It was windy there, high above Jabal al-Harim, outside the shepherd's cave overlooking the Straits of Hormuz in which they had passed the night. Below them lay the sea, and in the near distance, beyond the rust-colored headlands of the southern Iranian coastline, an assortment of arid, sandy islets sparkled in the just-risen sun.

Their journey had been a long one and fraught with many dangers. But God had been with them and his mighty hand had preserved them from all harm. When they emerged from the cave and saw the hawk circling overhead, his talons clutching the snake that was his prey, both knew that their mission would prove successful.

They had spent the better part of an hour carefully picking their way along a narrow, winding path to the surface of the windy promontory. Their two horses were laden with gear and often lost their footing. Yet that power that had preserved them from detection across great obstacles and distances protected them still and they reached the precipice without mishap.

The two were brothers. Not siblings but brothers in arms, brothers in mission, brothers in devotion to their holy cause. Their skills complemented one another's, yet their personal histories were as different as fire and ice. In the night before the mission they had talked, permitting themselves just this once to reflect on things they had not spoken of before.

The one who had taken the name Mabrouk, the Blessed One, stared into the cooking fire and saw images from his past life rise up in the flames. First the suburbs of Indianapolis, then the drugs and the flirtation with the skinheads at the Aryan Nations camp at Hayden Lake, Idaho, where he had marched and shouted himself hoarse and saluted the leader with the rest. Then the disillusionment and the angry leave-taking. After that the drugs again and the attempts at suicide, until he had finally found the light of God.

With this light had come renewed purpose. The skills learned in Idaho had given him an edge over many of the other recruits, and besides, he was a fast learner. There was also the connection between the neo-Nazi movement and his new life. Those days with the Nations had not been entirely in vain. There the leader had introduced him to Wolfram Krieger, a man who was to be the bridge between two worlds, and a reconciler of both. In the end Krieger had helped Mabrouk to realize that the martyrdom operation would be the culmination of his entire life.

The second one, who called himself Thawra, Revolution, now also going through the procedures he had trained to carry out until he knew them in his sleep, had come from a very different background. The slums of Cairo had nurtured his hatred for the satanic enemy. He had pledged to fight this enemy, to destroy it, even if it meant sacrificing his own life to accomplish his ends.

He had trained with Mabrouk, and though Mabrouk had come from the enemy's homeland, Thawra had embraced him as a brother. Still, Mabrouk could never truly be a friend. His blue eyes, his blond hair, his pale skin, all of these marked him as kufr, one of the infidel pit creatures, those who were al-haram, the unclean. Still, this American had proven himself through many trials; Thawra admitted grudgingly that he could be trusted. But only up to a point. Beyond that, never.

Now Mabrouk unshipped the olive-drab military transport canister from his saddle and dragged it across the dusty surface of the plateau. When he reached the edge of the promontory he squatted down, unsecured its latches, and removed what was packed inside it.

Thawra was also at work. He set up the parabolic antenna on a tripod base, pushing the sharp spikes into the firm subsoil beneath the weathered sand crust to stabilize it. He then snapped open a rectangular milspec case. Inside was nestled a battlefield computer.

Thawra pulled out the keyboard, coupled the parabolic antenna cable to one of the unit's interface connectors, then powered on and booted the unit. It required another few minutes to input commands using the keyboard and integrated mouse. With the ground-based unit now tracking the satellite, Thawra looked toward his comrade and signaled.

Mabrouk nodded and returned to his task. He too was almost finished with the assembly procedure. The firing tube now squatted on its mounting platform and he was behind the unit, sighting through the target-designator scope.

Their preliminary tasks now completed, the two men watered their horses, unpacked and heated rations, then fed themselves. Then they unrolled prayer mats and pointed themselves westward, toward Mecca, engaging in the afternoon devotions. Their hunger satisfied, their peace made with heaven, they rolled the prayer mats back up and stowed them in the saddlebags. Then they returned to their stations.

The sun was now beginning to sink. Soon it would be dusk. They knew that their expected target would approach the killing zone just before sunset, but they did not know precisely when it would be within optimum range of the weapon. The task of pinpointing this moment was entrusted to Thawra, who operated the computer.

