from his bones.
Suddenly the guard pulled back on the nozzle’s cutoff valve. The vicious flow stopped abruptly.
Shepherd slumped against the wall, coughing up water as if he had been pulled from the sea. To his relief, the guard set the hose aside, dragged him to his feet, and directed him to an anteroom where SHK Chief Abdel-Hadi and his two young thugs were waiting.
Shepherd’s eyes darted to some clothing on a table, his clothing. It had been laundered and folded neatly. When the swarthy guard threw a bath towel at him, Shepherd realized he had just been treated to a shower, Libyan prison style.
The SHK chief watched stone-faced and silent as he toweled off and began pulling on his clothes.
“What happens now?” Shepherd knew from experience it would be a waste of time, but asked anyway. “Am I being extradited, executed, what?”
“What does it matter?” Abdel-Hadi replied slyly. “In your case, they would be one and the same.”
The son of a bitch is right, Shepherd thought. If ever two men were soulmates, it was Abdel-Hadi and Larkin; and as he was led through the maze of corridors and security doors—leaving the foul stench of excrement and unwashed bodies behind—the horrid idea that the colonel had gained entry into Libya and would now take custody of him grew stronger with each step.
They went up a concrete staircase to the central processing area where, at Abdel-Hadi’s instructions, the officer on duty made an entry in his ledger. Then they went out the main entrance of the prison.
It was mid-afternoon. The sun blazed, unchallenged by a single cloud, the searing heat intensifying the suffocating odor of camel dung. They led Shepherd to Abdel-Hadi’s Krazz and opened the door to the prisoner’s compartment behind the cab, where the Akita waited.
The powerful canine sprang to a standing position and growled, its black lips curling back to reveal lethal fangs that dared Shepherd to enter. Abdel-Hadi uttered a command in Arabic and the dog backed off. The SHK officers grabbed Shepherd’s arms, shoved him inside, and slammed the doors shut.
Shepherd sat on the wooden bench, his face crosshatched with harsh shadows from the heavy wire mesh that separated the prisoner’s compartment from the cab.
The two officers got in, followed by Abdel-Hadi, who uttered another command in the same tone he had used with the dog. One of the officers responded by unbuckling a heavy canvas shade that rolled down over the wire mesh, plunging Shepherd and the Akita into almost total darkness. The engine started and the vehicle drove off across the Bab al Azziziya compound.
Shepherd heard the clank of tank treads as the T-55 that was parked in front of the entrance backed up to let the Krazz exit. He realized they were leaving the grounds. A series of turns, stops, and starts accompanied by the sounds of traffic ensued; the cacophony was followed by a high-speed drive that Shepherd reckoned meant they were traveling on a highway outside the city.
About three-quarters of an hour later, the driver backed off the gas and began down-shifting through the gears. The Krazz slowed and finally stopped.
Shepherd heard a few words of Arabic before the throaty engine came to life and the vehicle started down a sharply curving road that caused him to lean into the turn, followed by another series of sharp lefts and rights.
Throughout the drive, the Akita had been too busy clawing at the steel deck with its huge paws to compensate for the vehicle’s movement to pay any attention to Shepherd. Now the powerful animal stood expectantly, sensing the journey was over.
Shepherd heard the engine shut off, the ratchet of the hand brake being applied, then doors opening and slamming closed as the SHK officers got out.
The harsh guttural mumble of Arabic followed; then footsteps approached the rear of the Krazz.
The doors were yanked open.
The Akita lept to the ground and bounded off.
Shepherd recoiled at the sudden blast of light as the officers took his arms and pulled him out. Temporarily blinded, he stumbled, then straightened, squinting to determine where he was, to resolve the amorphous figures that seemed defined by the sharp edges of weapons, of rifles and bayonets. His eyes strained a
gainst the whiteness, unable to discern if it was Larkin and a group of government representatives or a firing squad. Finally a compact figure slowly emerged from the haze.
It was General Younis.
Several armed guards were posted behind him.
They stood in an immense hangar on an immaculate, glossy white floor that was boldly slashed by red, yellow, and green stripes used to position aircraft.
“Major Shepherd,” the general said, striding forward with a smile.
“General,” Shepherd replied apprehensively.
“As you can see, Major,” Younis began, gesturing behind him, “it would be to our advantage if you are who you say you are.”
