The chopper’s self-sealing fuel tanks had done their job. There were no secondary explosions, and the flames around the engines’ exhausts quickly starved for gas.
Mark blew out a long breath.
“Nice shooting, Tex,” Linc drawled. He then called back to Linda, “You okay back there?”
“I know what James Bond’s martini feels like.”
“Sorry about that.”
She poked her head back into the cabin. “You guys took down the Hind, so it was an observation, not a complaint. What is this place? Some sort of border station?”
“Probably,” Linc replied.
“Take us over to the Hind, will you?” Mark asked. He was studying the downed chopper through the FLIR.
“That isn’t such a good idea. We should clear out while the clearing’s good.”
“I don’t think this is a border station,” Murph said. “I need a closer look at the helo to be sure. Also, we have to do a sweep for any communications gear left intact. If there are survivors out here, the last thing we need is them calling in reinforcements.”
Linc dropped the transmission into gear and drove the quarter mile to the wreckage. The Pig wasn’t even stopped before Mark threw open his door. Like a primitive hunter approaching a dangerous prey that he wasn’t sure was dead, Mark crept closer to the downed Hind. Linda was back up in the hatch, watching the smoldering ruins of the camp over her machine gun’s iron sights.
“What are you looking for?” she asked without looking down from her perch.
“Not for,” Mark corrected. “At.”
“Okay, then, at.”
“The air intakes aren’t normal. They’re oversized. Also, the stubs of the rotor blades.”
“And?” Linc prompted from the Pig’s cab.
Mark turned to look at him. “This chopper’s modified for high-altitude operations. I bet if I checked the fuel lines for their turbines, they’ll be larger than normal, too. And this”—he slapped a hard-point mount under the gunship’s wing—“is the launch rail for an AA-7 Apex missile.”
“So?”
“The Apex isn’t part of the typical load-out for a Hind. These are ground-attack choppers. The Apex is designed for air-to-air combat, specifically for the MiG-23 Flogger.”
“How can you be so sure?” Linda asked.
“Weapons design is what I did before coming to the Corporation. I lived and breathed this stuff,” he replied. “You guys have put two and two together, right?”
“Air-to-air missile, high-altitude chopper”—Linc made a motion like he was balancing these two elements in his hands—“it isn’t exactly a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes. They used this bird to shoot down the Secretary’s plane.”
Linda asked, “So is this place Libyan or some terrorist compound?”
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Mark replied, stepping back into the Pig. “Let’s check it out and see if we can come up with an answer.”
They drove into the confines of the desert base. The tents were little more than ash, and the fronds had burned off all the palm trees. Linc braked next to the body of one of the Hind’s mechanics, placing the Pig between the corpse and the open desert. Mark jumped down and turned the body over. In the wavering light of the nearby fires, he could see a chunk of metal, probably from the tank of the fuel truck, was embedded in the man’s chest. What Mark didn’t find were rank insignia on the uniform or any kind of identification in the man’s pockets, not even dog tags.
He checked several more corpses, never venturing far from the protection of the Pig. No one showed any rank or carried ID. He poked around the ruined tents, finding a satellite phone, which he pocketed, and a big radio transceiver, which had been destroyed by the blast, but nothing to indicate who these men were or whom they served.
“Well?” Linda asked when he clambered into the cab of the Pig and closed the door for the last time.
“This place is a complete cipher.” He raked his hand though his stringy hair in a gesture of frustration. “We know the how of the crash, but we still don’t know the who or the why.”
“I’m not worried,” Linc said as he started them away from the camp and toward the Tunisian border. “I bet the Chairman had those two questions pegged five minutes after landing in that other helo.”
SIXTEEN
AS SOON AS THE HELICOPTER’S CLAMSHELL DOORS OPENED and Juan’s eyes adjusted to the bright light streaming in from outside, he knew he was into it. Deep.
Avoiding detection at a Libyan air base should have been relatively easy. There would be a thousand men stationed there, dozens of buildings to hide in, and the anonymity that came with the transient nature of military personnel who were shuffled from duty assignment to duty assignment.
But the Mi-8 hadn’t landed at an Air Force facility. It had landed high in the mountains on a shielded plateau that still commanded views over several breathtaking valleys. Below the compacted-earth landing pad was a training camp. Exiting the rear of the helo with the others, he could see dozens of tents, a parade field, an obstacle course, and a shooting range.
Juan made sure not to jump to a conclusion. The fact that this appeared to be a terrorist camp didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t government backed. He was still in Libya after all.
Off to one side of the compound was the mock-up of a three-story building constructed of metal scaffolding draped in burlap. The building it represented was large, like an office block, with a perimeter wall, a cantilevered porte cochere extending out over the circular drive, and a side wing that somehow made Juan think of a solarium, except the structure was too big for a private residence. The back of the building was an enclosed space, and while the men here hadn’t landscaped it like the real place, they had erected burlap fences to represent hedges.
With the turbines winding down, Cabrillo heard generators chugging away below them and the cry of a muezzin calling the faithful to noontime prayers. Men were streaming across the camp, each carrying a prayer rug. They began assembling on the parade ground, orienting their mats to face east and the holy city of Mecca. He estimated there were at least two hundred men—a large number, to be sure, but not big enough for him to remain anonymous for long. Someone would eventually miss the real Mohammad, and a thorough search would be conducted.
As much as he needed to gather intelligence about this group, his only chance lay in ducking away early and hoping he could return for a nocturnal reconnaissance.
“Get moving,” he was ordered from behind, and he shuffled off the chopper’s rear ramp.
Off across the valley, Juan spied some sort of construction site or excavation. He tugged his headscarf tighter around his face and started for the footpath leading to the camp below. He stayed close to the man in front of him so no one could get a look at his eyes and made sure to walk in a slight stoop to hide the fact that he was taller than most of the others.
He didn’t know if the men sent out to sabotage the downed airliner were stationed in the same barracks, but it stood to reason. He had watched them work, and while not as disciplined as professional soldiers they had a cohesiveness that came from working and training together in a tight group. Once they reached their billet, Juan knew his life would be measured in seconds.