by Mack Maloney
“You were going to run another operation soon?” he asked Murphy.
“I was thinking of it,” Murphy called over his shoulder. “A pipe dream for sure….”
“And now, you’re KO’ing it—and you’re just going to wait for the ax to fall?”
Murphy replied: “That’s seems to be the only option.”
Phelan took a long swig of his beer.
“It’s been my experience,” he said, suddenly sounding like he was three times his age, “that in times like this, people get pissed off very quickly. Call it stress or whatever. But I also know that crap like this sometimes goes away just as quickly, and eventually ceases to exist altogether. I think Buddha said it best: ‘Just because it’s bad doesn’t mean it can’t also be temporary.’”
Murphy turned and looked across the room at him. “What are you saying?”
Phelan picked up the photo and pointed to the fruit warehouse. “I’m saying run it anyway.”
Ryder froze midsip on his beer. Murphy looked at Phelan strangely.
“Run what?” he asked him.
“The plan you were working on,” Phelan replied. “This next mission. Do it anyway—and screw the people who are turning up the heat. You might even go down in the history books if you do.”
Murphy was very puzzled. So was Ryder. Suddenly Phelan was back to being all mouth.
“Explain, please,” Murphy asked him.
Phelan took another long swig of beer. “Didn’t you ever take military history?”
Murphy shook his head, but then said: “Sure….”
“Down through the ages,” Phelan went on, “many commanders have won great battles, pulled off incredible victories, turned the tides of entire wars, all while they were under strict orders not to do anything. It’s true. And you know how most of them got away with it?”
Murphy shook his head no.
Phelan lowered his voice a little. “They always said, ‘I didn’t get the message in time.’”
“Really?” Murphy asked.
“I can list at least ten examples off the top of my head…” Phelan replied. “Maybe more.”
Murphy raised his hands as if to indicate the dim lights, the dead computers, the rolling ship, their suddenly isolated condition. “But how can I say I missed all this?” he asked. “This is a message, loud and clear.”
Phelan smiled slyly. “But who says they know that?” he replied. “Did you reply to the E-mail they sent?”
Again Murphy shook his head no.
Phelan never stopped smiling. “Well, until you tell them otherwise, as far as they’re concerned, everything here could be status quo.”
Murphy looked over at Ryder, as if to ask: What do you think of this? But the senior pilot just shrugged. Nothing Phelan said surprised him anymore.
“Do you believe this next mission would hurt the mooks badly?” Phelan asked Murphy directly.
“Yes,” was the firm response.
“And do you think it will zap a few of the people who were involved in Nine-Eleven?”
“Absolutely it will….”
“And could it even help prevent the Next Big Thing?”
“Prevent or certainly delay it,” was the reply.
“Then just do your thing, Mr. Murphy,” Phelan told him. “And when they ask, just tell them it all got lost in the translation. You didn’t know what they meant. ‘I didn’t get the message in time.’”
Silence. Then Phelan added: “I mean, what do you have to lose? They can’t kill you twice.”
Murphy took off his cap and pushed back his thinning hair. He stood up straight again. Then he smiled and all but sprinted back to the table. The pep talk from the unlikeliest source had fired new energy into him. Just like that.
“Shouldn’t argue with history, I guess,” he said with a wink in Ryder’s direction. The lights dimmed again. The ship rolled heavily to port. “Though I think we shouldn’t waste any more time, either….”
Phelan pointed to the picture of the big warehouse. “Now, you want us to blow up this building, I assume?”
“Not exactly,” Murphy said. “I think I’ve got an even better idea.”
“Tell us then,” Phelan said.
But now Murphy hesitated. He looked down at the notes he’d been taking and seemed to consider them for a while. He turned serious again.
He said: “Look, whatever we do, I want you to realize that from now on I’m the guy out front. I didn’t get the message—it was screwed up in translation, OK, fine. But if it goes wrong, I’m the one who gets the blindfold and the last smoke. No one else.”
