Sacred Stone

53

IT WAS DARK when Coast Guard Petty Officer Perkins and the other two men inside the last truck in the convoy felt their vehicle begin to slow. Perkins peered out the crack between the cargo doors. There were scattered buildings along the road and the lights of a car following. He waited almost five minutes before the car, finding a clear spot in the road to pass the trucks, accelerated and sped past.

“Okay, guys,” Perkins said, “we need to jump out.”

Upon climbing inside, Perkins had rigged the door to open again so exiting was not a problem. The problem was the speed of the truck—it was still moving at over thirty miles an hour. He watched the side of the road out the rear.

“Men,” he said a minute later, “there is really no easy way to do this. Our best shot is to wait until we see sand along the left side of the truck, then you two grab the top of the door and I’ll push it open. The swing should get you near the side of the road—just drop off as soon as possible.”

“Won’t the driver notice?” one of the men asked.

“Maybe if he’s staring in the rearview mirror at that exact instant,” Perkins admitted, “but the door should swing back afterward, and if he doesn’t notice it immediately, he should be farther down the road before he catches on that the door is open.”

“What about you?” the third man asked.

“All I can do,” Perkins said, “is run and jump as far as I can.”

The buildings were giving way to a less populated area just outside Mecca. Perkins stared through the gloom. “I don’t know, guys,” he said a second later. “I guess this is as good a spot as any.”

Perkins boosted them up so they could grab the top of the door frame. Then a second later he pushed it out. The door swung outward, the two men dropped to the ground and rolled end over end in the sand. Perkins backed up as far as he could in the crowded shipping container and ran from the right side of the container toward the left then leapt into the air. Perkins’s legs windmilled through the air as he flew.

The truck, door flapping, receded into the distance. They were alone, with only the lights of Mecca a few miles away lighting the desert sky.

Perkins tore some skin off his knee and realized that he had also wrenched it upon landing. He lay on the ground just off the road. The other two men, one bleeding from an elbow abrasion, the other with a red spot on his face where he had scraped it against the sand, helped Perkins to his feet.

Perkins’s knee gave out and he crumbled to the ground.

“Take the phone I was given,” he said, reaching into his pocket and handing it to one of the men, “and push number one. Explain what happened to whoever answers.”

BACK ON THE Oregon, Hanley reached for the ringing telephone.

“Okay, hold on a second,” he said after the man explained.

“Get me GPS on this signal,” he shouted to Stone, who punched the commands into the computer.

“Got a lock,” Stone said a minute or so later.

“Is there a spot off to the side of the road where you’re not visible?” Hanley asked the man.

“We’re right alongside a wash,” the man said. “There’s a dune above.”

“Start climbing the dune and take cover,” Hanley said. “Leave the line open—I’ll get back to you in a second.”

Reaching for another phone, Hanley dialed the number of the CIA station chief for Saudi Arabia on the number Overholt had given him. “This is the contractors,” he said when the man answered. “Do you have any agents in Mecca right now?”

“Sure,” the station chief answered. “We have a Saudi national on the pad.”

“Does he have a car?”

“He drives a Pepsi delivery truck.”

“We need him to drive to these GPS coordinates,” Hanley said, “and pick up three men. Can you do that?”

“Hold on,” the station chief said as he dialed the Pepsi driver’s cell phone.

Hanley could hear him explaining in the background.

“He’s leaving now,” the station chief said, “he thinks it’s about twenty minutes away.”

“Tell him to honk when he reaches the area,” Hanley said. “Our men will come out of hiding then.”

“Where is he taking them?” the station chief asked.

“Jeddah.”

“I’ll call if there are any problems.”

“No problems,” Hanley said. “We don’t like any problems.”

Hanley hung up on the station chief, then grabbed the other phone and explained the plan.

HANLEY MAY NOT have liked problems but that was exactly what he was faced with.

The conference room was filled with Seng, Ross, Reyes, Lincoln, Meadows, Murphy, Crabtree, Gannon, Hornsby and Halpert. All ten of them seemed to be talking at once.

“We can’t do anything from the air,” Lincoln said, “they’ll see that coming.”

“No time to tunnel,” Ross said.

“The key,” Halpert said to Crabtree, “was how Hickman got it out in the first place.”

