The gesture was effective enough to cause Inspector Faizal to look at his own watch.
“Four more layers, Faizal. At this rate it will be dark before they finish inspecting one crate!”
The men lifted the second probe of the layer out of the crate and began carrying it across the floor of the warehouse.
Faizal looked irritated at the slow pace of the inspection. “Ahmed, have you hidden a missile in that crate?” Faizal asked jokingly.
“Me? No I haven’t,” smiled Ahmed. “A camel, maybe, but no missile.”
Faizal laughed. “Okay, that’s enough!” he shouted to the inspector. “We have to inspect all this cargo before evening prayer. Ahmed, I suspect you can close the crate? Good, I thought so.”
“Yes we can, Faizal. Thank you for your help.”
“Salaam Alakum, Ahmed.”
“Alakum Salaam.”
With that, Faizal placed an inspection sticker on the top of the crate and then moved with the inspection team to other crates in the warehouse. Ahmed and the two Puerto Ricans were left alone to reload and close the crate.
Juan and Angel jumped to the task of carrying the probes back to the crate and reloading them. They both had drips of sweat that the heat had not caused. They filled the crate, replaced the wooden top, and secured it in place with a couple of screws. They ostensibly replaced all ten screws so as not to cause any suspicion even though they knew they would be opening it again very soon. They loaded the crate into the back of the GenCon van, and Ahmed drove to a holding area where dozens of GenCon crates awaited further transportation to the offshore oil field.
“Whew, that was close!” Angel said, as they pulled the crate out of the back of the van.
“Yes, it was very close,” Ahmed responded. “But you know what? Close is no cigar, my friend. The fact is, they missed it. That means we’re on. So don’t think about the past; stay alert because we still have a lot to do.”
Behind a tall stack of GenCon crates, Angel and Juan reopened the probe crate and quickly unloaded the probes, revealing the RV stored below.
“Get it out and put it in the back of my Land Cruiser over there,” ordered Ahmed. “Cover it up with the pile of dirty laundry I put back there. If we get stopped, it would raise suspicions to have a crate in the back, and the authorities would want to search it. Dirty laundry would be par for the course for three GenCon workers!”
Within ten minutes, they were on their way to Mecca, about an hour and a half away on a four-lane highway.
It was a dark, moonless night. On the highway to Mecca, there was little traffic, so thousands of stars were brightly visible overhead. As they approached the city, the light pollution from Mecca became visible low on the horizon, and the fainter stars began to disappear. Soon, the traffic began to pick up, and only the brightest constellations could be seen in the night sky.
There were just a few days until the beginning of the hajj pilgrimage, and most of the country’s security forces were in Mecca to maintain traffic flow and to direct pilgrims to the streets designated for the walk to the Ka‘abah.
“Let’s review the plan.” Ahmed’s voice was strained, but calm and just loud enough to be heard over the drone of the Toyota’s engine and tires. “We will be entering Mecca on the Umm Al-Qura street and pass in front of the Al-Masjid al-Haram mosque, the site of the Ka‘abah, on Bab Al-umrah street. We should expect a lot of pilgrims and walking traffic, even late at night. We’ll park by the north entrance of the Ka‘abah at twelve o’four a.m. If everything goes as planned, there will be an automobile accident at exactly twelve o’five a.m., which will cut the power to the streetlights in that area. We should have about twenty seconds before people’s eyes adjust to the dark and maybe a minute before the streetlights come back on. So, we have to be ready to unload as soon as the lights go out. When I stop, what do you two do?”
Juan spoke up, “Angel and I get out and pretend to check the tires and the undercarriage. As soon as the lights go out, we lift the tailgate and start pulling out the RV.”
“Yeah,” continued Angel, “and when Juan and I have the RV about halfway out, you should be there to grab the front end. Then we run like hell to the wall by the north entrance and set it down. And then we walk back to the car. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes. We should be driving away by twelve o’seven.”
Ahmed said, “We’re coming up to the cloverleaf on Third Ring Road. We should be there in about five minutes. So, remember, we walk back to the car, no hurry. If the lights come back on, we don’t want people seeing us running. If we are stopped, we say we were just stopping by on our trip into town to check out the mosque.”
“Yeah, just stopping by to leave a little message, I mean see the mosque,” Angel joked.
“Right, a tiny little message,” laughed Juan nervously.
Traffic was lighter than they expected in the area of the mosque. Ahmed slowly rolled the SUV up to the curb directly across the street from the north entrance. Angel and Juan looked at Ahmed. He studied his watch with one finger raised in a sign to wait for his signal.
“Go.”
Juan and Angel got out of the SUV and moved toward the rear. They spent about twenty seconds looking at the rear tires and the undercarriage. Both of them met at the tailgate. They had been observing the people on the streets, mostly pilgrims, and nobody gave them a second glance. The north entrance was closed and locked for the night, so the usual contingent of security personnel was gone.
They raised the tailgate and started to sweep aside the dirty laundry, exposing the RV, but the lights didn’t go out. They didn’t even flicker. Ahmed got out and walked to the tailgate.
“If the lights don’t go out in twenty seconds we need to get off the street. We can’t be…”
Blackness. The lights went out.
“Go, go, go.” Angel and Juan grabbed the wide, heavy end of the RV and pulled it out. As the tapered end emerged, Ahmed grabbed the tip and caught it as it exited the tailgate. Five seconds had passed. They started moving across the street. Still black, but there were people close enough to be heard cursing the darkness. Twelve seconds. Across the street, now twenty feet to the big palm tree next to the front entrance.
They laid the RV against the wall and then casually started walking down the sidewalk by the mosque. No one spoke. They passed a group of pilgrims in the dark headed the opposite direction. Nobody noticed the four-foot long RV between the wall of the mosque and the palm tree.
A hundred feet or so down the walkway, Ahmed signaled to cross the street. As they did so, the lights came back on.
A few of the pilgrims cheered the returning light. Ahmed and company casually made their way back to the SUV.
A feeling of panic was setting in as their hearts raced. They had an almost irresistible urge to run! In a low voice that could not be overheard, Ahmed cautioned, “Boys, continue to walk slow. If anybody spots the RV and raises a fuss, look like we’re interested, but continue to the car.”
A group of pilgrims walking toward the north entrance had stopped by the palm tree.
“Uh-oh. Time to pick up the pace. Calmly.”
They arrived at the SUV, and Angel closed the tailgate as Juan and Ahmed got in. Angel opened his door, stealing one last glance at the RV as he slid into the back seat. One of the pilgrims was looking their way.