Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10 (37 page)

 
          
“I
am going to find those Americans,” Kazakov said, “and I’m going to capture them
somehow, I’ll learn all the secrets about who they are and all the secrets
about their weapons and technology—and then I’m going to roast each and every
one of them on a spit in my living-room fireplace” He paused for a long time,
turning the few details he knew over and over and over again in his mind; then
“First your missile base at Samah is attacked by an obviously high-tech force;
then, your armed residence at Jaghbub is attacked by an equally effective
high-tech force. The commando asks that all the detainees from your attack out
in the
Mediterranean
Sea
be released.
That means that the same commandos were involved in both the attack on Samah
and Jaghbub—and that you probably had some of their comrades in custody.”

           
“Obviously.
Na huya eta mn’e nuzhna?
So what?”

 
          
“You
idiot—you might have had the men that attacked your base,” Kazakov said. “I
want details, Zuwayy. I want to know everything you know about these attacks,
both on Samah and Jaghbub, and I want to know everything your military forces
learned before, during, and after you attacked those vessels out in the
Mediterranean Sea.”

 
          
“I
can tell you almost everything,” Zuwayy said. “Especially the last part—the
part of the incident where some of our planes were shot down.”

 
          
“Some
Libyan attack planes . ..
shot down
?
By whom?”

      
     
“By the men firing missiles from one of
the ships.”

           
“Firing
missiles!
And you’ve been sitting on this information all this time! Which
ship, damn you?”

 
          
“The
Lithuanian salvage ship,” Zuwayy said. “We recovered eleven men and one woman
from the water.”

 
          
“It
was them. I know it,” Kazakov said. “They invaded your country to force you to
release those prisoners.”

 
          
“I
will blast them to hell,” Zuwayy said. “Khan thinks he has them surrounded. I
will—”

 
          
“What
did you say, Zuwayy?” Kazakov thundered.
“What
did you say? ”

 
          
“I
received a call from Ulama Khalid al-Khan, the chief justice of the Egyptian
Supreme Judiciary,” Zuwayy said.

 
          
“He
claims that Susan Salaam and General Ahmad Baris aided and abetted a group of
soldiers believed to be American comm—” He stopped, his throat completely dry,
as he finally made the connection in his head. “Oh, my God ..

 
          
“You
knew this?” Kazakov screamed into the phone. “You knew those commandos were on
that base?”

 
          
“I
have been attacked'!”
Zuwayy shouted,
not quite knowing what else to say. “I didn’t know these were the men you
sought. I didn’t realize—”

 
          
“Are
those commandos still in Egypt?” Kazakov interjected.

 
          
“I
believe Khan is holding them at Mersa Matruh.”

 
          
“Tell
him not to let them leave under any circumstances,” Kazakov said. “They must
stay in Mersa Matruh. Tell Khan that you will deliver the prisoners there—that
should keep the commandos in place. And you will detain all of those prisoners
that have the slightest appearance of being Americans. Do not send them along
with the others.”

           
“And then what do we do?”

 
          
“This
is what you will do, Zuwayy,” Kazakov said. “You will do exactly as I tell you
to do, and you had better not slip up, or I will see to it that a lot more than
your damned nose is smashed.”

 
          
“You
will not speak to me this way!” Zuwayy shouted. “I am the king of united
Libya—!”

 
          
“Zuwayy,
the quicker you get that fiction out of your head, the better we will all be,”
Kazakov interjected. “You are nothing but a second-rate army officer who
deceived, murdered, and bribed your way into the presidential palace. It was a
brilliant scheme—until you actually started to believe the shit you were
feeding your fellow Libyans. Now, you are nothing. Even Qadhafi had a better
reputation than you do right now—before you had your men put a bullet in his
eye and string him up from the flagpole in broad daylight. You had him and his
family pleading for their lives on your living room floor, and you still didn’t
have the guts to pull the trigger yourself.

