Prologue - Page 1

PROLOGUE

Presidential Palace Near Baghdad
Saddam Hussein perused the two pages in his hands. He sat in a high-backed chair at a priceless, antique French desk. The desk and chair were on an elevated platform with gold-laced tapestries hanging behind the Great Leader. The carpeting was a royal red; pillared golden candle stands marked the borders of the room. The trademark black .45 ACP pistols lay casually on the top of the French desk. The muzzles pointed carelessly towards the entry door.

A dour man with thick black hair and hands scarred from his former street fighting days, Hussein now had others to kill for him. It was rumored he still used his guns to murder those who displeased him. His flat black eyes showed no joy or compassion, and the trademark mustache hung heavily over his upper lip. Today he was dressed in khaki fatigues that he found more comfortable than a Western Style suit coat and tie.

Members of his personal bodyguard stood inside and outside the doorway. Each held a machine pistol, and submitted anyone entering the room to a full body search after they had passed through an airport style metal detector. A trained, bomb-sniffing dog waited outside the doorway under the watchful gaze of its handler. Saddam Hussein protected himself not only from the masses—most of whom were too poor and frightened to attempt anything so bold as assassination—but also from the colonels in his own armed forces.

Generals could be watched easily. They had achieved their rank, and as long as the graft was not terribly expensive, generals understood their place. It was the anxious colonels who always seemed to be plotting grander schemes and greater glory. Saddam went through a lot of colonels.

He looked up to the two people standing twenty paces from his desk. He nodded as he went down the target list: Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Kuwait City, Tehran, Tabriz, Qom, Al-Jawf, Riyadh, and Ankara.