"Yes! How did you know?"
"Because I have been hunting him and his team down for the past year," Kazakov said. "These commandos are Americans. I do not believe they are government operatives-I believe they are privately organized. They fund their organization by shaking down their targets for money or weapons."
"How do you know so much about them?" Kazakov was about to tell him not to ask stupid questions, but Zuwayy came up with the answer by himself moments later: "So you've encountered this group before, eh? Perhaps they are the reason you were captured and brought to trial in The Hague?"
"Zuwayy!"
"And perhaps this private organization got part of its funding from you, eh, tovarischT Zuwayy asked, laughing. "On dal yimu pa pizde mishalkayt Did you get your ass handed to you by them? Now that I think about it, he did seem to know about you."
"Listen to me, you ignorant goat-fucker," Kazakov snarled, "you can make fun of me all you want, but if we don't stop these commandos, they'll destroy all of us. You were lucky they just broke your nose and blew up your base-they could have just as easily carried you out of Libya and destroyed your whole fucking capital!"
"What are you going to do, Kazakov?"
"I am going to find those Americans," Kazakov said, "and I'm going to capture them somehow, I'll learn all the secrets about who they are and all the secrets about their weapons and technology-and then I'm going to roast each and every one of them on a spit in my living-room fireplace." He paused for a long time, turning the few details he knew over and over and over again in his mind; then "First your missile base at Samah is attacked by an obviously high-tech force; then, your armed residence at Jaghbub is attacked by an equally effective high-tech force. The commando asks that all the detainees from your attack out in the Mediterranean Sea be released. That means that the same commandos were involved in both the attack on Samah and Jaghbub-and that you probably had some of their comrades in custody."
"Obviously. Na huya eta mn'e nuzhna? So what?"
"You idiot-you might have had the men that attacked your base," Kazakov said. "I want details, Zuwayy. I want to know everything you know about these attacks, both on Samah and Jaghbub, and I want to know everything your military forces learned before, during, and after you attacked those vessels out in the Mediterranean Sea."
"I can tell you almost everything," Zuwayy said. "Especially the last part-the part of the incident where some of our planes were shot down."
"Some Libyan attack planes… shot down! By whom?"
"By the men firing missiles from one of the ships."
"Firing missiles! And you've been sitting on this information all this time! Which ship, damn you?"
"The Lithuanian salvage ship," Zuwayy said. "We recovered eleven men and one woman from the water."
"It was them. I know it," Kazakov said. "They invaded your country to force you to release those prisoners."
"I will blast them to hell," Zuwayy said. "Khan thinks he has them surrounded. I will-"
"What did you say, Zuwayy?" Kazakov thundered. " What did you say? "
"I received a call from Ulama Khalid al-Khan, the chief justice of the Egyptian Supreme Judiciary," Zuwayy said.
"He claims that Susan Salaam and General Ahmad Baris aided and abetted a group of soldiers believed to be American comm-" He stopped, his throat completely dry, as he finally made the connection in his head. "Oh, my God…"
"You knew this?" Kazakov screamed into the phone. "You knew those commandos were on that base?"
"I"/ have been attacked!" Zuwayy shouted, not quite knowing what else to say. "I didn't know these were the men you sought. I didn't realize-"
"Are those commandos still in Egypt?" Kazakov interjected.
"I believe Khan is holding them at Mersa Matruh."
"Tell him not to let them leave under any circumstances," Kazakov said. "They must stay in Mersa Matruh. Tell Khan that you will deliver the prisoners there-that should keep the commandos in place. And you will detain all of those prisoners that have the slightest appearance of being Americans. Do not send them along with the others."
"And then what do we do?"
"This is what you will do, Zuwayy," Kazakov said. "You will do exactly as I tell you to do, and you had better not slip up, or I will see to it that a lot more than your damned nose is smashed."
"You will not speak to me this way!" Zuwayy shouted. "I am the king of united Libya-!"
"Zuwayy, the quicker you get that fiction out of your head, the better we will all be," Kazakov interjected. "You are nothing but a second-rate army officer who deceived, murdered, and bribed your way into the presidential palace. It was a brilliant scheme-until you actually started to believe the shit you were feeding your fellow Libyans. Now, you are nothing. Even Qadhafi had a better reputation than you do right now-before you had your men put a bullet in his eye and string him up from the flagpole in broad daylight. You had him and his family pleading for their lives on your living room floor, and you still didn't have the guts to pull the trigger yourself.
"Now, I will tell you what to do, and by God you had better do this mission right this time, or I'll see to it that you end up like your so-called 'ancestors'-your bones will be tossed out into the desert as vulture food." Kazakov outlined the targets he wanted struck and the way he wanted it done. Afterward, the line went dead.
Pavel Kazakov nearly turned over his entire desk in sheer fury. "That incompetent ass!" he shouted. "I want him, dead, dead, deadl I want his friends dead, his mistresses dead, and I want it public, messy, and I want it done now!"
Ivana Vasilyeva appeared-again-as if she was going to have another orgasm. She was a good aide and a fierce lover, Kazakov thought, but how could anyone with the kind of psychosexual dysfunctions that she had rise so far in the Russian army?
"Send me," Vasilyeva breathed. "Send me to Libya. I can get close to this peacock. I will pull his feathers for you-one by one, slowly and painfully-and then cook him for you."
But Kazakov wasn't paying attention to Vasilyeva's psychotic panting right now-his mind was occupied with trying to figure out who was attacking Libya.
It had to be the Tin Man organization, the same ones that had destroyed his Russian oil empire, Metyorgaz, and captured him. Kazakov's sources said most likely it was a private group, not government, with access to the latest high-tech military hardware. Well, they needed access to not just a few guns and futuristic body armor with jets in the boots to destroy two Libyan military bases-they needed access to large precision-guided bombs and the heavy, long-range aircraft to deliver them.
Mersa Matruh was the key. Zuwayy suspected they might be operating from there-if they were, he could track them down, follow them, and find a way to destroy them.
"Yes… yes, I think you would do very nicely," Kazakov said to Vasilyeva. "You shall leave immediately." But finally her orgasmic rush was too much for him to bear, and he reached out for her hard, sexy body. "Well," he said with a smile as she began to unbutton her blouse, "perhaps not immediately" -
CHAPTER 5
Patrick McLanahan stared blankly at the computer image, flipping back and forth through stills of several FlightHawk overhead photographs downloaded from the latest surveillance flights. He was sitting in a small, unair-conditioned but secure little semi-underground building in an isolated part of the Egyptian military base set aside for them by General Baris. Their facilities were spartan, but they had access to Egyptian communications and intelligence information via computer, also courtesy of Baris.
Since returning from his infiltration at Jaghbub, Patrick had been reviewing each and every minute of aerial reconnaissance from the stealthy unmanned reconnaissance aircraft flying over Libya. The strain was definitely showing. Patrick didn't know if he was eventually just going to totally collapse or end up throwing the computer against a wall in disgust. But he felt that the conflict was drawing to an end. Zuwayy had to release the prisoners now… he had to.