Whatever the Cost

1

Just two hours later, Cole had everything he would ever get from al-Zayani, and was satisfied that he’d been told the truth; the threat of being returned to the sharks was too overwhelming a possibility for al-Zayani to try lying about anything.

It turned out that al-Zayani really didn’t know what was in the crate that had been brought from Sumatra by Umar Shibab; al-Zayani was just the paymaster, and not concerned with operational details. All he knew was that after the private plane had landed in Dhahran, the crate had been picked up by someone al-Zayani only knew as Matraqat al-Kafir, the Hammer of the Infidel. He thought it had been taken to a safe house somewhere in Saudi Arabia, but that was as much as he knew.

Al-Zayani’s own job for the terrorist organization known as Arabian Islamic Jihad had been going on for years; he had been leaching large sums from the accounts of Saudi National Oil and its subsidiary companies for the past decade, providing the entire start-up costs for the AIJ.

Al-Zayani had been brought into the AIJ by Abd al-Aziz Quraishi, the so-called ‘Lion’ who fronted the organization, and Cole recognized the same techniques that case officers used to recruit agents for western intelligence agencies.

Al-Zayani told Cole how he had never been against the Saudi government before, indeed had been a loyal and devout citizen all of his life, right up until an event which occurred ten years ago. He had just made Vice President of Finance for Saudi National Oil, and was looking forward to finally starting a family with his wife, who was pregnant for the first time. And then one night, when al-Zayani was working late, the Mabahith broke down the doors to his home and took his wife from her bed.

He campaigned against the government, demanding to know where she was, why she’d been taken, if she was alive or dead; but all that came back was stony silence.

It was then that he’d been approached by Quraishi, who offered to use his influence at the Ministry of Interior to find out what had happened to his wife, and get her back if he could. Al-Zayani had been so anxious that he agreed to do anything in return, and waited for news to come from Quraishi.

Days passed, until finally Quraishi came to see him in his home. It seemed that his wife had been seen in the local market asking questions about moving to America to raise her children there. Sensing some form of blasphemous disregard for Saudi Arabia’s own culture, the Mabahith were called in and had taken her to the cells for questioning.

When al-Zayani had asked the obvious question, Quraishi had sadly shook his head; regrettably, his wife had died during the interrogation, along with their unborn child. Apparently the body had already been ‘processed’ — which meant it had been burned to ashes in one of the subterranean ovens kept for that very purpose.

Al-Zayani hadn’t been able to believe what he was hearing; how could this happen to a man like him, in a senior position in his nation’s most profitable business? And yet he’d heard so many stories before about these things happening that he didn’t doubt Quraishi’s story for a second.

His rage holy and indignant, he was fully primed for the offer Quraishi made next; to use the power of his position to help establish a group which would one day oust the Saudi monarchy and its corrupt government. Quraishi admitted to his own role, how he had dedicated his entire life to building up his position in order to more effectively lead a freedom-fighting group, and al-Zayani in his moment of weakness agreed absolutely to help the man in any way he could.

And so finance for the terrorist group had been made through the funds of Saudi National Oil ever since, with no one ever the wiser.

Cole had to give Quraishi credit; his group was clearly better funded and better organized than any that had gone before. And his own role as Assistant Minister for Security Affairs meant that it was his job to stamp out dissident groups; in effect, he was policing himself, which was the perfect position to be in. He could take down rival groups, recruit from their resources, all while protecting the AIJ and his own interests.

Cole couldn’t help wonder if Quraishi had organized the capture and death of al-Zayani’s wife himself, purely in order to recruit the man to his cause. From what he’d heard already, it wouldn’t have surprised him in the slightest.

However, Cole was surprised that he hadn’t heard more from Quraishi’s terrorist group, but this was ominous in itself; it was possible that it meant Quraishi was saving himself for something big.

Cole still didn’t know what was in the crate, but assumed it must be nuclear; the North Koreans had the right materials to make such things, and an attack with a nuclear device on American soil would explain what the big event was that Quraishi was heading towards.

But guesswork simply wasn’t good enough; he had to know.

And so he had asked al-Zayani to call Quraishi to ask for a meeting. It was under the pretense of Texas Mainline Oil’s concerns about security from terrorist groups; ‘Dan Chadwick’ wanted confirmation that TMO’s investment would be secure, and needed to speak to the government minister responsible for dealing with counter-terrorism.

And so — even though it was terribly short notice — al-Zayani had stressed over the telephone that his US associate would be returning to Texas the day after tomorrow, and Quraishi had therefore agreed to meet him the very next morning.

And now, the meeting arranged, Cole stood on the deck and wondered what to do about al-Zayani. He felt sorry for the man — he had been badly abused, and the fate of his wife too closely mirrored Cole’s own experiences. Wouldn’t Cole have agreed to Quraishi’s requests for money if their situations had been reversed?

He had already forced the man to call Saudi National Oil headquarters to say that he, Abu and the two other men — who, it turned out, had also been company employees — were taking an impromptu fishing trip the next day, and wouldn’t be back until the following evening.

It gave him a window of opportunity; questions might be asked, but not before Cole had gone to his meeting with Abd al-Aziz Quraishi in Riyadh and met the Lion himself.

Cole was a killer, but thought long and hard about the fate of al-Zayani. Could he just leave the man out at sea, and hope he wasn’t able to contact anyone and spoil Cole’s plans? Could he trust al-Zayani not to talk if he was found?

Cole looked up at the stars and the moon, bright in the cloudless night sky, and shook his head.

No. The unhappy fact was that he couldn’t take that chance. He’d already gone against his instincts with Boom Suparat, and that had turned out badly for everyone. Cole’s only hope of a lead was his meeting with Quraishi the next day; if that was jeopardized, then who knew what would happen?

When Cole returned to the cabin below, his mind made up and steeled for what he had to do, he saw that al-Zayani was sleeping. He sighed; that would make it easier, at least.

Approaching the sleeping body, Cole’s hands reached out and struck three of the nerve points on al-Zayani’s exposed skin; points which caused instant death, and al-Zayani’s eternal sleep.

Cole’s remorse was short-lived; he couldn’t afford to have it any other way, and he immediately set about making plans to scuttle the ship.

He would swim back to shore and — if anyone came looking for al-Zayani and his friends when they didn’t return the next night — all that would be found would be pieces of the million-dollar yacht strewn across the blue waters of the Arabian Gulf.

And the men on board would never be seen again.

2

The raindrops collected on the leaves above the three men hiding in the forest, showering them repetitively every few seconds when they got too heavy.

Jake Navarone was soaking wet, but never even noticed; his entire attention was focused on the industrial buildings which lay beyond the fence line in their own private compound.

Navarone, Devine and Liu were nestled in the trees which bordered the camp, just a hundred yards away from the curious compound. He could see that one of the structures had a huge chimney, which belched smoke up into the cloudy sky.

It was daytime, although the sun was struggling to break through the storm clouds above, and the valley remained dark and grey. But Navarone was now able to see more of the eastern side of the camp, especially from his new vantage point.

The rest of his men, under the leadership of Frank Jaffett, would be taking detailed notes on the rest of the complex, drawing up plans of the buildings, establishing timings of guard changes, camp routine, how many prisoners they could see and what they were doing, the list was endless.

But Navarone wanted to find out what was going on in these outbuildings. Why was there a group of buildings fenced off from the rest of the camp? What purpose did they serve?

A claxon sounded then, and Navarone recoiled in surprise; but it was just used to summon the prisoners to the camp square for roll-call, and Navarone watched in wonder as they began to stream out of the four barracks blocks, each person dressed in grey fatigues, heads down.

Navarone had estimated that each barrack building could hold about one hundred prisoners, and yet still they poured forth, spilling out of the concrete dormitories in huge numbers until the square was completely covered.

He couldn’t perform an exact count from his current position, as he was now too far away and there were simply too many to count; but he could see that it wasn’t just men who were imprisoned here, there were women and children too, some barely able to walk. Navarone clenched his fists in anger. What kind of political crimes could children be guilty of?

‘Are you seeing this, boss?’ Jaffett asked over the radio.

‘You can’t miss it,’ Navarone whispered with gritted teeth.

‘They’ve got kids here, man,’ Jaffett breathed in disgust.

‘I know. Can you see on your side how many prisoners in total?’

‘Best we can make out is about eight-fifty, nine hundred per block.’

Navarone breathed out in disbelief. That was nearly four thousand people cooped up in a space for four hundred. They must have been sleeping one on top of the other in there. Heaven only knew what sort of diseases were running through the place.

‘Okay, hold tight and carry on with the recon,’ Navarone said, and Jaffett gave him a double-click on the radio to confirm.

Navarone continued to watch through his high-powered binoculars as North Korean soldiers followed the prisoners out, shouting orders to the ones at the rear.

These prisoners returned reluctantly to the barracks, picking up the wheelbarrows which rested by the doors as they went. Several minutes elapsed before Navarone saw them reappear, pushing the wheelbarrows which now contained what appeared to be dead bodies.

Navarone felt Devine’s fingers grip his forearm. ‘Dammit Jake,’ he whispered, ‘they’ve got kids on those fuckin’ wheelbarrows! What the fuck kind of place is this?’

Navarone’s jaw was clenched as he saw the same thing; two of the dead bodies were those of children, what appeared to be a boy of about six, and a girl who might have been in her teens.

He remained silent as he watched the prisoners wheel the dead bodies past their comrades, who kept their heads down, eyes staring at the floor beneath them. Soldiers at the western edge of the compound moved to the heavy steel gates there and pulled them open, and Navarone watched as the wheelbarrows were pushed across the open ground, headed for the very area that he and his men were watching.

The gates of the secondary compound were opened, and the prisoners wheeled their dead colleagues through, heading for the building with the chimney; and it was then that Navarone’s fears were confirmed, and he knew what the building was. It was a crematorium, just like the Nazis had used at their death camps back in the worst days of World War II.

Navarone watched in horror as the bodies were wheeled inside, the prisoners appearing with empty wheelbarrows just moments later and starting their sickening journey back towards the main camp.

Navarone was sure that the smoke turned darker then, thicker and more intense. It could have been his imagination, but he could have sworn he smelt the burning of human flesh.

It was probably from disease, or else starvation and weakness from being worked too hard; there were probably deaths in the barracks every night.

Roll-call was going on all the while, and Navarone noticed for the first time the major he’d seen the night before. He was standing with a clipboard on a raised dais, gesturing to various prisoners as their names were called out, guards pulling them off to one side.

At the end of roll-call, there was a group of a dozen men and women gathered near the major’s dais, and Navarone could see the major talking to another man — obviously a senior rank, although Navarone couldn’t make it out from here. This second man then barked at the guards and pointed to the industrial compound.

Panic broke out in the dozen prisoners then, and Navarone could hear the screams and cries from where he lay in the soft undergrowth. A woman tried to break free, kicking out at the guards and running for the open gate.

A shot rang out, and the women fell down face first, blood pumping out onto the dirt floor from the gaping exit wound in her chest, a 7.62mm rifle round from one of the guards having entered her upper back at over a thousand feet per second.

The body was hauled to one side, the major pointed at another prisoner from the assembly to join the others in the dead woman’s place, and the dozen prisoners — now silent, accepting whatever horrific fate awaited them — were led out of the main camp to the mysterious buildings which lay under Navarone’s position.

‘Shit boss,’ Devine whispered. ‘What are we going to do?’

Navarone shook his head, wondering exactly the same thing. ‘I don’t know,’ he said truthfully, remembering that his orders were strictly to observe and report back. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

3

Abd al-Aziz Quraishi looked at the man across the table from him, trying to hide his distaste.

