Текст книги "Skeleton Coast"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

The bow runner had picked up most of the speed it had lost in the turn when it was still twenty feet from the coast. The engine’s shriek stuttered for a moment, but it was too late. The boat hit the shoaling bottom at thirty-plus knots and shot out of the water like a javelin. It arced high through the night air before nosing into the ground and came apart as if a bomb had gone off inside its fiberglass shell. The hull splintered into hundreds of pieces and her engine was torn from its mount as the craft cartwheeled up the beach. The impact burst the fuel tank and the gasoline became an aerosol cloud. The body of the driver was flung twenty feet before the fuel/air mixture detonated into a mushrooming fireball that consumed what remained of the ski boat.

Sloane had had the presence of mind to ease the hydrofoil off plane then slow it to a crawl by the time Juan had scurried back to the cockpit. He double-checked that the FN-FAL was safe and set it back on the dash. After raising the retractable foils he eased the boat as close to the wreckage as he could, idled the engine, and dropped the small anchor.

“He killed himself, didn’t he?”

Cabrillo couldn’t take his eyes off the burning boat. “Yup.”

“What does that mean?”

He glanced at her as he processed her question and all the implications his answer meant. “He knew we weren’t the authorities, so he was willing to die rather than risk capture and interrogation. It means we’re dealing with fanatics.”

“Like Muslim fundamentalists?”

“I don’t think he was an Arab jihadi. This is something else.”

“But what?”

Juan didn’t reply because he had no answer. His clothes were still drenched from his earlier swim, so he simply stepped off the back of the hydrofoil and into water that came up to his neck. He was almost to shore when he heard Sloane hit the water behind him. He waited for her at the surf line and together they approached the body. There was no sense checking out the boat since all that remained was melted fiberglass and scorched metal.

The damage done to the corpse by the impact and subsequent roll up the beach was horrifying. Like the vision of a demented artist, his neck and every limb were set at obtuse angles. Cabrillo checked there was no pulse before slipping the Glock into the waistband of his pants. There was nothing in the man’s rear pockets so Juan rolled the corpse, shaken by the boneless way the body moved. The man’s face was severely abraded.

Sloane gasped.

“Sorry,” Juan said. “You might want to stand back.”

“No, it’s not that. I know him. That’s the South African chopper pilot Tony and I hired. His name’s Pieter DeWitt. Damn, how could I be so stupid? He knew we were going to investigate Papa Heinrick’s snakes because I told him. He sent that boat to follow us yesterday and then came here to make sure no one ever questioned the old man again.”

The repercussions of her presence in Namibia hit Sloane fast and hard. She looked like she was about to be ill. “If I hadn’t come here looking for theRove Papa Heinrick would still be alive.” Her eyes were wet when she looked at Juan. “Luka, our guide, I bet they’ve already killed him, too. Oh God, what about Tony?”

Cabrillo knew intuitively that she didn’t want to be hugged nor did she want him to speak. They stood in the night as the ski boat burned and Sloane cried.

“They were totally innocent,” she sobbed, “and now they’re all dead and it’s my fault.”

How many times had Juan felt the same way, taking responsibility for the actions of others just because he was involved? Sloane was no more at fault for Papa Heinrick’s death than the wife who asked her husband to run an errand was responsible if he’s killed en route. But God how that guilt was there, corroding the soul as surely as acid eats away steel.

The tears flowed for five minutes, maybe longer. Juan stood at her side with his head bowed and only looked at her when she sniffled back the last of it.

“Thank you,” she muttered softly.

“For what?”

“Most men hate to see a woman crying and will do or say anything to make it stop.”

He gave her his warmest smile. “I hate it as much as the next guy, but I also knew if you didn’t do it now you’d just do it later and it would be a hell of a lot worse.”

“That’s why I thanked you. You understood.”

“I’ve been there a few times myself. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“But you do know you’re not responsible, right?”

“I know. They would be alive if I hadn’t come but I didn’t kill them.”

“That’s right. You’re just one link in the chain of events that led to their murders. You’re probably right about your guide, but don’t worry about Tony. No one onshore knows that the attack against you failed.

They already think you and Tony are dead. But to be on the safe side we’ll head for Walvis. ThePinguin didn’t look like she had the speed to reach her home port yet. If we hurry we can warn them off.”

Sloane wiped at her face with the sleeve of her Windbreaker. “Do you really think so?”

