Wings Of Fire

by Dale Brown

  "Good copy, Tin Man," Tanaka replied. "We'll see you shortly."

  Patrick turned to Muhammad as-Sanusi and extended a hand. "You've got yourself a deal, Your Majesty," he said. "My first plane will be here in a few minutes."

  Sanusi issued orders in Arabic, and most of his men raced off in their vehicles. "My men will have the runway, taxiways, and hangars cleared away for your aircraft immediately," he said. He shook Patrick's armored hand. "Welcome to Jaghbub, United Kingdom of Libya. Ahlan wa sahlan, es salaem alekum. You are most welcome." He looked at Patrick's gloved hand, touching the strange BERP fabric and composite exoskeleton with wonder. "I have got to get me a few of these!" he said with glee.

  HUN, UNITED KINGDOM LIBYA SEVERAL HOURS LATER

  Shortly after the 1986 American air attacks, the late Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Qadhafi built a complex called Ginayna-"the Garden"-under the streets of the town of Hun. Ginayna was actually an immense complex of underground tunnels, shelters, alternate command posts, and military storage facilities, extending out several dozen kilometers around the city. Despite its size, it was possible to reach any point of Ginayna from anywhere on foot within an hour. When fully staffed-as it was right nowGinayna housed over thirty thousand persons.

  The complex-five stories underground, shielded by six layers of Kevlar and steel and with its own power generator and air scrubbers, was meant to protect Qadhafi and his personal protection forces in case of another massive attack. It was said that Ginayna was the Doomsday shelter-since a very large majority of the personnel staffing it were women, it was said that Qadhafi planned to repopulate Libya with the personnel housed within Ginayna.

  Jadallah Zuwayy considered Ginayna his primary residence. It was craziness to live anywhere else. He was surrounded by plenty of security, they were safe from most all bombs and missiles-the complex was considered strong enough to withstand anything except a direct hit bj a nuclear weapon-and there were plenty of escape routes out

  "of there. Sure, he lived like a rodent-but better to be a live rodent than a dead king.

  Ginayna was broken into sections controlled by the various branches of the armed services, but Zuwayy stayed mostly in the section reserved as the operational headquarters of the Revolutionary Guard. This was Zuwayy's personal protection force; five thousand men and women, equipped with the best weapons and afforded the best training of all the Libyan armed forces. The main corps of the Revolutionary Guard was the Praetorian Guard, the unit charged with protection of Zuwayy himself, as opposed to all of the king's residences and offices.

  It was the only unit in all of Libya that Zuwayy would trust with this particular group.

  Thirteen men and one woman-that was all that was left of all the persons taken from the Mediterranean Sea during the air attacks on the ships suspected of staging the raid on the missile base at Samah. They were taken and separated from the others for one reason only: They looked, spoke, or behaved like Americans. And of the group, the most important and the most intriguing one was the woman.

  She was hanging, naked, from manacles bolted to a concrete wall. Her strength had given out days ago-she was no longer able to support herself except for a few brief hours every day, so her wrists were blackened and the flesh had been scraped almost to the bone. Her hair was thin and falling out from dehydration; her ribs protruded so far that they appeared as if they would likely pop right through her skin.

  Zuwayy thought she had been very pretty, once. Not anymore.

  The lights were turned on as he stepped into the cell. The one lightbulb was like a red-hot poker to the woman's eyes, but she could not shield them. "Any more information, Sergeant?" Zuwayy asked.

  "No, Your Highness," the jailer responded. "Her response to all questions is 'Help me, please.' No names, no other information."

  Zuwayy examined her. The interrogators had tried every

  possible combination of physical torture, drugs, deprivation, and disorientation to try to break her. He was impressed. "Very strong, very tough young woman," he said. He was surprised when she opened her eyes and moved unsteadily to her feet. "I see you are awake. How are you feeling today, miss?"

  "Help me, please," she muttered through swollen, cracked lips. "Please, sir, help me."

  "I will be glad to help you," Zuwayy said. "All you have to do is tell me your name."

  "Help me. Please."

