Without warning

‘My God,’ breathed Ritchie. ‘You’ll kill us all. If you do this, how long do you imagine it will be before some maniac in New Delhi or Islamabad decides they need to get the drop on their nemesis? How long will it be before Russia and China decide things will be a lot simpler with us, here in Hawaii, out of the picture?’

‘I cannot answer these questions, Admiral, as you well know. But I can tell you that if we do not act, the Jewish people and their state will be wiped out in a second Holocaust. And you know that I speak the truth.’

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

* * * *

30

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.