Max was seated at the opposite end of the burnished table, his bulldog face more dour than normal. “Makambo knew from the moment we first made contact pretending to be arms merchants that he was being set up. Isaka told him about how the weapons had been fitted with radio direction tags. His first step after we made our escape was to dismantle the AKs and RPGs and toss the tags into the river.”

“Isaka has admitted to this?”

“Not publicly,” Max said. “But I’ve been on the phone with a couple of people in their government. Once I explained who I am and all, they told me the team sent to track the arms reported they never left the dock before they simply stopped transmitting.”

“And when they reached the dock,” Juan said, coming to the same conclusion as the others, “there was no sign of the rebels or the guns.” He looked at Mark Murphy. “How about it, Murph, are our tags still working?”

“They should be for another twenty-four to thirty-six hours. If I can get up to the Congo in time I have a shot of finding them from a chopper or a plane.”

“Has Tiny reached Swakopmund with our Citation?” Juan asked, his mind calculating distances, speeds, and time.

“He should be there by about one.”

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. As soon as we’re in range Murph will chopper to the coast and Tiny’ll fly him up to Kinshasa. From there, Mark, it will be up to you to charter any aircraft you need because Tiny has to fly back for tonight’s parachute drop.”

“I’ll need a hand,” Murph said.

“Take Eric. Max can act as captain and helmsman when we make our rescue attempt.”

Eddie Seng spoke up for the first time. “Chairman, there’s no reason to believe those arms haven’t been spread all over the Congo by now.”

Cabrillo nodded. “I know, but we have to try. If the ten guns we put our tags on are bunched together it stands to reason all the other weapons are there, too.”

“Do you think Makambo’s planning an assault of some kind?” Linda asked.

“We won’t know until Mark and Eric locate them.”

“Gotcha!” Mark exclaimed, looking up from the ThinkPad.

“What have you got?”

“There were some encrypted files on this computer. I just cracked them.”

“What’s on them?”

“Give me a minute.”

Juan sipped his coffee while Linda demolished another piece of pastry. Doc Huxley suddenly appeared at the conference room door. She only stood five foot three but had the commanding presence endemic in the medical profession. Her dark hair was tied in its customary ponytail and under her lab coat she wore green scrubs that did little to flatter her curvaceous figure.

“How’s our patient?” Juan asked as soon as he spotted her.