Corsair

TWENTY-ONE

JUAN NEVER TRANSMITTED GAIN AFTER THE SALUTATION Julia had laboriously transcribed, so Max made the decision to have Linc, Linda, and Mark head to his final coordinates in the Pig.

It took the trio two hours of hard driving to reach the area.

Hanley was in the op center. The ship’s computer was maintaining their position so there was no need for anyone other than a skeleton watch to be in the high-tech room, but a dozen men and women sat in the chairs or leaned against the walls. The only sounds were the rush of air through the vents and the occasional slurp of coffee. Eric Stone was at the helm, while next to him George Adams lolled in Mark Murphy’s weapons station. With his matinee-idol looks and flight suit, the chopper pilot cut a dashing figure. He was one of the best poker players on the ship, after the Chairman himself, and his only tell was that he toyed with his drooping gunfighter mustache when he was really nervous. At the pace he was going on this night, he would have twisted the hair off his lip in another hour.

The main monitor over their heads showed a view of the predawn darkness outside the ship. There was the merest hint of color to the east. Not so much light but the absence of pitch-black. A smaller screen displayed the Pig’s progress. The glowing dots representing the Pig and Juan’s last position were millimeters apart.

When a phone rang, everyone startled. The tech sitting in Hali Kasim’s communications center glanced at Max. Max nodded, and fitted a headset around his ears and adjusted the microphone.

“Hanley,” he said, making sure to keep any concern out of his voice. He wouldn’t give Juan the satisfaction of knowing how worried he’d been.

“Ah, Max. Langston Overholt.”

Max grunted in irritation at the unexpected call. “You’ve caught us at a rather bad moment, Lang.”

“Nothing serious, I hope.”

“You know us. It’s always serious. So are you at the tail end of a late night or just getting an early start?” It was midnight in Washington, D.C.

“To be honest, I don’t even know anymore. It’s all blended into one of the longest few days of my life.”

“It’s gotta be bad, then,” Max said. “You were in the company during the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

“Back then, I was still so wet behind the ears they wouldn’t give me the code for the executive washroom.”

Max Hanley and Langston Overholt had come from opposite poles of the American experience. Max was blue-collar all the way. His father had been a union machinist at a California aircraft plant, his mother a teacher. His commands during Vietnam had come through merit and ability. Overholt, on the other hand, had been born into a family from such old money they still considered the Astors nouveau riche. He was the result of twelve years of prep school, four years of Harvard, and three more of Harvard Law. Yet the two men had a strong respect for each other.

“Now I think one of the stalls is named after you,” Max quipped.

“Enjoy your normal prostate while it lasts, my friend.”

“So, what’s up?”

“Libyans are reporting that a fighter jockey on a nighttime training exercise spotted something in the desert just inside their border with Tunisia. A patrol was sent out and discovered a secret base equipped with a Hind helicopter. The place had been hit hard. The gunship was destroyed, and there appeared to be no survivors.”

“Yeah, I was meaning to tell you about that. Our people stumbled onto it. They took out the Hind and determined it had been modified to fire air-to-air missiles, specifically the”—he looked to Eric, who mouthed “Apex”—“Apex. It’s Russkie-built.”

“Damn it, Max, you should have told me about that when I told you Professor Bumford had been kidnapped.”

“No offense, Lang, but you hired us to find the Secretary of State. I consider everything else to be collateral.”

Max knew Overholt had to be calming himself, because he didn’t say anything for almost thirty seconds. Max wasn’t concerned. They hired the Corporation because they had no place else to turn. How missions were accomplished, the recent fiasco in Somalia notwithstanding, was up to his and Juan’s discretion.

“You’re right. Sorry. Sometimes I forget you guys get to operate with a level of autonomy I can only dream of.”

“Don’t worry about it. So what’s this about the chopper?”

“The Libyans claim they found a computer buried under the command tent, or what was left of it.”

Max opened his mouth to say that his people had gone over the site, but he knew their search was relatively cursory. Instead, he asked, “What was on the computer?”

“Links tying the chopper to Suleiman Al-Jama for one thing, and indications that they’ve opened a terrorist training camp right under the Libyans’ noses using a dummy company purportedly opening up an old coal mine.”

Max and Eric Stone shared a significant look. This was exactly as they had discussed the night before.

“How are we getting this information?” Hanley asked.

“Through a deliberate leak to the CIA station chief in Tripoli, a guy named Jim Kublicki. His contact is an opposite number in the JSO, the—”

“Jamahiriya Security Organization. We know who they are. How good is his source?”

“Given the level of cooperation we’ve gotten from the Libyans leading up to the summit and the help they provided trying to find Fiona Katamora’s plane, I’d say pretty good.”