He had first met Jeb Richards at West Point back when they were both young men. He hadn’t known then, of course, that the American would rise to such prominence in his government, but had identified him early on as someone who could potentially be used in the future.

It wasn’t that Quraishi had expected Richards to ideologically support his cause; far from it in fact, as Richards was a patriot first and foremost. He had left West Point and gone on to serve with distinction in the US Army’s 37th Armor Regiment before pursuing a career in politics. But underneath the public persona of typical southern bluster, Quraishi had perceived something else; a ruthless streak that meant he could easily be manipulated into compromising his principled façade if it furthered his own agenda in some way.

And so Richards was just one of the people he had met during his time in the United States with whom he had developed long-term friendships, and he had been surprised yet delighted when Richards’ political career took off in later years. In fact, the man’s position as Secretary of Homeland Security dovetailed beautifully with Quraishi’s own role within the Ministry of Interior.

Quraishi’s distaste for the man stemmed in part from his physical appearance; he was slovenly and quite overweight, indications of poor self-discipline, and qualities which Quraishi simply could not abide. It offended his religious ideals of physical restraint and the resistance of the temptations of gluttony and laziness.

But he also disliked the man due to what he was prepared to do, even though it served Quraishi’s own interests. Quraishi simply couldn’t understand a man who was willing to betray his own people.

But then again, Quraishi told himself, he hadn’t been entirely honest about what was happening and — to be fair — Richards really did believe that what he was doing would ultimately benefit America’s homeland security and make his country a safer place.

Unable to help himself, Quraishi smiled at how wrong the man was.

Quraishi was inordinately pleased with how his plans were progressing; the martyrs had been prepared, and his beloved al-Hazmi was getting ready to escort them to the correct airlines for their specially selected flights. His scientific staff had been continually monitoring wind patterns and had made complex and — they assured him — quite accurate dispersal projections. The locations chosen for his team of martyrs had been decided upon after long consideration of a multitude of factors — total population, transport links and ease of egress to other areas, climate patterns, air density and barometric pressure, availability of emergency services and the ability of local hospital systems to cope with sudden demands, casualty estimates, number of expected fatalities, and a hundred other topics of interest. But now all decisions were made, and everything was in place, ready for the actual operation itself; and Quraishi would soon know if their projections were correct.

According to Richards, the US government had no idea whatsoever what was really going on. Apparently, there was some suspicion that a weapon developed in North Korea was on the loose somewhere, but nobody yet knew what it was, or who had it, or where it was headed.

Richards claimed that there was a rumor of Jemaah Islamiyah’s involvement, but — due to his own efforts, and those of Clark Mason, the Secretary of State — these leads were not being pursued as rigorously as some members of the National Security Council would like.

In a way, Quraishi pitied Richards; the man thought he was doing the right thing, thought that he was helping his nation. He knew that people would die, that sacrifices would have to be made, but that it was for the greater good of the American people.

He was going to be upset when he realized the truth, Quraishi thought as he sipped at his tea; very upset indeed.

Richards was nursing a sore head, a result of a too much alcohol the night before. Sure, Riyadh was as tee-total as the rest of the country, but a guy at his hotel had managed to find the wild side of the city, and Richards had tagged along. It turned out if you had enough money, people here could be quite reasonable.

Richards looked at the man sat across from him, wishing that he had some painkillers; his head really did hurt like a son of a bitch.

He had to admit that he didn’t much like the man he was here to see; but at the same time, Richards knew that he held the key to America’s future security.

Quraishi was the leader of Arabian Islamic Jihad, a group which was about to launch a serious attack on American soil; an attack which Richards was going to allow to go ahead.

The problem, as he saw it, was that the US government was drastically underfunding its homeland security program. In the aftermath of 9/11, money for national defense had been inexhaustible; at last what the country actually needed, in Richards’ opinion. He had been a Captain in the 39th Armor Regiment at the time, and the ensuing years had been good ones for the military, which saw its first real investment since the heady heights of the Cold War.

But al-Qaeda’s horrific attack, which had left nearly three thousand dead, had happened nearly twenty years ago now, and two decades had slowed the American defense machinery to a snail’s crawl. Budgets were being slashed, weapons systems culled, regiments disbanded. But, Richards knew, the threat was still there. It was always there.

What was needed, Richards knew, was a fresh attack on US soil; so long as the American people felt safe, there would be no pressure on the politicians to increase budgets to the correct levels. Government finance was never proactive, always reactive. Money would never be spent on preventing a crisis; the norm was for a crisis to occur, and then for the money to be spent. Completely backwards thinking in Richards’ opinion, but that was Washington for you.

Richards knew that what he needed was a new attack on America, from a new group which could be as feared as al-Qaeda had once been. And he believed that Quraishi and Arabian Islamic Jihad could well be that group, and the Lion’s planned attack could be the catalyst to get back his funding.

Richards wasn’t psychotic; he didn’t want the deaths of American citizens on his hands. But better the devil you know, he’d thought when he’d first entered discussions with his old friend Quraishi. If an unknown group launched an attack, he would simply never know what damage could be inflicted. But with Quraishi in charge, he was assured that fatalities would be limited to just a few thousand. It was a terrible thing to be burdened with, but Richards accepted the fact that America had lived through such an attack before, and had emerged even stronger; it was a number that could be tolerated, if it meant that her security would be improved immeasurably as a result.

He didn’t know exactly what was in the North Korean crate, only that it was a dirty bomb of some kind, a combination of radioactive material and conventional explosives. Such a device was nowhere near as devastating as a nuclear explosion, and indeed such dirty bombs were not even considered weapons of mass destruction in most circles, but as weapons of mass disruption; it wasn’t the number of fatalities which would be the key factor, but the psychological impact of nuclear fallout and the spread of radiation. There would be mass panic and terror, and the clean-up would require considerable expense and cause untold economic damage, but the number of actual deaths would be relatively negligible. And this was the beauty of the plan Quraishi had described to him; the terror and fear that would result from the attack would be enough to force politicians to raise budgets massively in order to appease the terrified population; so when a real attack came, they would be ready for it.

Could he live with the deaths of a couple of thousand Americans?

Yes he could, and he had decided this a long time ago. You couldn’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, and that was really all that was happening here. And after all, it wasn’t as if it hadn’t happened before; elements of the US and British governments had prior knowledge about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor but had allowed it to go ahead in order to force America into World War II; Kennedy had been seriously considering a Defense Department plan to shoot down an American airliner so that it could be blamed on Cuba and thus justify an invasion; and American intelligence was warned about the 9/11 attacks in advance. That was just how things worked, Richards knew.

And so Richards had supplied Quraishi with information, and tried to protect his organization from discovery, also helping to muddy the waters of the current investigation. He just hoped that the outcome would be worth the risk.

‘You have been most helpful,’ Quraishi said gratefully. ‘And I think we will both find benefits from the events to come.’ There was a pause as he sipped his jasmine tea, then he looked back across the desk at his American colleague. ‘Is there anything else?’

Richards paused; there was something. But was it worth bothering Quraishi with at this late stage? Finally though, he nodded his head.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there is perhaps something — or, at least, someone — you should know about.’

4

Cole walked through the fourth-floor corridors of the Ministry of Interior, escorted by a stern-faced official who didn’t like to talk.

Cole had been surprised by the look of the building; it was like something that had been built by aliens and then dumped in the middle of the city, quite unlike anything else that surrounded it. The interior was rather more conventional however, and was like government buildings the world over; cold, clinical and utilitarian.

But soon he was outside the office of Abd al-Aziz Quraishi — Assistant Minister for Security Affairs for the government of Saudi Arabia and, if al-Zayani was to be believed, the Lion himself, the head of Arabian Islamic Jihad.

Before leaving Dhahran, Cole had called Ike Treyborne via his secure sat phone to give his old friend an update. He had explained what he’d done to al-Zayani and his boat, and asked Treyborne to run interference in case there was any comeback; he needed the meeting to go smoothly, and didn’t want to have to worry about things back in Dhahran.

He’d also shared the information he’d managed to get from al-Zayani, including how Arabian Islamic Jihad had been financed, and the fact that Quraishi seemed to be behind the whole thing. It was far too early to start alerting the Saudi government — as yet there was no real proof tying Quraishi to anything — but Cole asked Treyborne to find out everything he could about the man, and recommended giving the name to Bud Shaw at the NSA to activate surveillance on his calls and emails.

Treyborne had promised to try, but Cole understood he had to be circumspect in how he went about asking; after all, Treyborne wasn’t supposed to have any leads, as he wasn’t supposed to be investigating anything. But Cole was sure Treyborne would find a way to put the intelligence services on Quraishi’s scent; he was a born improviser.

By the time Cole arrived in Riyadh and had found his luxurious suite in the Ritz Carlton hotel — courtesy of Abdullah al-Zayani and Saudi National Oil — Treyborne had already sent him the CIA file on Abd al-Aziz Quraishi.

The file revealed two interesting things to Cole — one, that Quraishi had spent considerable time in the United States; and two, that he was under no suspicion whatsoever by US intelligence. He was as clean as a whistle in every respect.

Quraishi had been born in 1972, his father a very distant cousin of King Faisal, who had ruled Saudi Arabia until his nephew assassinated him in 1975. The family was therefore tied to the royal family, and yet was never a part of the true upper echelon. But it did mean that the male members of the Quraishi family could serve in the Saudi government, and Abd al-Aziz Quraishi did just that, joining the Saudi Royal Guard Regiment at the tender age of seventeen. From there he was selected — apparently due to his high intellect and potential for future leadership — for an exchange program with the American military, and was sent to West Point to undergo officer training in the US Army.

He graduated near the top of his class, and reportedly didn’t restrict himself purely to military life during his four years in America; contemporary reports indicated that he travelled far and wide, and used his royal connections to establish links with many political and business figures.

Cole thought this strange — if not downright suspicious — but the CIA and FBI hadn’t been concerned, as this was common practice for foreign cadets; the whole exchange program was to help foster closer ties between nations on an unofficial level.

Quraishi had gone on to serve with distinction in the Royal Guards, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before joining the Ministry of Interior as head of the feared Mabahith. Again, he seemed to have made a positive impression on everyone, for he had steadily worked his way up to his current position as Assistant Minister for Security Affairs, about as high as a minor relative of the House of Saud could ever hope to rise.

Cole had searched the file for any information which might shed light on why Quraishi was — according to al-Zayani, at least — so rabidly anti-monarchy and anti-Western. On the face of it, it just didn’t make sense; Quraishi held a high position in a society which favored the royal family, of which he was a part. When did the religious zeal enter his life? At what point was the man turned?

It wasn’t in the report, that was for sure, and Cole wondered if he would be able to learn more from the man himself.

The door opened at the same time he arrived outside, and he was surprised to see an American face framed in the doorway.

‘Oh, excuse me,’ the man said, extending a hand. Cole took it and shook firmly. ‘You must be Dan Chadwick, right? Texas Mainline Oil?’

Cole nodded. ‘That’s right.’

‘I’m Jeb Richards, a fellow Texan,’ he said with a smile. ‘Just leaving as a matter of fact, though unfortunately I’ve got to go back to Washington and not Texas.’ He sighed. ‘Still, I might get back there one day. Be sure to pass on my regards to Ezzard,’ he continued as he moved past Cole into the corridor beyond, ‘not seen him for years but we used to enjoy a game of tennis together.’

‘I’ll be sure to do that,’ Cole said after the man, who was now half-way down the corridor, Cole’s mute escort accompanying him. ‘Have a safe flight.’

‘Will do, my friend,’ Richards shouted back over his shoulder.

Cole concealed his concern as he turned back to the open doorway, watching as Quraishi came towards him across the office. What the hell had Jeb Richards, the Secretary of Homeland Security, been doing here?