Ryder was finishing his third beer. Or was it his fourth?
“What are you talking about?” he asked Murphy.
“What I’m saying is, you might not want to know very much about this next one,” he replied, indicating his pile of notes. “That way, I’ll be the only one in position to take the heat.”
He looked up at the two pilots. “In fact, I’m going to ask you guys to do just one thing,” he said.
He pointed to the map of Qartoom, to the roof of the warehouse itself.
“Just get me here, in one piece. I’ll do the rest….”
Ryder and Phelan sat down with pen and paper.
Both had planned air missions before, of course, but not one quite like this. Murphy wanted to go to Qartoom sometime within the next 48 hours—anything after that he thought would lose them the very last of their momentum. But the warehouse was nearly 500 miles away and there was not enough time to turn the ship around and simply sail there. Thus the need for an air operation. But it would not be an easy one.
The mission called for a helicopter. But someone would have to fly it across Saudi Arabia, across the Red Sea, up along the Suez coast, and then over to Libya. After that, it would have to sneak under the Libyans’ noses, find a secure location near the target, if not right on top of it, put at least two men on the ground, then wait for them to return. Then they would have to fly all the way back to the ship again.
It would be more than 2,500 miles, round-trip. A long way to go in a rotary craft.
Ryder explained this to Murphy. Details upon details, five pages scribbled in his bad handwriting. It would involve complex flying, multiple fuel-ups, prepositionings of fuel, and total reliance on their stealthiness. And still, much would be left up to the fates.
But at the end of the briefing, Murphy had only one question: Where are we going to get the gas?
Ryder stood up and stretched. Phelan yawned loudly, too. It was the longest time they’d spent with Murphy, one-on-one, since the funny little guy arrived on the boat. Despite the intrigue and all the conflicting emotions, it was just about impossible to dislike him.
“Murph, if you really want to do this,” Ryder told him, “we can get you the gas.”
Chapter 20
Bahrain
Marty Noonan, tanker driver, was back from another mission.
This one had brought him and his crew over the familiar waters of the lower Gulf, near Hormuz. They juiced up some F-15s from Sultan Air Base, the semisecret U.S. facility found in the middle of the Saudi desert, then flew around while some Marine F-18s based in Qatar used them for target-tracking practice.
The mission had lasted 10 hours, a typical night’s work. It was now 5:00 A.M. Noonan craved nothing more than a few beers at the OC, some chow, and then eight hours’ sleep. He would need the rest, if not the food and beer. He’d be going back up again later that day, and every day, at least until the Fifth Fleet battle group arrived.
He taxied the big KC-10 Extender over to its appointed hardstand and killed the engines. He ran the postflight checklist himself. His radioman shut down their communications suite. His boom operator locked up the refueling bubble. His flight engineer shut down the airplane’s environmental systems, and the Bahrani copilot cleaned up the coffee station and galley.
All this took 15 minutes; then Noonan dismissed the crew. He did the interior postflight walk
-through and found no problems. It was 0530 when he finally climbed down from the big jet himself. He was always the last to leave.
With the long walk across the tarmac to the officers’ club, he began wondering if there might actually be something good to eat at the bar this time of day. Suddenly a hand grabbed him from behind. Another hand quickly went over his mouth. Instinctively he began to struggle, but many hands were grabbing him now. They forced him to the ground, locked his arms behind him, and clamped his feet together. The next thing Noonan knew, he was being carried away by a half-dozen people dressed in black and wearing ski masks.
They trundled him up and over the nearby sand dunes, dropping him to the ground in front of a weird-looking helicopter that had landed on the edge of the secret base undetected. Two men were sitting inside the copter’s cargo bay. There were 10 cases of Budweiser stacked between them. They lifted their ski masks.
It was Ryder and Phelan.
“You guys?” Noonan cried out.
“Yeah, us,” Phelan told him.
Noonan was totally confused. “What the hell is going on here?” he screamed at them. “I thought I was about to be killed.”