“I can arrange a pyrotechnic display to divert them,” Murphy said, smiling at Hornsby, “but we’re here on the Oregon, in the Mediterranean, and they’re there, in Saudi.”

“Tear gas?” Reyes offered to the room.

“Cut the power?” Meadows mentioned.

Seng stood up. “Okay, people,” he said, “let’s get some order here.”

As the highest-ranking man, he was in charge of the brainstorming session.

Seng walked over to the coffeepot to pour another cup. He was talking as he walked. “We have less than an hour to come up with a cohesive plan the team on the ground can execute if we want to do this thing tonight—and we do.”

He finished pouring the coffee and walked back to the table. “Like Halpert said—how did Hickman get the meteorites switched in the first place?”

“He had to somehow disable the guards,” Meadows said. “There is no other way he could have pulled if off.”

“Then why wasn’t the theft discovered soon after,” Seng asked, “and reported?”

“He had an inside man,” Murphy said, “that’s the only way.”

“We checked out the guards,” Seng said. “If one of them was on to what was happening, he’d be out of Mecca by now. They’re all still on the job.”

The conference room was quiet for a moment as the team thought.

“You said you checked out the guards,” Linda Ross said, “so you have the schedules and such?”

“Sure,” Seng said.

“Then the only way I see this going down is to switch all four,” Ross said.

“That’s good,” Halpert said, “hit them at shift change—replace the oncoming guards with our team.”

“Then what?” Seng asked.

“Turn off the power to all of Mecca,” Reyes said, “and have them make the switch.”

“But then we have four guards that will be found at the next shift change,” Seng said.

“Boss,” Gannon said, “by then the teams from Qatar will be safely away and the Saudis can do what they will.”

The room was quiet for a second as Seng thought.

“It’s crude,” he said at last, “but doable.”

“Sometimes you need to split a coconut with a rock to get to the milk,” Gannon said.

“I’ll take it to Hanley,” Seng said, rising.

WHILE THE PLANNING session on the Oregon was finishing, Skutter and his team found one of the hatches leading into the tunnel beneath the Prophet’s Mosque and slipped inside. They were only five minutes underground when the first of the explosive packages was located.

“Spread out up the tunnel,” Skutter said to the others, “and find out how many of these there are in here.”

Then he turned to the only man on his team with any training in demolition. “What do you think?”

The man smiled, reached in his pocket for wire cutters and pulled them out. Reaching down, he pulled up a wire and snipped it in two. Finding a few others, he cut those as well, and then started unwrapping the duct tape from the pipe.

“Crude but damned powerful is how I’d describe these,” the man said, laying the C-6 and the dynamite separately on the ground of the tunnel.

“That’s it?” Skutter said in exasperation.

“That’s it,” the man said. “One thing, however.”

“What’s that?”

“Be careful and don’t kick or drop the dynamite or anything,” the man said. “Depending on its age, it could be unstable.”

“Don’t worry,” Skutter said, “we’re leaving it here.”

Within two hours the charges would all be disabled and the tunnel would be checked then double-checked to make sure. Then Skutter could call and report.

WHILE THE DEMOLITION man was snipping the wires on the first explosive package, Hanley was phoning Cabrillo on the Akbar.

“That’s what we’ve got, boss,” he said after he finished filling Cabrillo in on the plan they had come up with. “It’s crude, I’ll admit.”

“Have you spoken to Kasim yet?” Cabrillo asked.

“I wanted you to clear it first.”

“I’m with it,” Cabrillo said. “Why don’t you fax me everything you have so I can brief the CIA man. Meanwhile, I’ll call Kasim and report what we came up with.”

“I’ll send it now.”

“YOU’LL NEED TO move fast,” Cabrillo explained to Kasim. “Shift change is at two a.m.”

“What about any explosives?” Kasim asked.

“The CIA man who’s delivering Abraham’s Stone will have a dozen chemical sniffers. Have the rest of the men in your team spread out and search while you do the switch.”

“Okay,” Kasim said.

“You have an hour and forty minutes for you and your team to make your way to the Great Mosque, observe the guards so you understand the procedures, then find the incoming guards, disable them and take their places. Can you do it?”

“It would seem we have no choice.”

“This is all riding on you, Hali,” Cabrillo said.

