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“GIVE ME SOME good news,” Cabrillo said as he turned his back to the increasingly strong winds.
“We located the Akbar on the radar,” Hanley said. “We’re a couple hours away. I’m planning an assault now to get our man back.”
Cabrillo was watching the signal strength on the telephone. He moved to receive a stronger connection. “I’m at the site where the Eurocopter went down,” he said. “It was shot out of the sky by the mystery chopper. The pilot and passenger are dead—and the meteorite is nowhere to be seen.”
“Are you sure?” Hanley asked.
“Positive. There’s a single set of tracks coming from a distance away. I followed them until I came to indentations in the snow from the other helicopter. Whoever shot down the Eurocopter now has the meteorite.”
“I’ll have Stone try to track the course of the helicopter on radar,” Hanley said. “He couldn’t have gone far. If it’s an MD helicopter, we’re looking at a range of three hundred fifty miles in total. Since he couldn’t refuel, he’s somewhere within a one-hundred-seventy-five-mile radius of where you are.”
“Tell Stone to try something else as well,” Cabrillo said. “I managed to sand the meteorite before it was stolen.”
Sand was the slang name the Corporation used for the microscopic homing bugs Cabrillo had sprinkled on the orb in the darkness. They looked like dust to the untrained eye, but they emitted a signal that could be read by the electronics on the Oregon.
“Damn, you’re good,” Hanley said.
“Not good enough, someone else has our prize.”
“We’ll track it down,” Hanley said.
“Call me when you know something.”
After disconnecting, Cabrillo started trudging back to the cave through the snow.
EIGHTY MILES DISTANT and undetectable on the Akbar’s radar scope, the scene aboard the motor yacht Free Enterprise was more subdued. The men on board were infused with a fervor that rivaled the Muslims on the Akbar—they were simply more highly trained and not accustomed to grand shows of emotions. Each man was white, over six feet in height, and in excellent shape. Each had served in the U.S. military in one capacity or another. All of them had personal reasons for accepting this assignment. Each of them was ready to die for the cause.
Scott Thompson, the leader of the team on the Free Enterprise, was in the wheelhouse awaiting a call. As soon as he received it, they would launch the assault. West and East were about to collide in an affair conducted in secret.
The Free Enterprise was racing south through a thick fog. In the past hour the ship had come alongside a trio of icebergs, the tops of which had covered at least an
acre. Smaller floes were too numerous to count, and they bobbed on the seas like ice cubes in a highball glass. It was bitterly cold outside and the wind was increasing.
“Active engaged,” said the captain.
High up on the Free Enterprise’s superstructure an electronics package began capturing radar signals from other vessels. Then it broadcast the signals back at varying speeds. Without a consistent signal return, the other ships’ radars could not paint the Free Enterprise.
The ship had become an unseen wraith on the black, tossing seas.
A tall man with a crew cut entered the pilothouse.
“I just finished running all the data,” he said. “Our best guess is that Hughes is gone.”
“Then there’s a good chance that whoever was hunting Hughes recovered the meteorite,” the captain noted.
“The big man is tracking the helicopter at one of his space companies in Las Vegas.”
“And where is the helicopter headed?” the captain asked.
“That’s the good part,” the man said, “right to our intended target.”
“Sounds like we can kill two birds with one stone,” the captain said.
“Exactly.”
ADAMS WAS AN excellent pilot, but the growing darkness and wind were making his hands sweat. He’d been flying only on instruments since leaving the Oregon. Wiping his palms on his flight suit, he turned the cockpit heater down and studied the navigation screen. At his current speed he was due to pass over the coastline in two minutes. Increasing his altitude to clear the start of the mountain range, he scanned the instruments again.
The lack of visibility made it like walking around with a paper bag over your head.
