WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller (24 page)

And it was even worse than they’d all feared.

‘What are our orders, sir?’ Treyborne heard Navarone ask, half a world away.

He thought about giving the SEAL leader
some shit about not following his
last
orders, but decided better of it; Navarone had seen a situation and did what he’d thought was right; there was no point in armchair quarterbacking him, especially when he had so much else on his plate.

‘Has the weapon been stockpiled there?’ Treyborne asked at last.

‘Affirmative sir, personnel say that it’s stored here and all over the camp.’

Treyborne exhaled slowly. He knew th
at Navarone and his men had raided the laboratory just in time; the prisoners who had been rounded up that morning were not just due to be experimented on, but were to be the real thing. Major Ho Sang-ok had arrived from Pyongyang to set the ball rolling. The hijack of the weapon had ruined the RGB’s original plan, and Ho had been forced to improvise.

If Navarone and his men had got there just a few hours later, the weapon would already have been on its way to South Korea.

‘Can the stockpiles be destroyed?’ Treyborne asked next.

‘Yes sir, but only by extremely high temperatures, and we don’t know for sure exactly where it’s contained. Might be multiple locations around the camp, and we might not get it all.’

Treyborne nodded to himself. ‘Okay son, I’ll have to go to General Cooper and probably Olsen too, and you know what the order’s gonna be.’

‘Yes sir,’ Navarone said.

‘So I suggest you get the hell out of there as fast as you can.’

‘What about the other prisoners, sir?’

Treyborne paused, and closed his eyes. He knew what would happen to anyone who was left in the camp.

‘Just get you and your men the hell out of there as fast as you can, Navarone. Do you understand me?’

Treyborne wasn’t at all surprised when Navarone didn’t reply; the silence at the other end of the line said it all.

Shaking his head, he shouted for the nearest aide. ‘You!’ he called out. ‘Get General Olsen on the line and organize an emergency meeting of the National Security Council.
Immediately.
’

Navarone knew what the generals’ orders would be.

Camp 14 would be entirely obliterated by an air strike, a couple of B-2
Spirit stealth bombers dropping their payloads of 30,000 pound Massive Ordinance Penetrator bunker bombs on the place and reducing it to ashes.

The horrifying, evil weapon developed there would be gone forever; and yet so would nearly four thousand prisoners, including an unknown amount of women and children.

Navarone thought quickly. Even in an emergency, it would take an hour or so for authorization; and the B-2s were all based at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, over six thousand miles away. At six hundred miles an hour, it would take them at least ten hours to get here.

So he had a ten to twelve hour window.

Navarone stroked his chin as he thought about the prisoners; about the odds.

Yes,
he thought.
Yes.

We
just might make it.

7

Riyadh Zoo was a relatively small affair, based right in the center of the city. Quraishi had accompanied Cole in a black Mercedes sedan with two security guards from the Ministry of Interior. Quraishi had claimed it was standard practice when ministers travelled through Riyadh, and Cole had had no reason to doubt him. He had wondered about the second sedan which had followed them all the way through the city streets, though.

The two security guards followed from a distance as Cole and Quraishi passed through the large steel gates into the dusty concrete mass of the zoo, waved through by the ticket officer. Cole noticed immediately that the zoo was eerily quiet. In fact, save for a few people who obviously worked there, Cole could see no other visitors whatsoever.

There was a lot more excitement directly outside, where a private company from Dubai was offering hot air balloon flights across the city; there had been a queue down the street.

Cole
looked around, then back to Quraishi, who was strolling peacefully past deserted kiosks, pink flamingos to one side splashing in some dark water which only half-filled the concrete bowl which was their home.

Cole had seen happier places.

‘Is the zoo not a popular destination?’ Cole asked Quraishi.

‘Oh, it is one of Riyadh’s most visited attractions,’ Quraishi replied. ‘But today, it is closed for maintenance. I’m not one for crowds, you see, and I much prefer it this way. Luckily, the management and I have an understanding.’

As Cole watched workers nervously moving out of Quraishi’s way, determined to avoid eye contact of any sort, he could only begin to wonder what that understanding was.

The whole situation seemed suspicious to Cole; he had been taken to a closed tourist attraction – he had noticed that the gates had been resealed behind them
by the man from the ticket booth – and was being followed by two armed security guards, with another car full waiting outside. As far as he knew, Quraishi had no reason to suspect him; but on the other hand, maybe Jeb Richards
had
said something? He might only have mentioned a rogue US agent, and Quraishi might have thought the timing of ‘Dan Chadwick’s’ visit was simply too coincidental.

But even if Quraishi
was
setting Cole up, what choice did he have? He needed answers, and he wasn’t going to get them by playing it safe. And so he decided to play Quraishi’s little game and see what happened.

