Wings of Fire pm-10 Read online

  AKRANES, ICELAND A SHORT TIME LATER

  "What in hell is going on out there, Zuwayy?" Pavel Kazakov asked angrily on the secure phone. This time, Kazakov put the call on the speakerphone, so his aide Ivana Vasilyeva could hear how the great "king" of Libya bleated and whined like a sheep being led to slaughter. Kazakov knew how Vasilyeva, a former commando and trained intelligence officer in the Russian army, hated weak menJadallah Zuwayy, the man who claimed to be a descendant of Arab kings, would infuriate her. "Why are you calling me now?"

  "Hey, Kazakov, this was your idea to begin with!" Jadallah Zuwayy retorted. "This is your fault!"

  "My fault?"

  "It was your suggestion to retaliate against the commandos that attacked Samah," Zuwayy said. "That's what I did.

  They somehow found out where I was, broke into my sanctuary, and threatened to kill me! He smashed my nose! He threatened to kill me, my entire family, break into my computers, and destroy my military bases."

  "They sound like extremely powerful, efficient, and well-informed commandos," Kazakov commented dryly. I could use an entire battalion of them, he said to himself. Something that Zuwayy said nagged at his brain… "Or your soldiers need more security training."

  "How could he have found out where I was? That information is top secret!"

  "Zuwayy, the entire world knows about your pleasure palace in Jaghbub," Kazakov said. "They know that it is the entrance to your escape route if there is ever a coup against you; they know it is where you bring young girls for whatever perverted pleasure you get out of screwing children. Besides, Jaghbub is less than forty kilometers from the Egyptian border-any good special-operations team can get in and out of the area in there hours. You ought to try a security back-trace on yourself some time, Zuwayy-you might be surprised to learn some of the things anyone can find out about you if they tried."

  "This is outrageous!"

  "Just shut up, Zuwayy," Kazakov said. "Nothing has changed. You should have just killed all those captives, then set a trap for those commandos when they returned to finish you off. You should have never turned them over to the Egyptians. At least you had the brains to turn them over to Khan and not to Salaam."

  "That commando said he was going to kill me if I didn't turn them over to the Egyptians," Zuwayy said. "He got into the sanctuary so easy, I didn't-"

  "Hold it," Kazakov interrupted him. "You said, 'that commando.' Do you mean to say there was only one commando?"

  "I told you there was only one!"

  "But you said a minefield and your military base were also hit."

  "They were, but only one commando got into my sanctuary," Zuwayy said. "He neutralized the guards and was waiting for me when I-"

  "He 'neutralized' the guards? How? Did he kill them?"

  "No. He had no weapons-he didn't even touch them."

  Kazakov nearly choked on the cognac he was sipping. He rose slowly to his feet, his throat suddenly dry, his ears ringing. It couldn't be, he thought wildly. No, it couldn't be… I

  "Did you hear me, Kazakov?"

  "This commando-he was wearing a black outfit, a full helmet with large eyeholes, and a slim backpack? Did he paralyze you with an electric shock that traveled from electrodes on his shoulders to you, without projectiles or wires?"

  "Yes! How did you know?"

  "Because I have been hunting him and his team down for the past year," Kazakov said. "These commandos are Americans. I do not believe they are government operatives-I believe they are privately organized. They fund their organization by shaking down their targets for money or weapons."

  "How do you know so much about them?" Kazakov was about to tell him not to ask stupid questions, but Zuwayy came up with the answer by himself moments later: "So you've encountered this group before, eh? Perhaps they are the reason you were captured and brought to trial in The Hague?"

  "Zuwayy!"

  "And perhaps this private organization got part of its funding from you, eh, tovarischT Zuwayy asked, laughing. "On dal yimu pa pizde mishalkayt Did you get your ass handed to you by them? Now that I think about it, he did seem to know about you."

  "Listen to me, you ignorant goat-fucker," Kazakov snarled, "you can make fun of me all you want, but if we don't stop these commandos, they'll destroy all of us. You were lucky they just broke your nose and blew up your base-they could have just as easily carried you out of Libya and destroyed your whole fucking capital!"

