Corsair

SEVEN MONOTONOUS HOURS PASSED AS THE TEAM TRAVELED across the desert. Linc slept most of the time, his big body swaying to the rhythms of the Pig churning over the rough terrain. Linda had offered to drive for a while, but Cabrillo declined. He needed to keep focused and out of his head. Every time the image of the slaughtered family crept to the forefront of his mind, his knuckles would blanch as he gripped the steering wheel.

Mark and Eric Stone had done a fantastic job mapping their route through the mountains using the satellite photos, and the truck had delivered more than Max had promised. The engine barely strained going up the steepest inclines, and her brakes were more than ample to keep the Pig under control during the descents. Max Hanley had even rigged chains that could be lowered behind the rear tires like long mud flaps. The chains dragged across the ground and obliterated any sign of the vehicle’s passage.

There was little fear they would be tracked from the checkpoint. However, there was a palpable sense of urgency. It wouldn’t take the Libyan authorities long to figure out what had happened on the highway, and they would want to catch the people who killed the cops, corrupt or not.

Juan received regular updates from Max aboard the Oregon. The Navy was rotating a squadron of E-2C Hawkeyes thirty miles off the coast. The propeller-driven, early-warning aircraft were keeping an eye on Lybia’s search-and-rescue efforts. These reports were shared with Cabrillo, so as the dawn flared and aircraft of the Libyan SAR teams once again took to the skies he knew if any were getting close to their location.

So far they had been in the clear. Once again the Libyans were concentrating their efforts more than a hundred miles from the crash site.

“GPS puts us two klicks from the wreckage,” Mark said. “Stoney and I spotted a good place to hide the Pig near here.”

Cabrillo looked around. They were in a shallow valley up in the mountains at an elevation of four thousand feet. Nothing grew on the bare, rocky slopes, and only sparse vegetation clung to the valley floor. This was a true wasteland.

“Turn left and go another five hundred yards,” Murph ordered.

Juan followed his directions and they approached another rise in the elevation, but before they started climbing he spotted what his guys had seen on the satellite pictures. There was a narrow cleft in the rock, just wide enough and deep enough to hide the Pig from any observation except from directly overhead.

“Perfect,” he muttered, and drove into the tight crevice. He killed the engine, noting they still had two-thirds of their fuel supply. The Pig got better cross-country mileage than Max had anticipated.

They sat for a moment, letting their hearing adjust to the lack of the growling diesel.

“Are we there yet?” Linc asked dreamily.

“Near enough, big man. Wakey, wakey.”

Linc yawned, and stretched as much as he could. Linda reached behind them and toggled a hidden switch. The rear wall of the cab slid down to reveal the cargo hold. Because of the nature of this mission, they had brought a minimal amount of gear. Apart from a small arsenal of submachine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, there were four knapsacks that had been prepacked with equipment aboard the Oregon. She reached in and started passing them back. As soon as she handed Cabrillo his, he jumped from the truck, knuckling kinks out of his spine.

Even in the sheltered fissure, the air was hot and dry and tasted of dust. He couldn’t imagine how anyone could live out here, but he knew the Sahara had been inhabited for millennia. He considered it a testament to mankind’s adaptability and ingenuity.

A moment later, the others joined him. Mark consulted the handheld GPS device he carried and pointed north.

They had been mostly silent during the drive, and no one felt the need to talk now. Juan took point as they started climbing another nameless hill. A pair of wraparound sunglasses protected his eyes, but he could feel the heat rising on his neck. He plucked a handkerchief from his hip pocket and tied it loosely around his throat. It felt good to be walking after so many hours cooped up in the Pig.

Fifteen minutes later, they moved around a sharp rise in the topography and came across the first bit of wreckage. It was a mangled piece of aluminum the size of a trash-can lid—a section of a wing, perhaps. An aviation expert would have identified it as part of the hatch that covered the 737’s front gear assembly.

Juan looked up the slope and saw it was littered with debris. In the distance, three-quarters of the way to the hill’s summit, lay the largest section of the aircraft’s fuselage. It looked to him like the aftermath of a tornado, where bits of some poor family’s house lay scattered in no discernible order.