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“So you’re saying they don’t use HEP cars with oil container trains.”
“No—but they attached one anyway because they wanted that car to move out tonight.”
“Tell me why oil is being shipped down by train when there’s pipeline from Abqaiq to Dammam.”
“That oil is headed for Riyadh. They still need to ship the processed oil back down to the city by rail, and as you’ve seen, that railroad passes right through Abqaiq.”
“So they got past security at the port and the bomb’s inside the HEP car.”
“It has to be.”
“So the bomb is part of a larger shipment.”
“Yeah,” said Grim. “We weren’t thinking big enough.”
“So now all they have to do is wait until the train passes through the processing facility and detonate it for maximum impact. Just like the thorium operation, they either have a spotter in Abqaiq or like Kasperov said, they’ll have someone to trigger it manually, someone on a suicide mission.”
“Plus they have the storm to cover them. No way they could’ve pla
“Call Shammari. Tell him to stop the train.”
“I already did,” she said. “The train’s still coming. It’s been hijacked. Just a single rail between Abqaiq and Dammam. No way to divert it.”
“What’s our ETA to the train?”
“About fifteen minutes.”
“Backup?”
“Shammari’s troops are leaving the compound now, but his F-15s have been grounded. He says he’s got some light helicopter gunships en route.”
“Tell him to hold back those gunships until I give the order—otherwise they could spook the triggerman.”
“Roger that. And, Sam, once the storm hits we’ll lose the satellite feed and maybe the rest of our comms.”
“That’s all right. We know what to do now.”
“Sam, I, uh . . . I think this time we’re right.”
“Is your gut telling you that?”
“It is.”
“Good. Mine, too.” He closed his eyes and could almost see her face. She wore the barest hint of a smile.
He wanted to say something else, something more meaningful because she was right, this was it—possibly the last conversation they’d ever have after years of working together.
“Grim?”
“Yeah?”
He stammered. “We’ll be okay.”
After a long pause, she answered, “Talk to you soon, Sam.”
Briggs, who’d been listening in on the conversation via the chopper’s intercom system, reached over and proffered his hand.
“What’s this?” Fisher asked.
“Just in case,” said Briggs. They shook firmly. “Someday, when I grow up, I’m go
Fisher shoved Briggs and smiled. “Let’s go kick some ass.”
34
THE chopper pilot from Dubai, who’d introduced himself as Hammad, knew some English—enough to deal with tourists—but that wasn’t an issue since Fisher and Briggs spoke Arabic.
However, convincing the thirty-year-old man with closely cropped beard to engage in the unthinkable with his rotary wing aircraft was the real challenge.
“We just need a ride to the train,” Fisher said over the intercom.
“To the train? The storm’s coming. We can’t do that. Besides, why there? How were you pla
Fisher sighed. “Very carefully. You’ll take us to the train. Now.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I won’t.”
“Then you can hop out right now, and my buddy will take over.”
Briggs reached in beside the man and began to open the side door.
“What’re you doing?” The pilot swatted away Briggs’s hand and cried, “You’re crazy! Crazy! We have the storm. We have to get back to the port and get under cover!”
“Hammad, we need you,” said Briggs, who looked to Fisher for approval and got it. “We’re talking about terrorists on board that train.”
“I’ll put it to you this way,” Fisher interjected. “If you don’t help us, we won’t kill you—but what they have on that train will.”
The pilot hesitated. “What do you mean?”
Fisher sloughed off his shirt to expose his tac-suit. Behind him, Briggs held up their machine guns. “Our business isn’t exactly oil.”
Hammad’s eyes flared. “Holy shit, holy shit.”
“Exactly,” said Briggs. “We’re just asking for a little help.”
“Don’t shoot me. Please.”
Fisher snorted. “Are you kidding? Today’s your day to be a hero. You up for it or what?”
Hammad was visibly trembling now. “My boss will kill me if I put even a scratch on the helicopter.”
“It’s cool,” said Briggs. “I know you can do this.”
Hammad gestured to a picture of two little girls taped just above his instrument panel, two gems about five and six years old. “They need their father!”
“I know,” Fisher said. “So do we.”
The man’s eyes were burning now. “Who are you?”
Fisher tensed. “We’re the passengers you’ll never forget.”
“Maybe you’re the terrorists!”
Fisher tapped a few keys on his OPSAT, bringing up some digital photographs of his daughter Sarah when she was nine. He held up his wrist for the pilot to see. “That’s my daughter. She’s all grown up now, but she still needs her father. And her father needs you. So let’s get this done. For all of them. Okay?”
Hammad pursed his lips, swallowed, then took another look at Briggs and Fisher.
Briggs put his hand on the pilot’s shoulder. “We have faith in you, Hammad. More than you know.”
After taking a deep breath and reaching out to touch the photograph of his girls, Hammad said, “I don’t want to die.”
“You won’t,” Fisher assured him. “Now take us a mile or two south, and get us up high, another thousand feet.”
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” the pilot muttered, banking sharply, then gaining altitude, the chopper buffeted hard by a sudden gust that left Fisher’s stomach about thirty feet below.
“Continue nice and wide,” said Fisher. “Anyone on the train spots us, they’ll think we’re heading to the port.”
“I understand,” said Hammad. “You’re not the terrorists, then, right?”
“I know it’s hard to tell who the good guys are these days, but Allah’s on your side.”
“Yes, always.”
Hammad kept several pairs of binoculars on board for sightseers. Fisher grabbed a pair and focused on the train, just a metallic serpent chugging forward across the broad plains of desert. Twin headlights reached out into the gathering dust. Fisher pa
The storm was a living, breathing creature of wind and sand, consumed by hunger and unaffected by politics, religion, or any other differences men used to justify killing each other. It was motivated only by the laws of physics, a perfect killer.
“All right,” Fisher told Hammad, shaking off the thought. “Come back around and descend hard and fast. You’re like an old fighter pilot in World War II, coming in to strafe the enemy, got it?”
“Holy shit, yes. I got it.”
Briggs had finished stripping down to his tac-suit and was double-checking their pistols and spare magazines. He handed Fisher his Five-seveN and SIG P226, then holstered his own weapons. Next he handed Fisher his submachine gun with attached sling and clutched his own tightly to his chest.
“Good to go,” Briggs said over the intercom. “Nothing beats the smell of factory-fresh ammo in the evening.”
Fisher almost smiled, then glanced to Hammad. “You’re doing great. Keep descending. Okay, now over there, we need to get lower, that’s right, bank right . . . right . . . descend again! You see it now?”
Hammad swooped down like a vulture, then he pitched the nose and descended even more aggressively. Fisher found himself clutching the seat with one hand as they came within five meters of the desert floor before Hammad pulled up and leveled off to check his altitude. Not two seconds later, he descended a few more meters.
“That’s how to do it,” Fisher said. “That’s perfect. You could be a military pilot.”