twenty armed men lying low against the rocky ground behind them.
"With these I can see everything. There was a leak."
"Why weren't we informed?"
There was no reply. None was needed. They had not been informed because of naked fear. Fadi, had he known, would have killed them all-every last one of the Ethiopian transporters. Such were the wages of absolute intimidation.
Fadi, peering through powerful 12x50 Russian military binoculars, scanned to his right to keep Martin Lindros in his sights. The 12x50s provided a dizzyingly small field of view but more than made up for it in their detail. He had seen that the leader of the group-the deputy director of CI-was using both a rad detector and a Geiger counter. This American knew what he was about.
Fadi, a tall, broad-shouldered man, possessed a decidedly charismatic demeanor. When he spoke, everyone in his presence fell silent. He had a handsome, powerful face, the color of his skin deepened further by desert sun and mountain wind. His beard and hair were long and curling, the inky color of a starless midnight. His lips were full and wide. When he smiled the sun seemed to have come down from its place in the heavens to shine directly on his disciples. For Fadi's avowed mission was messianic in nature: to bring hope where there was no hope, to slaughter the thousands that made up the Saudi royal family, to wipe their abomination off the face of the earth, to free his people, to distribute the obscene wealth of the despots, to restore the rightful order to his beloved Arabia. To begin, he knew, he must delink the symbiotic relationship between the Saudi royal family and the government of the United States of America. And to do that he must strike at America, to make a clear statement that was as lasting as it was indelible.
What he must not do was underestimate the capacity of Americans to endure pain. This was a common mistake among his extremist comrades, this is what got them into trouble with their own people, this more than anything else was the source of a life lived without hope.
Fadi was no fool. He had studied the history of the world. Better, he had learned from it. When Nikita Khrushchev had said to America, "We will bury you!" he had meant it in his heart as well as in his soul. But who was it that had been buried? The USSR.
When his extremist comrades said, "We have many lifetimes to bury America," they were referring to the endless supply of young men who gained their majority each year, from whom they could choose the martyrs to die in battle. But they gave no thought whatsoever to the deaths of these young men. Why should they? Paradise lay waiting with open arms for the martyrs. Yet what, really, had been gained? Was America living without hope? No. Did these acts push America toward a life without hope? Again, no. So what was the answer?
Fadi believed with all his heart and his soul-and most especially with his formidable intellect-that he had found it.
Keeping track of the deputy director through his 12x50s, he saw that the man seemed reluctant to leave. He felt like a bird of prey as he gazed down on the target site. The arrogant American soldiers had climbed into the helicopter, but their commander-Fadi's intel did not extend to his name-would not allow his leader to remain on the plateau unguarded. He was a canny man. Perhaps his nose smelled something his eyes could not see; perhaps he was only adhering to well-taught discipline. In any case, as the two men stood side by side talking, Fadi knew he would not get a better chance.
"Begin," he said softly to Abbud ibn Aziz without taking his eyes from the lenses.
Beside him, Abbud ibn Aziz took up the Soviet-made RPG-7 shoulder launcher. He was a stocky man, moon-faced with a cast in his left eye, there since birth. Swiftly and surely, he inserted the tapered, finned warhead into the rocket propulsion tube. The fins on the rotating grenade provided stability, assurance that it would hit its target with a high degree of accuracy. When he depressed the trigger, the primary system would launch the grenade at 117 meters per second. That ferocious burst of energy would, in turn, ignite the rocket propulsion system within the trailing tube, boosting the warhead speed to 294 meters per second.