This was an operation authorized by Hawke’s old flame Conch. Consuelo de los Reyes was the American secretary of state. She and Alex had a complicated past. It involved an on-again-off-again romance that just wouldn’t seem to die. For now, the best word to describe their relationship was comatose. Hawke had made a serious mistake. He’d gone running to Conch when his wife had been murdered. Deliberately or not, she’d misunderstood his intention. He’d only been looking for a port to weather the storm. She’d thought the mooring was to be permanent.
Now, after long months of tears and bickering, their relationship was back on a business footing.
De los Reyes had picked up hard intel from an asset inside the Muscat embassy. She’d learned that the sultan had been smuggled back into Oman and was possibly still alive although held hostage. Conch had decided that Hawke and Brock were to lead the small task force that would slip into Oman and gather hard intelligence on the sultan’s possible whereabouts. It was a straightforward assignment. Find him, get him out, get him in front of a camera speaking the truth about Bonaparte’s ruse. To discredit the Frenchman would go a long way toward resolving the current crisis without a war.
Oman is widely reputed to be one of the most inhospitable places on earth. Hawke was hardly surprised to learn Conch was sending him there. But, Brock? What the hell did she have against him? Brock was apparently headed straight to Oman, catching a ride aboard one of the Agency’s Citations. He would coordinate Kelly’s CIA operatives now moving from Saudi Arabia into Oman. Locate the sultan. Then he and Hawke would have to get him out.
Hawke had barely recognized Harry Brock. It had been well over two weeks since he’d last seen him. His eyes were clear. The shaggy hair and beard had been shorn, and Brock looked tanned and very fit. Part of his recovery had clearly taken place in the weight room. The broken, drugged, and wasted prisoner Hawke had found in the filthy storeroom aboard the Star was gone.
“Holy Jesus,” Brock now said, staring at the jet fighter. “Thing looks like the tip of a spear. Most beautiful damn airplane I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah,” Hawke said. He couldn’t take his eyes off the airplane either. Viewed from any angle it was a powerful work of engineering art. He was anxious for the techs who’d flown out to the carrier from Pratt & Whitney Europe to complete their work so he could climb back into that seat and light the monster up again.
One of the techies had found a glitch with the F-35’s STOVL nozzle while Hawke was in Admiral Howell’s briefing. Part of the new propulsion system was a nozzle that directed exhaust gases for short takeoff and vertical landing capability. The STOVL system was working beautifully when Hawke took off in England and also when he had landed. But brand new fighters were full of surprises.
The techs had fixed that particular glitch, the Pratt & Whitney rep had told him, but they were still checking and rechecking the entire aircraft. A discernible glitch often hid an indiscernible glitch. The obsessive tech squad’s exhaustive inspection was understandable. Hell, it was a fifty-million-dollar airplane. And, although it had been in development for ten years, the lift fan and propulsion system was still in P&W’s System Development and Demonstration Phase. Translation: It had taken the better part of a decade and they’d got a lot of the bugs out. But maybe not all of them.
Hawke had already completed his own preflight inspection. But right now, at least ten guys were crawling all over his airplane. He was supposed to be airborne in thirty minutes. His next stop was an airfield in Italy where U.S. and U.K. representatives of the Joint Strike Force fighter project were waiting to debrief him. From there, he had just learned in the briefing, he would be flying the plane to Oman.
“You some kind of test pilot, Hawke?” Brock asked.
“I guess I am now. Used to be an ordinary fighter jock.”
“Is that an upgrade or a downgrade?”
“Beats me. But it’s some ride.”
“Bat out of hell, huh? Christ, it looks like one.”
“More interesting than fast. The damn thing has a mind of its own. Practically flies itself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hard to explain. That airplane takes advice, not orders. It’s always one step ahead. You even think about something, the plane does it. You think, Okay, I’ll pull the nose up fifteen degrees, right? Sorry. Airplane’s already done that.”
“Just don’t think about crashing,” Brock said with a wry smile.
“Never crosses my mind.”
“Good. We got a lot of work to do in the next few weeks, you and me.”
“Right. My new partner. The director just told me. Whose mind did that wicked idea spring forth from?”
“Don’t look at me, sir. I’m just a lowly field wonk.”
“Just because I saved your life doesn’t mean I have to dance with you.”
Brock laughed. “Somebody at Langley thinks we’re good casting is all I can tell you, Hawke. Listen, I gotta ask you this. You think we’ll go to war with China? Is that where we’re headed?”
Hawke looked at the American carefully and considered his heavily loaded question. He liked the man well enough, and he’d just learned he was going to be working with him; at some point he had to trust him. But he hardly knew the guy. Brick Kelly had told him Brock was mean and clean. The CIA docs had finally determined that the Chinese hadn’t planted any bugs in his brain. They’d eliminated the Manchurian Candidate scenario completely.
Agent Harry Brock, Brick said, knew more about what the hell was going on inside China than anyone else at Langley. The intel he’d gathered during six months inside her borders was one of the key reasons so much brass had gathered here on the Lincoln. Because of what Brock had been able to learn, the current mood in Washington and London was more than a little tense. As a result, everybody in both capitals was tiptoeing around, walking on eggshells these days. Times like this, you wanted to watch every word you said.
So Hawke said, “I think they’re testing our resolve. What do you think, Brock?”
Over the American’s shoulder, Hawke saw crew disconnecting the external power lines that ran across the deck to the gleaming F-35. It was a hopeful sign he’d be airborne shortly.
Brock said, “Hell, Hawke, I think we’re back in the nuclear soup is what I think.”
Hawke just looked at him.
Brock shook his head as if trying to clear the cobwebs. He was edgy. Hawke was edgy. Hell, everybody was. According to everything the two men had heard in the last three hours, the whole bloody world was going to hell in a handbasket. It looked like a return to the bad old days of a nuclear standoff and mutually assured destruction. Yesterday, a huge bomb had blown the French president Guy Bocquet sky high along with one whole wing of the Elysée Palace. France was teetering on the brink of revolution.
The last thing they’d seen in the briefing room was French television video of cheering throngs held back by police cordons as Bonaparte rode up the Champs Elysées on a big white stallion. Kind of picture you didn’t forget.
The new French government, now firmly in Bonaparte’s hands, had just announced it was seriously considering the sultan of Oman’s invitation. Many in France viewed this as an invasion of a sovereign Gulf state, but no one dared say such things openly anymore. Oman was a small nation of some three million souls that had had a long and important relationship with both Britain and America. But the leadership of France was claiming they’d been “invited” into Oman by the reigning sultan, the British-educated Aji Abbas.