24 Declassified: Storm Force 2d-7

by David S. Jacobs

  He finished making a final adjustment and lowered the screwdriver. "Done," he said. Easing away from the mechanism, he straightened, standing up, groaning softly from the pain of moving after having knelt in one position for so long. He shook his leg to work out some of the kinks.

  Vollard said, "Bravo."

  Huygens lifted his shirt front, using it as a towel to wipe the sweat from his face. Fresh sweat instantly replaced it. Vollard padded into the cabin, eyeing the arming device.

  Huygens said, "It is a simple rig. Primitive, really. It has to be, to make it effective."

  Vollard said, "It looks all right to me."

  "A tricky problem," Huygens said, "complicated by the storm. Everette could throw off the electronics. Too much electricity in the air. We cannot rely on a remote, wireless detonator to set it off from a distance. The storm force could glitch the signal, suppress it, canceling it out. It could happen. Wireless devices are too fragile for a big blow.

  "So, we use a timing device which can be set from here in the wheelhouse. It all shall be done with wires, not wireless. The operator sets the timing device for say, five or ten minutes before final impact. At zero hour, an electrical impulse goes from here down the nerve net trunk, through the wires fanning out from here into the individual detonators of the bomb sub-clusters. Simplicity itself."

  Simple to Huygens, perhaps, but then he was the expert. Vollard turned to the senior boat pilot. "What do you think, Ahmed? You're the one who has to ride the tiger."

  Ahmed stood with arms folded over his chest. He nodded, said, "It is well."

  Vollard said, "You'll run into some rough waters when the storm is rising."

  Ahmed bared teeth the color of old ivory in a half-sneer, half-grimace that might have been a smile. "I have sailed wooden fishing boats in the Arabian Sea during monsoon season. A little wind and rain on this river is nothing."

  Huygens smirked, said, "Make no mistake, my friend. An incoming hurricane is no joke."

  Ahmed said, "Allah willing, Rashid and I will be in Paradise long before the storm reaches its height."

  Vollard said, "May it be so." Here was the variable in Vollard's plan, the unanticipated X-factor. The approach of Hurricane Everette presented threat and opportunity. According to his calculations, even if the storm did make landfall in New Orleans, it would not do so until some hours after the job was done. The mission would be accomplished well before the storm peaked. That said, it was still a risk, but he was used to taking risks and so were his men. That was one of the things they were paid for.

  The storm cut two ways. The chaos it would produce was his ally; he and his men were trained professionals used to operating at peak efficiency while havoc reigned. It would confound and confuse the authorities and reduce their already modest level of competency to new lows. Once the mission was done, the storm would help thwart all pursuit and give the mercenary force a long lead time to make their getaway.

  As for Ahmed and Rashid, they would make their getaway upon completion of their part of the mission. Final, earthly getaway.

  8. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12 P.M. AND 1 P.M. CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME

  House of the Green Fountain,

  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

  8:05 P.M., local time

  It was a scene that could have taken place a thousand years, back in the era of the Caliphate of Haroun al-Raschid, when the Tales of a Thousand Nights and a Night, now known as the Arabian Nights, was first penned.

  The setting was a pleasure garden, a place designed to please the senses of desert-dwelling folk. At the middle of it stood an octagonal basin, whose centerpiece was a stepped pillar, rising to the height of a man.

  The pillar contained a fountain, which continually sprayed jets of water from its top. The water cascaded down into a series of shell-shaped catch basins, each progressively wider than the one above it, finally spilling into the octagonal pool, where hidden pumps recirculated it, sucking it up a pipe in the center of the pillar, and resuming the process.

  The waterfall effect was a thing of great beauty; fluid, ever-changing curtains of clear liquid tumbling from basin to basin into the eight-sided pool.

  The fountain was faced with tiles, green tiles, in a range of color varying from pale green to dark green and all shades in between. They formed a mosaic, a pattern of intricate arabesques that spiraled and entwined around the fountain from top to bottom.

