“True, Hoop, there’s a lot of shit you have to do. Miller can come across behind you after the fighters on the other side of the reservoir are rigged.”
“Leaving Osborne to set it off by himself, and then run in with all hell breaking loose! Jesus! If there’s one patrol, one alert Libyan to give the alarm before that first stun grenade deafens the world and then wakes it up, we are, to coin a phrase, fucked.”
“I’ll be happy to forward your ideas for improvement to the admiral. Really, I take no pride of authorship in this.” Stuart was increasingly unhappy with his plan as they walked it through in the bright light of the desert sun.
Hooper turned, scowled, then grinned and slapped Stuart roughly on the shoulder. “Shit, man, SEALs have done far crazier things than this! Your plan is probably fine! But to make sure your fertile brain doesn’t miss any chance at improving it, I do have one suggestion.”
“Sure, Hoop.”
“When we begin again, after lunch, I want you to suit up and move with us, each element in turn, step by step.”
Stuart smiled. Hoop just wants to see me sweat. “I might slow you shark commandos down.”
“We’ll ensure that you don’t, old buddy.”
The three elements separated to figure out their individual problems. Osborne and Miller worked their way along the line of revetments, crawling up each and placing the shaped charges low on the inside rims. The charges, shaped like Claymore mines, would spew hot metal fragments in a wide arc under the aircraft, and were designed to do maximum damage to tires, external fuel tanks, and weapons slung beneath the fighters’ wings. There were six revetments to be checked, and any containing an aircraft would be mined. After all the mines were in place and wired together, Miller would move around the southern end of the reservoir to watch the backs of the penetration team. Osborne would blow the mines electrically when he heard the stun grenades go off in the Ops Building. Osborne would then make his way to the Ops Building as quickly as possible, following a smaller transverse taxiway that led from the main runway to the Ops Building.
For there to be any chance at all of either Miller or Osborne crossing the north-south runway and the apron after the base was awake, Feeney and Jones had to take out the two BTRs that had been identified as positioned on the apron north of the Ops Building in every recon photo taken since the hijacking. Those vehicles had heavy and light machine guns and would be able to drive right through the front door of the Ops Building if they chose to do so. Feeney and Jones had two options, depending upon how alert the BTR crews appeared to be, how far they were from any shadow deep enough for concealment, and timing. If they could approach the vehicles, they would attach magnetic limpet mines to the lightly armored undersides, which could be set off by remote radio detonators. If the vehicles were positioned to make a direct assault impossible, or, worse yet, if they were moving, Feeney and Jones would each be carrying a Dragon wire-guided missile - a shoulder-fired rocket with a shaped charge powerful enough to penetrate most armor plate. Hooper hoped that Feeney and Jones would reach the Ops Building with their two Dragons still available to stand off any armored cars or tanks that attacked the Ops Building before the paratroopers and heliborne marines landed and made fighting enemy armor their own problem.
Hooper looked at his equipment list on his clipboard. It was impossibly heavy, yet it was not nearly enough for safety. What if a detonator didn’t fire? What if the seals on one of those Dragons leaked underwater? Those armored cars have to be knocked out. I have to think about that element a bit more, he thought, and then he turned his thoughts to penetration of the Ops Building and the securing of the hostages. The entry of the building was the last element to be walked through before the team broke for an early lunch and began putting the whole plan back together. Stuart directed three Israeli soldiers in setting up chairs and tables inside the main hall, and putting cardboard cutouts of men, women, and children in various positions. Six terrorist cutouts were placed among the hostages, the only difference being that the terrorists held guns or grenades. Cutouts with guns or grenades were to be shot; others were not. Very simple in theory, thought Hooper bleakly, as Leah gave the penetration team some pointers about posture and movement that might draw their attention to the terrorists, but bloody difficult in practice. Between each run-through, Stuart repositioned the cutouts.
They drilled and drilled. They approached the windows in sprints and crawls, using the lines and the shadows where they guessed they would be. They lobbed the stun grenades, which made deafening loud bangs and were intended to cause both the hostages and the gunmen to freeze for a second or two, then leapt through the windows, carbines at the ready, selectors on single fire. Cross raced up the ladder in back and threw a dummy frag grenade into the control tower. Hooper, Goldstein, and Ricardo all fired before their feet hit the ground inside, each taking a third of the room. The first time in, they killed five of the six terrorists, but missed one with a pistol and a grenade, and shot up eight hostages. By 1100, they were doing a little better, and they broke for lunch.
