Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10 (48 page)

 
          
“Good
copy, Tin Man,” Tanaka replied. “We’ll see you shortly.”

 
          
Patrick
turned to Muhammad as-Sanusi and extended a hand. “You’ve got yourself a deal,
Your Majesty,” he said. “My first plane will be here in a few minutes.”

           
Sanusi issued orders in Arabic, and
most of his men raced off in their vehicles. “My men will have the runway,
taxiways, and hangars cleared away for your aircraft immediately,” he said. He
shook Patrick’s armored hand. “Welcome to
Jaghbub
,
United Kingdom
of
Libya
.
Ahlan
wa sahlan, es salaem alekum.
You are most welcome.” He looked at Patrick’s
gloved hand, touching the strange BERP fabric and composite exoskeleton with
wonder. “I have
got
to get me a few
of these!” he said with glee.

HON
,
UNITED KINGDOM
OF
LIBYA
 
SEVERAL HOURS LATER

           
Shortly after the 1986 American air
attacks, the late Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Qadhafi built a complex
called
Ginayna
—“the Garden”—under the
streets of the town of
Hun
. Ginayna was actually an immense complex of underground tunnels,
shelters, alternate command posts, and military storage facilities, extending
out several dozen kilometers around the city. Despite its size, it was possible
to reach any point of Ginayna from anywhere on foot within an hour. When fully
staffed—as it was right now— Ginayna housed over thirty thousand persons.

 
          
The
complex—five stories underground, shielded by six layers of Kevlar and steel
and with its own power generator and air scrubbers, was meant to protect
Qadhafi and his personal protection forces in case of another massive attack.
It was said that Ginayna was the Doomsday shelter—since a very large majority
of the personnel staffing it were women, it was said that Qadhafi planned to
repopulate
Libya
with the personnel housed within Ginayna.

 
          
Jadallah
Zuwayy considered Ginayna his primary residence. It was craziness to live
anywhere else. He was surrounded by plenty of security, they were safe from
most all bombs and missiles—the complex was considered strong enough to withstand
anything except a direct hit by a nuclear weapon—and there were plenty of
escape routes out of there. Sure, he lived like a rodent—but better to be a
live rodent than a dead king.

           
Ginayna was broken into sections
controlled by the various branches of the armed services, but Zuwayy stayed
mostly in the section reserved as the operational headquarters of the
Revolutionary Guard. This was Zuwayy’s personal protection force; five thousand
men and women, equipped with the best weapons and afforded the best training of
all the Libyan armed forces. The main corps of the Revolutionary Guard was the
Praetorian Guard, the unit charged with protection of Zuwayy himself, as
opposed to all of the king’s residences and offices.

 
          
It
was the only unit in all of
Libya
that Zuwayy would trust with this
particular group.

 
          
Thirteen
men and one woman—that was all that was left of all the persons taken from the
Mediterranean Sea
during the air attacks on the ships
suspected of staging the raid on the missile base at Samah. They were taken and
separated from the others for one reason only: They looked, spoke, or behaved
like Americans. And of the group, the most important and the most intriguing
one was the woman.

 
          
She
was hanging, naked, from manacles bolted to a concrete wall. Her strength had
given out days ago—she was no longer able to support herself except for a few
brief hours every day, so her wrists were blackened and the flesh had been
scraped almost to the bone. Her hair was thin and falling out from dehydration;
her ribs protruded so far that they appeared as if they would likely pop right
through her skin.

 
          
Zuwayy
thought she had been very pretty, once. Not anymore.

 
          
The
lights were turned on as he stepped into the cell. The one lightbulb was like a
red-hot poker to the woman’s eyes, but she could not shield them. “Any more
information, Sergeant?” Zuwayy asked.

 
          
“No,
Your Highness,” the jailer responded. “Her response to all questions is ‘Help
me, please.’ No names, no other information.”

 
          
Zuwayy
examined her. The interrogators had tried every possible combination of
physical torture, drugs, deprivation, and disorientation to try to break her.
He was impressed. “Very strong, very tough young woman,” he said. He was
surprised when she opened her eyes and moved unsteadily to her feet. “I see you
are awake. How are you feeling today, miss?”

 
          
“Help
me, please,” she muttered through swollen, cracked lips. “Please, sir, help
me.”

 
          
“I
will be glad to help you,” Zuwayy said. “All you have to do is tell me your
name.”

 
          
“Help
me. Please.”

 
          
“You
don’t need to resist,” Zuwayy said. “Your comrades have told us everything
about you. You were responsible for infiltrating and attacking a Libyan
military base, then escaping via helicopter to your ship. We know everything. We
know you are American commandos, on a secret mission to inspect and, if
necessary, destroy our military weapons. You might as well talk. If you do, we
will treat you like a combatant instead of a spy and afford you treatment under
the Geneva Conventions. Do you know what that means?”

           
“Please, Your Highness . . .
please, help me, I beg you.. ..”

 
          
“I
see you recognize who I am? Good! I can guarantee you much better treatment,
everything to which a captured combatant is entitled—food, water, clothing,
medical attention, and contact with the International Red Cross.”

           
“Please ... help ..

