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  Five seconds after the impact of Javelin Unit One against the mosque floor there was little left of the command center but airborne debris and the fires and smoke within the pit in the earth where the bunker had once been.

  For over two minutes the debris fell out of the sky and rained down on the sand surrounding the smoke-blackened hole, the impacting chunks of concrete and metal making little sound as they hit the sand; or if they did make sounds they were lost in the roaring of the orange mushroom cloud rising several thousand feet over the desert floor.

  Jack Morris felt more than saw the detonations of the cruise missiles. At first the ground trembled a bit as the first missile hit the mosque floor. The explosion shook him as it detonated below, the sound at first muffled by the layers of concrete below the earth, but immediately after missiles two through five hit the bunker there was the roaring noise as the force of the explosions burst out of the hole in the ground.

  The minaret tower seemed to disintegrate into a thousand fragments and fly slowly off into the night. A misshapen orange mushroom cloud rose several thousand feet overhead, turning the dark moonless night into a harshly lit midafternoon. Morris hugged the sand as the pieces from the explosion began to hit the ground around them, mostly a rain of sand and grit from what had once been concrete. When the debris shower ended, Morris looked up and whistled, his abused ears unable to hear his own exclamation of incredulity.

  The admirals who had sent the Javelins had miscalculated, Morris thought. With the new explosive, the missiles had been overkill. Although difficult to see from the ridge of sand, from where Morris lay, there was nothing left of the bunker to sift through. The idea of survivors was the dream of a Pentagon bureaucrat. Morris stood and signaled the men in, the fires from the explosion calming and dying down, the smoke still billowing out of the crater of what had once been the headquarters bunker of the Combined Armed Forces of the entire god damned UIF. Morris’s radio earpiece crackled with terse reports from the other platoon commanders as the seals surrounded the bunker, the reports confirming Morris’s analysis that there would be no survivors to take alive, no General Sihoud to interrogate. Morris got closer to the hole, peered in, nodded, and gave the orders to begin the extraction.

  * * *

  Ahmed had not yet mouthed his first word to tell Sihoud to continue through the tunnel when the tunnel suddenly turned upside down, the walls burst, and what had been an escape route became an airless tomb.

  For the next five minutes the collapsed tunnel was filled with the booming noises of the explosions. Then all was silent.

  * * *

  All this way, Morris thought bitterly, just to watch a bunch of million-dollar missiles overdo the work the seals could have done with precision. He and his commandos left the bunker compound at the same fence holes they had cut and ran at a six-minute-mile pace to the DPVS, cranked the engines, and headed four miles farther northeast. Three of the buggies had failed — sand in the supercharger blowers, Morris figured, making a few of the DPVS heavy with added men. When Morris’s satellite navigation unit blinked, he gave the order and shut down the buggies. The units were parked side by side in three rows of seven, the last man out of each DPV pulling a pin out of an assembly under the seats. The commandos ran a hundred yards to the north and hit the sand. A few seconds later the DPV destruct mechanisms kicked in and blew the buggies into smoldering ruins, the fires from their explosions guiding in the extraction air craft.

  Morris waited, frustrated, knowing that the extraction had been planned later, assuming there would be a longer action at the mosque. But he hated waiting on bus drivers, particularly Air Force bus drivers. After what felt like twenty minutes but was closer to five, Morris heard the beating of the rotors. The four V-22 tilt-rotor Ospreys flew overhead, circled, and tilted their rotors to the horizontal, descending vertically and touching down on the sand. Morris and the men climbed into the odd aircraft, half-chopper, half-transport, and buckled in. Morris’s V-22 lifted off and tilted the props, the aircraft now a turboprop high-speed transport. As the plane accelerated south toward occupied southern Iran, Morris took one last look at the burning remains of the mosque.

  There was no way anyone could have survived the explosion. Still, Morris had hoped to load Sihoud’s dead body aboard the V-22 with them, the ultimate war trophy. Well, every mission, he told himself, screwed up somehow. This mission’s screw up was just an overabundance of firepower.

  Morris leaned back in the seat, and although only a hundred feet over UIF territory and only minutes removed from combat, fell into a deep sleep.

