by Ward Larsen
Renting a car was out of the question, as he had not even entered the country legally. His dwindling supply of cash precluded purchasing a vehicle without papers, and while Donnelly and the CIA might eventually offer something from the embassy motor pool, that would come with strings attached and cost valuable time. As was his custom, Slaton opted for a more direct approach.
For twenty minutes he watched the valet parking stand outside the Phoenicia’s entrance, where two young men in white uniforms were busy on the evening rush. Slaton saw a Porsche and a Mercedes arrive, and a Jaguar depart. He watched the flow of the operation, noting that it took four minutes for the attendants to make a round trip to their parking area on that ever-purposeful trot demonstrated by valets around the world.
The fourth car to arrive, an Audi sport sedan, drew his close interest. Or more precisely, its occupants did—a middle-aged Lebanese man and a well-dressed woman. Neither carried baggage, and after leaving the Audi in the care of the taller of the two valets, Slaton watched the man slip the claim ticket into the side pocket of his suit coat. The couple then headed straight toward him, the coat pocket passing within six inches of his shoulder before ending on the opposite side of the lounge where a large group of equally fashionable people were mingling.
Slaton repositioned to a different chair, bettering his view, and he ordered a Coke from a waiter, ignoring an urge to ask for ice—only Americans did that. The air was carved with expensive scotch and even more expensive perfume, the staccato clink of stemware a constant backdrop. He watched a twenty-dollar martini spill on a two-hundred-dollar tie, and saw a minor drug deal take place across the bar. But mostly, Slaton watched the suit coat.
He watched it for a full twelve minutes, at which point the driver removed his coat and draped it over the back of his chair. Slaton stood and circled to the far side of the room. He waited.
The man’s date drifted to chat at a nearby table. Slaton edged closer.
A shapely waitress in a low-cut blouse approached with the man’s starter martini.
Slaton picked up his pace. At the moment she bent over to deliver the drink, along with a considerable display of cleavage, Slaton brushed past the chair.
Ninety seconds later he presented the Audi’s claim ticket to the smaller valet, a smiling young man named Andre. The ticket was wrapped in a twenty-dollar bill, and instead of mirroring the kid’s smile, Slaton gave him a be-careful-with-my-car-or-else glare. With his partner off on a retrieval, a purposeful Andre trotted away flashing an index finger to a fresh queue of arrivals—an Aston Martin and a Ford—to tell them he would be right back. Things would be very busy for the next few minutes.
Which suited Slaton perfectly.
* * *
The Audi was small and quick. Slaton steered the car to a side entrance and parked near a pair of hotel courtesy busses, one of which had a flat tire and looked as though it had been out of service for months. With the Audi acting as a screen, he went to the derelict bus’s rear luggage bay, which had until recently been empty and locked. He retrieved the umbrella-encased rifle and placed it on the Audi’s rear floor.
Slaton soon had the car merging onto the coast road, and he set a quick pace to the north. The phone in his pocket weighed heavily, but he decided not to turn it on. Not yet. North of town he sped through Maameltein, and past the Casino du Liban, famous for its black ties and flush clientele. Soon the lights of Beirut went dim in his mirror.
He would be happy to never see them again.
FIFTY-NINE
It struck Davis like a meteor out of the blue.
He was canvassing images of the long-abandoned Wujah Al Hajar Air Base, sixty kilometers north of Beirut, when he came across a thirteen-hour-old picture that piqued his interest. A second photo, taken ten minutes ago of the same two-acre plot of concrete, brought everything together.
“I’ve got it!” he said in a voice that reverberated across the CIA Operations Center.
Sorensen was the first to reach his side.
“Look at this frame from last night,” he said.
Sorensen stared at the image. “What is it?”
“It’s an airplane being scrapped—sectioned apart like a sliced vegetable.”
“You think the jet we’re looking for was flown in here and demolished?”
“No. Look here—” He tapped on what looked like a crane. “Now look at this same spot a few minutes ago.”