What was of more concern to Cole was whether Richards recognized him or not; with an arrest warrant out on him, it wasn’t unreasonable to assume that Richards — as a member of the National Security Council — might well have seen a picture of him.

But, Cole reflected, such a picture would hardly be up-to-date; whatever there was on file for the Caribbean diving instructor named Mark Cole would no longer tally with the man waiting outside Quraishi’s office. The fireball which had engulfed the house in Kreith had left Cole with extensive scarring which — although surgically corrected — had altered his appearance quite considerably. Added to which was the fact that Cole had partially disguised himself for the role of Dan Chadwick anyway.

But if Richards knew Ezzard Kaplan, might he also know the real Dan Chadwick? But he’d said that he hadn’t seen Ezzard for a long time, and Chadwick was new at Texas Mainline, one of the reasons for Cole choosing him in the first place.

In the end, Cole decided that he had nothing to be concerned about; his identity was secure. But he did still wonder about Richards’ purpose here in Riyadh.

But he could worry about that later; right now he had more pressing concerns, and he offered his hand to the man who floated gracefully towards him over his tiled floor, bedecked in the traditional Saudi white dress known as a thobe, with a red and white checked headdress to complete the image.

Quraishi smiled beneficently at his guest and took his hand. ‘Two Texans in my office in the same day,’ he said amicably. ‘It must be providence, no?’

Cole returned the smile. ‘It must be. I guess it is a small world, after all.’

Quraishi gestured for Cole to sit, and then swept elegantly around the other side of the desk and took his own seat across from him. ‘Water?’ he asked, gesturing with his hand to the water jug and glasses to one side of the large desk.

‘Thank you,’ Cole said, reaching forward to help himself.

‘And now,’ Quraishi began in his perfect English, his lilting voice pleasantly melodious, ‘how may I help you?’

5

The crematorium was located at the rear of the compound, close to Jake Navarone’s position.

It had been no use; he had just had to know what was going on here, and with time pressing, he had announced his intentions to his colleagues and then proceeded to slip down the forested bank which protected the valley.

The rear wasn’t guarded, and as Navarone approached the barbed wire fence, close to the ground, he was pleased to see that there were no motion sensors either. Probably nobody expected anyone to ever find the camp in the first place.

The fence was electrified though, which made things more difficult; cutting his way through the fence would cause a burnout, and get the immediate attention of the guards. But he didn’t really want to cut the fence anyway, as he didn’t want to leave any telltale signs of his visit. His plan was to quickly scout the place out and report back.

This left climbing the eight-foot fence, which was risky in itself; during daylight hours, he could easily be seen. But the weather was overcast and visibility was poor with the unaided eye; overall, it was unlikely the guards would spot him. He would rely on the two men behind him, and the other SEALs on the far side of the valley, to warn him if anyone was watching. On this side of the compound though, he couldn’t even be seen by the guards in their watchtowers.

He checked in with his teammates for the last time and was given the all-clear. And so, insulated gloves and boots protecting against the electric charge, he scuttled up the fence in seconds, pulling himself up and over the barbed wire as if it wasn’t even there, his Nomex bodysuit protecting him from the sharp barbs.

He landed on the grass on the other side, just a few yards away from the dark brick of the crematorium, which continued to belch thick smoke out of its tall chimney. Keeping close to the ground, he shuffled his way towards the building, until he was touching the rough brickwork.

He edged down the wall slowly, inch by tortuous inch, until Devine gave him the word that he was right below the small window which was the only thing on this side of the building except the brickwork.

Out of a utility pouch, he retrieved a fiber optic wire, with a camera mounted on one end. He bent the wire into a right angle and slowly — ever so slowly — pushed it up until it rested just above the window frame.

Navarone checked the miniature monitor that displayed the images from the camera, and saw a large unfurnished room, the walls bare brick. There was a large door over on the right hand side, and Navarone moved the camera around, panning across to the other side of the room.

What he saw on the monitor stopped him dead, the breath caught in his throat.

There was a gigantic cast-iron oven over the other side, its cavernous mouth wide open, flames flickering inside as a team of people — dressed in what looked like white biohazard suits — unloaded bodies from carts and dumped them unceremoniously into the furnace.

But it was the sight of the bodies themselves that had caused Navarone’s nauseated reaction.

There were a variety of shapes and sizes — men, women and even children — but they all looked the same in one way.

They were all hideously deformed, their flesh literally eaten away from their bones. On some of the bodies, Navarone could see gaping blisters on the skin, on others there was actual bone protruding through the withered skin and fat tissue; eyes were gone, melted away; noses and ears were also nowhere in evidence; and all looked as if they had undergone horrific mutation of some kind.

Navarone had never seen anything like it before in his life, and wondered just what the hell could have happened to those people.

He had been right about this place, at least; it wasn’t just a political prison camp. There was something very wrong going on here, experiments of some kind or another.

But what?

Had the prisoners been victims of radiation poisoning? Were the after-effects of a nuclear blast somehow being recreated and analyzed?

Or did the damage to the bodies indicate that some sort of horrifying new weapon was being developed here?

As he thought about those poor children being thrown into the furnace, his mind flipped for just an instant to his sisters, the twins; Jodie and Bobbi, so young and innocent. He cut the thought off immediately.

What had these people done to deserve this?

With gritted teeth, his mind flashed back to the prisoners who had been summoned forward that very morning; they were next, weren’t they?

Slowly, Navarone pulled the fiber optic camera back down and edged away from the wall.

Not if I can help it, he thought with an anger he had never before experienced.

Not if I can help it.

‘So you can see,’ Quraishi summed up with a confident smile, ‘there is really nothing for you to worry about. Your money will be quite safe, and your business with Saudi National Oil can proceed as planned.’

Cole nodded his head in thought. ‘Well, you do seem to have all bases covered,’ he said in his affected Texas Drawl. ‘And the Mabahith must really make people careful huh?’

Quraishi just raised an eyebrow and let his smile widen ever so slightly.

‘But I do have one concern,’ Cole said carefully, pausing as he heard a knock on the office door. He waited as Quraishi admitted an assistant, who cleared away the water jugs and glasses, and replaced them with fresh ones. Once the man had left, Cole continued. ‘We’ve been hearing reports about a new group operating right here on Saudi soil, Arabian Islamic Jihad. Now, we don’t know much about them in the US, but what’s your take on them? Are they dangerous?’

Cole watched Quraishi’s face for any hint of undue emotion at the mention of the AIJ; a twitch of the eye, a turning of the mouth, anything at all. But there was no reaction whatsoever.

‘Any terrorist group is potentially dangerous,’ Quraishi admitted, ‘but the fact is that the AIJ has yet to prove itself; it has been around for years, but has achieved nothing. The Ministry of Interior is confident that it will fizzle out like all the others.’ He smiled again. ‘I was just telling Mr. Richards, your Secretary of Homeland Security, exactly the same thing.’

Cole wondered if that was true. Was that why Richards had been here? Had he been checking up on what the Ministry of Interior knew about Arabian Islamic Jihad? It would certainly make sense.

Cole smiled at Quraishi. ‘That’s good to know,’ he said. ‘But word around the campfire is that they’re saving themselves for something big. You heard anything about that?’

‘Word around the campfire?’ Quraishi repeated with a good-natured laugh. ‘That’s a saying I’ve not heard in a long time. Since I was in your country as a young man, in fact.’ The smile on his face as he remembered seemed genuine enough. ‘Those were good days,’ Quraishi continued. ‘I met some fine people there. The United States is a great country.’

Cole watched the man’s face as he spoke, senses attuned for the slightest hint that he wasn’t telling the truth, that he really despised America and everything she stood for. But there was nothing to see; Quraishi’s face was a mask. Cole knew this meant one of two things — either al-Zayani had been lying to him, and Quraishi was exactly as he appeared to be; or else the man was completely sociopathic, and far more dangerous than Cole had feared.

There was a knock on the door again, and the same assistant popped his head through into the office, speaking in Arabic to Quraishi, who nodded his head and rose from the desk.

Quraishi turned to Cole. ‘I am very sorry,’ he said, ‘but I just have to go and take care of something. I will be no longer than a minute or two.’

And with that, he swept out of the room, white thobe billowing behind him.

Cole breathed out steadily as the door clicked closed. Was it some sort of test? Was he being left alone in the room, under surveillance, so he could be monitored?

Cole didn’t think so; it was unlikely that Quraishi’s office would be monitored. And even if it was, Cole knew he had to act anyway. He was running out of time, and it was imperative that he find something — anything — that would help his investigation.

His mind made up, Cole was out of his seat in an instant.

‘Yes, Hatim?’ Quraishi asked his assistant in the empty office next door, which was used as an anteroom for Quraishi and two other officials. ‘You found something?’

Hatim picked up the water glass Cole had used and tapped it. Quraishi noticed the equipment set up on the table next to it. ‘The fingerprints on this glass do not match what we have on file for Daniel Chadwick,’ he said authoritatively.

Quraishi’s eyes narrowed. ‘You are sure of this?’

Hatim cleared his throat. ‘With what little time we had, as sure as we can be,’ he said. ‘We’ve only done a visual match, we’ve had no time to feed the results into our computer system, but I can see that they are plainly different with just a magnifying glass. The man in your office is not Daniel Chadwick.’

Quraishi considered the situation. Jeb Richards had informed him that there were no authorized operations going on in Saudi Arabia, and Quraishi believed him. Why would Richards lie about things now? He had told Quraishi that the US government didn’t have the first idea where to even start looking.

And yet here was this man, an unknown, right here in his office. What did he want? Who was he?

Quraishi thought back to Richards’ final words, about the covert operative who had escaped arrest in Sumatra. He was the man who had found the pirate lair in the first place, and had brought the US Navy SEALs down on the place.

Could the man in his office be Mark Cole? The agent Richards said was known as ‘the Asset’?

Quraishi sighed. The meeting had been arranged by Abdullah al-Zayani. Had it been done under protest? Had this foreign agent found out that al-Zayani had financed the hijacking and interrogated him? If so, what would he have found out? What would al-Zayani have told him?

‘Hatim,’ Quraishi ordered, ‘find out where Abdullah al-Zayani is, right now. Have him brought here if possible, immediately.’

‘Yes sir,’ Hatim said, retreating to one of the secure telephones in the corner of the room.

The good thing, Quraishi supposed, was that at least al-Zayani didn’t know much. He didn’t know anything about the upcoming operation. But it seemed that he had led this agent here to Quraishi, which was more than enough.

But if this man wasn’t authorized, if he was wanted by the US government himself, then all was not lost, and Quraishi allowed himself a smile. He could get information from this ‘asset’, this Mark Cole, do whatever he wanted to him, and the man would not be missed.

‘Hatim,’ Quraishi called across the room. ‘After you’ve located al-Zayani, call the zoo and arrange a visit for us this afternoon.’

Hatim confirmed the order, and Quraishi’s smile widened. For people he didn’t want an official record to be kept on, there were other places in Riyadh to question them than the basement dungeons.

The zoo was Quraishi’s favorite.

Cole held the silken hood in his hands, eyes darting furtively over his shoulder every few seconds, wondering when Quraishi would come bursting back into the room.

He had found the hood and the robes in a briefcase which had been stored in a locked cupboard. Cole had recognized them instantly; they had been worn by the person who had beheaded Brad Butler, the same man who had spoken on video about the plague about to be unleashed by Arabian Islamic Jihad.

The bloodstains had been left on the otherwise white robes, as if in a perverse memory of Butler. The entire bag reeked of the coppery scent of blood, and Cole felt nauseated. Quraishi was able to slip out of his official robes of office and don this stinking bloodstained garment without a care in the world.

Cole stuffed the clothing back in the bag, zipped it up and replaced it in the cupboard, sure now that Abd al-Aziz Quraishi and the Lion were one and the same.