“I won’t let you or my religion down,” Kasim said.

“I’ll finish briefing the CIA agent and send him on his way,” Cabrillo said. “There’s a car and driver waiting to take him to Mecca as we speak. He’ll enter the Great Mosque at ten minutes after two if he doesn’t hear gunfire.”

“We’ll be there,” Kasim said.

The telephone went dead, and Kasim turned to his team. “Listen up,” he said, “we have our orders.”

CABRILLO TOOK THE sheets from the fax and quickly briefed the CIA agent. Once that was done, he boarded the shore boat with the agent for the ride across the water to the port of Jeddah. It was a pleasant night, seventy-five degrees with almost no breeze. The moon was waning and cast a pale glow on the water as the boat skimmed across the placid sea.

The lights of the Akbar faded and the ones of Jeddah loomed larger.

AS SOON AS the Pepsi truck pulled up by the dune and honked, Perkins and the other two men in hiding peered over the dune, waited until there was no traffic coming down the road, then made their way to the road. Perkins’s knee was heavily swollen and one of the men supported him as the other approached the truck.

“You here for us?” the man asked the driver.

“Hurry up and get in,” the driver said, reaching across the cab and opening the passenger door.

Once the three men were situated, the driver spun around in a U-turn, then headed toward the lights of Mecca. Skirting the main part of the city on an expressway, he was two miles down the road to Jeddah before he spoke.

“You guys like the Eagles?” he asked as he slid a CD into the player.

The first cut on Hotel California began to play as they drove through the night.

AS SOON AS the shore boat reached land, the CIA agent climbed off and raced to a waiting Chevrolet Suburban. A minute later the Suburban spun off, throwing gravel from the rear tires as he raced away.

“What now brown cow?” one of the Florida mechanics who was piloting the shore boat asked.

“Now we back off and wait for a Pepsi truck,” Cabrillo said.

The mechanic put the drive in reverse and started backing away. “So you men are Pepsi smugglers?” he asked.

“Is there a radio aboard?” Cabrillo asked.

The mechanic turned a dial on the dash. “What’s your poison?”

“Find the news,” Cabrillo said.

Cabrillo and the mechanic sat in the moonlight, bobbing in the bay.

A CHEVROLET SUBURBAN blew past the Pepsi truck headed in the opposite direction just as the driver exited off the main road onto the one to Jeddah’s port. The driver steered down the road he was instructed to take, then pulled to a stop with the nose of the truck facing the sea. He flashed the lights three times, then waited.

A SHORT DISTANCE out in the water, the tiny red lights from the bow of a boat answered.

“Okay, men,” the driver said, “I’m done here. There’s a boat coming in to get you.”

The first man climbed out of the cab and helped Perkins to the ground. Once the two men had stepped away from the cab, the last man climbed down.

“Thanks for the ride,” he said, closing the door.

“I’ll send you the bill,” the driver shouted through the open window as he started his engine and backed out.

The three men made their way out to the edge of the water just as the Akbar’s shore boat edged itself on land. Cabrillo slipped over the side and helped the three men aboard, then climbed back inside.

“Home, James,” he said to the mechanic.

“How’d you know my name was James?” the mechanic asked, backing away from shore.

As soon as Perkins and his men were safely on board, Cabrillo ordered Joseph to begin steaming north up the coastline at high speed.

ON THE OREGON, Hanley was monitoring the various operations. It was just after 1 A.M. when the truck that had been dispatched to pick up Skutter and his men reported that they had left Medina and were racing toward Jeddah.

The distance was a little less than a hundred miles.

Barring any surprises, part two was almost completed.

Hanley reached for the phone and called Cabrillo.

“Jones met up with the group with the prayer rugs and all is well,” he said. “They have been doused with antiviral agents, given clean clothes, and are now sleeping. Team two in Medina has completed their mission and is on their way toward you now. They should be arriving in a few hours.”

“They found explosives?” Cabrillo asked.

“Apparently enough to level the Prophet’s Mosque,” Hanley said. “They disabled them and left them in the tunnel. The CIA or someone will eventually need to handle that.”

“Then it’s all up to Kasim,” Cabrillo said.

“So it seems.”