Sorensen understood instantly. “In the middle of the night they removed a derelict jet and parked theirs in its place.”
“Exactly. It wouldn’t work for long … but they might not need much time.”
“Where is this?”
“Once upon a time it was called Wujah Al Hajar Air Base—it’s about an hour’s drive north of Beirut.”
“So our airplane is there right now.”
“It was ten minutes ago.”
Sorensen considered it. “The Israeli told us that the cache of cesium was taken out of Beirut in the last forty-eight hours. If so, then it’s probably already loaded on that airplane.”
“Almost certainly…” Davis said, his voice fading off as he studied the most recent image. “Only it won’t be there for long.”
“What makes you say that?” she asked guardedly.
Davis tapped on a white plume on the screen. “This is infrared—white means hot. The jet has its auxiliary power unit running.”
“Which means?”
“I’d say they’re getting ready to leave.”
* * *
Sorensen met with Director Coltrane three minutes later. She explained their theory that the fifty-two canisters of radioactive cesium chloride they were searching for was at an abandoned airfield in central Lebanon, probably loaded onto an aircraft that could disperse the material anywhere within a five-thousand-mile radius.
The director looked uncharacteristically stunned. “Christ … all these years we’ve been worrying about sarin and VX.”
“Do we get in touch with the Lebanese and have them intervene?” she asked.
The director snorted in exasperation. “Legally, I suppose we should. But that puts the most lethal radiological weapon we’ve ever seen in the hands of Hezbollah. The government of Israel might have an issue with that.”
“So what do we do?” Sorensen asked.
“There’s not really much choice. We stop this ourselves.”
“How?”
“Any damned way we can!”
* * *
Larry Donnelly, thinking his curious day was done, had gone back to pattern, which tonight involved a promising dinner with an attractive British Army liaison officer. The restaurant’s lighting was low as the sommelier decanted a Bordeaux, and Major James was smiling her lascivious best when his new phone—a replacement for the one stolen earlier by an Israeli assassin—lit with a message. His attempt to ignore it was nullified when, at a glance, he saw a subject line the likes of which he had never before seen.
Priority Alpha recall and mobilization. The embassy equivalent of DEFCON 1.
“I’m sorry,” he said, pushing back his chair and fumbling for words. “Something very important has come up.”
The major, a stunning brunette who knew a lot about wine, smiled as if she understood. Or perhaps it was the prospect of having a hundred-dollar bottle of Chateau Malescot, 2005, all to herself. Donnelly’s one surrender to propriety was to settle with the waiter, and sixty seconds later he was surrounded by his security detail and talking on the limo’s secure phone.
Mostly he was listening.
“Wujah Al Hajar Air Base,” said a voice from Virginia in an Alabama drawl. “It’s fifty kliks north on the coast highway, near Selaata. Call up your tactical squad. Delta Force is being scrambled but they’re at least four hours out. We may not have that much time.”
“Delta Force?” Donnelly repeated. He didn’t know what was happening, but he guessed it involved the Israeli he’d talked to earlier. More to the point, if Delta For
ce was involved, this was a career-maker. Or a career-breaker.
“Does this have to do with the inspection team we sent to Syria?”
“A full briefing package is waiting for you at the embassy.”
“All right, I’ll activate the tactical squad.”
At the embassy Donnelly worked fast. He found the briefing in a sealed folder on his desk. He’d been right—the Rapid Reaction team dispatched to Syria had found incontrovertible evidence of cesium-137. Having met the Israeli, Donnelly wasn’t surprised by the result. He was dumbstruck, however, by the acceleration of events and the forceful tone of Langley’s reaction. His orders were to assemble the tactical squad and proceed at best speed to a long-abandoned airfield, fifty kilometers north, where the radioactive material was possibly being loaded onto an aircraft. He would carry out those instructions to the letter.
