Omega Sanction

Chapter Thirty-two

Dublowski checked the readout as he drove down Chicken Plank Road — the glowing dot was still centered, which meant the bug was still working. He glanced in his rearview mirror. Nothing there. Yet.

Terri reached out with her toe and nudged the body. There was no response. The man's eyes were open and unfocused, his chest still. A pool of blood surrounded him. She took the extra magazines from the pouch on his belt along with the ring of keys and turned to the door of her cell.

She took several deep breaths, then edged out of the door.

"One minute!" Master Sergeant Grant's yell was grabbed by the wind swirling in the open back ramp of the Talon and swept away, but every man's eyes were focused on the single black finger he held up in the air and knew what it meant. Everyone hit the timer on their watch, set for two minutes, the time the HE hummingbirds would hit the wall.

The light above Grant's head glowed red. Behind the plane, the surface of the Red Sea looked like a flat, unbroken, black piece of glass.

They crowded forward on the ramp, Thorpe in the middle of the group. He slid the night-vision goggles down over his eyes and turned them on. Everything now showed up in a brightly lit green world.

"Get ready!" Grant yelled.

Thorpe put his hand on the rip cord for the drogue.

The light flashed green, a searchlight in the goggles. "Go!" Grant screamed and then he was gone. In a flash the men began disappearing off the ramp. Thorpe pulled the cord, the drogue popped out and then he was pulled off the ramp in an instant.

He was immediately jerked upright as the three canopies were pulled out of the backpack by the drogue and opened. Thorpe barely had time to glance up and make sure he had good canopies before he looked down, seeing the top of the palace level with him and then the large pool in the back directly below.

He hit water, submerged. His boots touched the bottom of the pool and he pushed up, surfacing underneath one of the canopies. The night-vision goggles shorted out and he was blinded. He ripped the goggles off, then fought with the canopy as it settled down around him, trying to pull him under.

Thorpe drew his knife and sliced through the nylon. He kicked toward the edge of the pool.

It was very quiet after the sound of the plane and with the earplugs in. Thorpe pulled himself over the edge of the pool, started to stand, then fell over as some of the lines to the canopy were caught on his vest. He used the knife to cut the cords.

A light went on near the low wing of the house to his left. Two men came running out, yelling in Arabic. Thorpe fired a sustained burst, killing both, the only sound the working of the bolt and the expended brass tinkling onto the patio. He saw another abandoned parachute to his right, just inside the wall. A man dressed in black was moving parallel to Thorpe, toward the door the two men had just come out of.

Thorpe ran forward in the same direction. There was a rattle of automatic weapons fire from a watchtower on top of the wall near the main gate to the left. The team had the element of surprise for about forty seconds.

The Delta trooper hit the wall on the right of the door, putting his back against it. Thorpe hit on the left.

Thorpe dimly heard a beep. He threw his arm across his eyes.

The first wave of hummingbird missiles hit. Two into the compound wall, hitting square on and blasting chunks of concrete into the air, leaving two gaping holes. The third hit the body of the Learjet. The secondary explosion from the refueling truck next to the jet lit the night sky with a tremendous fireball.

The Delta troopers who'd landed outside the wall poured through, breaking into assault teams as they'd been trained.

Thorpe kept his arm over his eyes through those explosions. Five seconds later a hummingbird flew over the compound scattering sixty flash-bang grenades. The cacophony of sound and searing light totally overloaded the senses of all the guards outside.

Thorpe pulled his arm away, looked across at the Delta solider, who whipped off his night vision goggles. The Delta man pointed at his own chest with one finger, then at Thorpe with two. Thorpe nodded, holding his MP-5 at the ready.

The Delta man dashed into the doorway, across to the left. Thorpe followed to the right.

"Who is it?" Jawhar demanded.

Akil was staring at the video screens that showed the outside of the palace. He could see parachutes draped here and there, dark-suited men closing on the building, his guards blinded, deafened and overwhelmed. The attackers moved with the precision of expert soldiers.

"Probably Israelis," Akil said. He could see that the Lear had been destroyed.

"They wouldn't dare!" Jawhar protested. The rattle of automatic gunfire came down the corridor. They were in a large room, about forty feet square. The two girls were locked down on gurneys; the doctor was nervously glancing up. Akil waved his gun in the man's direction and he continued with his delicate task.

