Countdown to Mecca

by Michael Savage

  “All right,” said Jack. “Let’s get this over with.” He turned to Jimmy. “You got a tire iron?”

  Jimmy held it up as if he were both a mind reader and a magician.

  Jack turned to Doc. “Got the digicam?” Doc held it up the same way as Jimmy had produced the tire iron—only with the same expression he always reserved for that question.

  Jimmy eyed the digicam suspiciously. “That’s your equipment?”

  “This cargo container has just arrived in Saudi Arabia from a small company in Oakland, California,” Jack said tightly, as he pried at the crate’s nails and slats. “A company that makes copy machines and electrical parts—very special electrical parts.…” Jack continued to narrate as he pried off the locks. “Key components for a sophisticated bomb, hidden in an office shipment. In just a few moments, we will make sure that they cannot be used in any weapon of mass…”

  A section of the crate gave way. It fell onto the ground with a hollow clatter. Jack stopped speaking. There was no reason to continue.

  The container was empty.

  34

  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

  General Brooks checked his watch. He was due at the ambassador’s residence in three hours for a cocktail party in his honor. Ordinarily he disliked attending fancy diplomatic shindigs—“pretend balls” he called them—but he was going to relish this one. The American ambassador to Saudi Arabia hated his guts, and the feeling was mutual. Brooks would savor the pleasure of smiling into his smile.

  If only there was some way to get him to Mecca when the bomb exploded! Brooks indulged himself in the image for a few moments, then turned his thoughts to the matter at hand. His man at Yanbu had sent him a message; he needed to find a private place to read it. He continued walking across the installation, nodding at the salutes of the men he passed, heading toward the large double-wide trailer used as the command’s headquarters.

  During the First Gulf War, the stationing of so many American troops on Saudi soil encouraged some extremists—most notably Osama bin Laden—to oppose the Saudi leadership and claim that it should be overthrown. The issue of “infidels” on Saudi soil was still very sensitive.

  While the long-distance X-Band Radar here protected vital Saudi assets—including the holy cities of Mecca and Jeddah—Americans were nonetheless under orders to keep a very quiet presence. The base was a small, self-contained area in the corner of a Royal Saudi Air Force installation some thirty miles south of Riyadh. Personnel were practically restricted from leaving, and when they did leave, they had to wear civilian clothes. Very possibly these men would have to be sacrificed at the start of the war. The thought sobered Brooks, and he gave each man a respectful nod as well as a formal salute as he passed. Finally he reached the command trailer. He pulled the door open and went in, luxuriating for a moment in the cool hallway.

  The men’s room was on the right. Brooks ducked in, and locked the door behind him. It was one of the few places on the base where he could absolutely count on being alone. He took out his private satellite phone and began entering the series of passwords that prevented anyone but himself from using it. Then he entered the encryption key of the day. The last barrier was a retina reader app, which required a photo of his iris. This was actually the trickiest step—General Brooks had developed a bad habit of blinking as the flash went off, spoiling the shot.

  It took two tries today. Better than normal.

  He went to the web browser and called up the program where the message was stored as a video. Leaning back against the wall, he pressed PLAY.

  Rather than the text he assumed he would see, an actual video came on the screen. The image was in bright, sharp color. It showed a Mercedes driving ahead of whoever was taking the video. The unusually sensitive camera zoomed in and waited until the man in the Mercedes passenger seat turned his head into profile. Then the image froze, and zoomed in even more.

  It was Jack Hatfield.

  Brooks smiled. The general had been right. Hatfield was exactly the sort of man who could see what was coming and explain it to America. Brooks had watched some episodes of Truth Tellers on YouTube. While some of the broadcasts were not as unabashedly patriotic as he might have liked, on the whole Hatfield provided a clear and refreshing view of what was really happening in the world. The fact that he was far outside the Washington Beltway was one factor, but Brooks was convinced that it was more than that—if every generation produced a finite number of people with clear vision and perceptive minds, Jack Hatfield was among them.