Cole closed the cupboard door and was securing the lock when he heard the footsteps in the corridor outside, sensed the hand reaching for the door; his fingers worked frantically to secure the lock, even as he saw the handle turning.

And then it was locked, and Cole dove across the room back into his chair, hitting the seat just as the office door swung open and Quraishi glided back in, the expression on his face positively beatific.

‘My friend,’ he said kindly, ‘it is far too nice a day to stay inside. I believe we should continue our conversation in more pleasant surroundings.’

Cole nodded his head, wondering what Quraishi was up to. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘Where do you suggest we go?’

‘Have you ever been to Riyadh Zoo, Mr. Chadwick?’ Quraishi smiled, and Cole could see his eyes were blank, like a shark’s. ‘I think that you will like it.’

6

James Dorrell peered over his half-moon spectacles at the man sat across from him. Lee Rawson was the head of the CIA Directorate of Intelligence’s Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis, and the man he had entrusted with finding out everything he could about Abd al-Aziz Quraishi, and an associate known only as the ‘Hammer of the Infidel’.

‘So what do you have for me?’ Dorrell asked.

‘On Quraishi,’ Rawson said tentatively, ‘not a hell of a lot, to tell you the truth. As his file says, he’s connected to the Saudi royal family, he’s had a solid career in the military and government, and there’s never been any hint of anything else. Pretty low key character actually, has good relations with the US due to the exchange he did as a military cadet at West Point.’

‘Friends with Jeb Richards,’ Dorrell said, reading from the paperwork on the desk in front of him.

Rawson nodded. ‘That’s right, they met at West Point. Nothing untoward going on there that we can ascertain. He’s friends with a lot of people, actually.’

‘Richards has just gone to Riyadh, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes sir, apparently Quraishi wanted to update him on Arabian Islamic Jihad.’

‘We heard back from him yet?’

‘No,’ Rawson said, ‘not that I’m aware of.’

Dorrell made a note on a pad, nodding. ‘Okay.’ He spread his hands across the desk. ‘So Quraishi looks clean, as far as we know.’

‘Yes,’ Rawson agreed, ‘but we’ve really only started to look into him. He looks clean on the surface, but we’ve not had any reason to investigate him in depth before. We’ll know a lot more when the NSA sends us what they’ve got.’

Dorrell grunted in agreement. He’d asked Bud Shaw to start electronic surveillance on Quraishi, including office, home and cell phones, emails and any other computer records they could hack into. They were also trawling through the vast archives of previously obtained information they stored, but didn’t access due to time constraints unless a specific request was made.

The NSA routinely intercepted almost every electronic communication sent around the world through its sophisticated ECHELON system. Vastly powerful supercomputers used advanced search programs to highlight any key words from these intercepts, which would then initiate the next level of analysis.

It was possible, therefore, that somewhere in the NSA’s databanks were previously overlooked conversations had by Abd al-Aziz Quraishi which might be relevant to the current investigation. The only trouble was, finding them would take time. Shaw had informed Dorrell that a special search program would have to be written and inserted into the system, and then they would just have to wait with their fingers crossed.

But to Shaw’s credit, he had initiated the search immediately, and Dorrell knew he would feed any results back as soon as he had them.

‘So we’re waiting to hear about Quraishi,’ Dorrell said. ‘Okay. Now what can you tell me about this other character, the one they call ‘the Hammer’?’

‘The most likely candidate,’ Rawson said, ‘is a man called Amir al-Hazmi, rumored to have the nickname Matraqat al-Kafir, the Hammer of the Infidel, which is a reference to his supposed position within Arabian Islamic Jihad as the Lion’s executioner and enforcer.’

‘Is that confirmed, or just supposition?’

‘Supposition, but we’re fairly confident. Not much is known about him except the fact that he fought with al-Qaida since his early teens, after his family was killed by Saudi security forces. He led an attack on the Ministry of Interior headquarters, but was captured and tortured. Somehow, he managed to escape, and resurfaced years later as a leading lieutenant in the newly formed AIJ.’

Dorrell nodded his head in thought. ‘When did he lead this attack?’

Rawson consulted his notes. ‘The summer of 2010, just over ten years ago.’

Dorrell continued nodding, as he searched his own notes. ‘Quraishi was the head of the Mabahith back then, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ Rawson answered. ‘Do you think there’s a link?’

Dorrell shrugged. ‘It’s a possibility,’ he said as he scratched down some more notes in his pad. ‘I’ll get Bud to check in more detail for anything that might link them. Do we know anything else about this al-Hazmi?’

‘If it is the same guy, he’s one of the most feared guys in the Middle East,’ Rawson said. ‘From what we hear, people are literally terrified of this ‘Hammer’ character. He uses an ancient Arabic dagger known as a janbiya, mutilates people with it. Again, it’s rumor, but word is that he hacks off bits of people’s bodies and collects them as trophies. He does this to ‘enemies of Allah’, which might be western hostages, or — just as likely — Arabs who don’t support the ideological goals of the AIJ. He’s skilled with it too, our sources tell us. It’s probably more myth and legend, you know how these things develop, but he’s supposed to have once killed a dozen men during a fight, just using his janbiya and his bare hands.’

Dorrell smiled. ‘Probably bullshit.’

Rawson smiled back. ‘Probably. But enough people are afraid of this guy to at least lend some credence to it.’

‘Okay. So this ‘Hammer’ — possibly Amir al-Hazmi — is one scary son of a bitch. And he might be connected to Quraishi, who might just be the leader of the AIJ. But we still don’t really know shit, do we?’

It was Rawson’s turn to shrug.

‘Do we at least know where al-Hazmi is?’ Dorrell asked. ‘The source we’re using suggests that he might have been the one to transport the package taken from the Fu Yu Shan.’

‘We’re working on it,’ Rawson said positively. ‘Between us and the NSA, we should nail him.’

‘I hope so,’ Dorrell said uneasily. ‘I hope so.’

Navarone was deep in thought. Should he contact JSOC? He knew what they’d say, and didn’t want to take the risk of being told ‘No’ officially.

The only thing he’d been told for certain before the mission began was that his remit was reconnaissance only; on no account whatsoever — save self-defense under extreme provocation — was he to engage the enemy.

But he’d seen enough in the crematorium to disregard those orders in an instant.

Fuck it.

He wouldn’t contact JSOC; not yet, anyway.

He could come up with a plausible scenario involving self-defense before he made his final report; for now, he was going to take his men in and do what he could to save this latest batch of prisoners from a fate which seemed worse than death.

Navarone knew that it was more sensible to wait until nightfall; and yet by evening it would be too late to do any good. They had to go in now, and that was the order that Navarone gave.

Frank Jaffett remained on the far side of the valley with three other men to carry on recon and make sure that nobody in the main camp noticed what was going on outside the fence; they were to radio in immediately if they thought that anyone was taking any undue interest.

Meanwhile, his two explosives experts had disappeared further into the valley, ready to do their own bit to help.

All the other SEALs, as well as the second liaison officer from the PLA, had now joined him over on the western side, and Navarone set two men up on overwatch duty. With a perfect field of fire, they manned their big M60 machine guns, ready to provide covering fire if necessary.

Two more men settled down behind their massive .50 caliber Barrett sniper rifles, ready to shoot through concrete walls if they had to.

Navarone led the rest of the team down the forested slope, but this time Jimmy Cray — an experienced engineer — disabled one panel of the fence, disconnecting it from its power source. Tony Devine cut through the chain link, and everyone crawled through, careful to keep low to the ground.

The men massed at the rear wall of the crematorium — the only place that couldn’t be seen by the main camp’s guard towers — and Navarone checked his watch.

The timing was perfect — they were in position with a minute to spare.

Sweat trickled down Navarone’s face as he waited, saturating his bodysuit. The weather was poor, but it had no cooling effect on him.

And then it happened — four massive explosions which ripped through the valley, one after the other.

Navarone smiled; they were on, and the adrenalin hit him in an instant with a drug-like euphoria.

The explosives had been placed deep within the wooded valley on the far side of the encampment from the area Navarone was now in; the plan was to draw guards away from the camp, right in the opposite direction.

‘They’re going ape shit,’ Jaffett confirmed over the radio moments later. ‘Soldiers are hauling ass out of the camp, officers screaming orders, the place is one big cluster fuck. Nobody’s watching your side of the camp at all.’

‘Roger that,’ Navarone confirmed. ‘We’re a go.’

The prisoners who had been rounded up that morning were not being held in the crematorium — Navarone’s earlier search of the secondary compound had revealed that they were in what looked like a laboratory, a single story concrete box just a hundred yards further inside the fence line.

Knowing they had to move while everyone was distracted by the explosions, Navarone gave the nod to his men, and they burst into action, tearing away from the crematorium walls and racing for the laboratory building.

Most of the SEALs gathered around the three walls which faced away from the main camp, but Navarone and Captain Liu strolled confidently around the front, as if they had every right to be there. Navarone knew that only furtive movement typically drew the attention of security personnel, not the confident strides of men who belonged.

It was a ballsy move, but Navarone and Liu arrived at the front of the laboratory building seemingly undetected, Navarone pushing his way through the unguarded door.

They were in a foyer, and were greeted at last by an armed guard, who raised his rifle towards them upon seeing Navarone’s Caucasian features. But Navarone was faster, shooting two suppressed rounds from his M4 assault rifle into the man’s center mass, dropping him instantly.

He could already hear the sound of shouts and screams coming from further inside the building, and the short, sharp exhalations of suppressed shots being fired. His SEALs were in, and were taking care of business; the enemy wouldn’t have suppressed weapons, which meant that it was just Navarone’s men who were firing.

As Navarone covered the foyer, Liu secured the receptionist, two nurses and a doctor with plastic cuffs.

‘Clear!’ he heard Devine confirm over the radio.

‘Clear!’ he heard Cray call next, followed by two more confirmations.

‘All clear,’ Navarone said at last. ‘All section leaders on me.’

As he waited for the four section leaders to get to the foyer, Navarone toggled his radio. ‘Frank,’ he said, ‘what’ve you got?’

‘Nothing I can see from here,’ Jaffett reported back. ‘Everyone’s hightailing it into the valley, nobody’s looking your way at all.’

‘Good. The boys back yet?’

‘Roger that, they’re right here with me.’

‘Okay, tell ‘em good work from me. Keep an eye out for search parties, get ready to move if you have to.’

Jaffett confirmed, and Navarone got a similar report from the fire team he’d left on the nearby slope; the compound was all clear, the assault on the laboratory apparently having gone unnoticed.

‘Okay,’ Navarone said, ‘but make sure you tell us the moment you see any movement at all towards this building.’

His men confirmed the order back to him, and he turned to see his four section leaders stood in the foyer, suppressed assault rifles still smoking.

Devine smiled. Handcuffed next to him was the major they’d seen the night before, the man who had held the clipboard as the names were read out that morning.

Navarone smiled too.

The major was a man he really wanted to speak to.

‘Well I’ll be damned,’ Commander Ike Treyborne breathed as Navarone finished his emergency field report.

Navarone’s Bravo Troop had really stumbled upon the mother lode, without even realizing it when they’d gone in.

Treyborne understood that Navarone had disobeyed a direct order, but that was the least of his worries. What was more disturbing by far was what Navarone had managed to find out.

He had managed to find out details of the weapon which had been developed at Camp 14 — the same weapon, part of which was now at large somewhere in the wider world, ready to be used — and also what it had been developed for.

Computer files found at a laboratory within an off-site compound — partially translated by the Chinese liaison officers — and questioning of the scientific personnel had given Navarone the details of the weapon. Major Ho Sang-ok, Chief of the Third Bureau of the RGB and now a prisoner of the SEALs, had provided the rest.

