by Ward Larsen
In that moment, Abdullah was content. Two dozen of his best men were doing their best to stay in the shadows. No more were required here, yet that would soon change. For the next five days, he would be responsible for the security of the royal family in its entirety as they gathered for the first time in a foreign land. Sixty-seven principals in all: the highest-ranking princes, government ministers, and corporate titans of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
He returned to the quiet security center behind the cockpit, lamenting what he would face in the days ahead. Nine hundred more of his men were already in place, and nearly as many Moroccan police. There would be countless servants, contractors, and guests from outside the family to screen. The workload would be crushing.
As he pondered it all, it never occurred to Abdullah that for the next five hours the very core of what he was charged with protecting—the House of Saud in nearly its entirety—was assembled in one confined space.
A thin-skinned steel tube.
Traveling miles above the earth.
At five hundred miles an hour.
* * *
“Where are the stars, Mommy?” Davy asked.
Christine tilted her head to one side as she considered it. Sunrise was still two hours away. She looked up at Rome’s light-washed night sky and considered how to put it. “They’re still there, honey. You just can’t see them right now.”
“Why not?”
“There’s too much light.”
He stared up with her, pondering, and she realized how perplexing it must seem.
Davy had awakened twenty minutes earlier with a bad dream. In his father’s absence, Christine had already moved his daybed next to her own. She’d brought him close and held him for a time. After the tiny shudders subsided, she’d taken him outside onto the patio, where a surprised Nick and another man adjusted their perimeter without comment.
Together with her son she stared up at the milky black sky, and soon Davy’s breathing turned rhythmic in the crook of her arm. With an appreciative smile to Nick, she lifted her son carefully and carried him inside. He was soon sleeping soundly, his terrors forgotten.
If only it were so easy for the rest of us, she thought.
As she turned to her bed, Christine realized she’d forgotten to take the burner phone David had given her outside: during the last twenty minutes, and for the first time since he’d left, it had been out of earshot. She checked the call log and saw nothing.
Settling on the bed, she wondered where he was at that moment. What country or time zone. She wished desperately she could do something to help him. She weighed hanging out at the embassy command post, much as she’d done when he was in the Red Sea, but decided that was no longer an option. Her admittance then had been Sorensen’s doing, and she’d gone to Riyadh.
Out of ideas, Christine closed her eyes and hoped for sleep.
Knowing it wouldn’t come.
SIXTY-ONE
Slaton eased off the power, and the big bike coasted downhill for the final half mile. He’d reached the coast quickly, no traffic whatsoever in the predawn hours. The sun remained no more than a dim prospect beyond the low eastern hills.
The main coast road lay a mile from the jutting promontory of rock that was his objective. This worked to Slaton’s benefit, as his final approach had to be on foot. He idled past two driveways that led to villas, and then a long-abandoned service road that was probably a remnant of the main road’s construction. He remembered all three sidings from the photographs.
Slaton’s strategy for the morning was based on two sequential assumptions. First was that the light-colored box he’d seen in the surveillance image of the cliffs had been placed there by the killer—most likely the targeting system for the long-range gun. The second assumption was an extension of the first: if it was the targeting unit, then it had been prepositioned for a reason. Action was imminent.
Slaton gave the entire scenario a fifty-fifty chance of playing out. Not the best odds he’d ever had, but in that moment he felt he was closing in on the assassin. He was also driven by the perishable nature of his assumptions: if Ovechkin were to be eliminated, there was no telling where, or even if, the shooter would ever surface again.
On waking two hours ago, Slaton had tried for updates using his Langley-issued phone. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to make a connection. It might have been a problem with the handset, or perhaps satellite coverage was erratic in this far-flung corner of Africa. As much as he wanted fresh intel, he couldn’t afford to wait until the orbital gods were smiling. He’d briefly weighed using his burner phone, but decided to keep it in reserve.
After correlating the terrain before him with the reconnaissance image he’d memorized—the two always held subtle differences—he doubled back and rode down the service road. Slaton descended a modestly steep grade for a hundred yards. He then steered off the road and across hardpan earth until the BMW was well out of sight. He stood up the bike, broke a leafy branch from a tree, and dusted away the most obvious tracks. Fortunately, there hadn’t been any recent rain—the big bike would have left deep ruts on softer ground.
From the saddlebags he removed the canvas bag. Slaton took off his loose outer shirt, donned the body armor, then shrugged the shirt back on with a much tighter fit. The spare magazine for the UMP went into the thigh pocket of his cargo pants. He considered keeping the gun in the canvas bag for the sake of discretion, but decided against it. This stretch of coastline was exceedingly remote, and the chance of encountering hikers or beachcombers at this hour seemed nonexistent. Far more likely: a surprise encounter with someone like himself. With one last check of the gun, he fitted its three-point sling to put the weapon across his chest for a right-handed grip.
He set out downhill, paralleling the service road for a time. In his back pocket was the folded “big-picture” overhead photo Smith had provided. Slaton didn’t expect to use it, having spent twenty minutes this morning memorizing every gulley, outcropping, and tree line along this narrow section of coast. He knew precisely how he would approach the cliffs. Where to conceal himself once he got there. Where his eyes would be trained.
