Sea of Greed

Rudi spoke up. “Rule them out for now. Same with Malta. That leaves the Sardinia wreck and the target off the coast of Libya.”

Kurt stared at the map, running courses and headings through each of the possible locations, making calculations of the time, distance and danger.

“It comes back to the damaged snorkel,” Kurt said. “Assuming the Minerve’s temporary commander did what Rudi suggested — sitting still and submerged during the day and traveling on the surface at night — he would still have to worry about French radar. How does he do that?”

“Two options I can think of,” Rudi suggested. “Travel where French radar won’t find you — in the territorial waters of other nations — or line yourself up in the shipping lanes and appear — on radar at least — like just another vessel.”

Gamay spoke next. “The shipping lanes get crowded around Sicily with all the traffic rounding Isola delle Correnti at the southern tip. A missing submarine might easily be spotted, even at night. A chance our friend can’t take.”

A good point. With the French telling the world they’d lost a submarine, the Minerve would have to stay out of sight. “That leaves one option,” Kurt said. “Get as far away from France as quickly as possible and then turn east and hug the African coast.”

“The French were primarily searching with aircraft,” Paul noted. “And every mile away from France means longer transit times out and back and less time on station.”

Kurt nodded. “Going south also puts a larger gap between the Minerve and the Dakar, making it less likely that the French would find both.”

“And if the French are steadily shifting their search grid to the east to account for the known speed of the submarines, they would soon be searching an area out in front of the Minerve while it crept along behind,” Rudi said. “That might explain why they never found it.”

All eyes focused on the target off the Libyan coast. It lay seventy miles offshore in shallow waters of the Gulf of Sidra.

“That sonar image is one of the oldest,” Hiram said. “It’s not very clear.”

“All the same, that’s our target,” Kurt said. “At top speed, we can be there by morning.”

61

CENTRAL KAZAKHSTAN

JOE LAY ON his stomach in the dirt and dust. After leaving the helicopter, he’d made his way past two abandoned airliners and into a weed-strewn section populated by old trucks sitting up on blocks. He’d moved through the collection of vehicles relatively unhindered and had crawled under the last truck in the long line. On the far side, he was less than a hundred feet from the Monarch.

There was now nothing but open ground between him and the aircraft. Open ground and a hive of activity. While Joe watched, a small fleet of vehicles streamed in. None of them went aboard the Monarch. Instead, they parked nearby, dropping off equipment and armed men.

As the men climbed the ramp into the Monarch, a larger vehicle pulled up. From this truck, long crates were removed. They were heavy enough that four men struggled to carry them.

“Missiles,” Joe said to himself. “Meant for Kurt, Paul and Gamay.”

As the missiles were loaded aboard, the drones Joe had heard earlier began returning. They landed, one by one, in a clearing beside the plane, where they were collected by Tessa’s people. All the while, a pair of tanker trucks pumped fuel into the great plane’s wings.

“Pulling up stakes and heading west,” Joe said to himself. “Not if I can help it.”

The activity was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it put a lot of boots on the ground and that made it much more likely he would be spotted as soon as he left his hiding spot.

On the other hand, with all the people milling around, Joe might be able to walk right up to the plane without raising anyone’s suspicions. There were too many people around each truck to sabotage the fueling procedure.

He needed to do something mechanical, preferably something that would be difficult to fix quickly. His eyes were drawn to the nose gear of the aircraft.

When the plane landed on the water, its hull remained sealed and it steered itself like a boat. But on land, of course, it used wheels and the stubby nose gear was crucial to maneuvering the behemoth around.

If Joe could damage or disable the nose gear, the pilots wouldn’t be able to navigate the other derelicts and get the Monarch onto the runway to take off. Tessa and her crew would be as trapped as he and Priya were.

Easing his way back under the truck, Joe crawled to the front end of a third truck. He came to a spot across from the nose gear.

A swath of light surrounded the nose of the aircraft, spilling out from inside the fuselage. Standing in that light was a lone guard with a metal thermos cup in his hand.