“Since I wouldn’t impugn your courage by disagreeing, let’s assume you would’ve,” Doc said. He smiled lightly. “Or would you have?”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“I mean if a Muslim radical had destroyed the Golden Gate Bridge and half of San Francisco, wouldn’t that have solidified ‘our’ cause? Mightn’t that have won many of those moderate Muslims to ‘our’ side. Wouldn’t that have isolated and eventually quarantined the extremists the way the attacks of 2001 started to? Until we went to war with Iraq,” he said. “We tried to slip that in under a kind of ‘Remember the Alamo’ clause but it didn’t fly. All the credibility we had went out the window when we became what we beheld, when we attacked the way we had been attacked.”
Jack smiled proudly. Brooks grinned humorously. “I appreciate your loyalty to your friend, Mr. Matson. And your points are not without merit—intellectually. You know as well as I that in the real world, boots on the ground, you hit a hive of wasps before they can sting you.”
“Mecca isn’t just a hive,” Doc pointed out. “That’s like comparing a den of Irish gunrunners to the Vatican. You don’t take out St. Peters to make peace in Ireland. I think you’ll find that would have had the opposite effect.”
Brooks bowed in the first concession of the exchange. He turned back to Jack. “Your friend makes a valid point—about Catholics. But they are rational. Muslims are not.” He looked from one man to another, and stood. He placed his fists on the table.
“Gentleman, tomorrow, there will be a nuclear strike on Jerusalem, followed, almost immediately, by a bigger attack on Mecca, the likes of which the world has never seen and won’t soon forget. The plan is too far along to stop now. So your choice, your only choice, is to get with the program or get run over by my tank treads.”
He looked at Jack with an infuriating “all-is-forgiven-come-home-to-papa” expression on his face. “If you make the right choice, I want you to be the good fight’s spokesman in all media. I want you to take your rightful place as the only man with the balls and brains to lead our people to the right side. This is your destiny, Jack. This is what you were born for. You know it, I know it, now let the rest of the world know it.”
If Brooks expected Jack to run into his arms he was sorely disappointed. He was, however, somehow taken aback by Jack’s suspicious expression.
“Sure,” he said drily, “and how do I know you won’t pull the same scam on me that you did here in Riyadh?”
Brooks blinked again, his fists coming off the table. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”
“Please—don’t give me that innocent routine,” Jack chided. “You know very well what I’m talking about. The whole song and dance about having me track the copy machine switches to a fake Yanbu base with an empty bomb. Schoenberg, the eleven workers, our interpreter Jimmy. How many people did you have killed just to keep me busy?”
Doc saw it first. Jack’s words were hitting the previously assured general like a flurry of little, rock-hard, fists. Brooks’s eyes narrowed, then widened. He even took a step back, his mouth opening.
“You’ve lost all perspective, General,” Jack pressed on, still not really seeing what effect he was having. “With this terrible plan, you lost all your humanity!”
Finally Jack stemmed his own flow of words. He stared at Brooks, his own eyes widening. He wanted to swear, but couldn’t find the profanity amid the roar in his own brain. “You … didn’t … know?” he finally breathed.
Brooks stood stock still, but his eyes were ratcheting in their sockets like pinballs.
“Doc,” Jack said as calmly as he could. “Show him.”
Then Doc, as calmly as he could—which was very calm indeed—walked over, turned the digicam so the general could see the playback screen, and showed him the base, the aftermath of the battle, and the revelation of the bomb’s empty innards.
Jack watched Brooks’s face as the video played. By the end he seemed as ashen and empty as the bomb itself.
The general stepped back again, as did Doc, who also returned the digicam back to its RECORD setting, calmly placing it on the level of Brooks’s face. The general looked as if he wanted to hold up a cross toward the digicam, to ward off its blood-sucking truth.
The man who spoke again was not the same man they had seen when they entered the room. His body language and face was the polar opposite of the prince’s. The prince had been galvanized. General Thomas Brooks had been gutted.
