Cabrillo sat up in bed. “What’s the verdict?”
“He wants to do it all without Saudi cooperation,” Overholt said. “I’m sorry but that’s the only way we see this working.”
Cabrillo exhaled and the sound carried over the telephone line. “We have six days until the hajj, when two million pilgrims will be all over Mecca and Medina, and you want me to send a team inside for what?”
“First, you find Hickman,” Overholt said, “and determine the status of the meteorite—if he has switched it with Abraham’s Stone, you switch it back. Then you search al-Haram and al-Nabawi mosques and make sure they are not wired to blow during the hajj. Then you and your team get out of Saudi Arabia before anyone knows you’re there.”
“I hate to talk business when you are talking fantasy,” Cabrillo said, “but do you have any idea what this is going to cost the United States?”
“Eight figures?” Overholt guessed.
“Maybe nine,” Cabrillo said.
“So you can do it?”
“Maybe, but I’ll need all the resources of the Department of Defense and the entire intelligence community on our side.”
“You call,” Overholt said, “I’ll make sure they jump.”
Cabrillo hung up and dialed a number.
AN HOUR LATER, while Cabrillo was still back at the hotel showering, Hali Kasim walked out onto a runway in front of a hangar on the edge of the U.S. Air Force base in Qatar. Thirty-seven men were milling about—the entire number of Muslim U.S. military men from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to the continent of Africa. All had been flown in yesterday from their various postings on military jets to Qatar.
Not one man had been told why they were sent for.
“Gentlemen,” Kasim said, “form ranks.”
The men lined up and waited at parade rest. Kasim studied a sheet of paper.
He looked up and addressed the men. “My name is Hali Kasim. I served seven years in the United States Navy as a warrant officer W-4 in underwater demolition before joining the private sector. I have been recalled to active duty by presidential decree and given a field rank of commander for the purposes of this operation. According to my docket, the next highest ranking man here is a United States Air Force captain named William Skutter. Would Captain Skutter please step forward.”
A tall, thin black man dressed in a blue Air Force uniform took two steps forward.
“Captain Skutter,” Kasim said, “is my second in command. Please come over here next to me and face the troops.”
Skutter walked over and pivoted on his heel and stood alongside Kasim.
“Captain Skutter will be dividing you into teams according to your various service ranks in the next few hours,” Kasim said. “Right now I want to explain why each of you was selected to appear here today. First and foremost, all of you are United States military personnel; secondary and very important to this mission, each of you listed Islam as your religion on your military records. Is there anyone here who is now nota Muslim? If there is, please step forward.”
No one moved.
“Very good, gentlemen,” Kasim said, “we have a special operation we need you for. If you could follow me into the hangar, we have assembled chairs and a briefing area. Once you are all seated I will begin to explain.”
Kasim, followed by Skutter, walked toward the hangar.
The men filed behind. There was a series of blackboards surrounding a podium, several long folding tables with various weapons and devices displayed, a water cooler and several rows of black plastic folding chairs.
The men filed into their seats as Kasim and Skutter walked to the front.
49
EVEN IN Acountry as steeped in tradition as Saudi Arabia, the modern world has a way of intruding upon the past. The Prophet’s Mosque in Medina was one such example. A massive construction project initiated in 1985 and completed in 1992 expanded and updated the facilities. The area was enlarged fifteenfold to cover an area of nearly 1.8 million square feet. The additional space allows almost three-quarters of a million visitors to be in the site at the same time. Three new buildings were added, along with a massive courtyard built from marble and inlaid with geometric designs. Twenty-seven additional courtyards topped with intricate retractable domes now graced the skyline, along with two more large areas that are topped with six large mechanical umbrellas that could be opened or closed depending on the weather.
Six minarets, soaring 360 feet in the air, were constructed around the perimeter—each topped with giant brass crescents weighing nearly five tons. Ornate tiled and gold gilding were added to various areas, and spotlights and beacons illuminated the various architectural details.
The physical plants were completely reworked. Escalators were installed to move the pilgrims to the upper levels, and a gigantic air-conditioning system was built. The cooling system, one of the largest ever constructed, pumps seventeen thousand gallons per minute of chilled water through pipes that were tunneled in under the lower level.
The entire system is managed from a control center a little over four miles from the mosque.
The rebuilding of the Prophet’s Mosque and the additional construction around the Kaaba in Mecca were estimated to cost the Saudi Arabian government nearly $20 billion. The primary contractor for the massive construction project at the Prophet’s Mosque was a company owned by the family of Osama bin Ladin.
THE LEADER OF the Indian mercenaries stared at the diagrams again. Before he boarded the ship in Rabigh, Hickman had made it clear he wanted the tomb of Muhammad at the Prophet’s Mosque destroyed. The fact that bin Ladin had profited from the rebuilding galled him—Hickman wanted to erase the work from the planet.
A bonus of ten times their agreed-upon fee awaited the Hindus if they were successful.
They had been paid one million in gold so far—a king’s ransom in their own country. Even split up among twelve men it was enough for each of them to live out the rest of their days in comfort. The additional ten million they had been promised would make them utterly rich.
All they needed to do was make it to Medina and sneak into the underground tunnels where the chilled water pipes ran under the mosque, lay the charges where the diagram directed them, and make their way back to Rabigh, where Hickman had another ship waiting to transport them across the Red Sea to Port Sudan, Egypt.
There a jet would be waiting with the gold and several guards. They would pass the next three days in Port Sudan. Once the Prophet’s Mosque was destroyed on the morning of the tenth, the start of the hajj, the jet would fly them back to India with their gold. Performance before final payment was a lesson Hickman had learned decades before.
IF THERE IS one single key to a successful operation, that key is to never rely on a single system. The Desert One affair during the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980 had proved that doctrine. The president wanted to go in with the minimum number of helicopters, and once the first aircraft began to fail, the entire mission unraveled.
When faced with a question of having one weapon or one thousand, you should always go for the largest possible number. Systems fail, bombs can be duds, and weapons jam.
Both Kasim and Skutter were aware of this fact.
“Sir, the primary threat right now is the shipping containers in Riyadh,” Skutter said. “You have already verified that they were delivered. And as soon as they are opened—which has to be sometime before the start of the hajj, which we believe everything else keys off—this entire operation could fall apart.”
“The first case of viral poisoning and Saudi Arabia will clamp down on everything,” Kasim agreed.
The two men were standing in front of a map tacked to a bulletin board in the hangar. On a table nearby were stacks of Qatari passports and pilgrim documents for Kasim and each of the thirty-seven team members. The emir’s government officials had been working on them all night. Because they were real and not forgeries, they would withstand any inspection by Saudi authorities. Since Saudi visas were usually given to Qatari nationals without question, the men now had a way to gain access to the kingdom.