“Don’t worry—that’s just the cavalry showing up,” Patrick said matter-of-factly. Norwalk was reaching for his service pistol when Patrick touched a hidden switch on his desk, then covered his eyes with his arm and tightly closed his eyes just as the room lights went out and an immense flash of light completely blinded the two FBI agents. The room lights then came back to normal. Patrick was able to simply walk over and disarm both men by plucking their weapons from their hands—the sudden flash of light disoriented them so badly that they could hardly tell up from down. Norwalk was shouting for help as he bumped and caromed off the furniture; the other agent couldn’t stay on his feet any longer and finally slumped to the floor.

Briggs and Wohl rushed into the office moments later. Briggs looked at the two writhing on the floor. “There’s the last two. All present or accounted for,” he said, then shot both with the crystal nerve darts. “I think the guy out in the hangar shot your plane.”

“Bastard. He’ll pay for that,” Patrick deadpanned. “Let’s go.”

Within minutes, Patrick started up the DC-l0’s auxiliary power unit and powered it up while one of the Night Stalkers drove one of the company jet fuel trucks over to the DC-10. After Patrick directed him on how to use the DC- 10’s single-point refueling system, he went up to the cockpit and started getting ready for their flight out of the country. Meanwhile, Briggs and Wohl loaded up as many sets of the Tin Man battle armor, the powered exoskeletons, the electromagnetic rail guns, and as much ammunition, spare battery packs, tools, and as many other devices as they could carry in the DC-10. In less than twenty minutes, they had completely refueled the DC-10, loaded it up, and were all on board.

“All that cargo space, and no weapons aboard,” Briggs said as he looked down the cavernous cargo area. They had enough cargo space and payload to carry two Megafortresses’ worth of air-launched weapons—but they had no time to get any out from the storage bunkers. “Too bad.”

“We got the fuel, the battle armor, and the rail guns— that’ll do for now,” Patrick said. “The nerve agent will wear off in another thirty minutes—we need to be long gone before they wake up.”

JAGHBUB, UNITED KINGDOM OF LIBYA
 THE NEXT MORNING

“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to bring many weapons with us,” Patrick said to Sayyid Muhammad ibn al-Hasan as-Sanusi. They were back in the big aircraft hangars at Jaghbub’s military airfield, supervising the refueling of all the planes. One of the Megafortresses had to abort while over the Atlantic; in addition, all of the EB-1C Megafortress Two aircraft had been returned to their Air National Guard unit. Their remaining force: two EB-52 Megafortress flying battleships and two AL-52 Dragon airborne laser aircraft, Dragon One and Two, with Dragon Two carrying its untested plasma laser on board. “But I would sure like to take another look at your weapon storage areas, Your Highness.”