"Their Sixth Fleet is drifting helpless at sea," the colonel said. "Some of their vessels have run aground. They are of no consequence to either of us."
Relieved that his one concern had been allayed, Aruch gave the Russian his coordinates in the Jordanian desert.
"Several packages will be arriving at your location shortly," the colonel said. "I know that you will use their contents wisely. Russia intends to enjoy a long and mutually beneficial relationship with the Palestinian people and their president. Good night, sir." With that, the Russian was gone.
The deal was struck. Just like that.
Aruch slipped the receiver into the hook on the side of the large square box.
He had not even had to offer the former American President as payment. Money wasn't necessary now. The Russians only wanted to establish a new client state. Their first in years.
For Nossur Aruch, it was all too good to be true. He would get his guns and he would receive payment. After all, the ex-President was of no use to him. He would auction off the old one to the highest bidder.
Aruch lifted the phone once more. With a single, stubby digit, he began dialing the long code that would connect him to Tripoli.
Chapter 35
Remo heard the dull hum of the plane engine before the Master of Sinanju. It was coming from the north. Chiun's ears pricked up a microsecond after his pupil's. As they rode through the desert, they turned their faces to the sound.
The fat shape of a low-flying transport plane appeared as a dark shadow above the desert expanse. It was a Russian Antonov An-26 Curl. A popular light tactical transport craft. The drone of its twin turboprops grew to an earthshaking bellow as the plane roared over the desert only a few miles from where Remo and Chiun were following Aruch's tracks. Falling in line far ahead of them, the aircraft began to track the same course as the two Masters of Sinanju.
"I think it's safe to assume they're not delivering copies of your movie to the Assam Blockbuster," Remo said tightly.
The Master of Sinanju didn't reply. His narrowed eyes were trained on the Antonov's distant shuddering tail.
Desert wind pelting their faces with grains of fine sand, they raced after the plane.
EXCITEMENT HAD PREVENTED Nossur Aruch from sleeping. Although night was nearly gone, the PIO leader was still wide awake when the growing thunder that was the Russian plane reached his thrilled ears.
He leaped eagerly to his feet, racing through the tent flaps and out into the patchy green island of the oasis.
Most of his army was still awake. Men sat around open fires at the edge of the oasis. A corral for the horses had been roped off in the adjacent desert. Near it, Bryce Babcock sat glumly. Beside him, sleeping lightly, was the former President of the United States.
Although Babcock was free, the President was not. The ex-chief executive's wrists had been lashed together.
Aruch's army had heard the plane, as well. They rose expectantly to their feet, eagerly following their leader into the desert just beyond the edge of the oasis.
Along the horizon, predawn streaks had begun to bleed into the smothering veil of night. The massive shape of the Antonov-visible as a gray shadow against what remained of midnight's twinkling alabaster stars-was like some great primordial bird. Running lights off, the plane flew in low. It seemed to drag daylight in its wake as it closed the distance between them. The Antonov bellowed over their heads, its great belly clearly visible to five hundred upturned Arab faces.
Aruch saw the cavernous black opening of the rear ramp just up the fuselage from the huge tail section.
When the Russian plane had cleared the far side of the oasis, something big and blockish slipped from the blackness of the open ramp.
The huge shipping crate tumbled through the air only a few seconds before a perfect white mushroom shape blossomed behind it. The parachute snagged eddies in the chill air, slowing the descent of the massive crate. The box hit sand a few seconds later, and the nylon chute collapsed, spent.
A cheer went up from Aruch's army. His men swarmed from the oasis, racing up to the big crate. Crowbars were jimmied into the sliver of space between the wood on one side. Nails creaked in pain as the crate was pulled apart. The side dropped away with a sudden slap, disgorging contents at the feet of Nossur Aruch.
The AK-47s that spilled out had not been packaged as they would have during the glory days of the old Soviet Union. These guns were fully assembled. They had been piled in the crate with only torn sections of moth-eaten surplus Red Army blankets wrapped around them. Yellowed ten-year-old shredded copies of Pravda had been shoved in to fill any vacant space.
