Introduction At 2:38 a.m. on January 17, 1991, Colonel Hussein Kamil Hasan al-Majid was awakened from his sleep by the ringing of a red telephone which was on the makeshift night stand next to his cot. He had been sleeping eighty feet underground in a concrete- fortified bunker attached to Factory 10, a top-secret centrifuge production unit in Taji, 50 kilometers northwest of Baghdad which, as chief of the State Organization for Technical Industries, Kamil had been responsible for creating. His call abruptly informed him that several radar sites in Iraq's western border had just stopped functioning, and that it was believed that the allied attack had begun, which, in fact, was true, since a squadron of Apache helicopters had just destroyed the sites with laser-guided Hellfire missiles, followed by clusters of Hydra rockets. As Hussein Kamil spoke on the telephone, nearly 700 aircraft of the coalition forces slipped undetected through the "radar-black" corridor, including the 415th Squadron of the U.S. 37th Tactical Fighter Wing, consisting of six subsonic F-117A Stealth attack planes, each armed with a single, 2,000-pound, laser-guided smart bomb. The 415th flew in a tight formation under a blank new moon with only the beavertail plumes of their exhaust showing underneath the stars. If detected in daylight the F-117As were no match for an enemy fighter with a maximum speed below Mach 1, but by night they were all but invisible. The only warning the platoon of sentries guarding the Taji Complex had before the plant was hit was the unusual high-pitched whine of the approaching F-117A's General Electric F404-F1D2 turbofan engines. In his bunker below ground Hussein Kamil felt each bomb hit its target in succession. The 415th's final target was Factory 10, and the force of the explosions was enough to cause Kamil's ears to ring for days afterwards, destroying in a moment hundreds of gas centrifuges, spinning lathes, spinning machines, vacuum pumps, and custom valves, all of which he had spent years in acquiring. An hour later, the 416th "Ghostriders" Tactical Fighter Squadron repeated the same bombing pattern, reducing the shattered remains of Taji Complex to flaming rubble and Iraq's nuclear weapons program with it. By dawn the allied bombing had stopped and Colonel Kamil decided to leave the safety of his German-built bunker. A two-foot-thick steel-reinforced concrete slab which separated the three underground levels from the concrete stairwells leading to the basement of the complex had collapsed under the impact of the bombing, so after Kamil had rounded up a few key members of his staff and ordered them to don nuclear protective gear, he had them follow him along a special exit tunnel which surfaced about a hundred yards from Factory 10. Even though he knew only too well that an allied bombing attack had taken place, the Iraqi colonel was not emotionally prepared for the landscape filled with smoking wreckage which he saw for the first time through his visor. Destroyed! Years of work destroyed overnight by the air forces of the very same countries who had been his suppliers! His staff members watched in horror as Kamil fell to his knees and sobbed silently inside his protective suit. Hussein Kamil had begun his career as an errand boy, fielding packages on shopping trips made by the presidential family to Oxford Street when they went to London. Allowed to talk to the women, since he also happened to be Saddam's cousin, Kamil wasted no time in asking the president's permission to marry his eldest daughter, Ragha. After single-handedly stopping an assassin from killing his future father-in-law, Lieutenant Kamil was promoted to full colonel and granted permission to marry Ragha. The war with Iran found him touring the front lines, side by side with his father-in-law Saddam in the official photographs. In fact, they looked more like brothers than in-laws, having the same dark mustaches, full jaws, and dark skins. In 1986 Kamil was given his first real responsibility, when Saddam Hussein put him in charge of the State Organization for Technical Industries (SOTI), the agency responsible for procuring nuclear weapons technology. Through dummy companies set up all over Europe, Colonel Kamil had purchased enough equipment so that by the time the war with the United States had begun, Iraq was simultaneously manufacturing weapons-grade fuel using all four of the presently available processes in secret facilities spaced throughout the country. Only the chance appearance of a defector, coming over to the U.S. Marines in June 1991, revealed the existence of five buried plants which had been untouched during the war. In September 1991, after the war was over, Defense Intelligence Agency analysts drastically revised their prewar estimates of how close Iraq was to obtaining the bomb, from five to ten years, down to six months. Almost two years later after the allied air attack, in the morning of November 4, 1992, Colonel Kamil heard a pounding on the door of his home in Baghdad and was welcomed by a pair of colonels from Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guards who ordered him to get dressed and come with them. They raced along the Military Canal past the bombed-out communications center, swerved suddenly into a side street and slammed to a stop in front of a nondescript two-story restaurant with two sentries holding automatics at port arms stationed at the door. The dining room was empty, save for three men at the center table: Saddam Hussein, the President of Iraq; Sabawi Hussein, Saddam's half-brother and long-time head of Iraqi intelligence; and a German nuclear physicist, Dr. Karl Stemmler, who had supervised Iraq's development of gas centrifuge plants to make nuclear bombs. It had turned into a celebratory dinner as the early evening election returns from America showed Bill Clinton a clear winner over George Bush for the