The Emperor's Revenge (Oregon Files 11)

Napoleon slammed his fist against the submarine’s conning tower. “Lieutenant Delacroix, I demand to know what your intentions are for my rescue!”

“You misunderstand, Your Majesty,” Delacroix said, and nodded to a sailor holding a set of iron shackles. “We did not come to this desolate place to rescue you. We came to kidnap you.”

ONE

ALGERIA

PRESENT DAY

Towering dunes and rocky crags stretched as far as the eye could see, baked by the harsh midday sun. The IL-76 cargo plane, now three hours out of Cairo, had been flying a zigzag pattern across the Sahara according to instructions.

Tiny Gunderson turned in his pilot’s seat and blinked in confusion when he saw Juan Cabrillo standing behind him.

Normally, Juan sported short blond hair, blue eyes, and a tan complexion like the native Californian he was, but today he was disguised as an Arab native, with dyed black hair, brown contact lenses, skin darkened even further by makeup, and a prosthetic nose to alter his appearance.

“For a moment, I thought you were one of our other passengers,” Tiny said.

“They’re busy down in the hold, checking their gear,” Juan replied. “They look a little nervous. A couple of them have never skydived before.”

“Well, they picked a doozy of a place to learn. I haven’t seen so much as a road for the last thirty minutes.”

“They want to make sure no one beats us to their target.”

“Fat chance of that happening. We’re nearing the latest checkpoint. I’m going to need the next set of coordinates.”

“Then my timing is impeccable,” Juan said. “Our client just gave me this. He said it’s the drop location.” He handed Tiny a piece of paper with a set of GPS coordinates. Tiny plugged the new numbers into the Russian jet’s autopilot computer, and the four-engine plane began banking in that direction.

“We should be on-site in ten minutes,” he said. “I’ll open the rear door two minutes before the drop.”

Juan nodded. “What’s our fuel status?”

“No problem. I’ve got eight more hours of flight time.”

“Remember,” Juan said, “they won’t leave the landing zone until you’re out of sight, so hightail it as soon as we’re away.”

“Like I’ve been bit in the butt, Chairman. Have a good fall.”

Juan smiled. “Keep in touch.” He left the cockpit and took the stairs down into the cavernous hold.

Four pallets occupied the center of the hold. Three dune buggies were packed nose to tail, their parachutes piled on top and their rip cords attached to the plane so they would be triggered automatically when dropped.

The dune buggies were Scorpion desert patrol vehicles sold as surplus by the Saudi Army, with their armaments removed, of course. It had taken a day to refit them with the .50 caliber M2 Browning machine gun and 40mm Mk 19 grenade launcher that were usually mounted on the chassis. Now they could take on anything, short of a tank, and, according to their clients, the weapons weren’t going to be just for show.

The fourth pallet, the same size as the dune buggies, was still under wraps at the front of the hold. It wouldn’t

be joining them on this drop.

Juan strode toward the six men gathered near the rear door. All of them were elite soldiers of the Saharan Islamic Caliphate, a terrorist organization hoping to build a fundamentalist state that would span the entire width of North Africa.

The leader of this particular group, a brutal Egyptian named Mahmoud Nazari, who was suspected of several attacks on tourist groups, had made it known that he was trying to gain access to weapons of mass destruction that would aid in his goal to become the ruling caliph. The NSA had intercepted a conversation between him and his benefactors in Saudi Arabia that he needed funds to make an incursion into Algeria, where he could obtain such weapons.

Although the type of weapon was never specified in the call, the threat was taken seriously, and the Corporation had been tapped to take on the mission to discover what Nazari was looking for.

Juan stopped in front of the group. Nazari, a thin man with a heavy beard and dead eyes, showed no emotion whatsoever. He said in Arabic, “How long until our jump?”

“Less than ten minutes,” Juan replied with flawless Saudi Arabian inflection. He also spoke Russian and Spanish fluently in various accents, but he’d never been able to master Arabic in any other dialect, so his backstory sold him as a jihadist from Riyadh.

Given the atrocities Nazari was thought to have committed, Juan got a bad taste in his mouth every time he had to talk to the terrorist. When Nazari bragged about slicing off an infidel civilian’s hands during one of his attacks, Juan nearly threw him out of the plane’s door without a parachute, but the mission to find the WMDs was too important to indulge his urge.