“Wait a second. You think Hamal and those militants are going to pull the trigger? They’re all Wahhabis. Why would they be party to killing their own religious leaders?”

“Because,” replied Harvath, an adept student of militant Islam, “with Paradise assured for the Wahhabi leadership, if it takes their deaths to bring about a greater good for the rest of the Islamic people, they won’t hesitate to take them out.”

EIGHTY-SEVEN

WESTERN HEJAZI MOUNTAINS

SAUDI ARABIA

With a few well-placed phone calls, Reynolds discovered that just as Kalachka had predicted, the Wahhabi leadership had managed to force the Saudi Royal Family to the table. But because of the rioting, the Royal Family had been afraid to return to Riyadh for the summit. Instead, they had insisted the Wahhabis come to them at their summer capital just north of At’Taif in the Western Hejazi Mountains.

The Royal Family had been relocating to these lush mountains, known as the garden spot of the Saudi Kingdom, for decades in order to avoid the superheated summer temperatures of Riyadh. As a result, all of the most important members of the Royal Family had palaces built in and around At’Taif.

Less than sixty kilometers from the holy city of Mecca, At’Taif was also home to the King Fahad Air Base, which housed both the Royal Saudi Air Force’s 5th Fighter Squadron and the Royal Saudi Air Force’s Western Approach Region Air Defense radar complex, responsible for guarding the kingdom’s airspace against hostile penetration.

With opulent summer palaces lying cheek-by-jowl with modern military complexes, all that was missing from the dysfunctional Saudi dream site was religion, and At’Taif had that too. For almost one hundred years, the area surrounding At’Taif had been the principal stronghold of the ultra-conservative Wahhabi faith. In a sense, for the Wahhabi religious leaders traveling in from Riyadh, it was like coming home.

They arrived by a private jet that had been magnanimously chartered for them, only after they had vociferously complained about the Royal Family’s unwillingness to meet in Riyadh. Everyone knew the relationship between the Monarchy and the Wahhabis was teetering on the edge of disaster and the credibility of both sides hinged on being able to demonstrate that they acted in good faith in everything they did.

Not above subtle power plays, and in fact quite dependant upon them, the Royal Family chose to hold the summit in the most intimidating palace at their disposal, that of Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, de facto ruler of the Saudi Kingdom. In addition to Prince Abdullah, other family members in attendance were Saudi defense minister, Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, and Prince Nawaf bin Abdul Aziz, minister of state intelligence. There was a good chance the summit was going to get very heated, and Abdullah wanted as few witnesses to the hostilities as possible. His family had made a big mistake paying what amounted to protection money to build mosques and schools and contributing to the other pet projects of the radical Wahhabis, and he was sick of them running roughshod over his country. They, not the Royal Family, had set loose upon the world the specter of modern Islamist terrorism and as a result had not only blackened both of Saudi Arabia ’s eyes, but those of the Muslim religion at large. For once and for all, the Wahhabis would listen to him and not vice versa.

With all of the different soldiers standing guard, landing at the King Fahad Air Base reminded Harvath of arriving with the president aboard Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

The early morning air was cool and markedly different from Riyadh as they descended the Citation X’s stairs. Jillian had worked through the night, analyzing her samples and conferring with the Whitcombs and other USAMRIID personnel back at Fort Detrick. Concurrent with their discussions, teams of FBI and Hazmat agents, warrants in hand, were busy raiding the warehouse of Kaseem Najjar, as well as the cash-heavy businesses owned by every name on the list Chip Reynolds had discovered in Prince Hamal’s Riyadh warehouse. Anything and everything that was suspect was placed into airtight containers and transported back to Fort Detrick for further analysis.

Based on the brain tissue samples from Hannibal’s elite guard, the Whitcombs had been able to confirm what Alan had suspected-rabies was indeed a prime component of the illness, and the elite guard had been inoculated against it. But inoculation against rabies alone only increased resistance to the illness-it didn’t make people one hundred percent immune. This information explained why one of the victims strapped to the ceiling of the Provincial Ministry of Police building in Asalaam-a former veterinarian-was still alive when the Stryker Brigade Combat Team arrived. Another part was still missing from the puzzle.

Hoping to buy time, USAMRIID and the CDC had ordered all first responders to be treated with hyperimmune antirabies serum. The Herculean effort to collect enough doses and have them shipped around the country as quickly as possible was now under way.

In the meantime, Harvath had held a lengthy phone conversation with Gary Lawlor. In the belief that standard rabies vaccine had just bought them more time, Lawlor officially bifurcated Harvath’s assignment. Not only was he to do everything he could to uncover both the source and any possible cure for the illness, but he had been additionally instructed to do whatever was necessary to prevent the assassination of the Wahhabi leadership, which all the political minds back in DC agreed would plunge Saudi Arabia into an all-out revolution.

For years, American military and intelligence strategists had been preparing for the possibility of a coup in Saudi Arabia. If the Royal Family was overthrown, a full-blown military operation, codenamed Sandstorm, would go into immediate effect. The plan called for mobilizing U.S. armed forces to slice the eastern Saudi province of al-Hasa off from the rest of the country and place it under American control, thereby preventing the Wahhabi extremists from occupying the world’s largest proven oil reserves. At this point, though, there was just one problem. The intense summer heat made it nearly impossible to fight in full chem-bio combat gear. Until they were inoculated, neither the U.S. nor any of its allies could fully field enough troops to put Operation Sandstorm into effect.

There was also one other problem. Though it had never been proven and was much debated after the Iraq WMD intelligence fiasco, Washington was well aware that Saudi Arabia had pumped over a billion dollars into Pakistan ’s nuclear program. Despite repeated denials by the Saudis, there were many who were willing to stake their careers on their belief that in exchange for their generous contributions to Pakistani scientific advancement, the Saudis received one or more nuclear weapons.

Though Gary Lawlor was reluctant to heap more upon Harvath, he had no choice. Equally as important as getting to the bottom of halting the illness was preventing the Royal House of Saud from losing its grip on power.

Not knowing who might be plotting against the kingdom from the inside, Lawlor was afraid to reach out to anyone in the local diplomatic or intelligence food chain on Harvath’s behalf. It was common knowledge that the office of the Saudi Crown Prince leaked worse than a sieve, so a direct call from the president was out of the question. Finding someone they could trust and who would cooperate with them to get Harvath inside would take time, and time was something they were very quickly running out of. Harvath, though, had an idea and knew someone who might be able to make it happen and make it happen fast-Chip Reynolds.