office of President of the United States. "He lost! The bastard lost!" Saddam Hussein rose from the table and clasped Kamil's hand, then motioned for him to sit down next to him. For a man who had only two years ago suffered a humiliating military defeat of immeasurable proportions and whose country was presently overrun with UN inspection teams, Saddam Hussein seemed to Colonel Kamil to be in astonishingly good spirits. The Colonel also couldn't help but notice the barely disguised look of satisfaction on the face of the normally taciturn Sabawi Hussein. Kamil asked himself what difference did it make to them whether it was Bush or Clinton? The war had already been lost, and the country's nuclear weapons program still lay in ruins . . . Only the German, Stemmler, seemed unaffected by it all, maintaining the same skeptical expression he had when the Colonel had shown him the stolen blueprints for building uranium gas centrifuges at the Rashid Hotel almost a dozen years ago. In many ways the German scientist was the opposite of the volatile Kamil, who had to be officially reprimanded by his father-in-law for his extravagances during his buying efforts in Europe. Intellectually arrogant and a ruthless manager of his own self- interest, Stemmler resembled nothing so much as a harmless retiree in his battered felt fedora and wrinkled sports coat. Stemmler's saving grace was that at bottom, like many scientists, he was relatively apolitical, which made it easier for him to switch sides if the need arose. Now seventy-five years old, Stemmler had begun his scientific career in ballistic missile manufacture at Hitler's Nordhausen Rocket Works under the aegis of General Walter Dornberger. Dornberger, a career German artillery officer, had recognized two decades before the war that even though the Treaty of Versailles prevented Germany from manufacturing most conventional weaponry, it had not banned the building of rockets, which Dornberger began to add to the Nazi arsenal in 1932. When Stemmler joined Dornberger's staff in 1943, battalions of slave laborers from the nearby Dora concentration camp had just been directed by the SS to hack a square-mile hole out of an abandoned salt mine to begin Nordhausen's construction. By the time the plant was liberated by American troops in April 1945 over twenty thousand prisoners had been systematically starved and worked to death, their bodies finally piling up everywhere in the last months of the Reich, since the ovens were too busy. Far from being charged with war crimes for having been honorary members of the SS and having set production schedules responsible for working thousands of men to death, the talents of Dornberger and his scientific staff were fought over by the Russians and Americans for use in one or the other side's own military research projects. But the day before the Americans' arrival Herr Doktor Karl Stemmler left the plant to avoid being swept up in either Project Overcast or Operation Paperclip, the secret programs which were responsible for bringing 765 former Nazi scientists, engineers and technicians to the United States. Eluding American patrols, Stemmler was passed along a ratline run by former Abwehr officers and escaped to Syria. From there he moved to Cairo and worked for Nasser, until the Mossad found him out and he escaped to Brazil, where he continued his work for that government's ballistic research missile program. Later, Stemmler was asked by the Brazilian National Intelligence Service to become involved in Brazil's nascent secret nuclear weapons program, which was run by its Navy. Since the 1950s, Brazilian scientists had been working with ultracentrifuge technology, the same used in the Manhattan Project by the Americans, to separate the rare bomb- grade isotope from regular uranium, which the Brazilians had in large supply in their local mines. The head of the Brazilian nuclear program was another former Third Reich scientist, Wilhelm Hoth, a man of mixed allegiances, who became Stemmler's mentor and fast friend. When Saddam Hussein signed the top secret ten-year nuclear cooperation agreement with Brazil, Stemmler was instructed by his superior, Hoth, to move to Iraq and become his special representative in Baghdad. There Stemmler oversaw Brazilian shipments of natural and low-enriched uranium, reactor technology, and, more importantly, a special centrifuge project to enrich ordinary uranium to bomb-grade fuel at the Iraqis' first nuclear reactor site in Osirak. After signing the Franco-Iraqi Nuclear Cooperation Treaty, the French, insisting nuclear technology was a question of "national sovereignty," had agreed to export a breeder reactor and a so-called "research reactor" to Iraq and train six hundred Iraqi nuclear technicians. Visiting members of the French Atomic Energy Commission were surprised by the arrival of Brazilian nuclear physicists in the spring of 1981, but were told by Dr. Stemmler to keep quiet or they would be declared persona non grata and sent back to France. But three of the French physicists didn't take kindly to being ordered about by an arrogant old man they suspected was a former Nazi, and upon returning to France, complained to President Mitterand that Saddam Hussein was planning to make a bomb. In Israel, Prime Minister Menachem Begin's chief of staff, General Rafael Eitan, was informed of the French physicists' report by Mossad, who also informed Eitan that the Iraqis' Osirak plant was almost a carbon copy of Israel's own bomb plant at Dimona. On June 7, 1981, Dr. Karl Stemmler suffered his first major reversal in Iraq, when Israeli F-16s crossed Saudi, then Jordanian, airspace and attacked Osirak with precision- guided missiles and 2000-pound "dumb" bombs in Operation Babylon. After the years spent rebuilding the shattered ruins of Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program, for Karl Stemmler at his advanced age, the