Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10 (70 page)

 
          
Too
bad he was sucking up to the wrong guy.

 
          
Patrick
toweled off, tossed the bag of ice, then experimentally flexed his left shoulder.
It felt pretty good, so he decided to forgo the steam room and instead take his
son Bradley to the pool. He checked Bradley out of the daycare center and took
him back to the locker room.

 
          
He
didn’t notice a janitor set a bucket of smelly water and a mop in front of the
door to the locker room after Patrick entered, put up a sign that said, “DO NOT
ENTER” on the door, and then lock the door after he entered.

 
          
Patrick
put Bradley in a pair of swim trunks he kept in his gym bag for just this purpose,
changed himself, and led his son to the pool. He found the door to the pool
locked. He turned to ask someone why the door was locked when he noticed that
the locker room was very quiet—unusually quiet. No one else was in there. The
place usually had at least a dozen men in there all hours of the day, but it
was empty now . ..

 
          
...
except for an Arab-looking man who stepped out from behind a row of
lockers—carrying an automatic pistol in one hand.

 
          
Patrick
immediately grabbed Bradley and dodged behind a row of lockers. The man didn’t
follow—that meant there were others in the room, waiting for him.

 
          
“Dad?
Aren’t we going swimming?” Bradley asked. He was obviously more concerned about
not going to the pool than he was about being carried protectively by his
father like a slippery football through onrushing linebackers.

           
“Shh,” Patrick whispered. He
crouched as low as he could, almost duckwalking through the locker room.

 
          
He
saw the second guy’s knees before he saw the rest of him, and he prayed it
wasn’t an innocent sailor—because Patrick lashed out with his right foot,
snapping out in a driving thrust against the stranger’s left knee. The knee
buckled outward at an unnatural angle.

 
          
“Dad?
Why did you kick that guy?” Bradley asked amid the stranger’s animal-like
howling. “Is he a bad guy?”

 
          
Patrick
wasn’t sure how to answer—until another automatic pistol clattered to the tiled
floor. “Yes, he’s a bad guy,” Patrick replied as he picked up the gun. “We’re
getting out of here.”

 
          
“Good
job,” Bradley said.

 
          
Patrick
decided not to go to the front door but try for the equipment manager’s office,
which had an exit into the gymnasium. He heard footsteps sliding around the
tile floor behind him. He kicked a chair over toward the front door to try to
make it sound as if he was headed in that direction, then ran as hard as he
could to the equipment manager’s office. Good—no one around. He tried the
door—even better, it was unlocked. Patrick dashed in ...

 
          
...
and immediately a fist rapped him on the side of his head. He went sprawling.
Bradley screamed. Patrick raised the gun, but he couldn’t make his eyes focus,
and he didn’t dare try to aim at any shape he saw in front of him, fearful it
would be his son. “Get the hell away from me!” he shouted over Bradley’s screaming.
“Get away or I’ll shoot!” But at that instant a large blur raced across his
eyes, and the gun was knocked from his hand. “Bradley!” he shouted. He curled
himself over his son, pressing him into a comer up against a file cabinet,
shielding him as best he could. “Stay down!”

 
          
“It’s
all right, General, it’s all right,” he heard a familiar voice say. ‘Tell your
son to calm down. You are in no danger.”

 
          
“Who
. . . who is it?”

 
          
“Just
relax, my friend. Relax.” His vision did clear a few moments later .. .

 
          
...
and when it did, he saw the smiling, boyish face of King Idris the Second of
Libya, Muhammad as-Sanusi, hovering over him. “You ... Your Majesty, what in
hell are you doing here?” Patrick said. He got Bradley up and calmed him down.

 
          
“Whatever
I’m doing, I don’t think I’m doing it very gracefully,” Sanusi said. He gave
commands in Arabic, and his two men disappeared. “I need to speak with you
immediately, General McLanahan. It is most urgent. Where can we meet?”

 
          
“For
Pete’s sake, Your Majesty, a phone call would’ve been better,” Patrick said. He
couldn’t help but smile at Sanusi’s wry grin.

 
          
“I
apologize, my friend,” Sanusi said, “but my men went about their task too
enthusiastically, and you reacted most unexpectedly. But I need to speak with you.
It is very important.”

 
          
“How
did you get on base?” Patrick asked. “The security on this base has never been
tighter. How . . . ?”

 
          
“It
is about your wife, Wendy McLanahan,” Sanusi said.

 
          
Patrick’s
mouth dropped open in surprise. Bradley stopped whimpering and broke out in a
wide, teary-eyed smile. “Mommy . .. ?”

 
          
“Fifteen
minutes.
Silver
Strand
State Park
, east side, near the boat rental shop.”

 
          
“I
know where it is.”

 
          
“Then
be there in ten minutes,” Patrick said. Sanusi disappeared—Patrick had no idea
how he expected to get out of the gym after the commotion they started, but
somehow he knew he would. “Let’s go, Bradley.”

 
          
“Are
we going to see Mommy?” he asked excitedly. Patrick did not
—could
not—answer.

