Sacred Stone

“Everything is compartmentalized,” Kasim said. “Each piece of this operation will remain separate until it is time to bring it together. Now we all need to get some rest and take turns getting cleaned up. I want everyone to eat a good meal and try to relax. Soon we will be called, and when we are, it’ll be go time.”

The team nodded.

THE SUN WAS setting as Adams approached the Akbar from the Red Sea. Passing over the yacht once to alert the crew, he lined up over the stern and dropped slowly down. Al-Khalifa’s Kawasaki helicopter was still on the heliport, so he hovered a few feet above the yacht, just above a clear spot on the stern. The CIA agent dropped Abraham’s Stone safely packed in a box with padding to the deck, then leapt off.

“Overholt’s men are waiting for you back at Ras Abu Shagara,” Cabrillo said. “Will you be okay?”

“Yes, sir,” Adams said.

The CIA agent was carrying the box toward the rear door of the Akbar. Cabrillo stepped off and crab-walked out from under the rotor blade. Adams lifted off again.

AT JUST THAT moment Cabrillo’s phone rang.

“Threat one is eliminated,” Hanley said. “The cargo containers are on board a ship just now leaving Bahrain for Qatar.”

“No problems?”

“All went as planned,” Hanley said. “Three men will meet the Akbar’s shore boat in Jeddah. You’ll need to have them transported out to the yacht—their part in the operation is finished.”

Kent Joseph, part of a Florida team who had been contracted to handle the Akbar for the Corporation, poked his head out of the door, and Cabrillo smiled and raised his finger for the captain to wait a minute.

“Skutter?”

“He has the diagrams and we’re sending him and the team in this evening,” Hanley said. “If that’s successful, it’ll be two down, one to go.”

“How are you coming on that plan?” Cabrillo asked.

“I’ll call you back soon.”

The telephone went dead and Cabrillo placed it in his pocket. Then he smiled and reached his hand out to Joseph.

“Juan Cabrillo,” he said, shaking. “I’m with the Corporation.”

“Is that like the Agency?” Joseph asked.

“Heck, no,” Cabrillo said, smiling. “I’m not a spy.”

Joseph nodded and motioned to the door.

“But he is,” Cabrillo said, waving toward the CIA agent.

53

IT WAS DARK when Coast Guard Petty Officer Perkins and the other two men inside the last truck in the convoy felt their vehicle begin to slow. Perkins peered out the crack between the cargo doors. There were scattered buildings along the road and the lights of a car following. He waited almost five minutes before the car, finding a clear spot in the road to pass the trucks, accelerated and sped past.

“Okay, guys,” Perkins said, “we need to jump out.”

Upon climbing inside, Perkins had rigged the door to open again so exiting was not a problem. The problem was the speed of the truck—it was still moving at over thirty miles an hour. He watched the side of the road out the rear.

“Men,” he said a minute later, “there is really no easy way to do this. Our best shot is to wait until we see sand along the left side of the truck, then you two grab the top of the door and I’ll push it open. The swing should get you near the side of the road—just drop off as soon as possible.”

“Won’t the driver notice?” one of the men asked.

“Maybe if he’s staring in the rearview mirror at that exact instant,” Perkins admitted, “but the door should swing back afterward, and if he doesn’t notice it immediately, he should be farther down the road before he catches on that the door is open.”

“What about you?” the third man asked.

“All I can do,” Perkins said, “is run and jump as far as I can.”

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.