Sacred Stone

The buildings were giving way to a less populated area just outside Mecca. Perkins stared through the gloom. “I don’t know, guys,” he said a second later. “I guess this is as good a spot as any.”

Perkins boosted them up so they could grab the top of the door frame. Then a second later he pushed it out. The door swung outward, the two men dropped to the ground and rolled end over end in the sand. Perkins backed up as far as he could in the crowded shipping container and ran from the right side of the container toward the left then leapt into the air. Perkins’s legs windmilled through the air as he flew.

The truck, door flapping, receded into the distance. They were alone, with only the lights of Mecca a few miles away lighting the desert sky.

Perkins tore some skin off his knee and realized that he had also wrenched it upon landing. He lay on the ground just off the road. The other two men, one bleeding from an elbow abrasion, the other with a red spot on his face where he had scraped it against the sand, helped Perkins to his feet.

Perkins’s knee gave out and he crumbled to the ground.

“Take the phone I was given,” he said, reaching into his pocket and handing it to one of the men, “and push number one. Explain what happened to whoever answers.”

BACK ON THE Oregon, Hanley reached for the ringing telephone.

“Okay, hold on a second,” he said after the man explained.

“Get me GPS on this signal,” he shouted to Stone, who punched the commands into the computer.

“Got a lock,” Stone said a minute or so later.

“Is there a spot off to the side of the road where you’re not visible?” Hanley asked the man.

“We’re right alongside a wash,” the man said. “There’s a dune above.”

“Start climbing the dune and take cover,” Hanley said. “Leave the line open—I’ll get back to you in a second.”

Reaching for another phone, Hanley dialed the number of the CIA station chief for Saudi Arabia on the number Overholt had given him. “This is the contractors,” he said when the man answered. “Do you have any agents in Mecca right now?”

“Sure,” the station chief answered. “We have a Saudi national on the pad.”

“Does he have a car?”

“He drives a Pepsi delivery truck.”

“We need him to drive to these GPS coordinates,” Hanley said, “and pick up three men. Can you do that?”

“Hold on,” the station chief said as he dialed the Pepsi driver’s cell phone.

Hanley could hear him explaining in the background.

“He’s leaving now,” the station chief said, “he thinks it’s about twenty minutes away.”

“Tell him to honk when he reaches the area,” Hanley said. “Our men will come out of hiding then.”

“Where is he taking them?” the station chief asked.

“Jeddah.”

“I’ll call if there are any problems.”

“No problems,” Hanley said. “We don’t like any problems.”

Hanley hung up on the station chief, then grabbed the other phone and explained the plan.

HANLEY MAY NOT have liked problems but that was exactly what he was faced with.

The conference room was filled with Seng, Ross, Reyes, Lincoln, Meadows, Murphy, Crabtree, Gannon, Hornsby and Halpert. All ten of them seemed to be talking at once.

“We can’t do anything from the air,” Lincoln said, “they’ll see that coming.”

“No time to tunnel,” Ross said.

“The key,” Halpert said to Crabtree, “was how Hickman got it out in the first place.”

“I can arrange a pyrotechnic display to divert them,” Murphy said, smiling at Hornsby, “but we’re here on the Oregon, in the Mediterranean, and they’re there, in Saudi.”

“Tear gas?” Reyes offered to the room.

“Cut the power?” Meadows mentioned.

Seng stood up. “Okay, people,” he said, “let’s get some order here.”

As the highest-ranking man, he was in charge of the brainstorming session.

Seng walked over to the coffeepot to pour another cup. He was talking as he walked. “We have less than an hour to come up with a cohesive plan the team on the ground can execute if we want to do this thing tonight—and we do.”

He finished pouring the coffee and walked back to the table. “Like Halpert said—how did Hickman get the meteorites switched in the first place?”

“He had to somehow disable the guards,” Meadows said. “There is no other way he could have pulled if off.”

“Then why wasn’t the theft discovered soon after,” Seng asked, “and reported?”

“He had an inside man,” Murphy said, “that’s the only way.”