  The garden floor was made of larger, hexagonal tiles of black and green, themselves forming dynamic geometric patterns. Grouped around the fountain were marble benches and rows of enormous reddish-brown ceramic planters holding orange, lemon, and apricot trees. Interspersed among them were rows of thick, dark hedges, seven feet tall, set in long, troughlike planters. Benches, fruit trees, and hedgerows broke up the garden space, creating a variety of nooks, alcoves, and arcades. The air was cool, moist, fragrant with the scents of flower beds and fruit trees.

  The garden would have looked right at home in a fabulous storybook illustration, yet it was a reality that existed right in the heart of the futuropolis that is today's Riyadh.

  It was indoors, located in an atrium of a house occupied by Imam Omar, the Smiling Cleric — who, with a piece of property like this, had much to smile about. The atrium was a central shaft, several stories tall, whose top was roofed over with a clear, Plexiglas bubble dome.

  The palatial residence had been donated to the Imam by one of his followers who was a well-placed member of the House of Saud. It was one of several such houses, all equally magnificent, located in and about Riyadh, that belonged to the Imam.

  Counterpointing the sounds of running water from the fountain came the rhythmic rise and fall of voices chanting prayers.

  The praying took place in a room that served as a place of worship, located off the atrium. Entrance was obtained through a pointed archway. Posted outside it were two guards, trusted members of the mutawayin, the religious police.

  The mutawayin was the militia of Imam Omar and his militant sect of ultrafundamentalist Wahabists.

  Minister Fedallah had his own private army in the form of his Internal Special Squad. But Fedallah was only the steward of the corps, not its master. The section was the property of His Majesty the King, to whom all its members had pledged fealty.

  Whereas the mutawayin's ultimate loyalty lay not with the King, but to God, who was represented on earth in the form of his servant and messenger, Imam Omar.

  Fedallah — and for that matter, the King himself — would have given much to know what now transpired in the inner sanctum of the prayer room of the House of the Green Fountain.

  The entire site was guarded by a phalanx of religious police, stationed throughout the house and in the grounds beyond. Fanatical bodyguards whose lives were pledged to protect the sanctity of this place.

  The prayer room was large, spacious, high-ceilinged. Its walls were paneled in rare, costly woods polished to a mirrorlike finish, its marble floor covered with ornate rugs. There were low divans and mounds of overstuffed cushions and pillows.

  Within, a joyful celebration was taking place. Twelve men in all were assembled, a mirror image of His Majesty's Special Council, the overseers of the petroleum market glut operation veiled under the cryptic tag of Cloak of Night.

  Some of those now present in the prayer room had also been present earlier in the afternoon, in the conference room of the Special Council.

  Chief among them was Imam Omar himself, who now conducted this special service of prayer and thanksgiving. The Smiling Cleric was their undisputed arbiter of matters devotional and religious.

  All the celebrants stood, open prayer books in hand, rocking slightly back and forth as they chanted their holy verses, God-intoxicated. It was a call-and-response ceremony, Omar passionately intoning the stanzas, his rapturous followers venting their corresponding choruses in unison.

  The devotions had been going on for some time now, more than an hour, but the energy and e
nthusiasm of the participants never flagged, instead seemed to steadily increase.

  The uninitiated might have been most surprised by the presence and fervent, wholehearted participation of Prince Tariq. Those who knew him only as a worldly, Westernized man of affairs, the smoothly polished diplomat and dealmaker of the corporate boardrooms and ministerial conclaves, would have been surprised to see him here, seemingly giving himself up heart and soul to the ritualized worship.

  Still more God-maddened and inspired was Prince Hassani, caught up in the throes of an ecstatic trance. His expression was otherworldly. His gaze was fixed, the object of his glazed-eyed stare placed somewhere beyond worldly ken — perhaps on the promise of Paradise.

  Such worship — one-point consciousness, channeled, underlined by repetition — can induce mystical intimations. A hypnotic quality underlay the ritual, evoked by the rhythmical chanting, the call-and-response, the rise and fall of words that lost their individual meaning and became a sonic pattern as abstract and primal as crashing surf or winds wailing across a wasteland.

