Sacred Stone

From the outside, the Akbar appeared to be a floating palace owned by someone ultrarich. Almost no one would guess that she housed a terrorist cell. Along with the leader, Al-Khalifa, and the follower, Esky—both now on shore—were six more men. Two were Kuwaitis, two were Saudis, and there was one Libyan and one Egyptian. All of the men were infused with fundamentalist Muslim rhetoric. And all were ready to die for their cause.

“We’re cleared to leave port,” the captain said into a handheld radio.

“Once you’re free of the outer harbor, begin steaming at full speed,” Al-Khalifa ordered from shore. “I’ll rendezvous with you in an hour and a half.”

“Yes, sir,” the captain answered.

Al-Khalifa slid the small telephone back into his front pocket and then stared at the electrical panel in the basement of the hotel again. “Place the charges there,” he said to Esky, pointing to the main trunk line. “After the alarm sounds and it goes dark, meet me at the lower stairwell as we planned.”

Esky nodded and began molding the C-6 explosive around the aluminum pipe. He was reaching into his pocket for the firing wires and triggers as Al-Khalifa walked away. Crossing through the underground parking garage, Al-Khalifa stopped, opened the rear of a van, looked inside, and then closed it up and walked across the lot again.

Opening the door to the emergency stairwell, he began climbing up flights of stairs.

Once he’d reached the floor directly under the Qatari emir’s suite of rooms, he used his card key to enter a room that had been rented by his shell company. Al-Khalifa glanced at the bed he had flipped up against the wall earlier that day. Then he examined the strange-looking red-painted machine sitting on the area of the floor where the bed had formerly resided. Up near the ceiling was a four-foot-diameter diamond-tipped circular saw blade that looked like a giant version of what a woodworker would use to bore a hole in the side of a birdhouse. The blade was attached to a stainless steel shaft powered by hydraulic rams. Below the shaft was a rectangular metal box that housed the diesel engine that was used to power the boring unit. Under the engine box was an axle and automotive-sized wheels that allowed the unit to be towed where it was needed. A portable hand-control panel with a twenty-foot cable allowed the machine to be remotely operated.

When he lowered the blade, there were six feet of clearance between it and the ceiling. There was a square piece of plywood and a ladder placed alongside the machine. The entire affair had been brought to the room in parts over a period of weeks and then assembled. Maids had been kept out by giving the front desk strict orders to not have anyone enter the room.

The unit was used on construction sites to bore through concrete in order to lay cables.

Al-Khalifa figured it would go through a floor just fine.

THE EMIR OF Qatar was sleeping peacefully on the floor above. Security teams from the Corporation were passing the night on duty in rooms across the hall and adjacent to the emir’s suite. They were sure the snatch would go down tonight. In the room across the hall, Jones and Meadows carefully watched the remote cameras. To the left of the emir’s suite, Monica Crabtree made notes while Cliff Hornsby cleaned a handgun. In the room on the right side of the suite, Hali Kasim and Franklin Lincoln were picking at a platter of sandwiches as they waited.

There was nothing to indicate what was about to happen.

ONE FLOOR BELOW, Al-Khalifa placed a pair of night-vision goggles over his eyes, then fingered the remote control and stared at his watch. The seconds ticked past until the hand swept across 3 A.M. Then Al-Khalifa felt a rumble through the floors of the building and the lights went dead.

Al-Khalifa pushed the starter and the boring machine roared to life. Pressing the button to raise the ram, he watched as the shaft and spinning blade headed toward the ceiling. As soon as the blade made contact with the ceiling, it tore into the drywall and wooden supports, spewing wood slivers and dust into the room. The blade was through the ceiling in less than ten seconds, and fresh air from above filtered down. Lowering the ram, Al-Khalifa tossed the plywood sheet across the sharp prongs of the blade, then grabbed the control box again, climbed onto the plywood, and raised the ram with the power to the blade shut off. A second later he was up in the emir’s room and stepped onto the floor.

Through the night-vision goggles, Al-Khalifa could see someone sitting in bed, rubbing his eyes. Sprinting across the suite, he grabbed a chair and jammed it under the doorknob, then raced back to the emir’s bed.