Skeleton Coast

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 sca

“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 cu

“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 fu

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.”