American attack in January 1991 was the final straw. The message sent by George Bush and the coalition couldn't have been clearer: it was fine for Iraq to buy uranium gas centrifuges from Brazil and Germany; nuclear reactor cores from the French; and plutonium hot cells and laboratories from the Italians-- but if these discrete components were ever assembled by the Iraqis to create an atom bomb, they would be destroyed or dismantled. The second participant, Sabawi Hussein, Saddam Hussein's middle half brother, had replaced one of the dictator's cousins to become acting head of the General Intelligence Department (or Mukhabarat) at the end of 1989. While police forces in many third-world countries are often poorly staffed and inefficient, Iraq's employed more than one hundred fifty thousand people in its various security services. The Mukhabarat had representatives in over a score of Iraqi embassies abroad, who had been responsible for the elimination of exiled Iraqi dissidents in France, Lebanon, Sweden, England, Egypt, and the United States. Born in the same dirt-poor village of Tikrit as his brother Saddam, Sabawi had been chosen specifically because of the dictator's belief in the family as the key to power. His predecessor, Dr. Radhil al-Barak, had drastically reorganized the department, replacing political favorites with trained professionals, so that by the time Sabawi took it over, the Mukhabarat was quite capable of running successful foreign operations. Under no illusions as to who held the true authority in Iraq and shrewder than many of his other relatives, Sabawi Hussein believed he, more than anyone, understood his half brother's deep-rooted desire to avenge himself for his humiliating defeat at the hands of the Americans and their allies. Saddam Hussein returned to his seat at the table and surveyed his three guests. Each man knew better than to initiate a conversation in his leader's presence so he merely returned his gaze, asking no questions. The dictator now began a long, rambling monologue, citing instance after instance of treachery and betrayal he had suffered at the hands of his previously faithful armaments suppliers, most of whom hadn't hesitated to join the United Nations coalition arrayed against Iraq in the Gulf War. Carefully and methodically he listed plant after plant which had been destroyed in the massive air attacks, stripping the country of its strategic weapons. His three guests glanced down at the floor in shame, their faces growing longer with each recitation. "Hussein Kamil Hasan al-Majid!" Saddam began, "you know I am always the first to admit I've made a mistake!" "Yes, sir," replied Kamil, now fearing for his life, since Saddam's mistakes had often been rectified in the past by drastic changes in strategy and summary executions. "And Sabawi Hussein al-Tikriti," Saddam continued, turning to his half brother, "your loyalty has never been in doubt throughout this whole ordeal." Then turning to the German, "Nor yours, Dr. Stemmler. Without your help, Iraq could never have come as far as she did . . ." Stemmler silently nodded in appreciation. "But we must simply face the facts--we have taken too many blows to be able to recover, plus it's now impossible for us to start again. Our previous suppliers are now our enemies, and even if they weren't, it would take us years to get where we were before the war. Of course, there will always be the Chinese and the Pakistanis and the North Koreans--if they last that long--but all of you have made it clear to me in the past that they alone were not enough." Saddam's three guests had informed him early on in the development of Iraq's nuclear weapons program that reliance on only those countries which had not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, e.g., China, North Korea, France and Pakistan, would not be sufficient. Iraq would also have to approach the various signatories to acquire all the components necessary to construct a nuclear device. Now, to go back to Germany for centrifuges, Italy for plutonium cells, France for a new reactor, or the United States for replacement equipment was out of the question. Although each of his three invitees knew this, none dared to interrupt. "I believed before the war, and I believe now, that my two primary aims in attempting to liberate Kuwait were sound: first, to acquire and control Kuwait's oil capacity, and, second, by doing so, to help relieve our enormous debts by reducing their output, thereby raising world oil prices when it suited us. I don't have to tell you how many times we tried to reason with them and the Saudis over this to no avail, while they continued to defy us and ran their wells flat out . . . "Now we have American troops directly across our border, plants overrun with I.A.E.A. inspection teams, and the Saudis and the Kuwaitis laughing in our faces--a state of affairs for which I accept the total blame. What was my mistake? My mistake was to confront our enemies too courageously, too arrogantly on their own terms--and because I made that mistake we lost. "But after talking to one of you, it's now clear to me that there is another way of accomplishing these same objectives--that there always was another way--which was right under our noses if I had only seriously considered it. The Libyans gave us a hint of it over Lockerbie. It is simply this, gentlemen, to use the enemy's own nuclear forces against himself." Kamil and Stemmler looked at each other in horror, each knowing the dictator well enough to have understood exactly the ramifications of what he had just said, guessing immediately that the dictator's half brother, Sabawi, whose face continued to remain impassive, had a surprise in store for them. "But how can we implement such a plan?" interrupted Dr. Stemmler, suspecting encroachment on his territory. "A method exists, I assure you, gentlemen," replied Saddam. "But what I want to