Akil pulled out his cell phone and punched in a code, then he flipped it shut. "Help will be here from Father in forty minutes," he said.

The firing was getting closer.

"Forty minutes?" Jawhar had his titanium case out, running it nervously through his fingers. "They will be in here in a minute!"

"While you were away playing, I prepared for this," Akil said. "The vault is finished downstairs. We lock ourselves in, no one can get to us before help arrives. Are you done?" he demanded of the doctor.

"Yes."

"This way." Akil led them toward a set of double doors.

"The NSA has picked up a SATPhone transmission from Nabi Ulmalhamah," Dilken reported.

"How far out are the Blackhawks?" Gereg asked.

"An hour and twenty minutes," Dilken answered.

"Too far," Parker said. "They're going to get caught on the island."

"The F-14s?" Gereg asked.

"They're circling over the Red Sea, five minutes’ flight time away," Dilken said.

"You can't send those F-14s in," the director said.

"We can't abandon those men," Gereg responded.

Thorpe fired a quick burst to suppress anyone who might be down the corridor. He moved into the corridor, muzzle of his weapon leading the way — the corridor was empty. Thorpe glanced at the Delta trooper who was with him. The man shrugged, then held up a finger for Thorpe to follow him down the short corridor. The few remaining guards were giving way quickly, withdrawing faster than the Delta men could clear their way in.

"Mask up!" Major Dotson ordered over the radio. Thorpe knew he was fearful that they were being drawn into a trap. He pulled the mask out and slipped it over his head, tightening the straps down. He covered the inlet and sucked in a breath. The mask compressed around his face, letting him know he had a good seal. He continued on his way.

Lieutenant Boorstin was watching his screens carefully. The AWACS rotodome was picking up everything in the air throughout the region. He had the combat Talon clear of the target area and heading back to Israel by the same route. The four F-14 Tomcats were holding in a very tight pattern over the Red Sea, burning fuel.

A new grouping of dots appeared on the screen. Boorstin adjusted the reading, but he already had a very good idea what he was looking at.

He keyed the radio linking him to Langley. "Ops, this is AWACS Eye. We've got four helicopters airborne out of the Saudi air force field at Al Wajh."

"This is Gereg. How long until they reach Nabi Ulmalhamah?"

The dots were moving and Boorstin made a quick calculation. "Approximately thirty minutes."

The key opened the door and Terri slid through. A long concrete passageway beckoned. Halfway down, about thirty feet away, she could see an opening to the right where the stairs came down. A large steel door was at the other end, sixty feet away.

She padded down the hallway. She had heard the loud explosions and gunfire, but that had stopped about thirty seconds ago. She had no idea what was going on and she refused to allow herself to believe that rescue was here.

She heard the thud of boots on stairs and brought the pistol up. The man with all the rings stepped into the corridor, turning toward the steel door and away from her.

Terri didn't hesitate. She dashed forward and jammed the gun hard against the side of Jawhar's head.

"I'll kill him!" she screamed at the group of men still on the stairs, most of them caught with their weapons pointed up the stairs.

As Thorpe turned the next corridor, he saw Major Dotson in the main hallway of the east wing, the officer rattling off orders, coordinating the movement of his elements toward the center of the palace. Thorpe fell in behind the eight troopers with Dotson, willing to let the experts take the lead.

But it appeared the battle was over, as they encountered no more resistance. They closed on the center of the palace from both wings, the troops in the west wing also reporting no opposition.

Both groups reached the large center room on the first floor at the same time.

"The stairs." Dotson waved his men forward toward a double-wide door beyond which a set of stairs headed down.

"You will not shoot," Akil had his submachine gun centered on Terri's forehead.

She dug the barrel of the gun deeper into Jawhar's temple. "I will. You know I will. Just as you shot Patricia, I'll shoot your brother down."

Akil's eyes shifted between his brother and the girl. "Listen—"

A burst of bullets from above blew one of the guards down the stairs.

"Stop it!" Akil screamed. "Stop shooting! We have the girls!"

"Hold your fire!" Thorpe shoved his way in front of the Delta Troopers. "Hold your fire!"

