Clive Cussler - Treasure

"The Lady Flamborough," replied Schiller, his face carefully pensive.

"Come up with indisputable proof that Yazid is behind the ship's hijacking and we can crack the Capesterre wall. "

Brogan nodded heavily. "The ensuing scandal would certainly be a step in stripping away Yazid's and Topfltzin's mystiques and opening the door to the family's countless criminal activities. "

"Don't forget the world news media. They'd have a shark feeding frenzy once they bit into the Capesten-es' bloody past." Nichols belatedly winced at his unthinking pun.

"You're all overlooking one important fact," Schiller said with a long sigh. "At the moment, any tie between the ship's disappearance and the Capesterres is strictly circumstantial."

Nichols frowned. "Who else has motives for getting rid of Presidents De Lorenzo and Hasan, and Hala Kamil?"

"No one!" Brogan said heatedly.

"Wait up," the President said patiently. "Julius has a sound point. The hijackers are not acting like typical Middle East terrorists. They have yet to identify themselves. They've made no demands or threats. Nor have they used the crew and passengers as hostages for international blackmail. I'm not ashamed to admit I find the silence nightmarish."

"We're faced with a different breed this time," admitted Brogan. "The Capesten-es are playing a waiting game, hoping De Lorenzo's and Hasan's governments will fall in their absence."

"any word on the cruise ship since George Pitts son discovered the switch?" asked Oates, coolly steering the discussion clear of an impending confrontation.

"Somewhere off the east coast of Tierra del Fuego," replied Schiller.

"Sailing like hell to the south. We're tracking by satellite and should have her cornered by this time tomorrow."

The President didn't look happy. "The hijackers could have murdered everyone on board by then."

"If they haven't already," said Brogan.

"What forces do we have in the area?"

"Virtually none, Mr. President," answered Nichols. "We have no call to maintain a presence that far south. Except for a few Air Force transport planes ferrying supplies to polar research stations, the only U.S. vessel anywhere near the Lady Flamborough is the Sounder, a NUMA deep-water survey ship. "

"The one carrying Dirk Pitt?"

"Yes, sir."

"What about our Special Forces people?"

"I was on the phone with General Keith at the Pentagon twenty minutes ago," Schiller volunteered. "An elite team, along with their equipment, boarded C-140 cargo jets and took off about an hour ago. They were accompanied by a wing of Osprey as ult aircraft."

The President sat back in the chair and folded his hands. "Where will they set up their command post?"

Brogan called up a map displaying the tip of South America on a giant wall monitor. He used a flashlight arrow to indicate a particular spot.

"Unless we receive new information that will alter the tentative plan,"

he explained, "they'll land at an airport outside the small Chilean city of Punta Arenas on the Brunswick Peninsula and use it as a base for operations."

"A long flight," said the President quietly. "When will they arrive?"

"Inside fifteen hours."

The President looked at Oates. "Doug, I leave it to you to handle any sovereignty issues with the Chilean and Argentine governments."

"I'll see to it."

"The Lady Flamborough will have to be found before the Special Forces can launch a rescue attempt," said Schiller with remorseless logic.

"We're up the creek on this one." There was a curious acceptance in Brogan's voice. "The closest carrier fleet is almost five thousand miles away. No way a full-scale air and sea search can be mounted."

Schiller stared at the table thoughtfully. "any rescue attempt could take weeks if the hijackers slip the Lady Flamborough in among the barren bays and coves along the Antarctic coast line. Fog, mist and low overcast wouldn't help matters either."

"Satellite surveillance is our only tool," said Nichols. "The predicament is that we have no spy satellites eyeballing that region of the earth."

"Dale is right," Schiller agreed. "The far southern seas are not high on the strategic surveillance list. If we were turn northern hemisphere, we could focus a whole array of listening and imagery gear to tune in conversations on board the ship and read a newspaper on deck."

"What's available?" the President asked.

"The Landsat," answered Brogan, "a few Defense meteorological satellites, and a Seasat used by NUMA for Antarctic ice and sea current surveys. But our best bet is the SR-90 Casper.

"Do we have SR-90 reconnaissance aircraft in Latin America?"

"A tight security airfield in Texas is as close as we come."

"How long to fly one down and back?"

"A Casper is capable of reaching mach five, or just under five thousand kilometers per hour. One can fly to the tip of Antarctica, make a photo run and have the film back in five hours."

The President slowly shook his head in dismay. "Will someone please tell me why the United States government is always caught with our pants down? I swear to God, nobody screws up like we do. We build the most sophisticated detection systems the world has ever known, and when we need them, they're all concentrated in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Nobody spoke, nobody moved. The President's men avoided his eyes and stared uncomfortably at the table, papers, wall, anything but one another's face.

At last Nichols spoke in a quiet, confident voice. "We'll find the ship, Mr. President. If anyone can get them out alive, the Special Forces will."

"Yes," the President drawled softly. "They're highly trained for such a mission. The only question in my mind is whether the crew and passengers will be there to be rescued. Or will the Special Forces find a silent ship filled with corpses?"

Colonel Morton Hollis wasn't overjoyed at leaving his family in the middle of his wife's birthday party. The understanding look in her eyes wrenched his gut. The cost would hit him dearly, he knew. The red coral necklace was about to be enhanced by the five-day cruise to the BAHamas she'd always pestered him about.

He sat at a desk in a specially designed office compartment inside the C-140 transport, flying south over Venezuela. He Puffed away deeply on a large Havana cigar he had purchased at the base store, now that the embargo on Cuban imports had been lifted.

Hollis studied the latest weather reports on the Antarctic peninsula and peered at photographs showing the rugged, icy coastline. He'd already been over the difficulfies in his mind a dozen times since takeoff.

During their brief history the newly formed Special Operations Forces had already achieved a notable record, but they had yet to tackle a major rescue of the magnitude of the Lady Flamborough hijacking.

The orphan child of the Pentagon, the Special Operations Forces were not molded into a single command until the fall of 1989. At that time the Army's Delta Force, whose fighters were drawn from the elite Ranger and Green Beret units and a secret aviation unit known as Task Force 160, merged with the top-of-the-line Navy SEAL Team Six and the Air Force's Special Operations wing.

The unified forces cut across service lines and boundaries and became a separate command, numbering twelve thousand men, headquartered at a tightly restricted base in southeast Virginia. The crack fighters were heavily trained in guerrilla tactics, parachuting, wilderness survival and scuba diving, with special emphasis on storming buildings, ships and aircraft for rescue missions.

Hollis was short-he'd barely met the height requirements of the Special Forces-and almost as wide in the shoulders as he was tall. Forty years old but immensely tough, he had survived a rigorous simulated guerrilla war in the swamps of Florida for three weeks, and parachuted right back in for another exercise. His closely cropped brown hair was dun and graying early. His eyes were a blue-green, the whites slightly yellowed from too much time in the sun without proper glasses.