“We know that will be difficult, Your Highness,” said Harvath.

“More difficult than you can imagine,” replied Abdullah wearily. “Prince Hamal is my son.”

EIGHTY-NINE

Hamal is your son?” repeated Harvath.

“The result of an indiscretion in my youth of which I certainly am not proud,” said Abdullah, looking away.

“While I have been largely successful in keeping his lineage quiet, the boy has been nothing but a source of constant distress for me.”

“You’ll forgive me for asking, Your Highness, but why have you let him live here? Why not banish him? Send him to Europe or America, anywhere but here where he has been making so much trouble for you?” said Reynolds.

“You don’t have children, do you, Mr. Reynolds?” replied the Crown Prince.

Reynolds shook his head.

Abdullah smiled the smile not of an all-powerful ruler but of a father. “If you did, you would understand that I would rather cut off my own arm than to see my son forced from the land of his birth. That’s not to say that I didn’t try. I thought that if he had someone to travel with, another worldly young man, a young man of Arab birth, but of a second cultural influence, he might open up and decide life outside this kingdom was more to his liking.”

Harvath didn’t know why, but suddenly there was that ping from a remote corner of his mind as connection of some sort was made. “Who was this traveling companion you selected for your son, Your Highness?”

“His family was from Abha, a small city in the southern province of Asir. The family’s name was-”

“Alomari,” said Harvath, putting it all together and finishing Abdullah’s sentence for him. “You entrusted your son to the companionship of Khalid Sheik Alomari.”

It was the first time Harvath had ever seen a major head of state lose his composure. “I didn’t know how evil he was. How could I?”

“You are the ruler of the Saudi Arabian Kingdom,” replied Harvath. “You have amazing resources at your disposal. Why didn’t you use them?”

“I did!” he asserted. “I was too embarrassed to air my dirty laundry to my minister, so I asked his second in command to do the checking for me.”

“You asked Faruq,” said Harvath.

Abdullah, his head hung low, responded, “Yes. It was Faruq, and along with the Wahhabis, they succeeded in turning my son against me.”

There was still a piece of the puzzle Harvath felt he was missing-a piece that was the key to helping all of the others floating around in his mind to fall into place. “I know this is a delicate question, and please forgive me, Your Highness, but it is something I have to ask.”

“What is your question?”

“From you, your son can claim direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad.”

“This is correct.”

“Hamal’s mother. You said she was a foreigner. What country was she from?”

For a moment, the Crown Prince seemed to be at peace, as if he was reliving happier memories from long ago. “We met in Cyprus. A man who had been involved in selling weapons to my brother, King Fahad, for our army introduced me to her. I was a young man filled with the world and forgetful of my responsibilities. She was the most beautiful creature I have ever seen. I was completely captivated by her.”

“Her nationality, Your Highness,” repeated Harvath. “What was it?”

“Turkish. She was of Ottoman descent.”

“And the man who introduced you? The man who had been involved in selling weapons to your brother?”

“Ozan Kalachka.”

And with that, Harvath knew who the new caliph was going to be.

NINETY

Crown Prince Abdullah agreed to Harvath’s next request on two conditions. The first condition was that he promise not to kill his son. The second was that Harvath, Reynolds, and Alcott convert to Islam before being allowed to enter the holy city of Mecca.

While the second condition came as a surprise to Jillian, Harvath and Reynolds both knew it was not the first time the Royal Family had made such a demand. When the French GIGN team had gone in to help liberate the holy city from radical fundamentalists in the 1970s, they had done so not as French Catholics, but as newly converted followers of Islam.

Once the trio’s temporary conversion, which had been conducted on the tarmac of the King Fahad Air Base, was complete, they climbed aboard a Royal Air Force UH60 Blackhawk helicopter with a team of National Guard Special Warfare soldiers. Dressed in urban camouflage, the Special Warfare team was as serious a group of men as Harvath had ever seen. Outfitted with 5.56mm M4 automatic rifles, 9mm H amp;K MP5 sub-machineguns and two M700 sniper rifles, it was obvious the Crown Prince’s handpicked team had come to play.

A half mile out, the chopper’s pilot radioed to make sure the local security forces were in place and, upon confirmation, swooped in low and fast on their approach.

As they neared the gates of Prince Hamal’s sprawling compound in an industrial neighborhood on the dusty outskirts of Mecca, the two AH64 Apache attack helicopters escorting them opened up with a barrage of Hydra 70 rockets and an onslaught of heavy lead from their 30mm cannons.

Hamal’s security force was taken completely by surprise, but they soon regrouped and mounted their response. Battle-hardened mujahadeen who had fought in Afghanistan against both the Soviets and the Americans, the men responded instantly.

Before anyone in the Blackhawk knew what was happening, the early morning sky was filled with the contrails of rocket-propelled grenades. Though their pilot did his best to avoid being struck, one of the rockets found its mark, shearing off the rear tail rotor. The pilot yelled for everyone to hold on as the helicopter was launched into a violent spin.

The bird whipped around in circles as it lost altitude and the packed earth of Hamal’s main courtyard rushed up to meet it. Harvath could hear gunfire, but with the enormous force created by their spin, it was all he could do to hold onto his breakfast, much less figure out where any of the shots were coming from.

The Blackhawk slammed into the ground, its spring-loaded safety seats barely breaking their fall or, in Reynolds’s case, not breaking his fall at all as his leg snapped on impact.

To the Special Warfare unit’s credit, they were out the door, weapons hot, before Harvath even had his seatbelt unfastened. Rushing over to Reynolds, he tried to assess the man’s injuries, but Reynolds waved him away.

With Jillian’s help, he pulled Reynolds as gently as possible from the wreckage of the helicopter and propped him against the mud wall of a large cistern.

Jacking a round into Reynolds’s twelve-gauge, Harvath handed it to her and told Jillian to keep her head down as he took off after the Special Warfare team.

Ten feet away he heard the roar of Reynolds’s Remington and turned in time to see one of Hamal’s security people fall facedown into the dirt. Behind a cloud of blue gunsmoke, Alcott flashed Harvath the thumbs-up. Obviously she had learned something from shooting rabbits in Cornwall. That was the second time she had saved his life.

Getting his head back in the game, Harvath raised the MP5 provided to him by the Special Warfare unit and slipped into the main building. By the time he reached the team members inside, he had three tangos to his credit, and with every man he dropped, he quickly searched each face for any resemblance to the two militants they were still looking for.

Inside, Harvath followed the unit as they plowed through wave after wave of gun-toting jihadis intent on defending whatever or whoever lay at the center of the compound.

By the time they reached the center, the team was faced with a set of stairs going up to the second story, as well as a door that led somewhere down belowground. Knowing Arab terrorists’ penchant for using tunnels, especially when under siege, Harvath chose to accompany the part of the team that was going below grade.