“It is you who is responsible for this!” Zuwayy shouted, finally switching back to full Russian. “My troops could have executed this entire operation without your damned missiles! Now the Americans are breathing down my neck! You must pay for the loss of my base and compensate me for the loss of my soldiers! You must—!”

“Shut your scum-sucking mouth, Zuwayy,” Kazakov interrupted hotly. “I spent ten million dollars of my own money to put those missiles in place—but not in Samah! I ordered that the missiles be placed in Al-Jawf, not Samah! ”

“I put missiles in Al-Jawf—and there they sit, useless, while my men roast in the damned Sahara Desert!” Zuwayy retorted. “You make me pay fifty million dollars for missiles pointed at nothing but wasteland! I say no! Egypt is our true enemy! We need to threaten much more than just the Salimah oil fields.”

“You moved some of those missiles to Samah, against my orders,” Kazakov said.

“The missiles at Al-Jawf are useless, worthless!” Zuwayy repeated. “From Samah, those missiles can reach Cairo, Alexandria, Israel, even Italy. Moving some of the missiles that I purchased does not affect your plan against the Salimah oil fields.”

“I’m not interested in attacking Israel, and I’m sure as hell not interested in attacking Italy with shitty first-generation rockets with chemical warheads!” Kazakov shouted. “Are you out of your mind? If we attack Israel, it will bring the Americans into the region with a vengeance. My oil terminals on the Adriatic Sea are directly downwind of any bases we would attack in Italy—besides, some of my best customers are in Italy! I did not pay you to put those missiles in Libya so you can threaten your neighbors or satisfy your thirst for global conquest.

“I’m glad those missiles in Samah were destroyed, Zuwayy—perhaps now you’ll stop going off on your own and listen to what I tell you to do. I will pay you to replace those missiles and warheads—but only if you dismantle any other bases that you put missiles other than Al-Jawf, and only if you stop being a jackass and do as I tell you to do from now on.”

“You may not talk to me this way,” Zuwayy said haughtily. “I am the king of Libya. I am the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the lord of the Muslims. I am—”

“You are nothing but a back-stabbing opportunistic traitor who would sell his wife, mistresses, children, and even your own mother on the streets of Benghazi for money,” Kazakov interjected. “You can use that cockamamie I-am-royalty story to impress your people and baffle the rest of the world, but to me you’re nothing but a two-bit thug.