The team nodded.
THE SUN WAS setting as Adams approached the Akbar from the Red Sea. Passing over the yacht once to alert the crew, he lined up over the stern and dropped slowly down. Al-Khalifa's Kawasaki helicopter was still on the heliport, so he hovered a few feet above the yacht, just above a clear spot on the stern. The CIA agent dropped Abraham's Stone safely packed in a box with padding to the deck, then leapt off.
"Overholt's men are waiting for you back at Ras Abu Shagara," Cabrillo said. "Will you be okay?"
"Yes, sir," Adams said.
The CIA agent was carrying the box toward the rear door of the Akbar. Cabrillo stepped off and crab-walked out from under the rotor blade. Adams lifted off again.
AT JUST THAT moment Cabrillo's phone rang.
"Threat one is eliminated," Hanley said. "The cargo containers are on board a ship just now leaving Bahrain for Qatar."
"No problems?"
"All went as planned," Hanley said. "Three men will meet the Akbar's shore boat in Jeddah. You'll need to have them transported out to the yacht—their part in the operation is finished."
Kent Joseph, part of a Florida team who had been contracted to handle the Akbar for the Corporation, poked his head out of the door, and Cabrillo smiled and raised his finger for the captain to wait a minute.
"Skutter?"
"He has the diagrams and we're sending him and the team in this evening," Hanley said. "If that's successful, it'll be two down, one to go."
"How are you coming on that plan?" Cabrillo asked.
"I'll call you back soon."
The telephone went dead and Cabrillo placed it in his pocket. Then he smiled and reached his hand out to Joseph.
"Juan Cabrillo," he said, shaking. "I'm with the Corporation."
"Is that like the Agency?" Joseph asked.
"Heck, no," Cabrillo said, smiling. "I'm not a spy."
Joseph nodded and motioned to the door.
"But he is," Cabrillo said, waving toward the CIA agent.
Chapter 53
IT WAS DARK when Coast Guard Petty Officer Perkins and the other two men inside the last truck in the convoy felt their vehicle begin to slow. Perkins peered out the crack between the cargo doors. There were scattered buildings along the road and the lights of a car following. He waited almost five minutes before the car, finding a clear spot in the road to pass the trucks, accelerated and sped past.
"Okay, guys," Perkins said, "we need to jump out."
Upon climbing inside, Perkins had rigged the door to open again so exiting was not a problem. The problem was the speed of the truck—it was still moving at over thirty miles an hour. He watched the side of the road out the rear.
"Men," he said a minute later, "there is really no easy way to do this. Our best shot is to wait until we see sand along the left side of the truck, then you two grab the top of the door and I'll push it open. The swing should get you near the side of the road—just drop off as soon as possible."
"Won't the driver notice?" one of the men asked.
"Maybe if he's staring in the rearview mirror at that exact instant," Perkins admitted, "but the door should swing back afterward, and if he doesn't notice it immediately, he should be farther down the road before he catches on that the door is open."
"What about you?" the third man asked.
"All I can do," Perkins said, "is run and jump as far as I can."
The buildings were giving way to a less populated area just outside Mecca. Perkins stared through the gloom. "I don't know, guys," he said a second later. "I guess this is as good a spot as any."
Perkins boosted them up so they could grab the top of the door frame. Then a second later he pushed it out. The door swung outward, the two men dropped to the ground and rolled end over end in the sand. Perkins backed up as far as he could in the crowded shipping container and ran from the right side of the container toward the left then leapt into the air. Perkins's legs windmilled through the air as he flew.
The truck, door flapping, receded into the distance. They were alone, with only the lights of Mecca a few miles away lighting the desert sky.
Perkins tore some skin off his knee and realized that he had also wrenched it upon landing. He lay on the ground just off the road. The other two men, one bleeding from an elbow abrasion, the other with a red spot on his face where he had scraped it against the sand, helped Perkins to his feet.
