Clean Kill

by Jack Coughlin

  Kyle was moving before the roar ceased and relentlessly led the other Tridents in a mad scramble toward the shattered campsite. He estimated about 90 percent of the fifty-two man terrorist force was already dead, and was glad that no return fire was coming back toward the Marines.

  “Split up!” he hollered when they reached the perimeter. The team divided into two-man units and worked rapidly through the burning ruins, firing three-round bursts at anyone who looked as if he may have somehow survived the initial attacks. There weren’t many, and even the wounded drew the momentary but deadly attention of the raiders. It was not work for the weak of heart, but mercy had no place in the mountains of Pakistan on a night like this.

  At the far edge of the camp, Kyle yelled, “Back!” They all turned and worked their way through the charnel houses to their starting point. Fewer shots were needed this time.

  The fire was chewing everything in the camp and an ammunition dump erupted like a small volcano, but the surrounding high mountains shielded the fire and detonations from the outside world. The Tridents pulled out after leaving behind a few booby traps in case of pursuit.

  They climbed the trail, picked up the guide, and disappeared like ghosts back into the unfathomable reaches of the rugged border.

  2

  SCOTLAND

  T HE CASTLE WAS GUARDED by everything but dragons, knights, and archers with longbows. Professional security personnel from five nations and counterterrorism teams roamed the grounds while police in small boats patrolled the black waters of the forbidding loch. Electronic and thermal detection systems webbed the woodlands and motion detectors and surveillance cameras probed every corner. Sir Geoffrey Cornwell took a sip of whisky and looked for holes in the security net as the sun set in a final blaze of bronze sky sliced by layers of purple clouds. A fine mist was on the light breeze, but he could see across the loch, which meant the weather would be fine for tonight.

  It was less than a dozen miles from Edinburgh, perched on the dominating knob of a hill that sloped to the water on the east side. Patrol vehicles on the far perimeter road that led around the loch had turned on their headlights, and from the castle wall, they looked like slow-moving fireflies. Cornwell owned more than a thousand acres, from working farmland to a game-thick forest and the entire place normally would have been leased for the week to some multinational corporation for a conference of managers. Not tonight.

  He had bought the fifteenth-century castle a decade ago, when it was little more than a dilapidated ruin, then had it gutted and rebuilt. The single rugged exterior wall on which he now stood was one of the few remaining parts of the original structure and still bore the scars of English cannonballs. Bathed by light blue floodlights, the broad front wall kept the castle looking medieval, ominous, and strong.

  The new buildings behind the blue wall contained improvements that had never been dreamed of by the ancient stonemasons, such as electricity, flush toilets, and central heating. Corporate executives on a business retreat required ultimate comfort.

  Cornwell had retired from the British Special Air Services as a colonel, then became a successful industrialist and a visionary designer of military hardware. He and his wife, Lady Patricia, lived in one private wing of the Scottish estate and left the rest to be operated as a commercial venture, for he would not allow his money to sit idle.

  A WIDE LANE OF flickering torches led from the gatehouse to the area in which the limousines would arrive, and off to the left the helipad was aglow with a blinking strobe light flashing upward from the center. Security had never been tighter. Still, he felt as though he was holding a brittle piece of history in his palms, and he was worried. The slightest unexpected incident could ruin everything. He took another sip of warm Scotch and the whisky teased a burn down his throat. He placed his glass on the thick flat stone of the saw-toothed battlement and straightened his tuxedo.

  “Would you please stop worrying? Let the professionals do their jobs, Jeff. Your only role tonight is to be the perfect host.” Lady Patricia slid an arm around his waist and kissed his cheek. She wore a navy blue organza gown designed by Karl Lagerfeld, and diamond earrings matched the necklace, the stones glittering in the bright lights and contrasting with her tanned skin.

  Sir Jeff was startled, then he wrapped a big arm around Pat and hugged her close. Gave her a smile. “You are beautiful tonight,” he said.

