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“Chairman, it’s Linc,” Franklin gasped. “We got trouble.”
“What’s happened?”
“You can forget your theories about Ali Ghami being Al-Jama.” Lincoln continued to wheeze. It was obvious he was running. “Our old buddy Tariq Assad just showed up, and after a little Arab-style kissy face with the leader of the group searching for the tomb they beat it southward in that old Mi-8 of theirs. He’s Al-Jama, Juan. I tried calling Linda but they’re still underground. I’m now hightailing it after them, but I figure I got four or five miles to go.”
“That confirms it.” Agitated, Juan stood and began pacing the deck. “A couple hours ago, we got suspicious because Hali Kasim hadn’t checked in, and his GPS chip hadn’t moved in a while. I sent Eddie to find him. Hali’d been shot at such close range, there was GSR all over him. The last person with him was none other than Tariq Assad.”
“Jesus, is Hali okay?”
“We don’t know yet. Eddie said it was bad. All he could do was stabilize him and call for an ambulance. He stuck around long enough to follow it to a hospital, but he can’t exactly barge in and start demanding answers.”
A fax machine built into the communications center started whirring.
“For Assad to bug out like he did,” Linc panted, “he must have seen something he liked in the same area as Linda and the others.”
“I can get a backup team to you by chopper, but it’s going to take a couple of hours,” Juan offered lamely, for he knew it would be over long before then.
The communications officer handed him the fax. He glanced at it quickly. It was the report on Libya’s Navy he’d been expecting for hours now.
“Nah. I’ll be okay. I’m doing eight-minute miles so I’ll have something in the tank when I get there. A dozen tangos in a cave when I have the element of surprise shouldn’t be too difficult.”
Juan was barely paying attention. He crossed to the navigation computer to punch in the GPS numbers and plot the vessels’ coordinates and recent movements.
One leapt out at him immediately. His instincts screamed at him that they had found it. The ship would have been within helicopter range of the terrorist training camp, and, while all the others were converging on Tripoli for a military review as part of the peace conference, this particular vessel was loitering near the Tunisian border.
“Linc, call me back when you reach the cave. I’ve got to go.”
“Roger that.”
“Helm, plot me a course for that ship.” He pointed at the blinking light on the overhead display. The edge in his voice caused those around him to stop their work and look. A wave of expectant energy swept the op center crew.
“Course laid in, Chairman.”
“What’s our ETA at best possible speed?”
“A little over three hours.”
“Okay, hit it.”
An alarm the crew was all too familiar with began to wail. When the ship was pushing near her maximum speed, the ride was usually rough, and every loose item from the saucers in the galley to the makeup pots in Kevin Nixon’s Magic Shop had to be secured.
The acceleration was smooth as the Oregon’s revolutionary engines came online, the cryopumps whining a high-pitched tone that became inaudible to humans but would have sent a dog into paroxysms.
Juan returned to his central seat and called up the specifications for the Libyan vessel. She was a modified Russian frigate, purchased in 1999, weighing in at fourteen hundred tons. She was two-thirds the length of the Oregon—three hundred and thirteen feet—and the Corporation’s ship outclassed the Libyan when it came to weapons systems. But the frigate Khalij Surt still packed a powerful punch, with four three-inch deck guns, multiple launchers for the SS-N-2c Styx ship-to-ship missiles, as well as an umbrella of Gecko rockets and rapid-fire 30mm cannons to ward off an air assault. The Khalij Surt, or Gulf of Sidra, could also fire torpedoes from deck launchers and lay mines from her stern.
Juan studied a picture of the vessel from Jane’s Defence Review’s website. She was a lethal-looking craft, with a tall, flaring bow, and a radio mast festooned with antennae for her upgraded sensor systems behind her single funnel. The big cannons were paired in armored turrets fore and aft, and just behind the lead gun sat her antiship missile launchers.
Cabrillo had no doubt he could take her in an engagement. The Oregon’s ship-to-ship missiles had twice the range of the Sidra’s Styx system, but blowing the Libyan frigate out of the water with a missile shot from over the horizon wasn’t the point.
He needed to board the Sidra, rescue Fiona Katamora if his hunch was right, and get her to safety.
“That her?” Max asked. He’d moved to Juan’s side silently and was pointing at the computer monitor.
“Yup. What do you think?”
“Judging by the radar specs, they’ll see a chopper coming fifty miles off. And it looks like she’s loaded for bear, with triple-A and SAMs.”
“Which means we’re going to have to lay in alongside her and do this old-school.”
