There was a quiet knock on the door and he walked to it, keeping a hand near a holster strapped over his shirt. The two Saudi men on the other side matched the photos he’d been given and he let them in, pointing to a large toolbox in the corner. One of them apparently spoke English, but there was no need for conversation. They had been fully briefed on the operation’s protocols and already possessed the GPS that would lead them to the place where they were to detonate the bomb-in their case, a nondescript and uninhabited swath of desert more than six hundred kilometers to the southwest.
In the unlikely event that they were stopped by authorities, they would be indistinguishable from the myriad Aramco geologists exploring the area for new drill sites. Authorities would never think to examine the toolbox thoroughly enough to find its false bottom. If they did, though, they would find a powerful C-4 charge next to a container full of Pakistani fissile material. And be rewarded with a bullet in the back of the head.
“May Allah smile on you,” Azarov said as they hefted the toolbox and started back to the door. One nodded his understanding and Azarov closed the door behind them.
Both men would happily die for the bizarre illusion that God cared about their brutal and pointless enterprise. That the creator of biology and the laws of physics was reliant on humans to enforce His archaic laws. If God did exist, Azarov was confident that mankind lived and died outside His gaze.
Reminding himself that philosophizing about the Almighty had little bearing on his survival over the next twenty-four hours, Azarov unwrapped a medium-size package that had been delivered just over an hour ago. The detonator inside was designed to his specifications by an eminently reliable Spaniard with whom he had worked in the past.
Kneeling next to another of the toolboxes lined up along the wall, he removed the false bottom and looked down at the explosive charge inside. The detonator connected to it didn’t look substantially different than the one in his hands, and maybe it wasn’t.
It was possible that Krupin was telling the truth; that the men Azarov was to lead into the desert would activate the bomb only after he reached a safe distance. It was a longer leap of faith than he was willing to take, though.
After replacing the existing detonator with his own, he went to his phone and replaced the software Krupin’s people had installed with an application created by his Spanish associate.
Azarov watched it go through its diagnostic cycle, locating the detonator and confirming that all systems were functional. When he had green lights in all categories, he shut down the app and replaced the box’s false bottom.
He had considered sending the Russian-made detonator to Madrid for examination, but then decided there would be no profit in it. Whether Krupin intended for him to die in this operation or not was of no importance. He had no intention of doing so. Should the Russian president attempt to press the matter, Azarov would deal with him in the same way he had dealt with so many others.
CHAPTER 49
NORTHEAST OF RIYADH
SAUDI ARABIA
THE sun was up, but visibility was only about a hundred yards due to the swirling sand. The SUV Rapp was driving had been modified to handle the terrain but was still struggling where the unpaved roadbed had softened or drifted over.
They’d crossed into Saudi Arabia about five hours ago at a checkpoint manned by guards sympathetic to ISIS’s mission. Rapp’s best guess was that they were now somewhere east of Hafar Al-Batin, headed south.
He glanced in the rearview mirror at the four men crammed into the backseat and then at the man next to him-Mihran. Rapp hadn’t caught the names of the others and it was hard to ask because he assumed that Eric Jesem had trained with them at the girls’ school. In fact, he was fairly certain that the one sitting directly behind him had been there the night he’d attacked the facility.
“I’m losing the road,” Rapp said in English.
“Shut up and keep going straight,” Mihran responded. He was staring at the screen of a Toughbook attached to a satellite link.
“It would help if I had a sense of where I’m going,” Rapp probed.
“You’re going south, idiot! Now find the road again and drive on it.”
It was clear that he and Mihran were never going to be friends. The man had been clear from the beginning that he despised Americans-even radicalized ones. And while he spoke English quite well, he seemed embarrassed by the fact. His education at the hands of a “godless British female” had been forced on him by moderate Muslim parents and he was determined to make the world pay.
“The weapons reached al-Hofuf and are in the process of being distributed,” Mihran said, switching to Arabic in an unsuccessful effort to isolate Rapp. “The operation has begun.”
Excited conversation erupted in the backseat but Mihran quickly put a stop to it. “We will continue for another half hour and then hold and wait to see if we’re needed. Pray to Allah that we are not.”
“What’s happening?” Rapp asked, as would be expected.
“Drive the car. Don’t speak again unless I address you directly.”
Rapp nodded submissively. It looked like Irene and her people had guessed right. If he had to put money down, he’d bet that they smuggled the weapons up the Gulf in a dhow. After landing it on an uninhabited beach, they’d transport them by truck to al-Hofuf, which would put them within striking distance of the Saudi’s most productive oil fields.
Rapp glanced over at the computer on Mihran’s lap and saw their position marked in red on an empty section of map. More interesting was a similar dot moving southwest from al-Hofuf. He assumed that it depicted the position of one of the primary teams.
It was something he hadn’t considered and he mentally kicked himself for the lapse. His initial reaction had been to try to convince the Iraqi general to put him on one of the attack teams, but now he realized that would have been a fatal mistake. If Krupin was behind this, he’d keep everyone on a need-to-know basis. No individual team would be aware of the status or destination of the other teams. That kind of secrecy wasn’t possible for the backup, though. They would need a view of the entire game board.
“Go left here,” Mihran said, pointing through the windshield at a barely visible fork in the dirt road. Rapp did as he was told and they soon arrived at a cliff band tall enough that the top disappeared into the dusty air.
“Pull in.”
Rapp gunned the vehicle into a hollowed-out section of rock probably thirty feet deep and the sound of sand blasting the paint off the vehicle’s exterior subsided.
They all piled out, Mihran immediately taking his laptop to the mouth of the shallow cave in order to maintain satellite reception. The others went around to the rear gate to get water. Three grabbed bottles and went for the cliff wall to maximize shelter from the wind. The fourth grabbed the last water jug and put it to his lips, taking a long pull before replacing the cap. Rapp pointed, but the young man just pulled back with a cruel smile.
He was probably no more than eighteen, with a scrawny body and scraggly beard. He’d obviously picked up on Mihran’s dislike for their American comrade and was going to take a run at asserting a little authority of his own.
Rapp pretended to search the back of the vehicle for more water, but was really taking stock of what was there: primarily a zipped bag of weapons and a well-thought-out assortment of replacement engine parts. Food was minimal, suggesting that the operation wasn’t expected to go on for long. Other than that, there was little more than a couple of five-gallon gas cans and some wooden stakes in case they needed to use the winch to pull themselves out of the sand.