  The worshippers were transported beyond earthly cares into the realm of the blessed. For what could be more blessed, more joyful, than to know that one of their own, one present here tonight, would be in Paradise tomorrow?

  This would-be homicidal suicide had elected to make the supreme sacrifice by taking unto himself the honor of holy martyrdom.

  Tomorrow, he would kill. A sanctified killing, righteous and just, yet one that could not be accomplished without bringing death to the slayer.

  The Cloak of Night had a dagger hidden up its sleeve, the dagger of an assassin.

  * * *

  De Lesseps Plaza, New Orleans

  Another showpiece of the midtown business district was the Mega Mart building.

  It was visible from De Lesseps Plaza, where Jack Bauer and Pete Malo were. Pete pointed to a needlelike spire rising to the northeast behind a row of buildings lining the plaza's east side.

  "There it is," he said. "Not far from here, as the crow flies. Too bad we're driving. We've got to go the long way around. Like the man said, 'You can't get there from here.' "

  The midtown area was suggestive of a medieval fortress town, its central keep surrounded by a maze of pathways. The SUV rolled along one-way streets, making frequent detours to access the route it wanted, only to find progress blocked by a high wall, construction site, or cul-de-sac, requiring it to make another circuitous go-round.

  It stopped for a red light, Jack taking advantage of the pause to reach into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and remove a nondescript metal container that was about the size and shape of a pack of cigarettes. He lifted the lid, opening it.

  Inside, each nestled in its own hollow in a lining in the bottom of the box, were a half-dozen objects that looked like fuzzy black aspirin tablets.

  Pete glanced away from the road ahead and at the container nestled in Jack's palm. "What're you going to do with those?"

  Jack said, "Hang one on Garros."

  "A nice trick, if you can get away with it."

  Jack smiled with his lips. "What's one more flea to a horndog like him?"

  "It's not him I'm worried about, it's Susan Keehan. And her palace guard," Pete said.

  "Flea" — that's what the technical division called it. Unofficially. A new refinement on traditional bugging devices, it operated along lines similar to those of the microchips that pet owners have implanted in their dogs and cats to find them if they got lost. Except that it didn't have to be injected under the skin, but could be attached by a casual "brush" contact.

  Each one contained an ulframiniaturized transponder, audio pickup unit, and transmitter, all enabled by a fleck-sized power cell. The entire surface was a compound poly-fabric condenser microphone. Powerful and sophisticated, it could hear what was going on around the general vicinity of its wearer and stream the audio to a receiver.

  Its sticky matte-black exterior shell was modeled after a thistle burr, and once attached to the target, unlikely to work loose and come off. The transponder also served as a locator, enabling the operator to maintain a continuous fix on the subject's location.

  The light turned green and Pete drove on, wending his way Mega Mart-ward.

  He said, "You don't think Garros is going to stand still while you slap one of those on him, do you?"

  Jack said, "It'll be over before he knows what happened. It'll only take a second to stick it to him."

  Pete scoffed. "A second, huh? What makes you think you'll get it? We're not just bucking Paz's crew this time, we're going up against the Keehan machine."

  "I'll keep that in mind."

  "Center'll make sure you do. So will headquarters in Washington."

  Jack quirked a smile, with one corner of his mouth turned down, the other turned up. "Deep politics, eh?"

  "With a vengeance," Pete said. "Susan's uncle, Senator Keehan, holds a top post on the Senate Intelligence Committee."

  Jack said, "I know; I've met him a few times when I was testifying before the committee in closed-door session."

  Pete shot him a quick side glance. "Is he as big a horse's ass in person as he is on TV?"

  "Depends," Jack said. "He's Mr. Senatorial Courtesy and Decorum until the testimony contradicts some policy line that he's taken. Then he repeats his question in the form of a statement, telling you what he wants to hear from you."

  "What did you tell him?"

  "Just the facts, Pete, just the facts. That's why I'm sitting here right now, instead of holding down atop administrative job at CTU Washington."

