The aide's eyes narrowed as he read the screen. "Ah. Is that wise, sir? I mean, if the Americans have learned that the Kingston woman is being held here, instead of at Skopje-"
"The Americans will still assault Skopje," Mihajlovic said. "They must. They cannot know whether or not all of the Americans have been removed from the aircraft and transported here, and they will want to make certain before launching an assault here. Furthermore, I expect they may wish to keep us uncertain about how much they know. The best way to do that would be to launch a rescue operation at the Skopje airport." He smiled. "It is even possible that they will think that the story that Kingston was brought here to be a fabrication. If I were they, I would not believe so fantastic a story, eh? It has all of the elements of a fairy tale, does it not? A castle on a mountain, the princess held prisoner in the dungeon."
"It lacks only the fire-breathing dragon, my General."
Mihajlovic laughed. "Forewarned is forearmed, as they say, my friend. With two more companies of soldiers in place, we will make anyone who comes calling believe that we have a regiment of dragons on this mountain. Come. Let us see about sending that order."
The Greyhound COD dropped out of leaden skies, descending at two hundred knots toward the roundoff of the supercarrier's flight deck. Wheels kissed steel, the tail hook snagged the number-two wire, and as twin turboprops howled protest, the aircraft lurched to a halt.
On board the COD, Murdock unhooked his safety harness.
"Haven't we been here before?" Mac said, peering out through one of the Greyhound's tiny windows. The edge of the flight deck just aft of the carrier's island was packed with aircraft, F-14 Tomcats and A-6 Intruders, their wings folded, their fuselages huddled together like huge, gray, nesting birds.
"That we have, Chief," Roselli said. "But I got a feelin'."
"What feeling, Razor?" Holt wanted to know.
"That we ain't gonna be aboard for very long. I'd keep my toothbrush handy if I was you guys."
"Shit," Jaybird said. "I'm just glad to be the hell out of Greece. I thought for a while they were going to give us a personal tour of their prison system."
"Me too, 'Bird," Papagos said. "Hey, I don't think Mr. Solomos likes us very much." The others laughed, all except Stepano. Murdock decided that it would be a good idea to keep a close eye on the big Serb-American. Forcing him into the role of interrogator back in Salonika might not have been such a good idea.
Screw it. If they hadn't done it, they wouldn't have found out about Lake Ohrid. Murdock knew he would make the same decision again if he had to. All the same, Stepano would bear watching for a while.
Their escape from Greece had been somewhat anticlimactic. After leaving Vlachos tied up in the room at the Dimitriu, they'd broken into small groups again and made their way across town to the American Consulate, at number 59 on the Leoforos Nikis, back where the evening's excitement had begun. Two Greek soldiers were standing guard out front, no doubt with orders to arrest any SEALs who might show up. Roselli and Mac took them out, silently and efficiently, leaving them unconscious, tied and gagged, and lying behind a rubbish bin in an alley around the side of the building.
At the consulate, Murdock made several phone calls, using a password that both vouched for his security clearance and demonstrated the urgency of the situation. The last call on his list put him through to Solomos, manning a stakeout back at the Vergina Hotel. In the early morning hours, Solomos had managed to pick up three more SEALs — Rattler, Bearcat, and Doc — when they'd showed up at the hotel in their rental car from Athens, but he'd lost them again almost immediately. Murdock hadn't learned all of the details yet, just something about a smoke grenade going off inside the van the DEA men were using as a mobile headquarters.
But the rest of the SEALs would still be arriving throughout the morning, and Murdock wanted to get them all rounded up without further interference from Greek security. Solomos refused to talk with Murdock when the SEAL lieutenant got him on the phone, but an hour later he'd been contacted by George Aristides, the Assistant Director of the Greek Security Agency. Aristides, it turned out, had just had a long conversation with his boss, the Agency's Director, who in turn had just had a long conversation with the U.S. Secretary of State. The SEALs were to be released — all of them — and allowed to leave Greece at once without hindrance.
Solomos, Murdock imagined, was by that time probably delighted with the idea.
Once all of SEAL Seven's Third Platoon had been collected, they'd taken an Olympic charter flight to Hellenica, where they'd boarded the same Navy Greyhound that had brought them there the day before. And now they were back aboard the Jefferson.
For ten hours that morning, ever since receiving an alert from the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon, the Jefferson had been cruising north through heavy seas at thirty-five knots. Now she was on station, patrolling a racecourse-shaped oval midway between the heel of Italy's boot and the Greek island of Kerkyra, which curled protectively around the southern tip of Albania. Murdock and the other SEALs accepted the padded helmets known as "cranials" in Navy parlance, and life jackets, both of which they were required to don for their trip across the flight deck. Jefferson was at battle stations and in the middle of a hectic launch-and-recovery operation; under those conditions a carrier's flight deck was quite literally the most dangerous work environment on Earth.
Murdock stepped off the Greyhound and onto the deck. It had been raining not long ago, and the air was chilly and wet with the promise of another storm. Even through the cranial's built-in hearing protectors, his ears rang with the throbbing thunder of a catapult launch off one of the two waist cats. Preparations were under way at the second waist cat as well. The air shimmered from the jet wash, boiling above the raised rectangle of deck called a JBD, or jet-blast deflector, as the aviator aboard an F-14 Tomcat eased up the throttles on his chariot. A small mob of men in brightly and variously colored jerseys and helmets were in the midst of an intricate performance around the aircraft. At the launch officer's signal, they scattered, drawing back from their trembling gray charge.
Forward, the launch director waved, spun, pointed down the deck, then dropped to one knee with his thumb to the steel; at the signal, the Tomcat rushed forward, hurled down the slot of the catapult at an acceleration that took the aircraft from zero to 250 knots in less than two seconds. Steam spilled from the slot that guided the cat shuttle hooked to the Tomcat's nose wheel, almost as though the hurtling aircraft had set the deck afire behind it as it moved. Afterburners glaring like twin, orange-white eyes, the Tomcat flashed off the waist catapult, then ominously dipped below the level of the flight deck, vanishing from view. As Murdock watched, however, the aircraft reappeared a moment later, well ahead of the ship and climbing steadily, rising toward the gray ceiling on a trailing crescendo of thunder.
"Man," Murdock said, yelling to be heard both above the jet roar and the cranials everyone wore. "I don't know how they do that!"
"They might say the same thing about your job, Lieutenant!"
Murdock turned and found Captain Coburn standing there, along with Senior Chief Hawkins.
"Good afternoon, Sir," Murdock said. He almost saluted… stopping himself when he remembered that he was still in civilian clothes. "We seem to keep bumping into one another out here."
"Hello, Blake. Ed. Welcome aboard. I hope your boys are rested after their shore leave in Greece."