 
          
“Now,
I will tell you what to do, and by God you had better do this mission right
this time, or I’ll see to it that you end up like your so-called
‘ancestors’—your bones will be tossed out into the desert as vulture food.”
Kazakov outlined the targets he wanted struck and the way he wanted it done.
Afterward, the line went dead.

 
          
Pavel
Kazakov nearly turned over his entire desk in sheer fury. “That incompetent
ass!” he shouted. “I want him, dead, dead,
dead!
I want his friends dead, his mistresses dead, and I want it public, messy, and
I want it done
now!”

 
          
Ivana
Vasilyeva appeared—again—as if she was going to have another orgasm. She was a
good aide and a fierce lover, Kazakov thought, but how could anyone with the
kind of psychosexual dysfunctions that she had rise so far in the Russian army?

 
          
“Send
me,” Vasilyeva breathed. “Send me to Libya. I can get close to this peacock. I
will pull his feathers for you—one by one, slowly and painfully—and then cook
him for you.”

 
          
But
Kazakov wasn’t paying attention to Vasilyeva’s psychotic panting right now—his
mind was occupied with trying to figure out who was attacking Libya.

 
          
It
had to be the Tin Man organization, the same ones that had destroyed his
Russian oil empire, Metyorgaz, and captured him. Kazakov’s sources said most
likely it was a private group, not government, with access to the latest
high-tech military hardware. Well, they needed access to not just a few guns
and futuristic body armor with jets in the boots to destroy two Libyan military
bases—they needed access to large precision-guided bombs and the heavy,
long-range aircraft to deliver them.

 
          
Mersa
Matruh was the key. Zuwayy suspected they might be operating from there—if they
were, he could track them down, follow them, and find a way to destroy them.

 
          
“Yes
. . . yes, I think you would do very nicely,” Kazakov said to Vasilyeva. “You
shall leave immediately.” But finally her orgasmic rush was too much for him to
bear, and he reached out for her hard, sexy body. “Well,” he said with a smile
as she began to unbutton her blouse, “perhaps not
immediately
.”

MERSA MATRUH JOINT MILITARY
BASE,
EGYPT

A FEW HOURS LATER

           
Patrick McLanahan stared blankly at
the computer image, flipping back and forth through stills of several
FlightHawk overhead photographs downloaded from the latest surveillance
flights. He was sitting in a small, unair-conditioned but secure little
semi-underground building in an isolated part of the Egyptian military base set
aside for them by General Baris. Their facilities were spartan, but they had
access to Egyptian communications and intelligence information via computer,
also courtesy of Baris.

 
          
Since
returning from his infiltration at Jaghbub, Patrick had been reviewing each and
every minute of aerial reconnaissance from the stealthy unmanned reconnaissance
aircraft flying over Libya. The strain was definitely showing. Patrick didn’t
know if he was eventually just going to totally collapse or end up throwing the
computer against a wall in disgust. But he felt that the conflict was drawing
to an end. Zuwayy
had
to release the
prisoners now ... he
had
to.

           
“Hey, man,” Hal Briggs said softly,
“let me and the sergeant take a look through those images. You go take a nap.”
Patrick ignored him. “You hearing me okay, Muck?”

 
          
“I
heard you,” Patrick said, rubbing his eyes wearily. “But I want to go over the
last batch of images, the ones of daybreak over that Libyan naval base where
Wendy was probably taken....”

 
          
“There’s
at least three bases she could have been taken to in the past twelve hours,
Muck,” Briggs pointed out. “Or she could still be on one of the ships.” Left
unsaid was the other obvious possibility—Wendy was not in Libyan custody at
all. “We’ve got trained guys waiting to look at those pictures. Why not let them
do their jobs?”

 
          
“I
gave them a job to do—plan a nighttime infiltration of those three military
medical facilities,” Patrick said irritably. “But we need to target the most
likely one, because once we go in, the Libyans will be alerted.” He looked angrily
at Hal and added, “And I asked you to check on the aircraft and the weapons,
Hal.”

 
          
“The
sergeant is on it,” Briggs responded. “But he asked me to talk to you....”

