Page 7 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier

George “Gomez” Adams piloted the AW609 tilt-rotor, currently configured in helicopter mode. The three touchscreen cockpit displays were straight out of a video game and provided anyone in the dual-control pilot seats complete situational awareness. They’d been in the air nearly two hours.

Gomez had picked Callie up at the private jet terminal at Dubai World Central airport—one of several with which the Corporation had long-standing, discreet arrangements. With piercing brown eyes and a stylized gunfighter’s mustache, Gomez was roguishly handsome, but it was his charming cocksureness that cut most women to the quick.

Callie frowned as she pointed through her side windscreen. The Gulf of Oman was dotted with cargo vessels and oil tankers.

“Hey, Gomez. Is that theOregon?”

A pale blue freighter with a white stern superstructure was anchored several hundred feet below. She saw a 590-foot break-bulk carrier with four pairs of yellow cranes towering over five large green cargo hold doors. She’d seen dozens of such vessels over the years. It wasn’t at all what she was expecting.

“Yup. That’s theOregon.” Despite the electronic microphone, Gomez’s voice was deep and smoky as a plate of West Texas barbecue brisket.

“Doesn’t look like much.”

“That’s kinda the point.” He flashed a leather-soft grin as he eased the aircraft into a gentle descent.

“Hate to ask but…Where are you gonna land this thing?” Callie asked.

Gomez opened his mouth to answer, but alarms suddenly screamed in their headphones.

Callie’s eyes widened like dinner plates. Her blood pressure spiked into her skull as her stomach puddled in her boots.

They were plummeting out of the sky.

“Wind shear,” Gomez whispered calmly in his mic as he simultaneously advanced throttles, mashed rotor pedals, and worked the cyclic and collective to generate massive lift without stalling—and yet, still maintaining control. The twin Pratt & Whitney turbines screamed as the tachometers crashed into the red zone.

The sudden burst of power pinned Callie into her seat as the AW’s nose launched skyward. Skeins of high clouds sped across the windscreen.

The aircraft yawed and bucked in the turbulence, but Gomez never broke a sweat. His deft handling of the controls was deceptively fast.

The wind shear alarms suddenly cut off as the tilt-rotor stabilized. Gomez eased the big bird back into a landing approach. Callie sat upright in her seat, a little green around the gills.

“You good, miss?”

“Been in worse situations. Just not up in the air.”

Gomez smiled. From what he’d heard about her, that was true enough.

?

The tilt-rotor’s three small wheels touched down on the disguised cargo hold door that served as theOregon’s helipad as gently as a feather on a velvet blanket. The whining turboprops cycled down as two aircraft technicians—“hangar apes” inOregonparlance—scurried to secure the vehicle before it descended belowdecks on the elevator.

Juan pulled the cabin door open and Callie descended with a large waterproof duffel in hand. The two had never met, but there was an instant affinity between them, like twins separated at birth.

And maybe something more.

Cabrillo noted the copper tan of her skin, like the Hawaiian surfer girl she was—at least in her spare time. Cabrillo had the same kind of tan when he surfed the beaches up and down Orange County, California, years ago. He still got a lot of outdoor sun, but surfing wasn’t the reason.

He extended his hand. “Welcome aboard. Juan Cabrillo.”

Callie took it. “Callie Cosima.”

Juan felt heat pass between them—and it wasn’t from the warm weather.

“I see you bought the e-ticket up there,” Juan said. “Heck of a ride.”

“We hit a downdraft—or it hit us. By the way, your pilot was truly amazing.”

“Gomez is a decorated combat flier. He flew AH-6M Little Birds with the U.S. Army’s Night Stalkers—the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment—before he came to us. He’s the best of the best.”