AT THAT EXACT instant, Kasim and his team were approaching the mosque containing the Kaaba. Even being U.S. citizens did not provide the team much comfort—they were deep inside a foreign country whose capital punishment was beheading. And they were entering the holiest of the country’s sites for a mission that could be easily mistaken for a terrorist action. The fourteen servicemen and Kasim were very conscious of that fact.

One mistake, one misstep, and the entire operation would unravel.

AT THE SAME time Kasim was walking through one of the gates leading into the courtyard where the Kaaba was sheathed in cloth, a C-17A troop transport plane was lifting off the runway in Qatar. The Boeing-built jet, a replacement for the venerable Lockheed-Martin C-130 prop plane, could carry 102 troops or 169,000 pounds of cargo.

Designed to land on either short or rough dirt airfields, she was manned by a crew of three. The C-17A had a range of three thousand miles and tonight she would need that.

After leaving Qatar on the Persian Gulf, she was scheduled to fly out over the Gulf of Oman and into the Indian Ocean. There she would turn, fly over the Arabian Sea, into the Gulf of Adan, then through the gap between Yemen and Djibouti, Africa, and into the Red Sea. She would loiter there until called or released.

The C-17A was the ace everyone hoped they would not need to deal.

KASIM WALKED FARTHER inside the mosque, then he and four others hid off to the side and watched the guards walk through their routine from a distance. It seemed simple enough. Every five minutes the guards would walk from one corner to the next in a clockwise direction. The exaggerated steps they used looked simple enough to duplicate.

Kasim studied the plans he had, seeking out the small stone building inside the mosque that the guards used to change from their street clothes into their uniforms. Locating it on the hand-drawn diagram, he motioned for the men with him to stay in place, and then he walked back to where the rest of his group was hiding.

“You stand guard,” he said to one of the men, “and whistle if you need to attract our attention.”

“What am I looking for?” the man asked.

“Anything that doesn’t look right.”

The man nodded.

“I want the rest of you to follow me. We are going to sneak over to that structure,” he said quietly, “and wait for the first incoming guard to arrive. I’ll take him down as soon as he unlocks the door to the building.”

The men nodded their assent.

Then they fanned out across the mosque, slowly sneaking toward the small stone building. A few minutes later they were all in place.

ABDUL RALMEIN WAS tired. His schedule as a guard rotated throughout each month. Sometimes his four-hour shift took place in the heat of day, sometimes at sunrise—the time he liked best—and sometimes at 2 A.M., like tonight. It was the late-night shifts he had never learned to adjust to—his personal clock stayed the same, and when his time came to work through the night, it took everything he had to fight off sleep.

Finishing a steaming cup of coffee flavored with cardamom seed, he slid his bicycle into a rack on the street near the Great Mosque and locked it with a chain and padlock.

Then he walked toward the entrance and through the gate.

He was partway across the courtyard when the shrill whistle from a bird sounded.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he slid the keys from his pocket as he neared the building. He grasped the padlock and slid the key in the slot. He was just twisting the lock open when he felt a hand across his mouth and a tiny prick on his arm.

Ralmein grew even more sleepy.

KASIM OPENED THE door to the room and dragged Ralmein inside. Flipping the light switch on the wall, a single bulb lit up and illuminated the crowded space. The inside of the building wasn’t much—a rack against the wall holding uniforms in plastic sleeves to keep them clean, a large laundry-type sink, and a toilet behind a curtain.

On the wall, attached with tacks to a corkboard, was the schedule for the coming week. On the wall next to it was a framed photograph of King Abdullah and another of the Great Mosque during the hajj, taken from the air, showing crowds of people. The only other thing was a round black-edged clock. It read 1:51 A.M.

KASIM HEARD WHAT sounded like the hoot of an owl. He turned off the light and waited.

The second guard walked through the open door and reached for the light switch. He flicked it on, and for the briefest of seconds saw Kasim standing there. The image was so shocking to his mind that it didn’t register for a second. By the time it did, Kasim had wrapped his arms around him and pricked him with the needle.

The guard was placed alongside Ralmein.

Right at that instant, Kasim heard the voices of two men approaching. He had no time to reach the light switch to turn it off, no time to hide. The two men walked through the open door and stared at him.

“What the—” one started to say just before two of Kasim’s team hiding outside blocked the exit.

The fight was almost over before it began.