  * * *

  Chah Bahar was a peaceful village on the sea. Ahmed had gone home on leave to see his wife and four-year-old son Nadhar. The sun was warm as he walked the street with his family hours before he had to fly back to Ashkhabad.

  Abruptly out of the south, the sound of jet engines, too big and heavy for UIF jets. His ears were filled with the sounds of the Western Coalition Stealth bombers, the whistle of the descending cluster bombs, the oddly muffled cough from his wife as the shrapnel hit her. He felt himself running, Nadhar’s body in his arms. As the first bombs hit, he and Nadhar fell to the dirt, Ahmed on top, the bombs exploding around them. His ears rang from the low pass of a black bomber. He braced himself as the fuel-air explosive canister hit the ground and detonated, the explosion smashing into him. He felt the impact of shrapnel, then the conflagration sucked the air out of the sky, leaving him gasping, certain he was moments from death, but finally the flames faded and he drank in the air. Even before he looked Ahmed sensed his son had been hit by the shrapnel. And Col. Rakish Ahmed, supreme commander of the Combined Air Forces of the United Islamic Front of God and chief of staff to General-and-Khalib Mohammed al-Sihoud was obliged to watch as his son died. The final wave of Stealth bombers flew over then, their bellies full of another round of cluster bombs.

  Ahmed was forced to leave Nadhar’s body and run for cover.

  His anger and grief would coalesce into a hunger for revenge … his understanding that his own personal loss was shared by thousands his troops had left fatherless never really occurred to him …

  In the broken service tunnel of the headquarters bunker, Ahmed’s uniform was soaked in cold sweat. His heart was pounding, his breath wheezed. The vision of the smoking ruins of Chah Bahar vanished in a swirling storm of dots, yellow and red and blue dots.

  He shook his head, slowly realizing he had been unconscious, unable to escape the Chah Bahar nightmare even when knocked out by an enemy attack on the bunker. He heard rushing noises, dripping noises … the noise of air as it rushed in and blew out. The sounds grew in volume.

  Choking, rasping, retching noises filled the dark space. He tried to move, going nowhere at first, feeling pressure from something lying on top of him. A slick feel against a harder surface. A liquid. Blood or water.

  He tried again to move, trying his arm first, surprised when it followed his command. His other arm, then his legs.

  He tried to get up but was pinned. He tried to roll, and felt a jagged piece of steel jab into his ribs. He rolled the other way and felt pressure ease up, allowing him to breathe.

  There was still no light, but another sound, a spurting, sprinkling noise.

  The attack on the bunker had come, as Ahmed had predicted.

  The tunnel, their intended escape route, had partially collapsed, its concrete upper half smashed to dust by the fist of the explosions. What had been the floor of the tunnel was littered with smashed pieces of concrete, sand, dirt, wires and cables. No sign of Sihoud.

  It hit him then … Sihoud was dead, and with him the hopes of the thirty nations and half billion people of the Union. The United Islamic Front, in minutes, had been doomed. The attack had, as Ahmed feared, been a decapitation.

  Because without Mohammed al-Sihoud, everything was lost. Ahmed heard his own voice call out for the Khalib.

  Soon his voice was drowned by another sound. What before had been a spritzing sound
, a dim noise of rain, now became a sound of rushing force. The water pipe, which had once fed the bunker, had ruptured and was flooding the remains of the utility tunnel. The water had submerged his face, and he twisted into a violent roll. The same piece of steel jabbed into his ribs, and he decided he would rather be stabbed to death by the reinforcing steel in the chunk of concrete that held him down than be drowned by the water line.

  The steel cut into him, ripping open the skin at his ribs, cutting into muscle and scraping bone, coming close to puncturing the lung beneath the bone, until his chest was no longer in contact with the metal, only the smooth underside of the concrete chunk. By then the water had risen over Ahmed’s prone body. He continued to twist and felt his back scrape across the concrete block. In a corner of his mind, prepared for death, he realized that he was free. He pumped his legs and pushed with his hands and was able to half-stand.

  His head splashed out of the water into the damp darkness of the half-collapsed tunnel, water up to his waist. He had to find Sihoud. He had to shut off the flooding water. He had to get them out of the tunnel. He had to get Sihoud to a place of safety. As he searched in the rising water for Sihoud, he realized it would be no good merely to get the Khalib to another command post, to a field battlefield company.

