“Oh my God,” Alana gasped. “Greg told me two prisoners escaped a couple of days ago. They only brought back one.”
Juan considered the odds that they would come across the only other human within twenty miles and guessed they were actually pretty good. He had put the camp directly behind him as he and Alana had struck out, and they had followed the easiest terrain to gain distance. It had been the most logical choice, and the prisoner had done the exact same thing.
They had obviously moved faster than the man, and, considering his wasted condition, it was no surprise. The miracle was that he had made it this far at all. He must have been using the hillock as an observation post, spotted Alana and Juan walking toward him, and remained hidden until Cabrillo was at his most vulnerable.
Juan shuffled over to the prisoner and reached out a hand for Alana to pass him the canteen.
“Drink,” Juan said in Arabic. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
Under the dirt and grime and weeks of matted beard, he saw the guy was about his own age, with a strong nose and broad forehead. His cheeks were hollow from hunger and dehydration, and his eyes had a dull sheen. But he had had the strength to hike this far and launch a pretty well thought out assault. Cabrillo was impressed.
“You’ve done well, my friend,” he said. “Our rescue is close at hand.”
“You are Saudi,” the man rasped after drinking half the canteen. “I recognize your accent.”
“No, I learned Arabic in Riyadh. I’m actually American.”
“Praise be to Allah.”
“And to His Prophet, Muhammad,” Juan added.
“Peace be upon him. We are saved.”
“We?”
TWENTY-ONE
JUAN NEVER TRANSMITTED GAIN AFTER THE SALUTATION Julia had laboriously transcribed, so Max made the decision to have Linc, Linda, and Mark head to his final coordinates in the Pig.
It took the trio two hours of hard driving to reach the area.
Hanley was in the op center. The ship’s computer was maintaining their position so there was no need for anyone other than a skeleton watch to be in the high-tech room, but a dozen men and women sat in the chairs or leaned against the walls. The only sounds were the rush of air through the vents and the occasional slurp of coffee. Eric Stone was at the helm, while next to him George Adams lolled in Mark Murphy’s weapons station. With his matinee-idol looks and flight suit, the chopper pilot cut a dashing figure. He was one of the best poker players on the ship, after the Chairman himself, and his only tell was that he toyed with his drooping gunfighter mustache when he was really nervous. At the pace he was going on this night, he would have twisted the hair off his lip in another hour.
The main monitor over their heads showed a view of the predawn darkness outside the ship. There was the merest hint of color to the east. Not so much light but the absence of pitch-black. A smaller screen displayed the Pig’s progress. The glowing dots representing the Pig and Juan’s last position were millimeters apart.
When a phone rang, everyone startled. The tech sitting in Hali Kasim’s communications center glanced at Max. Max nodded, and fitted a headset around his ears and adjusted the microphone.
“Hanley,” he said, making sure to keep any concern out of his voice. He wouldn’t give Juan the satisfaction of knowing how worried he’d been.
“Ah, Max. Langston Overholt.”
Max grunted in irritation at the unexpected call. “You’ve caught us at a rather bad moment, Lang.”
“Nothing serious, I hope.”
“You know us. It’s always serious. So are you at the tail end of a late night or just getting an early start?” It was midnight in Washington, D.C.
“To be honest, I don’t even know anymore. It’s all blended into one of the longest few days of my life.”
“It’s gotta be bad, then,” Max said. “You were in the company during the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
“Back then, I was still so wet behind the ears they wouldn’t give me the code for the executive washroom.”
Max Hanley and Langston Overholt had come from opposite poles of the American experience. Max was blue- collar all the way. His father had been a union machinist at a California aircraft plant, his mother a teacher. His commands during Vietnam had come through merit and ability. Overholt, on the other hand, had been born into a family from such old money they still considered the Astors nouveau riche. He was the result of twelve years of prep school, four years of Harvard, and three more of Harvard Law. Yet the two men had a strong respect for each other.
“Now I think one of the stalls is named after you,” Max quipped.
“Enjoy your normal prostate while it lasts, my friend.”
“So, what’s up?”
“Libyans are reporting that a fighter jockey on a nighttime training exercise spotted something in the desert just inside their border with Tunisia. A patrol was sent out and discovered a secret base equipped with a Hind helicopter. The place had been hit hard. The gunship was destroyed, and there appeared to be no survivors.”
“Yeah, I was meaning to tell you about that. Our people stumbled onto it. They took out the Hind and determined it had been modified to fire air-to-air missiles, specifically the”—he looked to Eric, who mouthed “Apex”—“Apex. It’s Russkie-built.”