“You,” Kasim said to one of the men, “go back to the gate and bring the others here.”

The man raced off.

“You six fan out and start searching for bombs,” Kasim said. “When the sniffers arrive, we’ll send them over to you. For now, just look. If you find anything, leave it alone.”

The six men crept away into the night.

“The rest of you stay here with me. After we dress the replacement guards and they take their stations, we’ll need to deal with those going off shift.”

Three minutes later the replacement guards were dressed.

“Now,” Kasim said, “you watched what the others did, right?”

The men nodded vigorously.

“Just do the exact same thing.”

“Do we all go out together?” one of the men asked.

“No,” Kasim said, “the plan says the switch takes place one at a time. Starting at the northeast corner and moving counterclockwise.”

The clock read 1:57.

“You’re the first,” Kasim said, motioning to one of the men. “We’ll all follow and watch from a distance.”

The first faux guard walked through the courtyard. Kasim and his men hid at the edge of the building closest to the Kaaba and watched. He approached the northeast corner.

SOMETIMES EVEN THE best-thought-out plans are just that—plans. This one, cobbled together in a rush and lacking the Corporation’s usual finesse, was about to unravel like a cheap sweater. The guard Ralmein was due to relieve happened to also be his best friend. When someone else showed up instead, it raised more than concern. The real guard knew something was wrong.

“Who are you?” the guard said loudly in Arabic.

Kasim heard it and knew the problems were starting. The guard reached for a whistle on a chain around his neck. But before he could blow it the fake guard wrestled him to the ground.

“It’s a free-for-all,” Kasim yelled to his men. “Just don’t let anyone escape.”

KASIM, THE REMAINING three fake guards, and the four other men raced from their hiding spot and ran across to the Kaaba. They quickly subdued two more of the real guards but one managed to escape and ran toward the gate.

Kasim raced after him but the guard was fast. He had cleared the courtyard and was almost under the arch leading outside when one of the men looking for explosives stepped out of the shadows and clotheslined him with his arm.

The guard hit the stone flooring and was knocked out. A thin trickle of blood ran from the back of his head.

“Drag him over to the guard shack,” Kasim said as he raced over, “and wrap his head.”

The men grabbed the guard under his armpits and started dragging him away.

KASIM RACED BACK toward the Kaaba, made sure the fake guards were in place, then began to help remove the real ones to the guards’ building. When that was finished he stared at his wristwatch. The time was 2:08 A.M. Kasim raced for the gate to meet the CIA agent. A minute later the agent pulled up in the Suburban. He climbed out and took a box containing the sniffers out and set it down, then removed Abraham’s Stone—still in the box—off the rear seat.

“I’m Kasim, give me the stone.”

The agent hesitated. “I’m a Muslim,” Kasim said quickly. “Give me the stone.”

The agent handed the box to Kasim.

“Take the sniffers inside and hand them to the first man you see,” Kasim said. “Then get the hell out of here. This is not going as smoothly as we’d planned.”

“Okay,” the agent said.

Kasim, clutching the box to his waist, ran toward the entrance with the CIA agent right behind. Once inside the gate, the agent handed the box of sniffers to a man who raced over, then he stood for a second and watched as Kasim ran across the courtyard toward the curtain that hung over the Kaaba. Kasim was just slipping under the curtain when the agent turned and raced back to the Suburban.

A FEELING OF peace, tranquility and history flooded over Kasim as soon as he was under the curtain. For the briefest of moments he was filled with hope. A single spotlight cast a beam toward the silver frame where the Greenland meteorite was now displayed.

Kasim stepped closer, then set the box down and cut the tape on the seam with his knife. He reached up, wrested the Greenland meteorite from the frame and set it on the ground. Then he carefully lifted Abraham’s Stone from the box.

Slowly and reverently he put it back in its rightful place.

Then Kasim stood back, made a quick prayer, and gathered up the Greenland meteorite, which he placed back in the box. Slipping back under the curtain, he carried the box over to the guard’s building. The rest of the men were already searching the mosque with the sniffers when he reached for his phone.

SKUTTER SAT IN the passenger seat of the truck. The rest of his team sat in the rear. Just then the telephone rang.

“We’re watching you from above,” Hanley said. “There has been a slight change in plans—we don’t want you to go to Jeddah. We’re going to pull you out before that.”

