“Thank you for your advice, Susan,” Patrick said. “I’ll take it into serious consideration.”

Susan Bailey stood, stepped toward Patrick, and touched his shoulder. “What has happened to you, your wife, and your men is already a horrible tragedy,” she said, “but please don’t compound the tragedy by launching off on an impossible mission against overwhelming odds for an objective that you cannot define.”

Patrick nodded, then opened up the door. “Dave.” Luger appeared within seconds—obviously he was standing very close by. “Please escort Mrs. Salaam outside.”

Susan looked into Patrick’s eyes once more, but his deep-blue eyes were even more dark and inscrutable than before—he might as well have been wearing the strange high-tech helmet right now. She left without another word.

Patrick put on his flight suit and flying boots and went into the command center, where he met up with Hal Briggs. “Glad you got some shut-eye, Muck,” he said. He motioned to a stack of CD-ROM disks inside an open metal briefcase. “Mrs. Salaam brought over tons of intel for us—some of it’s only a few hours old. I doubt if even the U.S. government has this data.” He looked at Patrick closely. His longtime friend was staring at the doorway where Susan Salaam had just exited. “What’d she have to say, Patrick?”

“Same as you—don’t try going into Libya.”

“Well, then I’ll give her credit for more than being a drop-dead stone fox,” Briggs quipped. “What are you going to do?”

Patrick picked up a few of the CD-ROMs and looked at their index labels. He chose a couple of them and headed for the portable computer terminals. “I’m going to do a little target study,” he said.

“What does she want with us, Muck?” Hal asked.

“Same thing that the Central African Petroleum Partners want—to fight and die for them,” Patrick replied. “I don’t know if she wants revenge for her husband’s assassination, or something else—but I’ve got my own agenda first.”

It appears that Zuwayy has ignored our warning,” Patrick McLanahan said grimly as he began the briefing a few hours later, “so we’re going to put the strike plans in motion in about two hours.”

His entire group of Night Stalkers were inside the semiunderground bunker reserved for them by Susan Bailey Salaam and General Baris, south of the airfield in an isolated part of the sprawling Egyptian joint forces base. Patrick was wearing his battle armor with the helmet on the table nearby, the power pack and electromagnetic rail gun plugged in and ready to go in just a few moments. He was definitely ready for battle.

“The primary target area will be the command-and- control center at Benina, ten miles east of Benghazi,” Patrick went on. “It is located at a Libyan air force base, with a large mix of Russian and French fighters and transports based there, plus antiaircraft systems of all sizes. Our target is the air operations center.” He displayed a high- resolution image of the air base, with one building outlined with a red triangle. “This building is the headquarters of Libyan air combat operations in the eastern half of the country, and it is also an alternate national military command center. It forms the junction of all communications from the eastern half of the country to Tripoli.