you are named president, we shall work together to eliminate the Westerners from our land. The oil they pump from our land is ours, not theirs. Libya took control of our oil fields, Khalid-Egypt should do the same. I will accept any information you can give me, and God will tell me His wishes.'
'As you wish, Majesty,' Khan said. 'It shall be sent to you without delay.'
Good little tool, Zuwayy thought, good little tool.
'I apologize for having to do this,' Patrick McLanahan said as he entered the briefing room. The other members of his team were already there, waiting. 'I know none of us feel much like debriefing right now. But we have a report to file. Let's get to it.' He looked over to his wife, Wendy. 'What have you got for us?'
Wendy looked on her husband sadly, her eyes wet with tears. Concentrating on recovering the commando team, with the body of her dead brother-in-law aboard, was one of the most difficult things she ever had to do. But Patrick was all business-never shed a tear, never sulked, never really looked at his brother once they were brought aboard. He helped carry the litter off the CV-22 Pave Hammer tiltrotor aircraft until two other men took the body away, and then he got right back to work. She could feel the pain inside him, even though his face and features didn't show it.
Patrick issued a voice command, and his fibersteel exoskeleton automatically detached itself from his body. He stepped out of it and pressed a code into a hidden keypad, and the exoskeleton folded itself up into a package about the size of a small suitcase. He plugged the pack into a wall outlet to recharge it, set the exoskeleton aside, sat down at the head of the conference table, then plugged his battle armor into another available outlet. Patrick, Wendy noticed, still had Paul's blood on his hands, his wrists, his arms, and his face-he hadn't even slowed down long enough to wash it off.
'We launched a FlightHawk recon aircraft while you were on your way back, Patrick,' Wendy began in a low monotone voice. 'We did detect radioactive elements in the atmosphere over Samah consistent with a number of nuclear warheads, so some of the rockets you destroyed were nuclear. The bad news is, we also detected VX nerve agents, also consistent with a number of warheads, maybe as many as a half-dozen.'
'Holy shit,' Hal Briggs breathed. 'With an SS-12 they could hit Rome, Athens, Istanbul, Tel Aviv…'
'Or Cairo, Alexandria, or the Suez Canal,' Patrick added. 'And Libya has a number of ex-Russian long-range bombers, tactical fighters, coastal antiship, and ship-borne weapon systems capable of delivering those warheads too. They could hold all of southern Europe at risk.' Patrick looked at his intelligence briefing notes. 'Our private intelligence sources told us there might be as many as six other bases, including two more secret bases like Samah, hiding ballistic missiles armed with nuclear or chemical warheads. I'd like to set up a complete reconnaissance schedule with as many FlightHawks as we can, scanning every square foot to try to locate the other missiles.'
'Agreed,' Chris Wohl said. 'We can have a strike team standing by either offshore or in Egypt to move as soon as targets are located.'
'We should also push to upgrade the sensors on the recon FlightHawks,' Wendy added. 'We can put an ultrawideband radar on a FlightHawk to let us scan for underground bunkers and communications lines under the sand.' The ultra-wideband radar, or UWBR, was one of the most significant advances in surveillance and reconnaissance: a radar capable of seeing through some mediumdensity objects. The system normally fit only on a full-size aircraft, but Jon Masters had redesigned it to fit on board a small, unmanned aircraft. 'The FlightHawks will have only a few hours' loiter time because of the size of the UWBR system, but we'll be able to scan the country quicker and more efficiently.'
'Then let's get it all moving this way immediately,' Patrick said. 'I don't want to give the Libyans a chance-'
Just then, an electronic warning tone sounded-the collision warning. Everyone in the briefing room immediately shot to their feet and headed out to their emergency stations. At the same moment the phone from the bridge sounded; Patrick picked it up before the second ring. 'Go ahead, Brian.' -
'We got a situation, General,' Brian Lovelock, the cap-
tain of the Catherine, responded. 'We're receiving distress signals from two vessels within thirty miles of our position, saying they're under attack from unidentified aircraft. No warning given. The attackers appear to be moving from east to west-in our direction.'
