‘How certain are we of this?’ James Dorrell asked Bud Shaw, ensconced in a private meeting room with Pete Olsen, John Eckhart and President Abrams.
‘Sure enough to bring it to attention of all of you,’ Shaw responded acidly, before holding up his hands in apology. ‘Sorry, I’m sorry, that was uncalled for. I guess I’m tired.’
Abrams nodded in understanding. ‘We appreciate your efforts, Bud,’ she assured him. ‘Now what exactly is it that you have?’
Shaw took a breath, and then looked up. ‘We’ve given finding the AIJ safe house top priority. The weapon needs to be prepared, and it’s possible that these so-called ‘suicide time-bombers’ are still there. We’ve been cross-referencing everything we have on both Quraishi and al-Hazmi, trying to triangulate a possible location.’
‘And it looks like Quraishi is definitely the man we’re after,’ Dorrell interjected. ‘Our sources in Saudi Arabia tell us that he took off before he was brought in for questioning, he’s now officially on the run and listed as the most likely candidate for the Lion, the leader of the AIJ.’
Shaw nodded. ‘Well, we entered what we have on file for him, including voice recordings, into our system, and a little while ago, we received a hit – a conversation between Quraishi and a second man, who we believe to be Amir al-Hazmi. The conversation was in an unusual Arabian dialect, and also used code words to mask the meaning of the conversation, but our analysts believe that Quraishi was checking on the progress of his operation.’
‘Do we think the bombers are still there?’ Eckhart asked.
Shaw shrugged. ‘We can’t be sure,’ he said uneasily. ‘We traced the origin of the call to a payphone at a bus station in Riyadh. Quraishi obviously didn’t want to use a cell phone, as he would think that all his numbers would be monitored, and he probably didn’t have access to his voice modulation software – you know, the one he’s been using to change his voice when he makes those AIJ videos.’
‘You think it’s him in the videos?’ Abrams asked.
Shaw nodded. ‘Our analysts have studied the body language – now we know to compare it with Quraishi – and they’re eighty percent certain it’s the same person.’
‘Have we shared this with the Saudi authorities?’ Olsen asked.
‘We’ve told them about the pay phone location,’ Shaw said, ‘just in case they can nail Quraishi, but we’ve got to assume that he’s long gone by now.’
‘What about the other location?’ Dorrell asked with anticipation. ‘The place the call was made to?’
Shaw smiled. ‘I think we’ve got it,’ he said. ‘We managed to trace the call to Mecca, one of the world’s holiest cities and one of the reasons we get so much stick for being there in the first place. From satellite photos it seems to be a walled compound in a residential area. Rented in a private name, but we’ve traced the money back and it seems that payments are coming from accounts operated by Abdullah al-Zayani, the suspected financier of the AIJ – who we’ve still not managed to locate, by the way. It also appears on some of the other cross-checks we’ve been doing, calls that we’ve since traced between Riyadh – we suspect from Quraishi – and Amir al-Hazmi.’
‘So,’ Abrams said slowly, ‘you believe that this compound is where the weapon was taken by al-Hazmi, and where the suicide bombers are to be injected?’
‘All but certain of it,’ Shaw said.
‘Have we informed the Saudi authorities?’ Abrams asked next. ‘Can we get them to move in? Secure the place before the bombers leave?’
Dorrell shook his head. ‘I’m not sure that would be a good idea,’ he said. ‘The trouble is, the country is a mess; people work for these organizations, but often hold very different opinions and loyalties. Look at Quraishi himself, for example. We simply don’t have any idea how many people he’s got working with him in the Saudi government. If we tip them off that we know about the compound, they might contact al-Hazmi and then everyone would be gone, just like that.’ Dorrell snapped his fingers. ‘And then we’d have no chance whatsoever.’
‘Do we have anybody there?’ Abrams asked next. ‘Anyone we can trust?’
Heads turned as Olsen exhaled slowly. ‘We do have a man who’s been working with us there,’ he said uneasily. ’In an unofficial capacity, at least.’
‘Go on,’ Dorrell said.
‘Mark Cole,’ Olsen replied. ‘The Asset. He’s the one who gave us the take on al-Zayani and Quraishi in the first place.’
‘Where is he now?’ Abrams asked quietly, and she watched as Olsen’s shoulders slumped regretfully.
‘That’s the problem,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid we don’t exactly know.’
5
Dorrell was back in his sixth floor office at CIA headquarters in Langley, deep in thought, when the call came.
It was Francis Stevens – although he only got patched through under a code word, Dorrell knew exactly who it was – calling from Riyadh.
Stevens was responsible for the CIA safe house in the Saudi capital. Even though Saudi Arabia had good relations with the US, sometimes precautions still needed to be taken – which was why the CIA maintained safe houses in almost every city in the world. They were havens where agents could escape to if something went wrong; secure locations where kidnapped targets could be stored and interrogated before being taken elsewhere; places where operations could be planned and staged from. Some had never been used – perhaps would never be used – while others got used far too often for comfort.
The safe house in Riyadh fell somewhere in the middle; some years saw it used frequently, others rarely. For the past few years though, it had been very quiet, and Dorrell’s instincts were immediately aroused by Stevens’ unexpected call.