Much like the WMD team he had earlier dispatched to Al Qutayfah, all U.S. embassies kept a standing plan for mustering a tactical force. It was drawn from Marine guards, military cadre, and CIA staff, and could be assembled on a moment’s notice for deployment anywhere in the host nation. The team trained for widespread contingencies: off-site hostage scenarios involving embassy staff members, perimeter protection in the face of uprisings, and a last-ditch extraction plan should a full-blown evacuation become necessary. Intervention in radiological attacks, Donnelly knew, had never made the manual, let alone been practiced, which meant some old-fashioned American ingenuity would be required. Inside twenty minutes a convoy of three vehicles, the heaviest armored limos on station, burst through the north gate and hurtled toward the Dbaiyeh highway.
From the back seat of the middle car, Donnelly looked out the window and tried to imagine what they could be facing. How many adversaries? What kind of weapons did they have? How much time was left to act? These were answers Donnelly desperately wanted. Yet as the group struck out north along the coast highway, the limo’s satellite suite remained ominously silent. For now, they were running blind. Then there was the other complication.
The Israeli.
He was presumably on their side, but in this corner of the world, where allegiances shifted like the desert breeze, one never knew. He remembered the man’s presentation at Les Palmiers, precise words and carefully constructed thoughts that could not have been bettered by Langley’s legal department. So too, he remembered the gray eyes that never wavered, this from a man who was on the run, and who had ended three lives in as many days. Indeed, Donnelly had sensed something missing in the Israeli.
Was it remorse? Conscience?
No, he realized, it wasn’t any of that. It was a complete lack of fear. He had seen it before in certain soldiers and field operatives. They were invariably hard men, braggarts and louts mostly, the occasional madman. But this Israeli was none of those things. He was capable, Donnelly was sure, yet he also sensed commitment—a very deep commitment—to something or someone. That was what made him different.
And at the moment, it was what made him essential.
SIXTY
Slaton was halfway to Tripoli and passing through Byblos, held to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, and a place whose name shared origins with that of the Bible, when he turned on the phone he’d seized from Donnelly. Finding an urgent message he returned the call.
“Where are you?” asked a female voice without introduction.
“I’m sure you’ll have me triangulated soon,” Slaton said. “I’m on the coast road northbound, heading through Byblos.”
“Did you see our confirmation on the CIA website?”
“I didn’t bother to look.”
“That’s pretty confident.” A pause as if the spokesperson was expecting a reply, then, “All right, what we need you to do is—”
“Who is this?” Slaton interrupted.
“You’re speaking to the National Counterterrorism Center. My name is Sorensen. The director is monitoring this call.”
Slaton considered making her prove that point, but decided it wasn’t necessary. “All right. I headed north out of Beirut because I suspected the material was taken in that direction. Do you have any intel on its location?”
Slaton waited through a long silence that implied the director was indeed listening in. He imagined Sorensen being briefed on what to share, and perhaps what to hold back. She came back on the line and talked for a full minute, explaining that a suspicious aircraft the CIA had been searching for had landed that morning at an abandoned field near Selaata.
“You think this aircraft is going to transport the material?” he asked.
“Transport is not the right word. This is a unique jet, a very large tanker that’s designed to disperse large quantities of retardant on forest fires. Or in this case, we believe something far worse.”
It was Slaton’s turn to go silent. For days he had been focusing on his own predicament, his private war with Ben-Meir. Now a larger picture was presented, an unprecedented threat that could affect thousands. He remembered Nassoor suggesting that the cesium could hypothetically be aerosolized to carry on the wind. “So they’re going to disperse it using this airplane,” he said, his thoughts verbalizing.
“We believe so,” said the voice from Langley. “We haven’t identified a specific target, but we think deployment may be imminent. The group behind this has gone to great lengths to hide the aircraft. It last was seen in Basrah, Iraq, and we’ve confirmed that equipment was placed on board there that could be used to weaponize the material.”
One word sank deep in Slaton’s mind. Target. A vague theory began to percolate, but didn’t completely come together.
