the hot tub was on rollers, though, and moved easily to the front of the plane, freeing up a significant amount of space deep in the cargo hold. This is where Alpha Squad stowed its gear.
Conversely, the plane’s pilots were definitely un-posh. Both were ex-members of the Stormo Incursori, the Italian Air Force’s special operations unit. Among the crème de la crème of the world’s secret operators, the SI had enjoyed a string of anti-terrorist victories around the Mediterranean over the years, few of which were ever publicized.
Nolan had no doubt the Stormos would get Alpha Squad where they had to go. The flying boat had an impressive array of navigation gear, both ground-based and GPS-slaved, plus specialty equipment such as anticollision radar and even an advanced air defense system, just in case someone wanted to take a shot at their ultra-wealthy employer.
Once at their destination, though, the Stormos’ skills would have to be extra sharp. They would have to avoid any local radar networks while Alpha reconned the target area from above—and that would be the easy part.
Landing off Gottabang would be a major challenge. The waters were known to be extremely rough, a nasty side effect of the area’s high tidal forces. It would be like coming down in a typhoon, even though the weather might be perfectly clear. One wrong move, one rogue wave, or the slightest loss of power at the wrong moment, and the big Shin would flip over, come apart, and everyone on board would be killed.
It would only get harder for Alpha once they’d set down and left the Shin-1. There was the question of breathable air at Gottabang. Anything that couldn’t be salvaged from the ships on the breaking beach was burned. Asbestos, PCB pipes, a galaxy of different plastics and carbon-based coatings and wire—all of it went up in flames. But because of Gottabang’s location—it was carved into the side of a mountain—the resulting smoke tended to stick around. This made the local atmosphere highly toxic even for short exposures.
For this reason, the Senegals had brought a box of small oxygen tanks and masks with them from Aden. But the tanks had an endurance of just under an hour, so whatever Alpha Squad was going to do at Gottabang, they’d have to do it in less than sixty minutes.
And there was an additional time constraint: Alpha had to complete their recon of the site while still under the cover of darkness. This was especially important because in an effort to keep its near-slave-labor force from escaping, the people who ran Gottabang employed a small army of thuggish Indian mercenaries, some of them veterans of the brutal wars in Kashmir and Sri Lanka. These people were well armed with armored cars and technicals, and possibly an armed helicopter or two. They had to be avoided at all cost.
Alpha Squad’s mission required a lot of moving parts. If just one of them ran into a snag, it would mean an unsuccessful mission and good-bye to Whiskey’s big payday.
It might get them all killed, too.
* * *
THEY ARRIVED OVER Gottabang just before midnight.
The Shin-1 was flying at 20,000 feet. Once on station, the Stormos throttled down to just 120 knots and started a long, slow circle high above the notorious ship-breaking beach.
Nolan was looking out one of the plane’s many observation blisters via his specially adapted one-eye nightscope. The many fires he saw below made Gottabang look even eerier and more noxious than he’d imagined. It really was like looking down on another planet.
The best for all concerned would be if Nolan was able to spot the missing Pacific Star from this height. That way, Alpha could set down close to it, dispatch a boarding party, pop any pirates they could find and then, ideally, reclaim the Z-box, all in a matter of minutes.
But this notion was quickly dismissed when Nolan realized Gottabang’s highly polluted bay was absolutely crammed with ships waiting to be broken, many more than he’d expected. There were so many, it wasn’t possible to concentrate on just one for very long from this height, never mind trying to read the name on its hull. Making a bad situation worse, the wind was blowing the lethal smoke in swirls over both land and water, further obscuring the soon-to-be-broken fleet.
Under these conditions, and the fact that the CIA, even though they’d arranged for the Pacific Star to be used in the botched Z-box operation, never bothered to record its dimensions or any