He stood in the middle of the stairs. A small cluster of guards, holding the two girls, was grouped behind Akil. Thorpe couldn't see who Akil was pointing his weapon at. He edged down another step, braving the muzzles of the guards' guns, sensing the weapons from the Delta men behind him. He saw Terri holding the pistol on Jawhar.

Dublowski caught a glimpse of the car in his rearview mirror. Dark green, just like the paint scrapings on Takamura's car. The other driver was good, but three turns left no doubt the man was following.

"Clock's ticking!" Dotson muttered. "We take them down now, we get the VZ, we get the bad guys. We get the hell out of here."

Thorpe could see the two metal briefcases being held by the guard closest to Akil. "And kill three girls."

"There's no—" Dotson began, but Thorpe waved him to be silent. He slowly bent over and placed his submachine gun on the step at his feet.

"We can work this out," he shouted. Akil's eyes were shifting back and forth from his brother to Thorpe. "I do not think so."

"She'll kill your brother," Thorpe said. Akil nodded, ever so slightly. "Yes. I know she will. She was the best of them. But if she does, she dies. If you shoot at us, you will all die."

"I don't think so, buddy boy," Dotson growled, the small red dot from the laser sight on his MP-5 centered right between Akil's eyes.

"All the VZ is not in the cases," Akil said. He turned away from Terri very slowly, so as to not precipitate any untoward action. His gun now pointed at the two girls.

"Where is it?" Thorpe asked.

Akil nodded toward the girls. "In them."

"In them?" Thorpe repeated.

"Yes," Akil said, "and if I shoot them, it will set off a small charge rigged against the container which is just below their left lungs. The charge will explode, sending VZ into the air. Everyone here will die. No one wins." He barked an order in Arabic and a guard reached out and lifted the left side of Leslie's smock. Thorpe and all the Delta men could see the long scar on her side.

"You're full of shit," Master Sergeant Grant muttered.

"No," Akil said, "they are full of nerve agent. Injected with a needle by our good doctor directly into the canister," Akil said. "Didn't he?" he asked Leslie.

She nodded. "He put something inside of us a while back." She was speaking quickly, taking quick, shallow breaths in between, as if afraid even that act would set off the device. "We could feel it. I can still feel it inside me. And the doctor took something out of those cases and used a needle to put it into us. Into the thing, whatever it is."

Dublowski went over a rise in the road. The trailing car was out of sight, as it had been most of the time. He twisted the wheel and skidded off onto a dirt trail on the right side. He flipped open the lid to the other case Simpkins had given him and turned a knob on.

Simpkins had prepared the program. It took over the frequency of the bug secreted in Dublowski's truck and projected the same signal. Except with diminishing power, as if the truck were still going down the road.

Dublowski jumped out of the truck, a small backpack over his shoulder. He walked to the side of the road, a thick tree hiding him. He heard a car's engine and an old Mustang came racing over the rise. He caught a glimpse of the driver — the glasses, beard — just as Parker had described O'Callaghan.

Dublowski stepped forward as the Mustang came by. O'Callaghan's head swiveled, staring wide-eyed in surprise at Dublowski standing at the side of the road as his foot reached for the brake.

Dublowski tossed the backpack onto the trunk of the Mustang, the powerful magnet clinging to the metal. The tires on the Mustang locked as the car skidded, trying to slow from sixty miles an hour.

The bomb inside the backpack exploded, blowing through the trunk and igniting the gas tank in a ferocious secondary explosion as the car was still sliding.

Dublowski shielded his eyes as the fireball consumed the car and O'Callaghan.

"Once too often." Dublowski spit, then turned for his truck. He paused suddenly, his head cocked as if he heard something. "Ah, Terri," he whispered, his eyes looking to the dark eastern sky.

"What kind of deal?" Thorpe asked.

"We give you the girls, we go into the bunker" — Akil nodded his head toward the large steel door at the end of the corridor—"and you leave. There is no other solution other than all of us dying."

"We can't make deals with this scum," Dotson hissed.

"We have to have the VZ," Thorpe said.

"She lets my brother go now," Akil bargained.

"Don't trust them!" Terri yelled.

"All right," Thorpe said to Akil.

"You don't have the authority to—" Dotson began, but Thorpe cut him off.

"Trust me."

Terri pressed the gun tighter against Jawhar's head, bringing a yelp of pain. "I'm not letting him go! You can't!"

