“Nike, clear out of there,” McLanahan repeated. “We’ll have the FlightHawks take them out.” The first FlightHawk UCAV carried only the laser radar array, but the second FlightHawk was armed with four antitank BLU-108 SFW sensor-fuzed weapon bomblets and four antipersonnel Gator cluster bomb munitions. They were devastating weapons: A single SFW could destroy as many as three dozen main battle tanks, and a single Gator could kill, injure, or deny enemy access across an area twice the size of a football field. “Base, you copy? Stand by to arm up the ’Hawks.”

“We have a good location on Nike,” Wendy McLanahan radioed from the Catherine out in the Med. The Tin Man battle armor contained a transponder to allow Wendy on board the command ship to track and monitor all the commandos. “Ready to come in hot.”

“Negative, Base, negative,” Wohl interjected. “The junk they got these things buried under will keep the SFW from detecting them, or they might lock onto some other hot object; and the junk might block the bomblets’ blast effects. We’re going to have to expose them enough so the SFWs and Gators can do their job, or destroy them one by one by hand. I’m moving in.”

No use in trying to hold him back, Patrick thought, he’s on the warpath. It’s not every day that you’re sent in just to take a few pictures and end up coming across a bunch of nuclear-tipped missiles. Wohl must be salivating in his battle armor. “Roger, Nike. Stalkers, let’s move in together. One coordinated attack. Stand by.”

But Chris Wohl wasn’t going to “stand by”—he was already on the move.

He hurriedly checked for a sentry. There were sentry shacks on all four sides of the garbage pit, but through his infrared sensors he could see that all were deserted. He descended down the incline toward the rear of the rocket.. .

. .. and the second he reached the floor of the pit and touched the net covering the rocket, four huge ballpark lights illuminated the entire garbage pit, and a siren sounded. There were no sentries because the entire garbage pit was alarmed. Time had run out.

From his observation point, Patrick saw the lights come on. “Oh, shit,” Patrick murmured. “Taurus, move in, check the garbage pit at Alpha Two,” he radioed. “I’ll check Golf Six. Pollux, create a diversion around Tango Five. Base, order the FlightHawks in to attack.”

“Roger that, Castor,” Patrick’s younger brother, Paul, responded. One of the original members of the Night Stalkers and the acknowledged expert in the use of the Tin Man battle armor, he was the fourth man on this spy team, taking the east side of the Libyan base.

“Copy, Castor,” Wendy replied. “They’re coming in hot, two minutes out, SFWs and Gators. Light up the targets as much as you can.”