Part 15 (1/2)

fries, an hour in a marble bathtub, and a big soft bed grab you?” ”By the b.a.l.l.s,” laughed Martin. ”Right. Colonel, your man gets a suite at the Hyatt down the road for twenty-four hours, courtesy of my people. Agreed?” ”Okay. See you this time tomorrow, Mike,” said Craig. On the short drive to the hotel opposite CENTAF headquarters, Martin gave Laing and Barber a translation of the Jericho message. Laing made verbatim notes. ”That's it,” said Barber. ”The air boys will go in there and blow it away.” It required Chip Barber to check the soiled Iraqi peasant into the best suite in the Hyatt, and when he was settled, Barber left to cross the road to the Black Hole. Martin had his hour in the deep, steaming bath and used the complimentary gear to shave and shampoo, and when he came out, the steak and fries were on a tray in the sitting room. He was halfway through the meal when sleep overtook him. He just managed to make the wide soft bed next door, then he was asleep. While he slept, a number of things happened. Freshly pressed shorts, trousers, socks, shoes, and s.h.i.+rt were delivered to his sitting room. In Vienna, Gidi Barzilai sent the operational details of the Jericho numbered account to Tel Aviv, where an identical replica was prepared with the appropriate wording. Karim met Edith Hardenberg when she left the bank after work, took her for a coffee, and explained that he had to return to Jordan for a week to visit his mother, who was sick. She accepted his reason, held his hand, and told him to hurry back to her as soon as he could. Orders went out from the Black Hole to the air base at Taif where a TR1 spy plane was preparing to take off for a mission to the far north of Iraq, to take further pictures of a major weapons complex at As-Sharqat. The mission was given a new task with fresh map coordinates, specifically to visit and photograph an area of a range of hills in the northern sector of the Jebal al Hamreen. When the squadron commander protested the sudden change, he was told the orders were cla.s.sified as ”Jeremiah directs.” The protest ended. The TR-1 took off just after two, and by four, its images were appearing on the screens inside the designated conference room down the corridor from the Black Hole. There was cloud and rain over the Jebal that day, but with its infrared and thermal imaging radar, the ASARS-2 device that defies cloud, rain, hail, sleet, snow, and darkness, the spy plane got its pictures anyway. They were studied as they arrived by Colonel Beatty of the USAF and Squadron Leader Peck of the RAF, the two top photoreconnaissance a.n.a.lysts in the Black Hole. The planning conference began at six. There were only eight men present. In the chair was General Horner's deputy, the equally decisive but more jovial General Buster Glosson. The two intelligence officers, Steve Laing and Chip Barber, were there because it was they who had brought the target and knew the background to its revelation. The two a.n.a.lysts, Beatty and Peck, were required to explain their interpretation of the pictures of the area. And there were three staff officers, two American and one British, who would note what had to be done and ensure that it was. Colonel Beatty opened with what was to become the leitmotif of the conference. ”We have a problem here,” he said.

”Then explain it,” said the general.

”Sir, the information provided gives us a grid reference. Twelve figures, six of longitude and six of lat.i.tude. But it is not a SATNAV reference, pinning the area down to a few square yards. We are talking about one square kilometer. To be on the safe side, we enlarged the area to one square mile.”

”So?”

”And there it is.”

Colonel Beatty gestured to the wall. Almost the entire s.p.a.ce was covered by a blown-up photograph, high-definition, computer- enhanced, and covering six feet by six. Everyone stared at it.

”I don't see anything,” said the general. ”Just mountains.”

”That, sir, is the problem. It isn't there.”

The attention switched to the spooks. It was, after all, their intelligence.

”What,” said the general slowly, ”is supposed to be there?”

”A gun,” said Laing.

”A gun?”

”The so-called Babylon gun.”

”I thought you guys had intercepted all of them at the manufacturing stage.”

”So did we. Apparently one got through.”

”We've been through this before. It's supposed to be a rocket, or a secret fight-bomber base. No gun can fire a payload that big.”

”This one can, sir. I've checked with London. A barrel over one hundred and eighty meters long, a bore of one meter. A payload of over half a ton. A range of up to a thousand kilometers, according to the propellant used.”

”And the range from here to the Triangle?”