  "What are you going to do, Kazakov?"

  "I am going to find those Americans," Kazakov said, "and I'm going to capture them somehow, I'll learn all the secrets about who they are and all the secrets about their weapons and technology-and then I'm going to roast each and every one of them on a spit in my living-room fireplace." He paused for a long time, turning the few details he knew over and over and over again in his mind; then "First your missile base at Samah is attacked by an obviously high-tech force; then, your armed residence at Jaghbub is attacked by an equally effective high-tech force. The commando asks that all the detainees from your attack out in the Mediterranean Sea be released. That means that the same commandos were involved in both the attack on Samah and Jaghbub-and that you probably had some of their comrades in custody."

  "Obviously. Na huya eta mn'e nuzhna? So what?"

  "You idiot-you might have had the men that attacked your base," Kazakov said. "I want details, Zuwayy. I want to know everything you know about these attacks, both on Samah and Jaghbub, and I want to know everything your military forces learned before, during, and after you attacked those vessels out in the Mediterranean Sea."

  "I can tell you almost everything," Zuwayy said. "Especially the last part-the part of the incident where some of our planes were shot down."

  "Some Libyan attack planes… shot down! By whom?"

  "By the men firing missiles from one of the ships."

  "Firing missiles! And you've been sitting on this information all this time! Which ship, damn you?"

  "The Lithuanian salvage ship," Zuwayy said. "We recovered eleven men and one woman from the water."

  "It was them. I know it," Kazakov said. "They invaded your country to force you to release those prisoners."

  "I will blast them to hell," Zuwayy said. "Khan thinks he has them surrounded. I will-"

  "What did you say, Zuwayy?" Kazakov thundered. " What did you say? "

  "I received a call from Ulama Khalid al-Khan, the chief justice of the Egyptian Supreme Judiciary," Zuwayy said.

  "He claims that Susan Salaam and General Ahmad Baris aided and abetted a group of soldiers believed to be American comm-" He stopped, his throat completely dry, as he finally made the connection in his head. "Oh, my God…"

  "You knew this?" Kazakov screamed into the phone. "You knew those commandos were on that base?"

  "I"/ have been attacked!" Zuwayy shouted, not quite knowing what else to say. "I didn't know these were the men you sought. I didn't realize-"

  "Are those commandos still in Egypt?" Kazakov interjected.

  "I believe Khan is holding them at Mersa Matruh."

  "Tell him not to let them leave under any circumstances," Kazakov said. "They must stay in Mersa Matruh. Tell Khan that you will deliver the prisoners there-that should keep the commandos in place. And you will detain all of those prisoners that have the slightest appearance of being Americans. Do not send them along with the others."

  "And then what do we do?"

  "This is what you will do, Zuwayy," Kazakov said. "You will do exactly as I tell you to do, and you had better not slip up, or I will see to it that a lot more than your damned nose is smashed."

  "You will not speak to me this way!" Zuwayy shouted. "I am the king of united Libya-!"

  "Zuwayy, the quicker you get that fiction out of your head, the better we will all be," Kazakov interjected. "You are nothing but a second-rate army officer who deceived, murdered, and bribed your way into the presidential palace. It was a brilliant scheme-until you actually started to believe the shit yo
u were feeding your fellow Libyans. Now, you are nothing. Even Qadhafi had a better reputation than you do right now-before you had your men put a bullet in his eye and string him up from the flagpole in broad daylight. You had him and his family pleading for their lives on your living room floor, and you still didn't have the guts to pull the trigger yourself.

  "Now, I will tell you what to do, and by God you had better do this mission right this time, or I'll see to it that you end up like your so-called 'ancestors'-your bones will be tossed out into the desert as vulture food." Kazakov outlined the targets he wanted struck and the way he wanted it done. Afterward, the line went dead.

  Pavel Kazakov nearly turned over his entire desk in sheer fury. "That incompetent ass!" he shouted. "I want him, dead, dead, deadl I want his friends dead, his mistresses dead, and I want it public, messy, and I want it done now!"