'Got it,' Patrick replied. He pressed another button, this one hooked directly to the Combat Information Center and his longtime friend and partner, David Luger. 'Dave, what do you have?'
'We're just now picking up four high-speed aircraft bearing one-zero-five, altitude less than one thousand feet, heading west at four hundred eighty knots,' Luger responded. The Catherine had an entire combat radar system hidden aboard the salvage ship, disguised as standard navigation radars-it was as combat-capable as many world navies' warships. 'Sorry we didn't pick them up earlier, Muck, but they are right down on the friggin' deck. Their ETE is four minutes.'
'Sound general quarters, everyone to air defense positions,' Patrick ordered. 'Better start a complete data dump to the satellite and then destroy the classified. Someone's on the warpath out here, and I think we're next.' On his subcutaneous microtransceiver, he said, 'Patrick to Wendy… Wendy, I want you aboard the Pave Hammer, along with the civilians.'
'I'm staying, Wendy said. 'I can have a FlightHawk armed with air-to-air missiles airborne in three minutes.'
'Wendy, no argument. You're evacuating with the other civilians.' He paused, then said, 'Bradley is waiting for you.'
There was a slight pause, but Patrick knew invoking the name of their son would do it. 'All right.'
'We'll hold them off as best we can,' Patrick said. He hit the hidden switch on his exoskeleton, stepped into it after it stood itself up, attached it to his body, locked his helmet in place, then ran up on deck. He immediately dashed over to the bow of the Catherine, which was facing east, in the direction from which the attackers were coming. 'Combat, this is Castor,' Patrick radioed. 'Range to bandits?'
'Twenty-two miles and closing. ETE less than three minutes.'
As he searched the morning sky with his helmet-mounted sensors, three crewmen trotted over to him, wheeling a large crate on a cart. Patrick unlocked the crate and with one hand extracted the weapon inside. It was an immense M-168 sixbarreled Vulcan cannon. Normally mounted on a big Humvee or M-113 armored personnel carrier, the eighthundred-pound Vulcan cannon was designed for use against ground targets and fast-flying helicopters at ranges out to a mile and a half. It had a maximum rate of fire of one hundred rounds per second- anything it hit would be chopped to hamburger in the blink of an eye.
'Combat, Castor,' Patrick radioed as he hefted the big cannon. The hydraulically powered exoskeleton made it ridiculously easy to level the big gun and move it smoothly and precisely in any direction. 'Where are they?'
'Bearing one-zero-two, range eighteen miles, low.'
Patrick activated all of his battle armor's sensors and began scanning at maximum range. 'Roger. Nike, Taurus, Pollux, you guys up?'
'Nike up in ten seconds,' Wohl replied.
'Taurus will be up in twenty.'
No reply from Pollux-and Patrick realized that there never would be one either, ever again. 'Roger, Stalkers,' he said sadly. 'Report when you're ready to engage.' At that moment, several of their commandos, wearing lightweight non-electronic battle armor, began to set their Stinger MANPADS (Man-Portable Air Defense System) up beside Patrick. The Stinger MANPADS was a portable shoulder-fired heat-seeking antiaircraft missile. Other commandos brought caskets of reloads. 'My MANPADS is up on the bow. Hammer, what's your status?'
At that moment, Patrick heard the low, steadily quickening roar of the CV-22 Pave Hammer's engines starting up behind him. It had been raised up on deck from its hold faster than Patrick could ever imagine. 'Hammer is starting engines. We'll be airborne in two minutes.'
'Make it one minute, Hammer,' Patrick ordered. 'combat?'
'Bearing zero-niner-seven, range fifteen miles… stand by, aircraft turning slightly, range decreasing rapidly We're being highlighted by X-band airborne radar. They got a lock on us.'
'Get the Hammer off the deck now' Patrick shouted.
'Sixty seconds. All civilians are aboard.'