“We have your location now,” said Langley. “You’re fifteen kilometers south of Wujah Al Hajar Air Base. We need you to get there as quickly as possible.”
“And then what?” Slaton prompted.
The longest pause yet. “Right now we need eyes on that aircraft. We have a Special Forces unit in transit, but they’re still three hours out. Donnelly is thirty minutes behind you with a team from the embassy. We believe there’s a chance the jet is being prepared for departure. If so, we may ask you to do what you can to … intervene.”
“Intervene,” Slaton repeated. “Do you have a head count? How many would I be up against?”
“So far only two confirmed at the aircraft, but there may be more. We have supporting intelligence that links this plot to a group of seven individuals … three of whom you’ve already eliminated. We think two of the remaining four are pilots, very possibly the individuals who are at the aircraft now. The other two may be in the area.”
The phrase “supporting intelligence” reminded Slaton of reports he’d gotten from Mossad in the past. It did not instill confidence. All the same, it was the best information he had—as far as the CIA knew, he would be facing no more than four adversaries, two of whom were being tracked in real time.
“Are you armed?” Sorensen asked.
Slaton pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it. Had the camera been enabled, it would have recorded a most incredulous expression. He ended the call and pocketed the handset. Turning his full attention to the road, he pressed the accelerator to the floor. The Audi’s big engine answered.
* * *
Ghazi removed his work gloves and tossed them into the scrub behind the airplane. He returned to find a nervous Tuncay standing near the nosewheel.
“You are sure it is safe for Walid and I to be inside the aircraft?” the pilot asked.
“Yes,” Ghazi replied with all the conviction he could muster. In truth, there was a measureable degree of risk. Ghazi had handled the material behind heavy shielding, but once removed from the shipping canisters some contamination was inevitable. “Go no farther aft than necessary, and when you abandon the aircraft after landing make sure you move forward, away from the fuselage. Everything aft of the tank will be hot by then, particularly underneath.”
“Hot?”
“Not as in temperature, but
—” Ghazi stumbled for a way to say it without inciting panic. There wasn’t one. “Everything will be fine, truly. Your escape is arranged?”
Tuncay nodded. “There is a little-used airfield south of our target area. I purchased a small aircraft and secured it in a hangar. From there, Walid and I can reach the Rub’ al Khali and Yemen in no more than three hours.”
Ghazi nodded. He knew Rub’ al Khali by its other name—the Empty Quarter, the largest sand desert in the world. He was surprised Tuncay was sharing his plan, and decided the Turk was probably anxious, seeking last-minute affirmation of the merits of the idea. “Yes, that is good,” Ghazi said, trying to sound reassuring. “Yemen is a place known only to God.”
Tuncay, looking little relieved, said, “It is time we finish this. Go to the hill and relieve Walid.”
Ghazi frowned. “I’m a chemist. A gun is useless in my hands.”
“You practiced earlier.”
A silence ran as both men recalled the sad affair, when Ben-Meir had made Ghazi take target practice. Aiming at water bottles from ten meters, he’d missed with an entire magazine. Ben-Meir had doubled over, laughing.
“It doesn’t matter that you can’t shoot,” Tuncay said. “Just keep your eyes open and use the radio if you see anything. If anyone approaches, point the rifle to frighten them away. Walid and I will have the jet airborne soon. Then you and Ben-Meir are free to make your escape.”
Ghazi took little comfort in this, remembering what Tuncay had said earlier about Ben-Meir speaking Hebrew. “I will await my payment in Rome, I think. And you?”
“I plan to avoid civilization completely. By the time the world realizes what we have wrought, I will be lost in the darkness of Africa.”
The two men exchanged an awkward look, both knowing the other was lying. Not that it mattered.
With a sigh, Ghazi looked reflectively at the massive jet. “So many years of school … this was not how I envisioned using my education.”
The Turk chuckled. “Nor I. But it pays the bills, no? You have done your part, and soon Walid and I will finish things. Now, enough talk—go relieve my copilot, and tell him to hurry.”