  What had happened would happen again and again until the enemy had achieved their goal of killing Sihoud and decapitating the Union. He had to find the one place on earth where the coalition’s commandos and assassins would be unable to reach him. The water, the rising water in the tunnel, had keyed a dim memory in Ahmed’s mind, but as yet he was uncertain what the connection was. And then it suddenly seemed obvious. Sihoud had to go into exile, much as the Prophet Himself had gone into exile to Medina almost fourteen centuries before. The Prophet’s exile had been called the hegira, and so would Sihoud’s. And like the Prophet Mohammed, Sihoud would return in glory, not with horses and swords but with high-altitude radar-invisible supersonic cruise missiles loaded with radioactive plutonium.

  Five steps down the tunnel Ahmed tripped on something.

  He reached down into the water, grabbed hold, and pulled with all his strength. Sihoud had been trapped under a piece of metal, but he must have been unconscious because the metal rolled off easily. His head came out of the water. He was not breathing. Ahmed leaned Sihoud’s face back and clamped his lips on the lips of the Khalib and blew.

  As the water rose in the tunnel, Ahmed felt the broken concrete tunnel begin to shift, the water undermining footing in the packed sand. He continued to blow into Sihoud’s mouth. The water continued to rise. How long could he try to bring life back to Sihoud before giving up and trying to save himself? But then he thought that no decision was in fact a decision. Without Sihoud there was no hope for the UIF or for Ahmed himself, and with the war lost, Sihoud and Ahmed’s family dead, what was there to live for?

  Sihoud suddenly stiffened and expelled water.

  * * *

  It was well past three o’clock in the morning and something was seriously wrong. Airman Abdul Djaliz squinted at the horizon where the smoke and flames were dying out but still discernible over the dim light of the few sodium arc lights illuminating the asphalt at Ashkhabad’s Sunni Air Base.

  It had been perhaps forty minutes before that the call had come from the main bunker HQ to pull the most airworthy Firestar fighter from the hangar, warm it up, and load liquid helium into the electronic warfare pod’s tank. That had taken only fifteen minutes. The sleek swept-winged jet sat on the pad, her turbines purring smoothly, the heat haze from the exhaust nozzles causing the strip lights to waver slightly.

  The canopy was up and the ladder was pulled up to the cockpit. For the fifth time in a half hour Djaliz climbed to the top of the ladder and peered in at the pilot’s status console, goosing the computer through its fifth checklist. The liquid crystal display recited the aircraft’s latest statistics, flashing graphics and charts and temperature profiles, oil pressures, hydraulic system status. All of it within limits.

  Djaliz lowered himself back down to the ground and reexamined the electronic warfare pod slung under the pointed nose of the large jet, the one he’d filled with supercold liquid helium. The ungainly size of the pod marred the sleek streamlined beauty of the aircraft. The pod was new with the latest modification of the Firestar, this particular pod nearly fresh out of the crate from Osaka. Djaliz worried over it for a moment and climbed the ladder again and this time climbed all the way into the cockpit, putting the pilot’s flight helmet aside on the engine control console. He dialed up the menu for the electronic warfare pod and ordered a self-check.

  He waited a moment while the computer tested the inputs and readbacks from the pod and tested the circuits to the large transmitters housed inside. The display recited that the pod was ready for combat, ready to fry the electronics of any approaching aircraft that challenged this particular Firestar in a dogfight. Djaliz checked the time, wondering if he should radio back to headquarters that he was wasting the jet fuel, that no one had shown up for whatever mysterious mission HQ had had in mind.

  The young airman stood and climbed out of the cockpit, his jaw dropping as the speeding U-10 crashed through the security gate without bothering to scan in. He dropped to the ground and unholstered his pistol, about to command the intruder to halt. The truck drew up to the jet, parking off the side of the starboard wingtip, as if the driver wanted to avoid blocking the jet’s takeoff. Djaliz leveled his automatic pistol at the driver, who seemed unconcerned with him. He called out to the man, who opened his door and walked around to the front of the vehicle.

