by Ward Larsen
Nearing the first van, he drew the Glock and trained it on the nearest man—the one connecting wires to a relay box and laptop computer. When he finally look up, his reaction further reinforced Slaton’s thinking. There was surprise, perhaps a touch of fear, but no suggestion whatsoever of a response. The electrician didn’t even shout to alert his partner.
Having the first man’s attention, Slaton put his finger to his lips in the universal silencing motion. The man nodded tentatively. Closing to within a few steps, Slaton flicked the Glock’s barrel twice, motioning in the direction of the man’s partner. The electrician began moving slowly. The man working the tubes was so engrossed in his task he didn’t look up until Slaton had the other man five steps away. His reaction was identical.
Once the men were standing next to one another, he said in English, “Don’t move. Do you understand?”
Two nods.
Slaton edged closer to the racks of mortar tubes. They all looked similar, with minor variations in the size of the tubes, the projectiles, and the color of their caps. He saw no metal cylinders, no unique launcher loaded with some kind of higher-grade mortar. Slaton was no expert when it came to pyrotechnics, but nothing seemed suspicious. Every bit of factual evidence screamed the same thing: he was looking at two guys setting up tonight’s firework display. And nothing more.
He’d hit another dead end.
He needed to call Sorensen, but he’d screwed up and destroyed his phone. Slaton reckoned both men in front of him had phones. But what number to call? The 911 app he’d accessed the night before wouldn’t be loaded. He hadn’t memorized a backup number. Slaton was working through it all, trying to figure a way to reestablish comm with Langley, when something far to the west caught his eye.
Something red, white, and green …
A short segment of six smoke trails dissipating high in the desert sky.
* * *
Sorensen recognized the threat at virtually the same time Slaton did, although it wasn’t the sound of jet engines that cued the connection. She was sorting through the loss of communications with Slaton when a call came in from her resident chemical weapons expert, Dr. Gyger. She told the comm officer to have him call back, but when Gyger persisted she picked up.
“I’ve been studying the hardware arrangement that was uncovered in Sudan,” he said. “I think I may finally have an answer for you.”
“You know where it came from?” Sorensen asked.
“Not yet, but I think we’ve identified what it is. Both the canisters and wiring are part of a smoke generation system.”
“Smoke generation? You mean like what the army uses in the field to hide the movement of formations?”
“Same general idea, but on a much smaller scale. This is an aviation version, very high-grade equipment—it’s what the Blue Angels use at an airshow to create their smoke trails.”
Sorensen literally dropped the handset.
She hurried to a nearby workstation and began looking for a printout she’d seen only minutes ago: the schedule of today’s events at Jeddah Tower.
* * *
On the tower’s observation platform, General al-Bandar finally got a bit of good news. The leader of the raid on the nearby apartment called to say that the situation was under control. There had been, by all appearances, a plot brewing involving a number of drones. One man was presently in custody, while another had been killed.
To say the general breathed a sigh of relief was a massive understatement. He’d been seconds away from shutting down the entire event, which would have meant pulling the king and crown prince away from a podium and hustling them to safety—this in response to a conspicuously vague threat. It was an insufferable choice, but one that, if he were to err, could easily end his career.
He put his phone back in his pocket with relief, sure that he’d dodged a bullet. He watched the crown prince, who was midway through his remarks.
“Is everything all right, sir?”
Al-Bandar looked to his left and saw an Air Force major, the narrator of the Saudi Hawk team. He was coordinating the fly-by scheduled to arrive immediately after the crown prince finished his remarks. The general realized his apprehension must have been obvious.
“Yes,” he said. “A minor incident, but everything is under control.”
The major nodded, and al-Bandar saw him glance at the prince’s chief of staff, who gave a distinct nod. The narrator lifted his handheld VHF radio, tilted it expertly so that he could also reference his Rolex, and said quietly, “We are on schedule. Three minutes … mark.”
* * *
Eighteen miles away Colonel Issa rolled smoothly out of a turn to establish the flight on its inbound run.
He glanced in his mirrors and saw a tight Delta formation. Numbers 2 and 3 were on his wings on the left and right, numbers 5 and 6 outriggering them. Number 4 was in the slot, low and directly behind Issa’s jet. Everyone was flying with the utmost precision.
He checked his navigation display. The reference point for show center was now his objective, the clock counting down. His goal was to arrive over the tower in a window of plus or minus two seconds, at which point the crown prince would finish his remarks and direct everyone’s attention skyward. Anything more exact fell into the realm of style points. He would guide his flight past the observation deck at minimum altitude. By regulation, he was not supposed to fly directly over spectators, nor closer than five hundred feet to the ground or any buildings. But then, those were Air Force rules. The crown prince had personally commended his work on previous occasions, always suggesting that the lower and more thunderous the Saudi Hawks appeared, the better. And the prince’s whims overruled any book of regulations.
Between Issa’s present position and the tower he had but one other navigation reference point—half a mile prior to the tower, so as not to draw attention too early, he would give the command for “smoke on.”
He lowered the nose of his aircraft and began to accelerate. The other five aircraft could have been welded to his wings.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
Slaton searched the skies intently.
