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“We tried that,” said Beatty. “We looked fifty miles out in all directions. Nothing—no defenses.”

“Just a pure deception operation?” proposed Barber.

“No way. The Iraqis always defend their prize assets, even from their own people. Look—see here.”

Colonel Beatty advanced to the picture and pointed out a group of huts.

“A peasant village, right next door. Woodsmoke, goat pens, goats here out foraging in the valley. There are two others off the frame.”

“Maybe they hollowed out the whole mountain,” said Laing. “You did, at Cheyenne Mountain.”

“That’s a series of caverns, tunnels, a warren of rooms behind reinforced doors,” said Beatty. “You’re talking about a barrel 180 meters long. Try to get that inside a mountain, you’d bring the whole damn thing down on top. Look, gentlemen, I can see the breech, the magazine, all the living quarters being underground, but a chunk of that barrel has to stick out somewhere. It doesn’t.”

They all stared at the picture again. Within the square were three hills and a portion of a fourth. The largest of the three was unmarked by any blastproof doors or access road.

“If it’s in there somewhere,” proposed Peck, “why not saturate-bomb the square mile? That would bring down any mountain on top of the weapon.”

“Good idea,” said Beatty. “General, we could use the Buffs. Paste the whole square mile.”

“May I make a suggestion?” asked Barber.

“Please do,” said General Glosson.

“If I were Saddam Hussein, with his paranoia, and I had one single weapon of this value, I’d have a man in command I could trust. And I’d give him orders that if ever the Fortress came under bombing attack, he was to fire. In short, if the first couple of bombs fell wide—and a square mile is quite a big area—the rest might be a fraction of a second too late.”

General Glosson leaned forward.

“What is your precise point, Mr. Barber?”

“General, if the Fist of God is inside these hills, it is hidden by a deception operation of extreme skill. The only way to be a hundred percent certain of destroying it is by a similar operation. A single plane, coming out of nowhere, delivering one attack, and hitting the target on the button the first and only time.”

“I don’t know how many times I have to say this,” said the exasperated Colonel Beatty, “but we don’t know where the button is—precisely.”

“I think my colleague is talking about target-marking,” said Laing.

“But that means another airplane,” objected Peck. “Like the Buccaneers marking for the Tornados.

Even the target-marker must see the target first.”

“It worked with the Scuds,” said Laing.

“Sure, the SAS men marked the missile launchers, and we blew them away. But they were right there on t

he ground, a thousand yards from the missiles with binoculars,” said Peck.

“Precisely.”

There was silence for several seconds.

“You are talking,” said General Glosson, “of putting men into the mountains to give us a ten-square-yard target.”

The debate went on for two more hours. But it always came back to Laing’s argument.

First find it, then mark it, then, destroy it—and all without the Iraqis noticing until it was too late.

At midnight a corporal of the Royal Air Force went to the Hyatt Hotel. He could get no reply from the sitting-room door, so the night manager let him in. He went into the bedroom and shook by the shoulder the man sleeping in a terrycloth robe on top of the bed.

“Sir, wake up, sir. You’re wanted across the road, Major.”