“Where do you want us to go?” Skutter asked.

On the Oregon, Hanley was watching the infrared satellite image of the truck racing south. “Go six point two miles farther south,” Hanley said, “then pull over to the side of the road. There is a ship just offshore there now. They are sending in a shore boat to extract you from the cove there. Just get all your men aboard, Captain Skutter, and we’ll take it from there.”

“HOW MANY CHARGES had Kasim and his team found when he called?” Stone asked.

“Five,” Hanley said.

“Well, sir, I’d order him to leave the rest to the Saudis. I just intercepted a call from the wife of one of the guards. She was calling the local police to inquire why her husband was not home yet.”

“It’s two twenty-one!” Hanley thundered.

“Women,” Stone said, “are impossible to live with sometimes.”

Hanley reached for the phone.

Kasim was crouched down disabling a C-6 packet when his phone beeped.

“Get out now!” Hanley said.

“We haven’t covered the—” Kasim started to say.

“I’m ordering an immediate evac,” Hanley said. “This thing is blown. I have a truck in front to take you to your second escape hatch. Do you understand?”

“Got it, boss.”

“Now, go.”

JUST AS KASIM was placing the telephone back in his pocket, a CIA agent pulled up in front of the Great Mosque in a Ford extended-cab four-wheel-drive pickup truck. He nervously clutched the wheel as the seconds passed.

“That’s it,” Kasim shouted across the courtyard, “everyone to the gate.”

The four fake guards started to sprint across the courtyard as the others that were searching the grounds began to appear from behind buildings and pillars. Kasim raced through the gate and approached the truck.

“We’re coming out now,” he said to the driver.

“Load them in back,” the driver said, “and pull the tarp over them.”

Kasim lowered the rear tailgate and the men started climbing inside. Kasim counted them off, ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen. With him there were fourteen—one man was still inside. He raced for the gate and stared across the courtyard. The last man was sprinting across the distance.

“Sorry,” the man said as he ran over, “I was in the middle of a disarm when you shouted.”

Kasim grabbed him by the arm and pushed him along. “Get in the back,” he yelled when they reached the truck.

Then Kasim pulled the tarp over his team and climbed in front with the driver.

“You know where we’re going?” he asked as the driver slid the Ford into gear and hit the gas.

“Oh yeah,” the driver said.

U.S. AIR FORCE Major Hamilton Reeves understood both the need for military decorum as well as having a loose hand with his crew. Hanging the radio microphone back in the holder, he turned to his copilot and flight engineer.

“You boys up for penetrating the airspace of a sovereign nation this evening?”

“I’ve got nothing going on,” the copilot offered.

“All pays the same,” the flight engineer noted.

“All right then,” Reeves said, “let’s go visit Saudi Arabia.”

SKUTTER AND HIS team climbed out of the truck as Cabrillo ran across the beach.

“Leave the truck and come with us,” Cabrillo said to the driver. “If your cover isn’t blown, it soon will be.”

The driver turned off the truck and climbed down.

Then the sixteen men and Cabrillo made their way to the shore boat. James was waiting and started to help the men aboard. Once they were all crowded into the boat, Cabrillo climbed in as James took his place behind the wheel.

“Mr. C.,” he said, “this is very unsafe—I don’t have enough life vests for all these men.”

“I’ll take full responsibility for this,” Cabrillo said.

James started the engine and backed away from the beach. “Say it,” he said to Cabrillo.

“Home, James,” Cabrillo said loudly.

“WE HAD TO use the air force,” Hanley said. “It got hairy at the Kaaba.”

“Is Abraham’s Stone back in place?” Overholt asked.

“That’s done,” Hanley said, “but they couldn’t complete the explosives sweep.”

“I’ll call the president,” Overholt said, “he has a State Department dinner at seven, but I can catch him now.”

“If he calls the Saudi king and keeps him from firing on the C-17,” Hanley said, “we’re out of this clean.”

TWO SAUDI POLICE cars, sirens blaring and lights flashing, passed next to the Ford pickup traveling in the opposite direction. They were two miles from the mosque, but Kasim and the driver had no doubt where they were headed.