  "You don't need to resist," Zuwayy said. "Your comrades have told us everything about you. You were responsible for infiltrating and attacking a Libyan military base, then escaping via helicopter to your ship. We know everything. We know you are American commandos, on a secret mission to inspect and, if necessary, destroy our military weapons. You might as well talk. If you do, we will treat you like a combatant instead of a spy and afford you treatment under the Geneva Conventions. Do you know what that means?"

  "Please, Your Highness ... please, help me, I beg you... ."

  "I see you recognize who I am? Good! I can guarantee you much better treatment, everything to which a captured combatant is entitled-food, water, clothing, medical attention, and contact with the International Red Cross."

  "Please ... help ..."

  "But under the Geneva Conventions, as you know, you must first tell me your name, rank, serial number, and date of birth," Zuwayy went on. "We'll start with your name. That is not a violation of your oath as an American soldier. It is not a national secret. You won't be disgraced or prosecuted by your government, I assure you. Most of your comrades have already told me this information, and that's why they are no longer in here with you-they are being fed, they have seen a doctor, and they have even filled out their Red Cross contact cards."

  "Please, Your Highness ... please, help me? I beg you...."

  This was getting nowhere, he thought-the same mindless imprinted resistance babble for days on end. "Where is that band she was wearing?" Zuwayy asked.

  The guard brought it to him. "We have determined it is some kind of power source," the guard said. "We searched her body and found this." He showed Zuwayy a device about the size of a tack. "It is some kind of transceiver. We checked it; it is deactivated. It may have been some sort of locator, perhaps even a communications device."

  "Did the others have it?"

  "No, Highness. She could be valuable...."

  "Or she could be a real danger," Zuwayy said. "If she was missing, she'd be just another casualty-but here, she could destroy us if they found out she was alive."

  "Torture doesn't seem to be working, Highness," the guard said. "Maybe we should try nursing her back to health. We can always eliminate her later."

  "Perhaps ..."

  "Help me ... please, Highness, help me ... I beg you...."

  Zuwayy reared back and slapped her across the face with the back of his left hand. There was no blood-her face, in fact most of her extremities, had long ago lost the ability to bleed. "Stop begging to me, bitch! You disgust me, you weak sniveling American whore! What is your job onboard your ship-servicing the real warriors, the real soldiers? Are you the unit's traveling whore? Why are we even bothering with this one? We won't learn any information from prostitutes. Throw her disease-infected body into the trash with the other garbage."

  "Please ... please, help me...."

  "Your name, whore," Zuwayy snarled. "All I want is your name. First name, last name, it doesn't matter. Is keeping that useless bit of information from us worth risking your life? When was the last time you felt your fingers? When was the last time you had a drink of water? We will give you proper medical care and start treating you like a human being and an American soldier instead of a stupid American cocksucker if you will only tell us your name."

  No response. She looked as if she might pass out-she was beginning to slump against her chains again. "One last time, bitch-your name. Right now." Again, no response.

  She is strong, Zuwayy thought. But they were wasting too much time with her. She was a novelty because she was a woman-one of the few captur
ed-but it was too risky keeping a woman imprisoned in a place like this. "Has she made any contact with any of the others?" Zuwayy asked the jailer. "Talking, tap code, hand signs, anything?"

  "No, Highness. When they were together, they did not even look at each other. They never tried to communicate."

  Very well-trained indeed. He examined her face once more. Her eyes were ready to roll back into her head; her tongue was swollen and almost black; and blood was seeping from her eyes, ears, and mouth. "Get rid of her," Zuwayy said. "She's practically dead already. Bury her in the desert. The last thing we need is for her to be caught in here like this. Make it quick, and make it untraceable. I want to see the others."

  Zuwayy was almost out of the cell when he heard her mutter behind him-and it didn't sound like "Help me, please" this time. He turned and went back to her. She had completely slumped against her chains now. He grabbed her hair and yanked her head up. "What did you say, bitch? Repeat! What did you say?" She muttered something unintelligible. He put his ear as close as he dared to her lips. "Speak up! What did you say?"