  And now here he was in Saudi Arabia, not just preparing for their interview, but, as Peter Andrews suspected, tracking down the operation. Too bad he was wasting his time. The last pieces of the bombs were in place; in two days, Jerusalem and Mecca would be completely destroyed.

  Brooks heard someone outside in the hall. He closed the program, exited out of the security barriers, and returned the phone to his pocket. Then he went to the commode, flushed the toilet, and washed his hands.

  The base commander’s chief of staff, a Chinese-American who’d recently been promoted to major, was waiting in the hallway when he emerged. “Sorry to bother you, General,” said the major. “Your event coordinator wants you to call him right away regarding an interview. Colonel Hall’s phone is available,” added the major, pointing to his boss’s office.

  “Thank you, Major.”

  Brooks walked quickly up the hall, nodded at the secretary, then stepped into Colonel Hall’s office. The call went through quickly.

  “General,” came Andrews’s frosty tone. “It is time I tell your precious Mr. Hatfield the time and place of your meeting.”

  “Set up an appointment at the Four Seasons,” said Brooks, revealing the hotel where he was staying in Riyadh. “Make it for dinner.”

  “That late?” Andrews countered. “Who knows what mischief he and his friends might get into by then?”

  Brooks glanced quickly around, just to make sure he had complete privacy. “I told you before,” he said tightly. “He is not to be touched. He may become very important in the mission’s aftermath.”

  “Yes, sir,” Andrews said in his unique way of making “yes” sound like “oh, very well.” The event coordinator continued blithely. “And he will not be. Does the same go for his associates?”

  The question brought Brooks up short. For a moment he considered how Hatfield being isolated from his support team might affect him. Would it make him easier to deal with? It could go either way.

  “Yes,” he told Andrews, “but only if they do not prove a direct threat to the operation.”

  “And if they do?”

  “Hatfield is to be protected,” Brooks ordered. “The others should be dealt with as you deem necessary.”

  Andrews appreciated the vote of confidence. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “You’ve earned it, Peter. Keep up the good work.”

  “I shall, sir,” Andrews replied sincerely. He was about to disconnect the call.

  “Peter?”

  “Sir?”

  “Tell Hatfield I’m looking forward to our interview,” Brooks said. “I’m looking forward to it very much.”

  “I will tell him that, sir,” Peter Andrews said into the phone.

  35

  Yemen, Saudi Arabia

  It was Peter Andrews who spoke to Brooks, but now it was his alter ego, Pyotr Ansky, who disconnected the call.

  Standing in the middle of the desert on the border, Saudi side, the killer adjusted his headscarf and then folded his arms in front of him. He had parachuted here ten minutes before, precisely as planned. After burying his parachute and helmet, he stood and waited. He smiled at the military-grade communication device in his hand. By all rights, it should not have worked here.

  Communication towers? he thought. Who needs them?

  Pyotr was not impatient. He had learned patience the hard way—spending time in the prison “box,” where his only companions were the rats that gnawed at his toe
nails while he slept. He smiled thinly as he heard the sound of a motor in the distance. He took a slow, deep breath and waited.

  A Range Rover appeared from the direction of the hills a few moments later, riding over the undulating dunes at a speed that had to be close to a hundred and twenty kilometers an hour. A vast cloud of dust and sand rose behind it. The angry fist of God, Pyotr thought. Then he cleared his mind of metaphors. They were distractions.

  The truck didn’t slow until it was almost upon him. Then the driver hit the brakes so hard that Pyotr thought it would surely roll over and crush him. But he remained calm. He stood still even as the grit caught up with the vehicle and spread over him.

  The truck stopped a few meters away, without rolling over. As the dust cloud settled, its driver and two other men got out. They had the Kalashnikovs, as Pyotr had suggested. The small group separated; two stayed near the truck; the other came forward. He held his gun in one hand, finger pointed parallel to the barrel, just as Pyotr had taught him. It was the man who had nearly fallen in the rigid-hulled raft after Pyotr had brought down the airliner. The remaining pair were his other men—the one who had worked the engines, and the third who served as their backup. Pyotr had trained them well, and they had proven capable and worthy.