           
“But under the Geneva Conventions,
as you know, you must first tell me your name, rank, serial number, and date of
birth,” Zuwayy went on. “We’ll start with your name. That is not a violation of
your oath as an American soldier. It is not a national secret. You won’t be
disgraced or prosecuted by your government, I assure you. Most of your comrades
have already told me this information, and that’s why they are no longer in
here with you—they are being fed, they have seen a doctor, and they have even
filled out their Red Cross contact cards.”

 
          
“Please,
Your Highness .. . please, help me, I beg you....”

           
This was getting nowhere, he
thought—the same mindless imprinted resistance babble for days on end. “Where
is that band she was wearing?” Zuwayy asked.

 
          
The
guard brought it to him. “We have determined it is some kind of power source,”
the guard said. “We searched her body and found this.” He showed Zuwayy a
device about the size of a tack. “It is some kind of transceiver. We checked
it; it is deactivated. It may have been some sort of locator, perhaps even a
communications device.”

 
          
“Did
the others have it?”

 
          
“No,
Highness. She could be valuable. ...”

 
          
“Or
she could be a real danger,” Zuwayy said. “If she was missing, she’d be just
another casualty—but here, she could destroy us if they found out she was
alive.”

 
          
“Torture
doesn’t seem to be working, Highness,” the guard said. “Maybe we should try
nursing her back to health. We can always eliminate her later.”

 
          
“Perhaps
. ..”

 
          
“Help
me ... please, Highness, help me ... I beg you...

 
          
Zuwayy
reared back and slapped her across the face with the back of his left hand.
There was no blood—her face, in fact most of her extremities, had long ago lost
the ability to bleed. “Stop begging to me, bitch! You disgust me, you weak
sniveling American whore! What is your job onboard your ship—servicing the real
warriors, the real soldiers? Are you the unit’s traveling whore? Why are we
even bothering with this one? We won’t learn any information from prostitutes.
Throw her disease-infected body into the trash with the other garbage.”

 
          
“Please
... please, help me....”

 
          
“Your
name, whore,” Zuwayy snarled. “All I want is your name. First name, last name,
it doesn’t matter. Is keeping that useless bit of information from us worth
risking your life? When was the last time you felt your fingers? When was the
last time you had a drink of water? We will give you proper medical care and
start treating you like a human being and an American soldier instead of a
stupid American cocksucker if you will only tell us your name.”

           
No response. She looked as if she
might pass out—she was beginning to slump against her chains again. “One last
time, bitch—your name. Right now.” Again, no response.

 
          
She
is strong, Zuwayy thought. But they were wasting too much time with her. She
was a novelty because she was a woman—one of the few captured—but it was too
risky keeping a woman imprisoned in a place like this. “Has she made any
contact with any of the others?” Zuwayy asked the jailer. “Talking, tap code,
hand signs, anything?”

 
          
“No,
Highness. When they were together, they did not even look at each other. They
never tried to communicate.” Very well-trained indeed. He examined her face
once more. Her eyes were ready to roll back into her head; her tongue was
swollen and almost black; and blood was seeping from her eyes, ears, and mouth.
“Get rid of her,” Zuwayy said. “She’s practically dead already. Bury her in the
desert. The last thing we need is for her to be caught in here like this. Make
it quick, and make it untraceable. I want to see the others.”

 
          
Zuwayy
was almost out of the cell when he heard her mutter behind him—and it didn’t
sound like “Help me, please” this time. He turned and went back to her. She had
completely slumped against her chains now. He grabbed her hair and yanked her
head up. “What did you say, bitch? Repeat! What did you say?” She muttered
something unintelligible. He put his ear as close as he dared to her lips.
“Speak up! What did you say?”

 
          
Through
her cracked lips and swollen tongue, he heard her utter, “M ... Me .. .
McLanahan,” just before she passed out again.

JAGHBUB
,
LIBYA
 
SEVERAL HOURS LATER

 
          
It
was hard, steamy, sweaty work—no other way to describe it; and there was no
other way to do it except virtually by hand. At first Patrick McLanahan spelled
the flight crew in the cockpit while the plane was being refueled—they had to
use water pumps and fire hoses to get the fuel out of the underground storage
tanks, and then gravity- feed it into each of the Megafortress’s twelve fuel
tanks. Patrick kept one engine running through the entire refueling just in
case they came under attack and he had to start all the other engines, but he
acknowledged to himself that there was almost no chance of getting the
Megafortress off the ground unless they had at least twenty minutes’ warning.
But in about a day, the EB-52 Megafortress bomber was fully fueled.

 
          
King
Idris the Second of Libya, Muhammad as-Sanusi, was nowhere to be seen until
dawn, out on patrol all night with his “Sandstorm” desert warriors. The effects
of the electromagnetic pulse had subsided, so Sanusi could maintain radio
contact with his men while taking a closer look at Mersa Matruh. “The
destruction is total, my friend,” he told Patrick after he returned, putting a
hand on Patrick’s sweat-bathed shoulder. “The dead are everywhere—it is the
most horrible sight I’ve ever seen. I know you told me it would be safe to go
there, that the radiation dissipates almost immediately, but my men refused to
go near the place, and I chose not to force them. I am truly sorry, McLanahan.
Very sorry.” Patrick nodded—he was beyond feeling sorrow or despair. Once the
Megafortress touched down on Jaghbub’s runway, he was all business again. “Very
cool bird you have here, Mr. McLanahan,” he said. “Unreal.”