  “Yes, I am,” she replied happily. “We’ve had many parties, Jeff, but this is at the top of the list.”

  Lady Pat looked around. Busy, efficient people were working hard to make the evening work perfectly. “So why are you worried?”

  “Something Kyle said a few weeks ago,” her husband replied.

  “Oh my God, Jeff. Listen to Kyle Swanson when you need to kill somebody, not when you are seeking social advice.”

  There was a small laugh behind them and Sir Jeff looked over. Delara Tabrizi, their thirty-year-old personal assistant, a refugee from Iran who was now a British citizen, was standing there with a thick notebook of checklists, a personal radio-telephone in her ear, a small computer in her hands, and a big smile on her face.

  He glared at her without effect. The two women in his life were not afraid of him.

  “Lady Pat is right, sir. It would be a vision of hell for Kyle to figure out a seating chart, and where to place that beautiful wife of the foreign minister of Israel for maximum effect, or to plan a menu that would be memorable for Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike. That, sir, would indeed be funny.”

  Pat asked, “See? So what did he tell you that has gotten you so jumpy?”

  Delara Tabrizi cocked her head and poked a finger in her ear to push the radio receiver deeper for better reception. She tapped her keyboard then looked up. “Excuse me, Sir Jeff, but you wanted a status report?”

  He nodded. British Foreign Minister Lord Covington and the Israeli foreign minister had been overnight guests, and the others were due momentarily. The private dinner was a prelude to tomorrow’s signing of a peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, a treaty that could be a huge step in bringing peace to the Middle East.

  Delara replied, “The American ambassador and the U.S. secretary of state have entered the grounds. The helicopter of Prince Abdullah is in the air, with an ETA of eight minutes. The Egyptian foreign minister’s plane just landed at Edinburgh, and a helo is waiting for him. Twenty minutes.”

  “Very well,” he said, and straightened the sleeves of his midnight black tux. “Ladies, shall we go down and greet the guests?”

  “Not until you tell me about Kyle.” Lady Pat crossed her arms and stayed put.

  “Well, I showed him all around the perimeter and described our security precautions. Where guards would be on duty in static positions and the routes of the roving patrols. The electronics. I told him that if a squirrel shat out there, we would know it.”

  “Jeff! Watch your language. Children are present.”

  “I apologize, Delara,” he said. She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I told him how all of the international teams were cooperating and how tight this net was going to be, and asked if he thought he could penetrate such a band of security and take out a target.”

  “Obviously he would tell you that he could,” Lady Pat almost snorted. “Little bastard thinks he is Superman.”

  “Worse. He said it would be easy. So we extended the protective perimeter to two miles in every direction. Not only did Kyle say that still would not be enough, but insisted that protecting this place was tactically impossible. Centuries ago, it made sense to put a castle on a hill so it could dominate the region. In the twenty-first century, he says it’s a security dinosaur.”

  “And that got you all upset. We are having this wonderful reception to mark an historic event and you let Kyle Swanson needle you. He was probably saying that just to get under your skin, and he did.” She grinned. “Delara, dear, please make a note to remind me to box Kyle’s ears the next time I see him.”

  “Ye
s, m’lady.”

  Pat linked her arm into Sir Jeff’s again and got him moving toward the stone stairs that descended from the wall-walk into the castle courtyard. The first black limos were arriving. “Now smile and prepare to welcome all of these important people to our stately manor.”

  3

  SCOTLAND

  I BRAHIM B ILAL WAS FIRST out of the minivan when it pulled off a narrow farm road and into a brush-obscured driveway three miles away from the castle. A few scruffy Highland cattle grazed around him but there was no other sound. He pressed a button on his wristwatch and started the attack countdown and called for the others. “Out! Quickly now. Quickly!”

  Four more men dismounted, all wearing insulated smoky branch camo overalls and strong climbing boots and with their faces smeared with NATO camouflage paint sticks. They hauled open the rear doors of the small truck, handed around backpacks and strapped them on. The loads contained only radios, water, some snacks, dry socks and shoes, and a complete change of clothing. Holstered pistols with a single spare clip apiece would be their only personal weapons. Very soon, every ounce would count.