The only question: Would the Russian come?
* * *
Tikhonov was driving the command truck, his massive frame suited perfectly to the wide trucker’s seat. “Where is the turnoff?” he asked.
Zhukov was next to him in the passenger seat. He referenced a map on his phone and compared it to the scene outside. “We are almost there, less than a kilometer to go.”
The phone was dead-on—a gravel side road soon appeared, and Tikhonov slowed and made the turn. Just ahead they both saw a thin chain strung between two poles, a halfhearted attempt to discourage access. Tikhonov brought the truck to a stop. He stared at the chain, then stole a glance at the colonel.
Zhukov waved his hand forward.
Tikhonov shifted into first gear and accelerated, the massive truck snapping the chain like a ribbon at a finish line.
“The grade is steep ahead,” Zhukov said, “but I walked all the way to the top on my survey—it shouldn’t be a problem.”
The climb took ten minutes. The grade was indeed steep, and a few hairpin turns demanded caution. On reaching the top both paused to take in the scene. It could hardly be called a mountain—not after a night spent negotiating the High Atlas Range—but it was without question the highest point within miles. Which, of course, was why they were here.
“You didn’t mention those,” said Tikhonov. He pointed to a nearby clearing where a pair of modest antennas stood like steel sentinels.
“Are they a problem?” Zhukov asked.
“It depends. If they use a common bandwidth we could have inference in our signals. Chances are, they’re only mobile communications relays—those operate on a different frequency than our equipment.”
“How can we know for certain?”
The engineer shrugged. “We turn everything on and see if it works.”
He
guided the truck onto a patch of asphalt between the two antennas, the place where maintenance teams probably parked once or twice a year. With the nearest of the aerials fifty feet away, he set the parking brake and turned off the engine.
For a moment the two men simply looked out over the water. To the north a belt of rocky cliffs arced out toward the sea, and long-winged birds rode effortlessly on the updrafts. To the left, half a mile distant and hundreds of feet lower, was the villa where Ovechkin had taken up residence. Zhukov had wanted to simply park there, thinking it more secure, but Tikhonov convinced him that elevation was necessary to ensure signal integrity.
“Yes,” Tikhonov said, having only seen the place on a map. “This will do nicely.”
“It had better. There’s not much time. Do what you need to do.” Zhukov got out of the cab, and was soon pacing along a gravel siding with his phone to his ear.
Tikhonov cranked up both generators, then went in back and began powering up the vital systems. Computers whirred to life, circuits energizing and fans spinning up. The antenna array on the truck’s roof went through an extensive self-test sequence. It took twenty minutes to get everything up to speed, and Tikhonov saw no faults in the system.
As screens came to life at the control station, he programmed the sat-comm handset Zhukov had provided with the correct log-on settings. That done, he sat back and waited.
Waited for the arrival of an order that would change his life forever.
* * *
One hundred miles distant, on the darkened ramp of the RosAvia complex, the Russian named Ivan glanced at his watch. It was almost time.
He watched the MiG get towed from the hangar, less interested in the aircraft than the two men pulling it—one drove the pushback tug, and the other sat in the MiG’s cockpit, presumably to operate the brakes if an emergency stop was necessary. There were six other men in the hangar, three in the office, and two near the runway—the last pair seated on the roof of a ridiculous van with an umbrella on top. It was all precisely as he’d been told. Thirteen workers in all, six Russian technicians and seven locals. All were busy this morning, preparing for a mission that none of them realized would be the last for this RosAvia outpost.
The tug stopped near the end of the runway, and the two men went to work. One removed the tow bar that connected the tug to the fighter, and the other began pulling safety pins from the landing gear. That done, they mounted the tug together, drove to a nearby taxiway, and parked. As they settled in to wait, the soothing light of dawn began painting the horizon.
Ivan looked again at his watch. 0635 hours.
It was time.
The small backpack was in his left hand. He unzipped it, put his right hand inside, and walked purposefully toward the office.
SIXTY-TWO
Someone did come to the cliffs along the peninsula. Whether it was the Russian, Slaton couldn’t tell.
He’d been waiting over an hour, and was repositioning into shadows as the sun topped the hills, when a flash of distant motion made him freeze. The first thing he noticed was a handful of terns scattering from the rock wall that rose above the rocky beach. Slaton shifted the binoculars on the area, and distinguished regular flickers of motion inside the tree line at the crest of the ridge. A figure wearing dark clothes was weaving toward the peninsula. Not slow, not fast. A carefree man in no hurry. Or a purposeful one being methodical.
Slaton watched for a full minute, at which point he was confident it was a man, based on build and gait. He was dressed in earth tone clothing and a black stocking cap, and moved in a way Slaton recognized: on a deliberate path that kept within the heaviest foliage and below the top of the ridgeline. He veered left and right, whatever it took to remain concealed, yet it was clear where the greater course was taking him: to the high rocky point.