“Yeah, I do. Come on.”

Thirty seconds after clambering aboard the hydrofoil, Juan had them rocketing down the bay while Sloane changed into dry clothing from the craft’s stores. She took the wheel while Cabrillo changed and broke out some rations.

“Sorry, all I have are MREs,” he said, holding up two brown foil packets. “It’s either spaghetti with meatballs or chicken and biscuits.”

“I’ll take the spaghetti and give you the meatballs. I’m a vegetarian.”

“Really?”

“Why do you look so surprised?”

“I don’t know. I always picture vegetarians wearing Birkenstocks and living on organic farms.”

“Those are vegans. In my opinion they’re extremists.”

Her statement got Juan thinking about fanaticism and what drove people to it. Religion was the first thing that sprang to mind, but what else were people so passionate about they would mold their entire lives around it? The environmental and animal rights movements were the next groups he considered. Activists were willing to break into laboratories to release research animals or burn subdivisions at ski resorts to get their message across. Were some willing to kill for it, too?

He wondered if the polarity of opinion had been so sharpened in the past few years that societal norms of restraint and respect no longer applied. East, West. Muslim, Christian. Socialist, capitalist. Rich, poor.

It seemed every issue could drive a wedge deep enough to cause one side or the other to consider violence.

Of course, it was into this very divide that he sailed theOregon . With the world no longer cowering under the threat of nuclear annihilation from a war between the old Soviet Union and the United States, regional flare-ups had proliferated to the point that conventional means could no longer contain them.

Cabrillo had known this was coming and had formed the Corporation to combat these new threats. It was disheartening to think it, but he knew they would have more work than they could ever handle.

With no ransom demands from Geoffrey Merrick’s kidnappers it appeared more and more likely that his abduction was politically motivated; and given the nature of Merrick’s work, the politics most likely involved were the extreme environmental fringe.

Then he wondered if his kidnapping was somehow connected to whatever Sloane Macintyre had stumbled into. The odds were dead against it despite the coincidental fact that both were connected to Namibia. The Skeleton Coast was far from the world consciousness when it came to the environment.

Brazilian rain forests or polluted waterways, those were what people were familiar with, not a remote strip of desert in a country that many couldn’t find on a map.

Then he thought of another scenario. Diamond mining was one of Namibia’s biggest industries. And considering how tightly controlled the market was, according to Sloane, the likely possibility was that they had stumbled into an illegal mining operation. People were more than willing to risk their lives for the idea of immeasurable wealth. And people committed murders for a lot less. But did that explain Pieter DeWitt’s apparent suicide?

It would if he considered the consequences of being caught worse than a quick death.

“What would happen to a man like DeWitt if he was caught in some sort of illegal diamond mining activity?” Cabrillo asked Sloane.

“It varies from country to country. In Sierra Leone he’d be shot on sight. Here in Namibia it’s a twenty-thousand-dollar fine and five years in prison.” He looked at her askance for knowing the answer so readily. “I’m a security specialist, remember? I have to know the laws pertaining to the diamond trade in a dozen countries. Just like you have to know the Customs laws of the ports you visit.”

“Well, I’m still impressed,” Juan said, then went on, “Five years doesn’t sound too bad, certainly not enough of a sentence for someone to commit suicide rather than doing the time.”

“You don’t know African prisons.”

“I can’t imagine they rate many stars in theMichelin Guide .”

“It’s not just the conditions. Tuberculosis and HIV infection rates in African jails are among the highest in the world. Some human rights groups believe any jail time is tantamount to a death sentence. Why are you asking about all this?”

“I’m trying to get a handle on why DeWitt killed himself rather than risk capture.”

“You’re thinking maybe he’s not a fanatic or something?”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking,” Juan admitted. “There’s something else going on that I can’t tell you about, and I thought for a second they could be linked. I’m just making sure they’re not. Understanding motivations is the key to seeing these aren’t two pieces of the same puzzle but two different puzzles altogether. It’s just that there’s a coincidence involved—”

“And you hate coincidences,” Sloane finished for him.

“Exactly.”

“If you want to tell me what else is happening maybe I can help.”

“Sorry, Sloane, that wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Loose lips sink ships and all that.”

Sloane was just being flippant and didn’t know how her words would soon prove to be prophetic.

