Countdown to Mecca (37 page)

The magazine boxes Pyotr had for the gun contained thirty-two rounds. Pyotr disliked carrying guns that were only half-full, and so he emptied the rest of the box, spraying indiscriminately across the large hall. With glass falling and women shrieking, he dashed for the door, reloading as he went.

A hotel security guard made the mistake of stepping out from his post at the side. The man was reaching for his gun when Pyotr shot him in the face with three bullets, a quick squeeze of the trigger. He was out of practice with the weapon. There was a time when he could have controlled it so carefully that he would have used only one.

Pyotr swung around, back to the door, and scanned to make sure no one else had gotten a clean view of him or was following him. Sure that everyone had taken cover, he pushed outside, then trotted to the white Toyota approaching from the far end of the street.

“Move quickly,” he told the driver as he got in. “Our schedule today is tight.”

Pyotr frowned at the phone's screen. It was inconvenient, but he had to answer. “Yes,” he snapped, holding it to his ear.

“The men are en route,” said Stefan in Russian. Stefan was reliable in many ways, but he suffered from deafness, a result of a car bomb that exploded prematurely in the Balkans some years before, and so he spoke far too loudly. At times Pyotr thought he didn't need a phone at all.

“Good.”

“You realize they will be there and—”

“That's none of your business,” said Pyotr curtly. “Everything else is arranged.”

“I thought you needed the heads-up.”

“Yes. Good job.”

He hung up and turned to the driver. “How long will it take us?”

“Two hours to get there, an hour to load it.” The driver shrugged. “We'll move as quickly as possible.”

“We'd better,” said Pyotr. “We have a bomb to deliver.”

 

47

The chauffeur drove relentlessly back to the prince's office. “It is imperative we get there,” he said. “There we will find a powerful Wi-Fi source that is less likely to be compromised.”

Jack nodded, knowing that no air-based communication system was hijack-proof. But both he and Doc were in agreement that the need for haste was absolute. The sooner they get Brooks's confession to Dover, the better. They sat on the edges of the limo seats. The men were so tense, in fact, that they had been sparring from the moment they sat down.

“I can't even imagine the devastation an attack on Mecca would wreak,” Jack was saying.

“Best not to try,” Doc advised.

“I can't be that complacent.”

“It isn't complacency,” Doc protested. “It's insulating the mind from overload.”

Jack shot him an angry glance. “How can anyone insulate his mind from
this
?” he said accusingly.

“By not thinking about it,” Doc said.

“No,” Jack said. “That's not possible. Or maybe it's just the difference between a soldier and a journalist.”

“What the hell does
that
mean?” Doc said. “To me, the difference is that your heart bleeds in empathy while my heart bleeds for real!”

“Come on, Doc. You know me better than that,” Jack said.

“And you know me better,” Doc shot back. “It's like the first responders in 9/11. We can't afford to let the magnitude of this in or we won't be able to move.”

“It's more than that,” Jack said. “It's been that way since we started this—‘documentary,'” he said, in deference to the Arab driving the car. “You conquer by force, I attack with reason. I believe in fighting ideas with better ideas, not with bullets.”

“Balls,” Doc disagreed. “I always give someone a chance to talk before I shoot 'em.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “‘Raise your hands or I'll put a slug in you.'”

“I'm still alive, aren't I?”

“Yes,” Jack agreed. “But I've carried a weapon in the field, too, Doc. I know the military drill. I like my way better.”

“Right. Don't you see, though—you're doing exactly what I'm warning against. You're letting the scope of this thing get to you and it's clouding your reaction. The ‘drill' as you called it is no different than if you're running to stop a bus or disco from being bombed. Focus on the steps, not the outcome.”

Doc had a point. That's how Jack was able to get through the last two crises he faced. Not knowing the potential horror that would be unleashed if he failed, he was able to stay keyed on the target.

“Words,” Doc muttered. “Weren't those the weapons your guests used against you when you posited something like this scenario on the air? Didn't they beat you down with ideas? Sorry, brother. My way is better. Shoot first—an object lesson—and persuade the survivors. That's the price of going to war.”