know now is if I have your approval to go forward with this new strategy?" Dr. Stemmler and Colonel Kamil quickly exchanged glances. They each knew that the one who protested at this point would not live out the day. "Na'am," Kamil answered in affirmation. "M'leeh." Good, replied Saddam. "Dr. Stemmler?" The former honorary SS Sturmbannfuhrer nodded silently in affirmation. Then, for the first time that day Sabawi Hussein began to speak: "President Hussein has agreed with me that it is of the utmost importance that what I am about to tell you will never leave this room." The chief of the Mukhabarat then paused and rested his gaze on both Stemmler and Colonel Kamil, who again nodded their agreement. "On the day after the American invasion, a certain Lebanese-American, who I hereafter will refer to as GERALD, walked uninvited into our United Nations Mission in New York." GERALD was an obscure systems designer who worked in La Jolla, California, at a software engineering firm whose sole business was a classified contract to update the U.S. military's Worldwide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS). "Wimex", as it was pronounced at the Pentagon, was the main circuit cable which ran straight from the White House Situation Room to the State Department's Operations Center, the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon, as well as several alternate war rooms, plus NSA's own early warning site, the Defense Special Missile and Astronautics Center (DESFMAC) and the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) Headquarters hidden in Colorado's Cheyenne Mountain. In case of nuclear war, the President and the Secretary of Defense would issue their orders over the WWMCCS network to the three legs of America's nuclear defense triad: submarines, strategic bombers, and the hardened silos containing ICBMs. Colonel Kamil turned to Saddam Hussein with a look of absolute bewilderment, but the dictator only nodded his head, motioning to his son-in-law to continue to pay attention to Sabawi's story, which, when he heard the rest of it, sent a shiver down his spine. "Being a scientist, he avoided political discussion, but because he was a Lebanese, I had immediately suspected him of being strenuously opposed to the American war effort, though I never said anything about it. "GERALD predicted that the Americans, after taking all our money, would never let us really have the atom bomb, and that either they or the Israelis would betray us. "Naively, I protested. I told him how close we were, that we were using all four processes at once and that Hussein Kamil had solved the problem of the capacitors, but he just laughed. "'Eventually they will destroy you,' he told me, and before I could protest, he grabbed my arm and told me this story:" On his first visit with Sabawi, GERALD slipped a folder from his jacket, whose contents consisted of a thick sheaf of paper filled with rows and rows of three-digit codes and handed it to the Iraqi secret service chief. No one spoke as Sabawi Hussein then handed his cousin, Colonel Kamil, a paper- bound book whose title read, Emergency Action Messages--Single Integrated Operating Plan--SIOP. Emergency Action Messages (EAMs) were a special set of codes used by the American military's Worldwide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS) to initiate a nuclear attack. Colonel Kamil leafed through the bland-looking book in shock--each page was filled with row after row of three-digit numbers which corresponded to a specific preset target for one of the United States' thirty thousand nuclear warheads. True, to be effective, Kamil knew before it was sent over the Worldwide Military Command and Control System any EAM would have to be both properly encoded and issued by the National Command Authority. Now in a daze, Kamil realized his cousin was still talking. On the second visit, Sabawi had instructed GERALD to meet him at the Iraqi United Nations Mission in Vienna, far from the prying eyes of the FBI. Once in Austria GERALD told Sabawi what he already knew--America's combat systems had all become computerized, since only computers could handle the data loads involved in modern electronic warfare. Communications satellites, radars, jet fighters, SSBNs, naval cruisers--the computers ran them all, hands-free, from target detection to weapons launch. America's new high command was the operating software deep in the center of each of its battle systems computers--a program that could dispatch thousands of orders in a second. Whoever controlled the operating system software could easily control the hardware; GERALD painted scenario after scenario for his stunned Iraqi host: missiles fired from warships which failed to reach their targets, exploding harmlessly in midair instead; fighter planes whose communications systems totally collapsed in the midst of dogfights; and destroyers which suddenly lost their communications links with fleet command. Each situation could easily be accomplished by the insertion of a few extra lines of software, a tiny subroutine added to the operating system, known as a Trojan Horse. GERALD could drop a Trojan Horse through a trap door in the operating system, circumventing the security controls, so that no one would even know of its existence. But GERALD had hardly come all the way to Europe to offer Sabawi a half-dozen malfunctioning missiles or a couple of incommunicado F-15s, he had a much more active imagination than that. He was offering the secret service chief the whole ball of wax, a major rewrite of Wimex, the ultimate national security network. After Sabawi finished, Colonel Kamil turned towards Saddam with a pained expression on his face. "Mr. President, we have no way to even begin to confirm that this, this GERALD is telling us the truth!" "Excuse me," Sabawi interrupted, "I never said we had no way to confirm GERALD's bona fides." Kamil leaned