“Sorry for the dramatics,” Ryder said. “But we’re in a strange position here.”
“What kind of strange?”
“You like Bud?” Phelan asked him.
Noonan eyed the cases of authentic American beer.
“Who doesn’t?” he replied.
They were called buddy tanks, or BTs.
Huge, bomblike containers that attached under an aircraft’s wing, they not only carried extra fuel for the host plane but also had the ability to stick out a hose from its rear end and let another aircraft get a drink, like a mini in-flight refueler.
BTs were usually a Navy thing, and they were rare at that. But Ryder and Phelan had spotted some Air Force models at the secret base during their first unscheduled visit here. That’s why they were back. They needed four buddy tanks, 600 gallons in size, all filled with aviation fuel.
Noonan was not a Boy Scout and it wasn’t like it was his gas. Plus this was a secret base; people were stopping by asking for strange things all the time. A few BTs for some Harriers was not that big of a deal. But how were they going to get them off the secret base without anyone knowing?
Ryder and Phelan directed Noonan’s attention to the next dune over. Here he saw an empty container, the size of a railroad boxcar, inexplicably sitting in the middle of the desert. It was stuffed full of packing, from fireproof blankets to Styrofoam peanuts, millions of them.
Before he could ask Ryder and Phelan how this thing had got here, he saw the answer himself. Hovering above the container, maybe 50 feet up, was another weird helicopter. It had a three-chain lifting brace swinging beneath it. Its engine was absolutely silent—that’s why Noonan didn’t see it at first.
“Now that’s freaking weird,” Noonan said. Seeing a chopper in flight that made no noise was almost a surreal event.
“If you can pack the BTs in that thing,” Ryder said to Noonan, pointing to the huge red container, “we’ll take it from there.”
There was only one way they could make Murphy’s new mission work.
Three aircraft had to be involved and each one would have to fly more than 2,000 miles. The BTs they’d received for the cases of Bud were mounted onto the Harriers belowdecks on Ocean Voyager. The jump jets would use one BT between them, in addition to the fuel they already had onboard. They would each carry another BT to take turns feeding the helicopter that would make up the third part of their three-plane flight. The fourth BT, carried by helicopter, would stay full. After finding a place somewhere halfway between the ship and their target, they would hide this tank temporarily. It would be their lifeline, the fuel they needed to get back.
The Harriers took off first on the night of the mission. The Blackhawk quickly followed them into the air. It was just sunset and the ship was rounding the tip of Oman, sailing west. The three aircraft hugged the coastline until they got to the eastern border of Yemen, the Harriers going as slow as the helicopter was going fast. They turned north, staying low, at no more than 250 feet maximum altitude, and dashed up to the southwestern part of Saudi Arabia. It was a quick flight over featureless terrain. About 50 miles inland from the top of the Red Sea, there was a small mountain range called Al-Hibiz Zim. It was uninhabited and held the distinction of having the most inclement weather on the Arabian Peninsula. The mountains were the first high ground after coming off the Red Sea, and thus clouds tended to form in front of them and then spill over. Many times, these clouds turned into rainstorms, or worse.
They hid the lifeline tank here.
The sun had gone down on Qartoom hours ago.
The activity around the port did not let up, though. This was a 365-day operation, especially on the docks at Heavenly Fruits. Two separate workforces changed places every eight hours. A ship could arrive at three in the morning, ten at night, or quarter to noon. It would be loaded, quickly, efficiently—just as long as the ship’s captain paid all his fees in cash.
Qartoom was also a naval base, a small one with two escort destroyers and a pair of harbor police boats. The police slept during the day, but at night they patrolled the port’s three miles of inner waterways, letting their searchlights randomly sweep over the piers. They were looking for animal smugglers mostly.
