“I know you’ll be at the helo’s maximum range, but it’s good to have a little insurance just in case. If things go as planned, you shadow us offshore when we make our escape into Tunisia.”
“And if things don’t go as planned?”
Juan gave him a look of mock horror. “When was the last time things didn’t go as expected?”
“A couple days ago in Somalia, a few months ago in Greece, last year in the Congo, before that in—”
“Yeah, yeah yeah . . .”
A burst of static erupted from the speaker in the wheelhouse. Juan strode in, plucked the microphone off the wall, and said, “Cabrillo.”
“Chairman, the Pig’s on the dock and we’re good to go. Latest intel puts the Libyan search-and-rescue a good three hundred miles from the crash site.”
“Okay, Linda, thanks. I’ll meet you at the gangway in five.” He went back out onto the flying bridge.
Max tapped his pipe against the rail, unleashing a shower of sparks that tumbled down the side of the ship and winked out one by one. “See you in a couple of days.”
“You got it.” Rarely would they wish each other luck before a mission.
JUAN DROVE, WITH MARK MURPHY riding shotgun and Linda Ross and Franklin Lincoln occupying the rear bench seat. All four wore khaki jumpsuits, the ubiquitous uniform of oil workers all over North Africa and the Middle East. Linda had trimmed her hair and tucked it under a baseball cap. With her slender build, she could easily pass for a young man on his first overseas job.
It was still dark by the time the lights of Tripoli faded in the rear-view mirror. Traffic on the coast road was nearly nonexistent, and after an hour they had yet to come upon any roadblocks. A police cruiser had slashed by, its dome lights flashing and its siren keening, but it passed the truck without incident and vanished into the distance.
Cabrillo was confident in their fake papers, but he preferred to remain anonymous as long as possible. He wasn’t as worried about a legitimate stop by the authorities. What concerned him were corrupt cops setting up roadblocks to shake down motorists. He had cash on hand for such a situation; however, he knew things could spiral out of control quickly.
Mark had keyed in way points on the Pig’s integrated navigation system to get them to the downed airliner, and it was just their luck that there was a roadblock less than a hundred feet from where they were supposed to leave the highway and begin their trek into the desert. Two police cars were parked so that they cut the two-lane road down to one. A cop wearing a reflective vest was leaning into a car headed in the opposite direction, his flashlight bathing the interior of the sedan. Juan could make out two more men in one of the cars. He suspected there was a fourth keeping himself out of view.
As he slowed, Juan asked, “Murph, can we pass through and turn farther down the road?”
The young weapons expert shook his head. “I mapped our route exactly from the satellite pictures. If we don’t turn here, we come up against some pretty steep cliffs. You can’t see it in the darkness, but there’s a switchback trail just to our left that will get us to the top.”
“So it’s here or never, eh?”
“ ’ Fraid so.”
Cabrillo braked the big truck far enough from the makeshift roadblock so the car could pass him once the cops were satisfied. In a concealed pocket to the right of his seat he could feel the butt of his preferred handgun, the Fabrique Nationale (FN) Five-seveN. The military-grade SS190 rounds had unbelievable penetrating power, and, because of their small size, twenty could be loaded into a comfortable grip magazine. He left it for the moment.
At this distance, Juan could see it was a family in the car. The wife’s head was covered in a scarf, so her face was a pale oval in the flashlight’s glow. She held a baby over her shoulder and was bouncing it gently. He could hear its crying over the wind. A second child was standing in the backseat. Though he couldn’t understand the words, he could hear the tension in the voices as the father argued with the cop.
“Is this stop legit or a case of mordida?” Linc asked, using the Spanish word for bite and the Mexican euphemism for bribery.
Juan was opening his mouth to reply when suddenly the cop pulled back from the open car window and yanked a pistol from his holster. The woman’s startled scream echoed across the night, pitched even higher than the infant wailing in her lap. The husband in the driver’s seat threw up his hands in supplication.
Car doors were flung open as the other two police officers jumped from their vehicles, both going for the automatics on their hips. One strode toward the passenger’s side of the sedan while the other raced toward Cabrillo and his team, his pistol leveled at the cab.
Juan’s wary apprehension turned into instant fury because he knew they were going to be too late.
Mark Murphy yanked open the glove compartment and a tray automatically slid out and opened to reveal a flat-panel display and a keyboard with a small joystick. As he fumbled to activate the forward-mounted machine gun, the cop who had been leaning into the car fired.
The hapless driver’s head exploded in a red spray that coated the inside of the windshield with blood and gore. It obscured Cabrillo’s view of the gunman firing twice more. The woman and her baby’s cries were cut off mid-keen. A fourth shot, and Juan was certain the kid in the backseat was dead in what he now knew was a shake-down gone bad.
Instinct took over. Cabrillo jammed the transmission into gear and hit the pedal. Acceleration wasn’t the Pig’s strong suit, but it lurched from a standstill like a snarling animal. The cop running for them stopped and opened fire. His bullets gouged harmless craters into the safety glass or ricocheted off the truck’s armored plate.
“Got it,” Mark yelled.
Juan glanced over for a second. The video screen showed a camera mounted beneath the secreted machine gun that gave Mark an aiming reference. The gun had lowered itself so the barrel peeked from under the bumper.
“Do it!” Juan snapped.
Mark keyed the weapon, and a juddering vibration rattled the truck while a plume of fire erupted under the cab. Bullets tore into the road in a line aimed straight for the nearest gunman. The corrupt cop turned to run to his left but made his move too early. He gave Murph ample time to adjust his aim. The rounds took the cop in the calf, and then walked up his body, punching holes into him at a rate of four hundred rounds a minute. The kinetic force drove him to the asphalt and rolled him once so he lay faceup. His torso looked as if he’d been mauled by a lion.
The cop who had gunned down the family lunged for his car while the third retreated back to his. Mark lifted the trigger as soon as the first one was down and swiveled the barrel to take on the third killer. Rounds pummeled the car, blowing out its windshield and side windows and shredding the bodywork. Both tires deflated, and the vehicle settled closer to the road. The gunman found temporary cover behind the partially closed door but must have understood his position was untenable. He scrambled across the seat, threw open the far door, and fell to the ground on the opposite side of his cruiser. He hunkered behind the front tire and kept low as autofire raked the vehicle.
For the moment, he was neutralized, so Juan cranked the wheel over and steered for the other car. The triggerman was halfway into his seat when the Pig’s powerful halogen lights swept across the car and then centered on him. He raised his pistol and fired as fast as the gun would allow. His rounds had no more effect than his partner’s on the truck bearing down on him.
Cabrillo felt nothing but cold rage as he drove straight for the murderer.
“Brace yourselves,” he said needlessly an instant before the Pig barreled into the cruiser.
There was a terrific crunch of metal as the door slammed into the gunman’s body, cutting off one leg at the ankle, one arm at the wrist, and his head. The impact skidded the police cruiser until its tires hooked on the macadam and the car flipped on its roof.