forward in his chair, now letting his full exasperation with his cousin show. "You have absolutely no way of proving it--unless the operation is--" "May I?" Sabawi softly spoke, pulling out a case of cigarettes and casually lighting one, breaking Colonel Kamil's concentration. "I don't profess to be a computer expert," Sabawi explained, exhaling a puff of smoke, "but I would never be so stupid as to pay for something like this sight unseen." "Don't be ridiculous!" protest Kamil. "There's no way to show it works, short of shooting off a missile--which for us even to be discussing is nonsense!" Sabawi Hussein only raised his eyebrows and looked to Saddam Hussein for support, who held up his hand to silence his son-in-law. "Naturally, any buyer would want to see some evidence that what he was purchasing wasn't just a hollow claim," Sabawi sighed, "and dutifully honoring our President's wishes in this matter, I so far have advanced only a small down payment to GERALD, the remainder subject to a small demonstration." Saddam Hussein glanced at his son-in-law for a response, but Kamil was silent. It was obvious Sabawi was now in full control. Sabawi coolly continued, "I believe the U.S. Air Force is now patrolling the so- called no-fly zone with F-15Cs, correct?" "Of course, everyone knows that," snapped Colonel Kamil, "but--" "While our most advanced fighter is the MiG-29, correct?" "This is information you can get from the newspaper!" "And the newspaper has also told anyone who's interested that the coalition's air superiority depends to a great extent on the support the U.S. Air Force's F-15 and F/A-18 fighters receive from the E-3 AWACS and E-2C Hawkeyes, warning them well in advance of the appearance of any of our aircraft into the no-fly zone. "And I believe the F-15Cs of the Air Force 1st and 33rd Tactical Fighter Wings are armed with Sparrow missiles, while F/A-18s from the Saratoga carry both Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles--" "Please!" shouted Colonel Kamil, shooting a look of incredulity towards Saddam. "We already know all this--" "GERALD's prepared, against his better judgment, to give us a single, small demonstration of his good faith. Then, afterwards, if we like, we can discuss his terms. "Mr. President?" Colonel Kamil looked helplessly towards Saddam Hussein, who, much to his surprise, immediately gave Sabawi the order to send up a MiG-29 Fulcrum, Iraq's most advanced jet fighter, as soon as the proper moment presented itself. Chapter 1 During the last month of the Bush administration, Saddam Hussein surprised allied communications and decided to test the will of the U.N. forces remaining in the region by ordering several planes to fly into the Western-imposed no-fly zone over southern Iraq and launch a series of daring forays into Kuwait. In one case Iraqi commandos made off with several crates of Silkworm surface-to-surface missiles. Finally, after the U.S. shot down an Iraqi fighter, Hussein upped the stakes and defiantly deployed several SA-3 mobile surface-to-air missiles inside the zone. George Bush, who had finally had enough of Saddam Hussein's provocations, ordered Generals Chuck Horner and Buster Glosson in Riyadh to conduct two retaliatory strikes against Iraq. Allied air forces subsequently struck four SA-3 missile sites on January 13, followed by a second strike on January 17. The second raid included forty Tomahawk missiles fired from two destroyers, the USS Hewit and the USS Stump, and one cruiser, the USS Cowpens, all stationed in the Persian Gulf. One of the Tomahawks crashed into the courtyard of Baghdad's Al-Rashid Hotel while an Islamic conference was in progress. Another, however, faithfully following the Iraqi terrain with its tiny internal radar preprogrammed by analysts at the Defense Mapping Agency in Washington, located and destroyed a much more strategic target along the banks of the Tigris River, south of Baghdad. An Iraqi defector who had recently passed through allied lines had informed military intelligence about an untouched network of twenty underground buildings at Tarmiya known as Djilah Park. Djilah Park, the plant which had just been obliterated by the Tomahawk, manufactured calutrons, machines used to enrich uranium, and was Colonel Kamil's last hope of Iraq maintaining its own nuclear weapons program. Within twenty-four hours of the second air strike, Air Force Generals Horner and Glosson received word from the White House to launch a third attack, targeting three Iraqi air defense centers and three mobile missile batteries which the allies had missed in the January 13 raid. At dawn on Monday both generals were in the basement of the Royal Saudi Air Force Headquarters building in Riyadh, watching an oversized display originating from a Boeing E-3 AWACS flying lazy 8s just south of the Saudi border. The borders of Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait appeared as dotted green lines glowing on the television screen, a much smaller version of which the radar controller of the AWACS was monitoring while he sat at a tiny desk inside the Boeing. An aide handed General Horner the handset to the special telephone known as HAMMER RICK, the secure communications line to the Pentagon. Twenty-four-hour wall clocks in the background gave the time in Washington, D.C., Greenwich, England, and Riyadh-Baghdad as Horner received the final OK to launch the third attack. "F-4G package up," the AWACS controller's disembodied voice echoed throughout the auditorium. "F-111B package up." The room in Riyadh was ominously silent, since the strike force's orders prohibited any plane-to-plane communication. "EF-111s activated." Six contiguous radial cones blinked on and off--the electronics-jammers from Torrejon AFB in Spain had arrived. "F-15C Four-ship One up." Now, sixty-nine glowing tracks illuminated the display screen, as each of the fighter-bombers sped across the