Moscow, 0900 GMT (1200 Local)
“We have to tell the Americans something, Comrade General Secretary,” said Doryatkin gently. He and Nevsky had just been admitted to the General Secretary’s overheated office, with its special vaporizer hissing and making the air feel even hotter and very damp. The windows ran with water vapor, and Doryatkin felt his shirt clinging to his chest and armpits as his sweat dripped within it.
Nevsky looked cool and disinterested. Somehow these KGB executioners never sweated, thought the Foreign Minister. The Defense Minister still had not returned from his inspection tour of Warsaw Pact exercises in Hungary, though he had been summoned. Doryatkin missed the bluff old marshal; he would know enough to avoid adventuresome mischief in this situation. The marshal knew the Americans well enough to believe that they would have to act if the hostages were not released, so the Defense Minister would agree with Doryatkin that Russian units should be pulled back and out of harm’s way. The Spetznaz teams were too good to waste pulling the Libyans’ chestnuts out of the fire, especially since they could do little if the Americans came in with a major assault. Soviet reconnaissance overflights had confirmed that the American Sixth Fleet was now at twice its normal strength, with the entry into the Mediterranean yesterday of a second carrier battle group.
The General Secretary dabbed his watery eyes with a handkerchief. He sat slumped in a large leather chair, laboring to breathe. He looked at Nevsky, who nodded and opened a leather portfolio on the table in front of him.
“We have prepared a series of responses, Comrades, to various aggressive and provocative actions we may expect the Imperialists to threaten, or even undertake.” He passed single sheets to the General Secretary and to Doryatkin.
Doryatkin winced as he scanned the sheet. The KGB nearly always opposed the Foreign Ministry; they were natural enemies in that the Foreign Ministry sought to gain favorable positions for the Rodina by negotiating with her adversaries, whereas the KGB preferred to undermine and weaken adversaries directly by means of deceit, disinformation, and espionage. And the KGB had a natural enemy in the Soviet armed forces as well, since the KGB not only had its own military units, but also the right and the duty to infiltrate and spy on the armed forces by means of its Third Directorate. The KGB therefore often proposed policies that frustrated the careful initiatives of the Foreign Ministry, and as often sought to embarrass the military and weaken its influence. Nevsky’s paper, beautifully written in careful socialist logic, sought to further both these objectives at once.
“Comrade Chairman,” Doryatkin looked hard at the head of the KGB, “if we do any of the things you suggest, the Americans will view our actions as provocative! At the same time, since we all agree the Americans will attack if political means fail, our actions will not be effective in deterring them, and we will lose what little influence we retain in the Arab world by looking powerless to defend our friends. We lose both ways.”
>
Doryatkin carefully turned the KGB option paper around and pushed it halfway across the table toward Nevsky, who reddened, though his expression remained one of bland amusement. The General Secretary looked a bit shocked at the Foreign Minister’s sharp words. Good, thought Doryatkin. Maybe I have got his attention.
The General Secretary heaved his frail body up in his chair and reached for the glass of tea in front of him and took a sip. Nevsky and Doryatkin watched as his trembling hands spilled tea on his shirt as he drank. The old man coughed deeply and spat into a folded handkerchief as he slowly ran his finger down the five numbered points of the KGB paper. “Mikhail Ivanovich’s recommendations seem sound, Ilya Antonovich. Surely they will discomfort the Imperialists.” His voice was a querulous wheeze.
Nevsky smiled. Doryatkin spoke quickly. “Just my point, Comrade! Discomfort them, but not deter them! Cause them to trust us even less than they presently do! Cause them to withhold trade, especially in the technological items we desperately need. And when they attack, and we do nothing except lose a few brave Soviet soldiers who we do not even admit are in Libya, the black-asses from Morocco to Afghanistan will laugh in their filthy beards!” Doryatkin did not hold the “black-asses,” as all Muslims were disparaged by Russians, in contempt, but he knew that the General Secretary did, after his long experience in the Soviet Republics east of the Urals. Another blow, however weak, at Nevsky’s ties to Arab revolutionary movements, especially the Libyan Jamahiriya.
The old man blinked and dabbed his eyes. Once again, he seemed startled. Even Nevsky’s expression lost a bit of its composure. The General Secretary pushed the KGB paper gently to one side. “What, then, do you suggest, Ilya Antonovich?”