  The man who nearly fell when Pyotr had thrown the container at him had never faltered again. He now reached into his pocket and took out a USB drive. “The location is in the document.”

  Pyotr took the flash drive. “Good.” It was time for the next phase.

  “The Americans are getting closer and closer,” his second-in-command blurted. “We could kill them easily.”

  Pyotr snorted. “A child could kill them easily.” He looked up at his associate. “Are you a child who needs to have such a tantrum?”

  The man swallowed, his lips tight. “No, sir.”

  “Then you will continue to do as you are ordered.”

  “Yes, sir. We will have the Jerusalem bomb in hand by the time you make your attack.” He swallowed again. “As ordered.”

  “Good,” Pyotr repeated. He turned to look everywhere around him, savoring the sight . He wondered what the sands would look like when a nuclear response turned them into glass. When he turned back, his second-in-command had never seen his smile so wide or his eyes so bright. “Now drive me back to the airfield,” Pyotr Ansky commanded.

  36

  Yanbu’ al Bahr, Saudi Arabia

  “Brooks is playing with us,” said Jack in frustration. “He knows we’re here, he knows we’re trying to stop the bombing, and he’s playing with us. The cat-and-mouse mentality of the Islamists is rubbing off on him.”

  “How are they cat-and-mouse?” Doc asked. “Terrorists are more like mice, hiding and then running after they bell the cat. Or in this case, bomb him.”

  “Those are the foot soldiers you’re talking about,” Jack said. “I mean the leaders. The ones who plot, who want to instill fear until you’re too paralyzed to act, would rather capitulate.”

  “Ah,” Doc nodded. “I see your point. Well, we have to get ahead of this, that’s for sure.”

  Jimmy watched the two, moving his head back and forth, as if they were tennis players.

  “But how?” asked Jack. It wasn’t really a question; he was thinking aloud.

  “There’s got to be another container, to start with,” Doc surmised. “This crate had been switched for another one, probably right under our noses. Look.” Doc held up the shipping records from San Francisco, and the record Jimmy had gotten from the shipping yard master. The number on this crate matched the shipping yard records. It did not match the San Francisco manifest.

  “What we have to do is find the right one,” Doc concluded. “We’ll go to the yard and look for these numbers.”

  “Assuming it’s still there,” Jack added.

  “Got a better idea?” Doc asked.

  Jack didn’t, so they went, Jimmy getting them there faster than before. They found a lot more activity at the dockyard, but if anything security was even laxer, with the guard simply waving as they came in. They began a search, but soon realized it was in vain. The place was bustling, and the odds of finding anything out of sheer dumb luck were about the same as hitting the lottery Powerball.

  “Jimmy,” Jack suggested. “Go talk to the men who unloaded the Flower of Asia. See if they can tell us anything.”

  Jimmy went to work, and ultimately wound up with a group of truck drivers who were waiting for their loads in a bullpen-type area near the entrance. It took him a few minutes and some cigarettes to find where the cargo containers that had come off the Flower of Asia were being held for pickup. Only a dozen trailers were stored there. None had the right numbers.

  A few more cigarettes took Jimmy to the foreman of the crew responsible for unloading Flower of Asia. He was from Indonesia; his Arabic was poor, but his English nearly perfect. Doc took over, and managed to persuade him to check the records on what containers had been shipped out already.

  The man wanted a hundred bucks. Jimmy frowned on that, but Jack supplied the cash. “Look for where this one went in particular,” said Jack, handing over a piece of paper with the number of the container they’d found.

  The man fiddled with the slightly oversize tablet computer that provided access to the records. It looked like an iPad with an antenna. He came up with an address two towns over.

  Jack walked away with a cunning smile, but Jimmy was frowning.

  “What’s up?” asked Doc when they were far enough away from the bullpen. The three were framed in a huge square doorway of the cavernous place.