Seeing the multicolored segments of smoke had been the key, the last vital element that brought the rest together. The curious hardware, an aerosolized nerve agent, the diversion with the drones. The obvious target. A flyby was en route by an aerial demonstration team, almost certainly the Saudis’ own. That was how the agent would be dispersed—misted directly over a crowd of cheering heads of state who would be oblivious to the death raining down on them. An attack that would decimate the ranks of Arab leaders in the Middle East.
An attack that would demand a war.
His shooter’s eyes kept searching, and finally he saw them. Roughly fifteen miles distant, the formation of six jets were extremely difficult to see—and in that moment, for the worst of reasons. The sleek airframes were arrowing directly at him.
Directly at Jeddah Tower.
How to stop it? Slaton cursed inwardly for having lost his phone. Without it he had no chance of reaching the right person, of getting someone to abort the approaching flyby.
He looked all around, wishing for a battery of surface-to-air missiles. What he saw was a Glock 17. Five rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber. If not for the situation, he might have laughed at the math. Six small caliber rounds to take out six light attack jets traveling hundreds of feet over his head at roughly five hundred miles an hour.
The jets were closing in, heading directly for the tower. He had no more than two minutes to do … something.
What else?
He looked at the two vans. Saw the Indonesians staring at him. And then … the obvious.
There was no time for subtlety. Slaton strode toward his two captives. They were still standing next to one another, and he raised the Glock to a point between them. He fired one round that went screaming past at shoulder height. Of the two, the one on the right, the electrician, reacted more favorably.
“No, pleas
e! What do you want?” the man said, his voice cracking.
Slaton swept the gun toward the nearest rack of mortars. “Is this setup operational?”
The man looked at him dumbly, as if the question hadn’t registered. It was probably the stress.
“Are these things ready to go?” Slaton demanded.
“Not all of them, but most are primed and ready.”
“Show me how it works—quickly!”
The little man scurried toward the table. His partner didn’t move.
On the table Slaton saw banks of wiring that connected to various circuit boards. Each of the boards was tied in to a laptop computer. Slaton was no expert, but he knew professional fireworks displays were orchestrated by computers, often accompanied by music.
He glanced at the onrushing formation of aircraft. They were getting close, maybe five miles and moving fast.
He knew that most fireworks didn’t go particularly high in the air. Two hundred feet? Five hundred? It was a question he’d never considered. Certainly not the last time he’d seen a display—this summer when he and Davy and Christine had attended a Fourth of July celebration in a small town in Montana. Whatever the answer, Slaton knew he had one thing in his favor: flight demonstration teams flew exceptionally low.
“Here is the sequence,” the electrician said, pointing to the laptop screen.
Slaton saw a list of probably forty names, all in creative English, for the various groupings: Dandelion, Starfire, Waveburst … Any single one, he reckoned, was a salvo of two or three or four tubes launched together for the best effect. There was a timing interval next to each one. In essence, he was looking at tonight’s show in the controller’s format.
“Which ones are ready to go?” he asked.
“The ones in large font,” said the electrician.
Roughly half the titles were listed in caps and highlighted. “You could launch those now?” he asked.
“Yes, they are wired and ready. It only takes a master code to arm the system.”
“You have it?”
“Yes.”
“Do it!” Slaton ordered.
The electrician went to work. A red box came up centrally on the screen, and he entered an eight-digit code like a missile officer about to launch a salvo of ICBMs.
Slaton could hear the jets now, their engines ripping through the air. They were barely a mile away, on a course that would take them almost directly overhead.
“It is ready,” said the slight man, casting a guarded glance at the approaching formation. “Select any one that is prepped and hit enter.”
In the moment it took Slaton to reach for the computer mouse, one name at the bottom of the list seized his attention.
Grand Finale.
* * *
Colonel Issa made a slight correction to the right. His wingmen held true.
His last reference point was nearly upon them, and he prepared to make the call-out for smoke. He was far too engrossed in the timing to notice two work vans passing beneath the nose of his aircraft.
“Smoke on, three … two … one…”
SEVENTY-EIGHT
Lieutenant Colonel Issa was a combat veteran. In his eighteen-year career, he’d flown extensively in the war in Yemen, and also taken part in a half dozen lesser skirmishes. That being the case, he was intimately familiar with being shot at. He’d seen anti-aircraft artillery. The odd shoulder-fired SAM. Plenty of unguided small arms fire. None of that prepared him for what engulfed his formation.
The explosions were all around, the sky filling with airbursts of varied brilliance and color. Issa heard a flurry of tiny impacts on his jet—he would later reflect that it sounded like flying through heavy rain. He had no idea what had just happened, but his reaction was instantaneous.
The final command to engage smoke was replaced by “Break out! Hawk Flight, breakout!”
The six BAE Hawks, which moments earlier had been glued to one another in tight formation, were already beginning to wobble. Every pilot’s attention had been locked to the aircraft next to him, but in the periphery they’d all seen what Issa had—explosions all around.
