The Americans had imported, or were about to, the First Cavalry Division, Second and Third Armored Cavalry Regiments, the First Mechanized Infantry Division and First and Third Armored, two divisions of Marines, and the 82nd and 101st Airborne.

Right up on the border, where they wanted to be, were the Saudi Task Force and Special Forces, aided by Egyptian and Syrian divisions and other units drawn from a variety of smaller Arab nations.

The northern waters of the Arabian Gulf were almost plated with warships from the Coalition navies.

Either in the Gulf or the Red Sea on the other side of Saudi Arabia, the United States had positioned five carrier groups, headed by the Eisenhower, Independence, John F. Kennedy, Midway , and Saratoga , with the America, Ranger , and Theodore Roosevelt still to come.

The air power of these alone, with their Tomcats, Hornets, Intruders, Prowlers, Avengers, and Hawkeyes, was impressive to behold.

In the Gulf the American battleship Wisconsin was on station, to be joined by the Missouri in January.

Throughout the Gulf States and across Saudi Arabia, every airfield worth the name was crammed with fighter, bomber, tanker, freighter, and early-warning aircraft, all of which were already flying around the clock, though not yet invading Iraqi air space, with the exception of the spy planes that cruised overhead unseen.

In several cases the United States Air Force was sharing airfield space with squadrons of the British Royal Air Force. As the aircrews shared a common language, communication was easy, informal, and friendly. Occasionally, however, misunderstandings did occur. A notable one concerned a secret British location known only as MMFD.

On an early training mission, a British Tornado had been asked by the air traffic controller whether it had reached a certain turning point. The pilot replied that he had not, he was still over MMFD.

As time went by, many American pilots heard of this place and scoured their maps to find it. It was a puzzle for two reasons: The British apparently spent a lot of time over it, and it was not located on any American air map. The theory was floated that it might be a mishearing of KKMC, which stood for King Khaled Military City, a large Saudi base. This was discounted, and the search went on. Finally the Americans gave up. Wherever MMFD was located, it was simply not to be found on the war maps supplied to USAF squadrons by their planners in Riyadh.

Eventually the Tornado pilots admitted the secret of MMFD. It stood for “miles and miles of fucking desert.”

On the ground, the soldiers were living in the heart of MMFD. For many, sleeping under their tanks, mobile guns, and armored cars, life was hard and, worse, boring.

There were distractions, however, and one was visiting neighboring units as the time dragged by. The Americans were equipped with particularly good cots, for which the British lusted. By chance, the Americans were also issued singularly revolting prepacked meals, probably devised by a Pentagon civil servant who would have died rather than eat them three times a day.

They were called MREs, meaning Meals-Ready-to-Eat. The U.S. soldiery denied this quality in them and decided that MRE really stood for Meals Rejected by Ethiopians. By contrast, the Brits were eating much better, so true to the capitalist ethic, a brisk trade was soon established between American beds and British rations.

Another piece of news from the British lines that bemused the Americans was the order placed by London’s Ministry of Defence for half a million condoms for the soldiers in the Gulf. In the bleak deserts of Arabia such a purchase was deemed to indicate the Brits must know something the GIs did not.

The mystery was resolved the day before the ground war started. The Americans had spent a hundred days cleaning their rifles over and over again to purge them of the all-pervasive sand, dust, grit, and gravel that endlessly blew into the ends of the barrels. The Brits whipped off their condoms to reveal nice shiny barrels gleaming with gun oil.

The other principal development that occurred just before Christmas was the reintegration of the French contingency into the heart of Allied planning.

In the early days, France had had a disaster of a Defense Minister called Jean-Pierre Chevenement, who appeared to enjoy a keen sympathy with Iraq and ordered the French commander to pass all Allied planning decisions on to Paris. When this was made plain to General Schwarzkopf, he and Sir Peter de la Billière almost burst out laughing. Monsieur Chevenement was at that time also a leading light of the France-Iraq Friendship Society. Although the French contingent was commanded by a fine soldier in the form of General Michel Roquejoffre, France had to be excluded from all planning councils.

At the end of the year, Pierre Joxe was appointed French Defense Minister and at once rescinded the order. From then on, General Roquejoffre could be taken into the confidence of the Americans and British.

Two days before Christmas, Mike Martin received from Jericho the answer to a question posed a week earlier. Jericho was adamant: There had been within the previous few days a crisis cabinet meeting containing only the inner core of Saddam Hussein’s cabinet, the Revolutionary Command Council, and the top generals.

At the meeting the question of Iraq leaving Kuwait voluntarily had been raised. Obviously it had not been raised as a proposal by anyone at the meeting—no one was that stupid. All recalled too well the earlier occasion when, during the Iran-Iraq war, an Iranian suggestion that if Saddam Hussein stepped down there could be peace had been broached. Saddam had asked for opinions.

The Health Minister had suggested such a move might be wise—as a purely temporary ploy, of course.

Saddam invited the minister into a side room, pulled out his sidearm, shot him dead, and returned to resume the cabinet meeting.

The matter of Kuwait had been raised in the form of a denunciation of the United Nations for even daring to suggest the idea. All had waited for Saddam to give a lead. He declined, sitting as he so often did at the head of the table like a watching cobra, eyes moving from man to man in an attempt to smoke out some hint of disloyalty.

Not unnaturally, without a lead from the Rais, the conversation had petered out. Then Saddam had begun to speak very quietly, which was when he was at his most dangerous.

Anyone, he said, who let the thought of admitting to such a catastrophic humiliation of Iraq in the face of the Americans cross his mind was a man prepared to play the role of lickspittle to America for the rest of his life. For such a man there could be no place at this table.

That had been the end of it. Everyone present bent over backward to explain that such a thought would never, under any circumstances, occur to any of them.

Then the Iraqi dictator had added something else: Only if Iraq could win and be seen to win would it be possible to withdraw from Iraq’s nineteenth province, he said.

Everyone around the table then nodded sagely, though none could see what he was talking about.

It was a long report, and Mike Martin transmitted it to the villa outside Riyadh that same night.

Tags: Frederick Forsyth Thriller
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