  Ivana Vasilyeva appeared-again-as if she was going to have another orgasm. She was a good aide and a fierce lover, Kazakov thought, but how could anyone with the kind of psychosexual dysfunctions that she had rise so far in the Russian army?

  "Send me," Vasilyeva breathed. "Send me to Libya. I can get close to this peacock. I will pull his feathers for you-one by one, slowly and painfully-and then cook him for you."

  But Kazakov wasn't paying attention to Vasilyeva's psychotic panting right now-his mind was occupied with trying to figure out who was attacking Libya.

  It had to be the Tin Man organization, the same ones that had destroyed his Russian oil empire, Metyorgaz, and captured him. Kazakov's sources said most likely it was a private group, not government, with access to the latest high-tech military hardware. Well, they needed access to not just a few guns and futuristic body armor with jets in the boots to destroy two Libyan military bases-they needed access to large precision-guided bombs and the heavy, long-range aircraft to deliver them.

  Mersa Matruh was the key. Zuwayy suspected they might be operating from there-if they were, he could track them down, follow them, and find a way to destroy them.

  "Yes… yes, I think you would do very nicely," Kazakov said to Vasilyeva. "You shall leave immediately." But finally her orgasmic rush was too much for him to bear, and he reached out for her hard, sexy body. "Well," he said with a smile as she began to unbutton her blouse, "perhaps not immediately" -

  CHAPTER 5

  MERSA MATRUH JOINT MILITARY BASE,

  EGYPT A FEW HOURS LATER

  Patrick McLanahan stared blankly at the computer image, flipping back and forth through stills of several FlightHawk overhead photographs downloaded from the latest surveillance flights. He was sitting in a small, unair-conditioned but secure little semi-underground building in an isolated part of the Egyptian military base set aside for them by General Baris. Their facilities were spartan, but they had access to Egyptian communications and intelligence information via computer, also courtesy of Baris.

  Since returning from his infiltration at Jaghbub, Patrick had been reviewing each and every minute of aerial reconnaissance from the stealthy unmanned reconnaissance aircraft flying over Libya. The strain was definitely showing. Patrick didn't know if he was eventually just going to totally collapse or end up throwing the computer against a wall in disgust. But he felt that the conflict was drawing to an end. Zuwayy had to release the prisoners now… he had to.

  "Hey, man," Hal Briggs said softly, "let me and the sergeant take a look through those images. You go take a nap." Patrick ignored him. "You hearing me okay, Muck?"

  "I heard you," Patrick said, rubbing his eyes wearily. "But I want to go over the last batch of images, the ones of daybreak over that Libyan naval base where Wendy was probably taken…."

  "There's at least three bases she could have been taken to in the past twelve hours, Muck," Briggs pointed out. "Or she could still be on one of the ships." Left unsaid was the other obvious possibility-Wendy was not in Libyan custody at all. "We've got trained guys waiting to look at those pictures. Why not let them do their jobs?"

  "I gave them a job to do-plan a nighttime infiltration of those three military medical facilities," Patrick said irritably. "But we need to target the most likely one, because once we go in, the Libyans will be alerted." He looked angrily at Hal and added, "And I asked you to check on the aircraft and the weapons, Hal."

  "The sergeant is on it," Briggs responded. "But he asked me to talk to you…."

  "I'm not stopping this, Hal," Patrick said, his irritation quickly growing into anger. "We've got eight hours until sunset. We need a target in that amount of time so we have enough time to brief the infiltration, extraction, and exfiltration, then launch and-"

  "Obviously the entire Libyan armed forces are on full alert."

  "I know that, Hal."

  "If you did, Muck, you'd be suspending plans to go in until the situation stabilizes," Hal said seriously. "C'mon, man, think about it."

  "Hal, just do what I ask you to do, all right? Get the team and the aircraft ready to go."

  Briggs finally relented-arguing with him was not doing any good. "All right, Patrick, we'll press on-fot now." He ignored Patrick's warning glare. "But listen to me, man-it won't do anyone any good if you're dead on your feet. Take sixty minutes, Muck. Get some rest. I'll look at the imagery myself, and I'll have one of the guys doublecheck it. If there's any evidence that Wendy was taken to any of those facilities, we'll plan an entry to take a look. You might be overlooking something if you're too tired to check each image carefully."

