General Zhu Chi stiffened. “To be clear, comrade. We should consider actually capturing the Saudi oil fields?”
“Just consider all options, comrade general. The UN could be a useful ploy to delay a countermove by Washington. It should not ultimately determine our decision.”
“Then I shall leave you now, comrade, and order the planning staff to start working on possibilities.”
They bowed slightly to each other, and the general headed back to the elevator. As it descended, he found his handkerchief and mopped his brow. General Zhu had 2.3 million men under arms in the PLA, a total military head count of seven million people, and could get uncounted millions more if needed. He had a generous budget and could also get more money, if needed. Somewhere in the matrix had to be an answer that might stop short of World War III. The first need was to put some new eyes on the ground.
23
JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA
A LLAHU AKBAR! G OD IS Great! Mohammed Abu Ebara allowed the small metal chain to trickle through his fingers like a child’s toy, and then lifted it to eye level and examined its only ornament, a long-bladed key.
It was part of the contents of an envelope that was hand-delivered to him by an excited imam who had personally sped down from Riyadh to explain the magnificent gift from God.
“The material was entrusted to me by Vice Sergeant Mas’ud Mohammed al-Kazaz, our martyr who eliminated the heretic who commanded the Saudi Royal Guard Regiment.” The imam was nervous and afraid in the presence of the powerful leader of the Religious Police. He fished in an envelope and handed over a scarlet red card of thick plastic, stamped with a string of black letters and numbers.
The imam bowed his head in reverence. “The vice-sergeant confided that the items now in your hands are the codes and key needed to launch a missile carrying a nuclear warhead. The missile is at the base.”
Ebara wanted to shout in glee, but reined his emotions in tightly to show no weakness to the lesser religious figure. Inside his chest, his heart was beginning to soar. A nuclear weapon!
“Anything more?”
“Yes. This book.” It was a slim volume with a red stripe across the cover and the seal of the House of Saud. “It contains top secret military documents and I took the liberty of reading it on the trip down here, in order to spare you valuable time.”
“What does it say?” Ebara let the book rest on a small table and did not touch it. To even extend a hand might display his eagerness and the imam might think him weak.
“Although I am not a military expert, my reading of the material indicates that it contains the locations of five nuclear missiles within the kingdom, and instructions for computers, such as pre-set latitude and longitude positions of possible targets.”
“Humnh,” Ebara grunted, then sucked in a deep breath. “You have done well, my brother. Leave this with me and return immediately to Riyadh. Tell no one of what we have been given. Your loyalty and alertness will be amply rewarded when the rebellion is concluded.”
The imam stood and bowed. “Allahu akbar!”
“The peace of the Prophet, praise be unto him, remain with you,” Ebara replied.
WHEN THE OTHER MAN left, Ebara remained alone in the dimness of a large room in his mosque and let his thoughts weigh what was before him. Nuclear weaponry. This changes everything!
He was a tall and gaunt man, whose robes hung loose around his bony frame. Thick black eyebrows met atop a long nose. The mouth seldom smiled behind the long beard. He had risen swiftly through the ranks of the Religious Police with his unforgiving view of the world as an evil place and his patchwork philosophy of violence that he could trace to specific parts of the Koran.
Through years of behind-the-scenes maneuvering, he had taken control of the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, and wore the trademark red headpiece with great pride. Ambition, hard work, and a single-minded dedication to power had paid off. Now he was at a peak of power, a place in which he could do no wrong simply because he was the one doing it.
When the mysterious outsiders had come quietly shopping for an accomplice who might be installed to head a new government for Saudi Arabia, Ebara had been a natural choice. He was, by careful stages, outraged at the idea at first, then reluctant, and eventually, a full participant. In exchange, he had become extremely rich.
The goals of the plotters had been mutual. A coup to displace the House of Saud with a stringent, theology-based government and a shift in the control of the petroleum production facilities. Ebara would become even more feared and ever more powerful.
His only direct contact with the outside was with a German banker, Dieter Nesch. Through him, a message could be relayed to the president of Russia, who was funding the overthrow of the king. Ebara played with the key and the card and the book, thinking about the situation. The balance of power had tilted as suddenly as shifting sand in a storm, and Ebara, after all, was still a Saudi. Bargaining was part of his blood. The new weapons meant new negotiations. He could remain the visible head of the rebellion and ratchet up the pressure and the rhetoric, as outlined in the original plan, but more money could now be demanded, and more control must come to him in the eventual takeover of the oil business.
The Russian should pay dearly for a workable cache of nuclear weapons already in place in Saudi Arabia.
Still, Ebara knew nothing about nuclear bombs and such. He had not been recruiting scientists, since they were part of the intelligentsia that he had been targeting and persecuting for being in league with the current regime. The military still was unreliable, so those officers could not be trusted. Might some foreign scientists be hired to make these things work? No, it would take too long and tempt foreign rivals to enter the fray.
Dieter Nesch was the one who funneled the money from Moscow that was making things happen, and it was Nesch who had personally found the terrorist known as Juba to run the tactical portions of the rebellion. So far, Juba had done a brilliant job. That was the answer. Juba would know how to use the missiles.
Ebara shouted, and a young servant appeared. The boy was instructed to go immediately to the seaside villa of the European businessman and escort him back to the mosque for a private meeting. No topic was given. Just tell him to hurry.
To impose a savage control on this new situation, Ebara would order Dieter Nesch to immediately get the terrorist genius to emerge from hiding, fly into Saudi Arabia, and take direct control of the nuclear arsenal. He would work directly for Ebara. No one else.
24
KHOBZ, SAUDI ARABIA
KYLE SWANSON INVADED SAUDI Arabia all by himself, scrunched in a window seat on an ancient King Air 90 twin-engine turboprop that was grinding its way south down the coast of the Arabian Gulf over the one hundred kilometers from Kuwait to the oil patch semiautonomous city of al-Khobz. His documents identified him as a specialist in fiber optic sensor security systems and stated that he was on contract with a company within the massive al-Khobz Joint Operations petroleum complex.
The cream-colored plane was flying just out over the shoreline and Kyle watched as oil rigs, boats, piers and pipelines, storage tanks, and support facilities passed below the wing. There was a long, curving beach at the eastern edge of a cluttered city. At the western edge, bleached raw desert extended all the way to the horizon. Somewhere in between those borders, a nuclear-tipped missile was hidden. Kyle’s job was to find and destroy it.