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, deadl 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' -
CHAPTER 5
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-fot 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