desert in broad daylight to unleash its payload on a preprogrammed target. Far away from Riyadh, inside a nondescript two-story building off Torrey Pines Road in the hills of La Jolla, north of San Diego, California, rows of analysts sat at smaller desks before an identical display screen, which had the words "SITUATION ROOM" printed above it. Twenty-four-hour wall clocks gave the time on San Diego, Washington, D.C., Greenwich, and Riyadh-Baghdad. Five minutes before midnight Pacific Standard Time the display came alive with the same sixty-nine tracks as displayed on the screen in the Saudi Royal Air Force Building in Riyadh. Unbeknownst to the American public who would read about the air attack in the next day's papers, the American and British fighter- bombers (but not the French) were participating in a RAINBOW-clearance simulation of a strategic nuclear strike on Iraq, known as Operation ARCHANGEL. Each fighter- bomber's battle systems computer had been preprogrammed to fly the plane to target and unleash its conventional payload on automatic pilot as a test of the Worldwide Military Command Control Communications System for strategic nuclear war, Wimex. "F-111B package up," repeated the AWACS controller's voice. A line of sweat beads formed across the brow of the analyst whose job it was to monitor the F-111B fighter-bomber squadron's battle systems software. Victor Saleh knew that a simple programming error could cause the F-111's on-board tactical electronic warfare system computer to malfunction, rendering it suddenly and irreversibly impotent in the midst of a bombing mission. Before the mission had begun, each pilot had been handed an encrypted card, which he inserted into his firepower control computer. Firepower control was segregated electronically from the F-111B's other two avionics systems, penetration aids and MTC (Mission and Traffic Control), in order to prevent an enemy who was sophisticated in electronic warfare and computer hacking from sabotaging the mission while the aircraft was in flight. "APQ-110 TFR activated," silently scrolled across Saleh's CRT screen. The F-111B's pilot had just switched on his Texas Instruments automatic-terrain- following computer, freezing his and the WSO's sticks and pushing the F-111B into an automatic dive. The aircraft's inertial navigation system, which had been preprogrammed by the Defense Mapping Agency in Washington, was now flying the plane on autopilot, guiding it just a few hundred feet above ground level, where it bobbed over each slope and dipped into each valley. "BCU activated." The F-111B's navigation-attack system had just informed its ballistics computer unit that it was just about to arrive at the designated targets. Saleh's display window switched automatically, copying the F-111B pilot's main radar display. The moment the aircraft's BCU aligned the approaching target inside the cross-hairs, the light representing the target began to blink on and off on his CRT screen. Two 2000-pound GBU-24 glide-bombs had just dropped correctly over target, destroying a previously untouched nuclear processing plant in Tarimiya and causing yet another setback to Colonel Kamil's program. Now the direction of the F-111B package's tracks was reversed, and the digital readouts on the display screen showed it rapidly regaining altitude, climbing in a matter of minutes from slightly above ground level to a prearranged ceiling of 20,000 feet. Traveling at Mach 1.2 it would return to Saudi airspace in almost fifteen minutes. "Texaco 21, pop-up contact, H-5," the AWACS controller's voice interrupted the silent room. The AWACS had just informed a nearby F-15 squadron leader that an unidentified aircraft had appeared in their midst. The circling AWACS was being protected by a four- ship of American F-15s, whose squadron leader was in the midst of topping up his tanks from a KC-135 refueling tanker. Saleh's stomach tightened. H-5 was the Iraqi field at al-Tagaddum, so any Iraqi interceptors which had been launched from there would only be two hundred miles from the returning F-111Bs. The unidentified aircraft and the F-111Bs were converging on each other at over 2,000 miles per hour, only twenty-five miles apart, while the F-15s racing towards them from the opposite direction were approaching at 45 degrees to the left. Saleh was riveted to the screen, watching the nine different glowing tracks converge. "Pop-up contact. Two hundred miles north of target." The squadron leader of the F-15s heard the message over his intercom, noticing he had picked up a single contact on his radar. He wondered what had prompted the Iraqis to launch a single aircraft after the recent demonstration of allied air supremacy just a few days before. "Two same," replied his wing man. "No I.D. contact," the AWACS controller's voice echoed over the formation's intercoms. "Three same," repeated the pilot of the third F-15. Beads of sweat broke out across the squadron leader's forehead--the unidentified aircraft was approaching his position at Mach 2, cutting through 22,000 feet of airspace every second. Modern air combat tactics necessarily called for each pilot on either side to launch his stand-off missiles well before a visual ID (V.I.D.) was made by either pilot, but the maximum range of the F-15C's Sparrow missile was less than twenty-five miles. "Target 450 for fifty." The pilot of the MiG-29 flipped the Delta-H switch of his No-193 pulse-Doppler radar to the number two position for attack from below, and the radar-warning receivers in the AWACS and in all four of the F-15Cs were suddenly activated, as the MiG-29's radar computer automatically illuminated all five targets. "Hostile! Hostile!" warned the AWACS controller's voice over the American intercoms. Inside the MiG's cockpit, the five targets were now arrayed in threat-priority order on the Plexiglas head-up display. The Iraqi pilot next flipped on the master