Shepherd turned to see the two F-111s parked side by side. He knew the Libyans had acquired them, but was still taken by the sight; indeed, they were the last thing he had expected to see.
“Where did you get them?” Shepherd wondered, knowing Younis would expect him to ask.
“I wouldn’t tell you even if I knew,” the general replied with a sly smile. “Besides it’s hardly relevant to our arrangement.”
“Our arrangement . . .” Shepherd echoed flatly.
“Yes, the colonel decided to abide by it.”
“Just like that.”
“Hardly. As you observed, he has an obsessive concern for his safety that sometimes triggers these ‘episodes.’ Fortunately, he’s quite rational when he comes out of them, almost contrite, at which time we review decisions made under the stress. Sometimes I win; sometimes I lose.” He paused and pointed to the Libyan Air Force markings on the bombers. “In your case, he decided to accept your offer to share your knowledge and skills with us.”
Shepherd mulled it over, concealing his elation, and decided a challenge was the most natural response under the circumstances. “That’s all well and good,” he said. “But I’d like some assurances that I won’t end up back in that hellhole as soon as I do.”
“You have my word, Major,” the general said.
“And his?” Shepherd asked, inclining his head toward Abdel-Hadi.
The SHK chief responded with several phrases delivered in sharp, rapid-fire Arabic.
“He said you can be assured that’s exactly what will happen if you don’t.”
Shepherd stiffened and nodded resignedly. “Nothing like having a clear choice,” he said, reinforcing the impression that they had coerced him.
“I knew you’d make the right one,” Younis replied. He and Abdel-Hadi watched as Shepherd crossed to one of the F-111s and began a walk-around, working his way along the fuselage to the nose gear. He crouched to inspect it, then stole a glance at the doors. The vague outline of stenciled lettering that had once proclaimed AC MAJ SHEPHERD was still slightly visible, despite being painted over. A surge of adrenaline went through him. He remained there for a moment, then moved to the adjacent bomber.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing a little more tail droop,” he observed, indicating the trailing edge of the stabilizers. “I’d have my crew chief fine-tune the flight control system, if you don’t mind me suggesting it.”
“Not at all. We’d like to hear whatever you have to say, Major,” Younis replied, impressed by how Shepherd handled himself. When he had finished the inspection, the general directed him into the office, where his technical staff had assembled with several Libyan flight crews.
“We have flown both aircraft and have a working knowledge of the flight systems, Major,” the East German avionics expert said in his clipped cadence. “ANITA is where we stumbled. Unfortunately, none of the codes we developed proved operative.”
“Tough without the entry key,” Shepherd said, jotting the alphanumeric table on a chalkboard:
A 1 F 6 K 11 P 16 U 21 Z 26
B 2 G 7 L 12 Q 17 V 22
C 3 H 8 M 13 R 18 W 23
D 4 I 9 N 14 S 19 X 24
E 5 J 10 O 15 T 20 Y 25
“Let’s say you want to enter a hundred-and-seventy-eight degrees, fifty-three minutes north latitude. Well, the first digit of each number is encrypted as a simple letter equivalent; the second as a numerical equivalent of that digit written out in Roman letters without vowels; then you alternate as you go. In other words . . .” He wrote on the board:
1=A
7 = SVN or S = 19, V = 22, N = 14
8 = H
5 = E
3 = THR or T = 20, H = 8, R = 18
N = 14
178/53/N entered as: A: 19:22:14:H/E:20:8:18/14
The East German’s brows went up. ANITA was neither complex nor brilliant; it wasn’t based on top-secret prime numbers or on the polyalphabetic substitution tables commonly used for com- munications cyphers. Unlike them, ANITA didn’t have to withstand enemy interception and subsequent scrutiny by expert code breakers who, working from a purloined cipher, might eventually crack it. No, his technicians had only the Pave Tack entry keyboard, blank screen, and microprocessor with a protected internal entry program that defied them to literally guess what alphanumeric input format it would accept. There were no clues, no intercepted samples to study, only infinite, random possibilities.
When Shepherd finished, Younis produced maps marked with the location of the desert practice target the Libyan crews had been unable to destroy.