 
          
“I’m
not stopping this, Hal,” Patrick said, his irritation quickly growing into anger.
“We’ve got eight hours until sunset. We need a target in that amount of time so
we have enough time to brief the infiltration, extraction, and exfiltration,
then launch and—”

 
          
“Obviously
the entire Libyan armed forces are on full alert.”

 
          
“I
know that, Hal.”

 
          
“If
you did, Muck, you’d be suspending plans to go in until the situation
stabilizes,” Hal said seriously. “C’mon, man, think about it.”

 
          
“Hal,
just do what I ask you to do, all right? Get the team and the aircraft ready to
go.”

 
          
Briggs
finally relented—arguing with him was not doing any good. “All right, Patrick,
we’ll press on—for now.” He ignored Patrick’s warning glare. “But listen to me,
man—it won’t do anyone any good if you’re dead on your feet. Take sixty
minutes, Muck. Get some rest. I’ll look at the imagery myself, and I’ll have
one of the guys doublecheck it. If there’s any evidence that Wendy was taken to
any of those facilities, we’ll plan an entry to take a look. You might be
overlooking something if you’re too tired to check each image carefully.”

 
          
“I’m
not too tired, Hal,” Patrick told him. But he again rubbed his eyes wearily,
and he found he had to fight to keep them open. He nodded and got to his feet.
“Okay, buddy. I’ll go take a nap. Wake me if you find anything.”

          
 
“Just get some rest. We’ll handle everything.”

           
Patrick, David, and Hal shared a
room right beside the mission planning room, but this was the first time
Patrick had been there since the Egyptian military made room for them. Someone
had laid out his gear on a small shelf beside the bed, and Patrick found
himself eager to shave, brush his teeth, and scrub his body for the first time
in what seemed like weeks. After he was done, he felt a hundred percent better.
He told himself to be sure to take at least five minutes out to do this every
day—it wouldn’t look good for the other team members to see the team leader
looking like crap. It was a quick and simple thing to do, but it—

 
          
And
that’s when he noticed Paul’s gear, stacked in the comer of the room—a lone green
duffel bag with a yellow tag on the canvas handles that read, “P.McL.”—Paul
McLanahan.

 
          
Dammit,
Paul, why were you here? Why are any of us here? Just to fight a battle for
some oil executives? Was it worth the pain, the suffering, and the death? Who
would understand? Anyone? No one?

 
          
His
head was a jumble of thoughts and emotions, all fighting for attention,
analysis. But somehow, through it all, a woman’s voice told him to lie still,
to put all violent thoughts out of his head. There would be plenty of time for
planning the next battle, the voice said—now was the time for sleep. Rest was
as much a part of fighting a war as the bomb run, the voice wisely said, and
she was right.

           
Patrick didn’t know how long he had
been asleep, but he awoke gently and felt completely rested. He felt as if he
could take on the entire world. The room was quiet, and even the adjacent
planning rooms had only routine noises. There were things to do, he thought,
and now he felt as if he could do them. He opened his eyes . . .

 
          
...
and found Susan Bailey Salaam sitting on the bed beside him. She smiled at him,
her eyes sparkling, her hair shimmering in the dim light. Patrick immediately
sat up. Susan placed a hand on his chest as if to tell him to stay put, but he
got up anyway. “Mrs. Salaam, what are you doing here?”

 
          
“She’s
been here for the last hour and a half, Muck,” David Luger said. He was
standing casually in the doorway of their room, but with a look of concern on
his face.

 
          
“An
hour and a half?” Patrick asked incredulously. He could scarcely believe he
could sleep that long with everything that was going on. “Everything all
right?”

 
          
“Mrs.
Salaam wants to talk with you,” Luger said. “I’ll be in the command post.” He
turned and departed, but not before giving Susan an inquisitive, concerned
look.

 
          
“Your
officers have been standing guard over us the entire time,” Susan said to
Patrick. “They are very loyal to you.”

 
          
“You
should have waited outside.”

 
          
“You
looked restless. I thought I could help.”

 
          
“That
was your voice I heard?”

 
          
Susan
nodded. “Feeling better?”

