“I am not going to let a bunch of Lone Rangers fly an intercontinental bomber from American shores and bomb another country with explosives big enough to show up on a satellite as a nuclear explosion and let them get away with it,” Secretary Goff said angrily. “They’re going to start a war in north Africa before this is over, and I don’t care how deniable they are, we’re responsible if we don’t try to stop them.”

“You going to run this by the boss first?”

“Sky Masters is a Department of Defense contractor— that means I’m responsible for their activities,” Goff said. “I’m going to start my investigation, and I’m going to use all my enforcement authority to find out what they’re up to. In addition, the Night Stalkers are under federal indictment as well—if we uncover evidence that Sky Masters is aiding them, I can and I will shut them down.” He looked at General Venti. “Any way we can find that bomber again?”

“We know the tanker’s profile,” Venti said. “Basically, the Night Stalkers are doing an en route air refueling rendezvous, with the tanker flying a long, slow anchor route—they’re obviously very well coordinated and in constant secure contact. They’ll probably stay over the Med, although they can certainly do the refueling over Europe—they’d be worried about being spotted visually. We just intercept any aircraft matching that refueling profile. It’ll keep our Navy guys hopping, but I think we can do it.”

“Can you find the bomber before it links up with the tanker?”

“That’ll be tougher,” Venti said. “The Megafortress is pretty stealthy—we’d have to get in pretty close before the fighters’ radar will be able to lock on, well inside the bomber’s laser radar detection range. If they see us hanging around, they’ll just bug out.”

“That’s what I want, then,” Goff said resolutely after a few moments’ thought. “If the tanker guys are in such good contact with the bomber, they’ll tell the bomber to get out as soon as we intercept the tanker. I assume McLanahan has some kind of contingency plan in place, an alternate landing location somewhere in the region—they’ll have to abort their attack run and head right for it. They’ll be out of the fight.”

Venti looked at Morgan quizzically, then nodded. “I’ll give the order, sir,” he said.

“I’ll ask you one more time, Bob—you sure you want to chase McLanahan and his boys out of there?” Intelligence Director Morgan asked. “They may be cowboys, but at least they’re fighting on our side.”

“They’re not cowboys—they’re wild dogs,” Goff said. “They need to be put away in cages.”

ON THE LI BYA- EGYPT BORDER
 THAT SAME TIME