“Sir?” The kid looked a little like he was talking to a ghost. The driver had hopped from the cab; Jeff wheeled himself around to make it easier for them to hoist him.
“I’m thinking of losing weight,” he said to the corporal, who hopped up after him.
“No problem, sir.” The soldiers threw his boot against the wheel as they started up, bracing his arm against the side.
“Human brake, huh?” Zen said to him.
“Yes, sir.”
Zen started to laugh. A few weeks before – hell, yesterday – the man’s seriousness would have convinced Jeff that he was being condescending, pitying him. Today, it just struck him as funny.
“I’m not going to roll off,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” The soldier kept his foot in place.
“You in the 10th Mountain Division?” Jeff asked, noticing the soldier’s patch.
“Yes, sir.”
“Damn good unit.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The corporal never cracked a smile.
Hal Briggs met them outside the terminal building.
“Good job,” Hal boomed, helping the corporal lower Jeff to the pavement. “We were able to track the plane.”
“Really?”
“The Hawkeye was waiting off the coast. It caught it coming north, thanks to your information,” Briggs said. “We’re ninety percent sure where they’re taking them.”
“Ninety percent?” said Major Cheshire.
“Navy like numbers,” said Briggs. He smiled and held his hands out apologetically. “This is their baby now; we’re back to being, uh, consultants. Come on inside, I’ll fill you in.”
Madcap Magician and its associated Special Ops units were now a tiny part of an operation that included three aircraft carriers and a Marine Expeditionary Unit in the Mediterranean. The strikes on the Silkworm missiles had been successful. Two Iranian MiGs had been shot down; the Megafortress had accounted for one Libyan MiG- 25. And as Hal had said outside, planes from the JFK had tracked the Pchelka believed to be carrying the pilots and Marines to a bunker site just outside Tripoli.
The situation room had been tidied up some; there were now neat clusters of men gathered around tables and laptop computers. wires snaked everywhere. A thick pair led to the rear of the building, where portable generators the size of soda trucks were humming. Their vibrations played a mamba back through the building and up through the floor so violently one of the armrests on Zen’s chair rattled.
Hal led them to a corner of the room that had been set off by sandbags. A large table with maps sat behind the bags; half a Satcom and a large laptop computer were tucked against its legs. There were no chairs.
“The President has authorized an operation to retrieve the hostages,” Briggs told them. “But only if it can be launched within the next eight hours.”
“Why eight hours?” Jeff asked.
Briggs nodded, agreeing with the implied criticism of the deadline. “The UN Security Council is due to meet then, apparently, Washington wants to avoid any possibility of a condemnation – or worse, offers of mediation. They want a fait accompli. The Saudis and the Egyptians are up in arms, but the Iranians are hesitating. Retrieving our men will take their last cards away. Moderate elements in the Iranian government –”
“There are moderates in Iran?” said Cheshire.
“The politics really aren’t my business,” said Briggs. “But the way I read it, the Iranians and Libyans think their best bet is to hold a trial. The NSC analyst who’s been helping us thinks the Islamic League is teetering on collapse and will fold if we prevent that. As far as that goes, I think he’s right. The Iranians really have been the driving force here; Libya, Sudan, the Somalians – bottom line is they’re followers. Now if Egypt were to get involved – that’s a different story. In any event, we want to cut that all off. And we will. Or rather, the Navy will. With our help.”
“You’re not launching an assault from here,” said Jeff, trying to shake off his fatigue. “We’re twenty-five- hundred miles away.”
“No. Two SEAL groups will make the actual assault from the Mediterranean. A marine MEU is taking care of a diversionary raid. We’re sending our Delta operators and Whiplash to man some SAR points in the mountains to the south. Both of them are loading up now. Nancy, if you’d brief the Osprey pilots on what’s out there, I’m sure they’d appreciate it.”
“Okay. We found an antiair battery that wasn’t in our briefing. Beyond that, it was pretty clean. Except for the MiGs.”
“Good,” said Hal.
“Drop the other show,” Zen told him.
Cheshire turned to Jeff.
“I’ve played poker with Hal too many times not to know he wants something else,” Jeff explained. “He wants us to do more than brief the roto pilots. He’s explained too much. He doesn’t ante in on that last round unless he thinks he can win. Then he talks to you and tries to get you to help sweeten the pot.”
“The SEALS need some real-time surveillance of the Tripoli bunker complex,” said Briggs. His voice was flat – he could have been playing poker, sitting on a full house with nothing showing. “They’re talking about using F/A- 18’s, but I think it’s too damn risky. There’s one Pioneer UAV with the MEU, but that bunker has more SAMs around it than the Kremlin. It won’t last. And besides, the Pioneer would be useful for the diversion.”
“We can do it,” said Jeff. “We can use the test circuits to transmit optical and infrared views to a satellite uplink. If you’ve got JSTARS on the other end, they can relay it.”
“Zen, that’s a damn long flight,” said Cheshire. “Any we haven’t slept.”
“I slept on the way over. I’ll be fine,” said Jeff.
“You look like you’re tired as shit,” she answered. “And you’re sweating buckets.”
“Sorry if I stink,” he said.
“That’s not it.”
“I don’t want to push anybody beyond their limit,” said Hal. Now he wasn’t bluffing or playing poker – he was damn sincere. “But that bunker is a bitch. We have the plans from the Italian company that built it, because we were worried about the Libyans using it. There’s a way in, but it’s going to be tight. They need to know where the guards are sixty seconds before they land.”
“Piece of cake,” said Zen. “Show me the plans and a map.”
“You okay with this, Major?” Hal said to Cheshire.
Cheshire hesitated, but then nodded her head. “Raven cap wipe out the ground radars for the assault teams. It makes sense.”
“You’re not too tired?” Hal asked.
“No, damn it.”
Briggs nodded, then reached for his Satcom. But as he started to click into the line, he looked up at Jeff. “I was wrong,” he said. “I apologize.”
“Not necessary,” lied Zen. Then he added, “So you were sitting on four aces, huh?”
“Just two.”
Their well-earned rest had done nothing to lift the Whiplash team’s mood. Danny’s men were pissed that they had just missed the pilots and Marines. That they’d barely managed to escape without anything worse than a broken fingernail only added to the bitterness. And the fact that they were taking a decidedly secondary role in the new operation was about the last straw.
“SEALS just want the effin’ glory,” groused Bison as the Osprey lifted off. Freah could see it was going to be a long flight.
“I don’t see why we don’t take out the bunker ourselves,” said Hernandez. “While they’re going in the front door, we sneak in the back.”
“Goddamn Navy’s gonna screw it up.”
“The bunker is about seventy-five miles from Eagles Nest,” Talcom pointed out. “A hop, skip, and a jump. We
