Like the members of the Green Legion, Carter was outfitted in camouflage-pattern combat fatigues, black jump boots, and a black beret. Like them, his face was carbon-blacked for added cover.
Two hours earlier, the unit began infiltrating enemy territory, taking great pains to avoid discovery. The complex mechanical environment of derricks, pumps, pipes, and storage tanks provided excellent cover.
Sentries and pickets were disposed of via the knife, the crossbow, and the garrote.
The commandos moved like ghostly shadows from one place of concealment to the next, closing in on the compound. Pumps and recirculators chugged away, drowning the sound of their approach. The compound was noisy with idling trucks, busy hoists, and the hectic pace of loading the weapons crates.
The vaulting equipment shed's twin slablike doors were swung wide open, its barnlike interior ablaze with light that spilled into the compound. It was the buzzing heart of this wasp's nest.
A railroad spur circled its solid real wall, curving around it and the rest of the compound. Loading docks fronted the tracks. Set atop the concrete platforms were long flat-roofed warehouses. They formed a high wall running the full length of the compound's northern perimeter.
Stationed in position, stretched prone atop the rectangular warehouse roof, were twenty-five Green Legion sharpshooters. Carter brought the count up to twenty-six.
The high roof provided a clear field of fire encompassing all the compound and most of the hangar's enormous interior. The marksmen had the subversives in a lethal shooting gallery.
The other half of the commando unit was deploying on the opposite, southern side. That area was a jumble of storage tanks and towers, supplying plenty of vantage points for snipers.
Carter estimated that the compound held about two hundred subversives. When zero hour began, they would be caught in a murderous crossfire.
Down there, forklifts ferried crates to the backs of trucks, where gangs of sweating men piled them in. Cocky gunmen paraded about, flaunting their weapons, disdaining the manual labor.
How soon before the dead sentries were discovered?
When would zero hour commence?
Carter peered through high nightscope, its high-intensity light-collecting lens turning night into gray phosphor twilight.
There was Reguiba!
There was no mistaking him. Carter could have picked him out even without the special scope. His distinctive all-black clothes, lofty height, and arrogant stride were unmistakable.
Entourage in tow, Reguiba crossed the compound, entering the motor pool hangar. Carter felt as if he could sweat blood, he was so frustrated. If Reguiba went too deep into the hangar, he would unknowingly remove himself from the line of fire.
No. Reguiba paused at the threshold, engaged in some kind of confrontation with two other men who had hailed him and hurried to him. An argument, judging by the wild gestures made by the pair of newcomers. They looked as agitated as Reguiba was cool.
Prince Hasan consulted his watch, whispering, "Any second now…"
Carter made a minute adjustment on the sights, clarifying the target picture. Cross hairs centered on Reguiba's torso. Carter wouldn't even need to hit a vital organ to finish Reguiba. The rifle had such high velocity and penetrating power, that even tagging a limb would prove fatal to the target, swatting him down with massive pressure.
Ranged around Reguiba was his inner circle, a choice crew of misfits who held no interest for Carter. The head man was his target for tonight.
An excited character dashed into the compound, shouting and waving his arms. His words were inaudible, his alarm unmistakable. Unease stiffened the compound crew, who halted work to see what it was all about.
Somewhere in the tangled machinery bordering the compound's south perimeter, a flare gun fired a starburst shell. The missile climbed a parabolic arc, exploding in a hissing red fireball over the compound.
Zero hour was now.
Carter didn't even think about hitting the target. His concentration was far deeper than that. He was the target, identifying with it in almost a Zenlike state.
Letting out half his breath, utterly calm, he squeezed the trigger, firing the shot that would close out Reguiba's file in AXE's supercomputers.
Twenty-five rifles fired almost simultaneously with his, each sharpshooter taking out a different human target. It was doubled by a second crackling burst erupting from the rifles of the other half of the unit, opening fire from the south.
Total pandemonium broke out in the compound.
Prince Hasan targeted the driver of a truck that was idling at the front gate. The slug passed through the windshield and through the driver's chest. He bounced back off his seat and fell forward across the steering wheel, leaning on the horn, which blared nonstop, a brassy note among the percussive reports of the shooting.
Better yet, the truck now blocked the gate, obstructing that avenue of escape.
The flare's red light was the color that would do the least damage to the sharpshooters' night vision. Muzzle flares winked from roofs, towers, and other high points as marksmen picked off their targets.
A hailstorm of lead mowed down the radicals. They were in a blind panic, darting here and there, not knowing who or where to shoot, bewildered by all the bullets flying from what seemed like everywhere. Some fired their weapons off into empty air, merely to be doing something. Others who survived the initial onslaught dove for what little cover there was, huddling under trucks and behind crates.
Clamor in the east and west indicated that the Home Guard companies were on the move, charging hard. Powerful searchlights stabbed into the compound, throwing the scene of slaughter into high, harsh relief.
The militants spun, danced, whirled, died. No living thing could long survive the murderous fusillade. This was no battle; it was a mass execution. A total rout. By the time the Home Guard came on the scene, there would be little for them to do but count the bodies.
Carter felt like hell.
Reguiba was still alive.
"He who pays the piper calls the tune."
Reguiba didn't see it that way. Not surprising, since he was the piper in question. Sadegh Sassani and Nuri Shamzeri did. They served as the eyes and ears of the paymasters of Militant Islam. Needless to say, the difference of opinion generated plenty of friction in the short time in which Reguiba had been saddled with the young Iranian overseers.
Sassani was young, tough, pious, intolerant, unbending. Shamzeri, a Koranic scholar, was more intellectual and philosophical, though no less unbending. A hundred times a day, ever since they had all come down to Al Khobaiq on the same plane, Reguiba heartily wished he were rid of the irritating pair.
The Supreme Council of Militant Islam sent Sadegh Sassani and Nuri Shamzeri to see how their money was being spent. Thus far, Operation Ifrit was less than a howling success. The Al Khobaiq component of the action was of particular importance to the Iranians.
On paper, the plan sounded plausible. Those Saudi puppets, the Jalubi, were a fractional minority dominating the Shiite masses thanks to their ferocious Bedouin Home Guard. Arm the masses, raise the call to revolt, and smash the emir and his royal family.
Sassani grudgingly admitted that Reguiba had established a pipeline for the vast quantities of weapons bought from the Soviets by Militant Islam. Disguised as pipes, drill bits, and other implements of the petroleum trade, the crated weapons were off-loaded at the port, then distributed by divers and sundry means to the would-be rebels. A large quantity of them was sent via railroad to the oil fields, to be used for the great uprising.
Sassani was skeptical. In truth, it seemed that his Khobaiqi brethren were less than eager for glorious martyrdom. Oh, they were more than willing to take as many weapons as they could get, but who wouldn't be? But as for using them to depose the emir and install a fundamentalist Koranic regime, they lacked that all-important holy fire, and seemed more than content to continue the status quo.