  Djaliz stared down his gunsight… at Colonel Ahmed, supreme commander of the Combined Air Force. Djaliz quickly holstered his weapon. Ahmed ignored him in his rush to the passenger door. When he opened it, Djaliz could see the form of the Khalib himself, Mohammed al-Sihoud.

  He at least had enough presence of mind to snap to attention, eyes focused on the horizon, but from the corner of his eye he could see that the Khalib was in bad shape.

  “Help me with him, airman,” Ahmed ordered.

  The two men grabbed the arms of the Khalib, who seemed conscious but weak, dazed.

  “Sir, what happened?”

  Ahmed shook his head, hauling the general to the ladder.

  “Get him in the back seat,” Ahmed said when they had reached the ladder. “General, can you climb?”

  “I think so.” The airman helped him up the steep ladder.

  Ahmed returned to the U-10, found a clipboard with a scrap of paper and scrawled on it. He looked it over, checked his watch and continued writing, finally folding the paper in two, then again. He hurried over to the jet. Djaliz had gotten Sihoud into the rear seat and was strapping him in, putting on his flight helmet and strapping on the oxygen mask. He stepped back down the ladder and faced Colonel Ahmed.

  The colonel looked Djaliz over for a moment, then handed him the piece of paper.

  “You know where the Quchara Communication Base is?”

  “Twenty kilometers on Highway 2, north, sir.”

  “Take the U-10 and get to the base as fast as the truck can go. Have them transmit that immediately on the VLF set— very low frequency. Can you remember that? Very low frequency.”

  “But, sir, why will they do that on my say so? I’m an airman—”

  Ahmed reached into his tunic and pulled a chain around his neck until it broke. He handed the bar-coded identification card to the airman.

  “Give them that. If they have doubts call me on the airborne UHF frequency of the day. Have you got all that?”

  Djaliz stood at attention and saluted.

  Ahmed was already four steps up the ladder. Djaliz watched as the colonel strapped on the helmet, lowered the canopy and waved down at him. Djaliz ran for the wheel chocks, pulled them both out and ran clear of the jet. As he looked up Ahmed had already taken the turbines to half-thrust and was thundering down the taxiway to the end of the runway. Less than a minute late
r the jets roared on full afterburner as the colonel kicked the aircraft up to full power. The takeoff run took only seconds, the Firestar’s nose pointed skyward, blasting off the runway, rising nearly vertically into the sky. Soon all Djaliz could see were the twin flames coming from its tailpipes, and then they vanished in the darkness.

  Djaliz seemed to wake up from a dream then, the paper soaked with the sweat of his hands. He unfolded it and read the colonel’s hurried scrawl.

  TO CNF SUBMARINE HEGIRA: BY THE ORDERS OF THE KHALIB, SURFACE AT DAWN AT NORTH 35 DEGREES/EAST 30 DEGREES AND PREPARE TO RESCUE TWO SURVIVORS. GOD IS GREAT. COLONEL R. AHMED SENDS.

  Chapter 3

  Thursday, 26 December

  EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN BASIN

  The predawn darkness shrouded the calm waters of the Mediterranean, the dim starlight barely apt to separate the dark water from the black sky on the horizon. Three hours later the water would be a sapphire blue, shimmering and beautiful and clear, but now the water was black and forbidding.

  The water was filled with sound, the central and western basins always busy with commercial traffic, even now that the nations of the northern coast found themselves at war with those on the south. If anything, the war had accelerated the flow of freighters and tankers in and out of Gibraltar, the ships filling the sea for miles with the noises of their cavitating screws. The noise of the hundreds of ships competed with the marine life that inhabited the warm water. Clicking of shrimp, chattering of dolphins, moaning of whales all filled the underwater with sound waves.

  There in the wash of noise, under 100 meters of water, a silent ghost passed through a school of shrimp, the startled fish clicking loudly. The shape of the intruder was sleek and long, starting with an elongated elipsoidal nose, a cigar-shaped twelve-meter-diameter cylinder following, the shape seventy-five meters long, tapering to a point. In the middle, a tall fin towered over the cigar body, the rear of the fin angled down to the cigar, the dorsal fin of an exotic fish. At the tapered end of the body was a set of tail fins; the tail planes were attached to the hull at an angle, forming an X-shape. The underwater vessel continued swimming east, gliding silently through the water.