Purpose of Evasion (33 page)

50

SHEPHERD
and Brancato had spent the night driving the Transportpanzer across the bleak landscape of the Libyan desert. They crossed four north-south roads en route. The first three were narrow, little-used ribbons of macadam broken by drifting sand. The last was Pepsi Cola Road, a motorway connecting Tripoli and the industrial city of Ghariyan 75 miles to the south. It was primarily used by trucks ferrying raw materials and finished products to and from the factories.

Shepherd brought the Transportpanzer to a stop about a quarter of a mile from the road. They waited until the pinpoints of distant headlights couldn’t be seen in either direction, then continued their journey.

The time was 7:14
A.M.
when they arrived at the patch of heavily forrested terrain Brancato had spotted on the maps, and concealed the TTP in the cool shade of a stand of cedars and pines nourished by a nearby oasis.

Okba ben Nafi Air Base lay 30 miles due north.

“You sure you want to do this?” Shepherd asked as they shrouded the Transportpanzer with a camouflage net they had found in one of the storage compartments.

“Hell of a time to ask.”

“We can wait until dark, turn right around and—”

Brancato shook his head no. “
I
can.”

Shepherd shrugged forlornly and stretched out on the ground beneath the trees, exhausted. “I mean the chances of pulling this off are pretty damn remote.”

Brancato nodded, then sat opposite him.

“I just keep thinking about Steph and Marie and the kids. No sense both of us—”

“And my dog. You forgot my dog.”

“Al, I’m serious,” Shepherd said in weary protest.

“So am I. If I don’t run him, nobody does. Marie said he put
on ten pounds while I was in the hospital. I miss him, you know? I mean, jogging every morning with those big paws padding along next to me, slobbery mouth drooling all over everything. God, it’s just . . . I don’t know, there’s a bond there. Of course I’m the only one who understands him. Really, he’d be lost without me. You ever see a dog laugh? This dog laughs—at jokes. I was thinking of trying to get him on David Letterman, but he’s . . .” Brancato paused and laughed to himself.

Shepherd was sound asleep.

They spent the day taking turns sleeping and rummaging through the compartments, removing the items they would use—handguns, walkie-talkies, military clothing among them.

As the sun began dropping toward the horizon they removed the camouflage net and started the Transportpanzer rolling across the desert.

About an hour later darkness had fallen, and Okba ben Nafi loomed in the distance, a dusty mirage enclosed by an endless chainlink fence topped with razor wire.

Brancato directed Shepherd to a desolate corner of the airfield, well beyond the end of the runways. Shepherd let the TTP inch forward until the leading edge of its angled snout was flush against one of the pipes that supported the miles of chainlink; a little more gas and the 40,000-pound vehicle began advancing, gradually bending the pipe toward the ground until the adjacent sections of fence lay flat against the sand and the eight huge combat tires rolled over them onto the air base.

Shepherd kept the running lights off until he left the sand for a paved road that cut across the taxiways with geometric precision. Soon the ribbed texture of sheetmetal hangars marched to the horizon. The TTP rumbled past them in the direction of hangar 6-South, where the F-111s were housed.

Shepherd and Brancato exchanged anxious looks at the sight of one of the bombers. It was being towed through the open sliders onto the tarmac for its preflight check. They circled the hangar toward the personnel entrance, which was guarded by armed sentries.

IN BEIRUT,
a chilling scream echoed through Casino du Liban’s marble corridors. It was Katifa’s scream; a scream of horror and forlorn protest. Upon returning to the amphitheater, she
discovered Moncrieff once again suspended upside down above the stage. As the Saudi had suspected, Abu Nidal had no intention of sparing his life. On the contrary, as the terrorist leader had planned when postponing the Romeo’s departure for Beirut,
he
would be the first hostage executed and delivered to the United States Embassy.

Now Katifa stood but several feet from Moncrieff. Two women held her arms; one of the men clutched fistfuls of her hair, keeping her from looking away. But as Nidal slowly inserted the knife into the cut he had made in Moncrieff’s flesh earlier, Katifa struggled free, smashed an elbow into the face of one of the women, and went for Nidal. The guerrilla who had hold of her hair yanked backwards, stopping her abruptly, and brought the grip of his pistol down hard across the side of her head. She screamed and fell to the floor, unconscious.