14

THEde Havilland Twin Otter approached the rough landing strip so slowly it appeared to be hovering.

Although her design dated back to the 1960s, the high-winged, two-engined aircraft continued to be a favorite among bush pilots the world over. She could land on just about any surface and in about a thousand feet. Her takeoff runs were even shorter.

The hard pan abutting the Devil’s Oasis had been marked with orange flags and the pilot set the plane down dead center in a whirl of dust. The blast of her turboprops kicked up more dirt so when she slowed she was enveloped momentarily in a dark cloud. Power was taken off the propellers and in moments they’d juddered to a stop. An open-topped four-wheel drive reached the aircraft just as the rear door creaked open.

Daniel Singer unlimbered his lanky six-foot-seven-inch frame from the aircraft and knuckled his spine to work out the kinks of being confined for the seven-hundred-mile flight from Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.

He’d flown there from the States because enough money in the right hands ensured there was no record of his arrival in Africa. For all anyone knew he was still at his home in Maine.

The truck’s driver was a woman named Nina Visser. She had been with Singer from the beginning of his quest and had been instrumental in recruiting other members to their cause, like-minded men and women who recognized that the nations of the world needed to be jolted out of their complacency when it came to environmental issues.

“About time you showed up to share in our misery,” she said by way of greeting, but there was a smile on her face and a spark of affection in her nearly black eyes. Born in Holland, like many of her countrymen, she spoke English with little accent.

Singer stooped to kiss her cheek and quipped, “Nina, my dear, don’t you know we evil geniuses need a remote lair?”

“Did you have to pick one that’s a hundred kilometers from the nearest flush toilet and overrun by sand fleas?”

“What can I say, all the hollowed-out volcanoes were taken. I rented this place through a dummy company from the Namibian government on the pretext we’re going to film a movie here.” He turned to accept a bag from the pilot who’d appeared at the door. “Get the plane refueled. We’re only going to be here for a short while.”

Nina was surprised. “You’re not going to stay?”

“Sorry, no. I have to get to Cabinda earlier than I’d planned.”

“Problems?”

“A slight glitch with the equipment has delayed the mercenaries,” he said. “And I want to make sure the boats we are going to use for the assault are ready. Besides, Mother Nature is being more than cooperative. Another tropical storm is brewing on the heels of the one that dissipated a couple of days ago. I don’t think we’ll need to wait more than a week or so.”

Nina stopped suddenly, her face showing joy. “So soon? I can’t believe it.”

“Five years of work are about to pay off. When we’re done there won’t be a person on the planet who can sanely deny the dangers of global warming.” Singer settled himself into the truck’s passenger seat for the short drive to the old prison.

The penitentiary was a three-story stone monstrosity as large as a warehouse with a crenellated rampart on the roof for guards to watch out over the desert. There was just a single window on each wall of the outside façade, which made the structure appear even more solid and foreboding. The shadow it cast was a midnight stain on the white sand.

A set of towering wooden doors with iron hinges mortared into the stone and broad enough to admit a much larger truck gave access to the central courtyard. The bottom floor of the prison was given over to administrative spaces and dormitories for the guards who’d once lived here while the second and third stories were for the cell blocks that ringed the courtyard.

The sun beat onto the exercise yard, reflecting and rebounding so the air was as heavy as molten lead.

“So how are our guests doing?” Singer asked when Nina braked in front of the entrance to the main administration area.

“The men from Zimbabwe arrived yesterday with their prisoner,” Nina said and turned to her mentor. “I still don’t understand why they’re here.”

“A tactical necessity, I’m afraid. Part of the bargain to allow me to enter Africa without having to get visas and all that other junk was that we let them use a portion of the prison for a short while. Their prisoner heads the main opposition party and he goes on trial for treason soon. The government is rightly justified in thinking that his followers would break him out and smuggle him to some other country. They just need someplace to keep him until the trial starts and then he’ll be returned to Harare.”

“Won’t his people just stage their breakout when he goes back?”

“The trial will last less than an hour and sentence will be carried out immediately.”

“I don’t like this, Danny. Zimbabwe’s government is one of the most corrupt in Africa. I think anyone who opposes them is probably in the right.”

“I agree with you, but this is the bargain I got stuck with.” His tone made it clear he didn’t want to be questioned further. “How about my illustrious former business partner? How’s he doing?”

