“We’re here to help,” Thoreau put in, “and for the duration. So why don’t you two brains get started?”
Suddenly, Beck remembered Slick telling him that if not for Thoreau, Slick would have killed him on the plane after Beck’s intransigence had led to the deaths of Jesse and Yael.
And yet he didn’t feel betrayed, or even nervous: there were all kinds of courage, and there were moments ahead in which he might well lose his nerve.
It was nice to know that Rafic and his boys were there to make sure that the job got done.
“Well, Sam, come on then, don’t let them intimidate you.” Beck bared his teeth and leveled his best stare at Nye, who was standing very still and breathing shallowly. “Time to get to work.”
It took an hour and a half to make sure everything was ready and all systems go. Intermittently Beck thought about Chris Patrick, his wife and kids, and the casualties from Ashmead’s team. But it didn’t hurt his concentration—it may have helped it.
Finally Beck said, “Well, Sam, I think that’s got it.”
“Me, too,” said Nye, “and just in time. I don’t know about you, but I’ve about had it. Go ahead, Marc—push the button.”
Beck, too, was feeling queasy from the heat, queasy enough that when the lights flickered, he wasn’t sure if they really had or if it was eyestrain. Surges wouldn’t bother this system, which had a backup emergency supply, but when it went down, it would be down for good.
“Ashmead?” Beck asked. “Thoreau? Slick?”
Only Ashmead answered: “Give it your best shot, Beck.”
Slick had his head on his arm, slumped over a nonoperational console and Thoreau, on the floor with his back against the wall and the M-10 balanced on his updrawn knees, didn’t open his eyes.
Beck tapped the “run” button on the mainframe computer before him and saw his reflection staring back at him. He gave it a thumbs-up.
Then the lights went out.
Book Three:
COVERT ACTION
Chapter 1
The Saudi fondness for preformed concrete had made Riyadh a study in architectural culture clash exceeded nowhere in the Middle East.
Through the window of his high-rise Riyadh Marriott Hotel room, Ashmead watched the Cadillacs, gleaming in the evening streetlights, cruise by and waited for the phone to ring.
The connecting door to Slick’s room was open and Ashmead’s deputy, in a show of optimism, had finished laying out their operations gear and was changing into his black fireproof jumpsuit which was padded with neoprene at the elbows, shoulders and knees and tailored to fit without binding over his lightweight kevlar body armor.
The sun had set without bringing the telephone call that Ashmead was expecting. He was beginning to worry it might never come—or come bearing the wrong message.
Anything could go wrong, and something usually did: Yael’s informants might be in error and the Islamic Jihad’s martyrs might never show up in the hotel lobby to check in one floor below; Zaki’s agents might have swallowed Iranian/Palestinian/Libyan disinformation whole and thus misdirected Ashmead’s team to the wrong city, the wrong airport, or even the wrong terrorists: the Libyans, at least, were getting better at tradecraft—the holy warriors his people were running to ground might be decoys carrying a suitcase loaded with lead bars and not the bomb.
One thing Ashmead was sure of: there was a bomb and there was a terrorist operation in progress that could change the face of the world, kick off a Gulf spasm war of hideous proportions, or even trigger a nuclear exchange. The fact that these risks were unacceptable to Langley and Ashmead’s Stateside superiors in the National Intelligence Tasking office gave the Islamic Jihad a peculiar advantage upon which the Libyans certainly were counting. A successful nuking of Home Plate would tempt the US to retaliate against the nations involved—Libya and Iran, at least, since Palestine was wherever the exiles hung their AKs—and no American strategic analyst at home in McLean or field collector from Defense or State on-site could bring himself to believe that the budding Pan-Islamic front would risk nuclear annihilation by an aroused superpower.
But the desk boys didn’t understand what martyrdom meant to the Muslims, except perhaps for Marc Beck, who was on the other side of a very high interagency fence but might just be Ashmead’s best hope. Beck had the balls to go against the consensus and the clout to override Stateside qualms about taking action which wouldn’t long remain covert, and taking it in a Gulf State.
Whether or not they got a go order, whether or not their information was correct, they were already inserted and Ashmead was pulling every string his puppeteers could hand him to make sure that if such an order was forthcoming, no Islamic Jihad members commandeered that jumbo bound for Washington International.
Slick, somewhere behind Ashmead, cleared his throat.
The Covert Action Chief turned and regarded his deputy: Slick had donned a thobe—the white, full-length Saudi shirt—which hid his black jumpsuit the way dark glasses hid his pale eyes and a red-and-white Saudi ghutra-and-aghal headdress covered his Western-cut hair. With his bearded chin and his deep tan, Slick would do, even if he had to carry on a conversation: even Ashmead’s sister had been fooled by Slick’s Omani-accented Arabic.
Slick said, “Salaam, Hajji,” soberly; then in English: “I’m going to go check the car again.”
Hajji meant pilgrim and it was Ashmead’s code name for the operation. Slick wanted to check the Mercedes in the garage because it was in the garage, where anyone might slap a load of plastique up against the shocks or jimmy the locking gas cap to put any of a number of detonating devices in its gas tank. Slick had just returned from checking the bugs and passive surveillance equipment ready to monitor whatever might occur in the Islamic Jihad’s suite directly below: since they hadn’t been able to determine whether the bomb was radio detonated, they’d had to make sure that none of their own devices could trigger it.
What no one wanted, and what Ashmead had had to promise his brother-in-law—Turki ibn Abdul Aziz, head of the Saudi Secret Police—there would not be, was a nuclear explosion in the middle of Riyadh.
“Wait until we get a go or a no-go, Slick; I don’t want to be sitting here wondering where the fuck you are.”
“A no-go? You still think they’ll pass? After everything we went through to get those heat and radiation signature detectors up and running? And calling in the Saudi National Guard? And the can-opener?” The “can-opener” could peel back the metal of an aircraft like a sardine can.
“Don’t know, Slick.” Ashmead switched to Arabic, telling Slick that the ghazzu—raid—would take place or not, Insh’allah—as God wills; that the Ikhwan—brothers of the army, in this case the Saudi National Guard’s anti-terrorist squad—were ready, and so was the team.
Just then the phone rang, and Ashmead gestured in its direction.
Slick went to answer it, leaving Ashmead with his thoughts once again. It had been less than ten years since a Saudi princess and her unacceptable lover were marched, tranquilized, into a square and publicly beheaded. Ashmead had been there, with his sister and Turki. The veneer of civilization here was still perilously thin; anything could happen. Turki was trying his best to help Ashmead with this operation—not only were they brothers-in-law, but Ashmead had been pivotal to the negotiations that facilitated the training and equipping of the Saudi National Guard by a private American company in California with ties to the Agency. So Turki owed him one, but could easily be overruled by others higher in the House of Saud—there were too many members of the royal family in Riyadh to evacuate while maintaining security, and most of those wanted assurances Ashmead couldn’t give that the bomb wouldn’t explode within their territorial borders.