Order to Kill

CHAPTER 51

EAST OF RIYADH

SAUDI ARABIA

AZAROV ignored both the GPS on the dashboard and the man driving, instead looking out the side window at the blowing sand. They’d abandoned Saudi Arabia’s well-maintained road system about two hours ago and were now surrounded on all sides by nothing but empty desert and desolation.

The SUV’s powerful engine roared as they crested a large dune and dropped over the other side, fishtailing down the steep slope. For a moment, Azarov thought the vehicle might roll, but the driver regained control and accelerated through the bottom. His skill was admirable. Suspiciously so.

Perhaps it wasn’t the bomb that Krupin would use against him. Perhaps it was these two men. Did they have special forces backgrounds? What were their orders? Certainly, to ensure that the mission was carried out. But was there more?

“You can see it,” the man in the backseat said, speaking for the first time since their initial meeting. “Just ahead.”

He was right. A web of pipes and containment tanks began to separate itself from the dust. As they closed in, Azarov could see that sand had partially reclaimed the south side of the facility. The Saudi Aramco logo on the largest of the tanks was still clearly legible, though.

He continued to study the structure as it grew in the windshield, mentally comparing it to the 3-D simulation he’d trained on. Everything appeared to be as anticipated and there was no sign of any recent human activity. Having said that, the weather system enveloping the region would obscure tracks almost as they were made. In a few minutes, evidence of even their own approach would fade from existence.

“In there,” Azarov said, pointing to a gap between a vertical cylinder used to burn off natural gas and a horizontal storage tank the size of an attack submarine. The driver did as he was told, continuing forward until the drifts beneath the facility became impossible to negotiate.

“One of you take the northeast side,” Azarov said, opening the door and stepping out. “The other, the southwest.”

“Our duty is to protect you,” the driver said. “We-”

“The best way for you to perform that duty is to warn me if anyone approaches.”

Azarov hefted the backpack containing Krupin’s bomb and started toward a staircase.

“Can we at least clear the area?”

Azarov didn’t dignify the question with a response. The structure was far too large and complex to be cleared reliably. This was one of the reasons it had been chosen as a command center-it gave the occupying force a significant advantage. If the CIA had managed to arrive first, that advantage would be reversed and they were all dead men.

Azarov drew his weapon, more out of habit than any expectation of necessity. He followed the path laid out in his simulation, minimizing the possibility that anyone could get behind or above him. It took a full half hour, but he finally arrived at the heart of the complex, having found nothing suspicious.

“Report,” he said, activating his throat mike.

“North and east clear,” came the first reply. It was followed by similar assurances from the southwest.

Azarov bypassed the area that Krupin’s people had told him to set up in and descended a ramp to an alternate position. Not as convenient for the operation as a whole, but more advantageous to his personal goal of surviving this fool’s errand.

He slid his backpack beneath a massive valve system and took a few moments to pile sand around it. A maze of steel walls surrounded his position, protecting him from the wind but also contributing to the deafening drone of vibrating metal. He retrieved his phone and pulled up the feeds from his teams. Three were red, indicating that they were still on the move. The dot representing him had turned green, indicating that he was in position. The other two teams hadn’t started their relatively short journeys yet and therefore weren’t represented.

Azarov found himself forced to move to a less easily defended position in order to utilize the transmission system that had been integrated into the structure. While communications with the two men who had accompanied him could be easily handled with commercial walkie-talkies connected to throat mikes, getting a reliable signal to the other teams necessitated something encrypted and far more powerful.

Once connected, he sent Maxim Krupin a coded text informing him that all was well.

The sun was a hazy disk in the west, inflicting slightly less heat than it had the day before. Azarov sat down behind a disused oil tank, mindful that the metal was still too hot to touch with bare skin. The teams were projected to arrive at their targets simultaneously in just over four hours. They would deploy their weapons and then it would be done.

He would return to Al-Hofuf and meet with the private contractors he’d hired to get him out of Saudi Arabia. Then he would begin his circuitous route back to Central America. And that would be the last the world ever heard of Grisha Azarov.