“Pretty good scam, wasn’t it? I’ve got half the world believing I’m a fucking god. It’s priceless. Some fools will believe anything you tell them as long as they think they’ll get something good out of it.”

“How clever of you. What will you do now, Highness?”

“Attack Egypt, again,” Zuwayy said. “That bitch Salaam won’t back me with the oil cartel, so I’m going to have to destroy Salimah. Actually, not destroy it—just the workers. I’ll keep the oil fields for myself. I’ve got enough troops to take the whole southern part of Egypt.”

“Did you already give the order to attack?”

“Yes. And that cowardly bastard Fazani better follow my orders too.”

She picked up the phone beside the lounger. “Call off the attack, Zuwayy. Killing all those workers won’t get you any closer to the oil.” But he had already drifted off into his drug-induced world, oblivious to the real one.

SURT AIR BASE, NORTHERN LIBYA
 THE NEXT EVENING

As soon as the three fighters fit their afterburners, the copilot started counting: “Talaeta, itnen, waehid... daeyikh!” The pilot released brakes and slowly moved the throttles up to full military power, let them stabilize a few seconds, then pushed the throttles into afterburner zone. He waited for the inevitable kohha—the “cough”—as the old fuel valves struggled to keep raw fuel flowing into the afterburner cans. Half the time, especially if the pilot advanced the throttles too fast, a valve stuck or failed and the afterburner would blow out completely. But it didn’t happen this time—the nozzles opened, the fuel-flow needles jumped, and the Libyan Tupolev-22 bomber leapt down the runway. Six seconds behind him, the second Tu-22 bomber began its takeoff roll.

A third bomber wasn’t so lucky—both of its Dobrynin RD-7M-2 turbojet engines’ afterburners blew out seconds after engagement. The pilot quickly yanked the throttles back to military power and tried once more to light the afterburners, inching the throttles up over the detent in slow, careful increments. But it was no use, and the third Tu-22 bomber aborted the takeoff, its screeching, smoking brakes barely managing to stop the two-hundred-thousand-pound bomber before it rolled off the end of the runway.