The Emperor's Revenge (Oregon Files Adventure, Band 11) - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Clive Cussler is the author or coauthor of over fifty previous books in five bestselling series, including Dirk Pitt®, NUMA® Files, Oregon® Files, Isaac Bell, and Sam and Remi Fargo. His nonfiction works include Built for Adventure: The Classic Automobiles of Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt, and Built to Thrill: More Classic Automobiles from Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt, plus The Sea Hunters and The Sea Hunters II; these describe the true adventures of the real NUMA, which, led by Cussler, searches for lost ships of historic significance. With his crew of volunteers, Cussler has discovered more than sixty ships, including the long-lost Confederate ship Hunley. He lives in Colorado and Arizona. 

BOYD MORRISON is the author of six adventures, including the four Tyler Locke novels, most recently The Roswell Conspiracy and The Loch Ness Legacy. He is also an actor and engineer, with a doctorate in engineering from Virginia Tech, who has worked on NASA’s space station project at Johnson Space Center and developed several patents at Thomson/RCA. In 2003, he fulfilled a lifelong dream by becoming a Jeopardy! champion. Morrison lives in Seattle.

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ONE

Algeria

Present day

Towering dunes and rocky crags stretched as far as theeye could see, baked by the harsh midday sun. The IL-76 cargo plane, now threehours out of Cairo, had been flying a zigzag pattern across the Saharaaccording to instructions.

Tiny Gunderson turned in his pilot’s seat and blinked inconfusion when he saw Juan Cabrillo standing behind him.

Normally, Juan sported short blond hair, blue eyes, and atan complexion like the native Californian he was, but today he was disguised asan Arab native, with dyed black hair, brown contact lenses, skin darkened evenfurther by makeup, and a prosthetic nose to alter his appearance.

“For a moment, I thought you were one of our otherpassengers,” Tiny said.

“They’re busy down in the hold, checking their gear,”Juan replied. “They look a little nervous. A couple of them have never skydivedbefore.”

“Well, they picked a doozy of a place to learn. I haven’tseen so much as a road for the last thirty minutes.”

“They want to make sure no one beats us to their target.”

“Fat chance of that happening. We’re nearing the latestcheckpoint. I’m going to need the next set of coordinates.”

“Then my timing is impeccable,” Juan said. “Our clientjust gave me this. He said it’s the drop location.” He handed Tiny a piece ofpaper with a set of GPS coordinates. Tiny plugged the new numbers into theRussian jet’s autopilot computer, and the four-engine plane began banking inthat direction.

“We should be on-site in ten minutes,” he said. “I’llopen the rear door two minutes before the drop.”

Juan nodded. “What’s our fuel status?”

“No problem. I’ve got eight more hours of flight time.”

“Remember,” Juan said, “they won’t leave the landing zoneuntil you’re out of sight, so hightail it as soon as we’re away.”

“Like I’ve been bit in the butt, Chairman. Have a goodfall.”

Juan smiled. “Keep in touch.” He left the cockpit andtook the stairs down into the cavernous hold.

Four pallets occupied the center of the hold. Three dunebuggies were packed nose to tail, their parachutes piled on top and their ripcords attached to the plane so they would be triggered automatically whendropped.

The dune buggies were Scorpion desert patrol vehiclessold as surplus by the Saudi Army, with their armaments removed, of course. Ithad taken a day to refit them with the .50 caliber M2 Browning machine gun and40mm Mk 19 grenade launcher that were usually mounted on the chassis. Now theycould take on anything, short of a tank, and, according to their clients, theweapons weren’t going to be just for show.

The fourth pallet, the same size as the dune buggies, wasstill under wraps at the front of the hold. It wouldn’t be joining them on thisdrop.

Juan strode toward the six men gathered near the reardoor. All of them were elite soldiers of the Saharan Islamic Caliphate, aterrorist organization hoping to build a fundamentalist state that would spanthe entire width of North Africa.

The leader of this particular group, a brutal Egyptiannamed Mahmoud Nazari, who was suspected of several attacks on tourist groups,had made it known that he was trying to gain access to weapons of massdestruction that would aid in his goal to become the ruling caliph. The NSA hadintercepted a conversation between him and his benefactors in Saudi Arabia thathe needed funds to make an incursion into Algeria, where he could obtain suchweapons.

Although the type of weapon was never specified in thecall, the threat was taken seriously, and the Corporation had been tapped totake on the mission to discover what Nazari was looking for.

Juan stopped in front of the group. Nazari, a thin manwith a heavy beard and dead eyes, showed no emotion whatsoever. He said inArabic, “How long until our jump?”

“Less than ten minutes,” Juan replied with flawless SaudiArabian inflection. He also spoke Russian and Spanish fluently in variousaccents, but he’d never been able to master Arabic in any other dialect, so hisbackstory sold him as a jihadist from Riyadh.

Given the atrocities Nazari was thought to havecommitted, Juan got a bad taste in his mouth every time he had to talk to theterrorist. When Nazari bragged about slicing off an infidel civilian’s handsduring one of his attacks, Juan nearly threw him out of the plane’s doorwithout a parachute, but the mission to find the WMDs was too important toindulge his urge.

“How far do we have to drive once we land?” Juancontinued.

“You’ll know when I tell you. Now, complete yourpreparations.” Juan hadn’t been expecting an answer, but he would have seemed suspiciousif he weren’t curious about the mission.

“Yes, sir,” Juan said, forcing himself to say the wordswith a convincing tone of feigned respect. He pointed at the warning lightabove their heads. “That will flash red when the rear door opens. Stay behindthe yellow line on the floor if you don’t want to get sucked out. The lightwill change to amber a minute before the jump, then green to signal the jump.The pallets will go first, then us. Understand?”

“We went over this in the preflight briefing,” Nazarisaid with clear disdain. “We’re not simpletons.” His men, who busily recheckedtheir harnesses and static lines, didn’t seem bothered by the reminder.

“Of course,” Juan replied. “I didn’t mean to offend. I’llsee you on the ground.”

Juan left them and headed to the front of the cargo deck.The only reason he cared if they made it to the ground intact was so they couldlead him to the target. It had been a challenge to get them to trust him to thedegree they had, which was why this operation hadn’t been tasked to U.S.Special Forces. As good as they were, infiltration wasn’t their specialty, andthe CIA had their own limitations.

Juan had created the Corporation to do work the U.S.government couldn’t engage in directly. Plausible deniability was the rule. Hisstint as an agent in the CIA had made it clear that there were plenty of thosetypes of operations needing to be carried out through the Corporation. Juan hadoffered to take on the risks, for which he and those in his employ had beenwell compensated. Side jobs supplemented their income when work from the CIAwas scarce, but Juan never took on a job that he didn’t feel was in the bestinterests of America.

This mission certainly fit the bill.

It had taken weeks of secret meetings to gain Nazari’strust enough to be hired for the mission. He required a clandestine insertioninto the southern Algerian desert, fifty miles of rough terrain from thenearest settlement or oasis. The dune buggies had only enough fuel to get themfrom the drop to the target and then back to civilization, which was one of thereasons for the aerial insertion. The other was because they weren’t supposedto be on Algerian soil. The Oregon was already positioned at the port ofAlgiers to smuggle them out of the country. Tiny Gunderson, the...