He scanned their faces and spotted the person he wanted trying to hide behind a large bearded kid. Juan walked over and yanked Susan Donleavy’s arm. The guy protecting her made to swing at Cabrillo’s head. The effort was clumsy, and Juan easily ducked the blow, coming up with his nine millimeter pressed firmly between the collegian’s startled eyes. “Care to try that again?”

The kid stepped back. Juan cinched Susan Donleavy’s cuffs tight enough to let her know there was going to be worse to come, and frog-marched her to the plane. At the ramp he paused and addressed the two team members who were going to remain behind. They had manhandled a rubber bladder of fuel for the truck off the plane. “You know the drill?”

“We’ll drive about thirty miles deeper into the desert and dump them.”

“That way the plane Singer sent will never find them,” Juan said. “Just don’t forget to get the GPS coordinates so we can get them later.”

“Then we drive back to Windhoek, stash the truck someplace, and get a hotel room.”

“Check in with the ship as soon as you arrive,” Juan said and shook their hands. “Maybe we can get you out before we go after the guns up north in the Congo.”

Just as Cabrillo was about to disappear inside the Caribou with his prisoner, he shouted at the environmentalists, “See you in a week.”

Linc trotted after him, and as soon as he was aboard Tiny gunned the engines. Ninety seconds after touching down they were aloft again, leaving behind eight slack-jawed, would-be ecoterrorists who never knew what hit them.

Chapter 23

23

“WELCOME back, Chairman,” Max Hanley said when Juan reached the top of the Oregon’s boarding ladder.

The two shook hands. “Good to be back,” Cabrillo said, fighting to keep his eyes open. “The past twelve hours have been about the worst of my life.” He turned to wave down at Justus Ulenga, the Namibian captain of the Pinguin, the boat Sloane Macintyre and Tony Reardon had been aboard when they had been chased. Juan had contracted the fisherman at Terrace Bay, where he’d been lying low following the attack on his boat.

The affable captain tipped his baseball cap back at Cabrillo, grinning broadly because of the thick sheaf of money he’d been paid for the simple job of ferrying Juan’s party to where the freighter loitered just outside Namibia’s twelve-mile limit. As soon as his boat had motored a good distance from the Oregon, the massive freighter began accelerating northward, ersatz smoke pouring from her single funnel.