Blowback

Harvath was about to pull the trigger when he heard movement on the floor of the bottling plant. The local security forces had discovered the tunnel and were now coming up through the trapdoor. Hamal seemed to know he was saved. He looked at Harvath and through his pain managed another laugh. Harvath raised his MP5 and brought it crashing down into the man’s face, knocking out several teeth and rendering him unconscious just as the first of the security forces appeared beneath the platform.

“Prince Hamal is up here, “He yelled in Arabic. “He needs medical attention, and then Prince Abdullah wants him detained.”

Two security forces operatives ran up the stairs, and Harvath used one of their radios to contact an officer at the compound and have him send Jillian through the tunnel.

When she arrived, she was amazed at the extent of what she found. Tens of millions of dollars had been spent creating a sophisticated, meticulously sealed laboratory complete with full decontamination stations. Whoever had built it obviously knew that they were dealing with something extremely lethal.

After putting one of the lab’s full biohazard suits on and clicking her hose in to the supply of fresh oxygen, Jillian made her way through the sets of airlocks until she was inside the main lab itself. Harvath waited for her on the other side of the glass, and they communicated via the intercom system rigged to her suit.

It didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for. Close to a hundred crudely fashioned black vials sat on the shelves of one of the lab’s refrigerators, while nearly ten times that many in purple crowded the shelves of another fridge. They were made from some sort of alloy Jillian had never seen before, and all of them would have fit perfectly in the intricately carved box they had discovered in the depths of the Col de la Traversette.

Upon closer inspection, she saw that the black vials had all been stamped with the same menacing rabid dog’s head with entwined vipers, while the purple ones bore the impression of an odd plant or herb, which she assumed must have been part of the inoculation-antidote combination.

Based on the diagrams taped to the lab’s rear wall, Jillian was able to figure out that both the illness and the inoculation were extremely potent and required only small amounts to do their work. What’s more, the water Hamal was bottling and selling wasn’t from any secret spring but rather the Mecca municipal waterworks.

Harvath knew it would take the U.S. at least a day or more before they could get a specialized team on site to help contain the facility, and his thoughts immediately went to Nick Kampos. Kampos could be on site in a matter of hours, and with his experience with the DEA’s Clandestine Labs Unit, he could help Jillian secure the antidote until the cavalry arrived. Getting hold of Kampos to help out, though, would have to wait.

Rushing back through the tunnel, Harvath arrived at Hamal’s bullet-riddled compound just in time to help Reynolds aboard the CH-47D Chinook helicopter that had been sent to transport the wounded back to the Al Hada hospital adjacent to the King Fahad Air Base.

Once they had lifted off, Harvath used one of the headsets to radio the palace. All of the National Guard troops had been accounted for. There were no signs of the missing militants, and the summit was in the process of wrapping up. Soon it would be all over. Though no attempt had been made on the Wahhabi leadership, Harvath was feeling more nervous about things than he had all day. Removing the headset, he leaned over and shared his concern with Reynolds.

“You think it’s safe leaving her back there?” he yelled above the roar of the rotors, referring to Jillian.

“She’ll be okay. I’m more concerned at this point with the Wahhabi leadership. We know Kalachka’s plan was to kill them during the summit and to have it look like the Royal Family was responsible. But if their men are nowhere near the palace, how the hell do they plan on pulling it off?”

“There’s a motorcade,” replied Reynolds. “Maybe they’re planning on hitting that.”

“Two guys plus the deputy intelligence minister? It’s possible, but Abdullah’s got exceptional security. I think they stole the uniforms so they could get up close to do whatever they’re going to do.”

“Maybe they’ve got more than three guys. Who the hell knows? They could have recruited a hundred people and that uniform box we found in the warehouse was only one out of ten others just like it.”

There was something about that that made sense. There was also a gnawing at the back of Harvath’s mind, as if the answer was already there, just waiting to be teased out. Why did the militants need the uniforms? If they weren’t going to launch their attack from inside the palace, where else would they launch it from? What purpose did the uniforms serve? What would they help them get close to? The most obvious answer was the Wahhabi leadership, but was there another answer?