The Libyan weapons were hauled out of storage bunkers near the air base with block and tackle, makeshift trailers— most of the vehicles on the base had been destroyed by the fuel-air weapon attacks by the Megafortress days earlier— and pure old-fashioned muscle work. The weapons were dragged, pulled, or manhandled across the runway and to the largest and most undamaged hangar on the field, on which a large canvas tent had to be erected to hide the Megafortresses’ protruding tails, which had to remain outside the hangar. Muhammad as-Sanusi’s men had devised a bomb-loading “jammer” out of an engine jack for the larger weapons; the smaller weapons were simply carried into position by however many men it took to do the job. Once they were loaded, it was simple to get them ready for release— the Megafortress’s attack computer already had ballistics information for every possible air-launched weapon in existence, even Russian ones, so it was just a matter of telling the computer which weapon was on which station.

The first EB-52 Megafortress battleship that would lead the attack carried longer-range standoff weapons, including four Russian Kh-27 antiradar missiles in the forward bomb bay, eight Kh-15 long-range inertially guided missiles on the rotary launcher in the aft bomb bay, four R-60 heat-seeking air-to-air missiles on each external pylon, and two FlightHawk unmanned combat aircraft on wing pylons—unfortunately, the FlightHawks did not carry any weapons of their own. The second EB-52 Megafortress battleship carried a rotary launcher in the rear of the bomb bay that held sixteen one-thousand-pound unguided bombs in eight two-round clips, with inflatable parachutes attached to each one to allow them to be released from low altitude if necessary. The slant racks in the forward bomb bay held thirty-six five-hundred-pound unguided cluster munitions in six rounds of six bombs; and the external weapon pylons held two Kh-27 antiradar missiles plus four R-60 heat-seeking missiles on each pylon.

Even though the Russian guided weapons were state-of- the-art, they couldn’t interface well with the Megafortress. The antiradar missiles were programmed on the ground to detect and attack any height-finder radar, an integral part of a surface-to-air missile or fighter ground-controlled intercept radar; the air-to-air missiles’ seeker was caged straight ahead and would only report if a bright enough heat source crossed its path—they would never know if it locked on or hit its target. The inertially guided missiles had to be programmed with a target on the ground before takeoff, and then their guidance systems had to be aligned on the ground before takeoff—and their accuracy couldn’t be updated while in flight.

Patrick took the king on a quick tour of the AL-52 Dragon. Workers from Sky Masters Inc., including Jon Masters himself, were still poring over it, adjusting components and voltages while a laptop computer measured magnetic fields and predicted power yields and safety margins. “A truly impressive weapon, Dr. Masters,” Sanusi said after he had been introduced.