And although the codes he had given were years out of date, he had hoped that the CIA would be able to put two and two together and realize it was the Asset — still alive, and ready for his orders.
The information he had received from Dorrell over the secure line was terrifying — the possibility of these suicide time bombers unleashing their destructive bioweapon all over the US was almost too much to comprehend.
But there was still a chance — the bombers could still be at the safe house, and if Cole could get there in time, he might just be able to avert a catastrophe of historic proportions.
The Saudi authorities had been told about Quraishi’s involvement with the AIJ, but he had managed to escape arrest — so far, at least. Cole wondered if he would find Quraishi at the Mecca safe house, but discounted the possibility. He would probably be a thousand miles away by now, lost forever. Still, Cole hoped he would get the chance to meet the man again.
But Cole knew that it had to be first things first.
He had to get to Mecca, confront Amir al-Hazmi, and stop the suicide bombers before they left on their genocidal journey to the United States.
‘So what’s our back-up plan?’ Bud Shaw asked the small group, gathered together now in person, back in the White House Situation Room.
‘It’s tough,’ Eckhart sighed. ‘We’re going to need to get NSC approval before we can do anything on the national level.’
Dorrell nodded his head in agreement. ‘The only thing we can do is to close off the United States to all incoming visitors. If the bombers have already left, then they could be anywhere. We can’t just screen flights out of Saudi Arabia, or even the Middle East — what if they’ve flown somewhere else first, and then catch a connecting flight to the US? And we can’t just screen Arab passengers either; we have no idea what their ethnicity is, none whatsoever. They could be Arab, Oriental, Caucasian, a mix of everything, we just don’t know.’
‘And you can just imagine the havoc it would wreak, can’t you?’ said Shaw. ‘And what if they come in by car or on foot across the Canadian or Mexican borders?’ He sighed. ‘This is one hell of a shit sandwich.’
Ellen Abrams breathed out slowly. ‘I understand,’ she said, struggling to retain her legendary composure. ‘What we’ll do is convene a meeting of the NSC, put things into place. If we have to shut down all of our airports, then that’s exactly what we’ll do. If we have to check everyone coming in, then we’ll do it.’ She checked her watch. ‘Ken Jung from Fort Detrick is due here in the next ten minutes, and we have other experts en route from the FBI and the bioweapons defense division of the DOD to discuss what we can do to counter this thing. How we can identify it, how we can defeat it.’
The men around the small table murmured their approval. Fort Detrick, Maryland, was the home of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, and Jung was their top man. Files were already being downloaded through secure connections by the SEAL team back in North Korea for analysis, and America’s top experts were hard at work on getting to grips with this new bio threat.
‘The only other thing is how we’re going to keep a lid on it,’ Eckhart said next, and there were weary sighs exchanged around the room. Everyone knew that this was another huge problem — if word about the bioweapon got out in the public domain, mass panic would ensue. And panic on such a scale was guaranteed to leave thousands dead, even if the weapon was never used.
‘We have the normal protocols in place,’ Abrams answered. ‘But if something goes wrong and the press gets wind of this, then Heaven help us.’ She looked around the table at her advisors. ‘We just have to hope and pray that Cole finds those bombers still at the safe house.’
Everybody nodded their agreement; if the bombers had already left, then the very existence of the United States was at risk.
The G-force pushed Cole back into the second pilot’s couch of the Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jet as it rapidly accelerated away from the runway of Riyadh Air Base.
He could feel his skin rippling underneath the flight suit as the aircraft steadily climbed into the darkening skies above the Saudi capital, the speed on the readout in front of him spiraling steadily upwards — Mach 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 1.1 — until he could look at it no longer, speed ceasing to have meaning.
The irony of his departure from Riyadh Air Base wasn’t lost on him; it was here that the killer Apache had flown from, the helicopter that had destroyed the Al Faisaliyah Center earlier that day. But Cole was no longer a wanted man; with his new CIA-provided identification, he was now Tom Drake, US Congressman for Tennessee. And the one thing Drake wanted to do on his tour of the Middle East was experience the sensation of flying in a fast jet — a wish the Saudi Air Force was only too willing to grant.
The Saudis had recently taken delivery of their Eurofighters, and the jet that Cole was sat in was the T1 variant, a two-seat trainer rather than the normal single-seat fighter version. His pilot gave him a running commentary in perfect English as they soared across the open skies.
He’d asked the pilot back at the base if it would be possible to fly as far as Mecca, and he’d been told it was no problem — at Mach 1.1, or 810 miles per hour, the Eurofighter could still cruise without using its afterburners, and at this so-called ‘supercruise’ speed, the jet could be over Mecca in less than an hour and a half.
It was only when they were over Mecca that the problems would begin, Cole knew. He had no legitimate reason for requesting the jet to land; besides which, by the time the jet landed at an official airbase, more time would have been wasted. And he would still have to escape from a military airfield in order to locate the AIJ safe house without the knowledge of the Saudi authorities.
He sighed as he settled in for the flight, phasing out the pilot’s continuous talking as his mind focused on what lay ahead.
PART SEVEN
1
From his position at the laboratory window, Jake Navarone watched the chaos unfold before him.
At his command, his snipers had taken out the soldiers manning the four corner guard towers; all head shots which had killed the men instantly.
His half-dozen SEALs hidden throughout the prison camp swung into immediate action, gunning down the camp guards from their strategic positions. Some of the soldiers managed to respond, but they were unused to the chaotic melee of real combat and failed to do any real damage before the American commandos finished them.
At the same time, Navarone’s men operating over on the east side of the camp were moving back around the perimeter to liaise with the main group back at the laboratory compound. The majority of the camp’s guard force was still chasing shadows in the eastern forest; and when they were alerted about the attack on the camp and tried to return, they would face the booby traps of Claymore mines that had been strategically placed across their route home. Navarone hoped it would be enough to keep them pinned down on the far side of the camp.
While the gunfight was erupting within the main camp, Navarone watched as Captain Liu and Major Ho started to channel the thousands of scared, confused prisoners towards the western gate, which had been opened by Captain Xie.
Navarone breathed out slowly as he watched the operation unfold before his eyes. It might work, he thought; it just might work.
He checked his watch; only thirty-two minutes to the arrival of the B2 bombers. Would it be enough time?