"Terri, you know me," Thorpe called to the girl. "Do what I say. It's what your dad would do."

"My dad wouldn't let them get away."

"We have to get the nerve gas," Thorpe said. "Thousands of lives are at stake."

Terri was shaking her head, tears flowing down her cheeks. "No. No. You can't let them get away with it."

"Put the VZ down and let the girls go," Thorpe said.

Akil barked an order in Arabic and the two cases of VZ were placed on the floor. "You get the girls when my brother is freed and we are in the vault."

Master Sergeant Grant edged close to Thorpe. "We don't have time for this bullshit. A reaction force will be here soon."

Thorpe ignored everyone but Akil and Terri. "Move down the corridor," he instructed Akil.

The Saudi and his men backed up, keeping Leslie and Cathy between them and the Delta men who moved into the corridor. Terri and Jawhar were now also directly between the two groups. Thorpe, empty hands outstretched, took one cautious step after the other, closing the distance between himself and Terri and her prisoner.

He reached the two. Blood from the torn skin under the muzzle was mixing with the sweat that dripped down the side of Jawhar's face. Thorpe remembered the body in the hotel in the Ukraine. He forced himself to focus.

"Terri." Thorpe kept his voice low. "Terri, you need to trust me.

She was still crying, her head shaking, but the gun hadn't wavered. "You don't know what he's done!"

"I have a very good idea," Thorpe said. "Trust me on this. Please, Terri."

She dropped her hand and Thorpe stepped forward and caught her, keeping her from hitting the floor. Jawhar smiled at Thorpe, then quickly strode down the hall and joined his brother. Thorpe could feel Terri's body shaking as he held her tight.

Akil slid a key into a panel on the side of the door. With a rumble, the massive steel panels slid open. Akil barked at his men, hustling them through until he and Jawhar along with the other two girls were in the corridor.

"We will meet again," Akil called as he pushed his brother through the door, then stepped through himself, the heavy steel sliding shut.

"No, we won't," Thorpe whispered as the Delta men rushed forward, securing the VZ and the two girls.

"We need to get the hell out of here," Dotson yelled.

Thorpe checked his watch and shook his head. "You heard the report. The Saudi choppers will be here in five minutes, the Blackhawks in forty-five."

"So what do you recommend?" Dotson was still upset about the brothers escaping. "Stand here with our thumb up our ass while they sit in that vault?"

"No," Thorpe said. "I have a plan."

"Saudi choppers are three minutes out," Dilken reported.

"This is going to be a mess," Gereg muttered. She raised her voice so the director could hear her. "Sir, I recommend we let the F-14s take out those choppers now."

"Negative," the director replied.

"Damn it, sir!" Parker slammed her fist into a desktop. "You can't do things halfway. Either we go all the way or we shouldn't have gone in at all."

"I am working within the boundaries of the sanction I was granted," the director said. "We will not, I repeat, not, engage Saudi armed forces in combat."

"What happens when they engage our people?" Parker asked.

To that the director had no answer.

"You can clear a homicide with this, Sammy," Dublowski said.

The sheriff stared at the wreck, the metal still hot. "It just exploded?"

Dublowski nodded.

"And you just happened to be driving by?"

Dublowski nodded once more.

"And you say when I run this guy's prints — or more likely his dental records, since it don't look like there'll be much left to take prints from — that this guy will come up as wanted IRA terrorist?"

Dublowski's head bobbed for the third time.

"And," Sammy continued, "this guy killed that Takamura fellow and the paint from this car will match the paint on his car?"

"Roger that," Dublowski said.

Sammy tucked his thumbs in his equipment belt and regarded Dublowski for several seconds from under the brim of his Sam Browne hat. "Spontaneous combustion, eh?"

"That's what it looked like to me," Dublowski said.

"Then why is there what appears to be a downward forced explosion on the trunk?"

"Don't know," Dublowski said.

"This guy was bad?" Sammy asked.

"Very."

Sammy nodded. "Okay. I'm ruling it an accident. Get out of here."

"Have your men stand down," Thorpe told Major Dotson.

The Delta commander was staring at the flight of helicopters rapidly approaching the island from the mainland. Two Cobra gunships were in the lead. "We're not surrendering to these people," Dotson said.

"I'm not asking you to surrender. I just want to talk to the man in charge of those helicopters."