  “Man no good,” Jimmy said. “Man lying. Sending us on wild moose chase.”

  “How do you know?” Jack pressed, hoping he didn’t waste the hundred.

  “Man took bribe,” Jimmy explained. “Ask for too much. Man who take bribe dishonest. Man who ask for too much think you a…”

  Jimmy didn’t want to finish the sentence in deference to his manners, but Jack saw the truth in what Jimmy was saying.

  Jack lowered and shook his head. He realized he wanted to defeat Brooks too badly. He looked up at a sympathetic Doc. “Should’ve listened to you about getting my head in the Middle East game. I keep thinking this is America with Saudis in it.” He looked back to Jimmy. “How do we get the truth out of him?”

  “Him?” Jimmy echoed. “We don’t.”

  Jimmy looked around until he saw a group of Arab women and children in the far corner. The kids were playing, but only near the small circle of women, who knitted, cooked on small hot plates, and talked. The women were all wearing niqabs—the body covering garb that only revealed their eyes. To Jack’s eyes, it looked like a small section of a Middle Eastern village moved inside an expansive hangar.

  “Them?” Jimmy said with a wide smile. “We do.”

  He motioned to the two Americans to stay back, then casually approached the conclave of women and children.

  “Probably wives and kids of the truckers,” Doc surmised. “Who knows how long they have to wait here for an assignment, so the women come along to make them food or tend to whatever needs they require. And since they probably can’t afford, or don’t want, babysitters…!”

  Jack watched as Jimmy chatted with the women. Since he was wearing nice Arabian clothes, they showed him respect, but soon there was more than that. He reminded Jack of certain perceptive, persuasive stand-up comics, and sure enough, the women started laughing and nodding to each other.

  Eventually Jimmy made his farewells and returned to Doc and Jack, motioning for them to follow him. “Those men would never betray their bosses, no matter how much you pay them,” Jimmy explained. “You gone in a moment. Hundred dollars not enough to retire on. You never know the truth from them. Ah, but their wives…! Wives know what men say about bosses behind bosses’ back.”

  Doc smiled in appreciation and admiration as they all got back into the car. “So you commiserated with them, right?”

  “What i
s commiseration?” Jimmy asked, starting the car.

  “Sympathized with them,” Jack translated. “Understood what they were going through, and joked about it with them.”

  “Yes, yes,” Jimmy said as they drove away from the pier. “Co-mis-er-ate.” He nodded. “Good word.”

  “What did they tell you?” Jack asked.

  “Saudi Air Force,” Jimmy reported, heading away from town. “The place they sent the truck was Saudi AF base.”

  “Around here?” Doc asked. “I don’t know any Saudi Air Force Base around here.”

  “No name,” Jimmy revealed. “Strange. But I have directions.”

  Doc frowned. “This does not sound good,” he decided. “Take it nice and easy, Jimmy.”

  Jack looked to his tall, experienced friend with a question on his face.

  “If the truck driver told his wife that he was sent to an Air Force base,” Doc explained. “I figured it was because they wanted that driver, as well as the others, to stay away.”

  “No, no,” Jimmy countered. “Wife say air force base okay. Got nice little town there, helping soldiers.”

  Doc’s face registered surprise, then concern. “Interesting. Still be careful, Jimmy.”

  “Always careful, Doc,” Jimmy assured him.

  The landscape changed dramatically several times before they’d gone five miles. The port buildings gave way to a thin green belt of lettuce and other sunflowers, which promptly melted into total desert, then a fog of sand, and finally a hardscrabble collection of low hills and canyons that clustered beneath the horseshoe peak of Jebel Jar, a nearby mountain.

  Jack studied the area. The only sign of life was a small group of Bedouins camped in the middle of the desert to the east as they drove. But no matter how hard they looked, the terrain in front of them looked just as empty and uninviting. Then Jimmy spotted a pair of large rocks at the side of the road. They had been painted with white swirls.