Doryatkin straightened in his chair. “Since we cannot oppose effectively an American attack upon our miserable Libyan ally, we must make every effort to see that the attack does not occur. We must intervene with Baruni, and anywhere else we have useful influence, to get those American hostages out of Libya. Our public posture will of course be quite different,” Doryatkin paused and favored Nevsky with an agreeable smile, “but we must assure the Americans privately that we will do everything we can to get their citizens out unharmed.”
“Assuring the Americans is, of course, one thing-” began Nevsky.
“No, Comrade, excuse me, but we must do more than give assurances; we must act effectively to get those Americans out.”
“Suppose you succeed, Comrade?” asked Nevsky, quietly and without inflection.
“Then we will have shown ourselves helpful to the Americans and responsible to a world fed up with terrorism.”
“And to the Arabs?”
“The Arabs give lip service to Baruni’s revolution, because they fear him. If we deny him a portion of the stage, the others will thank us, although of course, not publicly. Moreover, if we fail to act and the Americans give Baruni, with his Soviet arsenal and his Soviet advisers, a severe mauling, the other black-asses will thank the Americans, and not us.”
The General Secretary nodded with a shadow of his old vigor, and smiled. “Your ideas deserve consideration, Ilya Antonovich! Don’t you agree, Mikhail Ivanovich?” Nevsky nodded dutifully, his slight smile fixed. “Good. Let us meet and talk further this evening. And now, you are closest to the sideboard, Ilya Antonovich. Why don’t you bring us some vodka?”
Doryatkin rose and smiled broadly as he turned toward the sideboard to pick up the tray with the three different bottles of vodka and glasses. He hadn’t won yet, but he had scotched the KGB paper. Later he would present his own, and with any luck at all, the Defense Minister would be at the meeting and would support him.
Uqba ben Nafi, 0900 GMT (1000 Local)
Abu Salaam had set himself up in a small office in the south wing of the Operations Building. At his request, all Libyans who normally worked in the building had been removed to other locations. He wrote slowly on the lined tablet before him, putting together a statement for the press. He wrote in Arabic, a difficult language even for an educated man. Abu Salaam’s early life in refugee camps had included little formal education.
He looked up from his work as the commander of the tiny infiltration cell entered with two glasses of tea. The young Palestinian was known only as Walid. Abu Salaam smiled and took the tea. All of Walid’s immediate family had been killed by an Israeli bomb in their hovel in a nameless camp in southern Lebanon, and Walid had never used his family name after that. Walid lived only for the struggle, driven by his hatred.
“How are our guests, Walid?”
“Calm, but a little apprehensive, Naqib,” replied Walid. He and the other fighters always addressed their leader as naqib, Arabic for captain.
“I will wish to begin interviewing them this morning, Walid.”
“As you wish, Naqib, but why?”
“I want to know a little about each one. We must choose carefully which are to be executed first.”
Walid smiled crookedly. “There will be executions, then, Naqib?”
Abu Salaam shrugged and smiled a little at the young fighter. “Do the Americans meet our just demands? Are our brothers to be returned to us from Kuwait? Yes, Walid, most assuredly, there will be executions.”
Walid rose from the scarred metal table. “I will send Ahmed to you. He will organize the interviews, and he will translate.” Ahmed had had two years at the American University in Beirut and was proficient in English.
“Good. I will finish this,” Abu Salaam tapped the tablet in front of him, “then we will begin with the aircraft’s commander, in about an hour.”
“Ahmed will be ready, Naqib.”
Abu Salaam nodded and went back to the difficult writing.
Moscow, 1400 GMT (1700 Local)
The afternoon meeting in the General Secretary’s office began precisely at 4:00 p.m. The General Secretary had napped for two hours after lunch, as his doctors required, and looked fresh as he presided. Marshal Tikunin, the Defense Minister, had arrived at Domodedovo Airfield in central Moscow at three and had been driven directly to the meeting. As Doryatkin had expected, the marshal had opposed any effort to tweak the Americans’ noses ineffectively, and he had supported Doryatkin’s arguments in favor of pushing Baruni to take the situation in hand and defuse it. Doryatkin had been surprised, however, to hear the old soldier’s vehement arguments that the Russian advisers help the Libyans if the Americans did attack, albeit anonymously. And so a compromise was reached. Baruni would be told in no uncertain terms to control his protégé, Abu Salaam. Soviet advisers would prepare the Libyans for battle as best they could and manage the battle if it occurred. Nevsky thought better of provoking a confrontation, believing he had won half a loaf.