Nina smirked. “I think he’s finally beginning to understand the ramifications of his success.”

“Good. I can’t wait to see the look on that smug bastard’s face when we pull this off and he finally understands he’s at fault.”

They entered the prison and Singer greeted his people by name. While he would never have Merrick’s charisma, among the activists he’d gathered together he was already a hero. He handed out three bottles of red wine he’d brought with him and they drank them down over the course of the next half hour. One woman in particular received special attention, and when he called for a toast in her honor, the others cheered.

He then took the office once occupied by the warden and asked that Merrick be brought down from his cell. He spent several minutes trying to find the right pose for when Merrick entered. He tried sitting behind the desk but didn’t want the height disadvantage so instead he stood by the office’s window with his head bowed as if he alone shouldered the weight of the world.

A moment later, two of Singer’s men led Merrick into the office with his hands bound behind his back.

The two hadn’t physically seen each other since the split, but Merrick had been on enough television interviews for Singer to recognize the physical toll the past days of captivity had taken on his former partner. He was especially gratified at how his once bright eyes had sunken into his skull and gazed at him with a haunted look. But incredibly, he saw them begin to brighten, and once again he felt the mesmerizing intensity that Merrick had always possessed and Singer had secretly coveted. Singer had to fight the urge to sit.

“Danny,” Merrick started in a sincere tone, “I can’t begin to understand why you’ve done what you’ve done other than to get back at me. I just want to say you’ve won. Whatever you want is yours so long as you stop right now. You want the company back, I will sign it away right now. You want all my money, just give me an account number to transfer it into. I will issue any statement you prepare and take any responsibility you believe I deserve.”

God, he was good,Daniel Singer thought.No wonder he could always beat me. For a moment he was tempted to take him up on his offer but he wouldn’t let himself be swayed. He thrust aside the momentary doubt. “This isn’t a negotiation table, Geoff. Having you as a witness is only a bonus I’m giving myself.

You are the sideshow, my old friend, not the main attraction.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“Of course it does!” Singer roared. “Why do you think I’m giving the world a taste now?” He took a deep breath and continued a bit more calmly, but with an equal amount of passion. “If we continue on the path we’ve set my demonstration will be nothing compared to natural events. We have to change, only the fools that run the world refuse to see it. Damnit, Geoff, you’re a scientist, surely you understand.

Within the next century global warming is going to destroy everything mankind has accomplished.

“An increase of just a degree of surface temperatures will have untold ripple effects on the environment—and it’s already happening. The planet isn’t hot enough yet to melt all the glaciers, but in Greenland the ice is flowing into the sea quicker than ever because meltwater is acting as a lubricant when it scrapes over the ground. In some places they are advancing twice as fast as normal. This is taking place today. Right now.”

“I’m not going to deny what you’re saying—”

“You can’t,” Singer snapped. “No rational person can, but still nothing is being done about it. People have to see the effects for themselves, in their homes, not on some glacier in Greenland. They have to be galvanized into action or we’re doomed.”

“All the deaths, Dan—”

“Pale in comparison to what’s coming. They have to be sacrificed in order to save untold billions of others. You have to cut off a gangrenous limb in order to save the patient.”

“But we’re talking about innocent lives, not infected tissue!”

“Okay, so it was a bad analogy, but my point still stands. And besides, the death toll won’t be as high as you think. Forecasting has come a long way. There’ll be plenty of warning.”

“Yeah? Ask the people living in New Orleans when Katrina hit,” Merrick spat.

“Exactly. Local, state, and federal authorities had ample time to evacuate and yet more than a thousand perished needlessly. This is what I’m saying. We’ve had two decades of scientific fact as to the effects we’re having on the environment and only token action has been taken. Can’t you see I have to go forward? I have to do this to save humanity.”

Geoffrey Merrick knew his former partner and best friend was insane. Sure, Dan had always been a little odd, they both had been, otherwise they wouldn’t have thrived at MIT. But what had once been quirky behavior had turned into full-blown mania. He also knew he’d never find an argument to get Singer to give up. You couldn’t rationalize with a fanatic.

He still wanted to try one more tack. “If you care so much for humanity, then why did you have to kill poor Susan Donleavy?”

Singer’s expression was unreadable as he broke eye contact. “The people helping me lacked certain, ah, skills, so I had to hire outsiders.”

“Mercenaries?”