Their chance was not long in coming. Mabrouk, squatting behind the weapon, soon heard Thawra warn that the target was approaching. Soon Mabrouk could see it with his unaided eye, a small, toylike speck glinting in the reflected golden rays of the sun as it slanted over the coast of the Arabian Peninsula directly behind them.

Mabrouk now gave all his attention to the weapon and his appointed task. With his eyes pressed into the rubber cups of the spotter scope, he now saw a magnified image of the ship. He pressed the initiator switch and began tracking the target.

Forward and to the right of the launcher, a laser emitter fired invisible pulses of coherent light at the near side of the vessel's hull. An auto-ranging processor in the launcher analyzed the laser pulses as they were reflected back from the ship. Soon the launcher indicated that the target was acquired.

Mabrouk pressed the trigger and launched the round.

The projectile arced out over the windswept abyss expelling a contrail of billowing white smoke. Seconds later the booster stage flamed out and its main solid-fuel engine executed a burn that rapidly propelled the projectile upward to its tracking altitude of six hundred feet. Once it was there, a parachute popped from its rear. Gravity pointed the round downward.

Slowed by drag, the round began to fall into the Gulf.

Behind the Plexiglas dome set in the center of its nose, an infrared tracking head mounted on gimbals began to swivel, and behind this assembly, a guidance-control module began to interpret the data that the sensor was now acquiring. This module, a small rectangular printed circuit board, was not the original supplied by the manufacturer, Bofors of Sweden.

The Stryx system had been designed as a tank-killer, not a ship-killer. The original module contained a library, in ROM, of known MBT, APC, and other mechanized armor signatures against which it would match data input from the IR nose sensor. The new module had been prepared in an underground laboratory in the city of Thumrait, one of the many burgeoning suburbs of Baghdad, by technical staff attached to the Iraqi mukhabarat, or intelligence service, SUS.

The techs, many of whom had received their training in military electronics in one of the sprawling valleys of California, had replaced some of the original ICs with chips programmed with an entirely new library of target signatures. They had made other modifications as well, but the new and differently programmed ICs was the main one.

The new terminal-guidance modules contained signatures of commercial ships: freighters, oil tankers, and naval vessels of several nations. In effect the modification turned the revamped Stryx into a top-attack ship-killer. While such a weapon would be of limited use against most oceangoing military vessels, which are defended by Phalanx deck guns and similar antimissile systems, it would prove devastating against virtually all unprotected commercial vessels, especially fully loaded oil tankers. Such a ship was now the target, and it was precisely such a target that the weapon had been re-engineered to search out and destroy.

Mabrouk, as he watched the trajectory of the fire-and-forget round while quickly breaking down the launcher apparatus, knew nothing of these matters. All he knew was what concerned his training and indoctrination. But what Mabrouk knew was not important.

It was what the reconfigured Stryx round knew that was important. And the Stryx round knew that below it was an oil tanker matching the parameters in its target library. Armed with this knowledge, Stryx began its terminal-guidance routine. The round executed a terminal burn. The round then sped downward into the main chimney just above the boiler room of the vessel below.

The explosion that followed ignited approximately one million cubic pounds of crude oil. The secondary explosion that followed upon this primary blast was so great that it could be heard and seen as far away as Riyadh, in the middle of the Saudi Arabian desert.

As the hulk broke up, leaving behind no survivors, and spraying a miniature lake of flaming oil across the mouth of the Persian Gulf, the brothers in arms prepared to complete their mission. The horses were sent on their way, into the darkness. At first they did not go, but the martyrs-to-be drove them off with their whips and curses.

When the beasts had departed, Thawra and Mabrouk turned toward one another. Their faces were grave and each thought of something fitting to say; in the end no suitable words came to mind, and both merely nodded and did what they had come prepared to do next.

From within their loose-fitting shalwar qameez, each produced a hand grenade consisting of a cylindrical fragmentation sleeve shrouding a core of plastic explosive. The two martyrs stood to face the sea. Each looked out into the night that was now filled with the sound of low-flying planes and the questing searchlights of military helicopters. Al-Dhafra air base, in which the satanic enemy had many men and aircraft, was quite near, and U.S. forces would soon be sweeping the area. There was no time left to waste.

