Tzafon may Eilat, Israel, 17 February, 0400 GMT (0600 Local)

The SEAL team stood in front of the operations bunker, marveling at the overnight transformation of the Israeli base. The desert sky was black, changing to gray-blue in the predawn. Haze on the eastern horizon was turning pink.

The men were dressed in their parachute gear, minus the chutes themselves. They were glad for the lined immersion suits, as the desert air was cold. Leah Rabin was equipped the same as the SEALs, including the CAR-15 carbine and the mixture of M-67 fragmentation and MK-3A2 stun grenades. Stuart stood next to Hooper, pointing out the newly constructed buildings, light towers, revetments, and the truncated fire-fighting pond across the runway. Stuart was wearing desert utilities and a warm, quilted Israeli Air Force jacket.

“Your guys actually built this overnight,” said Hooper.

“Yeah, and it looks good, down to the last detail.” Stuart was comparing locations to the blueprints he had laid out on the hood of a parked IDF pickup truck. “When the lights are on, the angles of the shadows here should relate to the pond and to the buildings exactly as they will in Wheelus.”

Hooper tapped the operations plan summary on his clipboard, which described how his team would carry out its mission after landing in the reservoir. “We never did anything like this, man,” said Hooper, shaking his head.

“Want to give it to the Delta Force?” grinned Stuart.

“Fuck, no. This will make history.” Hooper ran his fingers over the chart, then looked at the Ops Building. It was built of plywood, its windows roughed out but without glass. A framed control tower poked up on top of the building, but there was no roof. Hooper pointed to the empty windows. “We go in there, right?”

“Right,” replied Stuart. “We work this morning on getting from the pond across the apron to the building and in. We’ll also train at shooting terrorists inside and not shooting hostages. Captain Rabin has had useful experience in this area, which she’ll share with us. We’ll take the control tower, and we’ll work out how to take out the ready APCs. This evening we’ll jump into the pond and do it from beginning to end, over and over.”

“And then?” Hooper was grinning his maximum crazy grin.

“Tonight we’ll do it with glass in the windows and Israeli crews in the BTRs. We’ll practice until we go or are told to stand down.”

“Bet, Stuart,” said Hooper, moving his grin up close.

“What, Commander?” Stuart smiled in return.

“Bet you a dinner at Simpson’s on the Strand when this is over that we in actual fact run this drill for real on the sands of Libya!”

Stuart laughed, but he felt cold inside. “You’re on.”

Hooper gave a bark of joyful laughter and punched Stuart on the shoulder hard enough to sway him sideways. He turned to his seven big men and the tiny Israeli woman. “All right, children, let’s get into the pool.”

The SEALs drilled all morning, with Stuart watching and taking notes. They taped black plastic over their dive masks to simulate total darkness and practiced getting each other out of the pressure suits under the turbid water. Leah had a difficult time at first, as even the smallest pressure envelope was much too big for her. The suits, affectionately known as “body bags,” were not meant to fit tightly, so hers was huge, but the SEALs worked patiently with her. By midmorning, Hooper was satisfied that his team would be free of the encumbrances of the drop itself, and ready to emerge from the pond, less than three minutes after hitting the water.

The SEALs could not drill properly for the crossing of the runway and the apron until they had darkness, and the lights on, to create the pattern of bright light and deep shadows. They spent an hour lizard-walking across the vast open area, moving from one point of presumed shadow to another, to get a rough idea of the timing. Osborne and Miller had been detailed to emerge from the east side of the pond, away from the Operations Building, and set charges around the fighters in the revetments north of runway 11/29 and on the transverse taxiway. They practiced their approach, which would be in almost total darkness, measuring distances, angles, and heights of the revetments. Feeney and Jones had responsibility for disabling the two BTRs they expected to find in front of the Operations Building. They crawled up to and around the high-wheeled vehicles while amused Israeli crewmen either sunbathed or looked on.

The actual assault on the Operations Building would be undertaken by Hooper, Goldstein, Ricardo, and Cross. Ricardo and Cross carried the unit’s two radios. The central tower of the building extended onto the apron like a large bay window, with high, narrow windows on either side of the main doors and on each angled side of the bay. The control tower rose above the flat roof of the building.

Immediately inside the main doors was the only large room in the building, which had been used as a ready room for military flight operations and as a passenger waiting room for personnel flights. It was in this room that Baruni had been shown on television talking to the hostages some eighteen hours earlier.

The doors in the mock-up were solid plywood and couldn’t be opened. Original specifications for the building indicated steel doors strong enough to be easily barricaded, so the entry into the building would be made through the windows, one man each through the bay-side windows and one through the window to the left of the doors. The fourth man, Cross, would climb an iron staircase in the back of the building and reach the control tower at the same moment Hooper, Ricardo, and Goldstein tossed stun grenades over or through the windows and then crashed through after them, helmets strapped tight and high-impact plastic visors closed over their faces, their CAR-15s held in front of them to deflect the breaking glass.

“Are we sure the windows have just plain window glass, Stuart?” Hooper was scribbling on the margin of the op plan.

“That’s what the original specs called for. No laminate, no wire core.”

“I’m not going to be pleased if we slither all the way to these windows and find nice, strong wire screens.”

“Photo interp claims they could pick out screens, Hoop, but how will you get in if you find screens or reinforced glass?”