The driver of the Ford was doing ninety miles an hour, and he stared at the GPS navigation system built into the dashboard. “It says less than a mile,” he said. “Watch for a dirt road heading north.”

Kasim stared through the gloom. He just caught sight of a road angling off as the driver slowed. “I got it,” the driver said.

He stood on the brakes and the Ford slid on the sand atop the pavement. At the last instant, the driver spun the wheel and turned sideways. Then he pushed down on the gas again and raced up the sandy road. Reaching over to the dash, he pushed the button for four-wheel drive. On the left and right of the truck, hills started to grow taller as they raced down the wash. The driver stared down at the navigation system.

“Okay, we’re going to do a right up here and tuck behind that hill.”

A few minutes later the truck slid to a stop. The driver reached into the compartment between the seats and removed a spotlight and plugged it into the power outlet.

Then he flashed it across the land behind the hill.

There was a large expanse of flat packed sand one mile long and a half mile wide.

“Let me turn this around,” the driver said, backing up and twisting the wheel until the cab was pointed to the west.

“You want me to have the men climb out?” Kasim asked.

“Nope,” the driver said, “I’m driving right up into the back.”

REEVES AND HIS crew flew the C-17A as low as safety would allow. Even so, the plane was picked up by the advanced Saudi radar they had purchased from the United States. Within ten minutes of entering Saudi airspace and just before they were due to land, the Saudi Royal Air Force had a pair of fighter jets off the ground from their base in Dhahran. They headed across the expanse of desert at Mach speed.

Hearing the approaching C-17A, the driver began to flash his lights. Reeves saw the lights, made one pass over, then turned and lined up to land.

“IT’S THE MIDDLE of the night,” the aide to King Abdullah said.

“Listen,” the president said, “I’m sending the secretary of state over there now—he’ll be there by late morning tomorrow to explain what has happened. Right now, I have a United States Air Force plane inside your airspace. If this plane is fired upon, we will have no choice but to retaliate.”

“I just don’t—”

“Wake the king,” the president said, “or there are going to be serious consequences.”

A few minutes later a sleepy King Abdullah came on the line. Once the president explained, he reached for another telephone and called the head of his air force.

“Have them escort them out of the country but do not take hostile actions,” he said in Arabic.

Returning to the open line with the president, he said, “Mr. President, if your secretary of state does not supply a proper answer to what is happening, your citizens will have a very cold winter.”

“Once you hear what happened, I think we’ll be good.”

“I look forward to the meeting,” King Abdullah said and disconnected.

REEVES LANDED THE C-17A, then turned around and faced the opposite direction.

“Drop the door,” he said to the flight engineer.

The Ford pickup was already making its way across the sand as the door slowly lowered. When the truck pulled up, the door was fully extended down, making a ramp. Edging forward through the sand, the driver reached the end of the ramp. Then he gave it some gas and drove inside the cargo bay.

Opening the door, the driver ran forward to the cockpit. “We’re in, sir,” he said.

“Door up,” Reeves said.

As the door was rising, Reeves ran the engines up to check the operation. Everything looked good, so as soon as the light on the control panel went green, indicating that the door was locked in place, he pushed the throttles forward and raced down the patch of sand.

Two minutes later they were airborne again.

“Ninety miles to the Red Sea,” he shouted back to the rear, “five minutes or so.”

“I have two fighter jets inbound,” the copilot said.

“Prepare countermeasures,” Reeves said.

But the jets never turned on their firing computers. They just stayed off the wingtips until the C-17A passed over the water. Then they peeled away to head back to their base.

“WE’RE OUT OF Saudi airspace,” Reeves yelled to the rear, “two hours to Cutter.”

Kasim walked to the rear of the pickup and pulled back the tarp. “Okay, men,” he said, “we did it—we’re going back to Qatar.”

The cheers filled the cargo area of the C-17A.

“Take over,” Reeves said to the copilot.

Reeves walked back into the cargo area. “I would have brought you a cooler of beer but I understand you men don’t drink. So I had the mess hall prepare a cooler of iced soda and some food in case we did have to come get you. There are some hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad and such. It’s been a few hours, but they packed it in those silver insulated bags so it should still be warm. Enjoy.”

Reeves headed back to the cockpit.

“Okay, men,” Kasim said, unzipping a silver padded bag, “dig in.”