Eight miles to the north, the EB-52 Megafortress opened the aft portion of its bomb bay doors, and one by one four bombs dropped from a rotary launcher exactly twelve seconds apart. These were GBU-28F JDAMs, or joint direct attack munitions—two-thousand-pound gravity bombs guided by satellite navigation signals that could glide as far as ten miles and still hit their targets with great accuracy. But instead of simple high-explosive warheads, these bombs were fuel-air explosives—the most devastating non-nuclear weapon devised. At a precise altitude above the ground, the bombs split open, releasing a large cloud of vapor. The vapor mixed with oxygen in the air to form a highly explosive gas. At the right moment, three small incendiary bomblets ejected into the gas cloud were ignited.

The resulting explosion of each JDAM was equivalent to a hundred tons of TNT, creating a fireball a half-mile in diameter and a shock wave that crushed everything aboveground for a mile in every direction. Spaced exactly two miles apart, the four fuel-air explosive bombs created a blinding wall of fire over the Jaghbub airfield. Detonated on the mostly uninhabited West side of the airfield, the fireballs themselves did relatively little damage—but the tremendous overpressure caused by the explosion overturned vehicles, blew out windows, burned wooden buildings, and scorched the sand black all across the reservation, right to the walls of the Green Palace and the Great Mosque where Patrick stood with his captive.

Zuwayy screamed as the huge wall of fire blossomed out toward him, but his screams were drowned out by the roar of rushing fire and burning air. The overpressure that roiled over them was like a one-second superhurricane, tossing Zuwayy around like a puppet. Patrick kept him facing into the rushing wall of sand and red-hot wind until the air, now needing to fill in the vacuum created by the burnt air near the fireballs, reversed direction and rushed back outward.

Patrick jumped down off the roof of the rectory, went back inside, and tossed Zuwayy on the floor. All of Zuwayy’s hair on his face, head, and the back of his hands had burnt off, replaced by a beard and hair made of gray ash. He found a pitcher of water on the desk and dumped it on Zuwayy’s face to keep him from passing out. “Can you hear me, Zuwayy?” Patrick asked. Zuwayy was trembling so hard that Patrick thought he might be having a seizure. “Answer me, you coward! Can you hear me?”

“Yes ... yes, I can hear you,” Zuwayy cried. “Don’t kill me, please, don’t kill me!”

“You have one chance to live, Zuwayy,” Patrick said in Arabic. “You captured some prisoners off some vessels your military forces sank....”

“I know nothing of this! What are you accusing me of? This is not—”