“We’d better take some extra C-4 and detonators. I guess we’d have to blow both the front and back doors, but that’s sure to take more time, and let the terrorists have a few bursts at the hostages, and at us.” Hooper flipped a page on his clipboard, to his equipment list, and made a note. “We’re going to be jumping in really heavy.”

Hooper stepped through the window to the left of the door and paced the distance to the door at the back of the big hall. He made several more notes on the op plan, then stepped back into the sun, shaking his head.

“You look worried, Hoop,” said Stuart as he removed his jacket and tossed it into the pickup truck. The day had grown warm very quickly once the sun popped up over the haze.

“This is going to be a bit close, my civilian friend,” said Hooper as they walked around the mock-up with the three other men of the penetration team. “We really need four more guys; two to cover the back with Cross and two to cover our tails as we go in.”

“I know, but we don’t have them,” said Stuart. “Hopefully, Feeney and Jones can set their charges in the BTRs, and at least one can help Cross.”

“‘Hopefully’ was not one of Clausewitz’s favorite words when he wrote about the importance of military planning,” observed Hooper, measuring the height of the windowsill. It was about thirty inches above the tarmac.

“True, Hoop, there’s a lot of shit you have to do. Miller can come across behind you after the fighters on the other side of the reservoir are rigged.”

“Leaving Osborne to set it off by himself, and then run in with all hell breaking loose! Jesus! If there’s one patrol, one alert Libyan to give the alarm before that first stun grenade deafens the world and then wakes it up, we are, to coin a phrase, fucked.”

“I’ll be happy to forward your ideas for improvement to the admiral. Really, I take no pride of authorship in this.” Stuart was increasingly unhappy with his plan as they walked it through in the bright light of the desert sun.

Hooper turned, scowled, then grinned and slapped Stuart roughly on the shoulder. “Shit, man, SEALs have done far crazier things than this! Your plan is probably fine! But to make sure your fertile brain doesn’t miss any chance at improving it, I do have one suggestion.”

“Sure, Hoop.”

“When we begin again, after lunch, I want you to suit up and move with us, each element in turn, step by step.”

Stuart smiled. Hoop just wants to see me sweat. “I might slow you shark commandos down.”

“We’ll ensure that you don’t, old buddy.”

The three elements separated to figure out their individual problems. Osborne and Miller worked their way along the line of revetments, crawling up each and placing the shaped charges low on the inside rims. The charges, shaped like Claymore mines, would spew hot metal fragments in a wide arc under the aircraft, and were designed to do maximum damage to tires, external fuel tanks, and weapons slung beneath the fighters’ wings. There were six revetments to be checked, and any containing an aircraft would be mined. After all the mines were in place and wired together, Miller would move around the southern end of the reservoir to watch the backs of the penetration team. Osborne would blow the mines electrically when he heard the stun grenades go off in the Ops Building. Osborne would then make his way to the Ops Building as quickly as possible, following a smaller transverse taxiway that led from the main runway to the Ops Building.

For there to be any chance at all of either Miller or Osborne crossing the north-south runway and the apron after the base was awake, Feeney and Jones had to take out the two BTRs that had been identified as positioned on the apron north of the Ops Building in every recon photo taken since the hijacking. Those vehicles had heavy and light machine guns and would be able to drive right through the front door of the Ops Building if they chose to do so. Feeney and Jones had two options, depending upon how alert the BTR crews appeared to be, how far they were from any shadow deep enough for concealment, and timing. If they could approach the vehicles, they would attach magnetic limpet mines to the lightly armored undersides, which could be set off by remote radio detonators. If the vehicles were positioned to make a direct assault impossible, or, worse yet, if they were moving, Feeney and Jones would each be carrying a Dragon wire-guided missile - a shoulder-fired rocket with a shaped charge powerful enough to penetrate most armor plate. Hooper hoped that Feeney and Jones would reach the Ops Building with their two Dragons still available to stand off any armored cars or tanks that attacked the Ops Building before the paratroopers and heliborne marines landed and made fighting enemy armor their own problem.

Hooper looked at his equipment list on his clipboard. It was impossibly heavy, yet it was not nearly enough for safety. What if a detonator didn’t fire? What if the seals on one of those Dragons leaked underwater? Those armored cars have to be knocked out. I have to think about that element a bit more, he thought, and then he turned his thoughts to penetration of the Ops Building and the securing of the hostages. The entry of the building was the last element to be walked through before the team broke for an early lunch and began putting the whole plan back together. Stuart directed three Israeli soldiers in setting up chairs and tables inside the main hall, and putting cardboard cutouts of men, women, and children in various positions. Six terrorist cutouts were placed among the hostages, the only difference being that the terrorists held guns or grenades. Cutouts with guns or grenades were to be shot; others were not. Very simple in theory, thought Hooper bleakly, as Leah gave the penetration team some pointers about posture and movement that might draw their attention to the terrorists, but bloody difficult in practice. Between each run-through, Stuart repositioned the cutouts.

They drilled and drilled. They approached the windows in sprints and crawls, using the lines and the shadows where they guessed they would be. They lobbed the stun grenades, which made deafening loud bangs and were intended to cause both the hostages and the gunmen to freeze for a second or two, then leapt through the windows, carbines at the ready, selectors on single fire. Cross raced up the ladder in back and threw a dummy frag grenade into the control tower. Hooper, Goldstein, and Ricardo all fired before their feet hit the ground inside, each taking a third of the room. The first time in, they killed five of the six terrorists, but missed one with a pistol and a grenade, and shot up eight hostages. By 1100, they were doing a little better, and they broke for lunch.