What sealed it for Slaton was a single glimpse caught in a clearing between a pair of tall trees. On the man’s far shoulder was a soft case hanging by a strap, long and thin, roughly two-thirds the length of his body. Having carried such packages before, Slaton knew precisely what it was. A gun case, sized for a long-range rifle. Like a Barrett fifty cal. Almost everything Slaton saw fit perfectly with the scenario he’d been building.
Almost.
There was, however, one disconnect, and it gnawed at him. He knew precisely where the assassin’s villa was located, the tiny cottage that, according to the CIA, had been tied to an FSB front company. The man Slaton was watching had not come from that direction. He’d appeared from the east, materializing at the forested curve where the promontory joined the mainland. From where Slaton was set up, near the tip of the peninsula and concealed among sea-rounded rocks on a mid-level ledge, he had a commanding view of the northern coastline. The one drawback of his position was that he couldn’t see any part of the tiny cottage where the killer was supposedly based. Because it was set back in a gulley, and virtually unapproachable—sheer vertical faces of rock on one side, a thin road over cleared land on the other—Slaton had decided to wait for the assassin on neutral ground.
So what course had the man taken? Had he come by way of the distant main road? Had he set up last night to the south, perhaps to surveil Ovechkin’s villa? Either was possible, but also unverifiable. It was decision time. The man would soon be lost to sight, and within minutes he would arrive at the clearing on the ridge where the equipment case was waiting. Slaton summed everything he knew, and decided it was enough. The rifle case the man was carrying was simply insurmountable.
He backed away into cover, then began moving toward the rock face at the tip of the point. After one last look, he set off on the route to the top he’d scouted earlier. It was a modestly difficult climb, two or three areas where he’d have to navigate steep walls. Slaton rotated the UMP until it was slung across his back.
He began to climb.
* * *
CIA director Coltrane had not gone home that night, opting to sleep in one of the quiet rooms he’d ordered set up with precisely that in mind. The tiny spaces—little more than closets with plush recliners and “Do Not Disturb” signs on the doors—had been installed to support the rank and file. Analysts, cyber specialists, and comm techs who found themselves headquarters-bound for excessively long shifts could find a few hours’ rest without battling the Beltway’s notorious traffic. Coltrane had discovered early on that the rooms’ loungers and dense soundproofing were far superior to the couch in his office. But comfortable as it all was, he dozed fitfully for no more than an hour before heading back to the operations center for an update.
The duty officer filled him in. “The situation in Saudi Arabia is deteriorating. Over the last two hours NSA is reporting a major spike in message traffic. The Saudi National Guard is responding to three ‘terrorist-related’ events as we speak.”
Coltrane listened intently as each dustup was covered in detail. Like the others in recent days, they appeared to be isolated incidents involving the distribution of small arms. But as the frequency increased, it became difficult to deny that something larger was in play. “What about this business in Morocco?” he said.
“We’ve been concentrating on the RosAvia complex in Tazagurt. It was nothing but desert three years ago, then the place seemed to get built almost overnight, a joint venture between Russia and Morocco. It was designed with test work in mind, although nothing very cutting edge. The idea was to support high-altitude, high-temperature testing for the certification of civilian aircraft. At least that’s what the website says.”
“Website?”
“Honestly, we’re playing catch-up on this—we know a lot about RosAvia’s Russian operations, but the complex in Tazagurt is pretty much a mystery. We found a website, although it hasn’t been updated in years. RosAvia advertises the facility as being available for contract work. So far we can’t find a record of anyone who’s actually used it. NRO has done a handful of passes over the place in the last couple of years, but none of the images showed anything suspicious. Botto
m line—this airfield just wasn’t on our radar.”
“It is now,” Coltrane said pointedly. “First we have a hangar full of old MiGs that have been modified into drones, and now some kind of arms smuggler arrives by private jet after murdering the crew of—”
“Sir!” an urgent female voice interrupted.
Coltrane’s head swiveled turret-like, and he saw a woman behind a communications panel. She said, “I have a call from Miss Sorensen in Riyadh. She says she needs to talk to you directly—something very urgent.”
Coltrane hesitated, then reached for the black handset in front of him. “All right, put her through.”
“Anna,” he said into the secure phone, “please make it quick. We’ve got multiple crises here.”
“I’m going to add another one,” she said. “I think the entire Saudi royal family is being targeted for assassination!”
SIXTY-THREE
“What?” Coltrane said loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear. “How?”
“I’m not sure. I’m at National Guard regional headquarters in Riyadh, and I’ve been trying to get answers for hours. I can’t reach General Abdullah, and nobody will talk about what’s going on. But I can tell you that last night I saw a hundred limos in the parking lot outside. Every one of them is gone this morning. I’m convinced the family is gathering as we speak—it’s an annual event where virtually every minister and prince is in attendance.”
“Where?”
“That’s the problem—nobody will say. If you put together all these small arms coming in, and the fact that the House of Saud is gathering in one place…”
Coltrane thought about it. “That only makes sense to a point,” he said. “You’re saying the family is gathering in one spot, and that’s a vulnerability. But these arms shipments are being spread all across the country.”
After a long pause, it was Sorensen who found a solution. “Maybe these arms aren’t meant to be used against the family.”
“But what then?”