As they walked through the dusty alleys of the city zoo, Quraishi gave Cole a running commentary –
here are the kangaroos, there are the parrots, over on the right you can see the elephants
; on and on it went, but Cole had seen better animals pretty much everywhere. The ones held here seemed uniformly dull, depressed and unhappy.

‘Ah,’ Quraishi said with a smile, ‘and here we have my favorite.’ He gestured with his hand to a sunken pool to their left. The surface was still, but when Cole raised his hand to cut out the glare of the sun, he could see small, rough shapes moving silently through the water.

Eyes and snouts.

‘American alligators,’ Quraishi informed him.
‘
Alligator mississippiensis.
Members of the same family are said to date back as far as the Cretaceous. Incredible creatures. They will eat anything, from fruit to large mammals, from snails to automobile license plates. Even men,’ he added, his expression blank.

When Cole didn’t respond, Quraishi smiled and turned back to the pool, moving closer. Cole noticed that the two security guards were also getting closer, and he could feel the adrenalin start to work its magic on him, readying him for anything that might happen.

‘But on the other hand,’ Quraishi explained, ‘they can sometimes live for weeks – even months – with no food whatsoever.’ He turned back to Cole. ‘You can see why they have survived for so many millions of years,’ he said. ‘They are perfectly evolved killing machines.’

‘You believe in evolution?’ Cole
asked, now right at the water’s edge next to Quraishi. ‘I thought Allah created everything that we see.’

‘He did,’ Quraishi said, seemingly undisturbed by Cole’s ruse to upset him. ‘I appreciate that some of my fellow believers claim that this means that evolution could not happen, but I myself fail to see why the two things should be mutually exclusive. Blame it on my western education, perhaps. As far back as the nineteenth century, Islamic scholars have supported Darwin’s theories. Jamal-al-Din al-Afghani, for instance, agreed that life will always compete with life, and the strongest will survive. There are numerous references to the emergence of life in the universe in the Qur’an, and many respected men have explained how there is no contradiction between these and the scientific theory of evolution.’

Cole sensed the two security guards directly behind him now, and turned to see their Uzi submachine guns aimed at his back. So Quraishi’s little speech had been little more than a distraction; whether it reflected what the man believed was irrelevant, and unknowable. Sociopaths like Quraishi were able to fashion any reality they desired if it served their purposes.

Cole moved his head, taking in the three men stationed on the parapets of the high walls which surrounded the zoo, aiming Soviet-era – but no less deadly for that – Dragunov sniper rifles at him. The men from the second car, Cole mused as he turned back to Quraishi.

‘Okay,’ Cole said indifferently. ‘What do you want?’

‘I would like very much to know who you really are,’ Quraishi replied in a voice that was still friendly. ‘And if I don’t find out, I would like very much to feed you piece by piece to my little friends here.’

Quraishi gestured with a sweep of his hand to the alligators swimming languidly in the pool before them, and Cole for an instant saw what lay behind the man’s eyes.

And it was only then that he realized how much trouble he was in.

Quraishi and his guards had a different approach to feeding Cole to the alligators than Cole himself had used with al-Zayani and the sharks.

Whereas Cole had strung the terrorist financier upside down, so that his head was just inches from the water, Cole was being held down the right way up on the concrete poolside, the water lapping gently against his feet. His shoes and socks had been removed, and he could feel the hot sun warming his skin.

The difference was that Cole had just been trying to scare al-Zayani; there
were
no sharks, and even if there had been, Cole wouldn’t have fed him to them. He wanted the man to talk, and he knew that just the threat of it would be enough.

Here, though, it was clear that Quraishi wanted Cole to talk, and the fact that his feet were in the water meant that his captor was prepared to have the alligators
really
start to eat him. If his head was near the water, their first bite would render Cole useless; if they started on his legs, Quraishi would still have plenty of time to extract a confession before they reached anything truly vital. If he didn’t pass out from pain, shock and blood loss first, of course.

The water was already bloody, Quraishi’s men having thrown in some raw meat from a large pail they’d brought down to the pool.

Cole watched in detached terror as the alligators’ huge jaws snapped out of the water and swallowed the small carcasses whole.

‘I hope it’s all Halal,’ Cole said, trying to keep himself calm.

Quraishi spat at him, then laughed. ‘Very funny, Mr. Chadwick,’ he said. ‘Or whoever you are. I’m sure you understand that we are using the meat to bring them in closer, get them interested in those little feet of yours. They are cautious for the most part,’ he carried on conversationally, as if giving a lecture. ‘Sometimes they can be a little lethargic, even sluggish. They need some . . .
encouragement
, before they start on the real feast.’