The next scream was Moncrieff’s.

BENEATH THE AEGEAN,
the
Cavalla
was concealed behind a basaltic ridge that crested just north of the Crete-Karpathos gap.

Cooperman had the BQS-6 bow array in passive mode, using the computer-linked DIMUS program to separate frequency ranges, when he heard the faint hiss on his headsets. He straightened in his chair, pressed a hand to an earphone, and was soon listening to the telltale beat of twin propeller cavitation; he ran an acoustic signature comparison, then buzzed the control room.

“Lover boy’s heading for Beirut, skipper,” he reported. “ETA our position twenty-one hundred.”

“You’re positive it’s him?”

“Ac-sig’s a perfect match.”

Duryea turned the conn over to McBride and went up the companionway to the SEALs’ quarters on A-deck. The bulkhead adjacent to the door still displayed the pictures of the hostages; the one opposite was covered with the construction drawings of the Romeo.

Four salvage/rescue valves on the exterior hull had been circled in yellow and numbered. They allowed air to be injected into an incapacitated submarine to save the crew and/or float the vessel, and were spaced out the length of the hull in the event bulkhead doors had been closed, sealing off compartments. On another
drawing, the salvage hatch forward of the sail, through which divers could enter the vessel, had been outlined in red. Passageways leading to compartments where the hostages might be quartered had also been marked. The plastic shipping container from the Office of Technical Services at Langley was on the floor in front of the drawings. Lieutenant Reyes was sitting on it, refining his plan, when Captain Duryea came through the joiner door.

“Target coming in, Lieutenant.”

A thin smile tugged at the corners of Reyes’s mouth. “Showtime,” he called out to the members of his team, who came surging into the compartment in response. The SEALs went directly to their equipment lockers and began suiting up as Reyes opened the shipping container.

The interior was divided into a six-section egg crate. Each contained a steel pressure vessel, delivery hose, and valve assembly. Reyes removed one from its cushioned sleeve. Painted bright yellow, it resembled a scuba tank; but its gaseous contents would have a far different effect on human consciousness.

Halothane was a general anesthetic that acted on the central nervous system. Commonly used for surgical procedures, the odorless gas was a benign compound with negligible aftereffects. It induced a deep state of unconsciousness within 30 seconds of inhalation.

The SEALs prepared with an economy of movement and conversation. They had already rehearsed every step of the mission; each man had his assignment; each knew individual scuba tanks would be used and carried in standard two-bottle rigs with the tank of halothane.

“Black fitting goes in the regulator, yellow in the sub; black in the regulator, yellow in the sub,” Reyes recited, making certain no one had inadvertently connected the wrong hose to his breathing apparatus. “I don’t want any of you guys getting off on this stuff.”

“I’ll wake you just prior to launch,” Duryea joked, heading for the communications room.

The time was exactly 7:54
P.M.

AT OKBA BEN NAFI AIR BASE,
a sentry stationed outside hangar 6-South noticed the Transportpanzer approaching. It drove past him and rumbled to a stop near the
personnel entrance, where another sentry, cradling an AK-47, stood guard.

Two Libyan military officers exited the massive vehicle and strode boldly toward him. Both wore desert camouflage fatigues, sidearms, maroon berets, and sunglasses; security badges were clipped to their pockets. Two gold stars and an eagle on their epaulets identified them as aqids, or colonels. The sentry snapped to attention and saluted. The officers returned it and entered the hangar through the personnel door.

Once inside the hangar, they proceeded down a corridor lined with offices. Though normally staffed with technicians and clerical personnel, most were empty since the workday had been shortened due to Ramadan, as Brancato had predicted.

In the life-support room, two Libyan aviators who were about to fly a practice mission in the F-111 were at their lockers suiting up when the door half-opened. A colonel appeared, snapped his fingers, pointed to the aviator nearest the door, and gestured authoritatively that he join him outside. The Libyan stepped into the corridor, the door closing behind him. The last thing he remembered was a rustle of clothing before Brancato, who was concealed behind the door, brought the grip of a pistol down hard across the back of his head.

Boldness, conviction, and the element of surprise.

