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By noon, three-quarters of the people on the ship were suffering coldlike symptoms, and, despite precautions, Mark and Linda were included in that group

CHAPTER 32

THE HIGH DESERT WIND SHRIEKED ACROSS THE AIRFIELD, throwing up towering clouds of dust that threatened to block out the sky The pilot of the chartered Citation jet came in on the runway fully thirty feet to the left, to account for the cross-wind hae

The gear came doith a mechanical whine and thump, and flaps were extended The turbojets roared to keep the aircraft aloft for a few more seconds

The sole passenger seated in the cabin paid no attention to the weather conditions or the dangerous landing Since catching a coht from Nice to London, and then on to Dallas, where the leased executive jet aiting, he sat with his laptop open and his fingers dancing across the keys

When Eric had come up with his plan to fire the Russian ballistic projectile weapon, it had been the barest outline of an idea He hadn’t considered the tremendous amount of data he needed to make it work Orbital speeds, vectors, the rotation of the earth, the sten rods, and a hundred other elements—all had to be factored into his computations

With his naval background, he was h he would have liked Murph’s help Mark had an innate grasp of trigonometry and calculus that would have made this socoiven him the slot Mark was simply more qualified to do this than Eric

Because this broke down to a communications exercise between the satellite and the coical choice The only probleot sick on carnival rides and wouldn’t have been able to do the work

Eric got tapped to do what only a handful of people had ever done He would allow hiet excited about it later, but, for now, he had to work the nu to do this, e out the reason And with Mark trapped on the Golden Sky, he had stepped up his pursuit of the beautiful young Norwegian He was already up to the eighth item on his courtship checklist and al to hold her hand when he explained why he had to leave the ship He wished he knehat it meant when she had cocked her head and parted her lips just before he left her in the infirmary

He should have asked Dr Huxley

The plane touched doaying dangerously on theels for a moment before the pilot could kick in the rudder to even her out again They taxied a long way—the airstrip was over three ar next to another unar door was the naines spooled to silence, and the copilot eed from the cockpit

“Sorry, Mr Stone, but we can’t taxi into the hangar in this sandstorht”

Eric had already checked a dozen weather sites on the Internet and knew to the ht, there wouldn’t even be a breeze

He closed up his laptop and grabbed his suitcase, an old Navy duffel that had followed

him from Annapolis