Clasping the grenades to their chests, they pulled the pins and quickly joined the ranks of the shudadah, Allah's holy martyrs, in paradise, although the acrid stench of high explosive fumes that accompanied their deaths befitted another locale entirely.

The room in the refurbished Pentagon basement bore no number or other identifying marking. Not that it needed one. The armed Marine standing guard outside it, big as a Texas outhouse, was a landmark that couldn't easily be missed.

Before a visitor even crossed the jarhead sentinel's path, he had to present ID at a checkpoint set up near the elevator. This requirement applied even to those whom the guards manning the checkpoint recognized on sight, or even to those who outranked them.

Dressed in mufti, Lieutenant Colonel David Saxon returned the sergeant major's salute and pinned the photo-ID tag he'd been handed to the left breast pocket of his leather jacket, then turned the latch on the unmarked door and entered the room beyond.

Already inside were key members of Marine Force One's operations staff including Saxon's exec, Lieutenant Frank Williamson, Master Sergeant Berlin Hirsh, and other wizards, dragons, and gnomes of MF-1's inner circle. Like Saxon, they were all in casual dress. It was early Sunday morning and the normal dress code that prevailed at the Building was significantly relaxed.

Marine Force One's new operational command center at the Pentagon was state-of-the-art, modeled after the larger war room on the fourth floor used by the chiefs during global crises, and linked to it by local intranet.

Banks of flat-panel display screens on the walls provided real-and near-real-time imaging from intelligence satellites. Workstations at modular centers across the length of the large room could be used as networked mission-planning centers, or to access the same satellite data as the large displays. Doors set in the walls opened into other rooms that included a well-stocked galley, sleeping facilities, and an armory.

Saxon took his place amid his seated staff, and let them fill him in on what they had learned during his flight up from MF-1's training compound at Camp Lejeune. Then the audiovisuals started.

The images were stark, but this was to be expected. A pathetic husk of what had been a U.S. serviceman like themselves twisted and turned slowly on a length of rope. In the grainy long shot the figure was only a blur, but as the camera zoomed in, the bruises and blood oozing from the bandages that covered his eyes, and the torn, bloodstained uniform, could not be missed. The camera lingered over the end product of weeks of torture and interrogation, mercilessly playing across every bruise and every patch of blood-spattered cloth.

A placard had been set up behind the figure. The narration, which had been overdubbed onto the original footage by CIA interpreters, stated that the Arabic characters read: "Islamic People's Jihad Center. Death to the Crusader Infidels! Death to Satanic America!"

After the AV briefing the lieutenant from the JCS Advisory Committee who had come with the DVD took over the show. He recited facts, figures, statistics, dates, and times. The prisoner was Captain Craig Michaels, USAF, formerly pilot of a B-1B Lancer strategic bomber. The captain had been taken prisoner shortly after the plane had gone down after a midair refueling accident.

"At 1735 hours, almost three weeks to the day," began the lieutenant, "a B-1B had rotated off the runway of Diego Garcia Island en route to its initial ordnance release point near Baghdad, Iraq. Awaiting the Lancer at thirty-three thousand feet some fifteen minutes out from Diego was a KC-135 tanker aircraft. It was night. The weather was clear. Visibility was good. The crews of both aircraft were professionals and maintenance records revealed no flaws in servicing prior to the mishap."

Nevertheless, a mishap did occur. The Lancer RV'd with the KC fuelbird. The boom man aboard the KC-135 flew the hose-and-drogue refueling boom down toward the receptacle located just behind the cockpit roof. He was experienced and wind conditions were good. Yet the boom missed its target. Instead of docking with the fuel receptacle, it went smashing into the roof of the cockpit.

The damage ruptured hydraulics on the B-1B. The pilot began to lose control. As he fought to stabilize the aircraft, the bomber pitched wildly and collided with the aft section of the KC-135, inside which was a bladder farm containing some twenty metric tons of high-octane aviation gasoline. Miraculously, the resultant fireball did not incinerate the Lancer.