  The rest of the cargo was pulled out, then they covered the vehicle with a ten-by-twenty foot mottled mesh camouflage net and branches were used to erase the tire tracks. That done, they helped each other add the new loads, grunting with effort as they distributed several hundred pounds of additional weight among the five of them, using the backpacks to take some of the weight and better balance the loads across their shoulders. “Life isn’t easy,” Bilal joked. “Go now.”

  Moving at the head of the column, he took them through the cows toward a small hill at the far west end of the pasture. A helicopter roared high overhead and passed beyond the crest, with its bright landing lights pushing columns of white through the gloom. Bilal looked at his wristwatch as he walked. Right on time.

  “I NEVER THOUGHT I’D see this day,” the American secretary of state, Kenneth Waring, told Sir Jeff as the sleek helicopter touched down with barely a wiggle. The engines were shut down and the blade slowed its spinning.

  “It is the inevitable outcome of the extremely difficult work by dedicated men and women of good will over many years,” Cornwell replied. His hands were moist from nervousness.

  “Sir Jeff, your work behind the scenes was vital in this final stage of the negotiations. I doubt that we could have done it without your assistance. You know so many influential people and they all trust you to be an honest broker. Believe me, that sort of reputation is rare today.”

  Jeff was uncomfortable with compliments. He felt he had just done his duty, keeping all of those hard-headed politicians and diplomats going in private meetings when they all had conflicting agendas. They had been arguing for years and Jeff had helped nudge them toward a decision. “The danger comes over the next few months, while the heads of the regional governments try to keep the fanatics under control.”

  “Jeff, if anybody can pull this off, it is Prince Abdullah. Either he is successful or we probably get another century of Middle East misery.”

  They were not the only ones having doubts.

  P RINCE A BDULLAH, THE S AUDI ambassador to the United States, looked out from the window of his helicopter and saw the eager faces of his hosts and the big blue wall of the old castle. He knew that when he stepped from this aircraft, he would be changing the world and in a fleeting moment of fear, wanted to order the pilot to take off again, to rush him back to the airport so he could fly back to Washington and resume his normal and familiar routines. Let this burden fall on other shoulders.

  The prince was in his early forties, tall, handsome, and athletic, and had been groomed for this role since he was a boy. Highly intelligent, multilingual, and experienced both as a soldier and a diplomat, he might never be king, for he was not the monarch’s eldest son, but the family had molded Abdullah into their version of an enlightened, modern political figure. If forced to evolve into a democracy, he would be the prince who could run for office, although that plan had also fallen into ashes in this turbulent time. His new reputation, historic as it might be, would not win him many voters. The man who made peace with the Jews!

  Abdullah had reviewed the diplomatic cables and the latest news while on the flight across the Atlantic. There was unrest at home, which had been expected, for to have Saudi Arabia sign an official peace treaty with Israel carried huge risks. The nation where Islam’s most holy cities of Mecca and Medina were located was switching sides, a monstrous development in the view of religious fundamentalists who championed a stern theocracy. Blind hatred for Israel was a bedrock belief for millions of Muslims. Violence had blossomed in dozens of places.

  The royal family in Riyadh saw things differently than the imams and mullahs. Egypt had made a similar agreement with the Jewish state forty years ago, withstood the ensuing political storms, and prospered. To survive in the tumultuous twenty-first century, the Saudis also needed to make political adjustments. Controlling one-fifth of the world’s known oil reserves was no guarantee of a stable long-term existence because the product was only that, a product to be sold. It was a finite resource and would either run dry or, more likely, be overtaken by other energy sources and the nation could disintegrate right back into the desert sands from which it had come, having been rich and powerful for only a few generations. Hatred of the Jews had outlived its usefulness. National survival was at stake.

