“You’re not getting rid of me that easily, Ricky. Besides, I want to see Nidal taken out just as badly as you do. Let’s get down to brass tacks. I’ve got three questions. How do we get in? How do we do it? How do we get out?”

“Our infiltration is still in flux.”

“What do you mean in flux?”

“Originally, we thought we’d go in via Algeria’s border with Libya, but Gadhafi’s all of a sudden doing military exercises in that area.”

“Do you think there’s a connection?”

“No. He does these border defense drills all the time. This is just bad timing. We’re still working on it. If the Algerian angle falls through, I’ve got a backup.”

“Such as?”

“We’ve still got several hours until we get there,” said Morrell. “Let’s see what shakes out between now and then.”

“What about taking out Nidal?”

“It’s by the book, just like we trained. Meg Cassidy will ID him, and the snipers will earn their checks. Simple as that.”

Harvath wished things were that simple in the real world. He could see from Morrell’s face that he was worried too, but Harvath let it slide for now. There was no sense putting any more stress on Morrell than was obviously already there. Instead, Harvath asked for an answer to his third question. “And how do we get out?”

“If we’re able to insert via helicopter from Algeria, that’s the same way we’ll do the extraction.”

“And if not?”

“We’ve got a contingent of FAVs at an airbase in Sicily. I’ve already dispatched several of my men to load them onto a C-130 and drop them into the Ubari Sand Sea, not far from the Hijrah Oasis.”

Harvath had worked with FAVs, or more appropriately, Fast Attack Vehicles, before. They looked like dune buggies on steroids and were awesome pieces of machinery. The knobby-tired, 2100-pound FAVs could reach speeds in excess of eighty miles per hour cross-country and could clear sand berms over six feet high. They came complete with a fifty-caliber machine gun and forty-millimeter grenade launcher forward, as well as a 7.62 machine gun to cover the rear. Strapped to the roof rack of each FAV was an antitank-and-antiaircraft missile. Though the vehicles were made to carry only three people, two extra passengers could be transported in the wire-mesh equipment baskets welded to each side of the vehicle. All in all, the FAV was an extremely efficient way to get around and extremely deadly for any opponents.

“It seems like you’ve thought of everything,” said Harvath in an attempt to be reassuring.

“You and I both know you can never think of everything,” said Morrell with a wry smile.

Harvath smiled back. It was a rare moment of camaraderie between the two men. “What’s the timetable on this? Are we going to be able to go through some run-throughs in country before the actual assault?”

“Negative. The meeting’s set for tomorrow night.”

Harvath couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Tomorrow night? What time?”

“About eleven P.M. local time.”

“That’s nuts. We’d have to get in place tonight.”

“I know.”

“Jesus, any other surprises?”

“I hope not. Listen. I want to ask you a favor.”

“What?”

“I want you to keep Meg Cassidy as calm as possible until we go in. I’d rather not discuss the operational details with her just yet, especially as we haven’t been able to nail everything down.”

“As long as you don’t ask her to fast-rope out of one of the helicopters, I think she’ll be fine. She’s not too fond of heights.”

“So I’ve heard. Just try and keep her calm up there, and keep her mind off of things for the time being. Okay?”

“Fine by me. Is there a movie on this flight?”

“No, and no prime rib either. I stocked the plane myself, so I know. You’ve got your choice in the galley of MREs or we loaded a couple of pizzas on board.”

“I think I’ll go with the pizza,” said Harvath as he stood up. “Did you bring any beer?”

“Beer? What are you, crazy? I wouldn’t bring beer on a mission.”

Harvath shrugged his shoulders as if to say, It never hurts to ask, and made his way back up to the front of the plane to see if Meg was hungry for pizza.

When he returned from the galley with two hot slices for each of them, he noticed that Morrell had joined his nine man team in the back of the plane for a discussion. He knew Rick was holding back something about the execution of the mission. He didn’t know what it was, but something was off. Harvath tried to push it out of his mind as he settled in for lunch and the long ride ahead.

42

Two-and-a-half hours out from Libyan airspace, the Gulfstream jet began to descend and Rick Morrell called another meeting. An hour earlier he had given Harvath, Meg, and the rest of the SAS team a full mission briefing. Morrell covered everything from the encrypted radio frequencies they would use, to GPS coordinates, land contour formations, code names, and the contents of their weapons packages. The two items he had left out were the methods of infiltration and extraction. As the team members gathered in the rear of the aircraft this time, it looked as if Morrell was ready to complete the picture.

“According to our intelligence, it doesn’t look like the Libyan military exercises along the Algerian border are going to be letting up anytime soon. I had hoped to insert via helicopter from Algeria, but that’s no longer an option,” said Morrell.

“So how are we getting in?” asked Harvath.

“We’re going to hop and pop.”

“No, seriously. How are we going in?” repeated Harvath.

“I am serious.”

“But right now we’re descending. Are you going to try and get us in under their radar in this jet?”

“No. We’re going to go in through the normal air traffic lanes with a commercial IFF signature so we don’t raise Libya’s suspicions. We’re descending now to below ten thousand feet so we can get everyone started on masks with one-hundred-percent oxygen.”

“And then what?”

“We climb to just over thirty thousand.”

“Then we hop and pop?” asked Harvath.

“That’s the plan. We’ll be under canopy for a little over a half hour, but it’s going to put us right on the money.”

“You’re forgetting one thing,” said Harvath, hinting in Meg Cassidy’s direction with his eyes.

“If there was an easier way to do this, I would,” replied Morrell.

Meg, who had been listening, but not understanding any of the exchange, finally spoke up. “What are we talking about here?” She had a bad feeling she wasn’t going to like the answer to her question.

“There’s been a decision made on the infiltration, Meg,” said Harvath.

“How are we going in?”

“It’s a technique called HAHO. A high-altitude, high-opening parachute jump.”

Meg’s face immediately drained of all color. “Exactly how high are we talking about?”

“We’ll be exiting the aircraft above thirty thousand feet. Ten to fifteen seconds later we’ll pop our chutes and glide down to the sand dunes behind the Hijrah Oasis. A piece of cake,” lied Harvath. He knew HAHOs were one of the most dangerous insertion techniques ever conceived of.

“Why is the plane going down?” asked Meg, growing more nervous.

“The plane is descending so we can use masks to begin breathing pure oxygen. It will help flush most of the nitrogen from the bloodstream and tissues.”

“What if I don’t want the nitrogen flushed from my bloodstream and tissues?”

“Have you ever been scuba diving?”

“Yes, but-”

“This is very similar. There are going to be pressure changes when we jump, and we’re all going to be on oxygen on the way down. It’s just a safety precaution to help prevent any decompression problems.”

“Scot, I can’t do this. I won’t do this.”

“Meg, look at it this-”

“No. One minute we’re training to beach on a small tropical island by swimming in from a rubber Zodiac, and now you want me to jump out of an airplane at over thirty thousand feet. I’m not doing this.”