Jack didn't see the point of continuing the discussion. They were not just splitting hairs they were grinding them to powder. They were on the same team. That was all that mattered.

“All of which is beside the point,” Jack said. “What's the game plan going forward?”

“I don't know,” Doc said. “I'd say it's fluid.”

Jack thought aloud. “Mecca holds a population of roughly two million people, though it routinely holds as many times that number of religious pilgrims. Every Muslim is, at least in theory, expected to visit the city at least once in his life. But no non-Muslim is ever permitted to go there. Christians, including you and me, would be shot on sight if we dared enter.”

“Even to warn of the bombing?”

“Even to warn of the bombing.”

“That's nuts,” Doc decided. “With that kind of stupidity, maybe they deserve to get their clocks cleaned.”

“Doc—don't,” he said, flashing his eyes toward the driver. “Not now.”

Doc shut up. Jack exhaled to stay calm.

“Gentlemen, if I may be permitted?” the chauffeur said. He did not wait for permission to speak. “The city is the holiest of all Muslim centers because it holds the Kaaba, the sacred granite cube that every Muslim faces when he prays. According to the Quran, the Kaaba was built by Ibrahim—Abraham to the other people of the book—and was the first house where Allah was praised. Before the time of Muhammad, the Kaaba and the surrounding area were designated as a place of peace and sanctuary; no one could fight within the area.”

“Well, this will change that!” Doc exclaimed, his knee shaking up and down.

“But it was Muhammad who declared the site sacred only to Allah,” the chauffeur continued, “evicting the other gods and their worshippers who had gathered in the city. Mecca, an important trading center even before becoming enshrined as the first city of Islam, expanded until it was one of the largest urban centers in the Muslim world.”

“Yes,” said Jack. “Though history was its essence, it has spread and modernized itself over the centuries, pushing up against the valley it's located in. That same valley would concentrate the effect of a blast. The shock waves would surely devastate the city center. They might also help to contain the lethal agent.”

“That's a double-edged sword,” Doc mused. “It might lessen damage outside the city, but it will make any cleanup a bitch and a half.”

“What did your countryman hope the effects on Islam be, I wonder?” the chauffeur said.

“First, I want to be clear about this,” Jack said. “We're countrymen like you and Osama bin Laden were countrymen. I don't approve of his methods. At all.”

“Thank you for that, Mr. Hatfield.”

“What Brooks hopes is that it will bring on an all-out war,” Jack explained. “In his opinion, that can be the only way Islam will be contained.”

“The Kaaba has been damaged before,” the chauffeur informed them, “but those were accidents. A deliberate act against our religion's holiest site would be catastrophic not for Islam but for the world.”

Jack, desperate to get his mind off their helplessness, grabbed on to the only hope he could conceive at that moment. “Maybe it would bring war,” he said. “Or maybe the act would be so heinous, so incomprehensible, that it would bring people to their senses. Maybe they would see that extremism meant death, and death is not the answer.”

“You sound like Abe when you talk like that,” said Doc, referring to their liberal friend who had been murdered years before. “A wild-eyed, bleeding-heart, new-age hippie.”

Jack turned on him. “It comes down to what you believe about people,” said Jack. “If you think people are basically good—”

“I think it was Cervantes who called the world a dungheap and everything on it a maggot,” Doc said. “If you think people are basically good, you're insane. The extremists will go all carpe diem on our asses and take this situation over, Jack. That's human nature.”

“There's good in the world,” countered Jack.

“Not in my experience,” Doc said. “You know what Islamist radicals are like. They blow themselves up to kill children. What does that say?”

“Not every Muslim is like that,” the driver pointed out.

“Enough are,” Doc replied. He turned to his old friend. “Frankly, I'm surprised at you, Jack. You used to be a realist.”

“I
am
a realist, dammit. I'm just not hopeless. I can't be.”

Doc grinned. “Well, you're in love. Maybe Dover is responsible for this.”

Jack softened a little. Thinking about the young woman made him smile inside. Doc could have a point.

“Anyway,” Jack said, “just because we're up against evil, that doesn't mean we have to be evil as well.”

“Okay,” Doc said. “Tell me one Muslim who would have tried to stop someone from nuking the Vatican in Rome.”

