“Perhaps,” Sanusi said. “But even if you do penetrate those air defenses, there is no way you can locate your wife and your men in the Garden labyrinth. We’ve narrowed the area down to the southeast complex, which is the presidential palace area, but that only narrows it down to two or three dozen rooms, defended by perhaps five hundred troops.”

“I know a way to find her quickly,” Patrick said.

Sanusi looked into Patrick’s eyes, and his round eyes grew sad and his lips pulled taut. “I think I know how you intend to do this,” Sanusi said. “It’s madness. Your son will lose both his parents.”

“It’s the only chance we’ll ever get, Your Highness,” Patrick said. He looked down, tracing his finger over the air defense circles surrounding their objective. “I don’t think I can go back without her again, Muhammad. The pain on my son’s face was almost too much to bear.”

CHAPTER 10

PRESIDENTIAL PALACE, TRIPOLI,
 UNITED KINGDOM OF LIBYA
 THAT NIGHT

“He is with that new whore every hour of every day now,” General Tahir Fazani, the Libyan military chief of staff, commented disgustedly in a low voice. He and the Minister of Arab Unity, Juma Mahmud Hijazi, were in Fazani’s office in the Libyan Presidential Palace, where a military briefing had just wrapped up—minus the king, Jadallah Zuwayy, again. They had dismissed the rest of the military advisers and were preparing to brief the king on the military-readiness reports. “We’re getting ready to go to war with Egypt, and he’s over there getting laid.”

“Or worse,” Hijazi mused. “Do you think he’s on the drugs again?”

“God, I hope not,” Fazani said. “We’re screwed if he is.”

“Tahir, why the hell don’t we just blow town?” Hijazi asked.

“You know why, Juma—if we don’t control the money or don’t bump off Jadallah, we come away with nothing—and worse, he’ll be coming after us for the rest of his life. We need to get those bank account numbers and passwords first.”

“Maybe if he was back on horse, we could get them easier,” Hijazi surmised. He nodded to the reports. “How are we looking?”

“It couldn’t be better,” Fazani said. “Exactly as the planning staff predicted, the intelligence staff tells us Egypt pulled so many forces back toward Cairo that they’re unable to set up any kind of meaningful defense, let alone mount an offensive. We don’t have enough troops to take Salimah yet, in my opinion, but if Jadallah wanted to mount an offensive, now would be the time to do it. We set up a forward base inside Egypt, move a large number of troops and aircraft there, and we can hold off the Egyptian army forever.”

“And if the Americans intervene?”