“We do a lot of listening, Prime Minister.”
“Did you know the Americans cannot use a missile because there is a Western agent inside the bastard’s entourage?”
“Yes.”
“Is he one of ours?”
“No.”
“Anything else I should know?”
“By sundown there will probably be a Swedish merchant marine officer, a hostage, a few yards away as well.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“It’s what we do, Prime Minister,” said Herbert. Mentally, he made a note to put in for a bonus for Mrs. Bulstrode.
“Can it be done? Extraction of both men? Wipeout of the target?”
“That’s a military question. We leave that sort of thing to them.”
The British premier was not a politician without having a keen eye for benefit. If British Pathfinders could pull the Swedish officer out of there, the Swedes would be rather grateful. The appreciation might go right up to King Carl Gustaf, who might mention it to Queen Elizabeth. No harm done, no harm at all.
“I’m giving the green light, subject to the military’s overriding judgment on feasibility,” he told the chief of the defence staff ten minutes later. Then he called the Oval Office back.
“You got it,” he told the President. “If the military say it can be done, the Pathfinders are yours.”
“Thanks, I won’t forget it,” said the man in the White House.
• • •
As the phones went down in London and Washington, the Grumman twin jet entered Egyptian airspace. Egypt, Sudan, then the descent toward Djibouti.
Outside, at 33,000 feet, the sky was still blue, but the sun was a blazing red ball above the western horizon. In Somalia, and at ground level, it would be about to set. Through the Tracker’s headphones, a voice came from Tampa.
“They’ve stopped, Colonel. The technical has pulled into a tiny hamlet miles from anywhere, on a track between the coast and the Ethiopian border. It’s just a cluster of a dozen, maybe twenty, mud-brick houses, with some scrubby trees and a goat pen. We don’t even have a name for it.”
“Are you sure they are not moving on?”
“Looks like no. They are climbing out and stretching. I am zooming in close. I can see one of the target party, talking with a couple of villagers. And the guy with the red baseball cap. He’s taking it off. Wait, there are two more technicals approaching from the north. And the sun’s about to go down.”
“Get the GPS fix on the village. Before you go to infrared, get me a series of vari-scaled pictures by last daylight from as many angles as possible. Then patch them through to the comms room at Djibouti base.”
“You got it, sir. Will do.”
The copilot came through from the flight deck.
“Colonel, we just had a call from Djibouti control. A British C-130 Hercules in RAF livery just landed from Oman.”
“Tell Djibouti take good care of them and refuel the Herc. Tell the Brits I’ll be there momentarily. By the by, how long to ETA?”
“Just cleared Cairo, sir. About ninety minutes to runway threshold.”
And, outside, the sun went down. Within minutes, South Sudan, eastern Ethiopia and all Somalia were enveloped in moonless night.
14
Deserts can be furnace hot by day yet freezing at night, but Djibouti is on the warm Gulf of Aden and remains balmy. The Tracker was met at the foot of the steps of the parked Grumman by a USAF colonel sent by the base commander to welcome him to the command. He was in light, tropical-weight desert camouflage, and the Tracker was surprised by the balminess of the night as he followed the colonel across the tarmac to the two rooms in the operations block that had been set aside for him.