THE TRANSFER WAS called Operation CUSTER. All forty aircraft were aloft now, each carrying roughly 250 soldiers in a sky train six thousand miles long. The lead aircraft were now six hours out from Dhahran, leaving Russian airspace and overflying Ukraine.
The F-15 pilots had traded waves with a handful of Russian fighters which had come up to say hello. They were tired now. Their rumps were like painful lead from all the time in the same seat–the airliner pilots behind them could get up and move around; they even had toilets, quite a luxury for a fighter pilot who had an appliance called a relief tube. Arms tightened up. Muscles were sore from staying in the same position. It was to the point that tanking from their KC-135s was becoming difficult, and gradually they came to the opinion that an air-to-air engagement an hour out from their destination might not
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be much fun at all. Most drank coffee, tried to shift hands on the stick, and stretched as much as they could.
The soldiers were mainly sleeping, still ignorant of the nature of their mission. The airlines had stocked their aircraft normally, and the troops indulged what would be their last chance to have a drink for some time to come. Those who had deployed to Saudi in 1990 and 1991 told their, war stories, chief among which was the memory that the Kingdom wasn’t a place you went to for the nightlife.
NEITHER WAS INDIANA, Brown and Holbrook had found, at least not now. They had at least been smart enough to get into a motel before the general panic, and here they were trapped. This motel, like the ones they’d used in Wyoming and Nebraska, catered to truckers. It had a large restaurant, the old-fashioned sort with a counter and booths, and now with masked waitresses and customers who didn’t group closely together to socialize. Instead, they ate their meals and went back to their rooms, or to sleep in their trucks. There was a daily dance of sorts. The trucks had to be moved, lest staying in the exact same spot damage the tires. Everyone listened to the radio for hourly news broadcasts. The rooms, the restaurant, and even some of the trucks had televisions for further information and distraction. There was boredom, the tense sort familiar to soldiers but not known to the two Mountain Men.
“Goddamned government,” a furniture hauler said. He had family two states away.
“I guess they showed us who was boss, eh?” Ernie Brown said, for general consumption.
Later, data would show that not a single interstate trucker had caught the virus. Their existence was too solitary for that. But their working lives depended on movement, both because they earned their living that way and because they had chosen to do so. Sitting still was not in their nature. Being told to sit still was even less so.
“What the hell,” another driver added. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Goddamned glad I got outa Chicago when I did. That news is scary.”
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“You suppose this all makes sense?” someone asked.
“Since when does the government make sense?” Hoi-brook griped.
“I hear that,” a voice chimed in, and finally the Mountain Men felt at home somewhere. Then, by unspoken consent, it was time for them to leave.
“How the hell much longer will we be stuck here, Pete?” Ernie Brown wanted to know.
“You’re askin’ me?”
“A WHOLE LOT of nothing,” concluded the lead agent. Aref Raman was a little neat for a single man living alone, but not grossly so. One of the FBI agents had noted with surprise that even the man’s socks were neatly folded, along with everything else in the bureau drawers. Then one of the group remembered a study of NFL football players. A psychologist had determined after months of study that offensive linemen, whose job was to protect the quarterback, had neat lockers, while defensive linemen, whose job it was to pound the opposing quarterbacks into the turf, were slobs in every respect. It was good for a laugh, and an explanation. Nothing else was found. There was a photo of his parents, both dead. He subscribed to two news magazines, had the full cable options for his two televisions, had no booze in the house, and ate healthy. He had a particular affinity for kosher hot dogs, judging by the freezer. There were no hidden drawers or compartments– they would have found them–and nothing the least bit suspicious. That was both good news and bad.
The phone rang. Nobody answered it, because they weren’t there, and they had beepers and cellular phones for their own communications needs.
“Hello, this is 536-3040,” the recording of Raman’s voice said, after the second ring. “Nobody’s here to answer the phone right now, but if you leave a message, somebody will get back to you.” Followed by a beep, and in this case, a click.
“Wrong number,” one of the agents said.
“Pull the messages,” the lead agent ordered the technical genius on the team.
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Raman owned a digital recording system, and again there was a punch code programmed in by the manufacturer. The agent hit the six digits and another took notes. There were three clicks and a wrong number. Somebody calling for Mr. Sloan, whoever that was.
“Rug? Mr. Alahad?”
“Sounds like the name of a rug dealer,” another one said. But when they looked around, there was no such rug in the apartment, just the usual cheap wall-to-wall carpet you found in apartments of this type.
“Wrong number.”
“Run the names anyway.” It was more habit than anything else. You checked everything. It was like working FCI. You just never knew.
Just then the phone rang again, and all five of the agents turned to stare at the answering machine, as though it were a real witness with a real voice.
SHIT, RAMAN THOUGHT, he’d forgotten to erase the messages from before. There was nothing new. His control officer hadn’t called again. It would have been a surprise if he had. With that determined, Raman, sitting in a Pittsburgh hotel room, punched the erase-all code. One nice thing about the new digitals was that, once erased, they were gone forever. That wasn’t necessarily true of the ones using tape cassettes.
THE FBI AGENTS took note of that, sharing looks.
“Hey, we all do that.” There was general agreement. And everybody got wrong numbers, too. And this was a brother officer. But they’d run the numbers anyway.
SURGEON, TO THE relief of her detail, was sleeping upstairs in the residence. Roy Altman and the rest assigned to guard her had been going crazy with her on the fever ward–their term for it–at Johns Hopkins, as much from the physical danger as for the fact that she
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had run herself right into the ground. The kids, being kids, had spent the time like most other American children, watching TV and playing under the eyes of their agents, who now worried about seeing the onset of flu symptoms, blessedly absent from the entire campus. SWORDSMAN was in the Situation Room.
“What’s the time there?”
“Ten hours ahead, sir.”
“Make the call,” POTUS ordered.
THE FIRST 747, in United livery, crossed into Saudi airspace a few minutes earlier than expected, due to favorable arctic winds. A more circuitous routing at this point would not have helped very much. Sudan had airports and radars, too, as did Egypt and Jordan, and it was assumed that the UIR had informants somewhere in those countries. The Saudi Air Force, augmented by the F-16Cs which had sneaked in from Israel the previous day as part of BUFFALO FORWARD, stood combat air patrol along the Saudi-UIR border. Two E-3B AW ACS were up and turning their rotodornes. The sun was rising now in that part of the world–at least one could see first light from their cruising altitude, though the surface, six miles below, was still black.
“GOOD MORNING, PRIME Minister. This is Jack Ryan,” the President said.
“A pleasure to hear your voice. It is late in Washington, is it not?” she asked.
“We both work irregular hours. I imagine your day is just beginning.”
“So it is,” the voice answered. Ryan had a conventional receiver to his ear. The conversation was on speakerphone as well, and feeding into a digital tape recorder. The CIA had even supplied a voice-stress analyzer. “Mr. President, the troubles in your country, have they improved?”
“We have some hope, but, no, not quite yet.”
“Is there any way in which we might be of assistance?”
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Neither voice showed the least emotion beyond the false amity of people suspicious of each other, and trying to hide it.
“Well, yes, actually, there is.”
“Please, then, how may we be of help?”
“Prime Minister, we have some ships heading through the Arabian Sea at the moment,” Ryan told her.
“Is that so?” Total neutrality in the voice.