Sacred Stone

The next leg of the flight, some two hundred miles to Aswan, was made in less than two hours at a speed of 125 miles per hour. The helicopter was fueled and checked again and the trio set off.

Aswan to Ras Abu Shagara, the dangling peninsula of land that jutted into the Red Sea across from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, was the longest leg of the flight. Some 350 miles in length, the flight would take nearly three hours.

The Robinson was thirty minutes out of Aswan high above the desert when Adams spoke. “Sirs,” he said, “it will be a couple of hours until the next stop. If you want to get some sleep it’s okay by me.”

The CIA agent in the rear seat nodded, crouched down and pulled his hat down over his eyes.

“You okay, George?” Cabrillo asked. “You’ve been flying a lot lately—how are you holding up?”

“I’m ten by ten, boss,” Adams said, smiling. “I’ll take us down to the Sudan, then across the Red Sea and drop you—once I’m back in Sudan I’ll get some shut-eye.”

Cabrillo nodded. Slowly, as the helicopter droned south, he fell into a sleep.

THE TIME WAS just after 4 P.M. when Hanley on the Oregonmade the satellite call to Skutter. With no clear direction yet on how to proceed, Skutter and his team had been milling around the bus terminal waiting for a contact.

“My name is Max Hanley, I’m Mr. Kasim’s superior.”

“What do you want us to do?” Skutter asked quickly.

Several people had approached his team already and only one of the men with him could speak even a smattering of Arabic. If they stayed here any longer they might be detected.

“To your left,” Hanley said, “is a beggar with an old tin plate who looks like he’s sleeping. Do you see him?”

“Yes,” Skutter said.

In between bouts of what looked like napping, the man had been staring at his team for the last twenty minutes.

“Go over to him and place a coin in his plate,” Hanley said.

“We don’t have any coins,” Skutter whispered. “We were only issued bills.”

“Then use the smallest bill you have,” Hanley said. “He will hand you what looks like a religious pamphlet. Take the pamphlet, walk a safe distance away from the terminal to a side street, then find somewhere you can read it without being observed.”

“Then what?”

“Your instructions are inside.”

“Is that all?” Skutter asked.

“For now,” Hanley said, “and good luck.”

SKUTTER DISCONNECTED THEN whispered to one of his men. Then he walked over to the beggar, removed a bill from a stack in his pocket, bent over, and slipped it on the plate.

“Allah will reward you,” the beggar said in Arabic, handing him the pamphlet.

Skutter was bending back to an upright position when the briefest of winks flickered across the beggar’s left eye. Suddenly Skutter was feeling a renewed hope. Making his way away from the bus station followed by the other men, he found a deserted area and read the instructions. It was only a few blocks to his destination and he ate the entire pamphlet as he walked.

“DO NOT GO outside,” the CIA contact said to Kasim and his team at the safe house in Mecca, “do not do anything to draw attention to yourself. There is food, water, and soft drinks in the kitchen.”

“How do we reach you if we need to?” Kasim asked.

“You don’t,” the contact said. “You wait for your people to give you any further instructions. I was told to stock the house, meet you at the terminal and bring you here. That ends my involvement. I wish you luck and Godspeed.”

The CIA man made his way to the door and exited.

“THAT SEEMS ODD,” an army private in Kasim’s team offered.

“Everything is compartmentalized,” Kasim said. “Each piece of this operation will remain separate until it is time to bring it together. Now we all need to get some rest and take turns getting cleaned up. I want everyone to eat a good meal and try to relax. Soon we will be called, and when we are, it’ll be go time.”

The team nodded.

THE SUN WAS setting as Adams approached the Akbarfrom the Red Sea. Passing over the yacht once to alert the crew, he lined up over the stern and dropped slowly down. Al-Khalifa’s Kawasaki helicopter was still on the heliport, so he hovered a few feet above the yacht, just above a clear spot on the stern. The CIA agent dropped Abraham’s Stone safely packed in a box with padding to the deck, then leapt off.

“Overholt’s men are waiting for you back at Ras Abu Shagara,” Cabrillo said. “Will you be okay?”

“Yes, sir,” Adams said.

The CIA agent was carrying the box toward the rear door of the Akbar.Cabrillo stepped off and crab-walked out from under the rotor blade. Adams lifted off again.

AT JUST THAT moment Cabrillo’s phone rang.

“Threat one is eliminated,” Hanley said. “The cargo containers are on board a ship just now leaving Bahrain for Qatar.”

“No problems?”

“All went as pla

Kent Joseph, part of a Florida team who had been contracted to handle the Akbarfor the Corporation, poked his head out of the door, and Cabrillo smiled and raised his finger for the captain to wait a minute.

“Skutter?”

“He has the diagrams and we’re sending him and the team in this evening,” Hanley said. “If that’s successful, it’ll be two down, one to go.”

“How are you coming on that plan?” Cabrillo asked.

“I’ll call you back soon.”

The telephone went dead and Cabrillo placed it in his pocket. Then he smiled and reached his hand out to Joseph.

“Juan Cabrillo,” he said, shaking. “I’m with the Corporation.”

“Is that like the Agency?” Joseph asked.

“Heck, no,” Cabrillo said, smiling. “I’m not a spy.”

Joseph nodded and motioned to the door.

“But he is,” Cabrillo said, waving toward the CIA agent.

53

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

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

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

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

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

“Maybe if he’s staring in the rearview mirror at that exact instant,” Perkins admitted, “but the door should swing back afterward, and if he doesn’tnotice it immediately, he should be farther down the road before he catches on that the door is open.”

“What about you?” the third man asked.

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

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

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