“I bet Jimmy would have.”

“All right—maybe,” admitted Doc.

“I would,” came a voice from the front seat.

Doc looked at the back of the chauffeur's head, remembering what he had already done for them. He sat back. “Touch
é
to you both. I'll shut up now.”

“Don't shut up, Doc,” Jack said, softening. “Just help me. We've got to figure out a way to stop this.”

“I'm stymied,” Doc admitted. “For the first time in my life, I don't know who to shoot at. And I don't like it.”

“We're here,” said the chauffeur.

The heat of the discussion instantly dissipated as all three men barreled from the limo and charged into the lobby. Despite the hour of the evening, the place was as active as it had been at noon. The chauffeur was first at the information desk and spoke in rapid Arabic. Doc raised his eyebrows at Jack when they saw the deference the men at the desk paid him in body language, expression, and action. He was certainly not just a chauffeur. A desk man raced to prepare the way as if his hair was on fire as the chauffeur motioned for Jack and Doc to follow him.

“This way,” he said. He led them quickly to the building's security office, which looked to Jack like a set out of a James Bond movie. Glittering lights were everywhere and a row of desks were outfitted with the most sleek, costly, and futuristic machinery oil money could buy. Huge, flat, wide-screen monitors encircled the room, showing every inch of the building and surrounding grounds.

“Here, here, here,” said the chauffeur, striding over, and pointing, to a desk on the right side wall. Jack grabbed the phone while Doc tried to resend the video. The general's confession was already flying across the world, seemingly before the digicam even registered
SEND.

Jack checked his watch. San Francisco was ten hours behind Riyadh, so it was midmorning for Dover. Perfect. “Do I have to dial anything to get out?” he asked the chauffeur, who had sat down at the computer.

“No,” he said, his fingers dancing on the keyboard.

Jack dialed “their number” and waited anxiously, his toe tapping nervously. As soon as the connection went through, Jack's energy welled up and he started talking.

“Dover, listen,” he barked. “Doc's just sent you a video where Brooks admitted it. He's planning to bomb Jerusalem and Mecca. Get it to Carl Forsyth, Kevin Dangerfield, everyone! They're planning to do it tomorrow.”

“Christ, Jack—”

“But be careful,” Jack cautioned. “There may be people even higher than Brooks involved in this. Maybe the administration has set Brooks up—maybe they were the ones who thought we'd all benefit from Armageddon. Regardless, we've got to stop it, any way we can!”

“Jack, are you—”

“I'm fine!” he shouted. “Go! Please!”

Jack took a breath and listened to the sound of rampant activity going on behind her. It was too busy to be in the safe house. It had to be the offices of the FBI.

“Jack, we got it!” she said after a few long, tense moments. “The video came in from Sol minutes ago.”

“From Sol?” Jack asked.

Then he realized what Doc had done. Although he would have gotten an
UNDELIVERED
message for Dover's line, Sol's more powerful safe house system must have pulled it in.

“Good, good,” Jack said. “What can I—what
should
I do?”

“Jack,” Dover said urgently, as if she hadn't heard him, “listen to me.”

“Yes, what?”

“General Brooks is dead.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, stunned.

“Fresh from the Pentagon,” she replied. “Jack, talk to you later. We've got to find out who's really running this show.”

 

48

Pyotr Ansky walked quickly through the maze of narrow, refuse-strewn, potholed paths that made up the district of Al-Suwaidi in the southwestern corner of Riyadh. He ignored the notorious places where prostitutes of both sexes secreted themselves, despite contentions that they didn't exist or had been wiped out by the dens of criminals, terrorists, and strict ultraconservatives who infested the place. It was a closed market on depravity in any form. No one entered the district at night unless they were looking for death. Pyotr Ansky entered the place after dark, and quickly ducked into a seemingly benign, peaceful caf
é
, filled with the smell of potent coffee and clouds of hookah smoke. As always, Pyotr's eyes had taken in everyone even before he stepped completely inside, but then he moved quickly to a table in the back, where a small, wizened, man sat. Although he wore a dirty robe and up-raised hood, Pytor could see his face—both the color and texture of a shelled walnut.