And it was even worse than they’d all feared.

‘What are our orders, sir?’ Treyborne heard Navarone ask, half a world away.

He thought about giving the SEAL leader some shit about not following his last orders, but decided better of it; Navarone had seen a situation and did what he’d thought was right; there was no point in armchair quarterbacking him, especially when he had so much else on his plate.

‘Has the weapon been stockpiled there?’ Treyborne asked at last.

‘Affirmative sir, personnel say that it’s stored here and all over the camp.’

Treyborne exhaled slowly. He knew that Navarone and his men had raided the laboratory just in time; the prisoners who had been rounded up that morning were not just due to be experimented on, but were to be the real thing. Major Ho Sang-ok had arrived from Pyongyang to set the ball rolling. The hijack of the weapon had ruined the RGB’s original plan, and Ho had been forced to improvise.

If Navarone and his men had got there just a few hours later, the weapon would already have been on its way to South Korea.

‘Can the stockpiles be destroyed?’ Treyborne asked next.

‘Yes sir, but only by extremely high temperatures, and we don’t know for sure exactly where it’s contained. Might be multiple locations around the camp, and we might not get it all.’

Treyborne nodded to himself. ‘Okay son, I’ll have to go to General Cooper and probably Olsen too, and you know what the order’s gonna be.’

‘Yes sir,’ Navarone said.

‘So I suggest you get the hell out of there as fast as you can.’

‘What about the other prisoners, sir?’

Treyborne paused, and closed his eyes. He knew what would happen to anyone who was left in the camp.

‘Just get you and your men the hell out of there as fast as you can, Navarone. Do you understand me?’

Treyborne wasn’t at all surprised when Navarone didn’t reply; the silence at the other end of the line said it all.

Shaking his head, he shouted for the nearest aide. ‘You!’ he called out. ‘Get General Olsen on the line and organize an emergency meeting of the National Security Council. Immediately.’

Navarone knew what the generals’ orders would be.

Camp 14 would be entirely obliterated by an air strike, a couple of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers dropping their payloads of 30,000 pound Massive Ordinance Penetrator bunker bombs on the place and reducing it to ashes.

The horrifying, evil weapon developed there would be gone forever; and yet so would nearly four thousand prisoners, including an unknown amount of women and children.

Navarone thought quickly. Even in an emergency, it would take an hour or so for authorization; and the B-2s were all based at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, over six thousand miles away. At six hundred miles an hour, it would take them at least ten hours to get here.

So he had a ten to twelve hour window.

Navarone stroked his chin as he thought about the prisoners; about the odds.

Yes, he thought. Yes.

We just might make it.

7

Riyadh Zoo was a relatively small affair, based right in the center of the city. Quraishi had accompanied Cole in a black Mercedes sedan with two security guards from the Ministry of Interior. Quraishi had claimed it was standard practice when ministers travelled through Riyadh, and Cole had had no reason to doubt him. He had wondered about the second sedan which had followed them all the way through the city streets, though.

The two security guards followed from a distance as Cole and Quraishi passed through the large steel gates into the dusty concrete mass of the zoo, waved through by the ticket officer. Cole noticed immediately that the zoo was eerily quiet. In fact, save for a few people who obviously worked there, Cole could see no other visitors whatsoever.

There was a lot more excitement directly outside, where a private company from Dubai was offering hot air balloon flights across the city; there had been a queue down the street.

Cole looked around, then back to Quraishi, who was strolling peacefully past deserted kiosks, pink flamingos to one side splashing in some dark water which only half-filled the concrete bowl which was their home.

Cole had seen happier places.

‘Is the zoo not a popular destination?’ Cole asked Quraishi.

‘Oh, it is one of Riyadh’s most visited attractions,’ Quraishi replied. ‘But today, it is closed for maintenance. I’m not one for crowds, you see, and I much prefer it this way. Luckily, the management and I have an understanding.’

As Cole watched workers nervously moving out of Quraishi’s way, determined to avoid eye contact of any sort, he could only begin to wonder what that understanding was.

The whole situation seemed suspicious to Cole; he had been taken to a closed tourist attraction — he had noticed that the gates had been resealed behind them by the man from the ticket booth — and was being followed by two armed security guards, with another car full waiting outside. As far as he knew, Quraishi had no reason to suspect him; but on the other hand, maybe Jeb Richards had said something? He might only have mentioned a rogue US agent, and Quraishi might have thought the timing of ‘Dan Chadwick’s’ visit was simply too coincidental.

But even if Quraishi was setting Cole up, what choice did he have? He needed answers, and he wasn’t going to get them by playing it safe. And so he decided to play Quraishi’s little game and see what happened.

As they walked through the dusty alleys of the city zoo, Quraishi gave Cole a running commentary — here are the kangaroos, there are the parrots, over on the right you can see the elephants; on and on it went, but Cole had seen better animals pretty much everywhere. The ones held here seemed uniformly dull, depressed and unhappy.

‘Ah,’ Quraishi said with a smile, ‘and here we have my favorite.’ He gestured with his hand to a sunken pool to their left. The surface was still, but when Cole raised his hand to cut out the glare of the sun, he could see small, rough shapes moving silently through the water.

Eyes and snouts.

‘American alligators,’ Quraishi informed him. ‘Alligator mississippiensis. Members of the same family are said to date back as far as the Cretaceous. Incredible creatures. They will eat anything, from fruit to large mammals, from snails to automobile license plates. Even men,’ he added, his expression blank.

When Cole didn’t respond, Quraishi smiled and turned back to the pool, moving closer. Cole noticed that the two security guards were also getting closer, and he could feel the adrenalin start to work its magic on him, readying him for anything that might happen.

‘But on the other hand,’ Quraishi explained, ‘they can sometimes live for weeks — even months — with no food whatsoever.’ He turned back to Cole. ‘You can see why they have survived for so many millions of years,’ he said. ‘They are perfectly evolved killing machines.’

‘You believe in evolution?’ Cole asked, now right at the water’s edge next to Quraishi. ‘I thought Allah created everything that we see.’

‘He did,’ Quraishi said, seemingly undisturbed by Cole’s ruse to upset him. ‘I appreciate that some of my fellow believers claim that this means that evolution could not happen, but I myself fail to see why the two things should be mutually exclusive. Blame it on my western education, perhaps. As far back as the nineteenth century, Islamic scholars have supported Darwin’s theories. Jamal-al-Din al-Afghani, for instance, agreed that life will always compete with life, and the strongest will survive. There are numerous references to the emergence of life in the universe in the Qur’an, and many respected men have explained how there is no contradiction between these and the scientific theory of evolution.’

Cole sensed the two security guards directly behind him now, and turned to see their Uzi submachine guns aimed at his back. So Quraishi’s little speech had been little more than a distraction; whether it reflected what the man believed was irrelevant, and unknowable. Sociopaths like Quraishi were able to fashion any reality they desired if it served their purposes.

Cole moved his head, taking in the three men stationed on the parapets of the high walls which surrounded the zoo, aiming Soviet-era — but no less deadly for that — Dragunov sniper rifles at him. The men from the second car, Cole mused as he turned back to Quraishi.

‘Okay,’ Cole said indifferently. ‘What do you want?’

‘I would like very much to know who you really are,’ Quraishi replied in a voice that was still friendly. ‘And if I don’t find out, I would like very much to feed you piece by piece to my little friends here.’

Quraishi gestured with a sweep of his hand to the alligators swimming languidly in the pool before them, and Cole for an instant saw what lay behind the man’s eyes.

And it was only then that he realized how much trouble he was in.

Quraishi and his guards had a different approach to feeding Cole to the alligators than Cole himself had used with al-Zayani and the sharks.

Whereas Cole had strung the terrorist financier upside down, so that his head was just inches from the water, Cole was being held down the right way up on the concrete poolside, the water lapping gently against his feet. His shoes and socks had been removed, and he could feel the hot sun warming his skin.

The difference was that Cole had just been trying to scare al-Zayani; there were no sharks, and even if there had been, Cole wouldn’t have fed him to them. He wanted the man to talk, and he knew that just the threat of it would be enough.

Here, though, it was clear that Quraishi wanted Cole to talk, and the fact that his feet were in the water meant that his captor was prepared to have the alligators really start to eat him. If his head was near the water, their first bite would render Cole useless; if they started on his legs, Quraishi would still have plenty of time to extract a confession before they reached anything truly vital. If he didn’t pass out from pain, shock and blood loss first, of course.

The water was already bloody, Quraishi’s men having thrown in some raw meat from a large pail they’d brought down to the pool.

Cole watched in detached terror as the alligators’ huge jaws snapped out of the water and swallowed the small carcasses whole.

‘I hope it’s all Halal,’ Cole said, trying to keep himself calm.

Quraishi spat at him, then laughed. ‘Very funny, Mr. Chadwick,’ he said. ‘Or whoever you are. I’m sure you understand that we are using the meat to bring them in closer, get them interested in those little feet of yours. They are cautious for the most part,’ he carried on conversationally, as if giving a lecture. ‘Sometimes they can be a little lethargic, even sluggish. They need some… encouragement, before they start on the real feast.’

Quraishi snapped his fingers, and an assistant appeared with a cup of tea for him. The terrorist leader lounged back languidly, enjoying the sun. He seemed perfectly relaxed, and Cole was sure that he’d done this before, probably more than once.

Cole watched as the gators snatched the meat out of the water, rolling over and over as they ripped and swallowed, teeth tearing, blood spilling.

As they finished, they continued to swim, eyeing the shore warily, as if wondering whether to come back.

‘They will not take long to make the decision, my friend,’ Quraishi said pleasantly. ‘Then they will come back. Or one will, at least, just to test you out. Probably that one there,’ he said, pointing at a large gator which appeared slightly darker than the others, circling closer. ‘He’ll take a foot at least, perhaps two. My men here will pull you back, make sure he doesn’t get everything, but it will mean that your entire leg will probably be torn off below the knee.’ He smiled. ‘I cannot promise that the experience will be completely painless.’

‘Okay,’ Cole said, steadying his hammering heart rate with pure strength of will, ‘what is it you want to know?’

‘Ah,’ Quraishi said in disappointment. ‘Ready to talk so soon?’ He watched the gators for several more moments, then looked back at Cole. ‘Let us start with your real name. Then we can move on to who you work for, what you know, and who you have told.’ He gestured at the hungry alligators, some of which were starting to nose their way onto the poolside. His men chased them back into the water. ‘If they let you get that far, of course.’

‘How about an exchange?’ Cole asked, trying to ignore the gators.

‘An exchange?’ Quraishi asked as he sipped at his tea. ‘How do you mean?’

‘I’ll tell you what you want to know, and you tell me what I want to know.’

Quraishi laughed. ‘But what possible use can it do you now?’ he asked. ‘You must realize that you are going to die here, I will not insult your intelligence by pretending otherwise. The only question that should bother you is how painful the experience is going to be.’ He gestured to the murky green waters of the gator pool. ‘You are hardly in a position to barter.’

‘If I’m going to die anyway, why not tell me something?’ Cole asked, his feet pulling back reflexively from the water as the big dark gator nudged his snout towards them. ‘Like what the weapon is that you stole from the Fu Yu Shan, and what you’re planning on doing with it.’

Quraishi laughed again. ‘Oh, I see; you want me to tell you my entire plan? So that — what? So that you can go to your grave knowing that you failed to prevent the biggest massacre in US history? Would that make you happy?’

‘Try me,’ Cole said seriously.

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Quraishi said. ‘Even my men don’t know.’ He pointed to the guards who were restraining Cole on the concrete slope, others who were monitoring the gators, keeping them away with long poles until their boss gave them the word. ‘If I told you, I would have to have them all killed to keep them quiet. And you know that the Qur’an forbids unnecessary killing.’

