by Vince Flynn
“He’s there,” Rapp said. “At the production facility.”
“It’s a possibility we’ve considered. Our people agree that it would be an ideal command post. It’s centrally located and provides shelter from the wind as well as a place to set up equipment. The question is whether Krupin would send his man personally.”
“My gut says he would. This operation is too important and has too many moving parts to trust it to a bunch of ISIS idiots.”
“I tend to agree.” She paused for a moment. “Mitch, Scott’s going to make a full recovery and my understanding is that Joe injured you fairly seriously.”
“Your point?”
“I don’t want you going up against this man. Not now.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
“Don’t patronize me, Mitch. I’m serious about—”
As Rapp had been expecting, the door at the far end of the suite suddenly burst open. He disconnected the call as four armed men rushed him. Two aimed their U.S.-supplied weapons at his head while the others snatched the laptop from his hands and the Toughbook from the desk next to him.
Once the room was secured, a man wearing the uniform of a Saudi army colonel strode through the door. Bazzi was right behind, with an even younger man who had the unmistakable look of a computer tech.
“What took you so long?” Rapp said.
Bazzi gave a weak smile but Wasem just pointed to the computers now sitting next to what was left of Rapp’s lunch. The hacker knelt and went to work on the Saudi-supplied laptop.
“The operating system has been bypassed, Colonel. There is a telephone application on-screen but the call has been disconnected.”
“Who was the recipient of the call?” Wasem asked.
“There is no record.”
“What do you mean no record?”
“This operating system appears to be exclusive to the CIA. I assume that all information is permanently wiped the moment it’s no longer necessary.”
The young man moved to the Toughbook and woke the screen. “This computer is password-protected, sir.”
Wasem turned his attention to Rapp. “What’s the password?”
“Don’t waste my time, Colonel.”
“I don’t think you understand your position,” Wasem said, pulling his sidearm and aiming it at Rapp. “My country is under nuclear threat and you’re withholding the information I need to protect it.”
Rapp slid off the desk and walked over to the table containing the computers. Instead of reaching for one, he grabbed a stalk of asparagus and took a bite off the end. “Am I supposed to be afraid?”
“Colonel,” Bazzi intervened, “the Americans are our closest allies. Surely, Mr. Rapp is going to do everything in his power to help us. He wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
Rapp finished the asparagus and reached for another, using it to point at Wasem. “Here’s how this is going to work, Colonel. You’re going to get five attack choppers in the air. No missiles. Just guns. The people we’re going after are carrying dirty bombs and I don’t need you doing their work for them. When your men are in the air, I’ll give them targets. But no one attacks until I give the order.”
“So you’ll be here, directing things from the safety of your hotel suite?” Wasem mocked.
“No, I’ll be in a helicopter of my own on my way to take out the man running the operation.”
“Out of the question. You’re to give me all the intelligence you have, immediately. I will handle this personally.”
“Colonel,” Bazzi interjected again, “perhaps we could go with Mr. Rapp and supervise the operation from the field? That would—”
“Shut up, Captain! If I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.”
“You should listen to your man,” Rapp said. “Because if those birds aren’t in the air soon, you’re going to spend the rest of your short life explaining to King Faisal why he doesn’t have a country anymore.”
CHAPTER 51
EAST OF RIYADH
SAUDI ARABIA
AZAROV ignored both the GPS on the dashboard and the man driving, instead looking out the side window at the blowing sand. They’d abandoned Saudi Arabia’s well-maintained road system about two hours ago and were now surrounded on all sides by nothing but empty desert and desolation.
The SUV’s powerful engine roared as they crested a large dune and dropped over the other side, fishtailing down the steep slope. For a moment, Azarov thought the vehicle might roll, but the driver regained control and accelerated through the bottom. His skill was admirable. Suspiciously so.
Perhaps it wasn’t the bomb that Krupin would use against him. Perhaps it was these two men. Did they have special forces backgrounds? What were their orders? Certainly, to ensure that the mission was carried out. But was there more?
“You can see it,” the man in the backseat said, speaking for the first time since their initial meeting. “Just ahead.”
He was right. A web of pipes and containment tanks began to separate itself from the dust. As they closed in, Azarov could see that sand had partially reclaimed the south side of the facility. The Saudi Aramco logo on the largest of the tanks was still clearly legible, though.
He continued to study the structure as it grew in the windshield, mentally comparing it to the 3-D simulation he’d trained on. Everything appeared to be as anticipated and there was no sign of any recent human activity. Having said that, the weather system enveloping the region would obscure tracks almost as they were made. In a few minutes, evidence of even their own approach would fade from existence.
“In there,” Azarov said, pointing to a gap between a vertical cylinder used to burn off natural gas and a horizontal storage tank the size of an attack submarine. The driver did as he was told, continuing forward until the drifts beneath the facility became impossible to negotiate.
“One of you take the northeast side,” Azarov said, opening the door and stepping out. “The other, the southwest.”
“Our duty is to protect you,” the driver said. “We—”
“The best way for you to perform that duty is to warn me if anyone approaches.”
