Warren Murphy: The Last Monarch

A cheer went up from Aruch's army. His men swarmed from the oasis, racing up to the big crate. Crowbars were jimmied into the sliver of space between the wood on one side. Nails creaked in pain as the crate was pulled apart. The side dropped away with a sudden slap, disgorging contents at the feet of Nossur Aruch.

The AK-47s that spilled out had not been packaged as they would have during the glory days of the old Soviet Union. These guns were fully assembled. They had been piled in the crate with only torn sections of moth-eaten surplus Red Army blankets wrapped around them. Yellowed ten-year-old shredded copies of Pravda had been shoved in to fill any vacant space.

There were fifty guns in the case. These were hastily snatched up by the nearest PIO soldiers. The Antonov was making another pass. In the desert a half mile distant, it began to drop a series of smaller crates. These floated to earth more slowly, touching the sand at about the time Aruch and his men reached them.

When they were split open, the boxes revealed hundreds of smaller cases of ammunition.

Like starving men on a shipment of food, the Arabs dove for the ammo. This was distributed to those with guns.

By now, the sky had lightened.

Far across the vacant plain, the Antonov was turning back for another run. In it was the future of the Mideast. The future of King Nossur Aruch.

His plan was set. They would take back the West Bank by force. Organized, his men would swarm through Jerusalem and into Israel. From there, he would secure his seat of power, striking out into the region in all directions. Like the relentless magnetic wave of the neutrino bomb, he would sweep across the Middle East until everything-from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, from Turkey above to Egypt in northern Africa-fell beneath the trampling hoofs of his unstoppable Palestinian army.

The Antonov was nearly upon them once more. The desert shook with the violent force of sound flowing from the mighty turboprops of the impossibly large aircraft.

All at once, the big Russian plane seemed to make another, separate noise. A high-pitched shriek of rapid deceleration. Almost simultaneous to the appearance of the new sound came a blinding flash of light from the fuselage of the big plane. The Antonov appeared to jolt to one side as a crackling plume of flame and smoke erupted from her starboard nacelle. The engines exploded an instant later, ripping most of the right wing from the craft.

The crash came almost too quickly to be believed. At one moment, the Antonov was burning and airborne; the next it was plummeting earthward. It hit the sand with a thunderous boom, tearing a furrow of flame through the desert.

As the nose of the crashing plane barreled toward them, flaming out of control, Aruch and his men split apart. Screeching in panic and confusion, the soldiers raced into the desert, into the oasis, anywhere that would get them out of the path of the Russian plane.

As they ran, a pair of jets appeared up out of the growing dawn. The new planes screamed forward, ripping across the lightening sky.

Even as he ran, Aruch recognized the familiar flag painted on the tails of the two Mirage F-1s. It was a plain green, the traditional color of Islam. The flag of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

Libya had blown the Russian plane, as well as Nossur Aruch's precious cargo, out of the sky. "Sons of dogs!" Aruch bellowed, shaking a balled fist at the jets as they flew over his family's oasis. In the desert behind him, the crashed Antonov exploded and burned. "The infidel Khaddafi did not pay for this!"

The jets took a wide arc over the Jordanian desert before circling back around. Holding formation, they raced toward the oasis.

The Palestinian army dispersed before the Mirages.

Aruch slowed his pace as the jets flew toward him. Even as he noted that the Sidewinder missile was missing from the port wingtip rail of the right plane, the left plane was loosing its pair of similar missiles.

They detached in a cloud of trailing white smoke, rocketing toward the oasis. Eyes wide, Aruch dove for the sand and covered his head.

When the missiles struck an instant later, it was as if the desert floor had turned to flame. Hundred-year-old trees exploded to smoking pulp. The plants were flung like matchsticks into the desert. Fire erupted from two smoking craters in the oasis. One heavy tree trunk crashed to the rope rail-the only thing that had prevented the terrified horses from running after the initial missile attack on the Antonov. The animals bolted now, racing across the desert.

By the time Aruch scampered back to his feet, the Mirage jets had circled again.

From the ground, rounds of automatic-weapons fire spit from the pitifully few guns the PIO soldiers had collected from the first and only Russian crate. The Libyan pilots returned fire on their way back to the oasis.

"He did not pay!" Nossur Aruch shouted as he bounded into the smoking ring that was his ancestral home.

Bryce Babcock greeted the PIO leader, grabbing him by the jacket. The interior secretary's drooping face was covered in grime. His eyes held a crazed, fearful look.

"What's going on?" Babcock begged.

"I am being cheated! That is what is going on!" Aruch screamed, shoving past the secretary. Babcock dogged him as he hustled over to the seated form of the ex-President. The din had awakened the older man.

"Who are they? What do they want?" Babcock sniffled, a fearful eye on the sky. It had suddenly grown eerily quiet.

"I contacted several parties last night who I thought might be interested in purchasing the old devil," Aruch said, waving at the President. "Libya and Iran agreed to bid on him. But that beast in human form Khaddafi has decided to kill him without paying!"

Aruch again shook a fist at the empty sky. As if in response, another rocket soared in out of nowhere, this one exploding in the dense greenery behind Aruch's tent. The PIO leader threw himself to the ground once more. Dust and rock pelted his back.

When he got to his feet, he found his tent had collapsed. Fire tore across the dry fabric. A few feet away, Babcock had crawled fearfully behind a shattered tree trunk.

With rage-twisted fingers, Aruch grabbed for the President.

"Looks like you should be trading up for a better class of friend," the old man commented, his weather-hardened face curled into the suggestion of a smile.

"Shut up!" Aruch snapped. "We will be safe in my bunker. I will get a fair bounty for you one way or another, old one." He dragged the President to his feet.

They had not taken a single step before an amused glint appeared in the eyes of the former chief executive. He was looking away from the burning tent. Toward the edge of the oasis.

"It's about time you fellas showed up," he said softly.

The voice that responded to the former President was new. And most terrifying of all, the words spoken were in unaccented English.

"Don't you remember? We always time these things for optimum dramatic effect."

Aruch whirled.

Two strangers had entered the oasis. A young white and an old Asian. As they slipped silently forward, Aruch stepped back, grabbing hold of the exPresident.

"He's mine!" the PIO leader screamed. As backdrop to his frantic shout, a new sound exploded in the sky above them.

A squadron of eight F-5s appeared out of the east. As they tore overhead, Aruch recognized the green, white and red flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

A demonic look of glee appeared in the eyes of Nossur Aruch. Allies. Fellow Arabs to help him battle these two men and the treacherous Libyan planes.

"They are here for him!" Aruch cried victoriously. Grabbing the rope that bound the President's hands, he tugged the old man's wrists in the air.