 
         
It
took longer than ten minutes for Patrick to explain to Fred Jackson and his
security police units what all the yelling and screaming was about. But Patrick
explained everything to
Jackson
, including where and when he was going to meet with Sanusi.
Jackson
offered to have a few of his men tag along,
but Patrick declined.

           
He already had someone on the way
prepared to do that.

 
          
It
was thirty minutes later when Patrick arrived at the rendezvous point, a small
glass-and-concrete white building between the base and the Loews Coronado
Resort where folks could rent sailboats during the summer. Sanusi and his men
didn’t arrive for another twenty minutes. Patrick was somewhat dismayed to see
them—he had thought security at the naval base was tighter than that.

 
          
Patrick’s
concern was assuaged after he met up with Sanusi and greeted him. “I am sorry
to be late, my friend— the naval security forces detained us momentarily,” the
king said. “I am grateful you explained who we were. They agreed to release us
under your supervision—after they took away our ID cards.”

 
          
“You
had false ID cards?”

 
          
“Real
ID cards with false photos on them,” Sanusi said. “It is laughably easy to take
IDs from lockers in your recreation facilities. We had no trouble crossing the
Mexican border with false Israeli passports, and getting on base was simplicity
itself—does no one patrol the shores at your seaside bases?”

 
          
“What
about my wife, Your Highness?” Patrick asked.

 
          
“Ah
yes—enough of the security lecture,” Sanusi said. “I believe your wife is
alive, my friend. She and several Americans are still held by the pretender
Zuwayy in
Tripoli
, in one of his underground bunkers south of
the city.”

 
          
Patrick
knelt down and put an arm around his son, hugging him with joy. Bradley was
more interested in Sanusi’s men, one of whom now had a splint around his left
knee. “Have your men seen her? Are you certain?”

 
          
“We
have not seen her,” Sanusi replied. “But the guards have reported to my men
that the woman spoke her name, and that name was McLanahan. When this was told
to me, I ordered my agents inside
Tripoli
to try to stay in contact with her, and I
made arrangements to travel here to tell you myself. Because of you, my men and
I are still patrolling the desert, probing for weaknesses in the Libyan army.
We will help you all we can.”

 
          
“I’m
grateful, Your Highness,” Patrick said. “I just hope we can reach her in time.”
He turned away and spoke: “Patrick to Luger, Briggs, and Wohl.”

           
“Luger’s up.”

 
          
“Wohl’s
up, in sight, your
four o’clock
.” Patrick turned, and Sanusi looked in the
same direction—just as Chris Wohl peeked his head above the low concrete rim of
an adjacent rest room building about a hundred yards away. Patrick had called
and asked that he cover him and Bradley during this meeting—just in case.

 
          
“Very
wise precaution, General McLanahan,” Muhammad as-Sanusi commented, his smile
beaming. He waved at Wohl; his wave was not returned. None of them could see
what weapon Wohl was carrying, but there were no doubts in anyone’s mind that
he was more than proficient with it at this close range.

 
          
“Just
a heads-up, Muck—Naval Intelligence has just initiated a foreign-contact log on
you,” David Luger reported. “They’ll start setting up surveillance on you,
probably tap your phones, all that stuff. The contact log said that Muhammad
as-Sanusi made contact with you right there in
Coronado
?”

 
          
“He
and his men are with me right now,” Patrick said. “So I should assume we’re
under surveillance right now, correct?”

 
          
“I
think that would be a safe assumption. What’s happening?”

 
          
“The
king says Wendy and the Americans are alive.”

 
          
“Holy
shit! That’s great! Can we confirm it? Do we have a location?”

 
          
“No,
and no,” Patrick said. “But I want to get the force loaded up and headed back
to Jaghbub right away.”

 
          
“You
got it, Muck,” Briggs said. “But just to let you know, the feds have really
cracked down on Sky Masters. They’ve got us in virtual lockdown as we speak,
and Jon has received notice of an FBI security inspection team that wants
unlimited access to inspect the base tomorrow morning. My guess is that they’re
not there to do a security audit—they’ll shut down the facility. I’m sure we’ve
got Defense Intelligence Agency guys on our butts, and now we’ll have to contend
with Naval Intelligence.”

           
“Which means we start immediately,”
Patrick said. “I’ll go with the king and Dave to
Libya
and get the base set up; you and Chris will
split up and help Jon get our planes airborne with as many weapons and as much
fuel as we can carry.”

TONOPAH TEST RANGE,
NEVADA
 
A SHORT TIME LATER

           
The Suburban screeched to a halt in
front of the security gate, and six men in plain dark business suits hopped out
and assembled at the electric gate. The man from the front passenger seat
picked up the phone mounted on the fence beside the gate. “Special Agent Willison,
FBI,
Los
Angeles
.
My office called this morning.” The gate was buzzed open by the guards inside,
and the agents rushed in.

 
          
They
were met inside the guardhouse by a young man who extended his hand to welcome
them but was greeted instead by upraised ID cards and stem, intimidating
expressions. “I’m Special Agent Larry Willison, FBI,” the lead agent said. “And
you are?”