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Azarov’s cell phone was docked in a bulky case that gave it satellite and radio transmission capability. The screen depicted a map of Saudi Arabia’s oil-producing region with blue circles glowing at six locations. Each had been selected by using a combination of weather forecast data from the Russian military and oil reserve estimates from his own consulting firm. A single ISIS team would be sent to each of these locations in order to detonate the dirty bombs he would provide. Overnight, Saudi Arabia would go from being the world’s second-largest oil producer to having capacity less than that of Norway. This would generate a violent economic collapse that would open the door for ISIS and radical antiroyal factions inside the country’s own population.
With no economic motivation, it was unlikely that America would expend much energy protecting a fundamentalist monarchy fond of funding terrorists. More likely, they would move to stabilize the surrounding energy-producing states. But would it be possible? ISIS wasn’t just an external threat in the region. Its growing popularity and deft use of social media made it a cancer that grew in neighborhoods and mosques throughout the Middle East.
The U.S. would struggle to contain the chaos and to shore up the world’s economy, while Maxim Krupin fanned the flames of collapse. Russia would rise from its grave like the bloodsucking ghoul of its folklore.
Azarov focused on the most central of the blue circles on the map and switched to satellite view, zooming in on an abandoned tangle of pipes and tanks more than three hundred meters square. It was the destination of the team he was being forced to lead personally. According to Krupin, it was an optimal position from which to coordinate the operation and deal with any problems that arose.
Much of the steel was still bright silver despite the facility’s having been abandoned almost five years ago. He’d commissioned a 3-D computer model of the structure and had spent endless hours memorizing every staircase, enclosure, and blind corner. In the end, it would likely prove to be a pointless precaution, but he hadn’t survived this long by being careless.
There was a quiet knock on the door and he walked to it, keeping a hand near a holster strapped over his shirt. The two Saudi men on the other side matched the photos he’d been given and he let them in, pointing to a large toolbox in the corner. One of them apparently spoke English, but there was no need for conversation. They had been fully briefed on the operation’s protocols and already possessed the GPS that would lead them to the place where they were to detonate the bomb—in their case, a nondescript and uninhabited swath of desert more than six hundred kilometers to the southwest.
In the unlikely event that they were stopped by authorities, they would be indistinguishable from the myriad Aramco geologists exploring the area for new drill sites. Authorities would never think to examine the toolbox thoroughly enough to find its false bottom. If they did, though, they would find a powerful C-4 charge next to a container full of Pakistani fissile material. And be rewarded with a bullet in the back of the head.
“May Allah smile on you,” Azarov said as they hefted the toolbox and started back to the door. One nodded his understanding and Azarov closed the door behind them.
Both men would happily die for the bizarre illusion that God cared about their brutal and pointless enterprise. That the creator of biology and the laws of physics was reliant on humans to enforce His archaic laws. If God did exist, Azarov was confident that mankind lived and died outside His gaze.
Reminding himself that philosophizing about the Almighty had little bearing on his survival over the next twenty-four hours, Azarov unwrapped a medium-size package that had been delivered just over an hour ago. The detonator inside was designed to his specifications by an eminently reliable Spaniard with whom he had worked in the past.
Kneeling next to another of the toolboxes lined up along the wall, he removed the false bottom and looked down at the explosive charge inside. The detonator connected to it didn’t look substantially different than the one in his hands, and maybe it wasn’t.
It was possible that Krupin was telling the truth; that the men Azarov was to lead into the desert would activate the bomb only after he reached a safe distance. It was a longer leap of faith than he was willing to take, though.
After replacing the existing detonator with his own, he went to his phone and replaced the software Krupin’s people had installed with an application created by his Spanish associate.
Azarov watched it go through its diagnostic cycle, locating the detonator and confirming that all systems were functional. When he had green lights in all categories, he shut down the app and replaced the box’s false bot
tom.
He had considered sending the Russian-made detonator to Madrid for examination, but then decided there would be no profit in it. Whether Krupin intended for him to die in this operation or not was of no importance. He had no intention of doing so. Should the Russian president attempt to press the matter, Azarov would deal with him in the same way he had dealt with so many others.
CHAPTER 49
NORTHEAST OF RIYADH
SAUDI ARABIA
THE sun was up, but visibility was only about a hundred yards due to the swirling sand. The SUV Rapp was driving had been modified to handle the terrain but was still struggling where the unpaved roadbed had softened or drifted over.
They’d crossed into Saudi Arabia about five hours ago at a checkpoint manned by guards sympathetic to ISIS’s mission. Rapp’s best guess was that they were now somewhere east of Hafar Al-Batin, headed south.
He glanced in the rearview mirror at the four men crammed into the backseat and then at the man next to him—Mihran. Rapp hadn’t caught the names of the others and it was hard to ask because he assumed that Eric Jesem had trained with them at the girls’ school. In fact, he was fairly certain that the one sitting directly behind him had been there the night he’d attacked the facility.
“I’m losing the road,” Rapp said in English.
“Shut up and keep going straight,” Mihran responded. He was staring at the screen of a Toughbook attached to a satellite link.
“It would help if I had a sense of where I’m going,” Rapp probed.
“You’re going south, idiot! Now find the road again and drive on it.”
It was clear that he and Mihran were never going to be friends. The man had been clear from the beginning that he despised Americans—even radicalized ones. And while he spoke English quite well, he seemed embarrassed by the fact. His education at the hands of a “godless British female” had been forced on him by moderate Muslim parents and he was determined to make the world pay.
“The weapons reached al-Hofuf and are in the process of being distributed,” Mihran said, switching to Arabic in an unsuccessful effort to isolate Rapp. “The operation has begun.”
Excited conversation erupted in the backseat but Mihran quickly put a stop to it. “We will continue for another half hour and then hold and wait to see if we’re needed. Pray to Allah that we are not.”
“What’s happening?” Rapp asked, as would be expected.