“Yes. They went beyond, ah, what was strictly called for. Susan’s not dead, but I’m afraid her condition is grave.”

Merrick gave no outward sign of what he intended. He merely shook off the men who held his arms loosely and launched himself across the room. He vaulted onto the desk and managed to smash a knee into Singer’s jaw before the guards reacted. One yanked at the cuff of his jumpsuit hard enough to topple the industrialist. With his hands bound behind his back he couldn’t cushion the blow and landed on his face. There was no momentarily flicker, no slow fade to black. He was unconscious as soon as his head hit the floor.

“I’m sorry, Dan,” one of the guards said, crossing behind the desk to help Singer to his feet. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

He smeared the blood with a finger, inspecting it as though he couldn’t believe it had come from his body. “Is he alive?”

The second guard checked Merrick’s pulse at his wrist and throat. “Heart’s beating fine. He’ll probably have a concussion when he wakes.”

“Good.” Singer stooped over Merrick’s prone form. “Geoff, I hope that cheap shot was worth it, because it was the last act of free will you will ever experience. Lock him back up.”

Twenty minutes later the Twin Otter took to the skies once again, heading northward to the Angolan province of Cabinda.

15

ASsoon as the harbor pilot had climbed down the rope ladder to his waiting tender, Max Hanley and Linda Ross took the secret elevator from the wheelhouse down to the operations center. It was like stepping from a junkyard into NASA’s mission control. They’d played the roles of captain and helmsman for the benefit of the South African pilot, but Max was officially off duty. The watch belonged to Linda.

“You going back to your cabin?” she asked, settling herself in the command seat and slipping on her headset.

“No,” Max said sourly. “Doc Huxley’s still worried about my blood pressure so she and I are heading for the gym. She plans on introducing me to power yoga, whatever the hell that is.”

Linda chuckled. “Oh, I would love to see that.”

“If she tries to bend me into a pretzel I’m going to tell Juan to start searching for a new chief medical officer.”

“It’ll be good for you. Cleanse your aura, and all that.”

“My aura is fine,” he said with good-natured gruffness and headed off to his cabin.

The watch was quiet as they cleared the shipping lanes and started to ramp up the speed. An unexpected storm was brewing to their north but would likely blow itself westward by the time they reached Swakopmund late the next day. Linda used the idle hours to go over the mission briefing Eddie and Linc had written about their upcoming assault on the Devil’s Oasis.

“Linda,” Hali Kasim called from his communication’s station. “I just got something off the wire service.

You’re not going to believe it. I’m sending it to your display.”

She scanned the news item and immediately sent out a ship wide page for Max to come to the op center. He arrived a minute later from the engine room where he’d been performing an unnecessary inspection. The yoga had taken a toll on him: his gait was noticeably hampered by muscles not used to so much stretching.

“You wanted to see me?”

Linda swiveled her flat-panel display so Max could read the news for himself. The tension in the room had risen as though an electric current had passed between the two.

“Will someone please tell us what’s happened?” Eric Stone asked from the helmsman’s position.

“Benjamin Isaka has been implicated in a coup plot,” Linda replied. “He was arrested a couple of hours ago.”

“Isaka. Why does that name sound familiar?”

Max answered, “He was our government contact in the Congo for that weapons deal.”

“Oh, man, that is seriously not good,” Mark Murphy said. Though there was no need to man theOregon

’s offensive systems he usually took his position whenever the senior staff had the watch.

“Hali, any word on the weapons we delivered?” Linda asked. She didn’t care about Congo’s local politics, but the Corporation had a responsibility for those arms.

“Sorry, I haven’t checked. That report just came through the AP wire service a minute ago.”

Linda looked to Max. “What do you think?”

“I have to agree with Mr. Murphy. This could be a potential disaster. If Isaka told the rebels about the radio tags and they disabled them, then we just handed five hundred assault rifles and a couple hundred grenade launchers to one of the most dangerous group of thugs in Africa.”

“I can’t find anything about weapons being seized,” Hali said. “The story’s still breaking so maybe it will come through later.”

“Don’t count on it.” Max had his pipe in his hand and was tapping the stem against his teeth. “Isaka had to have told them. Hali, is there any way we can check the signals from the radio tags?”

The Lebanese-American frowned. “I don’t think so. Their range is pretty limited. The whole idea was for Congolese army forces to follow the arms back to the rebel base using handheld detectors that could pick up the tags’ signals. They only needed to broadcast for a couple of miles.”

