“Amina!” Susan cried. She tried to rush to her bodyguard’s side, thinking she was dead, but the dark figure roughly pushed her away onto the bed. “Who are you?” Susan shouted. She hoped one of the outside guards might hear her, but they were all probably dead too. “What do you want?”

The figure reached out and flipped on the bedroom light. To Susan’s immense surprise, it was one of the American commandos, dressed for full combat in the electronic battle armor and strength-enhancing microhydraulic exoskeleton. “Patrick? Is that you?”

Patrick McLanahan turned, lifted Shafik in his hydraulically augmented arms, carried her into her bedroom next to Susan’s, and gently laid her on the bed. Susan felt the breeze blowing in off Abu Qir Bay through the bedroom patio doors and realized that Patrick had to have climbed up seventeen floors, or jumped at least a hundred feet from the nearest building, to get over to her bedroom balcony. He returned to the bedroom moments later and removed his helmet, rage blazing in his eyes.

“I thought you were dead,” Susan said, pulling on a thin, silky dressing gown.

“I thought we were going to go after the ones who killed your husband,” Patrick said. “I thought you were going to help me find my wife and my men.”

“I am helping you.”

“By making a deal with Zuwayy to take the prisoners to Mersa Matruh and lock us up in the bunker so he could wipe us—and your political rival Khan—out with a nuclear weapon?”

“You think I had something to do with that awful attack? I’m as horrified as you are,” Susan said. “I’ve been under house arrest here in Alexandria. I never heard from Zuwayy or anyone from Libya. As for Khan—I’m glad he’s dead, the murderous bastard, but I had nothing to do with it. He was double-crossed by his buddy Zuwayy—why, I don’t know. It’s all part of Zuwayy’s twisted scheme for power.”

“And you didn’t bother telling me about this? We thought you had turned us all in—we got out as soon as we could.”

“You didn’t bother telling me you were going after Zuwayy.”

“I told you I was going to try to recover Wendy and my men, or go after Zuwayy to force him to give them up— that was the best way I thought of doing it,” Patrick said. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know if I could trust you. Apparently I was right.”