“I’m afraid that’s all I have time for, Mr. Hatfield,” he said quietly, beginning to turn.
Jack was taken by surprise. “Wait a minute! How does this affect your plan? Will you stop now? In God’s name, will you stop?”
“Will you stop?” Brooks shouted over his shoulder as he quickened his pace.
“Never—General!”
But all Brooks did was continue to move away. All he said was, “I’m sorry, Mr. Hatfield, I have many appointments to keep.”
Brooks then turned and almost ran toward the door at the far end of the room. Jack jumped up to follow him. Doc shifted out of the way, but kept the digicam aimed at Brooks.
“General, you must know this compromises your plan. There’s no way the results you want can be achieved now. Where’s the other bomb? Will you stop the other bomb?” A sudden realization slowed Jack down. “Can you?!”
Brooks flat out ran. He slipped through the far door and slammed it in Jack’s face. They all heard the lock snap into place.
When Jack turned to Doc, the old soldier was already thumbing the SEND feature on the digicam to e-mail addresses at the safe house and an FBI office in San Francisco. Even so, he never stopped moving in the opposite direction. He slipped the digicam into a jacket pocket and kept moving. When Jack didn’t automatically follow, too overwhelmed to think straight, Doc only said one urgent word.
“Run.”
45
The next three minutes were a period of remarkable, single-minded focus for Jack. He was reminded of a time, in a journalists’ charity football game, when he caught the kickoff and ran downfield. All he saw ahead of him were a clutch of knee-jerk liberal administration apologists between him and the goal. There was no way he would let them stop him.
And they didn’t.
To the people in the hotel hallways and lobby, this was not a sporting event. They saw two men running haphazardly, as if they’d knocked off a bank and didn’t have an escape strategy; and two uniformed guards from General Brooks’s security staff in pursuit, their sidearms in their hands, their legs churning hard with practiced stride.
“Stop those men!” one kept bellowing, but most of the people they were shouting at didn’t know English. And the ones who did simply froze, confused or frightened, or both.
Jack hazarded a glance at a window as he ran, saw the reflection of the military police coming after them. Would they shoot? Would they go so far as to fire in a crowded lobby—something to which local authorities would not take kindly.
Jack didn’t think so. Moreover, Brooks couldn’t have barked more than a few words at them. What was the order? Stop them? Wound them? Shoot to kill?
Not that it mattered what the orders were, Jack decided. In the heat of the moment, anything could happen. Survival was measured in seconds, as he imagined the moments of life were treasured by someone who was about to be hanged.
All that counted was that he had not been shot when Doc burst out the hotel door and all but leaped to the side of the prince’s limo. Jack saw the chauffeur stagger back as Doc lunged into the Bentley’s rear section, and all but bounced back out, his Glock raised in his hand.
Jack sped, then slid toward them, but froze, his hands up when he heard a booming “Stop!” just behind him.
He turned slowly to the side and saw the two security men in their well-trained positions: heads tucked, both arms straight, guns aimed at his head and chest.
For an endless second it was a stand-off: the men ready to drop Jack,
and Doc standing beside him, his gun also ready.
Then the second was over, and, as if a moving picture had entered a still photo, the prince’s chauffeur wandered between the two sets of weapons, his hands out to both sides.
“I shall speak English because I assume you do not speak Arabic,” he said to the security men. “Correct?”
They didn’t answer, but their eyes started to waver between Jack, Doc, and the chauffeur. “Correct?!” the chauffeur snapped more sharply.
The lead security man nodded.
“These men,” the chauffeur said, motioning to Jack and Doc, “are under the personal protection of Prince Riad al-Saud of the Royal Family of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As such, if they are harmed in any way, the people who are responsible for harming them will be subject to the regulations of the Islamic Sharia derived from the Quran and the Sunnah. Do you understand?”