Azarov hefted the backpack containing Krupin’s bomb and started toward a staircase.
“Can we at least clear the area?”
Azarov didn’t dignify the question with a response. The structure was far too large and complex to be cleared reliably. This was one of the reasons it had been chosen as a command center—it gave the occupying force a significant advantage. If the CIA had managed to arrive first, that advantage would be reversed and they were all dead men.
Azarov drew his weapon, more out of habit than any expectation of necessity. He followed the path laid out in his simulation, minimizing the possibility that anyone could get behind or above him. It took a full half hour, but he finally arrived at the heart of the complex, having found nothing suspicious.
“Report,” he said, activating his throat mike.
“North and east clear,” came the first reply. It was followed by similar assurances from the southwest.
Azarov bypassed the area that Krupin’s people had told him to set up in and descended a ramp to an alternate position. Not as convenient for the operation as a whole, but more advantageous to his personal goal of surviving this fool’s errand.
He slid his backpack beneath a massive valve system and took a few moments to pile sand around it. A maze of steel walls surrounded his position, protecting him from the wind but also contributing to the deafening drone of vibrating metal. He retrieved his phone and pulled up the feeds from his teams. Three were red, indicating that they were still on the move. The dot representing him had turned green, indicating that he was in position. The other two teams hadn’t started their relatively short journeys yet and therefore weren’t represented.
Azarov found himself forced to move to a less easily defended position in order to utilize the transmission system that had been integrated into the structure. While communications with the two
men who had accompanied him could be easily handled with commercial walkie-talkies connected to throat mikes, getting a reliable signal to the other teams necessitated something encrypted and far more powerful.
Once connected, he sent Maxim Krupin a coded text informing him that all was well.
The sun was a hazy disk in the west, inflicting slightly less heat than it had the day before. Azarov sat down behind a disused oil tank, mindful that the metal was still too hot to touch with bare skin. The teams were projected to arrive at their targets simultaneously in just over four hours. They would deploy their weapons and then it would be done.
He would return to Al-Hofuf and meet with the private contractors he’d hired to get him out of Saudi Arabia. Then he would begin his circuitous route back to Central America. And that would be the last the world ever heard of Grisha Azarov.
CHAPTER 52
EVEN with Fred Mason at the controls, the helicopter felt like a toy in the jaws of a rabid dog. A violent downdraft caused them to plunge a good fifty feet, and Captain Bazzi finally looked like he was going to lose the fight to keep his lunch down.
The young officer bent at the waist and put his hands over his headphones as though to drown out the sound of the engines struggling to keep them aloft. Rapp moved his boots out of range and Colonel Wasem watched his assistant with undisguised contempt. The older man’s years in Saudi Arabia’s special forces allowed him to remain unaffected by the rough ride and to forget what it was like to be new at this game.
The chatter coming over the comm had gone from nervous to near panicked. Five similar choppers were hunting the scattered ISIS teams depicted on Rapp’s Toughbook. The last two had finally come online only fifteen minutes ago, flashing to life and joining the other teams closing on their targets. The one he was being carried toward had arrived at the abandoned oil facility over an hour ago and hadn’t moved since. The leader.
“This is Scout Four,” a voice said in Arabic. “Winds in this sector are becoming too strong for me to safely control my aircraft. Recommend that we abort.”
“Negative,” Wasem said. “Continue on target.”
Rapp squinted through the dust at the computer propped on his knees. Marcus Dumond had once again done his magic. Target positions were being updated in real time, with the assist of a number of military, intelligence, and hijacked commercial satellites. Their CIA-projected destinations showed up as hazy orange circles and the red dots depicting ISIS teams now included ETA countdown clocks. Blue icons tracked the chasing Saudi Air Force choppers, along with their projected time to intercept. Scout Four was southeast of their position with thirty-three minutes to intercept.
“This is Scout Five,” another static-ridden voice said. “I have a visual on my target.”
“How’s your weather, Scout Five?” Rapp said.
“Manageable.”
“Stay out of sight and keep tracking.”
“Disregard,” Colonel Wasem barked into his headset. “Engage the target immediately.”
“Belay that,” Rapp said, and then isolated his mike to include only the men with him in the helicopter. “We talked about this before we lifted off, Colonel. We wait until we’ve acquired all the targets and take them out at the same time.”
“The plan has changed,” Wasem said. “This is not America and your CIA has no authority here. King Faisal has made it clear that I am in command of this operation. You’re here only as an observer. And as such, you’ll remain silent. Is that clear?”
Rapp tried to keep his voice even. This situation was too complex to let it devolve into a pissing contest. “If you take that target, their central command is going to know. And if they think they’re compromised, they’ll order the rest of their teams to detonate. Even if most of them are outside of their optimal position, that’s going to cause a hell of a mess, Colonel.”
“You have no idea what they’ll do and I won’t be lectured by an American about terrorists. These ISIS men are little more than goat tenders and children. They have no operational discipline and their command structure is virtually nonexistent. If you don’t have the courage to act, I will.”