They gathered round Shepherd as he encrypted the data, writing the alphanumerics on a programming sheet that he had drawn up; it listed all ANITA functions—longitude, latitude, range, angle of attack, air speed, among others—that the Pave Tack computer required to locate a target and destroy it with laser-guided bombs.
“Encrypting ANITA and entering it is the easy part,” Shepherd observed. “Flying to it—that’s something else. Now the Pave Tack console has two sets of function readouts.” He turned to the chalkboard, writing as he continued. “PRESENT—the actual position and attitude of the aircraft in flight, and SELECTED—the target acquisition data. The trick is—”
“Getting the two to match,” the East German interrupted. “We’re quite aware of the problem.”
“There’s only one way,” Shepherd declared, about to utter the words that he hoped would literally put him in the cockpit of his plane. “Expert instruction. Lots of it. Each crew member has to fly a lot of hours with an expert one-eleven driver next to him.”
“I don’t doubt it, Major, but as you might imagine, one doesn’t place a want ad for one-eleven instructors.”
“Now that you’re here, now that we finally have ANITA,” General Younis chimed in, “I suggest that we reassemble here at eleven hundred tomorrow and plan a mission; a training mission which you and one of our aviators will fly after nightfall.”
Shepherd nodded coolly, suppressing his delight; not only would he soon be flying his F-111, but he also would have some time to plan just how he would steal it, how he would overcome the Libyan who would be in the cockpit with him, elude the inevitable fighter escort, and fly the bomber to D’Jerba. “See you on the flight line,” he replied in a flat professional tone.
41
MORE THAN A WEEK had passed since Moncrieff and Katifa had escaped from Tripoli and flown to Jeddah, a port city on the eastern shore of the Red Sea 600 miles south of Suez. Though Riyadh was Saudi Arabia’s capital, Jeddah had long been the center of banking and commerce, and the royal family maintained a palatial residence there.
Set against a background of craggy mountains, the palace stood majestically on a bluff above the sea. Its numerous domed buildings were masterful examples of Middle Eastern architecture, replete with intricate tilings and delicate mushrabeyeh latticework.
Katifa had been taken directly to the royal infirmary where she was attended by court physicians. After a few days they removed her bandages and prescribed that she swim to rehabilitate and strengthen her weakened muscles. Prior to discharging her, the Infirmary’s chief of staff–an aging, Harvard-educated physician who had brought Moncrieff into the world and had no qualms about voicing his opinion–took Moncrieff aside for a brief discussion.
; “What’s the problem?” Katifa prompted after the old fellow had left.
“The Koran,” Moncrieff replied, knowingly.
“I don’t think I’m going to like this.”
“Nor am I,” the Saudi said, explaining that the physician had concerns about where she would be living. Though not radical hard-liners like their Iranian neighbors, Saudis were fundamentalist Muslims: women were forbidden to smoke, drive, or drink, and were strictly segregated from men; they neither worked nor dined with them, let alone exposed their bodies to them in public. Even the wives of Western businessmen spent the evening in the women’s quarters while the men dined alone. The idea of Katifa living with Moncrieff and swimming in the palace pool was unacceptable.
Undaunted, Moncrieff arranged for them to move into the royal guest house. Located in Al Hamra, the city’s most fashionable area, it was a high-security estate with an immense pool reached by a marble staircase that descended from the main building.
Now Moncrieff sat at a table on a palm-shaded terrace above, watching Katifa’s lithe body gliding effortlessly through the water. The instant her fingertips touched the wall, she did a graceful swimmer’s turn, her long hair streaming behind her as the momentum propelled her through the sparkling water. She had grown up with political activisim and violence; had advocated them; but now, the shock of bullets tearing into her flesh along with her narrow escape from Nidal’s hit squad had given her pause. Indeed, though predisposed to reject the privileged opulence of Moncrieff’s world, she found the security and the time she had spent with him in this idyllic place more and more to her liking.
Moncrieff had been dividing his time between the guest house and his office in downtown Jeddah. Despite the problem created by Nefta Dam, Libya’s Great Man-made River Project was proceeding as scheduled: wells were being drilled and pipeline manufactured and laid, and several other projects were in development as well.
Moncrieff was primarily an intelligence observer; the encounter in Tripoli had been his first and, he had since decided, last field operation. Life was back to normal; and with each day, he was becoming more and more confident that as he had hoped, as he had conspired, he and Katifa would be spending their lives together.