Perkins's knee gave out and he crumbled to the ground.
"Take the phone I was given," he said, reaching into his pocket and handing it to one of the men, "and push number one. Explain what happened to whoever answers."
BACK ON THE Oregon, Hanley reached for the ringing telephone.
"Okay, hold on a second," he said after the man explained.
"Get me GPS on this signal," he shouted to Stone, who punched the commands into the computer.
"Got a lock," Stone said a minute or so later.
"Is there a spot off to the side of the road where you're not visible?" Hanley asked the man.
"We're right alongside a wash," the man said. "There's a dune above."
"Start climbing the dune and take cover," Hanley said. "Leave the line open—I'll get back to you in a second."
Reaching for another phone, Hanley dialed the number of the CIA station chief for Saudi Arabia on the number Overholt had given him. "This is the contractors," he said when the man answered. "Do you have any agents in Mecca right now?"
"Sure," the station chief answered. "We have a Saudi national on the pad."
"Does he have a car?"
"He drives a Pepsi delivery truck."
"We need him to drive to these GPS coordinates," Hanley said, "and pick up three men. Can you do that?"
"Hold on," the station chief said as he dialed the Pepsi driver's cell phone.
Hanley could hear him explaining in the background.
"He's leaving now," the station chief said, "he thinks it's about twenty minutes away."
"Tell him to honk when he reaches the area," Hanley said. "Our men will come out of hiding then."
"Where is he taking them?" the station chief asked.
"Jeddah."
"I'll call if there are any problems."
"No problems," Hanley said. "We don't like any problems."
Hanley hung up on the station chief, then grabbed the other phone and explained the plan.
HANLEY MAY NOT have liked problems but that was exactly what he was faced with.
The conference room was filled with Seng, Ross, Reyes, Lincoln, Meadows, Murphy, Crabtree, Gannon, Hornsby and Halpert. All ten of them seemed to be talking at once.
"We can't do anything from the air," Lincoln said, "they'll see that coming."
"No time to tunnel," Ross said.
"The key," Halpert said to Crabtree, "was how Hickman got it out in the first place."
"I can arrange a pyrotechnic display to divert them," Murphy said, smiling at Hornsby, "but we're here on the Oregon, in the Mediterranean, and they're there, in Saudi."
"Tear gas?" Reyes offered to the room.
"Cut the power?" Meadows mentioned.
Seng stood up. "Okay, people," he said, "let's get some order here."
As the highest-ranking man, he was in charge of the brainstorming session.
Seng walked over to the coffeepot to pour another cup. He was talking as he walked. "We have less than an hour to come up with a cohesive plan the team on the ground can execute if we want to do this thing tonight—and we do."
He finished pouring the coffee and walked back to the table. "Like Halpert said—how did Hickman get the meteorites switched in the first place?"
"He had to somehow disable the guards," Meadows said. "There is no other way he could have pulled if off."
"Then why wasn't the theft discovered soon after," Seng asked, "and reported?"
"He had an inside man," Murphy said, "that's the only way."
"We checked out the guards," Seng said. "If one of them was on to what
was happening, he'd be out of Mecca by now. They're all still on the job."
The conference room was quiet for a moment as the team thought.
"You said you checked out the guards," Linda Ross said, "so you have the schedules and such?"
"Sure," Seng said.
"Then the only way I see this going down is to switch all four," Ross said.
"That's good," Halpert said, "hit them at shift change—replace the oncoming guards with our team."
"Then what?" Seng asked.
"Turn off the power to all of Mecca," Reyes said, "and have them make the switch."
"But then we have four guards that will be found at the next shift change," Seng said.
"Boss," Gannon said, "by then the teams from Qatar will be safely away and the Saudis can do what they will."
The room was quiet for a second as Seng thought.
"It's crude," he said at last, "but doable."
"Sometimes you need to split a coconut with a rock to get to the milk," Gannon said.
"I'll take it to Hanley," Seng said, rising.
