John Birmingham - Without warning

Ritchie dropped his head into his hands and rubbed at eyes that burned with a lack of sleep. ‘Get out,’ he said quietly.

HATZERIM ISRAELI AIR FORCE RASE, BEERSHEBA

The envoy had lied. Or rather, he had not told the whole truth because he did not know it. The target list that Asher Warat supplied Ritchie with was incomplete, as were other details of the attack, including the fact that many of the warheads would be delivered by Jericho II missiles, not piloted aircraft. In addition to the cities and military facilities on the list, the Israeli Cabinet had added a further thirty-eight sites. Suspected Iranian nuclear centres in Natanz, Ardekan, Saghand, Gashin, Bushehr, Aral and Lashkar A’bad were all slated for destruction, along with the cities of Tabriz, Qazvin, Shiraz, Yazd, Kerman, Qom, Ahwaz and Kermanshah. Five of the nuclear-tipped missiles were inbound on Libya as the ambassador had sat down with Admiral Ritchie, while another three were headed for military bases near heavily populated Egyptian cities. But one mission, the last to depart, had a very different target. The Aswan High Dam.

Colonel Rudi Molenz sat quietly in the cockpit of his F-15I Ra’am at the end of the main runway of Hatzerim Air Base in the Negev desert. Tel Aviv and his family lay fifty miles to the north, but the bejewelled cluster of lights would be dimmed tonight, as the city hid itself in the dark. He would not be able to glance back over his shoulder after take-off and smile at the thought of his two little children safely in bed, somewhere in that mass of glowing pearls, surrounded by soft toys and dreaming of Daddy’s return. Because there was no guarantee that Daddy would ever be coming home. And worse than that, no certainty that home itself would survive the night or the next day. Behind him, his weapons system officer, Lieutenant Ephron, hummed tunelessly, irritating Molenz, who said nothing. Ephron was nervous and the flat, atonal droning was his release valve. It was the same before all of their missions. When they finally had a release from the control tower, the little putz would shut the fuck up and do his job flawlessly. He always had before.

A brief crackle sounded in the earphones of his bulbous DASH helmet. ‘Attention Reach One Ninety, please stand by…’

Molenz felt his balls shrivel and became acutely aware of silence in the back of the cockpit.

The voice crackled in his Display and Sight Helmet again. ‘You have clearance to execute Plan Magenta. Preliminary release codes: Echo Kilo Four Niner Three Niner Foxtrot.’

Molenz had burned the one-use code into his memory but checked the mission pad velcroed to his leg anyway. ‘Release confirmed,’ he replied. ‘Reach One Ninety away.’

The enormous power of the aircraft’s two F-100 Pratt amp; Whitney engines came roaring up like an angry leviathan as the pilot’s heads-up display blinked into life. The caged fury of the jet fighter completely enfolded him and as always he felt the deep-body thrill of having so much potential power in his hands. Beneath the old familiar sensation, however, lay a dread that ran deeper than anything he had experienced in all the years he had been flying combat missions. It was not the fear of his own death, but of becoming Death itself, because attached to the underside of his Strike Eagle was a thirty-kiloton nuclear warhead in a specially hardened penetrator casing. It was designed to slam into the base of the Aswan High Dam, drilling down through ten metres of concrete, before birthing a small supernova to atomise much of the dam’s solid mass, releasing the superheated waters behind to roar down the Nile Valley like a mega-tsunami towards Cairo.

Part of him could not believe he was doing this, that it was even happening. But the two aircraft ripping down the tarmac right after his were real. As were the dozen flights he’d watched leaving earlier for much farther flung locations. He’d known many of those pilots. Commanded some of them, trained others. Their goodbyes were restrained but heartfelt. Unlike Molenz, they were flying single-engine F-16s with modified drop tanks to get them all the way to Iran while flying low and fast through the wastes of northern Iraq. They would traverse the edge of the Kurdish regions, where years of British and American enforcement of the no-fly zone had denuded Iraq of air defence assets. Even with drop tanks, however, there would not be enough fuel for them to return. Extraction teams were standing by to evac anyone who made it to the preset rendezvous points. But Molenz knew from looking into the men’s eyes as they shook hands, and in some cases hugged, that they were going to their deaths.

The Israeli Air Force flights left in groups of three. One F-15 carried the warhead while the two escorts carried air-to-air load-outs. Those headed for targets in Iran and Iraq did not expect to encounter any significant resistance en route. The top-secret electronic warfare suites installed for this mission were designed to maximise the escorts’ effectiveness against any allied planes they might encounter. It was possible that Coalition aircraft might try to stop them, but Molenz and his peers figured they had enough on their plate as it was. They were no threat.

The colonel pulled back on the stick and the Strike Eagle clawed its way up into the stars. At twenty thousand feet he performed his usual contortionist feat anyway, straining to catch a glimpse of the capital off on the northern horizon. It was definitely dimmer, but not completely blacked out. What would be the point? Modern sensors meant that pilots no longer had to feel their way through darkened enemy airspace, seeking out targets to bomb. Iraqi Scuds had been landing in Israel for days, despite the best efforts of the Patriot batteries and the promises of General Franks that Coalition special forces would own the western deserts, from where the missile threat originated. The promises meant nothing. The threats issuing from the Iraqi dictator in hiding, however, they had to be taken seriously, and ever since the flooding of Baghdad those threats had become increasingly shrill and apocalyptic. It almost seemed as though Hussein and the Iranian president were racing each other towards a rhetorical abyss. And now, thought Molenz, the abyss races towards them.

Behind him, Ephron ran through another check of the Elisra SPS-2110/A Modified Electronic Warfare System and the LANTIRN pods while Molenz checked the APG 70 terrain-mapping radar. Even in the foulest weather, in the darkest hours of night, the radar provided him with a picture-perfect return from the ground, making it possible to pick out even small targets like mobile batteries tucked away in a dry wadi. At just under 4000 metres in length, and 114 metres tall, containing 43 million cubic metres of concrete and fill, there wasn’t much chance of him missing the dam.

Molenz edged their nose around to the south, to skirt Beersheba and trace the length of the border with Jordan, on a course for the headwaters of the Gulf of Aqaba. The three jets flew low and fast, operating up near the edge of full military power, shrieking over the ghostly blue-black desert at Mach 2.5. They maintained radio silence, each man alone with his thoughts, as the demands of the mission allowed.

A few minutes before they would overfly the resort city of Eilat, he pushed the stick over and sent them rocketing towards the Egyptian border. Beyond lay the Sinai Peninsula and the rocky wastes of the biblical Wilderness where David and the Israelites wandered for so many years. Mountains lay ahead, a jagged-edged void of darkness blotting out the stars, corresponding to the image scrolling down the APG 70 screen, bathing him in the softest of glows.