  Abdullah let the helicopter’s spinning blades come to a complete stop before a bodyguard opened the side door. To allow the powerful rotor wash to whip his regal robes like laundry on a line was unacceptable. The British foreign minister, the American secretary of state and Sir Geoffrey Cornwell welcomed him and they all left the gleaming helipad for a reception area in which Israeli Foreign Minister Nathan Simhon stood waiting. The moment of truth, thought Abdullah. Inshallah.

  Then Simhon, with a genuine smile, unexpectedly broke protocol and stepped forward to shake hands with the prince and a private photographer recorded the historic moment.

  “Mr. Foreign Minister, we shall be great friends!” declared the prince.

  “We all look forward to that,” responded Simhon. “I am honored to be signing the letter of intent with you tomorrow.”

  L ADY P AT WAS INTRODUCED to the prince as the evening’s hostess, and stepped between the two men to lead the group into the huge banquet hall, a corridor of stone and tapestries and ancient weapons that maintained the castle theme. A massive oak table ran almost the entire length of the room. Sir Jeff escorted the wife of the Israeli ambassador, a gorgeous brunette who had once been an actress.

  Delara Tabrizi took her notebook and her PDA and retreated to her basement office, which was serving double duty as a storage area for spare parts for the event’s beefed-up communication center. A bank of color television screens was aligned along the wall and she could watch things unfold while directing the cooks, waiters, and various staff members. Delara allowed herself a smile of sheer joy. It felt like only yesterday that she had barely escaped from Iran with her life and she knew this historic moment would not please the mullahs. However, it pleased her greatly.

  The reception was running smoothly and everything was on schedule, so she touched up her makeup before heading back upstairs to retrieve Sir Jeff and get him out to the helipad to greet the Egyptian foreign minister, whose helicopter was making its final approach.

  She noticed a member of the prince’s entourage whisper to Sir Jeff, who pointed to a side door, and the man immediately relayed the comment to the prince. Delara suppressed a laugh. All of this hullabaloo, peace treaties and history coming together, and the main guy had to go to the bathroom.

  4

  SCOTLAND

  A S HE TRUDGED UP the stony hill, Ibrahim Bilal remembered going on hikes as a child with his father when the family lived in High Wycombe in England. He had become an engineer, but a bored young man with no enthusiasm for life until he found Islam. Along with discovering inner change and com
fort, he became aware that a smart and brave young believer could earn a good living as a fighter and a maker of explosives. After his conversion, less than a year ago, he had abandoned the family name for a new identity, then departed from the family itself, for they were infidels and impure.

  This climb had been rigorous, but not really hard, other than carrying the extra weight. Within ten minutes, Bilal reached the crest and could see the glow from the big house, a bubble of blue and white light in the gathering darkness. “Now!” he commanded to those who followed him. “Set it up!”

  While the men dumped their burdens and packs, Ibrahim examined the perimeter road as a slow-moving vehicle passed by and a small spotlight illuminated clumps of bushes along both sides. When the car moved on, he removed a laser rangefinder from his pack and measured the distance between the hilltop on which he was crouched and the castle across the water. The digital readout told him they were 3,800 meters away from the big wall, and 600 meters outside of the two-mile security perimeter.

  By the time he checked his team, the tripod had been pulled from its container and the legs were unfolded, fanned out and locked in place. The men were forcing the stabilizing prongs into the hard ground. Then they heaved the fifty-two pound launch system into position and locked it atop the tripod.

  Bilal heard the low hum of another vehicle engine and snapped his attention back to the road where headlights and another spotlight gleamed, but were pointed down toward the edges of the road and not up the hill. Another patrol, only two minutes behind the first one. The loch road was a busy place.

  The team unhooked the day-night sight package from one of the backpacks and affixed it to the angular device they had already built, plugged in the connections and activated it. Another narrow cylinder was opened and a long object was withdrawn and was smoothly slid into the thick tube atop of the weapon. The tube-launched, optically-tracked, wire-guided missile, known worldwide as a TOW, was ready to work.