WHILE THE PLANNING session on the Oregon was finishing, Skutter and his team found one of the hatches leading into the tunnel beneath the Prophet's Mosque and slipped inside. They were only five minutes underground when the first of the explosive packages was located.
"Spread out up the tunnel," Skutter said to the others, "and find out how many of these there are in here."
Then he turned to the only man on his team with any training in demolition. "What do you think?"
The man smiled, reached in his pocket for wire cutters and pulled them out. Reaching down, he pulled up a wire and snipped it in two. Finding a few others, he cut those as well, and then started unwrapping the duct tape from the pipe.
"Crude but damned powerful is how I'd describe these," the man said, laying the C-6 and the dynamite separately on the ground of the tunnel.
"That's it?" Skutter said in exasperation.
"That's it," the man said. "One thing, however."
"What's that?"
"Be careful and don't kick or drop the dynamite or anything," the man said. "Depending on its age, it could be unstable."
"Don't worry," Skutter said, "we're leaving it here."
Within two hours the charges would all be disabled and the tunnel would be checked then double-checked to make sure. Then Skutter could call and report.
WHILE THE DEMOLITION man was snipping the wires on the first explosive package, Hanley was phoning Cabrillo on the Akbar.
"That's what we've got, boss," he said after he finished filling Cabrillo in on the plan they had come up with. "It's crude, I'll admit."
"Have you spoken to Kasim yet?" Cabrillo asked.
"I wanted you to clear it first."
"I'm with it," Cabrillo said. "Why don't you fax me everything you have so I can brief the CIA man. Meanwhile, I'll call Kasim and report what we came up with."
"I'll send it now."
"YOU'LL NEED TO move fast," Cabrillo explained to Kasim. "Shift change is at two a.m."
"What about any explosives?" Kasim asked.
"The CIA man who's delivering Abraham's Stone will have a dozen chemical sniffers. Have the rest of the men in your team spread out and search while you do the switch."
"Okay," Kasim said.
"You have an hour and forty minutes for you and your team to make your way to the Great Mosque, observe the guards so you understand the procedures, then find the incoming guards, disable them and take their places. Can you do it?"
"It would seem we have no choice."
"This is all riding on you, Hali," Cabrillo said.
"I won't let you or my religion down," Kasim said.
"I'll finish briefing the CIA agent and send him on his way," Cabrillo said. "There's a car and driver waiting to take him to Mecca as we speak. He'll enter the Great Mosque at ten minutes after two if he doesn't hear gunfire."
"We'll be there," Kasim said.
The telephone went dead, and Kasim turned to his team. "Listen up," he said, "we have our orders."
CABRILLO TOOK THE sheets from the fax and quickly briefed the CIA agent. Once that was done, he boarded the shore boat with the agent for the ride across the water to the port of Jeddah. It was a pleasant night, seventy-five degrees with almost no breeze. The moon was waning and cast a pale glow on the water as the boat skimmed across the placid sea. The lights of the Akbar faded and the ones of Jeddah loomed larger.
AS SOON AS the Pepsi truck pulled up by the dune and honked, Perkins and the other two men in hiding peered over the dune, waited until there was no traffic coming down the road, then made their way to the road. Perkins's knee was heavily swollen and one of the men supported him as the other approached the truck.
"You here for us?" the man asked the driver.
"Hurry up and get in," the driver said, reaching across the cab and opening the passenger door.
Once the three men were situated, the driver spun around in a U-turn, then headed toward the lights of Mecca. Skirting the main part of the city on an expressway, he was two miles down the road to Jeddah before he spoke.
"You guys like the Eagles?" he asked as he slid a CD into the player.
The first cut on Hotel California began to play as they drove through the night.
* * *
AS SOON AS the shore boat reached land, the CIA agent climbed off and raced to a waiting Chevrolet Suburban. A minute later the Suburban spun off, throwing gravel from the rear tires as he raced away.
