Warren Murphy: Arabian Nightmare

"What did he say?" asked the commandant of the Marine Corps.

"He said, 'Never mind what it is, ship the damned thing.' Unquote."

A C-130 Hercules Transport left Andrews Air Force Base within the hour, a Pentagon courier seated on a web seat, an attache case across his back and the tortoiseshell inside the case. The attache believed he was carrying all-important Pentagon campaign plans for the defense of Hamidi Arabia and the liberation of occupied Kuran. He believed this because no less than the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had implied this. The chairman was not about to inform the man that he was ferrying the cracked shell of a tortoise-or possibly a turtle-all the way to a frontline base in the Hamidi desert.

Neither the attache nor the chairman knew that that was exactly what lay within the attache case.

Chapter 6

Prince General Suleyman Bazzaz was, strictly speaking, neither a general nor a prince.

As the adopted son of Sheik Abdul Hamid Fareem, the title of prince was conferred upon him one night in a bedouin tent with only the hissing of sand-driven wind and the spitting of single-humped dromedaries as a musical accompaniment.

When this was done, Sheik Fareem clapped his withered hands together and asked his new son, "Your heart's desire. Name this thing and it will be done."

Since Sheik Fareem ruled over a stretch of sand under which the world's energy requirements slept, Prince Bazzaz thought carefully upon this.

"I have always wished to fly the great fighter jets," said the new prince, then but nineteen and fresh from a trip to Bahrain, where he had seen the forbidden-to-Moslems film called Top Gun-forbidden because it showed actual kissing. "My favorite is the F-14 Tomcat, a magnificent plane, for it boasts more fins than a 1957 Cadillac."

"You wish only to join the Royal Hamidi Air Force?" asked the sheik, a trace of disappointment creeping over his windseared old visage.

"No," said Prince Bazzaz, sensing that he was underestimating the offer before him. "I wish for my own aircraft carrier. "

No sound passed between the two men in the candleflicker light of the midnight tent. It was winter. The cruel northern wind, the shamal, threatened the sturdy tent.

Presently Sheik Fareem nodded mutely and stole from the tent. Outside, a retinue of servants and military guards awaited. At a gesture from their sheik, one proffered a cellular telephone. The sheik spoke nervously for some minutes into this and then returned to the striped tent.

"It will take five years to build one," Sheik Fareem explained in disappointment. "What would you do in the meantime?"

"I would be general of the Hamidi Royal Air Force."

"No," said the sheik, shaking his head. "I cannot allow any son of mine, even if his blood is not my own, to be a mere general."

Prince Bazzaz's bronzed young face fell.

"No," the sheik went on sagely, "you shall be prince general."

Prince General Bazzaz' face lit up. That he had no experience in military service, never mind generaling, was of no moment, the sheik patiently explained to him.

"For as long as the black gold oozes up from the sands of Araby, the Americans will protect us," he had prophesied.

And so they did.

When the legions of the brutal Iraiti regime rolled south along the bait-Kuran Friendship Road, slaughtering and looting and raping as they shouted their solidarity with Arabs everywhere, Prince General Suleyman Bazzaz received the news at a difficult moment. It was while he was working on his tan.

The aide came to his private tanning booth in downtown Nemad, capital of Hamidi Arabia. It had cost twenty thousand dollars and gave almost as smooth a tan as the prince general would had gotten from sitting on a $12.95 chaise lounge under the scorching Hamidi sun. But even the lowliest effendis had the sun to bronze them. Only Bazzaz had a private tanning booth.

"The Iraitis are coming!" the aide shouted. "They have smashed into Kuran!"

"Our Kurani brothers will stop them," Prince General Bazzaz murmured nonchalantly. "They are almost as rich as we and they possess American weapons nearly the equal of our own."

"Which weapons are now in Iraiti hands," the aide added breathlessly. "And crack Iraiti Renaissance Guard units are heading this way."

Behind protective goggles of red lenses, the prince general's dark eyes blinked. "What of the valiant Kuranis?"

"Valiantly offering their services to protect our mutual border now that they have no country of their own," replied the aide.

Prince General Bazzaz threw off his protective visor and hurried into a white uniform which would have made an opera star blush with embarrassment and was whisked to the sheik's palace in his personal motorcade.

He arrived in exactly five minutes, three more than if he had walked. The palace was directly across the street from the command headquarters. But the winds were up and he did not wish to get dust on his ivory-white paratroop boots.

"O long-lived one," Bazzaz cried, bursting in on the majlis, where the sheik heard the complaints-which were many-of his people, "I am told the Iraitis have stabbed our Kurani brothers in the back."

"Let the word go forth," said the sheik, indignation making his voice quake. "This is an Arab affair. No outsiders are to meddle in matters between our brothers."

"Their tanks are coming this way. They covet our land. I have never before fought a war, 0 Father. What do I do? Which uniform should I wear-the white or the gold?"

The sheik blinked. He drew his adopted son close and whispered in his ear, "Call the Americans. Only they can save us now."

"But what about our Arab honor?" Bazzaz had demanded. "What about my honor? I am commander in chief."

"Honor is but a word," hissed the sheik. "Our blood is as spillable as any Kurani's. Call the Americans, and be silent. We will talk of honor once our nation is again secure."

And so began the mightiest airlift in history.

By the time the Hamidi-Kuran border had been fortified with several U.S. divisions and Hamidi Arabia at least temporarily secure from invasion, the question of command was first raised.

"I will command," said Prince General Bazzaz smoothly, upon meeting the general in charge of the UN farces. Today he was wearing the gold uniform, having decided to alternate.

"It's my army," retorted General Winfield Scott Hornworks, supreme commander of Allied Forces Central Command.

"It is my nation," said the prince general, who did not immediately comprehend why the unbeliever did not obey instantly. Had his father not hired this infidel army to do the will of the Hamidi royal family?

"Fine," retorted General Winfield Scott Hornworks. "We'll be on our way home, seeing as how your nice little sandbox of a country is out of immediate danger. If the Iraitis act up again, you give us a yell, hear?"

Prince General Bazzaz' eyes fixed on the broad retreating back of the American general as he started out of the room, looking like a human chocolate-chip cookie in his desert utilities and bush hat. They grew wide like twin explosions of surprise as the general's words sank in.

"I have a brilliant idea!" he called, lifting his bejeweled swagger stick. It trembled.

The general half-turned. "If it's half as brilliant as that getup of yours," he said dryly, "it oughta be a doozy."

"Why do we not rotate?"

"Rotate what?"

"Our responsibilities," Bazzaz said, smiling weakly. "Twelve hours for you and twelve for me."

Since the general had not actually been authorized to withdraw from Hamidi Arabia and was hoping to bluff the prince general, he gave this proposition serious thought. "It's possible," he allowed at last.

"Excellent! I will take days. I am a day person. Not a night oil."

"That's 'owl' and you got yourself a deal," said the general, who figured even in the crazy event the Pentagon went for this arrangement, any first strike would be a night operation.