They brought Halit to the truck. After checking the monitoring system to make sure the vehicle had not been tampered with, Jons put Halit in the backseat.
Rubeo climbed in the front. He let Jons drive.
“Do you know the head of the guards at the gate below Tripoli?” Rubeo asked Halit.
“I know them, yes. Why do you treat me like a prisoner? I was told you need a guide. I am a guide, the best.”
“I don’t trust you,” said Rubeo. “You used a child to spy on me.”
“Only to see when you are coming. My son.”
“He wasn’t your son,” snapped Rubeo. He hated being lied to.
“My son, yes.”
Rubeo stared at him with contempt. The two couldn’t appear more different. The boy had been rail thin, with light features and blue eyes; the man was dark and pudgy, very short, with curly hair where the boy’s was straight.
Which was worse? The fact that he would lie on such a petty matter—or that he would think it OK to put his own son in danger?
Or any child, now that he thought of it.
Rubeo found most people venal and petty. A good number were stupid as well. Navigating around them was one thing; inevitably, though, there were situations where you had to count on them.
Jons had found three men capable of getting them south into the government-held areas. Halit was the most highly recommended.
Rubeo couldn’t help but imagine how horrible the other two must be.
“Your job is to get us past the guards,” he told the man as they drove. “You will stay with us at all times. If you say anything beyond what I ask you to say, if you attempt to leave us, if you do anything that puts us in danger, you will die.”
“A lot of words,” said the Libyan, holding his hands out. “I don’t understand.”
“Let me explain,” said Jons. He pulled one of his pistols out and pointed it toward the backseat. “Fuck up and we kill you.”
They drove back over to the airport. Two associates were waiting, sitting on the front bumper of a large Ford 250. The diesel-powered pickup had been flown in only an hour before.
The taller of the two men sprang off the bumper as they approached. Rubeo had met him when he’d helped pull security for him during some travels in China. His name was Lawson, and he had been a Ranger in the Army. He was personable, a talker—rare for the profession, in Rubeo’s experience.
The other man was Abas, an Iranian-American who had been a SEAL and done some work for the CIA before joining a private company Jons often called on for backup. Abas was silent to the point of being rocklike. He never smiled, and if he blinked his eyes or even closed them, Rubeo had never seen it.
“Boss, how’s it going?” said Lawson, stalking over. He was tall and thin. His right knee had been torn up in Afghanistan. For some reason it didn’t keep him from running, but he walked with the slightest of limps. The others sometimes called him “Igor” because of it.
“Where is everybody?” asked Jons.
“Siesta in the warehouse,” said Lawson. “And Kimmy’s out with the helucopper.”
Lawson thought his mispronunciation was funny and began chuckling. The men in the warehouse were four Filipinos, trusted by Jons but unknown to Rubeo. Between them they had plenty of firepower, ranging up to a pair of automatic grenade launchers.
Unlike Rubeo and Jons, the team used commercial weapons and tactical gear. The only thing supplied by Rubeo’s company were the com units—small ear sets with a pocket broadcast device. The units linked through a satellite connection and could share data; they worked solely by voice command.
“Go wake them up,” said Jons. “When’s Kimmy getting back?”
“Oughta be here any minute. She’s just shay-uh-aching the chopper down.”
Laughing again, Lawson turned and walked over to the warehouse to get the others.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t just take the helicopter in?” Jons asked.
“It’ll attract too much attention,” said Rubeo. The helicopter was a backup, in case they needed to be extracted quickly. While it was tempting to fly directly in and out, the chopper brought its own risks. It would be a target not only for the government and the rebels, but the Western coalition as well. While Rubeo assumed they wouldn’t shoot him down, he wanted to avoid telling them that he was here.
Jons took Halit over to the pickup and put him in the front seat. With Abas looking on, he showed him the GPS mapping system, which had a seven-inch screen mounted on a flexible arm between the driver and the front passenger.
The 250 cab had another row of seats in the back. Abas would drive; Jons and Rubeo would be in the back. Lawson and three of the Filipinos would be in the other truck. The last Filipino and Kimmy would stay back in the helicopter, on alert.
Rubeo turned his attention to the horizon. The desert was calm. There was no wind to speak of. A few pancake clouds sat on the horizon. The temperature was mild, considering where they were.
“Kimmy’s about five minutes away,” said Jons. “You want to wait for her, or should we hit the road?”
“There’s no reason to wait.”
“Let’s go, then.” Jons turned to the others. “You want to hit the can, better do it now. We ain’t stoppin’ for nothing and nobody once we leave.”
17
Sicily
With the rest of the afternoon off, Turk decided he would work out back at his hotel, then maybe go for a swim in the pool there. He hoped the activity would give his mind a break. He was almost at his car when his phone buzzed with a text message.
It was from Li Pike:
R U AROUND?
He answered yes.
COL WANTS TO KNOW—CAN U FLY TONIGHT? MISSION. IMPRTNT
ON MY WAY.
The briefing had already started by the time he got there. A French plane had gone down near a city held by the government in the southeast corner of the country, very close to the Chad border. The plane had apparently been lost to engine trouble; in any event, the government did not appear to know that it had crashed. A team of British SAS commandos was looking for the downed airman; the Hogs had been asked to join the second shift of air support tasked to aid the mission.
The A–10s would be equipped with Maverick missiles guided to their targets via laser designators; the bombs could be targeted either by the ground forces or the aircraft themselves.
All eight of Shooter Squadron’s planes were tasked for the mission, but they would be divided into two groups to extend coverage.
The first flight, with Paulson as lead, would take off at 2200. The second group, led by Ginella, would come off the runway three hours later, at 0100.
The two flights would overlap for a brief period, but the general idea was that the first flight would be relieved by the second, which would operate until daylight.
“What happens if they don’t find the guy by then?” asked Grizzly.
“Then he’s not alive,” said Ginella. She glanced at her watch. It was a little past 1900, or 7:00 P.M. “There’s a little time to grab something to eat, but make it quick. Anyone that’s too tired, I want that hand up now.”
She looked at Turk. He wasn’t about to admit fatigue.
Assigned to the second group, he would fly wing to Grizzly; Ginella explained that he had never flown at night with the special gear the Hogs used. Coop was flying as her wingman.
Li was in the first group as Paulson’s wing.
“I’m sorry for you,” Turk told her as they went over to get some dinner.
“For what?”
“Paulson can be a real prick.”
“I think he’s a pretty good pilot.” Turk felt a little stab in his heart, until she added, “A class A jackass and a jerk besides, but he flies well.”
While they ate, Grizzly regaled them with stories about his first nighttime refuel in a Hog—not particularly morale inducing, as he had fallen off the fuel probe not once, not twice, but three times, which the boomer—the crewman manning the refuel probe—had claimed was a new Hog record. Turk gathered that the difficulty of the refuel was the reason he’d been relegated to the back of the line.