The eyes of the military men wavered even more, but they didn’t change their stances. “We have orders pertaining to these two men,” the lead officer finally said, despite knowing the severity of the Saudi legal system.
“I am sure you do,” the chauffeur replied amiably. “But since these men are under the personal protection of the prince, and are not members of the military, your orders have no bearing here. You have no authority here. You are already in jeopardy under our strict weapons regulations, rules that I will not hesitate to invoke if you do not immediately withdraw.”
The question of which was more severe, Saudi law or the wrath of General Brooks, clearly weighed on the men.
“I have no information regarding the military status of these individuals,” one of the men said, reaching for straws and also trying to buy time to think. “The general believes otherwise,” he added, ultimately passing the buck.
The chauffeur looked questioningly at Jack and Doc as if asking, “Are you, in fact, civilians?” Doc nodded in such a way as to communicate that Jack and he were, indeed, no longer members of any military.
“Your general is incorrect,” the chauffeur said.
“With respect, sir, we have orders,” the lead man repeated stubbornly, almost desperately.
The chauffeur sighed. “Well then, if I may ask, what were your orders?”
The lead man thought for a moment, then answered. “To stop these men.”
The chauffeur put out his hands. “Excellent. As you can see, they have stopped.”
The lead man was flummoxed. “Sir—” he sputtered, then stopped.
“No further discussion is required,” the chauffeur suggested. “Congratulations on a job well done. Please go back and tell your general that the orders have been carried out and if he has any further orders concerning these gentlemen, he should take them up with Prince Riad al-Saud. Thank you for your attention, good work, and I would put away your firearms and withdraw before the local authorities arrive—which should be momentarily,” he added, listening as the sound of sirens rose from down the street.
The chauffeur clapped his hands and then all but shooed the security men away. The staff and bystanders let out a sigh of relief and continued on. Just to be on the safe side, the chauffeur took Jack’s arm and brought him beside Doc, then stood calmly between them and the security men, who were lowering their weapons and looking at each other with indecision.
“You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” Doc whispered at him.
The chauffeur shrugged.
“You’re not just a chauffeur, are you?”
“You’re not just a cameraman, are you?” the driver said quietly.
Doc grinned, but the grin disappeared when he looked down at his camera. There was a red light flashing. He opened the viewing screen where a message waited. It was a red cross in a red circle with the red letters UNDELIVERED.
Doc looked up at the building. Something, or someone, had blocked his video e-mails.
46
The man who had blocked the signal stared down at Doc and Jack from the one-way window of the general’s suite. When the general burst into the room, he saw Peter Andrews there, casually holding an XM2010 enhanced sniper’s rifle.
“Are you mad?” the general snapped, yanking the sleek and deadly looking weapon from his event coordinator’s hand.
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Andrews replied casually, seemingly unperturbed by the gun’s removal from his grip. “You’re behaving like a drunken seaman, brawling in public.”
Brooks stared at his aide as if seeing him for the first time. They were alone in the luxurious, almost cavernous, suite, with all of Riyadh stretched out around and below them. Brooks’s face went from amazed recrimination to angry steel in the wink of an eye. He threw the rifle onto a sofa and planted his feet.
“Explain yourself.”
Andrews reacted like a spoiled brat who could ignore his parents order to “clean up your room!” Andrews snorted through his nose. “Americans are such imbeciles,” he said quietly. “And your security is laughable.” He looked back out the window. “Look at those fools. Stymied by a driver, of all people.”
“Never mind that,” Brooks growled, his hands curling into white fists. “What about the Yanbu device?”
Andrews glanced over his shoulder. “What about it?”
“They showed me video of the container! It was empty, an empty shell!”
Andrews laughed. “Of course it was, General. Do you think I’d let them take the real bomb?”
Brooks winced as though he had been hit in the face by a fierce Arctic wind. “What? Then you mean—?”