‘There’s a man here,’ Stevens said.
‘Who?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Stevens said cagily. ‘He wasn’t on any of the lists I’ve got, and I wasn’t told to expect anyone.’
‘Did he use the correct protocols?’ Dorrell asked next, trying to reign in his hope.
‘In a way.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, he used code words I didn’t recognize,’ Stevens said. ‘But I checked back, and they’re ones we used to use, but years ago.’
Dorrell felt his heart skip a beat. ‘Where is he now?’
‘He’s in the reception area. Off the street, but not inside yet.’
‘Bring him in,’ Dorrell ordered. ‘Immediately. And then get him on the phone to me right away, understood?’
‘Yes sir,’ Stevens replied, and Dorrell was pleased to hear the sound of the connection being broken as the safe house manager raced to his task.
He breathed a sigh of relief, sinking into his leather chair.
The man at the front door could only be Mark Cole.
So al-Hazmi was in Mecca, Cole thought as he replaced the receiver, his conversation with Dorrell recently finished.
The voices of John Eckhart, Bud Shaw, General Olsen and President Abrams had also been patched through during a hastily-arranged conference call, and it was clear that his arrest for treason was going to be overlooked – momentarily, at least. But it was interesting that it was just this small select group that he was addressing – obviously some other members of the National Security Council might well still harbor less positive opinions about him. But for the president and her closest advisors at least, now was not the time to pursue such things.
Mecca made perfect sense, of course; it was the holiest destination in the Arabian peninsula, and Quraishi would doubtless feel that it would please Allah to launch his operation from there. The American military presence in Saudi Arabia was felt by many to be a defilement of the holy land, and it would seem poetic justice to launch the attack against the so-called ‘Great Satan’ from the nation’s holiest city.
Cole had remembered about the Riyadh CIA safe house from his days as a covert operative for the US government. Such places weren’t meant to be used by deniable operatives, bu
t Cole had nevertheless memorized their locations and security procedures – just in case. And after escaping from the chaos surrounding the Al Faisaliyah Center, he had made his way straight there.
And although the codes he had given were years out of date, he had hoped that the CIA would be able to put two and two together and realize it was the Asset – still alive, and ready for his orders.
The information he had received from Dorrell over the secure line was terrifying – the possibility of these suicide time bombers unleashing their destructive bioweapon all over the US was almost too much to comprehend.
But there was still a chance – the bombers could still be at the safe house, and if Cole could get there in time, he might just be able to avert a catastrophe of historic proportions.
The Saudi authorities had been told about Quraishi’s involvement with the AIJ, but he had managed to escape arrest – so far, at least. Cole wondered if he would find Quraishi at the Mecca safe house, but discounted the possibility. He would probably be a thousand miles away by now, lost forever. Still, Cole hoped he would get the chance to meet the man again.
But Cole knew that it had to be first things first.
He had to get to Mecca, confront Amir al-Hazmi, and stop the suicide bombers before they left on their genocidal journey to the United States.
‘So what’s our back-up plan?’ Bud Shaw asked the small group, gathered together now in person, back in the White House Situation Room.
‘It’s tough,’ Eckhart sighed. ‘We’re going to need to get NSC approval before we can do anything on the national level.’
Dorrell nodded his head in agreement. ‘The only thing we can do is to close off the United States to all incoming visitors. If the bombers have already left, then they could be anywhere. We can’t just screen flights out of Saudi Arabia, or even the Middle East – what if they’ve flown somewhere else first, and then catch a connecting flight to the US? And we can’t just screen Arab passengers either; we have no idea what their ethnicity is, none whatsoever. They could be Arab, Oriental, Caucasian, a mix of everything, we just don’t know.’
‘And you can just imagine the havoc it would wreak, can’t you?’ said Shaw. ‘And what if they come in by car or on foot across the Canadian or Mexican borders?’ He sighed. ‘This is one hell of a shit sandwich.’
Ellen Abrams breathed out slowly. ‘I understand,’ she said, struggling to retain her legendary composure. ‘What we’ll do is convene a meeting of the NSC, put things into place. If we have to shut down all of our airports, then that’s exactly what we’ll do. If we have to check everyone coming in, then we’ll do it.’ She checked her watch. ‘Ken Jung from Fort Detrick is due here in the next ten minutes, and we have other experts en route from the FBI and the bioweapons defense division of the DOD to discuss what we can do to counter this thing. How we can identify it, how we can defeat it.’
The men around the small table murmured their approval. Fort Detrick, Maryland, was the home of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, and Jung was their top man. Files were already being downloaded through secure connections by the SEAL team back in North Korea for analysis, and America’s top experts were hard at work on getting to grips with this new bio threat.
‘The only other thing is how we’re going to keep a lid on it,’ Eckhart said next, and there were weary sighs exchanged around the room. Everyone knew that this was another huge problem – if word about the bioweapon got out in the public domain, mass panic would ensue. And panic on such a scale was guaranteed to leave thousands dead, even if the weapon was never used.