Quraishi snapped his fingers, and an assistant appeared with a cup of tea for him. The terrorist leader lounged back languidly, enjoying the sun. He seemed perfectly relaxed, and Cole was sure that he’d done this before, probably more than once.

Cole watched as the gators snatched the meat out of the water, rolling over and over as they ripped and swallowed, teeth tearing, blood spilling.

As they finished, they continued to swim, eyeing the shore warily, as if wondering whether to come back.

‘They will not take long to make the decision, my friend,’ Quraishi said pleasantly. ‘Then they will come back. Or one will, at least, just to test you out. Probably that one there,’ he said, pointing at a large gator which appeared slightly darker than the others, circling closer. ‘He’ll take a foot at least, perhaps two. My men here will pull you back, make sure he doesn’t get everything, but it will mean that your entire leg will probably be torn off below the knee.’ He smiled. ‘I cannot promise that the experience will be completely painless.’

‘Okay,’ Cole said, steadying his hammering heart rate with pure strength of will, ‘what is it you want to know?’

‘Ah,’ Quraishi said in disappointment. ‘Ready to talk so soon?’ He watched the gators for several more moments, then looked back at Cole. ‘Let us start with your real name. Then we can move on to who you work for, what you know, and who you have told.’ He gestured at the hungry alligators, some of which were starting to nose their way onto the poolside. His men chased them back into the water. ‘If they let you get that far, of course.’

‘How about an exchange?’
Cole asked, trying to ignore the gators.

‘
An exchange?’ Quraishi asked as he sipped at his tea. ‘How do you mean?’

‘I’ll tell you what you want to know, and you tell me what I want to know.’

Quraishi laughed. ‘But what possible use can it do you now?’ he asked. ‘You must realize that you are going to die here, I will not insult your intelligence by pretending otherwise. The only question that should bother you is how painful the experience is going to be.’ He gestured to the murky green waters of the gator pool. ‘You are hardly in a position to barter.’

‘If I’m going to die anyway, why not tell me something?’ Cole asked
, his feet pulling back reflexively from the water as the big dark gator nudged his snout towards them. ‘Like what the weapon is that you stole from the Fu Yu Shan, and what you’re planning on doing with it.’

Quraishi laughed again. ‘Oh, I see; you want me to tell you my entire plan? So that – what? So that you can go to your grave knowing that you failed to prevent the biggest massacre in US history? Would that make you happy?’

‘Try me,’ Cole said seriously.

‘Oh, I don’t
think so,’ Quraishi said. ‘Even my men don’t know.’ He pointed to the guards who were restraining Cole on the concrete slope, others who were monitoring the gators, keeping them away with long poles until their boss gave them the word. ‘If I told you, I would have to have them all killed to keep them quiet. And you know that the Qur’an forbids unnecessary killing.’

It was Cole’s turn to laugh. ‘It’s funny how you people twist the Qur’an to support whatever suits you at the time.’

‘
You people?
’ Quraishi asked with a raise of an eyebrow. ‘It is racist comments like that have damned your country.’

‘Racist? I’m not talking about Muslims. I’m talking about
terrorists
. Cowardly little piss-ants like you, nothing better than common criminals.
You
people.’ Cole spat at Quraishi’s feet. ‘The scum of the earth.’

Cole received a backhanded blow from one of the men who held him, but Quraishi held out a hand to stop him. ‘No,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘No.’ He smiled. ‘If this man wants to play games, we can accommodate him.’

Quraishi turned to the men keeping the gators at bay with their poles, and snapped his fingers. They moved back at his signal, and the alligators crept immediately closer.

‘We’ll continue our conversation after breakfast,’ he said with a smile.

Quraishi watched as his favorite, the nearly black alligator he’d called
Adil
– the just one – inched closer to his captive’s bare feet.

The man who had come to him as Daniel Chadwick tried to pull them back from the water, but his men continued to hold him in place, immobile. The unknown man’s hands were restrained, but his legs were free, and Quraishi looked on with enjoyment as they
tried to kick out, their jerking actions an indication of the panic the man must now be feeling.

He was brave, of course; most intelligence agents were, due to the nature of their work. But he would tell Quraishi everything after just the first little nibble from Adil’s powerful jaws.

He wondered what it meant, the presence of this man here. Was he same man Richards had warned him about? And if he was, was he really working alone? And if he wasn’t, who else knew about his trip to Riyadh? Who else knew that the man had gone to the Ministry to meet Quraishi? Who else could link Quraishi to recent events?

Quraishi sipped his tea as he waited for the first screams. Did it even matter anymore? He had already accepted the fact that his life would soon change. His plan acknowledged that his role would be revealed sooner or later. But Quraishi welcomed this; it would be a relief to finally leave the public life he had created for himself.
The
lie.