Uqba ben Nafi, 20 February 1015 GMT (1115 Local)

Colonel Hassan al-Baruni sat in the back seat of the Mercedes limousine as it drove off the Tripoli Road onto the air base. Next to him sat his oldest comrade, Maj. Abdel Salaam Jalloud. The limousine rolled to a silent stop in front of the gutted Operations Building, where a short line of tanks and BTRs, manned by Russian Spetznaz troops, was parked. The Russians rendered crisp salutes. Baruni looked toward the entrance of the gutted building. The steel doors and their frame were still standing, and he could see in his mind the face of Abu Salaam, twisted with rage, the pistol in his hand flashing. Baruni could see the look of sudden pain on the American boy’s face as he fell to the pavement, and the colonel could feel the boy’s blood and brains on his own hands and face.

The guard in the front seat got out and opened the door, but the colonel waved him away and pulled the door shut. The guard regained his seat, and Baruni told the driver to move on. Baruni felt his voice high-pitched and trembling.

The limousine bumped over the broken and scorched concrete, past empty firing positions, some intact and some rent apart by cannon fire. Shell casings from weapons of many types skittered away from the tires as the limousine advanced. When the Mercedes reached the intersection of the two runways, Baruni whispered for the limousine to halt, and he climbed out, following the guard. The two BTRs carrying his personal bodyguard halted behind the Mercedes, and, as usual, two of the women dismounted and prepared to follow the colonel on foot.

Major Jalloud got out of the limousine. Baruni looked so frail and agitated that the major was tempted to take his arm to support him. Jalloud looked nervously at the sad-faced guards, then back to the leader.

Baruni took a pair of binoculars from a case at his belt and scanned the runways, stopping his sweep at each burnt-out tank. He counted fifteen he could see, mostly the black T-72s of his own army, but some greenish smaller tanks he thought might be American. Fire engines and ambulances patrolled slowly among the wrecks, the former spraying smoldering fires, the latter on one last sweep looking for wounded and dead. A temporary morgue had been set up in the base medical clinic, in the undamaged northern sector of the air base, and Baruni knew the count of the dead had passed 190 before his car had left Tripoli.

Colonel Baruni started walking rapidly south, down the center of runway 03/21, around the many shell craters. He knew he was expected at the medical facility, to meet with the cameras and delegations of grieving relatives and to view the fallen soldiers, but he was drawn to the southern edge of his largest military installation, to the closeness of the desert that began just beyond a low ridge some twenty kilometers inland. He walked past the blasted tanks and saw in each gutted hulk a ruined piece of his dream of leading a united Arab movement.

Baruni walked to the end of the pavement and stopped, looking at the scrubby wild grasses off the end of the runway, the shell craters and the tank tracks, the twisted metal and burnt grass, and at the dark stains where men had fallen. He turned and looked at the ruined air base under its thinning pall of smoke, and at Major Jalloud, who had followed him on his rapid march south. Jalloud was sweating and slightly short of breath. “My old friend,” began Baruni, his voice shaking and his hands trembling, “I fear we have suffered a catastrophe from which we may never recover!”

“It, it was a brilliant vision, Aqid, but perhaps it is time to return.”

“Return? How can we return?”

“Return to the desert, Hassan.”

Baruni looked back up the runway. The Mercedes was approaching slowly, but the BTRs of his guard had remained at the intersection, surrounded by a larger group of soldiers. The two women who always followed him had disappeared. “But who will guide the Jamahiriya?”

“The Revolutionary Command Council has been reconvened. Believe me, my brother, it is only out of love that I say these things to you.”

Baruni looked at his friend and smiled. He could see the anguish in Jalloud’s face, and he knew he told the truth. Baruni turned his back on Jalloud and looked once more toward the distant desert. “Perhaps it is best, Abdel.”