“What about all the housing units you show here on your sketch?”
“Those are maintained for the personnel Baddour recruited to work at Nasrat. Many of them are from other countries. They are mostly scientists and technicians.”
Langley looked at Rogers. He was smiling.
“So far I like what I’m hearing.”
When Andera stepped back from the table she looked tired.
“I believe I have told you everything I can that will help you,” she said.
“Do you have any more questions?”
Rogers shook his head, and laid the satellite photos on top of the sketch.
“According to what your people at N1 are telling you. Captain Langley, these images we see on this photo are all Hormones, correct?”
Langley nodded.
“If I remember correctly, the count runs from nine to twelve.”
“Good. That’s going to make it easy to accomplish the first part. Tell your friend Mr. Burgaz that when we get there, we want him to set his Hormone down on the tarmac just like he belongs there. What’s one Hormone more or less?”
“What about their radar and air traffic control people?” Langley asked.
“Baddour isn’t the only one that recruits scientists and engineers. Captain. We do a little of that ourselves,” Rogers said before turning to Burgaz.
“How high will that chopper of yours go?”
Kizil Burgaz shrugged.
“I do not know, I have never tried to find out.”
“Now we get into our own bag of tricks,” Rogers said with a grin.
“When we’re fifteen miles out from Ammash, we will create a little diversion of our own. We will drop a rat pack, a device that will make our friends in the Ammash radar center, depending on how paranoid they are, think they are dealing with some kind of emergency or incursion. Then we fly directly south from that point, Mr. Burgaz, and we drop another one. Result, confusion. While our NIMF friends are trying to determine what the hell is going on, you will maximize your Hormone’s altitude and we will discharge enough RI particles to drive their air traffic people up the wall. Result, even more confusion.
At that point our NIMF friends won’t know what the hell is going on.
“After releasing the RI particles, we’ll make one or two passes over the base and we’ll borrow a page from our British friends. We’ll take out everything on the tarmac with high-velocity, shoulder-launched missiles. Then we land and do what we can to locate Captain Bogner. At that point, Captain Langley, it will be up to you to figure out how we find him. That shouldn’t prove so difficult being that you’re both Navy men.”
Peter Langley was reasonably certain he could detect the traces of a smirk in Rogers’s voice. He was savoring the moment.
Rogers began stuffing the satellite photos back in his attache case as Langley continued to study the Kurd woman’s sketch. There was a raw wind training down from the Koboli Mountains and it permeated the wall of the crude structure. Langley shivered and as he did, Andera reached out and laid her hand on his arm. “} hope you find your man Bogner,” she said, “and perhaps you will be able to put an end to this madness.”
Chapter Thirteen
For Bogner it soon became obvious that Matba was an old pro at working his way through the maze of access tunnels under the surface of the combined Ammash/Nasrat complex. He was twice able to guide them past security monitors and on the one occasion when he couldn’t, Bogner successfully used his crude reflector to interrupt the pulse beam. Within minutes after disabling the supply elevator accessing the supply tunnel to the Nasrat facility, Matba had led them to the supply elevator that carried them up and into the main hangar again.
Bogner was getting weaker. The continued bleeding from the bullet hole in his left arm was beginning to take its toll. For the first time since he had struggled to stuff the security guard’s body in the ventilating system of the incarceration unit, he was beginning to experience doubts, doubts that he could hold on long enough to do what he felt had to be done. Twice during their sprint from the bowels of the Nasrat unit he had been forced to stop long enough to regain his steadiness, and each time Matba had had the opportunity to go on without him. Each time, though, the little man with the big eyes had stood by him — waiting for more instructions.
Now they were standing in the shadows of the darkened hangar, and Bogner knew this step of the operation had to be as carefully thought out as all the others. He wanted to leave Fahid something to remember him by. He worked his way back to the two Hormones that he had disabled earlier, crawled in one of the cabins, searched through the Em-paks until he found a flare gun, made certain it contained the two cartridges, shoved it in his jacket, crawled out, and returned to Matba.
“Now we go to work,” he said. Earlier, when he had cut the hydraulic and fuel lines, he had made note of the fact that there were several drums of aviation fuel stored near the back of the hangar.
In that same area the NIMF mechanics had also stockpiled their oil and lubricants.
With Matba’s assistance, he opened the pet cocks on several of the fuel drums, tipped them over on their sides, and rolled them across the concrete floor of the hangar, each spilling out its contents as it rolled. Within minutes the only thing the two men could smell was the acidulated aroma of the aviation fuel.
“Now, little man, which door do we use to get out of here? The closer we are to the switching yards the better.”
Matba was staring back at him with an expression that conveyed his lack of understanding again.
“Train,” Bogner repeated.
“Where from here?”
Matba’s face lit up; he understood and he pointed.
“Then we go out that door. How about guards?”
Even as Matba was shaking his head, Bogner could hear a chorus of security sirens wailing in the background. The two men moved to the back of the hangar near the exit door. Bogner opened it to make certain the way was clear, and was in the process of surveying the number of vehicles parked just outside the building. When he saw the lights approaching, he figured his luck had just run out. An NIMF security vehicle similar to the one he had spotted in the personnel quarters was patroling the parking area less than fifty yards from them, the beam of its spotlight trailing back and forth as it slowly worked its way through the hangar’s parking lot.
“Start waving your hands,” Bogner whispered.
“Get their attention.”
If anything, Matba appeared to be even more perplexed than before.
“Get them over here,” Bogner said.
“When they get out of their patrol car, tell them you think the guy they are looking for is in the hangar.”
Somehow the message had gotten through.
Matba began waving his arms, and Bogner ducked between two nearby vehicles with the Mk 2 ready. The security truck rolled to a stop, two guards jumped out, and Matba pointed frantically through the door. What Bogner heard was nsomething that sounded like hen ak hen ak and a good bit more that he couldn’t decipher.
The guards, both armed with short-barreled Uzis, bolted through the door and into the hangar.
Matba was still pointing and shouting, “Henak, hen ak
The minute the guards disappeared into the hangar, Bogner came up out of his hiding place.
He waited until the men had worked their way well into the hangar, took out the flare gun, and fired it. He watched the flare ricochet off the hangar ceiling and plummet to the floor while still illuminating its trajectory. For the two stunned NIMF security guards there was no time to react.
The moment the phosphor flare hit the floor of the hangar already bathed in aviation fuel, it became an instant inferno. A searing ball of angry red-orange flames hawked its way upward and outward from the point of impact. Bogner thought he heard screams, but the wall of heat had already started to mushroom toward him and he was forced to turn away.