“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.