”Four hundred and seventy miles, or 750 kilometers. General, can your fighters intercept a sh.e.l.l?””No.””Patriot missiles?””Possibly, if they're in the right place at the right time and can spot it in time. Probably not.””The point is,” interjected Colonel Beatty, ”gun or missile, it's not there.””Buried underground, like the Al Qubai a.s.sembly factory?” suggested Barber.”That was disguised with a car junkyard on top,” said Squadron Leader Peck. ”Here there's nothing. No road, no tracks, no power lines, no defenses, no helipad, no razor wire, no guard barracks-just a wilderness of hills and low mountains with valleys between.””Supposing,” said Laing defensively, ”they used the same trick as at Tarmiya-putting the defense perimeter so far out, it was off the frame?””We tried that,” said Beatty. ”We looked fifty miles out in all directions. Nothing-no defenses.””Just a pure deception operation?” proposed Barber.”No way. The Iraqis always defend their prize a.s.sets, even from their own people. Look-see here.”Colonel Beatty advanced to the picture and pointed out a group of huts.”A peasant village, right next door. Woodsmoke, goat pens, goats here out foraging in the valley. There are two others off the frame.””Maybe they hollowed out the whole mountain,” said Laing. ”You did, at Cheyenne Mountain.””That's a series of caverns, tunnels, a warren of rooms behind reinforced doors,” said Beatty. ”You're talking about a barrel 180 meters long. Try to get that inside a mountain, you'd bring the whole d.a.m.n thing down on top. Look, gentlemen, I can see the breech, the magazine, all the living quarters being underground, but a chunk of that barrel has to stick out somewhere. It doesn't.” They all stared at the picture again. Within the square were three hills and a portion of a fourth. The largest of the three was unmarked by any blastproof doors or access road. ”If it's in there somewhere,” proposed Peck, ”why not saturate-bomb the square mile? That would bring down any mountain on top of the weapon.” ”Good idea,” said Beatty. ”General, we could use the Buffs. Paste the whole square mile.” ”May I make a suggestion?” asked Barber. ”Please do,” said General Glosson. ”If I were Saddam Hussein, with his paranoia, and I had one single weapon of this value, I'd have a man in command I could trust. And I'd give him orders that if ever the Fortress came under bombing attack, he was to fire. In short, if the first couple of bombs fell wide-and a square mile is quite a big area-the rest might be a fraction of a second too late.” General Glosson leaned forward. ”What is your precise point, Mr. Barber?” ”General, if the Fist of G.o.d is inside these hills, it is hidden by a deception operation of extreme skill. The only way to be a hundred percent certain of destroying it is by a similar operation. A single plane, coming out of nowhere, delivering one attack, and hitting the target on the b.u.t.ton the first and only time.” ”I don't know how many times I have to say this,” said the exasperated Colonel Beatty, ”but we don't know where the b.u.t.ton is-precisely.”

”I think my colleague is talking about target-marking,” said Laing.

”But that means another airplane,” objected Peck. ”Like the Buccaneers marking for the Tornados. Even the target-marker must see the target first.”

”It worked with the Scuds,” said Laing.

”Sure, the SAS men marked the missile launchers, and we blew them away. But they were right there on the ground, a thousand yards from the missiles with binoculars,” said Peck.

”Precisely.”

There was silence for several seconds.

”You are talking,” said General Glosson, ”of putting men into the mountains to give us a ten-square-yard target.”

The debate went on for two more hours. But it always came back to Laing's argument.

First find it, then mark it, then, destroy it-and all without the Iraqis noticing until it was too late.

At midnight a corporal of the Royal Air Force went to the Hyatt Hotel.

He could get no reply from the sitting-room door, so the night manager let him in. He went into the bedroom and shook by the shoulder the man sleeping in a terrycloth robe on top of the bed.

”Sir, wake up, sir. You're wanted across the road, Major.”

Chapter 22.

”It's there,” said Mike Martin two hours later. ”Where?” asked Colonel Beatty with genuine curiosity. ”In there somewhere.” In the conference room down the corridor from the Black Hole, Martin was leaning over the table studying a photograph of a larger section of the Jebal al Hamreen range. It showed a square five miles by five miles. He pointed with his forefinger. ”The villages, the three villages-here, here, and here.” ”What about them?” ”They're phony. They're beautifully done, they're perfect replicas of the villages of mountain peasants, but they're full of guards.” Colonel Beatty stared at the three villages. One was in a valley only half a mile from the middle of the three mountains at the center of the frame. The other two occupied terraces on the mountain slopes farther out. None was big enough to support a mosque; indeed, they were little more than hamlets. Each had its main and central barn for the storage of winter hay and feed, and smaller barns for the sheep and goats. A dozen humble shacks made up the rest of the settlements, mud-brick dwellings with thatch or tin roofs of the kind that can be seen anywhere in the mountains of the Middle East. In summer there might be small patches of tilled crops nearby, but not in winter. Life in the mountains of Iraq is harsh in winter, with slanting bitter rain and scudding clouds. The notion that all parts of the Middle East are warm is a popular fallacy. ”Okay, Major, you know Iraq, I don't. Why are they phony?” ”Life-support system,” said Martin. ”Too many villages, too many peasants, too many goats and sheep. Not enough forage. They'd starve.”

”s.h.i.+t,” said Beatty with feeling. ”So d.a.m.n simple.”

”That may be, but it proves Jericho wasn't lying, or mistaken again. If they've done that, they're hiding something.”

Colonel Craig, commanding officer of the 22nd SAS, had joined them in the bas.e.m.e.nt. He had been talking quietly to Steve Laing. Now he came over.

”What do you reckon, Mike?”

”It's there, Bruce. One could probably see it-at a thousand yards with good binoculars.”

”The bra.s.s wants to put a team in to mark it. You're out.”

”Bulls.h.i.+t, sir. These hills are probably alive with foot patrols. You can see there are no roads.”

”So? Patrols can be avoided.”

”And if you run into any? There's no one speaks Arabic like me, and you know it. Besides, it's a HALO drop. Helicopters won't work either.”

”You've had all the action you need, so far as I can gather.”

”That's c.r.a.p, too. I haven't seen any action at all. I'm fed up with spooking. Let me have this one. The others have had the desert for weeks, while I've been tending a garden.”

Colonel Craig raised an eyebrow. He had not asked Laing exactly what Martin had been up to-he would not have been told anyway-but he was surprised one of his best officers had been posing as a gardener.