Although severely damaged and with some of its crew seriously injured, the plane remained intact. Engines on fire, control systems almost useless, communications down, but intact -- just barely. The pilot attempted to land the plane. His intention had been to put it down in Saudi Arabia. In the end the B-1B never touched down anywhere.

The huge airframe broke up over southern Iraq. Captain Michaels, his navigator, and WSO/copilot succeeded in ejecting via their survival capsules. All three crewmen were later recovered, injured but still alive, by Iraqi ground forces, who also recovered at least one, and possibly another, of the nuclear-capable cruise missiles on board the plane.

Somehow Michaels had been spirited out of Iraq to some undisclosed location in Southwest Asia or the Middle East. That much could be determined from CIA analysis of the footage, which was largely propaganda. Michaels had been interrogated chemically. The beatings were for the visual impact only, pure window dressing for the American Satan. Enough had been extracted in this way to compromise many intelligence and military operations in the region.

"Gentlemen," the lieutenant said, "what you've seen and heard is classified, and eyes only."

"We figured as much."

"I would have hoped that you would."

The lieutenant was completely serious when he said this. His audience decided to let him slide and not get on his case. He was just a greenhorn from JCS HQ and the briefing was too important.

The lieutenant next showed Marine Force One's operational and planning cell another prepared video. This one was different. It showed another kidnapped official. Though Marine two-star Kenneth Baker had obviously been through the wringer, he was not in as bad shape as the Air Force captain they'd just seen.

But the capture was only a few days old. The general's captors were bragging about their coup. The snatch had not yet made the media. DOD would suppress the news for as long as possible, plugging every media leak. Baker had been kidnapped in Athens. The general had been on the NATO planning staff, the liaison officer from JCS continued.

As best as could be determined, he and his driver had driven into a moving ambush in an isolated section of Athens. They had been forced off the road and found themselves in a district of narrow streets.

What had stopped the car was a Prague chopper. It was a trap first used against Soviet tanks in the Prague Spring of 1968. A two-ton steel I-beam had been suspended between two buildings.

As the black limousine flying the U.S. diplomatic flag passed between the buildings, the I-beam swung down, decapitating the driver and peeling away most of the cab like the skin of an orange.

Riding in the rear compartment, the general was badly shaken. However, not even the security features of the limo, which included bullet-proof glass and an armored carriage, could withstand the crushing force of the trap.

The car was surrounded, the general pulled out at gunpoint by masked assailants. It was assumed he was driven to a safe house in the vicinity and spirited by fast boat from the coast of Piraeus that night. From there many sea lanes led to Middle Eastern locations. It was assumed that he too was being interrogated.

The images of the aftermath of the snatch dissolved, and a real-time secure video teleconference (SVTC) transmission from the situation room beneath the White House replaced them. Members of the National Security Council's Deputies Committee and their counterparts from Defense and State's second-tier hierarchy were seated there.

As was usual in such situations, mid-level civilian policymakers were tasked with briefing the military. The honchos rarely interfaced with the implementers of their policy, which was just as well in certain ways, since it was frequently the deputies and junior staffers who were in closest touch with the real world, while their bosses were largely glad-handers, political hacks, and time-serving appointees of the current Administration.

The nature of the mission was fairly obvious to Saxon before it was even given to him. The Mean One was to find the captive U.S. servicemen and either rescue or kill them before they spilled more of their guts to their captors. At the same time MF-1 would be ordered to secure and return or destroy the stolen cruise missiles from the downed B-1 bomber. Nobody told them that the bomber crew and general were both considered expendable. Nobody had to spell it out. One's orders would certainly include a provision to eliminate them all if they were not rescuable.

The large central screen that had displayed the SVTC transmission went blank, and neither Saxon nor the other members of MF-1's inner circle saw the men in the stuffy underground chamber of the White House turn to one another.

One of them lit a cigarette. Drew smoke. His name was Congdon. He was a spook who sometimes oversaw One's missions.

"You realize we've probably sent them all to their deaths," the other man said.

"That's what they're paid for, Charlie," Congdon answered, getting up and popping an antacid tablet into his mouth. His work had given him ulcers. It was all the stress, the CIA doctor had told him.

Copyright © 2003 by David Alexander