Both birds were painted black and carried no markings or running lights. The two Black Hawks had been modified at the Manage Risk shop at the Lodge so that their radar cross-sections were minimised. Stealth panels, similar to those used on the B-2 Spirits, had been fitted. The rotors had been modified with decibel mufflers. There were engine shields, a retractable undercarriage and refuelling probe, rotor covers, an extra rotor blade and a totally redesigned and enclosed tail boom. The Navy had done something similar with the birds that had been used on the mission to take out bin Laden, but one of those had crashed. The Pakistanis had sold the wreckage to an anonymous subsidiary of Manage Risk for twenty million, and then they had taken the basic modifications and perfected them. The cost was significant, but they would sell it back to the government eventually, and in the meantime, their efforts were going to prove very useful.

Especially tonight.

The price of all the extra work was that they flew more slowly than a standard MH-60 and packed less punch, but they had excellent radar defeat. English had been with the rest of the team when the hangar had been opened to the North Carolina sunlight and the birds revealed. The R&D guy responsible for the program admitted that he had been tempted to kill it more than once and that although the birds had been tested, they had never been tested with a full load inside them, and had certainly never been tested on something like this.

This illicit trip into Moroccan airspace was their maiden outing.

The men inside the Stealth Hawk bore no identification.

The helos and their complement of twenty-four were anonymous.

Deniable.

Unsanctioned.

Criminal, even, when you came down to it.

If anything went wrong, if the birds crashed or were shot down, if they compromised the mission in any way, they would be on their own.

English scanned the hills and valleys, looking for landmarks that he might recognise. He had studied the satellite intel that they had bought from the CIA. That had been helpful, but not nearly as profitable as the week that he had spent in the city itself. He had taken advantage of that time to acclimatise himself to the target and the surrounding neighbourhood. They had considered several ways of achieving the mission objective. They could have assaulted the riad from the ground, but it was buried deep within the medina, with very poor access. Some of the alleyways that they would need to negotiate were barely wide enough for travel in single file; this was especially true for the big men in the chopper with their hefty packs. The alleys were potential choke points, and that made English nervous.

So he had proposed this alternative.

They would fly in.