  "I'm not too tired, Hal," Patrick told him. But he again rubbed his eyes wearily, and he found he had to fight to keep them open. He nodded and got to his feet. "Okay, buddy. I'll go take a nap. Wake me if you find anything." "Just get some rest. We'll handle everything." Patrick, David, and Hal shared a room right beside the mission planning room, but this was the first time Patrick had been there since the Egyptian military made room for them. Someone had laid out his gear on a small shelf beside the bed, and Patrick found himself eager to shave, brush his teeth, and scrub his body for the first time in what seemed like weeks. After he was done, he felt a hundred percent better. He told himself to be sure to take at least five minutes out to do this every day-it wouldn't look good for the other team members to see the team leader looking like crap. It was a quick and simple thing to do, but it-

  And that's when he noticed Paul's gear, stacked in the corner of the room-a lone green duffel bag with a yellow tag on the canvas handles that read, "P.McL."-Paul McLanahan.

  Dammit, Paul, why were you here? Why are any of us here? Just to fight a battle for some oil executives? Was it worth the pain, the suffering, and the death? Who would understand? Anyone? No one?

  His head was a jumble of thoughts and emotions, all fighting for attention, analysis. But somehow, through it all, a woman's voice told him to lie still, to put all violent thoughts out of his head. There would be plenty of time for planning the next battle, the voice said-now was the time for sleep. Rest was as much a part of fighting a war as the bomb run, the voice wisely said, and she was right.

  Patrick didn't know how long he had been asleep, but he awoke gently and felt completely rested. He felt as if he could take on the entire world. The room was quiet, and even the adjacent planning rooms had only routine noises. There were things to do, he thought, and now he felt as if he could do them. He opened his eyes…

  … and found Susan Bailey Salaam sitting on the bed beside him. She smiled at him, her eyes sparkling, her hair shimmering in the dim light. Patrick immediately sat up. Susan placed a hand on his chest as if to tell him to stay put, but he got up anyway. "Mrs. Salaam, what are you doing here?"

  "She's been here for the last hour and a half, Muck," David Luger said. He was standing casually in the doorway of their room, but with a look of concern on his face.

  "An hour and a half?" Patrick asked incredulously. He could scarcely believe he could sleep that long with everything that was going on. "Everything all right?"

  "Mrs. Salaam wants to talk with yo
u," Luger said. "I'll be in the command post." He turned and departed, but not before giving Susan an inquisitive, concerned look.

  "Your officers have been standing guard over us the entire time," Susan said to Patrick. "They are very loyal to you."

  "You should have waited outside."

  "You looked restless. I thought I could help."

  "That was your voice I heard?"

  Susan nodded. "Feeling better?"

  "Yes." He sat up and swung his legs around to the floor, expecting her to stand to let him get up. But she didn't move, and he found himself face-to-face with her. She glanced at his lips invitingly, looked deeply into his eyes, then averted her eyes and let them roam across his broad chest and thick shoulders. The only sport Patrick ever excelled at was weight lifting, a sport that was solitary, much like the man himself. He had been doing it for many years,

  and it showed. He lingered there for a moment, trying to decide what she was doing, then got up and pulled a clean T-shirt from his duffel bag and pulled it on. "Let's go outside to the command center where we can talk, Susan."

  "I need to talk with you in private first," she said. He nodded, deciding to stand right there, but after a short, awkward silence, he returned and sat beside her on the bed. "I spoke with your officers outside while I was waiting. I still don't know Taurus's real name; it's obvious you and Mr. Luger are very close." Patrick did not respond. "I gave them the very latest information we have on both the Libyan naval vessels that searched the site where your ship was sunk."

  "Thank you. I'm sure it'll all be very useful."

  "Judging by the information they requested and the information they reviewed after I arrived, I'd guess you were planning a soft probe on either the Tobruk joint operations center or the Darnah naval base," Susan said.

  "I must be sure to remind my team members that you used to be an intelligence officer," Patrick said with a wry smile.

  "And you have obviously been trained to not offer any information to anyone, even in casual conversation."