‘We have the normal protocols in place,’ Abrams answered. ‘But if something goes wrong and the press gets wind of this, then Heaven help us.’ She looked around the table at her advisors. ‘We just have to hope and pray that Cole finds those bombers still at the safe house.’
Everybody nodded their agreement; if the bombers had already left, then the very existence of the United States was at risk.
The G-force pushed Cole back into the second pilot’s couch of the Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jet as it rapidly accelerated away from the runway of Riyadh Air Base.
He could feel his skin rippling underneath the flight suit as the aircraft steadily climbed into the darkening skies above the Saudi capital, the speed on the readout in front of him spiraling steadily upwards – Mach 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 1.1 – until he could look at it no longer, speed ceasing to have meaning.
The irony of his departure from Riyadh Air Base wasn’t lost on him; it was here that the killer Apache had flown from, the helicopter that had destroyed the Al Faisaliyah Center earlier that day. But Cole was no longer a wanted man; with his new CIA-provided identification, he was now Tom Drake, US Congressman for Tennessee. And the one thing Drake wanted to do on his tour of the Middle East was experience the sensation of flying in a fast jet – a wish the Saudi Air Force was only too willing to grant.
The Saudis had recently taken delivery of their Eurofighters, and the jet that Cole was sat in was the T1 variant, a two-seat trainer rather than the normal single-seat fighter version. His pilot gave him a running commentary in perfect English as they soared across the open skies.
He’d asked the pilot back at the base if it would be possible to fly as far as Mecca, and he’d been told it was no problem – at Mach 1.1, or 810 miles per hour, the Eurofighter could still cruise without using its afterburners, and at this so-called ‘supercruise’ speed, the jet could be over Mecca in less than an hour and a half.
It was only when they were over Mecca that the problems would begin, Cole knew. He had no legitimate reason for requesting the jet to land; besides which, by the time the jet landed at an official airbase, more time would have been wasted. And he would still have to escape from a military airfield in order to locate the AIJ safe house without the knowledge of the Saudi authorities.
He sighed as he settled in for the flight, phasing out the pilot’s continuous talking as his mind focused on what lay ahead.
PART SEVEN
1
From his position at the laboratory window, Jake Navarone watched the chaos unfold before him.
At his command, his snipers had taken out the soldiers manning the four corner guard towers; all head shots which had killed the men instantly.
His half-dozen SEALs hidden throughout the prison camp swung into immediate action, gunning down the camp guards from their strategic positions. Some of the soldiers managed to respond, but they were unused to the chaotic melee of real combat and failed to do any real damage before the American commandos finished them.
At the same time, Navarone’s men operating over on the east side of the camp were moving back around the perimeter to liaise with the main group back at the laboratory compound. The majority of the camp’s guard force was still chasing shadows in the eastern forest; and when they were alerted about the attack on the camp and tried to return, they would face the booby traps of Claymore mines that had been strategically placed across their route home. Navarone hoped it would be enough to keep them pinned down on the far side of the camp.
While the gunfight was erupting within the main camp, Navarone watched as Captain Liu and Major Ho started to channel the thousands of scared, confused prisoners towards the western gate, which had been opened by Captain Xie.
Navarone breathed out slowly as he watched the operation unfold before his eyes. It might work, he thought; it just might work.
He checked his watch; only thirty-two minutes to the arrival of the B2 bombers. Would it be enough time?
It would have to be, he told himself; there was nothing else they could do about it anyway.
He smiled as the vast numbers of prisoners funneled out of the side gate, the first surprised and disbelieving members passing by the secondary compound; led towards the safety of the forest beyond, Navarone’s snipers and machine-gunners providing protection from their elevated vantage points.
He kept on checking towards the east with
his high-powered binoculars, and could see – and hear – the first explosions of the Claymore mines as the soldiers attempted to return to their camp to stop the unexpected escape of their prisoners. He knew the presence of the mines would keep them at bay; the soldiers wouldn’t know how many mines there were, or where they’d been placed. And the reports coming back from Frank Jaffett confirmed that the soldiers were reluctant to take their chances, despite the orders of their officers to get back and help.
Navarone ordered Jaffett to get back to the western side of the camp and liaise with the rest of his men; the majority of the prisoners were out now, headed into the dense forest beyond the laboratory compound, and the six SEALs in the camp were moving out behind them.
All guards were down in the camp, and Navarone gave the order for his snipers and machine gunners to leave their positions and fall in behind the group funneling into the forest.
He checked his watch again; twenty-four minutes until the bunker busters were dropped. It was time for him to go too.
He took one last look at the camp with his binoculars, sweeping them across the dusty parade ground, past buildings, huts and barracks. There were dead soldiers everywhere, dead and injured prisoners too; but there was nothing he could do about them now. Time was about to run out, and they had rescued as many people as they could.
Yes; it was time to go.
But then he saw something; movement at the windows of a small building towards the north of the camp.
He zoomed in the binoculars, trying to see what it was.
When he realized what he was looking at, his stomach turned.
Children.
It was children that he could see at the barred window, straining to get out; they must have been locked in there by the guards.
Navarone turned, saw his men disappearing into the forest with the huge mass of stumbling prisoners; saw Captain Xie about to close the gate behind them.
WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller Page 29