“Of course, General,” Andrews repeated reassuringly. “I also blocked any e-mails they might have sent. The same way I blocked any e-mails anyone might have tried to send on the Rossiya airplane.”
The mention of the downed plane and all its innocent passengers so cavalierly murdered—not to make a point but to satisfy someone’s bloodlust—assaulted Brooks’s mood again. He felt a pang in his stomach, an actual physical reaction. It passed when he reflected on the greater good that would come from dealing with the devil.
“So,” Brooks started, his shoulders dropping. “All is going according to schedule?”
“Of course,” the event coordinator said a third time. “Don’t worry. By the time those meddlers can do anything, it will all be over, and you can get on with the rest of your good work, making the world safe for democracy.”
Brooks almost seemed to deflate with relief. He was so relieved that he hadn’t picked up on the sarcasm of Andrews’s comments. Instead, he patted Andrews reassuringly on the shoulder, then started to move slowly toward his desk. “Thank you, thank you,” he muttered.
“Pazhalooysta,” he replied in Russian.
Brooks appeared not to have noticed. “You’ve become very valuable to me, Pyotr. You and your people. I’ll be counting on you in the future.”
Andrews grinned thinly—both at the general thinking it right to use his actual name, and at the mention of his people. “I am glad to hear it.”
“The future will be terrible,” Brooks continued, almost to himself. “Difficult. I assume you’ve gathered that, from everything you’ve been involved in. You’re not a stupid man, not a simple one.”
“The two do not mean the same thing,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“A simple man may have strong but limited guidelines that serve him well through life,” Andrews said. “A stupid man is one who has no guidelines.”
“I see,” Brooks said. “Yes.” The general wavered at his desk, and then finally found his attention distracted by the amply stocked bar in the corner of the room. He started to wander over to it. “So, back to the matter at hand. We have a little problem that needs to be contended with. It’s my fault, really,” he said. “I thought I could control him, use him. He’s a journalist. It’s ironic.” Brooks paused as he searched for a bottle of bourbon. He found it, poured a shot into a glass. “Most journalists—I’d say just about all—are so easy to read, easy to deal with,
easy to control. They want access to newsmakers. Their careers are built on that, not on the merits of the news itself. In exchange for that, they will print any pablum they are handed.”
“We are the only ones left with any integrity, it would seem.” Andrews had intended that, too, to be ironic.
“That is very true,” Brooks said. But he was in a pensive mood and still talking—mostly to himself, like a man taking stock of his life. “A lot of those reporters hate me. Hate the military. I would imagine you don’t have quite the same problem in Russia. The media all work for the state.”
“Yes, but that forces them to be clever,” Andrews disagreed. “Their readers are not educated but they are astute and literate. They read a great deal, unlike Americans. Russians have learned to say things subvocally—in their inflection, not in their words—or to select language in print that communicates ideas a fast-reading bureaucrat will miss.”
“I suppose that’s all true,” said Brooks absently, hardly hearing what Andrews was saying. “But it’s worse than being merely illiterate or incurious. In my country, they hate patriotism in general. And religion. It’s all lumped together as some kind of radicalism. The hyphenates rule—the African-American, the Asian-American, the Gay-American. I am an American. Period. And these reporters—” he snickered—“they pander. Everything is softened with euphemisms. ‘The N-word.’ ‘The F-bomb.’ People know what they’re saying—why not say it? The way Jack Hatfield did.”
Brooks seemed almost sad when he mentioned the man’s name.
“Hatfield,” he said as if Jack were an estranged son. “I thought you would understand. I thought you would see.”
Brooks’s voice trailed off, his train of thought hopelessly mired in disappointment. He took his drink and sat heavily on the sofa. He looked up to see his event coordinator approaching, a beneficent smile on his face.
“Put that aside, General,” he said. “I understand your disappointment. It was a noble effort.”
“I thought I had him, dammit,” he said quietly.
“You want this Hatfield taken care of, yes?”
Countdown to Mecca Page 27