It was Cole’s turn to laugh. ‘It’s funny how you people twist the Qur’an to support whatever suits you at the time.’

‘You people?’ Quraishi asked with a raise of an eyebrow. ‘It is racist comments like that have damned your country.’

‘Racist? I’m not talking about Muslims. I’m talking about terrorists. Cowardly little piss-ants like you, nothing better than common criminals. You people.’ Cole spat at Quraishi’s feet. ‘The scum of the earth.’

Cole received a backhanded blow from one of the men who held him, but Quraishi held out a hand to stop him. ‘No,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘No.’ He smiled. ‘If this man wants to play games, we can accommodate him.’

Quraishi turned to the men keeping the gators at bay with their poles, and snapped his fingers. They moved back at his signal, and the alligators crept immediately closer.

‘We’ll continue our conversation after breakfast,’ he said with a smile.

Quraishi watched as his favorite, the nearly black alligator he’d called Adil — the just one — inched closer to his captive’s bare feet.

The man who had come to him as Daniel Chadwick tried to pull them back from the water, but his men continued to hold him in place, immobile. The unknown man’s hands were restrained, but his legs were free, and Quraishi looked on with enjoyment as they tried to kick out, their jerking actions an indication of the panic the man must now be feeling.

He was brave, of course; most intelligence agents were, due to the nature of their work. But he would tell Quraishi everything after just the first little nibble from Adil’s powerful jaws.

He wondered what it meant, the presence of this man here. Was he same man Richards had warned him about? And if he was, was he really working alone? And if he wasn’t, who else knew about his trip to Riyadh? Who else knew that the man had gone to the Ministry to meet Quraishi? Who else could link Quraishi to recent events?

Quraishi sipped his tea as he waited for the first screams. Did it even matter anymore? He had already accepted the fact that his life would soon change. His plan acknowledged that his role would be revealed sooner or later. But Quraishi welcomed this; it would be a relief to finally leave the public life he had created for himself. The lie.

For none of it was the real man. The al-Saud family connections, the job at the Ministry — even his wife and children — all were just affectations, a smokescreen to throw the authorities off the scent of the real Abd al-Aziz Quraishi.

For the real Quraishi was embodied in the Lion, the feared, hooded leader of Arabian Islamic Jihad. The silk hood didn’t mask his real face; the hood was his real face, and everything else was the mask.

He wondered sometimes where it came from, this drive to change the world, his passionate, zealous fury against the House of Saud and the Great Satan. The truth was, he didn’t know. His life had been blessed — he had had a happy childhood, he had never wanted for anything — and yet it had not been enough. There was something inside of him, something — unknowable? — that demanded that he take action, do what he was doing, rise up against the status quo and demolish it in its entirety.

He was destined for great things, that much he knew. And what could he ever hope to attain as a minor relative of the royal family? An assistant minister, who the corrupt regime would allow to rise no higher?

He knew that American psychoanalysis might suggest that he was driven by greed, the insatiable desire for power and control. Perhaps there were incidents in his childhood which had made this important for him — a feeling that he couldn’t control things, which had ultimately led to an overriding need to control everything, to change everything.

And yet Quraishi had no use for psychoanalysis; it was yet one more trick used by the West to conceal and hide the truth, the only thing that really mattered.

The will of Allah.

And so Quraishi never questioned his motives, his intentions. He was what he was because Allah had made him so. And if Allah had made him so, then it must be for a reason; and who was Quraishi to stand in the way of His will?

His plan was about to come to fruition, and the United States would never be the same again, and neither would Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East.

Indeed, the very fabric of the world was about to change, just as Allah required.

And if this man before him was a threat to that, then Quraishi would find out what he wanted, and make him pay for his effrontery.

Quraishi finished his tea and handed the cup back to the assistant, smiling as Adil made the final approach, his black jaws gaping wide.

8

It was now or never, and Cole didn’t have to think twice; he just reacted.

As the dark alligator opened its jaws to take its first bite, Cole pivoted up on his hips and pulled his legs free of the guards’ grasp. He had been purposefully jerking them forwards and backwards to simulate panic for the past few minutes, as well as to get the guards used to his movements, and now they arced up in the air and caught around the nearest security guard’s neck, pulling him down in one fast blur.

The man’s head was inside the alligator’s hungry mouth before anyone could react, and the writhing of his body as the jaws clamped closed, blood flying from the severed neck as the alligator twisted the head clean off, caused immediate panic in the others.

The two men holding Cole down instinctively let go to help their comrade, hands pulling the headless corpse back to the blood-drenched concrete poolside.

Cole was moving again in the same instant, on his feet and barreling into one of the men covering him with the Uzi. The startled man — his focus on his friends who were now trying to fend off the rest of the alligators — was knocked to the ground, dropping the submachine gun.

Shots rang out, and Cole realized that the snipers were firing at the alligators, who were storming out of the water, activated by the smell of the blood and the sight of the headless corpse.

Cole stooped to the ground and grabbed the Uzi, his hands still bound at the wrists, and shot the other armed guard in the chest before he even knew what happening.

One of the other men broke away from the group by the water, running towards Cole, but Cole opened up with the Uzi and the man flew back into the water, blood geysering out from the wounds in his chest.

Within seconds, the alligators moved in to tear the body to pieces.

Cole saw Quraishi backing away from the area, gesturing for the men on the roof to leave their friends to it and fire at Cole.

Cole immediately started firing at the rooftop snipers, hitting one and pinning down the others.

Cole waited — Quraishi was still backing away, and the men by the pool were too occupied with the gators to bother him — and then one of the snipers showed himself, and Cole fired two shots, hitting him in the mouth and shoulder.

He knew the other sniper would take his chance while Cole was occupied, and — anticipating the man’s movement — Cole pivoted and fired the last of his rounds. He saw blood fly from the sniper’s arm and chest and knew that — although he might live — at least he could no longer fire his rifle.

Cole turned to Quraishi, but felt the heavy impact of a body as he was tackled by one of the guards who had earlier been controlling the alligators with the pole.

The air was knocked from Cole’s lungs, and both men fell into the writhing, bloody waters of the alligator pool.

It took a lot to surprise Quraishi, but the agent’s actions had managed to do so.

One moment the man who had been posing as Daniel Chadwick was lying there, terrified he was about to have his legs chewed off; and the next, he was moving more quickly than anyone Quraishi had ever seen, except perhaps for Amir al-Hazmi.

And then one of his men was nothing more than a headless corpse, the gators were attacking the others; some fell into the water, others escaped, screaming as they went; then the agent got hold of one of the Uzis, another man was down, then his snipers too…

And still Quraishi wasn’t moving.

What the hell was wrong with him? What was he waiting for?

He didn’t want to admit it, but it must have been shock, rooting him to the spot. But he was unarmed, and against a man like this, he would stand no chance. He had to get away.

Yet still his legs refused to move.

But then — yes! — one of his men sacrificed himself, tackling the agent right into the middle of the alligator-infested pool.

This was his chance.

Run! he ordered himself. Run!

Cole saw the movement of green reptilian armor in the dark water and pulled free of the guard, kicking with his legs to the bottom of the pool. He sensed the huge beast sail past above him, felt the movement of the water as the big head collided with the other man’s body.

Cole felt the thrashing, and heard the screams as the guard was eviscerated by the gator, then something floating past him in the water caught his eye.

It was a severed arm; from who, he didn’t know.

But he sensed another gator approaching from behind, and pivoted in the water, grabbing the arm as he moved and holding it out in front of him between his bound hands, the gators jaws chomping down into it.

Cole kicked away from the thrashing bodies. He was used to swimming with his hands tied — in fact, during SEAL training, he had been forced to repeat lap after lap with both his hands and his legs tied — but the presence of the gators in the murky, bloody water made his heart rate go involuntarily higher, which hampered his progress.

He could feel the water being disturbed as the alligators got closer and closer, but then he was there — back at the concrete slope leading out from the pool — and he pulled his body out, until his feet hit the bottom.

And then he was running, breaking free of the water even as the big head of one of the gators snapped towards him, missing his heels by mere inches.

He turned around and saw the poolside was pure chaos, gators gorging themselves on the guards’ bodies, dragging them back half-eaten into the churning water.

But where was Quraishi?

Cole’s keen eyes scanned the concrete expanse of the city zoo around him, and quickly picked out movement.

Quraishi was running down the dusty main alleyway back to the steel gate, shouting at a shocked zoo employee as he ran.

Cole took off after him as the gates started to open.

Yes! The steel gate eased open, and Quraishi could breathe a sigh of relief at last; he would be back at the Ministry before long, and could order a city-wide manhunt for this crazed man. If the gators hadn’t already killed him, that is.

He risked a look over his shoulder, and his jaw dropped open.

There he was — barefoot, soaking wet, hands still bound in front of him — sprinting down the alleyway towards Quraishi.

Who was this man? A test sent by Allah? A demon sent by Satan?

It wasn’t that Quraishi was afraid to die; he had in fact become used to the idea many years before, and realized that the threat of death was part and parcel of the existence Allah had decreed for him.

But to die needlessly, to die before he had realized his full potential and achieved his great aims, was unthinkable.

The agent, even barefoot on the scorching hot concrete, was faster than Quraishi could hope to be, and would be upon him soon. The man was unarmed, but Quraishi was a realist, and had no delusions about his ability to win a fight with him.

But traffic was at standstill in the streets outside the zoo.

What else could he do?

It was then that he remembered the hot air balloon.

Cole couldn’t believe his eyes.

Ahead of him, he watched as the hot air balloon which had been giving people joy rides all morning, lifted off once again into the air.

But this time it had the relieved features of Quraishi in the basket, his face once more regaining its familiar arrogance.

Quraishi turned to the balloon’s frightened pilot and barked an order, and the flames rapidly burst higher, forcing the balloon to ascend more quickly.

Cole didn’t stop to think; there simply wasn’t time.

Instead, his soles burning on the heat-soaked ground, he increased his pace again and surged towards the lifting balloon, the queue of waiting passengers staring with mouths agape as he jumped.

9

Quraishi felt the basket move as it was pulled a few inches earthwards, as if it had picked up a large weight of some kind.

He had seen the agent sprinting towards him, but by then the balloon had been too high, and he hadn’t seen what had happened below the basket.

But now, the zoo getting smaller and smaller below him as the balloon gained height rapidly, Quraishi risked leaning forward over the side.

What he saw amazed him, although by now he realized that it shouldn’t.

The agent, the ‘asset’, had somehow managed to jump and grab hold of the anchor rope that hung below the balloon. He was now hanging on with his bound hands, suspended by the rope hundreds of feet above the city, wind billowing him from side to side.

What did he hope to accomplish?

But then Quraishi saw his knees rising, the rope steadied by his feet as he extended his legs and reached up with his hands, and he knew.

The son of a bitch was climbing.

Cole tried to steady his breathing as the balloon pulled him higher and higher into the sky, his body swaying from side to side as he tried to climb the anchor rope.

Nothing was in his mind now except getting to Quraishi; the man was only twenty feet above him, in the basket, and as far as Cole knew, he was unarmed. He would get to him and make him talk, make him admit to whatever heinous plan his evil mind had conjured up.

But with his hands still tied at the wrists, the climb was hard; he didn’t want to risk letting go of the rope for long enough to move them a useful distance with each effort, and was so forced to make a series of shorter moves, inching up the rope slowly and methodically.

His focus was so intense that he almost failed to see the long spire of a mosque’s minaret coming quickly towards him. But as the last moment, he sensed it and reflexively gripped tight to the rope and swung his body out to the side, missing the concrete crown with just inches to spare.

