They were in a foyer, and were greeted at last by an armed guard, who raised his rifle towards them upon seeing Navarone’s Caucasian features. But Navarone was faster, shooting two suppressed rounds from his M4 assault rifle into the man’s center mass, dropping him instantly.
He could already hear the sound of shouts and screams coming from further inside the building, and the short, sharp exhalations of suppressed shots being fired. His SEALs were in, and were taking care of business; the enemy wouldn’t have suppressed weapons, which meant that it was just Navarone’s men who were firing.
As Navarone covered the foyer, Liu secured the receptionist, two nurses and a doctor with plastic cuffs.
‘Clear!’ he heard Devine confirm over the radio.
‘Clear!’ he heard Cray call next, followed by two more confirmations.
‘All clear,’ Navarone said at last. ‘All section leaders on me.’
As he waited for the four section leaders to get to the foyer, Navarone toggled his radio. ‘Frank,’ he said, ‘what’ve you got?’
‘Nothing I can see from here,’ Jaffett reported back. ‘Everyone’s hightailing it into the valley, nobody’s looking your way at all.’
‘Good. The boys back yet?’
‘Roger that, they’re right here with me.’
‘Okay, tell ‘em good work from me. Keep an eye out for search parties, get ready to move if you have to.’
Jaffett confirmed, and Navarone got a similar report from the fire team he’d left on the nearby slope; the compound was all clear, the assault on the laboratory apparently having gone unnoticed.
‘Okay,’ Navarone said, ‘but make sure you tell us the moment you see any movement at all towards this building.’
His men confirmed the order back to him, and he turned to see his four section leaders stood in the foyer, suppressed assault rifles still smoking.
Devine smiled. Handcuffed next to him was the major they’d seen the night before, the man who had held the clipboard as the names were read out that morning.
Navarone smiled too.
The major was a man he really wanted to speak to.
‘Well I’ll be damned,’ Commander Ike Treyborne breathed as Navarone finished his emergency field report.
Navarone’s Bravo Troop had really stumbled upon the mother lode, without even realizing it when they’d gone in.
Treyborne understood that Navarone had disobeyed a direct order, but that was the least of his worries. What was more disturbing by far was what Navarone had managed to find out.
He had managed to find out details of the weapon which had been developed at Camp 14 — the same weapon, part of which was now at large somewhere in the wider world, ready to be used — and also what it had been developed for.
Computer files found at a laboratory within an off-site compound — partially translated by the Chinese liaison officers — and questioning of the scientific personnel had given Navarone the details of the weapon. Major Ho Sang-ok, Chief of the Third Bureau of the RGB and now a prisoner of the SEALs, had provided the rest.
And it was even worse than they’d all feared.
‘What are our orders, sir?’ Treyborne heard Navarone ask, half a world away.
He thought about giving the SEAL leader some shit about not following his last orders, but decided better of it; Navarone had seen a situation and did what he’d thought was right; there was no point in armchair quarterbacking him, especially when he had so much else on his plate.
‘Has the weapon been stockpiled there?’ Treyborne asked at last.
‘Affirmative sir, personnel say that it’s stored here and all over the camp.’
Treyborne exhaled slowly. He knew that Navarone and his men had raided the laboratory just in time; the prisoners who had been rounded up that morning were not just due to be experimented on, but were to be the real thing. Major Ho Sang-ok had arrived from Pyongyang to set the ball rolling. The hijack of the weapon had ruined the RGB’s original plan, and Ho had been forced to improvise.
If Navarone and his men had got there just a few hours later, the weapon would already have been on its way to South Korea.
‘Can the stockpiles be destroyed?’ Treyborne asked next.
‘Yes sir, but only by extremely high temperatures, and we don’t know for sure exactly where it’s contained. Might be multiple locations around the camp, and we might not get it all.’
Treyborne nodded to himself. ‘Okay son, I’ll have to go to General Cooper and probably Olsen too, and you know what the order’s gonna be.’
‘Yes sir,’ Navarone said.
‘So I suggest you get the hell out of there as fast as you can.’
‘What about the other prisoners, sir?’
Treyborne paused, and closed his eyes. He knew what would happen to anyone who was left in the camp.
‘Just get you and your men the hell out of there as fast as you can, Navarone. Do you understand me?’
Treyborne wasn’t at all surprised when Navarone didn’t reply; the silence at the other end of the line said it all.
Shaking his head, he shouted for the nearest aide. ‘You!’ he called out. ‘Get General Olsen on the line and organize an emergency meeting of the National Security Council. Immediately.’
Navarone knew what the generals’ orders would be.
Camp 14 would be entirely obliterated by an air strike, a couple of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers dropping their payloads of 30,000 pound Massive Ordinance Penetrator bunker bombs on the place and reducing it to ashes.
The horrifying, evil weapon developed there would be gone forever; and yet so would nearly four thousand prisoners, including an unknown amount of women and children.
Navarone thought quickly. Even in an emergency, it would take an hour or so for authorization; and the B-2s were all based at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, over six thousand miles away. At six hundred miles an hour, it would take them at least ten hours to get here.
So he had a ten to twelve hour window.
Navarone stroked his chin as he thought about the prisoners; about the odds.
Yes, he thought. Yes.
We just might make it.
7
Riyadh Zoo was a relatively small affair, based right in the center of the city. Quraishi had accompanied Cole in a black Mercedes sedan with two security guards from the Ministry of Interior. Quraishi had claimed it was standard practice when ministers travelled through Riyadh, and Cole had had no reason to doubt him. He had wondered about the second sedan which had followed them all the way through the city streets, though.
The two security guards followed from a distance as Cole and Quraishi passed through the large steel gates into the dusty concrete mass of the zoo, waved through by the ticket officer. Cole noticed immediately that the zoo was eerily quiet. In fact, save for a few people who obviously worked there, Cole could see no other visitors whatsoever.
There was a lot more excitement directly outside, where a private company from Dubai was offering hot air balloon flights across the city; there had been a queue down the street.
Cole looked around, then back to Quraishi, who was strolling peacefully past deserted kiosks, pink flamingos to one side splashing in some dark water which only half-filled the concrete bowl which was their home.
Cole had seen happier places.
‘Is the zoo not a popular destination?’ Cole asked Quraishi.
‘Oh, it is one of Riyadh’s most visited attractions,’ Quraishi replied. ‘But today, it is closed for maintenance. I’m not one for crowds, you see, and I much prefer it this way. Luckily, the management and I have an understanding.’