  Through her cracked lips and swollen tongue, he heard her utter, "M ... Me ... McLanahan," just before she passed out again.

  JAGHBUB, LIBYA SEVERAL HOURS LATER

  It was hard, steamy, sweaty work-no other way to describe it; and there was no other way to do it except virtually by hand. At first Patrick McLanahan spelled trie flight crew in the cockpit while the plane was being refueled-

  they had to use water pumps and fire hoses to get the fuel out of the underground storage tanks, and then gravityfeed it into each of the Megafortress's twelve fuel tanks. Patrick kept one engine running through the entire refueling just in case they came under attack and he had to start all the other engines, but he acknowledged to himself that there was almost no chance of getting the Megafortress off the ground unless they had at least twenty minutes' warning. But in about a day, the EB-52 Megafortress bomber was fully fueled.

  King Idris the Second of Libya, Muhammad as-Sanusi, was nowhere to be seen until dawn, out on patrol all night with his "Sandstorm" desert warriors. The effects of the electromagnetic pulse had subsided, so Sanusi could maintain radio contact with his men while taking a closer look at Mersa Matruh. "The destruction is total, my friend," he told Patrick after he returned, putting a hand on Patrick's sweat-bathed shoulder. "The dead are everywhere-it is the most horrible sight I've ever seen. I know you told me it would be safe to go there, that the radiation dissipates almost immediately, but my men refused to go near the place, and I chose not to force them. I am truly sorry, McLanahan. Very sorry." Patrick nodded-he was beyond feeling sorrow or despair. Once the Megafortress touched down on Jaghbub's runway, he was all business again. "Very cool bird you have here, Mr. McLanahan," he said. "Unreal."

  "Thanks."

  "So you will be departing soon?"

  "I assume that the Libyans will start getting curious about Jaghbub and send a force down from Tobruk or Benghazi to investigate," Patrick said. "I'll bet scouts are already on the way. The bomber needs to be gone by then. We can have a special-operations aircraft meet us here tonight to get us out of the country."

  "Well, we're as ready as we can be," Sanusi said. "My men picked up some shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles from their underground arsenal, and we've taken them out so we might have a chance of tagging an attack helicopter

  or two before it gets close enough to lob a missile in on us."

  Patrick didn't like hearing that. "What will you do, Your Highness?"

  "I need enough time to cart the weapons away, that's all," Sanusi said. "I've called for all the men I can muster, but they won't start filtering in for several hours. Once they get here, I'll load up as many weapons and as much fuel as I can carry, then head off to our desert bases. But we know Zuwayy's scouts will be back here before long-like you said, they could be here tomorrow morning, or even tonight." He paused, then nodded at the EB-52 Megafortress. "We sure could use your little toy there to help us hold off the heavies."

  It was risky-too risky. The EB-52 had enough fuel to make it to Scotland, where a Sky Masters Inc. DC-10 I aircraft could meet them to refuel and take them back to the States. Jon Masters used to have secret deals with the British government to use their facilities in emergencies-perhaps that still held true. Bottom line: They had a pretty good chance of making it out of here if they got out tonight.

  But Patrick also knew that angry Libyan soldiers could surround Muhammad Sanusi and his men any minute now. He couldn't just leave these guys to their fate. He spoke: "Patrick to Luger."

  "Go ahead, Muck," David Luger responded. Sanusi shook his head and again silently marveled at the technology these Americans possessed.

  "Let's get the Megafortress uploaded with target information for Zillah Air Base and Al-Jawf Rocket Base," Patrick said. "We'll have to use the intel we got from the Egyptians."

  "It's several days old, and a lot of shit has happened since then," Luger pointed out.

  "I don't think we have any choice," Patrick said. "Time's running out. We need to ..." Just then Sanusi received a frantic call on his portable radio. "Stand by, Dave."

  "I'm afraid time may have run out already," Sanusi said. "My scouts reported a convoy of four tanks af?d five armored personnel carriers heading south. They're about

  forty kilometers north of here, coming fast. They have also seen several helicopter patrols heading this way, but they have lost contact."