The movement sent him into a spin, and his body freewheeled around the hot skies like a spinning top as the balloon continued its progress across the city.

Cole felt the balloon turning as he contracted his core, trying to stop his unending spin so that he could start climbing again. He looked towards the new path of the balloon, and saw another minaret in the distance. Quraishi’s plan was obvious; to knock Cole off the rope by flying towards the tallest structures in Riyadh.

The rope unwound and finally started to spin back the other way, but it was too late — the next minaret was there, this one even taller, and Cole knew he wouldn’t be able to swing his body wide enough to avoid it.

Taking a deep breath, he gripped the rope hard and raised his feet, legs bent at the knee. He timed the impact perfectly, his bare feet compressing onto the minaret’s shaft, legs bending further with the pressure, and then he extended his legs with a powerful push, projecting himself away from the tower, the momentum of the balloon pulling his body around the structure in a wide arc.

The minaret behind him now, Cole again wrapped his feet and hands tight around the rope and concentrated on getting it to stop moving.

He hoped he had time before they reached the next tower.

Quraishi looked over the side of the basket in despair. He was still there!

He had managed to avoid hitting two of the minarets now, and would doubtless start his climb again as soon as he was able.

Suddenly he remembered his phone, and pulled it violently out of his pocket, calling a friend in the Ministry of Interior. He spoke rapidly but coherently, describing the situation and ordering the man to get some helicopters from Riyadh Air Base on the move immediately.

He finished the call, but knew he couldn’t just sit and wait for the choppers to come; by the time they arrived, it could already be too late.

Quraishi looked around the basket desperately, trying to find some sort of weapon. But there was nothing, and he turned to the frightened pilot, snapping at him. ‘A knife!’ he ordered. ‘Let me have your knife!’

He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before; the pilot would have to have a knife, wouldn’t he? In an emergency, a knife was a must — he might need to cut the ropes to free the balloon if it became caught.

The pilot nodded mutely and fished in his pocket, pulling out a box cutter which he handed over to Quraishi with a shaking hand.

Perfect, thought Quraishi as he took the knife. Purposefully designed for cutting the anchor rope, it would finish the American agent once and for all.

Cole saw a man — presumably the pilot — above him, maneuvering out of the basket, secured by a length of rope. His hands held the basket’s edge and his feet rested on the bottom guard rail, and Cole watched as the man bent his legs and let go with one hand, searching blindly below for the rope that was attached to the bottom of the basket. The rope that held Cole.

Cole wasn’t surprised that Quraishi had sent the pilot instead of doing it himself; he was a man who was used to sending others to their deaths, but rather more reluctant to take the risk himself. And then he saw the glimmer of metal in the pilot’s searching hand, and knew what it meant. He was going to cut the rope.

In the next moment, Cole could feel the rope moving as the knife found its mark and started to saw through it; forwards and backwards, forwards and backwards, every movement taking Cole one step closer to his death.

Cole immediately began to climb harder, allowing his hands to come off the rope for longer periods of time now to gain more distance with each pull, knowing that it was worth the risk, that if he didn’t make it to the basket before the rope was cut, he’d be a dead man.

He ignored the action of the man’s knife sawing back and forth through the rope and just concentrated on the one thing he could control; knees went up, feet secure around the rope, and then he extended his body, letting go with his hands as he reached high to grab hold again.

Cole continued like that for what seemed an eternity, gaining distance at a pace he feared was too slow, much too slow, and yet he persevered, working hands and feet in tandem as he edged ever upward.

Cole could feel the shadow of the basket and risked looking upwards; he was so close now, so tantalizingly close. But the rope was almost completely cut through now, and Cole saw that he was just hanging by a thread; the knife seemed to move in slow motion as the pilot worked through the last remaining fibers.

Knowing it was his last chance, Cole pushed violently upwards with his legs, bound hands reaching upwards as the rope finally gave way; Cole watched it fall to the city streets below even as his hands extended and then gripped down tight on the metal frame underneath the basket, legs swinging wildly.

And then he sensed a shadow approaching him and pulled his legs clear out of the way, the sharp edge of an apartment building’s flat roof just missing him.

He kept his body in an L-shape, his legs extended as the building passed beneath him, but was forced to react again when he felt the passage of the box cutter’s blade slicing towards his face.

He swung a leg up, his bare foot making contact with the pilot’s wrist, deflecting the blow; but his other leg came down in reflexive compensation, banging hard onto the roof, dragging across the hot, rough concrete before Cole pulled it back up.

He glimpsed the pilot bending lower, other hand gripping hard to his support rope as he swung the knife again at Cole.

Cole kicked out again, striking the arm and knocking the knife to one side; and then they were clear of the apartment building and Cole gripped even more tightly to the metal frame as he let both of his legs snake out, calves securing themselves forcefully around the pilot’s neck.

The man lashed out with the knife and Cole felt a searing, hot pain in his thigh as the blade sliced into him, but in the next instant Cole pulled hard on the metal frame, yanking his legs down in synchronization, and the pilot was ripped free from the side of the basket.

It all seemed to happen in slow motion; the man dropped the knife, his hands scrabbling for the rope, for the basket, for anything; and then his entire body was in motion as Cole’s legs pulled him clear and then relaxed their grip, dropping the man over a thousand feet to the unforgiving concrete streets below.

The pilot’s screams carried all the way down.

10

Quraishi watched the body fall from the balloon with impotent horror. He knew it wasn’t the American agent; he could see the rope used by the pilot for support fluttering now in the breeze, and it was clear that nobody was holding it any longer.

There was only one body; which meant that somehow, the agent must still be clinging to the basket. And, realizing now the utter single-mindedness of his opponent, Quraishi understood that the next thing that would happen was that the man would climb up into the basket.

And then what?

His plan — so many years in the making — was just about to reach fruition. And while he didn’t strictly need to be involved from this point on — everything would go ahead just as well, just as lethally, without him — he felt the need to see the results of his endeavours.

He wanted to see the West crushed beneath his feet, he wanted to see his beloved Arab homeland as a free country again, no longer dominated by a corrupt, hated monarchy.

He wanted to see it, and he wasn’t prepared to let this insignificant insect, this dog of an American, spoil his enjoyment.

He breathed deeply, preparing himself for combat.

Allah would be with him, and he knew this would give him the courage necessary for the fight that was surely to come.

Cole’s muscles were burning now, the lactic acid building up in his shoulders, forearms and fingers to excruciating levels as he held onto the metal frame. The climb up the rope had exhausted him, but at least he had been able to balance his weight out through his feet on the rope; now all he had was the grip of his hands, bound close together, the restraints making the position even harder, even more painful.

But he knew he had to somehow keep moving, get into the basket; if he did not, his grip would eventually give way, and he would plummet to the dusty streets of Riyadh as the pilot had before him.

And so Cole clenched his teeth against the pain and started to edge his hands slowly along the metal rail which made up part of the frame suspended below the basket; his fingertips struggling to keep hold as they walked Cole ever closer to the edge.

But soon enough he was there, where the frame ended and the edge of the basket began. He took a deep breath to center himself, and — keeping his grip strong — rocked his body first one way and then the other, finally bursting upwards and shooting out his nearest leg, his bare foot hooking onto the lower guard rail of the basket.

Cole tested the position, could feel it holding. The next part, he knew, would be so much easier with his hands free; but that was a luxury he didn’t have, and he cut the thought from his mind, focusing only on what he could do.

The bland, brown concrete mass of Riyadh stretched out below him, and for a fraction of a second, he imagined himself falling, his body plummeting through the warm air, breath caught in his throat, organs lurching around inside his body making him want to be sick, but unable to be sick, unable to even breathe as the velocity of his fall increased, until he blacked out completely, long before his body was smashed into little pieces as it finally made its impact with the unforgiving earth.

And then the image was gone just as soon as it had appeared, and Cole contracted the tiny muscles of his foot, causing it to grip hold tighter, tighter; and then he let go with his hands and lurched his body sideways and upwards in a near-suicidal last-ditch bid for the basket.

His hands made contact with the cords which ran down the side of the basket and they closed tight immediately, securing his grip once more; and then he pushed up with his foot and levered his other foot up onto the guard rail next to it, his body crunched up onto the side of the basket.

He breathed out steadily, controlling the fierce spike of adrenalin from the maneuver.

And then he extended his legs further, hands going over the top of the basket, taking hold and pulling himself upwards.

And despite the pain in his muscles, the terror which had gone unbidden through his heart, he couldn’t help but smile.

Quraishi was soon going to tell him everything he wanted to know.

Quraishi saw the American’s face as it rose above the side of the basket, flushed with effort but set with determination.

Quraishi had been scanning the rim of the basket continuously, waiting for the first sign of the man, ready to respond to his appearance.

And when Mark Cole appeared, Quraishi didn’t waste any time at all; he merely planted one booted foot on the base of the basket and unleashed the other, kicking the American with all of his force right in the center of his face and sending him flying away from the basket.

Quraishi smiled.

It had been even easier than he’d thought.

The impact rocked Cole’s head back with savage force, tearing his body from its secure hold on the basket.

There was a flash in Cole’s head and for a moment, he could see nothing, think nothing, do nothing; but he felt his body falling backwards and registered the danger, his mind switching back on just as his feet also began to lose their grip on the guard rail.

In that brief instant when he regained his senses, he saw and sensed everything with perfect clarity; the angle of his own body as it fell backward, the distance and relative angle of the basket, the level of grip retained by his feet, the rope which had secured the pilot, blowing about in the warm air.

And within that same instant, angles and speeds calculated instantaneously, his bound hands reached out and grabbed hold of the discarded rope.

Cole transformed his downward momentum into a sideways swing on the rope, travelling round the basket in a tight arc, legs releasing their grip and extending high upwards until the first one hooked over the edge of the basket and gripped tight; and then Cole pushed the rope away, his hands on the basket’s edge, pulling himself inside, his body rolling forwards until it landed safely on the inner floor.

With no chance to get his breath back, Cole looked up to see Quraishi’s booted foot aimed once again at his face and pushed his hands out, smothering the kick.

He rolled into the support leg in the same movement, taking Quraishi down, but the man quickly lashed out again and caught Cole across the jaw, making his head spin. He was moving more slowly than normal, he knew; but it was the fatigue of the past few minutes which had sapped him completely and left him sluggish.

Cole shook his head clear and clambered across the floor towards Quraishi, who seemed to anticipate the movement; and instead of knocking him down, the other man instead struck Cole in the face with an open palm, fingers then closing, gripping hard into Cole’s eyes and cheeks, forcing his head back…

Cole could feel the burning heat on the back of his head, and knew what Quraishi was doing; he was trying to force Cole’s head onto the burner unit, the flames arcing high up in the balloon above them.

Cole’s balance was gone, and he felt the flames from the burner shockingly, painfully close, threatening to burn the skin from the back of his head.

Cole’s head pulled forward away from the red hot burner in a powerful reflex action, his bare foot coming up into Quraishi’s groin instinctively, making the man instantly release his hold on him.

Cole dove forward, taking Quraishi violently down to the floor, the impact jarring the breath from his opponent. Cole quickly capitalized on the situation, forcing the cords which bound his wrists towards Quraishi’s throat to strangle him.

Quraishi’s chin came down quickly to block the cords from getting to his neck, and Cole let the cords instead come up under Quraishi’s nose, forcing the head back painfully, grinding upwards until the man had to turn his head away. Waiting for the movement, Cole immediately moved the cords back to Quraishi’s neck, this time getting them into his throat, pushing down and cutting off the man’s air supply.

Cole forced his hands down on either side of Quraishi’s neck, pushing into it with his bodyweight, letting the cords dig deep into his throat.

Quraishi gagged, his eyes bulging from his head as he struggled to breathe, panic setting in, the whites of his eyes started to turn red.