When jets fly in close formation, there is a standing procedure for separating in an emergency. It is covered in every briefing, and designed as a controlled maneuver. The jets on the left and right turn aggressively in their respective directions and climb steeply. The next two in line mirror the move, but to a lesser degree. The intent is to get separation, to keep wingtip from striking wingtip, until all aircraft are a safe distance apart.
Owing to the adrenaline of the moment, what actually happened was something closer to a bomb going off—six individual pilots reacting with nothing less than survival instinct. The four aircraft veering left and right did so with varying degrees of emphasis, shooting outward at odd angles and high into the sky.
Issa, the flight lead, began a sudden climb. The timing of his impending command to switch on the smoke generators had been so near, the reaction to the explosions so abrupt, that two of the team members actually did turn on their smoke. Numbers 2 and 5 soared up behind corkscrewing trails that rose high into the desert sky. One was green, the other white.
By no more than pure chance, number 4 did not activate his switch. He, in fact, had been put in the direst position of all. Flying the slot, below and behind the flight leader, the pilot knew he was surrounded by teammates engaged in various aggressive maneuvers. Turning to either side was not an option. His duty in the breakup was essentially to keep the status quo. In another situation, a gentle descent would have been permissible, but as it was, flying at high speed and extremely low altitude, he had no such option.
The number 4 pilot watched his lead climb away, then checked over his shoulder and saw the others careening skyward at odd angles. He was so distracted by these maneuvers, not to mention the explosions that caused it all, that he nearly made the classic aviator’s error—for the briefest of moments, he forgot to fly his own jet. When he turned back and focused ahead, his entire forward windscreen was filled by the largest building on earth.
In a panic he yanked back on his stick, aiming toward the nearest sliver of blue sky. It would later be determined that the pilot of number 4 put nine and a half Gs on his jet in the last-ditch move, necessitating the grounding of his aircraft for a precautionary inspection. Camera footage would eventually document that the tail of number 4 passed less than thirty feet from the observation deck. No less than the king himself would claim to have felt heat from the jet’s exhaust moments after it passed.
All of this was taken in by a group of stunned guests, chief among them the crown prince. As six hyperventilating pilots scattered high into the sky, he looked on lividly. The prince had not seen the fireworks that precipitated the disaster. Instead, he finished his speech expecting a breathtaking flyby, only to find his Saudi Hawks scattering like doves from an onrushing falcon. Then confusion went to fear as the number 4 jet nearly struck the observation deck. The prince immediately began drumming up invectives for Lieutenant Colonel Issa, although his ire would reverse before they could be delivered.
The director of the CIA’s Special Activities Division called the Saudi National Guard command center, who called General al-Bandar, who called his major, who called the rapid reaction team. Within minutes, the team was bearing down on the site from which the premature fireworks had been launched.
The general moved quickly to buttonhole the crown prince, and at a whisper explained how close they all might have come to an agonizing death. Before the prince could respond, al-Bandar ushered him and the king into the safety of the lobby.
* * *
Half a mile from Jeddah Tower, one expatriate Israeli and two perplexed Indonesians stood watching the spectacle. To Slaton’s eye, the six distant specks in the sky seemed to be reassembling. He warily eyed the two fast-dissipating trails of smoke. He had no way of knowing if either, or perhaps even both, carried elements of a deadly nerve agent. The smoke was drifting away fr
om where he stood, but toward the big tower. The surreal scene was made even more bizarre by the introduction of music. When the grand finale barrage had launched—sixty-one mortars in the space of ten seconds—an audio accompaniment had begun blaring from great speakers near the tower. The classical piece was now flooding across the desert at rock-concert volume, the ground actually vibrating.
Not unexpectedly, Slaton saw a group of six armored vehicles bearing down. At least twenty men, he guessed, and no doubt heavily armed. Probably also on edge. He ejected the magazine from his Glock and dropped it in the dirt, ejected the round from the chamber and locked the slide open. He set the gun on the table and stepped away.
The Indonesians stood staring at him.
There was nothing more Slaton could do. He would make his case to the commanding officer as best he could. Try to talk his way up the chain and get through to Sorensen. To anyone who would listen, he would explain the precautions that needed to be taken: the demo team needed to land at a remote airfield, and the pilots would be well served to get out of their cockpits and run like hell upwind.
The heavy vehicles ground to a stop, and men in full combat gear began pouring out. They shouted in Arabic, which neither he, nor he suspected the Indonesians, understood. It didn’t matter. The tone was sufficient. Slaton put his hands behind his head. The Indonesians, still watching him, mirrored the move.
Slaton grinned, and said, “It’s okay, you guys aren’t in any trouble. Just cooperate.”
The first men reached Slaton, forced him to his knees, and began searching him for weapons. As they did, the music rose to a crescendo. A soaring rendition of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” thundered across the desert into a featureless sky.
SEVENTY-NINE
The second rendezvous at the farmhouse in Uruguay took place five days later. Slaton was the first to arrive. He had been sprung from detention in Saudi Arabia after less than twenty-four hours, but a circuitous route to South America had taken another three days. He’d spent last night in the house alone, Sorensen having again given the caretakers a holiday. The front door remained unlocked.