Rapp considered pointing out that the sophisticated, satellite-linked Toughbook on his knees was part of that nonexistent command structure, but it seemed like too obvious a point to bother with.
Everyone at Langley agreed that the ISIS teams would act simultaneously. There was no reason for them to risk tipping off the Saudi military before all their people were in position.
“Colonel,” Rapp said, deciding to try reason one last time. Irene Kennedy was still pissed off about him stabbing Senator Ferris a few weeks ago and he didn’t need to give her anything else to ride him about. “All the ISIS teams are scheduled to arrive on target within ten minutes of each other and we have one team that’s been holding in position for more than an hour. Based on the ETAs I’m being fed from Langley, we’re going to have eyes on all the targets, with forty minutes to spare. This isn’t the time to start trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”
“Scout Five to command,” came a voice over his headset. “Awaiting final orders. Please clarify.”
“Turn my comm back on immediately,” Wasem said.
Rapp found himself at the end of what little patience he had. Wasem was well known to be a major asshole and a significant player in Saudi Arabia’s support for Muslim extremists. Could he be an ISIS sympathizer? Probably not. In all likelihood, he was just another useless prick calculating the best way to cover his ass. Either way, it was clear that their collaboration wasn’t working.
Rapp reached out and released the clasp on the harness keeping Wasem in his seat. The slow casualness of the move confused the man and he was completely unprepared when Rapp grabbed him by the front of his uniform and shoved him toward the chopper’s open door.
The Saudi colonel grabbed for the edge of his seat, but his surprise made him a fraction too slow. A moment later, the only evidence that he had ever been there was the headset flapping against the fuselage.
“Mitch!” Fred Mason said over the comm. “Did you just throw someone out of my aircraft?”
“Yes.”
“Well, stop it. You’re screwing up our weight distribution.”
Rapp stared into the terrified face of Captain Bazzi. “Roger that.”
“Scout Five to command!” The voice coming over Rapp’s headset had turned insistent. “I am awaiting attack orders. Respond!”
Bazzi remained frozen for a few more seconds but finally gave a short nod. Rapp reconnected their mikes to the operational comm.
“This is Bazzi. Colonel Wasem is having a problem with his headset. Until the problem can be resolved, Mr. Rapp will be relaying his orders.”
• • •
The intensity of the wind continued to grow but the unpredictable gusts had died down enough for Mason and his copilot to even out the ride. With Wasem somewhere in the sand behind them, the operation had similarly stabilized. The illusion of control lasted almost ten glorious minutes before being shattered by a panicked voice over Rapp’s headset.
“Mayday! This is Scout Four. We are—”
Then nothing.
“Scout Four, this is command,” Rapp responded. “What’s your situation?”
No response.
Rapp looked down at the laptop and scanned to Scout Four. The blue icon representing it was still glowing to the southeast, but after a few seconds it was clear that it was no longer moving. The ISIS team, on the other hand, was continuing on target, completely oblivious.
“Scout Four, give me a sitrep,” Rapp repeated. After five more seconds of dead air, he used a satellite link to connect to Marcus Dumond at Langley.
“Marcus, are you looking at the same screen I am? We may have lost Scout Four. Can you confirm?”
“Hang on. . . . Okay, based on their GPS signal, they’re on the ground. Landed or crashed, though, I can’t be sure. It’ll be five minutes before we get an updated overhea
d shot of that sector, and even then I can’t guarantee it’ll be worth anything. The blowing sand’s messing with our imagery.”
“Whether it was a crash or an emergency landing doesn’t matter,” Rapp said. “We have to assume they’re out of the game. Contact Riyadh and tell them to get a medevac out there.”
“On it.”
A quick survey of the laptop’s screen, suggested few options. “Fred, is my data right? Are we nine minutes out from target?”
“Give or take.”
Rapp glanced into the perspiring face of Captain Bazzi before returning his attention to the computer screen. “Marcus, are you still with me?”
“I’m here.”
“What if I have Fred drop me off and then redirect to Scout Four’s target? Could he make it in time?”
“Let me check.”
Rapp waited, noting that turbulence was increasing again.
“Marcus? What the hell are you doing? I asked a simple question.”
“Stop yelling at me, Mitch. You know it makes me nervous. We’re trying to factor wind speed and direction into Fred’s travel time.”
Dumond was a hacker who had been on his way to jail when Rapp’s brother brought him to the CIA’s attention. His skills were undeniable—incredible, really—but he didn’t like time crunches or being involved in life-or-death situations.
“I don’t need it down to the second, Marcus. Now kick it in the ass.”
Dumond finally came back on. “If he turns pretty much right now, he might make it. But it’s going to be tight. We go from having a forty-minute cushion to more like a three-minute cushion.”
“Mitch,” Mason said over his headset, “keep in mind that if I take that detour, I won’t have enough fuel to get back to base.”
“Then you’ll have to do a little walking.”
“Have I mentioned my ditching fee?”
Rapp picked up the laptop and held it out to Bazzi. “This is your op now, Captain. Do you understand your responsibilities?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re certain? Because if you don’t, you better hope I never make it back.”