“I figured you’d be happy,” Pitt said to Brinks. “This proves your theory. Djemma Garand is dangerous, his weapon is operational, and he’s not afraid to use it. Even I agree with you now. He has to be taken out.”

49

Somewhere over the Atlantic, July 7

KURT AUSTIN AND JOE ZAVALA found themselves in the noisy cockpit of a Russian-designed IL-76 transport as it cruised at thirty-four thousand feet. They sat in the jump seats, just behind the pilots. They wore headsets and flight suits and stared through the windshield at a brilliant sunset out over the Atlantic.

After leaving Singapore, they’d spent several days rounding up the equipment Kurt felt he needed to get aboard the Onyx. The last piece of the puzzle had been a jet capable of a transatlantic hop, piloted by a few people that would ask no questions.

They’d chartered it out of Tangiers, through a somewhat murky chain of brokers that began with an Egyptian friend of Joe’s, who knew a man from Greece, who had good contacts with a few people in Morocco.

While the chain of command worried Kurt a bit, the aging craft they were flying in was even more concerning. It shook and rattled and smelled as if it were leaking jet fuel in half a dozen places. The pilots tapped hard on the old analog-style gauges as if they weren’t working, fiddled with a pair of fuses at one point, and chatted in English with an Eastern European accent, making constant references to the “worthless mechanics.”

So far, the wings hadn’t fallen off. Kurt considered that a small victory.

As he pondered whether their luck would hold, the copilot turned to him.

“Radio call for you,” he said. “Switch to channel two on headset.”

Kurt looked over at the toggle switch beside the headset jack. Cyrillic writing and the numbers 1 and 2 presented themselves. He flipped the switch to number 2.

“This is Kurt,” he said.

“You’re a damn hard person to find, Kurt.” It was the voice of Dirk Pitt. “If it wasn’t for a rather large item on your NUMA credit line regarding an aircraft charter, I wouldn’t have been able to track you down.”

“Um, yeah,” Kurt mumbled. “I can explain that.”

He tapped the copilot on the shoulder.

“Is this line secure?” Kurt asked.

The copilot nodded. “It’s a proprietary channel. Scrambled until it reaches plane.” He smiled, a large mustache turning up with the corners of his mouth. “All part of our service to you.”

Kurt almost laughed. Not exactly the cone of silence, he thought, but it would have to do.

“I think we’re onto something,” he said, wishing he had been able to have this conversation after he’d confirmed the accuracy of that particular thought. “I think we’ve found our man.”

“Where?” Dirk asked.

“On a ship in the middle of the Atlantic.”

“Then why are you airborne?”

Kurt gazed out the window. The sun was about to drop below the horizon ahead of them. The moment of truth was still two hours away.

“It’s the only way to get close enough,” he said. “The ship we think he’s on is sitting in the middle of the Atlantic, making a few knots and pretty much going nowhere. The problem is, it’s a hundred miles from the nearest shipping lane in a barren spot in the middle of the ocean. Approaching it on the water would be a dead giveaway — with emphasis on the word dead. Our only hope is an airdrop.”

Dirk went silent, perhaps evaluating his employee for bravery or maybe a Section Eight.

“I’m sure they have radar,” Pitt said finally. “I take it you’re not going to fly overhead and jump.”

“No, sir,” Kurt said.

“Okay,” Dirk replied, obviously aware of what Kurt was planning. “That explains the second item on your account.”

“I made sure to get receipts,” Kurt insisted, as if it mattered.

“We’ll talk about that later,” Dirk said. “The thing is, I don’t believe you need to make this jump.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just say we’ve confirmed our primary target as lying elsewhere,” Dirk said. “Unfortunately, we’ve already sparred with them once today and we lost that round. Brinks was right, your man is nothing more than a hired hand. He delivered his hostages and took off. While there’s some value in locating him, I wouldn’t risk your life over it.”

Kurt considered what Pitt was telling him. The brass all assumed Andras was a soldier of fortune, and why not? That’s what he’d always been. It seemed they thought his part in this was over and that he was on his way to a vacation or another job.

Maybe they would pick him up later, maybe they wouldn’t, but if Kurt understood what he was being told, they’d confirmed Sierra Leone was the sponsor of all this madness.

“Why don’t you just sit this one out?” Dirk added.

“You know I would,” Kurt said, “but something is still bothering me. Our target is not acting like a mercenary. More like it’s his party. I’m not sure what it all means, but I swear there’s more to this than we know.”

He glanced over at Joe. “On top of that, Mr. Zavala says there’s a lot about this tanker that doesn’t add up. For one thing, she’s forty feet wider than most tankers her length, which gives her a kind of stubby appearance even though she’s twelve hundred feet long. She also has odd bulges protruding near the bow underneath the forward anchors, and a raised section amidships. We have no idea what any of it is for, but neither one of us likes it. If it’s all the same with you, I’d just as soon get a closer look at her.”

“You’ve earned the right to make this call,” Pitt said. “Just be sure you’re making it for the right reason.”

“I’m not trying to be a hero,” Kurt said. “If there’s nothing interesting down there, I’ll go over the side, pop the cork on my survival raft, and wait for you to send a blonde, brunette, and a redhead to pick me up. But on the odd chance Joe and I are right, better we find out now rather than later.”

Pitt was quiet. “Okay,” he said finally. “Don’t get yourself blown up before I can yell at you for all these bills that are coming in.”

Kurt laughed. “I’ll try not to.”

With that, Pitt signed off. Kurt gazed ahead at the orange ball of the sun just dipping below the horizon. The truth lay eight hundred miles ahead, moving slowly through the dark of night.

50

TWO HOURS LATER, still on the old jet, Kurt and Joe had moved from the cockpit back into main section of the fuselage. They now stood in a cavern of metal, surrounded by equipment, small containers, and tie-down straps.

Despite a pressure suit, gloves, boots, and fighter pilot — style helmets with noise-canceling headphones and forced oxygen, Kurt could feel the bite of the frigid cold at thirty-five thousand feet. He could feel every shudder of the aircraft and hear nothing but the piercing whine of the jet’s narrow seventies-era engines.

Such were the accommodations in the cargo bay of a Russian transport.

Standing beside him, in a parka with fur lining around the face and a headset and oxygen mask of his own, Joe Zavala appeared to be saying something, but Kurt couldn’t make out the words.

“I didn’t copy,” Kurt shouted.

Joe pressed his oxygen mask and its microphone tighter on his face and repeated his thought. “I said, you must be crazy,” he shouted back.

Kurt didn’t respond. He was beginning to think Joe might be right. Holding firmly to a strap that dangled from the side of the airframe like a man on a crowded subway, Kurt turned toward the aircraft’s tail. A crack began appearing near the rear as the ramp in the tail opened.

As the ramp went down, the old jet shook worse than ever, and the wind swirled through the cargo bay, buffeting him and Joe and threatening to knock them over.