Free Sand and Fire (9780698137844) by Tom Young

Group of Tripolitania seeks to bring sharia law and infinite justice to the whole of North Africa. The people long for a new pasha, a ruler who will serve as Allah’s instrument on Earth. The winds of the Sahara once struckfear into the hearts of infidels who sailed near our coasts, and those winds shall bring fear again.”
    Tripolitania? The graffiti in the photo Sophia had e-mailed said something about Tripolitania. Parson couldn’t read the Arabic script, but she’d told him it referred to the Barbary states back in the nineteenth century. As the video continued, Kassam drew the flintlock and began waving it.
    â€œAs in the days of old, we will terrorize our enemies. We will kill and enslave nonbelievers who seek to defeat our religion. My forebears in jihad took this pistol from an American sailor more than two centuries ago. And Allah has delivered into our hands far more fearsome weapons. As we showed you on the Crusader island of Sicily and in the backsliding region of Ghat, we are not afraid to use what Allah has given us. With these weapons we will strike even at the serpent’s nest in America.”
    Just keep running your mouth, Parson thought. Somebody’s going to take that pistol away from you and shove it up your ass.
    Extremists had a way of blaspheming the very principles they preached. This bastard spoke of restoring the former glory of Islamic rule—through indiscriminate use of weapons of mass destruction. Sophia would know more about the details, but Parson guessed this violated all kinds of Muslim teachings. Parson remembered her telling him about the seventh-century caliph, Abu Bakr, who established ten rules for Muslim armies. One said no killing of a child, a woman, or an aged man.
    When the briefing ended, Parson and Chartier returned to the ops center. Given Kassam’s threat of continued attacks, it seemed even more likely now that NATO or UN forces would get involved. As a member of the AFRICOM planning cell, Parson figured he’d better get cracking.
    The new Libyan government had already given permission for military use of Mitiga International Airport near Tripoli. Parson sat at his computer, tapped at the keyboard, and brought up airfield data for Mitiga.
    The field’s long history mirrored the history of the country. First built by the Italians in 1923, the base was captured by the Germans during World War II. The U.S. took it over during the Cold War and named it Wheelus Air Base. Wheelus hosted the cargo planes of the old Military Air Transport service and the bombers of Strategic Air Command. The U.S. closed Wheelus in 1970 and turned it over to the Libyans, who renamed it Okba Ben Nafi Air Base.
    At around the same time the Americans were preparing to shut down the base, Muammar Gadhafi deposed Libya’s King Idris in a military coup. In 1986 Gadhafi got the bright idea to bomb the La Belle disco in West Berlin to kill and injure American servicemen. Payback was a bitch; President Reagan launched Operation El Dorado Canyon. Parson’s own dad, as a weapons systems officer in an F-111 Aardvark, attacked the base that American fliers once called home. The elder Parson had spoken of the grueling mission from RAF Lakenheath in Britain.
    â€œFrance, Spain, and Italy denied overflight,” Dad had said, “so we dragged our asses all the way around the Iberian Peninsula. Refueled in the air several times.” But the long flight paid off when he found that row of Ilyushin transport planes in his crosshairs.
    Parson could not ask about that raid now. His father had died in the crash of his Wild Weasel during Desert Storm.
    In the 1990s, the Libyan base targeted by the elder Parson converted to a civilian airport. It bore a new name: Mitiga International.
    Hope Dad didn’t tear up Mitiga too bad for the Libyans to repair properly, Parson thought, because I might need it soon. Parson’s computer told him Mitiga boasted two runways, the