Sacred Stone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Does he have a car?”

“He drives a Pepsi delivery truck.”

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

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

Hanley could hear him explaining in the background.

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

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

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

“Jeddah.”

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

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

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

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

The conference room was filled with Seng, Ross, Reyes, Lincoln, Meadows, Murphy, Crabtree, Ga

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

“No time to tu

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

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

“Tear gas?” Reyes offered to the room.

“Cut the power?” Meadows mentioned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sure,” Seng said.

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

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

“Then what?” Seng asked.

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

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

“Boss,” Ga

The room was quiet for a second as Seng thought.

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

“Sometimes you need to split a coconut with a rock to get to the milk,” Ga

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

WHILE THE PLANNING session on the Oregonwas finishing, Skutter and his team found one of the hatches leading into the tu

“Spread out up the tu

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s that?”

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

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

Within two hours the charges would all be disabled and the tu

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

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

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

“I wanted you to clear it first.”

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

“I’ll send it now.”

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

“What about any explosives?” Kasim asked.

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

“Okay,” Kasim said.

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

“It would seem we have no choice.”

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

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

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