“Or it could all be a trick. The damned Libyans could be into this up to their necks.”

“Not according to the rest of my news.”

“Max,” the duty communications officer interrupted, “there’s a call coming in from the Pig.”

Max glanced at the overhead screen. The dot representing the Pig and the one for Cabrillo’s last known location overlapped. “Wait one sec, Lang. Go ahead, patch through the new call. This is Hanley.”

“Good morning, Max.”

By the tone in Juan Cabrillo’s voice, Hanley knew the Chairman was okay. “Hold the line, Juan.” He flipped circuits back to Overholt. “Continue, Lang.”

“What was that all about?”

“Nothing. Just Juan checking in. He can hold. What’s the news that’ll convince me this isn’t the JSO or some other faction pulling a fast one?”

“Because the Libyans are going to hit the training camp in about two hours. Jim Kublicki is at one of their Air Force bases suiting up now to accompany them in a chopper for verification. If that’s not enough, there’s the possibility that Fiona Katamora is at the base as we speak. Also, the computer provided a clue to track down Al-Jama himself. The chopper and other equipment were funneled into the country with the help of a corrupt harbor pilot named Tariq Assad. They have a record that such a guy exists and has worked for the harbor authority for five years, but there’s nothing in their system before then. No school records. No employment records. Nothing. They believe this Assad is actually a cover name for Al-Jama himself, and are already on their way to grab him.”

The look Max and Eric exchanged this time was one of absolute horror.

Juan and the others were twenty-five miles from the terrorist training camp. They had more than enough time to find decent cover before the Libyan assault. The horror the two men shared stemmed from the fact that Eddie Seng and Hali Kasim had been shadowing Tariq Assad since the night the Oregon docked. With stakes as high as they were, Juan hadn’t entirely trusted their Cypriot facilitator, L’Enfant, so he had ordered his best covert operative, Seng, and his only Arab, Kasim, to watch the man for any signs of treachery.

Other than the fact that Assad spent money like water on a string of mistresses all over Tripoli, they hadn’t discovered anything suspicious. This was why the deadly shoot-out at the roadblock on the way out of the city that first night had been dismissed as a coincidence. Now Max realized Assad had set them up from the beginning.

Depending on how wide a net the JSO threw to capture him, Eddie and Hali were in real danger of being drawn into it.

Hanley finally found his voice. “Lang, what you’ve given me changes our tactical picture a hundred and eighty degrees. I need to coordinate with Juan or we’re going to be in a world of hurt.”

“Okay. Keep me pos—”

Max cut him off and switched phone lines. “Juan, you still there?”

“I don’t know if I want to talk to you anymore,” Cabrillo said, trying to sound sulky.

“We got trouble, my friend.”

The gravity in Max’s voice killed any of the playful relief Juan harbored from being rescued by Linc, Linda, and Mark. “What’s happened?”

“The Libyans are two hours away from attacking the training camp where you just were. They think the Secretary might be there, so this is both a search-and-destroy mission and a rescue attempt. On top of that, they are going to arrest Tariq Assad because he’s Suleiman Al-Jama.”

“What about the mine?” Juan snapped.

“I’m not sure,” Max admitted. “Why?”

Cabrillo didn’t answer. Hanley could hear him breathing over the secure radio link. He understood the Chairman and knew he must be making a tough choice.

“Damn,” Juan muttered, and then his voice firmed. “First thing is to get word to Eddie and Hali to watch themselves.”

“Eric’s on that now.”

“There are more than two hundred tangos garrisoned at that training camp. If Fiona Katamora’s there—which she may well be, for all I know—she is as good as dead. It’ll take the Libyan strike force twenty or thirty minutes to secure the camp, plenty of time for someone to put a bullet in her head. We’ve got to even the odds.”

“How?”

“I’m working on it. Where are you guys?”

“About eighty miles off the coast.”

“And we’ve got two hours?”

“More or less.”

“Okay, Max, I don’t want to hear you grumble about your precious engines, but I need you on the coast as fast you can get here. Sound general quarters, and put Gomez Adams on fifteen-minute alert.”

“Helm, give me emergency power,” Max shouted. “All ahead flank. Get us to the coaling station dock. Don’t worry, Juan. We’ll get you out of there.”

STRETCHED OUT on the back bench of the Pig, with Linc stitching up his leg under local anesthetic, Cabrillo looked across the front seat at the Libyan prisoner he and Alana had saved. Fodl was his name, and already the salt tablets and liter bottles of water he’d consumed had revived him tremendously.

“Yes, you will,” Juan said to Fodl and Max. “All of us.”