The two Polish-built DD-6 destroyers based here represented about one-tenth of Libya’s tiny whitewater navy. These ships rarely left port. They had been stationed at Qartoom Harbor as a favor from the Libyan government to the owner of Heavenly Fruits and had yet to be withdrawn by the “new” Khadafi. Their presence here added a substantial layer of visible security. They were here as a deterrent to trouble.
That’s why it was such a surprise when the commander of one of the destroyers was roused from his sleep to be told British jet fighters were about to attack their base.
“No Englishman is up this late,” the commander said drowsily. But he climbed out of bed and got dressed anyway.
The destroyer captain did all the right things. He woke the rest of the crew; it was the sole man awake, the bridge watch officer, who had first alerted him. He sent his men to their battle stations. He ordered the ship’s engines started and lines made ready to cast off. Only then did he get up to the bridge to see what all this fuss was about.
Two planes had flown up the main waterway four minutes ago, the watch officer reported. He had watched them pass overhead. They were Harriers; he was familiar with their silhouette. He’d just guessed at their being British.
Why had no one else heard them? the CO asked him. Why was work continuing on the docks all around them?
“The jets were very, very quiet,” the watch officer replied.
The CO was close to accusing the officer of sleeping and then dreaming up the planes…when suddenly he couldn’t see anymore. A huge, extremely bright explosion had gone off not 200 feet from the port side of the diminutive warship. Both the CO and the watch officer found themselves thrown to the deck by its intensity. It took nearly 20 seconds of feeling their way around in the darkness before their sight finally returned.
Strangely, there had been no sound.
The destroyer’s captain got to his feet, just in time to see two jet fighters streaking by, no more than 20 feet off the top of his bow. And there was noise this time. It arrived just moments after the fighters appeared, and it was as deafening as the bright flash had been blinding seconds before.
The dual assault on their senses threw both men for a loop. It was all they could do to keep the two jet fighters in sight as they roared back down the inland waterway, two streams of hot exhaust getting smaller by the instant. Before the captain could give an order, the planes started dropping “bombs” again.
Except they weren’t really bombs. They were flares. Dozens of them were spilling out of the back ends of both aircraft, lighting up the night.
This caused great panic on the
docks. The tremendous noise, the blinding light. The Navy officers could see dockworkers taking cover everywhere as the flares floated down all around them. Some workers even jumped into the water to get away. A moment later, someone killed all the lights around the harbor. When the string of flares petered out, Qartoom was plunged into complete darkness.
The destroyer’s captain ordered his ship’s air-raid alarm to be blown. Among other things, he wanted to wake the crew of his sister ship, docked just a few hundred feet away. It seemed like a good idea. But in reality, the weird electronic crying just caused further panic among the hundreds of dockworkers now scrambling around in the darkness. The planes came back again. This time they released even longer, brighter streams of flares, and it seemed their engines were twice as loud. Amid the clamor of the jets and the ship’s air-raid siren, small scatterings of return gunfire could be heard.
Four of the destroyer’s crewmen charged up to the bridge; one turned on the ship’s air defense radar. The captain was soon huddled over its read-out screen. The jets went by again—more blinding flares, more earsplitting noise. In the glow of the phosphorescence, the officer could now see utter chaos on the docks. Dozens of workers were plunging into the water, leaving crates of cargo wherever they dropped them. Gunfire, the air-raid siren, the screech of jet engines—the multiple dots of light burned into everyone’s eyes, like flashbulbs at a wedding. All over the port, confusion reigned.
And yet the two planes were not showing up on radar.
“This is so strange,” the destroyer’s captain was heard to say. “Perhaps I’m the one still asleep.”
While all this was going on, no one noticed that a helicopter had landed on the roof of the Heavenly Fruits warehouse. The rain of flares was blinding even up here, a quarter-mile away.
Gallant and Curry were flying the Blackhawk. It was the Torch ship troop carrier, but all its external weapons had been removed and cans of aviation fuel had been bolted down in their place. Its benches, radios, and other nonessential equipment inside had been stripped out, too, making more room for more gas.