Sacred Stone

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

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

Hanley reached for the phone.

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

“Get out now!” Hanley said.

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

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

“Got it, boss.”

“Now, go.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh yeah,” the driver said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The driver turned off the truck and climbed down.

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

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

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

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

“Home, James,” Cabrillo said loudly.

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

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

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

“I’ll call the president,” Overholt said, “he has a State Department di

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then he flashed it across the land behind the hill.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I just don’t—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Door up,” Reeves said.

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