arm switch in the upper right-hand corner of the instrument panel, arming his Alamo missile circuit, then squeezed his gun trigger and checked its response on the HUD. The flashing of the rings of the multicolored threat lights was mixed with a high-pitched squeal from the SPO-15 radar warning receiver, indicating the MiG was being swept by several enemy radars at once. "Target 330 for forty." In the basement of the Royal Saudi Air Force Headquarters building a small crowd had gathered around the large display screen which was relaying the battle situation from the AWACS near the Saudi border. The oversized television showed everything in the air over most of the Middle East, but all eyes were riveted on the attacking MiG which appeared to be on a suicide mission against the far superior combination of an AWACS and the four F-15Cs. "Target 210 for thirty." "He's approaching them dead-on . . . he's crazy!" muttered General Horner to himself. The digits next to MiG's cursor flipped rapidly, indicating its altitude had dropped in a matter of seconds from 13,500 to 2,000 feet. "Target 100 for twenty-five," confirmed the controller in the AWACS. "Hot right!" the American squadron leader's voice screamed over the public address speaker. The lead F-15 and his wing man suddenly jinked to the right to get a better lock on their attacker. Closing speed between the two opposing fighters was now at Mach 4, about 45,000 feet per second. "Lock fifteen miles, 2,000." "Two same." "V.I.D. Hostile!" "Fox one." The squadron leader had just fired a radar-guided Sparrow. "Fox from two." The wing man had just fired his. General Horner watched the screen in amazement as the MiG's cursor refused to drop off the screen. At 600 feet above the deck, the MiG's pilot pushed the throttles to ninety percent, his airspeed now at five hundred knots. The two Sparrows just fired by the squadron leader and his wing man had sailed right past him, failing to find their target. A target block composed of all four F-15Cs and the AWACS lit up his HUD, its rectangular radar cursor dancing mechanically from one to the other. Straining against the force of his steep climb, the MiG pilot clicked the white button on his inner throttle knob to activate his Alamo missile's radar-seeking computer. "Pusk razrayshon," a synthesized voice responded in Russian. Launch approved. The Iraqis hadn't had the time to reprogram the Russian woman's voice recorded in the warning system. The pilot immediately armed the missile trigger, launching two B-27 Alamos at once in order to keep his load balanced. "Rubege odin," the computer responded. Lock-on target. "Jesus Christ!" General Horner had just seen both the squadron leader's and the wing man's F-15Cs disappear from the Air Force Headquarters display screen. "Hostile! Hostile! Hostile!" the AWACS controller's voice echoed throughout the basement room, now filled with solemn faces. Horner watched in horror as the first of the remaining two F-15s dove in a split S, rushing towards the ground, while the second banked in a diving roll in the opposite direction in a desperate effort to let the MiG rush through the hole. The MiG's pilot flipped his battle computer from "radar" to "combat infrared", switching his HUD's imagery to its Infrared Search and Track System (IRST). He banked hard left to acquire the third F-15, fighting to lock him into the narrow pair of vertical lines in the center of his display. The moment the dark splotch of the third F-15 fell between the ladder, his headset buzzed, and he pressed the trigger, launching an R-73 heat-seeking Archer missile. In seconds, the missile's logic system told it to turn inside its target's flight path, sending it straight up the F-15's tailpipe, so its small warhead exploded inside the fighter's Pratt and Whitney engine. At a higher altitude, its pilot could possibly have survived and bailed out, but at only 1,500 feet he lost control of the aircraft and smashed into the ground. The last remaining F-15 whizzed by the MiG, beginning a high-G arcing turn at medium throttle to keep his radius tight enough to escape the MiG's sharp angle of attack. "Hostile! Hostile! Hostile!" General Horner watched in astonishment as the fourth F-15 disappeared from the basement screen. Something was drastically wrong--the MiG-29 had just chewed up a whole four-ship of F-15s; there was literally nothing to stop the victorious MiG from crossing the Saudi border and shooting down the AWACS. The nearest support was a package of F-16s one hundred miles west at 30,000 feet. At FHI Systems' auditorium in San Diego, as the tracks of the four F-111Bs crossed into the safety of Saudi territory, everyone except Victor Saleh was asking himself what in the world had just happened. The superior numbers of the F-15 four-ship seemed to count for nothing, as the lone MiG downed each of the American fighter jets one after the other. In another fortified bunker deep under Baghdad, Saddam Hussein, Sabawi Hussein, Colonel Kamil, and Dr. Stemmler were seated in front of a set of display screens similar to those inside the Saudi Royal Air Force building in Riyadh. "Gentlemen," proclaimed a triumphant Sabawi Hussein, "I think we have just received adequate demonstration of GERALD's abilities," Saddam Hussein grinned slowly in response, glancing in his brother-in-law's direction. Colonel Kamil knew better than to protest. "What's his price? What does he want?" Dr. Stemmler demanded. "Ten million dollars. Paid in Zurich," replied Sabawi. Colonel Kamil and Dr. Stemmler both unconsciously turned to Saddam, who uttered only two words. "Buy it." Chapter 2 "The computer looks for pattern recognition, and when it finds a fit it gives us a signal," the instructor, David Woodring, intoned, noticing the watch team seemed to be already half-asleep. Woodring was the FBI's recently appointed Assistant Director of Counterintelligence, the Bureau's