by Brad Thor
Risking only one casual drive-by, Reynolds noticed that the building apparently belonged to yet another good-for-nothing member of the Saudi Royal Family—a young prince named Hamal. Reynolds didn’t know which type of Saudi royal he hated more—the heavy-drinking, whoring, spend-like-there’s-no-tomorrow kind, or the ultrareligious, hypocritical, spit-in-the-face-of-the-world, bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you kind. As far as he was concerned, Prince Hamal fell into the latter category. With an Oxford education and a bottomless bank account, Hamal didn’t want for a single thing in his life, yet as a convert to extremist Wahhabism, he never missed an opportunity to strike out at the Saudi monarchy for being bloated, lazy, and corrupt.
Recently, Hamal had taken a page from the British monarchy and had begun issuing royal titles to merchants who were furthering the greater good of Islam and the Islamic world. Much as pastry shops and shirt makers were being recognized as official purveyors to the crown in England, Hamal was recognizing businesses that made life better for Muslims around the globe. While quietly the higher-ups in the Saudi Royal Family were more than a little upset at not having been consulted before the young man embarked on his endeavor, they liked the idea of the Saudi name supporting people who bettered the lives of the followers of Islam. What’s more, Hamal was the brains behind the bottled water that supposedly came from a secret spring beneath Mecca. Reynolds thought it was all a crock, right down to how Hamal claimed he was donating all the proceeds to worthy Muslim charities.
That move was surely a winner with the Royal Family. Ever since 9/11, the Saudis had been forced to discontinue their highly successful charity drives on television, which had brought in hundreds of millions of dollars for various Islamic groups worldwide. The U.S. had seen it as blatant fundraising for terrorists, and though the Saudi monarchy didn’t necessarily agree, they had buckled under the pressure from their staunchest Western ally.
The money Prince Hamal’s venture stood to raise and the positive spin it placed upon the Royal Family meant that the powers that be were willing to look the other way and forget that he had never even attempted to go through the proper channels before setting up shop. At the end of the day, the Saudi monarchy had seen his effort at worst as worthwhile and at best as a way to keep the radical young prince out of their hair and maybe a means by which he could grow to be less of a pain in their collective ass.
After parking his car and surveying the building from the rooftop of an abandoned building down the street, Reynolds knew he wasn’t going to be able to leave until he got a look at what was going on inside. Finding a small slice of shade, he waited until most of the neighborhood’s residents had left for afternoon prayers before making his way down to the pavement. He had hoped that Mo, Larry, and Curly would leave the warehouse to attend prayers as well, but today just wasn’t turning out to be his day.
Stopping at his Land Cruiser, Reynolds pulled a twelve-gauge Remington 870 tactical shotgun from inside the cargo area and wrapped it inside a cheap prayer rug he had bought at one of Riyadh’s many souks.
He did one complete turn around the outside of the warehouse by foot, trying to find the best entry point. He stopped outside the blacked-out, bar-covered windows of what appeared to be the ware-house’s office, but was unable to hear anything above the steady roar of the industrial-strength air conditioners. With his sweaty right hand shoved inside the wool rug and wrapped around the Remington’s pistol grip, the whir of the machines only served to remind him of how goddamn hot he was. Jesus, was he sick and tired of Saudi Arabia.
Continuing on to the loading dock area, Reynolds kept looking for a way in, but the building was more secure than a bank vault. With steel-reinforced doors and bars covering what other few windows there were, the three Wahhabi stooges were obviously a lot more capable of keeping people out of their warehouse than they were of keeping people off their tail while driving. Reynolds realized that the only way he was going to get a look inside was if someone invited him.
By the time he came back around near the office, he had come to the conclusion that the best way to gain an invitation was to first smoke somebody out from inside. Setting his shotgun cum prayer rug against the side of the building, he removed his Benchmade tactical folding knife from his back pocket, popped open the circuit breaker covers for the air-conditioning units, and started knocking them offline one by one.
With one hundred plus degree temperatures raging outside, he figured it wouldn’t take too long for the people inside the building to start feeling the heat. The other thing Reynolds hoped he was right about was that with only one car parked in the warehouse’s parking lot, there was no one other than Mo, Larry, and Curly inside. Any more than that, and he could end up with a serious problem on his hands.
Picking his prayer rug back up, he leaned behind the office door and waited. Ten minutes later, he heard the sound of someone unlocking the door from the inside. Quietly, he unwrapped the shotgun and threw the rug off to the side.
There was the sound of voices from inside as the man’s colleagues urged him to hurry up and figure out what had gone wrong with the air conditioners. Reynolds waited until the man had stepped all the way outside and the door had closed behind him before pursing his lips and making the sound of two quick kisses.
The man spun around, only to be knocked unconscious by the butt of Reynolds’s shotgun. The only thing he would remember, if anything at all, was that his assailant wasn’t an Arab. That was probably one of the biggest advantages Reynolds had going for him. Saudi Arabia was awash with foreign contractors and consultants, and outside the people he worked with, nobody knew who the hell he was.