The Cobras — American craft sold to the Saudi military — did a flyby over the compound while the troop-carrying transports settled down on the sand outside the front gate. Dozens of men ran out of the large aircraft, weapons at the ready.

Thorpe walked forward unarmed, hands raised. He strode out the main gate between the guns of the Delta men behind and the Saudis in front.

"I need to speak to Prince Hakim Yasin," Thorpe yelled.

The Saudis had paused in a half circle around the gate, guns pointed. The Cobras flew by overhead once more, then turned and hovered a hundred meters back, the nose guns pointing right at Thorpe.

A man in camouflage walked forward. Thorpe could see the insignia on his collar — a colonel in the Saudi army. "Who are you?" He spoke with a strong English accent.

"I am an American officer," Thorpe said. "I need to speak to Prince Hakim Yasin."

"What are you doing on Saudi soil without permission?" the colonel demanded.

"I will explain that to Prince Yasin."

"No, you will explain it to me." The colonel looked past Thorpe, seeing the black-uniformed Delta men deployed along the wall of the compound. "What of Prince Yasin's sons?"

"They are safe," Thorpe said, "in the vault under the palace."

"You have not answered my question about why you are on Saudi soil," the colonel said.

"We came here to recover some VZ nerve gas and some American citizens kidnapped by Prince Yasin's sons," Thorpe said.

The colonel's eyes flickered past Thorpe, then back to him. "There are—"

"I don't have time to stand here and argue," Thorpe said. "I have something Prince Yasin needs to see."

The colonel snapped a command and held his hand out. A man came running up with a cell phone. The colonel pressed a button, then turned his back to Thorpe. All Thorpe could hear was some rapid speaking in Arabic muted by the sound of the Cobras hovering.

The colonel flipped the phone shut and turned back toward Thorpe. "What is it you wish to show Prince Yasin?"

"For his eyes only," Thorpe said.

"You are not in a position to ignore my question," the colonel said.

Both men turned to the north as another helicopter appeared. This one was painted black and very sleek, the wheels retracted into the body. Thorpe recognized the make — an Aerospatiale SA 365 Panther — with the tail rotor enclosed in the vertical fin at the rear, the trademark of that make.

"Prince Yasin, I assume," Thorpe said to the colonel as the landing gear on the helicopter quickly deployed and the aircraft settled down fifty feet away, the blades blowing sand, forcing Thorpe to put his hand over his eyes. The chopper lifted, and by the time Thorpe was able to see again, a tall man wearing a well-cut business suit was striding toward him.

"What is your name?" Prince Yasin demanded. He had dark features with piercing black eyes. There was no gray in his hair and it was difficult to determine how old he was.

"My name is Thorpe."

"You have something to show me?"

"American citizens your sons kidnapped from Germany," Thorpe said.

"There are diplomatic ways this could have been resolved," Yasin said. "An assault by American forces on Saudi Arabian soil will bring the severest of consequences."

"I don't think so," Thorpe said. He turned toward the gate. "Bring them out," he called out to Major Dotson.

Master Sergeant Grant and another Delta trooper appeared at the gate, helping support Cathy and Leslie.

"What is this?" Yasin demanded.

"Look familiar?" Thorpe said.

Yasin's dark eyes were fixed on the girls. "I don't understand."

"Akil and Jawhar did not deliver the VZ nerve gas to the Serbs as was arranged. As you arranged. They killed the Serbs who were supposed to get it and brought it here."

"Did you also arrange for them to be killed by the CIA reaction force? Was that your plan? Or did you really want the Serbs to get the gas?" Thorpe shrugged. "I don't know what your plan was, but I know now what Jawhar and Akil's was."

He pointed at the two girls. "They look like Jawhar and Akil's mother, don't they?" Thorpe didn't wait for an answer. "Your mistress. They put nerve agent inside of them in a dispenser. With an explosive charge. They were going to send them to you. Probably as a gift. And then kill you and all those around you."

Thorpe knew Yasin was one of the richest men in the world and he held that position because of his intelligence and cunning. The prince didn't argue with what Thorpe had just said, but rather stood there regarding the girls for several more seconds. A small muscle jumped on the left side of his cheek, his only reaction. He nodded. "You may leave," he said to Thorpe.