Thunder in the Blood by Graham Hurley

Author:Graham Hurley [Hurley, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1994-12-02T13:00:00+00:00

16

Wesley’s flight left at half past eight that night. From a distant parking lot, I watched the lights of the Jumbo lifting off, then I retrieved the bags from the lock-up, returned to the Chrysler and took the freeway towards Dallas. On the outskirts of the city, I found a tiny motel and booked in. I bought Chinese food from a take-away across the street and double-locked the door of the motel room. Cross-legged on the bed, a carton of noodles on my lap, I was ready, at last, for a proper trawl through Grant Wallace’s files.

There were seven in all, six devoted to an analysis of the period between the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the chill, moonless night six months later when the first waves of Allied bombers took the war back to Saddam. Grant had organized the account with great care, one month per file. Each file was prefaced with a typed chronology, a day-by-day record of who was doing what. Attached to the chronology were thick sheaves of newsprint – cuttings from papers, whole articles from magazines, even the odd abstract from the weightier specialist publications – and these provided back-up, sourcing quotations, amplifying key events, offering glimpse after glimpse of the national mood as George Bush tugged America to war. As a feat of archival research, Grant’s files were a revelation. His organizational skills were faultless. He seemed to have a natural eye for detail. He was scrupulous, painstaking and extraordinarily neat. Curzon House would have given him a job for life.

In the motel room, I spread the files on the carpet beside the bed, going through them one after the other, looking for the small print behind the headlines, the tiny bits of evidence that would tell me whether or not Wesley’s thesis deserved any more of Stollmann’s precious budget.

November, it seemed, had been the key date, the hinge on the door that led to war. August, September and October, the months immediately following the invasion, Bush had spent in furious consultation: with his allies abroad, with his cabinet, with his generals, with Congress. At first glance, the circle had seemed impossible to square. The State Department – the diplomats – favoured sanctions; the Pentagon argued for war, but with an overwhelming concentration of force. The latter would cost a fortune, both in money and in blood. The money, oddly enough, proved no problem. The hat went round the international community and came back brimming with foreign dollars. But the projected body count, the real cost to America, went up and up. As the Pentagon talked gravely about ‘Iraqi capabilities’ – their million-strong army, their world-class artillery, their stocks of chemical weapons, their ultra-modern air force – so the risks multiplied.

On 11 October, according to Grant Wallace, General Schwarzkopf had sent his first attack plan back to George Bush in Washington. Phase Four of the attack, codenamed Night Camel, drove a three-pronged assault towards Kuwait City. US Marines would storm ashore from the east, US armour would push up from the south, while Egyptian units took on the Iraqis from the west.

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