Gauntlet by Richard Aaron Page A

become the Twenty-First Century’s Saladin, the new sword of Islam? Had he lost the courage and the vision he’d had when he, still in his 20s, seized control of Libya from a crumbling and ineffective monarchy? Had he blown it? This is what he was truly thinking when the microphones and cameras were thrust into his face. What he said was something entirely different.
    “This is a great moment for peace. Libya has now joined the community of nations, and is open for trade, oil exploration, and business. A new economic power is being created on the shores of the Mediterranean. A nation that wants to trade and work with the European Economic Community, and with the Americans. A new day is . . .”
    T HE DC-3 had just reached Yousseff’s island retreat. Mustafa was watching CNN, and General Minyar, from the hangar workshop. “Horse shit for brains,” he muttered to himself. Across the world of radical Islam, the reaction was much the same. Another self-proclaimed avenger of Allah selling out, turned to camel dung. Mustafa shook his head and looked around. He had a few hours of work ahead of him, using a helicopter to transfer the Semtex from the DC-3 to the Mankial Star, anchored some five miles offshore. Even with the marvelous devices created by Karachi Drydock and Engineering, the work would be heavy. Turning off the TV, he and his men began their labors.
    R ICHARD WAS ON A SECURE LINE to Jon Duncan, the station chief in Cairo, since Libya didn’t yet have an Embassy. Jon had traveled a path parallel to Richard. He was an ex-Marine, and had fought and been wounded in the first Gulf War. Since then he’d moved to the Intelligence Community, and had served in many different offices and departments. The two had met many times, over the course of years, and respected one another. Jon, like so many others, had heard the stories and worried about Richard. They were stories about needing 1,093 feet of runway on a USS Theodore Roosevelt runway that was only 1,092 feet long. Stories about too much drinking, and lately, stories about drugs. Stories about a brilliant pilot and a passionate and dedicated soldier who had somehow, for some reason, taken a hard left turn at what should have been the peak of his career. He seemed to dwell too much in the past, still thinking about flying sorties off the flight decks of the Nimitz class carriers, when his life had moved beyond that. Jon had seen it before with other soldiers. Perhaps it was too much war, too much violence.
    The truth was that it had all started with Richard’s imperfect vision. It was a problem that had presented, for the Navy brass, an easy way to terminate the services of one of its pilots without venturing into more personal and difficult territory. Richard had been a problem for some time; a man who had always had trouble following orders, he had long since developed a problem with drugs and alcohol. It started simply, with a back injury during basic training. It was a minor wedge compression fracture of the thoracic spine, and most of the time he functioned well in spite of it. But occasionally it would flare up and create severe back problems and headaches, and he had found that ever more powerful medication was required to curb the pain. Aspirin led to ibuprofen, then to Codeine, and ultimately to Percocet, Oxycontin, and more powerful synthetic morphine substances. He had quickly discovered that dowsing such chemical concoctions with alcohol made their pain relief capabilities even stronger. The situation could have led to an embarrassing discharge for Richard, and public complications for the Navy. Luckily, his vision problem had provided a convenient cover story for a more honorable end. Jon had been well on his way to a leadership position in Cairo at the time, and a personal friend of Richard’s. He’d been called in as a character witness on many of the conversations that led to the man’s eventual discharge. He liked to think that he’d helped