After the meeting adjourned, Doryatkin and Tikunin hurried back to their offices in the Kremlin and Nevsky to his in Dzerzhinsky Square. In all three offices, communiqués were drafted and encoded. The Foreign Ministry sent its cable first, to the Ambassador to Libya, Fyotr Aleksandrovich Timkin, which began:
TOP SECRET EYES ONLY
AMBASSADOR ONLY
PRIORITY IMMEDIATE
SEE COL. BARUNI AND PUTITTO HIM IN THE STRONGEST TERMS THAT THE SOVIET UNION VIEWS THE PRESENT SITUATION AT UQBA BEN NAFI WITH ALARM AND DEMANDS. . . .
The Defense Minister’s message was for the senior military adviser in Tripoli, General Koslov:
DEFENSE MIN MOST SECRET
IMMEDIATE PERS GENERAL KOSLOV
IMPERATIVE YOU TAKE CONTROL DEFENSE OPERATIONS UQBA BEN NAFI. IMPERATIVE YOU ESTABLISH INDEPENDENT SOVIET REPEAT SOVIET MANEUVER CAPABILITY WITHIN BASE STRONG ENOUGH TO SEIZE CONTROL OF HOSTAGES IF INSTRUCTED. PROCEED WITH EXTREME POLITICAL CAUTION. . . .
The KGB’s message was the longest and was addressed to the senior KGB officer in the embassy, Colonel Ychengko:
KGB MOST SECRET
IMMEDIATE YCHENGKO ONLY DECODE
REQUIRE YOU IDENTIFY BEST INSTRUMENTS FOR UTMOST KGB LOYALTY WITHIN THIRD DIRECTORATE ATTACHED FORCES UQBA BEN NAFI AND ES
TABLISH SECURE COMMUNICATIONS FOR USE KGB ONLY. OPERATION INDEPENDENT SOVARMY MASTERS POSSIBLE. UTMOST CARE. . . .
Each of these messages was sent in a completely different code.
Wadi Rum, the Libyan Desert, 1600 GMT (1700 Local)
Colonel Hassan al-Baruni stood alone in front of his dark brown Berber tent, watching the Soviet Ambassador’s Zil limousine heading north on the dirt track toward the Tripoli highway, trailing a long plume of fine dust. Baruni wrung his hands and shook his head, then began to walk along the edge of the dry wadi. His elite guards watched him from the middle distance. He noticed that two armed female guards began to follow as he walked, while the rest remained around the three parked vehicles: two BTR-60 troop carriers and a Soviet-built ZSU-23-4, an ugly tracked vehicle with four 23mm automatic antiaircraft cannons mounted on a boxy turret on top.
It is good that they watch, thought Baruni, good that they are loyal.
Ambassador Timkin had been unusually blunt. He had smiled as he always did, but his shiny little eyes had reinforced the message of his words. Moscow viewed the events at Uqba ben Nafi with the gravest concern. Neither Moscow nor its esteemed ally, the Libyan Jamahiriya, could be seen to be giving direct support to terrorist acts. Moscow suggested most strongly that Baruni take all possible steps to end the crisis and to take control of the hostages away from the Abu Salaam faction without further delay.
Baruni had agreed to try, though he did not voice his own serious misgivings about the limits of his influence over Abu Salaam. The Russian’s second “suggestion” was perhaps more helpful, though certainly more ominous. Moscow “suggested” that the Soviet advisory team be given a direct role in “organizing” Libyan forces for the defense of Uqba ben Nafi against an assault from the American Sixth Fleet, to ensure, Ambassador Timkin insisted smoothly, that Soviet equipment was used to the best advantage.
They are threatening me! Baruni raged inwardly. The clear implication was that if he refused either “request,” Soviet advisers would distance themselves from him during the hostage problem and would perhaps soon withdraw their support entirely. Baruni knew that more than half his tanks and armored vehicles were presently garaged because of lack of trained Libyans to run or maintain them, and all but his oldest aircraft were flown and maintained by Russians or Cubans or North Koreans. Clearly the whole arsenal would deteriorate rapidly without direct and continuous Soviet support. Baruni wished blackly that Abu Salaam, his once-brilliant protégé, had never returned to Libya.
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