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“Here we thought you were dead because your trackers all but stoppedit up”

“I’d bring you the Cadillac we’re driving, but you wouldn’t have anywhere to drive it on the Oregon However, we did e to find four bottles of 1947 Macallan scotch froured that was the least he owed us for all this trouble Where are you?”

“Approaching the north end of the Red Sea Not too far froht down here We should be able to rendezvous with all of you in a few hours”

“What about the Colossus ships?”

“They’re set to enter the Suez Canal tonight The plan is to go in the saive us their spot”

“Good work,” Juan said “We found out the location for the Colossus ships to link up”

“Where?”

“Great Bitter Lake Apparently, they didn’t want to wait for Colossus 1, 2, and 4 to traverse the entire canal before they made the connection with Colossus 5, which should arrive fro from the south end”

“So we can’t wait to stop them in open water,” Max said ominously

“Afraid not”

Juan understood Max’s uneasiness Great Bitter Lake was nearly halfway between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea To keep the artificial intelligence fro over co to have to mount an assault on the Colossus ships in the middle of the Suez Canal

FIFTY-THREE

THE ARABIAN SEA

The Huey was noisy and uncoht the Vietnam War–era helicopter for its best feature: it used no coh and reliable, and with extra fuel tanks its range was ates, circling the launch platform at thirty miles out, were equipped with Hueys Mallik had been joined by Torkan for the flight froa to the Orbital Ocean launch command ship on station two miles from the platform

The chopper settled onto the helipad, and Mallik was greeted by the flight director, Kapoor