Boldness, conviction, and the element of surprise.

Boldness, conviction, and the element of surprise.

The instructor at survival-training school had drummed it into all his pupils and now Shepherd and Brancato knew why. They repeated the scenario with the second aviator, then dragged both back into the life-support room and stuffed them inside empty lockers.

A short time later, on the tarmac just outside the hangar, the crew chief and assistant crew chief, who were preparing the F-111 for flight, heard the ear-shattering clang of a fire alarm. They left the plane, hurrying through the hangar into the corridors outside the life-support room and offices, where smoke billowed.

Shepherd and Brancato, suited up in flight gear from the life support room, were concealed in an ordnance storage bay nearby. As soon as the Libyans had passed, they slipped into the hangar and split up: Shepherd headed for the F-111 on the tarmac, Brancato
for the one still in the hangar, intending to destroy it via a built-in self-destruct mechanism. Activated by setting a delayed-action timer in the cockpit, it would literally fry all the electronics, avionics, and weapons systems.

Inside the life-support room, flames were roaring up a wall from the trash barrel in which Shepherd and Brancato had started a fire before pulling the alarm. The Libyans were battling the blaze with extinguishers. A sentry who had also responded to the alarm heard a pounding from within a steel locker. He discovered one of the Libyan aviators, who had regained consciousness. A brief exchange sent the sentry dashing down the corridor toward the hangar.

Brancato had just reached the bomber and was about to climb the ladder to the cockpit when he heard the hangar door opening behind him. He whirled, pistol in hand, and opened fire. The sentry went down. Brancato spotted another Libyan through the glass panel in the door, who was running down the corridor toward the hangar. He fired several shots, shattering the glass. The sentry kept coming. Brancato left the hangar, running toward the F-111 on the tarmac.

Moments earlier, Shepherd had crouched to the main landing gear and reached up inside the wheel well, removing a khaki-colored can that contained a starter cartridge. Manufactured by Morton-Thiokol, it was a slow-burning explosive device used to start the engines when pneumatic blower units weren’t available. Shepherd had a far better reason for using it—the standard pneumatic start took 5 minutes; a cart start took 20 seconds. He opened the left side SOAP door and inserted the cartridge into the starter breech, moistening the pins with saliva to ensure electrical contact; then he secured the door and went up the ladder to the cockpit.

Shepherd already had the battery turned on and the starter switch in cart when he heard the gunshots and saw Brancato running from the hangar. He lifted the throttle on the number one engine, sending voltage to the starter breech and fuel to the engines simultaneously. The cartridge exploded, ballistically winding the engine to start speed.

Brancato was climbing into the cockpit as the pursuing sentry neared the bomber. The Libyan paused and jacked his AK-47; then, uncertain about blasting one of Qaddafi’s prized F-111s with the machine gun, he dashed to the ladder that lay against the fuselage and started climbing.

Brancato reached over the side of the cockpit and fired his pistol. The bullet hit the Libyan in the center of the chest with tremendous force and knocked him backwards. The ladder went with him, saving Brancato the task of shoving it aside.

The tachometer had just ticked 17,000 as Brancato dropped into the seat next to Shepherd. “I couldn’t pull the plug,” he said. “They were all over me.”

“We’ll just have to find another way,” Shepherd said with a thin smile as he started the bomber rolling.

While guiding it through the darkness, they went about hooking up oxygen and G-suit hoses and plugging in com-cords. By the time they had finished, the air that was being forced through the second engine by the plane’s forward momentum had the turbine winding at high speed, and Shepherd lifted the throttle, starting it.

“Master arm on,” Shepherd said, throwing the switch that energized the bomber’s weapons systems. “Manual release; select two and seven.”

“Manual; select two and seven,” Brancato echoed, reaching to the stores select panel in the right console. The plane was approaching the top of the runway as he pressed the numbered keys, arming the Mark 82 bombs that hung from pylons below the wings.

IN BEIRUT,
television camera crews were waiting outside the U.S. Embassy when a van turned into Avenue de Paris. As it went past, two Palestinians, faces masked by kaffiyehs, pushed a rolled carpet out the sliding door onto the macadam. Marine sentries cordoned it off and radioed for a bomb disposal unit.