"What now brown cow?" one of the Florida mechanics who was piloting the shore boat asked.
"Now we back off and wait for a Pepsi truck," Cabrillo said.
The mechanic put the drive in reverse and started backing away. "So you men are Pepsi smugglers?" he asked.
"Is there a radio aboard?" Cabrillo asked.
The mechanic turned a dial on the dash. "What's your poison?"
"Find the news," Cabrillo said.
Cabrillo and the mechanic sat in the moonlight, bobbing in the bay.
A CHEVROLET SUBURBAN blew past the Pepsi truck headed in the opposite direction just as the driver exited off the main road onto the one to Jeddah's port. The driver steered down the road he was instructed to take, then pulled to a stop with the nose of the truck facing the sea. He flashed the lights three times, then waited.
A SHORT DISTANCE out in the water, the tiny red lights from the bow of a boat answered.
"Okay, men," the driver said, "I'm done here. There's a boat coming in to get you."
The first man climbed out of the cab and helped Perkins to the ground. Once the two men had stepped away from the cab, the last man climbed down.
"Thanks for the ride," he said, closing the door.
"I'll send you the bill," the driver shouted through the open window as he started his engine and backed out.
The three men made their way out to the edge of the water just as the Akbar's shore boat edged itself on land. Cabrillo slipped over the side and helped the three men aboard, then climbed back inside.
"Home, James," he said to the mechanic.
"How'd you know my name was James?" the mechanic asked, backing away from shore.
As soon as Perkins and his men were safely on board, Cabrillo ordered Joseph to begin steaming north up the coastline at high speed.
ON THE OREGON, Hanley was monitoring the various operations. It was just after 1 a.m. when the truck that had been dispatched to pick up Skutter and his men reported that they had left Medina and were racing toward Jeddah.
The distance was a little less than a hundred miles.
Barring any surprises, part two was almost completed.
Hanley reached for the phone and called Cabrillo.
"Jones met up with the group with the prayer rugs and all is well," he said. "They have been doused with antiviral agents, given clean clothes, and are now sleeping. Team two in Medina has completed their mission and is on their way toward you now. They should
be arriving in a few hours."
"They found explosives?" Cabrillo asked.
"Apparently enough to level the Prophet's Mosque," Hanley said. "They disabled them and left them in the tunnel. The CIA or someone will eventually need to handle that."
"Then it's all up to Kasim," Cabrillo said.
"So it seems."
AT THAT EXACT instant, Kasim and his team were approaching the mosque containing the Kaaba. Even being U.S. citizens did not provide the team much comfort—they were deep inside a foreign country whose capital punishment was beheading. And they were entering the holiest of the country's sites for a mission that could be easily mistaken for a terrorist action. The fourteen servicemen and Kasim were very conscious of that fact. One mistake, one misstep, and the entire operation would unravel.
* * *
AT THE SAME time Kasim was walking through one of the gates leading into the courtyard where the Kaaba was sheathed in cloth, a C-17A troop transport plane was lifting off the runway in Qatar. The Boeing-built jet, a replacement for the venerable Lockheed-Martin C-130 prop plane, could carry 102 troops or 169,000 pounds of cargo.
Designed to land on either short or rough dirt airfields, she was manned by a crew of three. The C-17A had a range of three thousand miles and tonight she would need that.
After leaving Qatar on the Persian Gulf, she was scheduled to fly out over the Gulf of Oman and into the Indian Ocean. There she would turn, fly over the Arabian Sea, into the Gulf of Adan, then through the gap between Yemen and Djibouti, Africa, and into the Red Sea. She would loiter there until called or released.
The C-17A was the ace everyone hoped they would not need to deal.
KASIM WALKED FARTHER inside the mosque, then he and four others hid off to the side and watched the guards walk through their routine from a distance. It seemed simple enough. Every five minutes the guards would walk from one corner to the next in a clockwise direction. The exaggerated steps they used looked simple enough to duplicate.