There was no knob or handle on the outside of the door. It could only be opened with a key. Fishing a set of keys from the militant’s pocket, Reynolds found the correct one, slid it into the lock, and slowly opened the door. It swung silently back on its hinges, and Reynolds stepped out of the heat and into the hallway of the considerably cooler offices.
Less than five feet away, he could hear two men talking. Not knowing how long their colleague outside would be napping, Reynolds decided not to waste any time.
Sweeping through the main office door, he brought the Remington up to the firing position and yelled at both of the men in Arabic to get intimate with the carpeting.
For a moment, neither of them moved. Then, as if they were telepathically connected, they both acted at the same time. One of them snatched up an AK-47 while the other made a beeline out a side door and into the warehouse.
Before the man with the AK could get his finger anywhere near the trigger, Reynolds hit him with three rounds from the Remington that nearly tore him in half and sent his bloody body flying across the room. Two stooges down, one to go.
It had been a while since Reynolds had seen this kind of action, and his heart was pumping a mile a minute as he crept into the packed warehouse. Pallets of bottled water as well as what appeared to be various spices were stacked floor to ceiling.
Reynolds tried to concentrate on finding the last remaining Wahhabi wiseguy. Once he was neutralized, Reynolds could drag their unconscious colleague in from outside and start tearing the place apart.
He heard a noise from the other end of the building that sounded like metal scraping on metal. Peeking out from behind the pallet of water bottles he was using for cover, Reynolds took aim with the shotgun and pulled the trigger two more times, but it was no use. The remaining militant had opened one of the doors near the loading bay and had taken off.
There was no telling what contacts the man might have in the neighborhood, so Reynolds had to act fast.
After a quick sweep of the warehouse that turned up nothing of real value, he ran back to the office and tore the entire place apart as he searched for anything that would explain what the hell these people were up to and what the meeting he had witnessed earlier in the day had all been about.
He was extremely thorough, but the office was shaping up to be another dead end. Ready to give up,
Reynolds swept the assorted office supplies off one of the desks in frustration and in doing so sent the desk blotter sailing. As it hit the floor, he noticed several pages sticking out from underneath it.
Picking the pages up, Reynolds began reading. They didn’t make any sense. There were lists of currency exchanges, payday loan operations, check-cashing businesses, convenience stores, taxicab companies, and gas stations across the United States. It was all very strange.
Reynolds had no idea what he might have uncovered. It might have been nothing, but taking into consideration everything else he had already seen, he was suspicious enough to want somebody else back in the States to take a look at it.
There was just one problem. Reynolds needed to get the information to someone who’d take it seriously enough not to hand it off and let it get buried. It would also have to be someone who wouldn’t ask a lot of questions about how he got it. With a dead militant and the Saudi Royal Family involved, whoever he reached out to not only would have to have a good amount of power, but also be someone he could trust to do the right thing.
Going to the top at the CIA was definitely out of the question. Reynolds had been gone just long enough to lose what halfway reliable contacts he had in the director’s office. As he shoved the documents into his pocket, he realized there was only one person who could help him. After wiping down the office for prints, he snuck through the warehouse and used the set of keys he had taken from the first militant to let himself out one of the side doors. When he reached his truck, he waited until he was well away from the neighborhood and wasn’t being followed before he picked up his cell phone and dialed the number of his old friend and colleague back in DC.
As the phone began to ring, he hoped like hell Gary Lawlor was at his desk.
SIXTY-THREE
S WITZERLAND
W here are we going?” asked Jillian when Harvath got back in the car and pulled away from the curb in front of the hotel.
“Here, “He replied, and handed her the glossy brochure for Sion International Airport he had picked up in the lobby. “This caught my eye when we were on our way out this morning.”
As Jillian looked at it, Harvath added, “It’s a pretty impressive operation. Along with being a military airbase, they’ve poured a lot of money into it in the hopes that this region is going to be the next big thing. Besides having a runway long enough to accommodate the most sophisticated business jets, the airport has just about every service simple tourists like us could ask for.”
“I can see that,” replied Jillian. “Anything and everything when it comes to charters. Helicopters, gliders, hang gliders, parachute flights, sightseeing flights over the Alps. They don’t seem to have missed anything.”
“Nope. They even do glacier aviation, the desk clerk told me. It’s their specialty. If the glacier is big enough, they can actually land a plane on it.”
“So what’s the plan then?” asked Jillian as she set the brochure in the door pocket next to her.
“You and I are going to charter a plane and do a reconnaissance flight,” said Harvath. “We’ve already got pictures of what security is like at the base of the Aga Khan’s funicular. I want to see what things look like up top.”
“Then what?”
“Then we’ll try to figure out what to do next.”
Staring out the windshield at the mountains rising up on both sides of them, Jillian said, “A line like that doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.”
Harvath forced a smile and replied, “I’ll try to come up with something a little bit better once I’ve gotten a look at Aiglemont. Right now, though, let’s focus on what we need to get done.”
