Patrick donned his helmet, unplugged his fully charged battle armor, and went upstairs to the front of their halfunderground concrete facility. From the topmost security room, Patrick could look outside without being seen. There was a twelve-foot-high fence surrounding their building, topped with razor wire, about fifty feet away. The military district commander’s armored vehicle and several dozen light tanks and heavy armored personnel carriers were stationed outside the gate, weapons trained inside. More tanks and armored vehicles were spread out all along the perimeter—the Night Stalkers were suddenly sealed up tight.

“Dave, we got trouble,” Patrick radioed to Luger. “We got a company of armor outside the fence. They’re not coming through the fence, but they’ve got us surrounded pretty well.”

“I can have a FlightHawk and a couple Wolverines with SFWs overhead in about four hours,” Luger said. “We’ll have to reprogram the weapons from the Benina strike, but that’ll only take a few minutes.”

Patrick thought quickly; then: “Find a safe orbit area for the Megafortress and the tanker,” Patrick said, “and have them stand by as long as possible. We’re just hours away from getting our guys back—I don’t want to do anything to piss off the Egyptians now. But I want the strike aircraft available in case we have any trouble getting our folks out.”

“We’ve only got one refueling aircraft available,” Luger reminded him, “and it’s been on the go for two days straight. If we send the Megafortresses into holding orbits, that means less fuel for the strike package, less fuel reserves for the tanker, and more flying hours. Those guys will be wiped.”

“That can’t be helped,” Patrick said. “We’ve got to fly those planes hard until our guys are rescued. The tankers will just have to keep cycling as best they can. Contact Martindale and see if he can get us some more tanker support.”

“Okay,” David said. “Remember, we have that escape tunnel we found as a backup.” In the first few hours after occupying the bunker, which was an old security outpost protecting the southern part of the base, the Night Stalkers found an emergency escape tunnel, which ran several hundred meters west. “I’ll send some guys out to check to see if Ouda is covering it.”

“Roger,” Patrick said. “Cancel the strike meeting and have everyone get ready to bug out—we might have to move in a hurry.” He switched to the Egyptian liaison radio frequency: “Vice Marshal Ouda, this is Castor,” he said in his battle armor’s radio. His battle armor’s communications computer made the translation from English to Arabic and back again for him. “We have heard about the prisoner exchange between Libya and Egypt. We will not interfere. Once our men are returned to us, we will depart.”