martyrs now, and soon we will begin to use them in coordinated attacks that will see the world’s boundaries redrawn in the way I have always envisioned.”
He spoke not as a zealot but almost like a corporate president outlining growth projections for his company.
“You don’t need to do this.” Fiona found herself pleading.
“It’s too late to stop.” He pulled the kaffiyeh from down below his chin. Fiona had to will herself not to faint when she saw his face. “And your death will be the first strike.”
FOURTEEN
NO SOONER HAD LINC GOTTEN BEHIND THE WHEEL OF THE Pig and fired the engine than Mark Murphy opened the truck’s voice-activated communications system.
“Call Max.”
The ringing of a telephone sounded inside the off-road vehicle. The Pig was so well built, they could barely hear the engine as Linc guided the truck out of its hiding place and pointed its blunt snout toward the Tunisian border.
A voice no one recognized answered the call. “Max’s Pizza. Is this for pickup or delivery?”
“Be something if they would deliver,” Linc said. “I could go for a slice.”
“Sorry. Wrong number.” Mark cut the connection and tried again. “Call Max Hanley.”
This time Max’s voice muttered hello when the phone was answered.
“Max, it’s Mark Murphy. I’m in the Pig with Linda and Linc.”
“Glad you finally called,” Max said. “The stuff ’s hit the fan since you went dark.”
“I can imagine. Are you in the op center?”
“Yeah.”
“Have someone pull up the screen for the bio tracking chips.”
“Just a second.” There was a moment’s pause. While they waited, Mark used the Pig’s computer to jack into the
“That’s interesting,” Hanley muttered. “I have the three of you heading west at forty miles per hour, presumably in the Powered Investigator Ground, while the Chairman is going northeast at a hundred miles an hour. What happened, you guys get into an argument?”
“Funny. Make sure you stay on him. We’re on our way to the Tunisian border. Juan’s with the people we’re certain brought down the Secretary’s plane. We don’t believe she’s dead.”
“Did you say the plane was brought down?”
“I did, and I don’t think Fiona Katamora was on it when it crashed.”
“How the hell did they pull that off? Tell me in a second. You’d better hightail it out of there. Twenty minutes ago, the Libyans announced that they’ve located the wreckage, and their government has given permission for a team from our NTSB to examine it. They had been prestaged in Cairo and will be in Tripoli by noon, but I’m sure the Libyans will be swarming that area sooner.”
“They’re not going to find anything,” Mark told him. “A team of men came in on a chopper to demolish the site and ruin any chance of a reconstruction. They moved wreckage around, took some away, and smashed up just about everything they could lay their hands on. They even brought a lame camel to lay tracks all over the place.”
“A lame camel?”
“To make it look like nomads had done the damage,” Mark explained.
“Someone’s thinking a couple of steps ahead,” Max grunted.
“Is the NTSB coming to Libya general knowledge?” Linda asked.
“No. Langston told me it was cleared at the highest levels and kept under wraps.”
“That means the tangos have a source in the government if they knew to come back and mess with the wreckage.”
“Or they’re government sponsored,” Max countered. “Mark, you said you don’t think Secretary Katamora was on the plane.”
“There’s pretty convincing evidence that the plane landed in the desert before the crash.”
“You think they took her off?”
“Why else would they land it, take off again, and slam it into a mountaintop? They want the world to think she’s dead.”
“What do they gain by that?”
“Come on, Max,” Linda said. “She’s the damned Secretary of State. She’s either an intelligence coup for these people or the best bargaining chip in history. Remember, she was the last President’s National Security Advisor. If we think she’s dead, we aren’t going to be looking for her. They could extract information from now until doomsday and we’d never be the wiser.”
There was a pause in the conversation as all of them digested the implications of Linda’s theory. The terrorists