 
          
“Yes.”
He sat up and swung his legs around to the floor, expecting her to stand to let
him get up. But she didn’t move, and he found himself face-to-face with her.
She glanced at his lips invitingly, looked deeply into his eyes, then averted
her eyes and let them roam across his broad chest and thick shoulders. The only
sport Patrick ever excelled at was weight lifting, a sport that was solitary,
much like the man himself. He had been doing it for many years, and it showed.
He lingered there for a moment, trying to decide what she was doing, then got
up and pulled a clean T-shirt from his duffel bag and pulled it on. “Let’s go
outside to the command center where we can talk, Susan.”

 
          
“I
need to talk with you in private first,” she said. He nodded, deciding to stand
right there, but after a short, awkward silence, he returned and sat beside her
on the bed. “I spoke with your officers outside while I was waiting. I still
don’t know Taurus’s real name; it’s obvious you and Mr. Luger are very close.”
Patrick did not respond. “I gave them the very latest information we have on
both the Libyan naval vessels that searched the site where your ship was sunk.”

 
          
“Thank
you. I’m sure it’ll all be very useful.”

 
          
“Judging
by the information they requested and the information they reviewed after I
arrived, I’d guess you were planning a soft probe on either the Tobruk joint
operations center or the Damah naval base,” Susan said.

 
          
“I
must be sure to remind my team members that you used to be an intelligence
officer,” Patrick said with a wry smile.

 
          
“And
you have obviously been trained to not offer any information to anyone, even in
casual conversation.”

           
“We’re eight thousand miles from
home, at a strange military base—there’s nothing casual about this situation.”

           
“Are you ever going to trust me,
Patrick?” Susan asked.

           
“Would it upset you if I said
‘no’?”

           
“Yes, it would,” Susan replied. It
was obvious to her that he didn’t care if it upset her or not. She paused for a
moment, then said, “Going in to either Damah or Tobruk even in normal
day-to-day circumstances would be very, very dangerous. Both bases are
massively armed fortresses, especially for Anglos but even for Arabs. But our
intelligence information tells us both bases are at the absolute highest
readiness stages, just short of all-out wartime conditions. I strongly advise
you not to plan to go in there unless you have your target—I’m sorry, I should
say, your
wife
—located first. Or unless
you have some massive firepower lining up behind you to support a soft probe
that could turn hot in a matter of moments.”

           
Her inquisitive eyes told Patrick
she was still fishing for information—he was glad for the rest, because he
needed to stay sharp to avoid giving this beautiful, captivating, disarming
woman any good intelligence data. “I know that, Susan,” Patrick said. “But I’m
counting on the combat operations to help screen our movements in a soft probe.
You know as well as I do that security measures sometimes get curtailed when
moving men and equipment is the most important thing.”

 
          
“It’s
risky.”

 
          
“She’s
worth the risk.”

 
          
“I
didn’t mean to imply she wasn’t,” Susan said. “But if you’re discovered, even
if you can fight your way out, your entire operation is finished—they will kill
your wife and erect an impenetrable wall around every military and government
base, building, or office. All you will have left... is retribution. Will that
be enough for you?”

 
          
“I
don’t intend to let that happen.”

 
          
“With
all due respect, Patrick, that’s a pretty bad attitude,” Susan said directly.
“Think about it for a moment. What if you did nothing? What if you did no probe
at all, so your team never risked discovery? Your wife is probably in a Libyan
medical facility badly injured, probably unconscious and unable to speak, so
they will wait until she regains consciousness, which means you still have time
to plan, locate her precisely, and wait for the perfect opportunity.

 
          
“If
she is conscious, they may try to interrogate her. That could take days,
perhaps weeks. If she talks, they will keep her alive to extract every bit of
information from her. That still gives you time.”

 
          
For
the first time, Patrick reconsidered his plan. Susan was absolutely correct:
There was nothing to be gained by going in now. War could break out any moment
between
Libya
and
Egypt
, or just about anywhere in northern
Africa
, and Patrick and his team would be right in
the middle of it.