  Pete laughed, said, "Aw, you wouldn't like it at HQ anyhow. All that politics and paperwork."

  "Not to mention that big pay raise and all those perks. That'd be tough to take," Jack said.

  Pete's tone was upbeat. "Maybe this time the Senator's bitten off more than he can chew, getting into bed with Chavez on that oil deal."

  Jack said, "It hasn't hurt him so far. But who knows, now that the shooting's started. Maybe we can monkey wrench that gruesome twosome."

  A parked car lurched away from curbside into the street, causing Pete to have to swerve the wheel hard to avoid getting hit. He hammered the heel of his hand against the horn, cursing.

  The other driver flinched, looking sheepish. This was no sinister aggressor shooting a move, it was just another careless, heedless driver. He hung back a few car lengths, keeping his distance.

  A few blocks later, the veins standing out on Pete's forehead started to reduce in size. He said, "We're almost there now. That's Mega Mart up ahead. The building's got its own EXECPROTEK unit."

  EXECPROTEK was a civilian security and confidential investigations agency with plenty of clout, originally founded by Brinsley S. Wolters, former ace sleuth and opposition researcher on the Senator's staff. Senator Keehan's own private eye.

  Pete said, "Goofy name, EXECPROTEK. Sounds like some sort of fancy condom."

  Jack remained straight-faced. "Nice to have your own private police force, though. Every dynasty should have one."

  Pete nodded. "They've got Mylon Sears over there, honchoing the operation. He's nobody's fool."

  Jack, thoughtful, said, "Sears is Wolters's top lieutenant. Shows you how much store the Senator sets on this Chavez thing."

  Pete grinned, said, "Maybe it won't look so sweet to him now that the bodies are piling up."

  "Might make Sears more cooperative."

  "Uh-uh. Susan wouldn't like it."

  "What's her problem, anyway, Pete?"

  "She thinks we're picking on her because of her tie-up with LAGO. She's right, of course."

  "Garros might be inclined to meet us halfway," Jack said, "considering that we know about his hookups with the Golden Pole dancers, Vikki and Dorinda. He doesn't need that kind of heat while he's romancing Susan Keehan. That gives us some leverage."

  Pete shook his head. "She's so stuck on that guy, she'll just figure we're making things up to smear him. On the other hand,
Caracas might not like it that he's risking a multimillion-dollar romance by two-timing the heiress. Or is that three-timing? In any case, he's got the boys back home to worry about."

  Jack said, "Plus whoever it is that tried to whack Paz."

  "Yeah, there's that, too."

  * * *

  The Mega Mart building looked like a starship poised for takeoff on the launching pad. It had been built and was owned by the powerful Keehan clan. A decade earlier, they'd gambled big on the future of New Orleans, and it had paid off.

  Even now, in the post-Katrina climate, it continued to thrive and its prospects remained bright. Much of the skyscraper's space was occupied by Keehan business interests, not only the family's primary and openly acknowledged financial vehicles, but also a number of subsidiaries, satellite and shell corporations linked to it by a complex and tenuous web of cutouts and holding companies.

  Office space in the Mart was eagerly sought after by companies independent of any association with Keehan interests, attracted by the site's first-rate accommodations and the charismatic allure of the dynasty's name.

  The Keehans were one of the richest families in the United States. Back in the nineteenth century, the fledgling dynasts had been a clan of Philadelphia lawyers and bankers who'd gotten into the oil business on the heels of the state's rich Spindletop strike. Pennsylvania's oil deposits were soon exhausted, but not before the family had diversified its holdings into coal, steel, railroads, and real estate, taking their place among the great robber barons of the Gilded Age.

  In this, they were no different from many other hardheaded, hardfrsted plutocrats of the era. The Keehan genius lay in an early and intensive concentration in the field of politics.

  Most of their fellow titans of industry shunned direct involvement in partisan politics, disdaining the whole grubby business of electioneering, preferring to take the easier course of buying politicians rather than filling the offices themselves.

  The Keehans knew better, realizing early on that elective office was where the real money and power lay.