were in prison clothes. They were escaped prisoners. Nothing made sense! Were these the men the whore, Khalehla, was racing to meet? If so, everything was doubly incomprehensible. The bitch-whore was working for the enemy in Cairo. The information was confirmed in Bahrain; it was irrefutable! It was why he had cultivated her, repeatedly telling her of his firm's interests in Oman and how frightened he was to go there under the circumstances and how grateful he would be for a knowledgeable companion. She had swallowed the bait, accepting his offer, even to the point of insisting that she could not leave Cairo until a specific day, a specific time which meant a very specific flight, of which there was only one a day. He had phoned Bahrain and was told to comply. And watch her! which he did. There was no meeting with anyone, no hint of eye contact whatsoever. But in the chaos of Masqat's security-conscious immigration she had strayed away. Damn! Damn! She had wandered—wandered—out to the air freight warehouse, and when he found her she was alone by her petulant self. Had she made contact with someone there, passed instructions to the enemy? And if she had, did either have anything to do with the escaped prisoners now racing up the road?
That there was a connection would seem to be irrefutable. And totally out of place!
As the three figures passed him, a perspiring Anthony MacDonald pushed himself off the ground, grunting as he got to his feet. Reluctantly—very reluctantly—considering that millions upon millions could depend on the next few hours, he reached a conclusion: the sudden enigma that was Khalehla had to be resolved and the answers he so desperately needed were inside the embassy. Not only could the millions be lost without those answers, but if the bitch-whore was pivotal to some hideous coup and he failed to stop her, it was entirely possible that Bahrain would order his execution. The Mahdi did not suffer failure.
He had to get inside the embassy and all the hell that it stood for.
The Lockheed C-130 Hercules with Israeli insignia cruised at 31,000 feet above the Saudi desert east of Al Ubaylah. The flight plan from Hebron was an evasive one: south across the Negev into the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea, proceeding south again equidistant from the coasts of Egypt, Sudan and Saudi Arabia. At Hamdanah, the course change was north-northeast, splitting the radar grids between the airports in Mecca and Qal Bishah, then due east at Al Khurmah into the Rub al Khali desert in southern Arabia. The plane had been refuelled in mid-air by a tanker from Sudan west of Jiddah over the Red Sea; it would do so again on the return flight, without, however, its five passengers.
They sat in the cargo hold, five soldiers in coarse civilian clothes, each a volunteer from the little known elite Masada Brigade, a strike force specializing in interdiction, rescue, sabotage and assassination. None was over thirty-two years old and all were fluent in Hebrew, Yiddish, Arabic and English. They were superb physical specimens, deeply bronzed from their desert training, and imbued with a discipline that demanded split-second decisions based on instantaneous reactions; each had an intelligence quotient in the highest percentile, and all were motivated in the extreme for all had suffered in the extreme—either they themselves or their immediate families. Although they were capable of laughing, they were better at hating.
They sat, leaning forward, on a bench on the port side of the aircraft, absently fingering the straps of their parachutes, which had only recently been mounted on their backs. They talked quietly among themselves, that is to say four talked, one did not. The silent man was their leader; he was sitting in the forward position and stared blankly across at the opposite bulkhead. He was, perhaps, in his late twenties with hair and eyebrows bleached a yellowish-white by the unrelenting sun. His eyes were large and dark brown, his cheekbones high, fencing a sharp Semitic nose, his lips thin and firmly set. He was neither the oldest nor the youngest of the five men, but he was their leader; it was in his face, in his eyes.
Their assignment in Oman had been ordered by the highest councils of Israel's Defence Ministry. Their chances of success were minimal, the possibility of failure and death far greater, but the attempt had to be made. For among the two hundred and thirty-six remaining hostages held inside the American Embassy in Masqat was a deep-cover field director of the Mossad, Israel's unparalleled intelligence service. If he was discovered, he would be flown to any one of a dozen 'medical clinics' of both friendly and unfriendly governments where intravenous chemicals would be far more effective than torture. A thousand secrets could be learned, secrets that could imperil the state of Israel and emasculate the Mossad in the Middle East. The objective: Get him out if you can. Kill him if you cannot.
The leader of this team from the Masada Brigade was named Yaakov. The Mossad agent held hostage in Masqat was his father.
'Adonim,' said the voice in Hebrew over the aircraft's loudspeaker—a calm and respectful voice addressing the passengers as Gentlemen. 'We are starting our descent,' he continued in Hebrew. 'The target will be reached in six minutes