There were fifty guns in the case. These were hastily snatched up by the nearest PIO soldiers. The Antonov was making another pass. In the desert a half mile distant, it began to drop a series of smaller crates. These floated to earth more slowly, touching the sand at about the time Aruch and his men reached them.
When they were split open, the boxes revealed hundreds of smaller cases of ammunition.
Like starving men on a shipment of food, the Arabs dove for the ammo. This was distributed to those with guns.
By now, the sky had lightened.
Far across the vacant plain, the Antonov was turning back for another run. In it was the future of the Mideast. The future of King Nossur Aruch.
His plan was set. They would take back the West Bank by force. Organized, his men would swarm through Jerusalem and into Israel. From there, he would secure his seat of power, striking out into the region in all directions. Like the relentless magnetic wave of the neutrino bomb, he would sweep across the Middle East until everything-from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, from Turkey above to Egypt in northern Africa-fell beneath the trampling hoofs of his unstoppable Palestinian army.
The Antonov was nearly upon them once more. The desert shook with the violent force of sound flowing from the mighty turboprops of the impossibly large aircraft.
All at once, the big Russian plane seemed to make another, separate noise. A high-pitched shriek of rapid deceleration. Almost simultaneous to the appearance of the new sound came a blinding flash of light from the fuselage of the big plane. The Antonov appeared to jolt to one side as a crackling plume of flame and smoke erupted from her starboard nacelle. The engines exploded an instant later, ripping most of the right wing from the craft.
The crash came almost too quickly to be believed. At one moment, the Antonov was burning and airborne; the next it was plummeting earthward. It hit the sand with a thunderous boom, tearing a furrow of flame through the desert.
As the nose of the crashing plane barreled toward them, flaming out of control, Aruch and his men split apart. Screeching in panic and confusion, the soldiers raced into the desert, into the oasis, anywhere that would get them out of the path of the Russian plane.
As they ran, a pair of jets appeared up out of the growing dawn. The new planes screamed forward, ripping across the lightening sky.
Even as he ran, Aruch recognized the familiar flag painted on the tails of the two Mirage F-1s. It was a plain green, the traditional color of Islam. The flag of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.
Libya had blown the Russian plane, as well as Nossur Aruch's precious cargo, out of the sky. "Sons of dogs!" Aruch bellowed, shaking a balled fist at the jets as they flew over his family's oasis. In the desert behind him, the crashed Antonov exploded and burned. "The infidel Khaddafi did not pay for this!"
The jets took a wide arc over the Jordanian desert before circling back around. Holding formation, they raced toward the oasis.
The Palestinian army dispersed before the Mirages.
Aruch slowed his pace as the jets flew toward him. Even as he noted that the Sidewinder missile was missing from the port wingtip rail of the right plane, the left plane was loosing its pair of similar missiles.
They detached in a cloud of trailing white smoke, rocketing toward the oasis. Eyes wide, Aruch dove for the sand and covered his head.
When the missiles struck an instant later, it was as if the desert floor had turned to flame. Hundred-year-old trees exploded to smoking pulp. The plants were flung like matchsticks into the desert. Fire erupted from two smoking craters in the oasis. One heavy tree trunk crashed to the rope rail-the only thing that had prevented the terrified horses from running after the initial missile attack on the Antonov. The animals bolted now, racing across the desert.
By the time Aruch scampered back to his feet, the Mirage jets had circled again.
From the ground, rounds of automatic-weapons fire spit from the pitifully few guns the PIO soldiers had collected from the first and only Russian crate. The Libyan pilots returned fire on their way back to the oasis.
"He did not pay!" Nossur Aruch shouted as he bounded into the smoking ring that was his ancestral home.
Bryce Babcock greeted the PIO leader, grabbing him by the jacket. The interior secretary's drooping face was covered in grime. His eyes held a crazed, fearful look.
"What's going on?" Babcock begged.
"I am being cheated! That is what is going on!" Aruch screamed, shoving past the secretary. Babcock dogged him as he hustled over to the seated form of the ex-President. The din had awakened the older man.