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The President looked at Oates. "Doug, I leave it to you to handle any sovereignty issues with the Chilean and Argentine governments."
"I'll see to it."
"The Lady Flamborough will have to be found before the Special Forces can launch a rescue attempt," said Schiller with remorseless logic.
"We're up the creek on this one." There was a curious acceptance in Brogan's voice. "The closest carrier fleet is almost five thousand miles away. No way a full-scale air and sea search can be mounted."
Schiller stared at the table thoughtfully. "any rescue attempt could take weeks if the hijackers slip the Lady Flamborough in among the barren bays and coves along the Antarctic coast line. Fog, mist and low overcast wouldn't help matters either."
"Satellite surveillance is our only tool," said Nichols. "The predicament is that we have no spy satellites eyeballing that region of the earth."
"Dale is right," Schiller agreed. "The far southern seas are not high on the strategic surveillance list. If we were turn northern hemisphere, we could focus a whole array of listening and imagery gear to tune in conversations on board the ship and read a newspaper on deck."
"What's available?" the President asked.
"The Landsat," answered Brogan, "a few Defense meteorological satellites, and a Seasat used by NUMA for Antarctic ice and sea current surveys. But our best bet is the SR-90 Casper.
"Do we have SR-90 reconnaissance aircraft in Latin America?"
"A tight security airfield in Texas is as close as we come."
"How long to fly one down and back?"
"A Casper is capable of reaching mach five, or just under five thousand kilometers per hour. One can fly to the tip of Antarctica, make a photo run and have the film back in five hours."
The President slowly shook his head in dismay. "Will someone please tell me why the United States government is always caught with our pants down? I swear to God, nobody screws up like we do. We build the most sophisticated detection systems the world has ever known, and when we need them, they're all concentrated in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Nobody spoke, nobody moved. The President's men avoided his eyes and stared uncomfortably at the table,
papers, wall, anything but one another's face.
At last Nichols spoke in a quiet, confident voice. "We'll find the ship, Mr. President. If anyone can get them out alive, the Special Forces will."
"Yes," the President drawled softly. "They're highly trained for such a mission. The only question in my mind is whether the crew and passengers will be there to be rescued. Or will the Special Forces find a silent ship filled with corpses?"
Colonel Morton Hollis wasn't overjoyed at leaving his family in the middle of his wife's birthday party. The understanding look in her eyes wrenched his gut. The cost would hit him dearly, he knew. The red coral necklace was about to be enhanced by the five-day cruise to the BAHamas she'd always pestered him about.
He sat at a desk in a specially designed office compartment inside the C-140 transport, flying south over Venezuela. He Puffed away deeply on a large Havana cigar he had purchased at the base store, now that the embargo on Cuban imports had been lifted.
Hollis studied the latest weather reports on the Antarctic peninsula and peered at photographs showing the rugged, icy coastline. He'd already been over the difficulfies in his mind a dozen times since takeoff.
During their brief history the newly formed Special Operations Forces had already achieved a notable record, but they had yet to tackle a major rescue of the magnitude of the Lady Flamborough hijacking.
The orphan child of the Pentagon, the Special Operations Forces were not molded into a single command until the fall of 1989. At that time the Army's Delta Force, whose fighters were drawn from the elite Ranger and Green Beret units and a secret aviation unit known as Task Force 160, merged with the top-of-the-line Navy SEAL Team Six and the Air Force's Special Operations wing.
The unified forces cut across service lines and boundaries and became a separate command, numbering twelve thousand men, headquartered at a tightly restricted base in southeast Virginia. The crack fighters were heavily trained in guerrilla tactics, parachuting, wilderness survival and scuba diving, with special emphasis on storming buildings, ships and aircraft for rescue missions.
Hollis was short-he'd barely met the height requirements of the Special Forces-and almost as wide in the shoulders as he was tall. Forty years old but immensely tough, he had survived a rigorous simulated guerrilla war in the swamps of Florida for three weeks, and parachuted right back in for another exercise. His closely cropped brown hair was dun and graying early. His eyes were a blue-green, the whites slightly yellowed from too much time in the sun without proper glasses.
An astute man who always looked over the next hill and planned accordingly, he left very little to chance. He blew a smoke ring from the cigar with a degree of elation. He couldn't be leading a better team if he'd picked the medal winners of a military Olympics. They were the elite of the elite for fighting low-intensity conflicts. The eighty men of his team, who called themselves the Demon Stalkers, were selected for the Lady Flamborough rescue because they actually had engaged in assault exercises against mock terrorists who had held a ship and crew hostages off the coast of Norway. Forty were "shooters" while the other half acted as logistical and support fighters.
His second in command, Major John Dillenger, rapped on the door and stuck his head in. "You busy, Mort?" he asked in a decided Texas twang.
Hollis waved a casual hand. "My office is your office," he assured Dillenger jovially. "Squeeze in and sit yourself in my new French leather designer couch."
Dillenger, a lean, stringy man with a pinched face, but hard as an anvil, stared dubiously at the canvas seat bolted to the floor and sat down. Forever kidded about being saddled with the same name as the famous bank robber, he was a master of the art of tactical planning and the penetration of almost impossible defenses.
"Covering the bases?" he asked Hollis.
