Murph sent another burst from the machine gun into him. It was a mercy shot.

“Where’s the last guy?” Juan shouted.

“I think he took off into the desert,” Linc said. Linda had a gauze pad taped to his neck and was cleaning the blood from her hands.

Cabrillo cursed.

It was only a matter of time before another vehicle came along. But he had no choice. They couldn’t afford to leave any witnesses behind. He heaved the wheel over and left the road.

The Pig’s rugged suspension handled the soft sand with ease, and soon they were barreling along at forty miles per hour. The gunman’s tracks were clearly visible in the beam of the halogen lamps, widely spaced divots that told him their guy was running with everything he had.

It took only another minute to spot the corrupt police officer sprinting like a startled hare. Even with the big truck bearing down on him, he made no effort to surrender. He just kept running. Juan brought the Pig up right on his heels so he would feel the engine heat burning into his back.

“What are we going to do with him?” Mark asked. There was genuine concern in his voice.

Juan didn’t answer for a second. He’d seen and caused death in a hundred forms but hated killing in cold blood. He’d done it before, more times than he cared to think about, but he knew every time he did he lost a little more of his soul. He wished the Libyan would turn and fire at them, but Juan could see the man had abandoned his weapon back at the checkpoint. The smart thing would be to run him over and be done with it.

Cabrillo’s ankle flexed to gun the engine and then relaxed again. There had to be another way. The gunman suddenly tried to dodge out of the way of the Pig. He lost his footing in the soft sand and went down. Juan slammed the brakes and turned the wheel sharply, skidding the truck in a desperate bid to avoid running the guy over. All four of them in the cab felt the impact.

Before the Pig had settled on its suspension, Juan had his door open and was jumping to the ground. He bent over the body. A quick glance told him everything he needed to know. He climbed back into the truck, his mouth a tight, fixed line.

Cabrillo focused his mind on the image of the man firing at the Pig, of Linda hanging out the window, of the flesh wound in Linc’s neck, but nothing he knew would make him feel better about what had just happened. When they regained the road, he drove for the civilian vehicle. The one police cruiser was still burning.

Juan took back his pistol from Linda, rammed home a fresh magazine, and racked the slide. He jumped down from the cab, keeping the weapon pointed in a two-handed combat grip, swinging from one mangled police car to the next. He reached into the first one and yanked the radio microphone from its attachment point and tossed it into the desert, in case a Good Samaritan came along and wanted to call the authorities. The second would be a melted puddle of plastic, so he ignored it.

He approached the family sedan, taking a deep breath as he leaned in the window. The smell of blood was a coppery film that coated the back of his throat. The husband and wife, as well as their two children, were dead. The only solace he could find was the bullet wounds had been instantly fatal. That did nothing to lessen his anger at the senseless slaughter. He noticed a slim wallet sitting on the father’s lap. Ignoring the blood splatter, he grabbed it. The driver’s name was Abdul Mohammad. He had lived in Tripoli, and, according to his ID card, had been a high school teacher. Also in the wallet Juan found just a couple of dinar.

He didn’t feel so bad about running down the fourth gunman.

The young family had died because they were too poor to pay a bribe.

TWELVE

SEVEN MONOTONOUS HOURS PASSED AS THE TEAM TRAVELED across the desert. Linc slept most of the time, his big body swaying to the rhythms of the Pig churning over the rough terrain. Linda had offered to drive for a while, but Cabrillo declined. He needed to keep focused and out of his head. Every time the image of the slaughtered family crept to the forefront of his mind, his knuckles would blanch as he gripped the steering wheel.

Mark and Eric Stone had done a fantastic job mapping their route through the mountains using the satellite photos, and the truck had delivered more than Max had promised. The engine barely strained going up the steepest inclines, and her brakes were more than ample to keep the Pig under control during the descents. Max Hanley had even rigged chains that could be lowered behind the rear tires like long mud flaps. The chains dragged across the ground and obliterated any sign of the vehicle’s passage.

There was little fear they would be tracked from the checkpoint. However, there was a palpable sense of urgency. It wouldn’t take the Libyan authorities long to figure out what had happened on the highway, and they would want to catch the people who killed the cops, corrupt or not.

Juan received regular updates from Max aboard the Oregon. The Navy was rotating a squadron of E-2C Hawkeyes thirty miles off the coast. The propeller-driven, early-warning aircraft were keeping an eye on Lybia’s search-and-rescue efforts. These reports were shared with Cabrillo, so as the dawn flared and aircraft of the Libyan SAR teams once again took to the skies he knew if any were getting close to their location.

So far they had been in the clear. Once again the Libyans were concentrating their efforts more than a hundred miles from the crash site.

“GPS puts us two klicks from the wreckage,” Mark said. “Stoney and I spotted a good place to hide the Pig near here.”

Cabrillo looked around. They were in a shallow valley up in the mountains at an elevation of four thousand feet. Nothing grew on the bare, rocky slopes, and only sparse vegetation clung to the valley floor. This was a true wasteland.

“Turn left and go another five hundred yards,” Murph ordered.

Juan followed his directions and they approached another rise in the elevation, but before they started climbing he spotted what his guys had seen on the satellite pictures. There was a narrow cleft in the rock, just wide enough and deep enough to hide the Pig from any observation except from directly overhead.

“Perfect,” he muttered, and drove into the tight crevice. He killed the engine, noting they still had two-thirds of their fuel supply. The Pig got better cross-country mileage than Max had anticipated.

They sat for a moment, letting their hearing adjust to the lack of the growling diesel.

“Are we there yet?” Linc asked dreamily.

“Near enough, big man. Wakey, wakey.”

Linc yawned, and stretched as much as he could. Linda reached behind them and toggled a hidden switch. The rear wall of the cab slid down to reveal the cargo hold. Because of the nature of this mission, they had brought a minimal amount of gear. Apart from a small arsenal of submachine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, there were four knapsacks that had been prepacked with equipment aboard the Oregon. She reached in and started passing them back. As soon as she handed Cabrillo his, he jumped from the truck, knuckling kinks out of his spine.

Even in the sheltered fissure, the air was hot and dry and tasted of dust. He couldn’t imagine how anyone could live out here, but he knew the Sahara had been inhabited for millennia. He considered it a testament to mankind’s adaptability and ingenuity.

A moment later, the others joined him. Mark consulted the handheld GPS device he carried and pointed north.

They had been mostly silent during the drive, and no one felt the need to talk now. Juan took point as they started climbing another nameless hill. A pair of wraparound sunglasses protected his eyes, but he could feel the heat rising on his neck. He plucked a handkerchief from his hip pocket and tied it loosely around his throat. It felt good to be walking after so many hours cooped up in the Pig.