Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

ALASKAN AIR CORRIDOR
MONDAY; 14 MAY
2319 hours (11:19 PM)
TIME ZONE-9 ‘VICTOR’
CHAPTER 18
The flight from Narita, Japan, to Alaska was nearly sixteen hours long,
and there was still an hour of it left to endure. Then, after a quick
refueling, it would be back into the air for another six hours on the final
leg to DC. The very thought of it made Secretary of State Elizabeth
Whelkin want to bang her head against the window.
The Air Force 747 was a nice enough plane, and she and her staff had
the VIP section all to themselves, but she was tired. She was sick of
flying, and she was feeling cranky as hell—far too cranky to handle the
kind of delicate phone call that she was about to make.
Roger Couric, her chief aide, was on the phone now, wading through
the intricate barrier of political flunkies that shielded the president of
Egypt from the outside world. Elizabeth had been watching Roger work
the phone for nearly forty minutes. He was good at it, shifting smoothly
from English to Arabic, and back again as he climbed steadily up the chain
of command of the Egyptian government. Even so, from the look on his
face, things were not going well.
After a while, Roger appeared to hit an impasse. Chances were,
President Bin-Saud’ knew why Elizabeth was calling and had instructed
his staff to deflect the call.
Elizabeth yawned and stretched, the seat belt pulling tight across her
well-padded stomach. Plump rather than fat, she looked like Hollywood’s
idea of the perfect maiden auntie. Her tightly curled hair was an
aggregation of silver gray and Clairol’s Born Blonde, but her bright blue
eyes were pure steel.
Eventually, Roger covered the mouthpiece of the satellite phone and
whispered, “Prime Minister. That’s the best I can do. The big man is
absolutely not talking today.”
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