Page 58 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier
Juan couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Okay, gents. Cartoon stories aside, tell me more about what you two observed,” he said. “What kind of weapons system are we talking about?”
“Never saw anything exactly like it before,” Eric said. “The only missile-launched anti-submarine system I know of is our RUM-139 vertical launch anti-submarine rocket. But that missile only has a range of around twelve nautical miles.”
Murphy nodded. “This was an anti-sub rocket on steroids.”
Juan frowned with curiosity. “What did you mean when you said you’ve never seen anything ‘exactly’ like it before?”
“It’s almost as if they slapped Mark 54 torpedoes on Storm Shadows. A hybrid. Taking two existing systems and putting them together.”
Juan turned to Murph. “What about the torpedo signature? Something off the shelf?”
“It wasn’t a perfect match, but they sure sounded like Mark 54s.”
“And the missiles? Did our radar database recognize the profile?”
“No, not exactly. But then again, the radar profile was pretty close to a Storm Shadow. Maybe a modified version of it. And it moved at the same speed a TR60-30 turbojet would.”
“That’s the engine a Storm Shadow uses,” Eric said to Callie.
Callie smiled. “I kinda figured.”
“Whoever is designing this stuff is moving fast, almost improvising,” Eric said.
“And it’s definitely an automated operation,” Murphy said, “given that airplane of his.”
“Design or construction?” Max asked.
“Some combination of the two is my bet.”
“The bottom line is that we still don’t know who actually did this and we don’t really know what weapons they used,” Max said. “Where does that leave us?”
Juan rubbed his face, exasperated.
“What we do know for sure is that we had a lead on this Vendor character, and after I breached his drone airplane it exploded. And when we located his airplane wreckage in the water, theOregonwas attacked. If there is a consortium, the Vendor is the point man. And he’s deploying extremely sophisticated weapons. That means he’s even more dangerous than we suspected. Speaking of which, did Overholt light up those Afghani weapons caches?”
Max shook his head. “He contacted us when you were black box hunting. Those trackers you laid down? All of them stopped transmitting.”
“Malfunctioned?” Juan asked.
“No way. Tested them myself,” Murph said. “They got zapped. Either by the Afghanis—”
“—or the Vendor,” Juan said. He blew a blast of air through his nose, frustrated.
“We are way up a tall tree, gentlemen, and somebody keeps stealing our ladder.”
29
Kosovo
“Looks like it’s time to get out and take a little walk,” the lieutenant said to the sergeant driving the vehicle. The old logging road trailing through the forests north of Mitrovica had finally dead-ended at the foot of a steep mountain thick with trees. The air was heavy with the smell of pine and diesel exhaust.
The Iveco VM 90T Torpedo, an Italian version of a Humvee, pulled to a stop. The driver radioed back to the trailing Torpedo. Within minutes, the lieutenant and twenty of his Italian carabinieri had dismounted. One man remained stationed behind the machine gun affixed to each Torpedo while the others did weapons and gear checks. They wore camouflaged uniforms and large red armbands markedKFOR MSU—Kosovo Force Multinational Specialized Unit.
The MSU, part of NATO’s ongoing peacekeeping efforts in the turbulent region, had been stationed in Kosovo since 1999. They were well known and largely respected by the locals on both sides of the conflict.
Lieutenant Salvio Bonucci’s unit normally policed Mitrovica, where it was stationed. No easy task. The city itself was a microcosm of the larger regional conflict.