“So we’re screwed,” Linda said, her anger putting a hard edge in her girlish voice. “Those guns could be anywhere and we have no way of finding them.”

“Ye of little faith,” Murph said with a broad grin.

She turned to him. “What have you got?”

“Will you guys ever stop underestimating the chairman’s cunning? Before we sold the guns he asked me and the chief armorer to replace a couple of tags the CIA gave us with some of my own design. Their range is nearly a hundred miles.”

“Range isn’t the issue,” Hali said. “Isaka knew where we hid the tags on the weapons. He’s bound to have told the rebels, and they could disable ours just as easily as the ones we got from the CIA.”

Mark’s smile never faltered. “The CIA tags were hidden in the butt stocks of the AKs and forward grip assembly of the RPGs. I put our tags in the grips of the AKs and modified the sling swivels to hide them on the grenade launchers.”

“Oh, bloody brilliant,” Linda said with true admiration. “Once they find the CIA tags they wouldn’t look for any more. Ours are still in place.”

“And transmitting on a different frequency, I might add.” Mark crossed his arms over his chest and leaned far back into his seat.

“Why didn’t Juan tell us about this?” Max asked.

“He sort of thought he was straying from prudence into paranoia with his idea,” Murph replied. “So he didn’t want to mention it because more than likely our tags would never be needed.”

“How close did you say we need to be to pick up the signals?” Linda asked.

“About a hundred miles.”

“That still leaves us searching for a needle in a haystack without some idea where the rebels were headed.”

Mark wiped the smug look from his face. “Actually, there’s another problem, too. To give the tags that kind of range I had to sacrifice battery life. They’ll start failing in another forty-eight to seventy-two hours.

After that there really is no way to find them again.”

Linda looked to Max Hanley. “The decision to find those weapons has to come from Juan.”

“I agree,” Max said. “But you and I both know he’ll want us to track them down and alert the Congolese army so they can get ’em back.”

“As I see it we have two options,” Linda said.

“Hold on a sec,” Max interrupted. “Hali, call the Chairman on his satellite phone. Okay, two options?”

“One is we turn back and send a team from Cape Town up to the Congo with whatever detection gear they need. Mark, this stuff is man portable, right?”

“The receiver’s not much bigger than a boom box,” the technical wizard told her.

Normally someone would have commented on the size of the boom box he played when he turned part of theOregon ’s cargo deck into a makeshift skateboard park complete with ramps, jumps, and a half pipe made from an old section of ship’s funnel.

Max said, “Going back to Cape Town will cost us the five hours we’ve steamed so far, another couple messing around in port, and a further five to return to this exact same spot of ocean.”

“Or we keep going and send a team in from Namibia. Tiny’s got the jump plane waiting at the airport in Swakopmund and will have one of our jets there by tomorrow afternoon for when we have Geoffrey Merrick. We can chopper them directly to the airport, Tiny can fly them up to the Congo, and be back in time for the raid.”

“I can’t get the Chairman on his sat phone,” Hali told the group.

“Did you try the radio on the lifeboat?”

“Nada.”

“Damn.” Unlike Cabrillo, who could think through a dozen scenarios at a time and intuitively pick the right one, Hanley was more deliberative. “How much time do you think we’d save for the search team by turning back right now?”

“About twelve hours.”

“Less,” Mark said without turning from his computer screen. “I’m checking flights right now between Cape Town and Kinshasa. There isn’t much.”

“So we’d have to charter a plane.”

“That’s what I’m checking,” Eric Stone said. “I’m finding only one company in Cape Town with jet aircraft. Hold on. No, there’s a note on their website saying both their Learjets are grounded.” He looked over at his shipmates. “If it’s any consolation they do apologize for the inconvenience.”

“So we’re looking at saving maybe eight hours,” Mark concluded.

“And costing us twelve and pushing back the rescue attempt by another full day. Okay, there’s our answer then. We keep heading north.” Max focused on Hali. “Keep trying Juan. Call him every five minutes and let me know the instant you reach him.”

“Aye, Mr. Hanley.”

Max didn’t like that Juan wasn’t replying. Knowing how close they were to launching their attack on the Devil’s Oasis there was no way he wouldn’t be carrying his sat phone. The chairman was a stickler about communications.