Sacred Stone

“The trip from Riyadh to Mecca takes six hours,” Jones said. “It’s only four to Bahrain. Once they figure out the containers are missing, you’ll be on a cargo ship bound for Qatar.”

“And you’re sure we can make it through the border checkpoint into Bahrain?”

“It’s all been taken care of.”

“Sweet plan,” Colgan said.

“Good luck.”

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Colgan and the four other men bound for Bahrain made it safely out of the cargo terminal and started down the road. Seven minutes after that, a Coast Guard petty officer named Perkins, along with two others, attached the locators to three trucks in a six-truck convoy, then climbed inside the last truck.

The truck was filled with bottles of water, so at least they would not be thirsty on the six-hour haul to Mecca. If only the truck had had a pallet of M&M’s aboard, the ride would have been more enjoyable.

IT WAS ALMOST noon when Adams, Cabrillo and the CIA agent handling Abraham’s Stone landed at the first fuel stop at Al Ghardaqah, Egypt, at the mouth of Khalij as-Suways on the entrance to the Red Sea.

Overholt not only had the promised fuel, but food, water, coffee and a U.S. Army helicopter mechanic to check the R-44. The mechanic added half a can of oil to the piston engine and did a quick check of the craft, then pronounced the Robinson fit as a fiddle. The three men made a quick bathroom stop then took off again.

The next leg of the flight, some two hundred miles to Aswan, was made in less than two hours at a speed of 125 miles per hour. The helicopter was fueled and checked again and the trio set off.

Aswan to Ras Abu Shagara, the dangling peninsula of land that jutted into the Red Sea across from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, was the longest leg of the flight. Some 350 miles in length, the flight would take nearly three hours.

The Robinson was thirty minutes out of Aswan high above the desert when Adams spoke. “Sirs,” he said, “it will be a couple of hours until the next stop. If you want to get some sleep it’s okay by me.”

The CIA agent in the rear seat nodded, crouched down and pulled his hat down over his eyes.

“You okay, George?” Cabrillo asked. “You’ve been flying a lot lately—how are you holding up?”

“I’m ten by ten, boss,” Adams said, smiling. “I’ll take us down to the Sudan, then across the Red Sea and drop you—once I’m back in Sudan I’ll get some shut-eye.”

Cabrillo nodded. Slowly, as the helicopter droned south, he fell into a sleep.

THE TIME WAS just after 4 P.M. when Hanley on the Oregon made the satellite call to Skutter. With no clear direction yet on how to proceed, Skutter and his team had been milling around the bus terminal waiting for a contact.

“My name is Max Hanley, I’m Mr. Kasim’s superior.”

“What do you want us to do?” Skutter asked quickly.

Several people had approached his team already and only one of the men with him could speak even a smattering of Arabic. If they stayed here any longer they might be detected.

“To your left,” Hanley said, “is a beggar with an old tin plate who looks like he’s sleeping. Do you see him?”

“Yes,” Skutter said.

In between bouts of what looked like napping, the man had been staring at his team for the last twenty minutes.

“Go over to him and place a coin in his plate,” Hanley said.

“We don’t have any coins,” Skutter whispered. “We were only issued bills.”

“Then use the smallest bill you have,” Hanley said. “He will hand you what looks like a religious pamphlet. Take the pamphlet, walk a safe distance away from the terminal to a side street, then find somewhere you can read it without being observed.”

“Then what?”

“Your instructions are inside.”

“Is that all?” Skutter asked.

“For now,” Hanley said, “and good luck.”

SKUTTER DISCONNECTED THEN whispered to one of his men. Then he walked over to the beggar, removed a bill from a stack in his pocket, bent over, and slipped it on the plate.

“Allah will reward you,” the beggar said in Arabic, handing him the pamphlet.

Skutter was bending back to an upright position when the briefest of winks flickered across the beggar’s left eye. Suddenly Skutter was feeling a renewed hope. Making his way away from the bus station followed by the other men, he found a deserted area and read the instructions. It was only a few blocks to his destination and he ate the entire pamphlet as he walked.

“DO NOT GO outside,” the CIA contact said to Kasim and his team at the safe house in Mecca, “do not do anything to draw attention to yourself. There is food, water, and soft drinks in the kitchen.”

“How do we reach you if we need to?” Kasim asked.

“You don’t,” the contact said. “You wait for your people to give you any further instructions. I was told to stock the house, meet you at the terminal and bring you here. That ends my involvement. I wish you luck and Godspeed.”

The CIA man made his way to the door and exited.

“THAT SEEMS ODD,” an army private in Kasim’s team offered.