chief spycatcher, whose chief present worry was that his men no longer believed there were any important spies left to catch. Tall, blond and lanky, Woodring was only thirty-five years old when he was posted to the Manhattan office, he had been a major force in helping the bureau construct its case against John Gotti, the capo of the Gambino crime family. The new FBI Director, Hubert Myers, had specifically chosen Woodring to lead the FBI's counterintelligence department in the new, less than clear-cut era. Woodring was on the eleventh floor of the FBI's Los Angeles regional headquarters, a Kafkaesque-looking high-rise on Wilshire Boulevard not far from UCLA. The eleventh-floor bullpen was headquarters of CI-5, the only division of the FBI on the West Coast whose members could boast of possessing a "sensitive compartmentalized information" clearance, that is, a clearance one level higher than "top secret," giving them the power to investigate not only foreign agents, but also errant members of any of the domestic intelligence services, including both the CIA and NSA. It had been a fast-paced game, chasing men like Christopher Boyce to the former Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, but now much of the crack counterintelligence unit's enthusiasm was gone, since no one believed that their old adversary, the Russians, still posed that much of a threat. But, as they were about to find out, today's subject was a different matter. "Pentagon started up audio recog on the German border back in the seventies," continued Woodring, pointing his swagger stick at the chalk box labeled AUDIO on the blackboard. "Military boys got real good at telling the difference between Warsaw Pact tanks and trucks and NATO stuff coming over bridges and whatnot. Over the years sophistication level was increased. Billboard's Top 40 is done the same way--guy in Kansas City's computers listen to every station in the country and pick out how many times a song is played. "But today," Woodring paused, slapping a second box labeled VIDEO which woke up half the class, "today, gentlemen, we are gonna talk about video." Now the whole class was listening. "Two years ago CI discreetly began a program to re-ID all government personnel with restricted access status. Unfortunately, as we all know, the boys at CI found that included about everyone in the greybook, so at the same time, they have been chopping away at the access lists. Anyway, the new IDs are holographic, stored on both CD and videotape for flexibility, depending on the resolution fit. "Next, CI personnel went around to all their favorite hotspots and retrofitted all the watchstations with new camera technology," Woodring explained, then motioned for someone in the audience to douse the lights. "The list of camera locations is top secret, but I bet you boys can guess where a lot of them might be," Woodring grinned. Members of Counterintelligence Division 5 saw a slide photo of a generic-looking television camera appear upon the screen. "Admittedly, it's not much to look at," Woodring apologized. "But, gentlemen, this is only the antenna of a two-billion dollar piece of hardware, the rest of which is in the basement of this building. "One nice thing about the system is that it can tell us if an RA individual is making multiple visits to unrelated locations, a thing that we always had a problem with before." At that moment a slide appeared of a slim, balding man making his way through a snow- filled parking lot. The next slide showed the same individual in various locations, some foreign, others late at night, which were difficult to make out. "This is RABBIT," Woodring's voice informed them in the darkness. "We named him that because he likes to hop around, especially on vacations. One of RABBIT's trips to Europe could burn up more guys than we've got available worldwide. The interesting thing is that before we got the system up and running, CI would have probably never noticed this individual, since he's never been to the same location more than once," Woodring admitted in a respectful tone. "Anyway, unfortunately for you guys, you don't get to chase RABBIT all over Europe, you're gonna hippety-hop after him right here in your own backyard," Woodring informed them while the lights turned back on. "Where does RABBIT work?" Special Agent Johnson, a tall black man, asked. "FHI Systems, San Diego. He's a design engineer in charge of battle systems software. Worked for AT&T before that." The mere mention of RABBIT's job was enough to bring the membership of the watch team alive. Each agent knew FHI Systems was responsible for updating the telecommunications of America's national security computer network, the Worldwide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS). "Why hasn't RABBIT been picked up?" asked another agent. "Because Mr. RABBIT isn't retailing anything as far as we can tell, he's just picking up real big chunks of change," replied Woodring. "How big?" another agent asked. "Last I heard, he was looking to buy a Mercedes." "A Mercedes!" Johnson exclaimed. Even the Sovs never paid that much, thought the Special Agent. "Who's he working for?" someone demanded next. "We have no idea," Woodring replied, "no idea at all." Woodring's assistant, who had been quietly sitting in the back row during the presentation, left the room before the lights came back on to wait for Woodring in a nearby office. "We just got a call from CI-4 in New York," his assistant told him when Woodring appeared. He handed Woodring a donut with one hand and a cup of coffee with the other. "What's wrong?" "They won't say on the phone, but they want you up there." "When?" "Right now. FBI jet's fueled and waiting to pick you up at LAX." "They want me that fast? Why?" His assistant raised his hand, as if to say, don't ask me, it wasn't my idea. "Thanks for the coffee," Woodring replied, then left the room. K/JH-3A 7