  "Low-level helicopters-could be attackers," Patrick said. "Dave, let's get the Megafortress ready to launch. Me, Chris, and Hal will have to go out with the king and his men and see what we can do, but if the helicopters get past us, the Megafortress will fight better in the air."

  The Sanusi Brotherhood "Sandstorm" warriors raced across the desert at full throttle in their jeeps and Humvees, leaping up and over sand dunes and gullies at more than sixty miles an hour. If they encountered a minefield, Patrick was sure they'd never set any mines off because they hardly touched earth at all. They passed the remains of one Mil Mi-8 helicopter gunship, downed by one of the warriors with a Stinger shoulder-fired missile; a few kilometers away, they found the remains of the warriors and their vehicle, blasted apart into a twisted hunk of burning metal and human tissue.

  "Sorry about your men, Your Highness," Chris Wohl offered over the roar of their speeding vehicle. "They took on a gunship and defeated it."

  "I wish I could say that their death made a difference, or that they will find peace in God's hands as a reward," Muhammad as-Sanusi said. "All I can tell their families and their fellow warriors is that they died trying to win back a kingdom we all believe in so much. All the others can hope for is the chance that their death might rally others to our cause. We shall see."

  They proceeded another few miles until they met up with one of the Sanusi Brotherhood patrols on a slight rise, about two miles west of the Tobruk-Jaghbub highway. From there they crawled over to the edge of the rise, where they could see the oncoming Libyan scouts approaching, now about five miles away.

  "I think I found the one thing this battle armor doesn't do very well-you can't fight very well on sand," Hal

  Briggs observed. "You sure as hell can't crawl around with it, and the thrusters don't work very well unless you find a patch of hard-packed sand."

  "All true-that's why we can't fight like the king does," Patrick said. "Your Highness, I recommend you stay in hiding and keep an eye out for newcomers or anyone who tries to escape. We'll engage-our way."

  "We could use a few of those tanks and armored personnel carriers, Tor," Sanusi said, using his new nickname for Patrick in his battle armor, "Tor," meaning "bull." "Try not to destroy all of them, my friend." Patrick nodded and moved off. Patrick had Hal circle around to cross over to the east side of the highway, keeping Chris on the west side. Patrick took the middle-the highway itself.

  The line of Libyan armor was following the highway but staying well off of it, spread out about a mile either si
de of the highway. The armored vehicles stayed on the roadthey were wheeled, not tracked-with gunners at the ready in the cupolas. The armored vehicles had AT-2 antitank missiles fitted out on the front of the vehicles along with a fifty-seven-millimeter rapid-fire cannon and a 12.7-millimeter machine gun for the commander; the tanks were ex-Russian T-60s with one-hundred-ten-millimeter main guns. They were not moving very quickly-they were probably playing it cautious after losing contact with their helicopter gunship.

  The commander of the lead armored vehicle was surprised to see a lone figure standing in the middle of the highway when he crested the slight rise in the highway. He was standing right there, not moving or attempting to get away or hide. He might have been a hitchhiker-except for the weird head-to-toe outfit he wore. Both armored personnel carriers' fifty-seven-millimeter cannons trained on the solitary figure as they approached, but the stranger did not move.

  "Wa'if hena," the lead APC commander ordered. The stranger was dressed unlike anyone he had ever seen. It resembled a chemical warfare exposure suit, whichrts why he ordered his column to halt-if there were biochem

  weapons around, he didn't want to go charging in blindly. "What in hell does he think he's doing?"

  "What kind of uniform is that?" the other commander radioed in response. "Could it be one of our men, maybe a survivor from Jaghbub? Maybe that's a protective suit he's wearing. Who else would be stupid enough to be walking right up to an armored patrol unarmed in the middle of the day?"

  "Ordinarily I'd say yes-but we just lost contact with one of our scout helicopters, which means everyone's an enemy until we find out otherwise. Stay back: I'll go have a chat with him. Everyone else, stay alert." He ordered his men to dismount. Eight heavily armed Libyan soldiers ran out of the back of the APC and took up defensive positions on either side of the highway. The lead APC then began to roll forward toward the stranger.