Harvath and Alcott arrived at the Aéroport de Sion posing as climbers looking to charter a plane in order to conduct aerial surveys for a series of upcoming expeditions in the Bernese Alps. Even without reservations, they had no problem finding a willing charter company. Cold hard cash was an amazing problem solver. Not only did they luck out in finding a plane without a reservation, they also managed to land an extremely chatty pilot with an excellent command of English. The first thing he pointed out as they taxied out onto the runway was where the Aga Khan’s Cessna Citation X jet was parked. Had the police at the bottom of the funicular not been enough to confirm his presence, now they knew for sure that he was in residence. Hopefully, that meant Rayburn and Emir Tokay were at Aiglemont as well.
The pilot went on to explain that whenever the Aga Khan had one of his aid meetings or get-togethers with his bankers in Geneva, he had his own helicopter pick him up at Aiglemont and bring him back. He never drove.
With his detailed atlas of Switzerland on his lap, Harvath was able to guide the pilot over and around the peaks the would-be climbers were interested in tackling. Each pass was designed to bring them as close as possible to the Aga Khan’s mountaintop retreat, which their pilot was pleased to point out and discuss.
When Jillian told the pilot she hadn’t been able to capture the structure as well as she would have liked with her video camera, the pilot was more than happy to oblige with another, lower pass. Not only did they get an even better view, but they also got the additional bonus of seeing how the Aga Khan’s security team reacted to low-flying aircraft. It was exactly as Harvath had feared. The heavily armed men poured out of the building like angry bees from a hive. Though he couldn’t be one hundred percent sure, he even thought he saw one of the men armed with a shoulder-fired missile. The Aga Khan’s security team didn’t leave anything to chance.
After the pair had gathered all the pictures and videos they needed, Harvath had the pilot do a pass over Le Râleur and return to the Aéroport de Sion. The extent of what they had collected wouldn’t be evident until they were able to review it back in the hotel, but from what Harvath had seen already, he had a feeling it wasn’t going to be good. The Aga Khan’s retreat was impregnable.
SIXTY-FOUR
B ack at the hotel, Harvath began printing out all of the digital stills from both their surveillance on the ground in Le Râleur and their reconnaissance flight over Château Aiglemont. As he did, he was still haunted by the feeling that there was something familiar about it, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
After removing the art from one of the walls, they pinned up the pictures with thumbtacks. In addition to what looked like the original monastery buildings, Aiglemont had a glass solarium, which probably covered a pool of some sort, a structure housing the mechanical system for the funicular, a narrow concrete or stone patio in front, and a sickly piece of green which turned out to be a small, oblong patch of Alpine meadow that ran along the side of the main buildings and ended in an abrupt drop-off to the valley floor thousands of feet below.
“What do you think?” said Jillian as she stood back and admired their handiwork.
The first thing that came to Harvath’s mind was, I think we’re screwed, but he kept that thought to himself for the time being. “Let’s watch the video, “He replied.
They attached the camcorder to the TV and played the footage several times over, with Harvath stopping it in different places so he could note the reaction of the Aga Khan’s security forces. When he had seen enough, he said, “Those are definitely Rayburn’s men.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because they are doing exactly what the Secret Service would do in that kind of situation, right down to that man with the shoulder-fired missile. Château Aiglemont might as well be the White House as far as we’re concerned. In fact, it’s better than the White House because it’s protected by mountains on three sides and the only approach is via that funicular.”
“So are you saying it can’t be done?” asked Jillian as she watched Harvath walk over to the minibar and remove a beer.
Harvath looked at the freeze frame on the television and then up at the pictures tacked to the wall. “I don’t know, “He replied as he pried off the cap and took a long swallow. “I don’t know.”
Jillian didn’t
like what she was hearing. “There’s got to be some way. What if we could get inside the funicular car in the village? That would work, wouldn’t it? It’s a two-car system. They’re counter-balanced. For the one at the top to come down, the one at the bottom has to go up, right?”
“True,” responded Harvath, “but how would we get them to send the other car down?”
“I would imagine that they would need to resupply at some point, wouldn’t they?”
“At some point, yes, but who knows how well provisioned they already are up there?”
“The waitress at the café today said that sometimes when the security personnel are not working, they come down to the village. What if we did it then?”
Harvath took another sip of his beer and thought about it. “We’d still have to get around the police guarding the car at the bottom.”
“We could come up with some sort of diversion,” replied Jillian. “One of us could distract them.”
“And if we got halfway up and they discovered we had managed to sneak onto the funicular, what do you think would happen then?”
“There would be quite a welcoming party when we got to the top.”
“Exactly,” said Harvath, taking another long swallow. “We’d be sitting ducks. Besides, if I know Rayburn, those funicular cars are wired with cameras, as well as intrusion monitors. Even if we got past the Swiss police, the security personnel at Aiglemont would know the minute we opened the door on that car, or the rooftop hatch, “He added, seeing the look on Jillian’s face. “I told you, Rayburn was one of the best the Secret Service ever had. I know better than to underestimate a man like that. We need to come up with something a lot better.”