A tall man carrying a lantern walked over to the altar, scooped up the meteorite and placed it in a box. Cabrillo had left the rifle in the Thiokol, so there was little he could do right now. Cabrillo would need to intercept the meteorite farther down into the cave.
Gripping the metal hoop from the lantern in his mouth, the man carried the box out.
Cabrillo waited until the light from the lantern petered out, then slowly walked down the cave with his chemical light held in front. He figured the men would be examining the meteorite somewhere else, and when he found them he’d make his move.
Then he bumped into the ladder and nearly fell down the hole.
Listening carefully to see if they’d heard the noise, Cabrillo waited and, when nothing happened, climbed down the ladder. At the bottom he stepped on Ackerman’s body.
16
AS SOON ASHanley received confirmation that no Icelandic civilian or military helicopters had been in the air at the time of the emir’s abduction, it was child’s play to coordinate this information with the port records to see what ships had come and gone close to the time.
It didn’t take him long to settle on the Akbaras their primary target.
Accessing satellite records, he determined that the Akbarwas steaming up the Denmark Strait between Iceland and Greenland. Immediately leaving port, he ordered the magnetohydrodynamic drives engaged as soon as they were clear of land. The Oregonwas cruising at thirty knots and weaved through the icebergs like a slalom skier down an icy slope. He tried Cabrillo’s telephone again but there was no answer.
At that moment, Michael Halpert entered the control room. “They dummied up the chain of ownership,” he said, “that’s why we missed the threat.”
“Who is the true owner?” Hanley asked.
“The Hammadi Group.”
“Al-Khalifa,” Hanley said. “We knew he was planning a move on the emir, but if we’d known he had a yacht under his control it might have gone a lot different.”
Eric Stone swiveled around in his seat. “Chief,” he said, “I have the link you requested established. The helicopter ident is on the screen. The make is a Eurocopter and the model an EC-130B4. I’m running the registration right now.”
Hanley glanced over at the screen. “Why are there two blips?”
Stone stared at the image then enlarged the screen. “That second return just appeared,” he said. “Just guessing, I’d say another helicopter is in the area.”
CABRILLO HELD OUT his green light, reached down, and placed his fingers on Ackerman’s neck. He felt a faint beat. Then the archaeologist stirred and opened his eyes. His eyes were watery, his skin a ghastly gray, and his lips barely moved.
“You’re not…,” he whispered.
“No,” Cabrillo said, “I’m not the man who shot you.”
Pushing Ackerman’s coat aside, Cabrillo took a knife from his pocket and cut away Ackerman’s shirt. The wound was bad, and arterial blood was pumping out of the opening like a fountain with too large a pump.
“Do you have a first-aid kit?” Cabrillo asked.
Ackerman motioned to a nylon bag near a folding table a short distance away. Cabrillo ran over, unzipped the bag and removed the kit. Opening the plastic case, he removed some gauze pads and surgical tape. He tore open the packets as he walked back toward Ackerman, then pressed a wad of pads over the wound and taped it in place. Then he reached over and placed Ackerman’s hand over the wound.
“Keep your hand here,” Cabrillo said, “I’ll be right back.”
“The Ghost,”Ackerman whispered, “ the Ghostdid this.”
Turning on his heels, Cabrillo sprinted toward the entrance to the cave. As he peered out into the gloom he could hear the turbine of the Eurocopter winding up and see the outline of the flashing lights on its fuselage.
Then a second set of blinking lights appeared in the distance.
AL-KHALIFA WAS AN excellent helicopter pilot. A falsified student visa and $100,000 in fees, as well as a year at the South Florida flight school he had attended, ensured that. Looking through the windshield, he carefully scanned the terrain on Mount Forel. He had just caught sight of an orange snowcat off to the side of the mountain when the other helicopter came into view.
Fate is funny—five minutes later and he would have missed his chance.
A second later, Al-Khalifa had assessed the situation and formed his plan.
CABRILLO SLID CAREFULLY out of the cave and then flopped down behind a rocky outcropping. He needed to make it to the Thiokol and recover his rifle, but the second helicopter was facing him directly. Sliding the satellite telephone from his pocket, he glanced at the readout. Now that he was outside the cave he was receiving a signal again. He hit the speed dial and waited until Hanley answered.
“It looks like the fall of Saigon up here,” Cabrillo said. “I arrived to find a helicopter on site, and now another one has just arrived. Who are these people?”
“Stony just identified one,” Hanley answered. “It’s a charter from western Greenland owned by a Michael Neilsen. We ran the owner for ties to any organizations but no hits yet, so I’d guess he’s just a pilot for hire.”
“What about the second one?”
Stone had been furiously typing on the keyboard. “It’s a Bell Jet Ranger leased by a Canadian mineral company.”
“The second one’s a Bell Jet Rang—” Hanley started to say.
“I’m staring at it right now,” Cabrillo said. “It’s not a Jet Ranger, it looks more like a McDonnell Douglas 500 series.”
Stone typed in some more commands and a second later a picture of a wrecked helicopter filled the monitor. “Someone has stolen the registration and ident to avoid detection. Can Mr. Cabrillo see any tail numbers?”
“Stone says we have a stolen registration,” Hanley noted. “Can you see any tail numbers?”
Cabrillo removed a pair of small binoculars from his pocket and stared through the darkness. “Two things,” he said slowly. “The first is that there’s a weapons pod hung under the fuselage. The second is that the tail numbers aren’t visible, but I can make out letters painted on the side. There is an A, followed by a K, followed by a B.
Then the rest are covered in ice. The next is maybe an A, I can’t be sure.”
Hanley related to Cabrillo what they had uncovered about the yacht named Akbar.
“It’s that son of a bitch Al-Khalifa?” Cabrillo blurted. “Who’s in the other helicopter? Al Capone?”
NEILSEN HAD THE rotor blade up to speed and he pulled up on the collective, taking the Eurocopter into a hover just as the other helicopter appeared in the windshield.
“Look there,” he said through the headset to Hughes.
“Take off, now,” Hughes shouted.
“I think we’d better set down and see what’s up,” Neilsen said.
With a lightning-fast move, Hughes pulled a pistol from his pocket and pointed it at Neilsen’s head. “I said take off.”
One look at Hughes and the pistol was enough; Neilsen moved the cyclic and the Eurocopter lurched forward. At that instant a flame erupted from the bottom of the other helicopter and a missile streaked toward where they had been hovering. The missile went wide and veered out into the frozen wasteland.
STONE BROUGHT UP an image on the monitor in the Oregon’s control room. “This is a DOD satellite shot one hour ago,” he said quickly. “Helicopter number two came from a location offshore of eastern Greenland on a straight course for Mount Forel.”
Just then Adams walked into the control room. “Our helicopter is armed and ready.”
“Do you have enough range to make it from here and back?” Hanley asked.