The biggest administrative headache, as before, was the prisoners, all the worse with the additional confusion of nightfall. That problem would last for at least a day, commanders reported. Fortunately, in most cases the UIR soldiers had water and rations of their own. They were
1346
moved away from their equipment and placed under guard, but this far from home, there was little danger of their striking across the desert on foot.
CLARK AND CHAVEZ left the Russian embassy an hour after nightfall. In the back of their car was a large suitcase whose contents would not appear overly dangerous to anyone, and was in fact largely in keeping with their journalistic cover. The mission, they decided, was slightly crazy, but while that troubled the senior member of the team somewhat, it had Ding rather juiced. The premise of it seemed incredible, however, and that had to be verified. The drive to the alley behind the coffee shop was uneventful. The security perimeter around Daryaei’s home stopped short of their destination. The coffee shop was closed, what with the blackout conditions imposed on a city half at war and half at peace–streetlights were off, and windows draped, but cars were allowed to drive about with lights, and domestic electricity was evidently on. That worked to their benefit. The door lock was easily defeated in the unlit alley. Chavez eased the door open and looked inside. Clark followed, lugging the case, and both men went inside, closing the door behind them. They were already on the second floor when they heard noises. A family lived here. It turned out to be a husband and wife in their fifties, proprietors of the eating place, watching television. Had the mission been properly planned, he knew, they would have established that sooner. Oh, well.
“Hello,” Clark said quietly. “Please do not make any noise.”
“What–”
“We will not hurt you,” John said as Ding looked around for–yes, electric cords would do just fine. “Please lie down on the floor.”
“Who–”
“We will let you go when we leave,” Clark went on in literate Farsi. “But if you resist, we must hurt you.”
They were too terrified to resist the two men who had appeared like thieves in their home. Clark used the light cords to tie their arms, then their ankles. Chavez laid them
1347
on their sides, first getting the woman some water before he gagged her.
“Make sure they can breathe,” Clark said, in English this time. He checked all the knots, pleased that he remembered his basic seamanship skills from thirty years before. Satisfied, they went upstairs.
The truly crazy part was the communications lash-up. Chavez opened the case and started taking things out. The roof of the building was flat, and had a clear line of sight to another such building three blocks away. For that reason, they had to keep low. First of all, Ding set up the mini-dish. The tripod for it was heavy, with spiked feet to secure it to the roof. Next he had to turn it, to get the buzzing chirp of the carrier signal from the proper satellite. That done, he twisted the clamp to lock the dish in place. Then came the camera. This, too, had a tripod. Chavez set that up, screwed the camera in place, and aimed it, switching it on and pointing it at the center of the three buildings that held their interest. Then the cable from the camera went into the transmitter/power-supply box, which they left in the opened suitcase.
“It’s running, John.”
The odd part was that they had an up-link, but not a down-link. They could download signals from the satellite, but there wasn’t a separate audio channel for them to use. For that they needed additional equipment, which they didn’t have.
“THERE IT IS,” Robby Jackson reported from the National Military Command Center.
“That’s the one,” Mary Pat Foley confirmed, looking at the same picture. She dialed a phone number to the American embassy in Moscow, from there to the Russian Foreign Ministry, from there to the Russian embassy in Tehran, and from there by the digital phone in John’s hand. “Do you hear me, Ivan?” she asked in Russian. “It’s Foleyeva.” It took a very long second for the reply to come through.
1348
“AH, MARIA, HOW good to hear your voice.” Thank God for the phone company, John thought to himself, letting out a long breath. Even the one here.
“I have your picture here on my desk,” she said next.
“I was so much younger then.”
“HE’S IN PLACE and everything’s cool,” the DDO said.
“Okay.” Jackson lifted another phone. “It’s a go. I repeat, it’s a go. Acknowledge.”
“Operation BOOTH is go,” Diggs confirmed from Riyadh.
THE IRANIAN AIR defense system was about as tense as it could be. Though no attack at all had been launched into their territory, the radar operators were keeping a close eye on things. They watched several aircraft patrolling the Saudi and Qatari coasts, mainly running parallel, not even pushing toward the center of the waterway.
BANDIT-TWO-FIVE-ONE and BANDIT-TWO-FIVE-TWO completed refueling from their tankers within seconds of each other. It wasn’t often that Stealth fighters operated in unison. They were, in fact, designed to operate entirely alone. But not this time. Both separated from the KC-lOs and turned north for a flight of about one hour, albeit with a thousand feet of vertical separation. The tanker crews remained on station, and used the time to refuel the standing fighter patrol on the Saudi coast, exactly routine for night operations. Fifty miles away, an AW ACS tracked everything–or almost. The E-3B couldn’t detect an F-117, either.
“WE 1CEEP MEETING like this,” the President said to the makeup woman, with forced good humor.
“You look very tired,” Mary Abbot told him.
“I am pretty tired,” Ryan admitted.
1349
“Your hands are shaking.” “Lack of sleep.” This was a lie.
CALLIE WESTON WAS typing alterations to the speech directly into the electronic memory of the TelePrompTer. Even the TV technicians were not allowed to see the content of this one, and in a way she was surprised that she herself was. She finished, scanning the whole thing for typos, which, she’d learned over the years, could be very disconcerting to Presidents on live TV.
SOME OF THEM were smoking, Clark saw, the guards outside. Poor discipline, but maybe it did serve to keep people awake.
“John, you ever think that this job is maybe just a little too exciting?”
“Gotta take a leak?” It was the usual reaction, even for them.
“Yeah.”
“Me, too.” It was something that never made the James Bond movies. “Hmph. I didn’t know that.” Clark pressed the earpiece in, hearing a normal voice, as opposed to one of a known announcer, say that the President would be on in two minutes. Maybe some network director, he thought. With that, the last two items came out of the suitcase.
“MY FELLOW AMERICANS, I am here to give you an updated report on the situation in the Middle East,” the President said without preamble.
“Approximately four hours ago, organized resistance ceased among the forces of the United Islamic Republic which invaded the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Saudi, Kuwaiti, and American forces, working together, have destroyed six divisions in a battle which raged through a night and a day.
“I can now tell you that our country dispatched the
1350
10th and llth Cavalry regiments, plus the First Brigade of the North Carolina National Guard, and the 366th Wing from Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. A massive battle was fought south of King Khalid Military City. You have already seen some of the details on TV. The final UIR units attempted to flee the battlefield to the north, but they were cut off, and after a brief engagement, they began to surrender. Ground combat in the area has, for the moment, concluded.
“I say ‘for the moment,’ because this war is unlike any most of us have known in the past fifty years. An attack was made directly upon our citizens, on our soil. It was an attack deliberately made upon civilians. It was an attack made using a weapon of mass destruction. The violations of international law are too numerous to list,” the President went on, “but it would be wrong to say that this attack was made by the people of the United Islamic Republic upon America.
“Peoples do not make war. The decision to start a war is most often made by one man. They used to be kings, or princes, or barbarian chiefs, but throughout history it’s usually one man who decides, and never is the decision to start a war of aggression the result of a democratic process.
“We Americans have no quarrel with the people of the former Iran and Iraq. Their religion may be different from ours, but we are a country which protects freedom of religion. Their languages may be different, but America has welcomed people of many languages. If America has proven anything to the world, it is that all men are the same, and given the same freedom and the same opportunity, they will all prosper to the limit only of their own abilities.