It was then that Cole looked up, sensing the presence of something massive, something unavoidable, something immovable.

And then all he could do was close his eyes as the balloon — pilotless and completely out of control — flew straight towards the upper floors of a gigantic skyscraper.

11

The Al Faisaliyah Center, at eight hundred and seventy six feet, and forty-four floors high, was the third tallest building in Saudi Arabia.

Designed by the world-renowned architectural firm Foster and Partners, it contained a hotel, commercial offices, and a shopping center. It resembled a gigantic ballpoint pen, four huge corner beams joining together at the top above a huge golden ball.

The golden geodesic orb itself, suspended over six hundred feet in the air, was three stories high and housed The Globe restaurant, a fine dining venue with incredible views across the Saudi capital.

And it was this luxurious restaurant that the balloon’s basket hit first, smashing into the strengthened glass at fifteen knots.

Cole felt the impact jarring on his body and was immediately thrown clear from Quraishi’s prostrate form. He heard twisting, screeching metal and looked up; above him, the twin burner was bent and broken, the balloon itself rapidly deflating.

The basket whipped about in the wind as the silken mass of the balloon tangled itself around one of the huge corner beams and its network of steel cross-struts. Cole felt the basket drop, threatening to plummet down to the streets below, and his stomach gave an involuntary lurch; but then the deflated balloon settled above them, and the basket hung secure, bumping gently against the glass of The Globe.

It was only then that Cole heard the helicopter.

At last! Quraishi didn’t know what had taken them so long, but the chopper was finally here.

And as he peered over the rim of the mercifully near-stationary basket, he smiled; it was even better than he’d hoped. His friend at the Ministry must have pulled some serious strings, for although there was only a single helicopter approaching, it was perhaps the most advanced combat aircraft the world had ever seen.

The AH-64D Apache Longbow had been in service with the Saudi military for years, but was still the finest weapon in its armory. With laser-guided precision Hellfire missiles, 70mm rockets and 30mm cannon with 1,200 high-explosive rounds, the Apache could classify and threat-prioritize up to 128 different targets in less than a minute, no matter what the conditions were like.

But as the imposing, menacing chopper slowed to a hover in front of the Al Faisaliyah Center’s golden globe, doubts started to enter Quraishi’s mind. What were its crew’s orders?

He exhaled slowly, mind racing.

What was it going to do?

Cole was desperately searching for cover as he asked himself the same questions. With the basket hanging six hundred feet in the air, there was a limit to what the Apache could actually do; it wasn’t rigged up for rescue operations.

The answer came just moments later with a flash of light from its cannon pods, followed immediately by the heavy impacts of its 30mm rounds and the deafening noise of gunfire.

Cole hugged the floor along with Quraishi — a look of surprise, then fury on the man’s face — as the basket above them was torn apart, the curved glass windows of the restaurant shattering into millions of pieces.

Glass fell on them, and above the roar of cannon fire, Cole could hear the screams from the restaurant beyond, and could only imagine what was happening there as hundreds of high-powered rounds streamed across the sky from the combat helicopter.

Cole wondered if they’d been ordered to kill Quraishi too, but couldn’t be sure; more likely was the fact that the crew had been told there was a terrorist in the balloon that needed taking care of. The irony, of course, was that the terrorist they had been told about was Cole, and not Quraishi.

Still, the man would be just as dead no matter if they knew about him or not, and Cole found himself hoping for a direct hit. A single 30mm round fired by the Apache’s ferocious M230 automatic cannon would cut the terrorist leader in half.

The thought, however, only occupied Cole’s mind for a fraction of a second; in another fraction, he analyzed his chances of waiting on the floor of the basket, and made his decision to move.

There was a lull of cannon fire, as the pilot moved in closer to assess the damage, and Cole took the opportunity, leaping up from the floor, stamping through the remains of the wicker basket and leaping through the jagged broken glass of The Globe’s windows into the hopeful sanctity of the restaurant beyond.

Quraishi couldn’t believe what was happening, his mind reeling. Why were they shooting at him too? What were they thinking?

His mind flashed back to the conversation he’d had with his friend in the Ministry. ‘I need helicopters,’ he’d said. ‘There is a dangerous terrorist escaping in a hot air balloon, north across Riyadh.’

He couldn’t believe his stupidity. Why hadn’t he mentioned the fact that he was in the same balloon? He knew the order his friend would have given — to shoot the balloon out of the sky, no matter what. The Saudi government was ruthless in its treatment of dissenters and terrorists. Quraishi knew this better than most, and yet he still hadn’t mentioned that he would be in the basket too.

It must have been the pressure, Quraishi thought; the stress. It had been a long time since he’d been in a combat situation, and he had grown soft. The thought angered him, but there was little he could do now.

Now he just had to try and survive.

To his right, he saw the American moving, recognized that the sounds of the cannon had momentarily died down, knew he had one brief chance, and jumped out of the basket after him, scrabbling across the broken glass for the interior of The Globe restaurant.

Cole tripped over a broken table and the bodies of two dead diners, a look of shock still plastered over their bloody features, but managed to regain his balance on his bare and lacerated feet and keep on running.

He raced as far into the restaurant as he could, ignoring the pain in his soles as he ran across the broken glass, hearing the heavy breathing of Quraishi behind him. But for the moment, Quraishi was the least of his concerns. Right now, he just had to concentrate on not being killed.

Dead bodies littered the expensive five-star restaurant, staff and customers alike. Others were alive but injured, screaming and moaning as they lay on the floor or tried to hobble towards the stairs.

The Apache opened up again, spraying the restaurant with its 30mm cannon rounds, and Cole saw more people going down, blood flying across the polished wood and marble.

Cole crawled across the glass-strewn floor for the far side of the room, then — when he could no longer hear the sound of cannon — risked looking up.

He saw Quraishi raising his own head to do the same, and they both saw the helicopter pulling away, arcing left — presumably to fly around the building to get a better shot at their fleeing targets.

Cole turned and saw armed guards on the stairs, racing upwards.

Quraishi took his chance, leaping to his feet and pulling his ID, screaming at the men in Arabic and pointing over his shoulder at Cole.

Quraishi was ushered into the protective phalanx of guards, pulled away down the stairs, and Cole had to physically resist the urge to follow him; there were too many guards, too many guns.

It was no use; Quraishi was gone.

But Cole knew he still had to get out of this place, and his mind raced furiously as he tried to come up with a plan.

The chopper was rounding the other side, the side Cole had run to; in the restaurant, armed men were already raising their handguns and machine-pistols to him. Still on the staircase, they had blocked his only escape route.

There was only one thing for it, Cole decided.

Breaking into an all-out sprint, Cole raced back across the restaurant the way he had come, bullets tearing after him from the security guards on the stairs. Jumping over shattered tables and broken chairs, eviscerated bodies and bleeding casualties, Cole neared the shattered glass, increasing his pace; he knew the Apache would be opening up soon, maybe this time with more than just its cannon.

The firing from the guards had stopped, and Cole turned his head, seeing instantly why; they had run back down the stairs, the Apache hovering outside, ominous flashes coming from its side pylons.

Cole knew exactly what it meant; the Hellfire missiles had been fired, and The Globe was about to be completely destroyed.

The shattered window was now only feet away, and Cole jumped for it, his body passing through the jagged tangle of broken glass even as the Hellfire missiles blasted through the other side of the restaurant, exploding in an enormous concussive blast.

Cole’s body hit the floor of the half-destroyed basket, the force of the impact pulling the damaged, deflated silken balloon material free from its mooring around the corner support above.

Cole felt the basket moving, and kept his head down as a wall of fire exploded above him from the restaurant, the missiles igniting inside the huge golden orb.

The hot winds from the violent explosion served to rip the balloon completely free from where it had entangled itself, the support beams themselves breaking and toppling.

Cole felt his stomach lurch again as the basket dropped; held for a moment; and then dropped again, this time picking up speed as it skittered down the side of the skyscraper.

Cole held on for dear life as the damaged basket bounced its way down the side of the building, glad that its sides were not entirely vertical but rather widened out towards its base, acting like a gigantic slide for the basket.

And then the ripped and torn balloon itself partially filled with air from the fall, billowing out and slowing his momentum yet further; then it collapsed again and the basket fell faster for a few heart-stopping moments; and then the balloon caught the hot midday air again, filled, and slowed his progress once more.

Cole had no idea how fast he was falling, or how far; he just felt the jerking, terrifying, bumping journey as the basket slipped, slid and sailed down the angled surfaces of the Al Faisaliyah Center, his knuckles white as his fingers gripped the wicker base for all he was worth.

And then he felt the massive impact as the basket finally reached the concrete plaza, jarring him violently and leaving him shaken and dazed.

But alive, he thought with amazement as he looked upwards to see the silk of the balloon fluttering in the breeze above him, until it finally came to rest on the ground to one side of the basket, still giving the odd flicker of movement as the wind caught it, like a dead body twitching with the last of its nerves.

It was the sound which drew his attention upwards again, the enormously loud screeching of metal and concrete being ripped apart, a noise of destruction and annihilation.

And in the clear blue skies above him, he saw the entire, broken and shattered three-story golden globe of the skyscraper’s restaurant and viewing complex, hurtling down towards him, its crushing mass filling his vision completely.

Quraishi could barely believe his eyes as he watched the carnage unfold.

The security guards had managed to get him down the stairs, out of the suspended golden orb, and into the main bulk of the building, just in time.

The Apache must have fired its missiles into the globe, destroying the interior completely, and Quraishi recoiled from the fortieth floor windows as the huge globe itself — presumably having been ripped from its moorings — smashed into the side of the building, before continuing its downward descent.

Quraishi stood breathless, the windows, walls and some of the floor in front of him entirely gone from the globe’s impact, leaving just a gash in the building’s surface, a giant hole out into the blue sky beyond.

Quraishi backed away from the crater, instinctively gripping hold of the nearest wall, steadying himself for the impact which he knew was to come, the guards doing the same.

And then it happened; the globe reached the concrete plaza below, the colossal impact sending a concussive shockwave back up throughout the entire structure.

Quraishi held tight as the building shook with violent force, the office furniture of this level thrown around as if hit by a powerful earthquake.

For a moment, Quraishi thought that the entire building might collapse, the force of the globe’s impact with the ground enough to shake the skyscraper free from its foundations, resulting in a crippling, complete failure of its structural integrity.

But the reverberations finally settled down, and the huge skyscraper seemed to regain its equilibrium, coming to a peaceful rest.

Quraishi looked around at the frightened guards, dust swirling through the room, and swore that he would have the Apache crew court martialed; perhaps even executed.

But, he considered, at least the American agent was dead.

That much was a certainty.

Cole looked at the huge, damaged golden globe in wonder.

Wonder that it hadn’t killed him, crushed him beneath hundreds of tons of glass and steel.

But he had managed to get clear of the basket just in time, following the running crowds away from the base of the building as the globe hit the ground with a massive impact, then bounced and rolled down the streets after them.

There had been so much panic, so much chaos, so much screaming and terror, that nobody realized that Cole had been the man to escape from the basket. In fact, nobody even realized that anyone had escaped from the basket; by the time Cole was moving, everyone had already seen the globe ripped from its position at the top of building, and were heading across the streets in horror.

And now, as Cole stood amongst the crowd which was packed down the side street of Al Amiriyah, the huge gilded orb blocking the western end completely — it had finally come to rest against the two buildings on either corner — he joined them in their near-ecstatic realization that the globe hadn’t killed them, that they were still alive.

And although some of the crowd started tentatively forward, to get a closer look at the globe which had almost killed them, Cole joined the vast majority which filtered away from the damaged skyscraper, east to Olaya Street and the freedom beyond.