As the highest-ranking m
an, he was in charge of the brainstorming session.
Seng walked over to the coffeepot to pour another cup. He was talking as he walked. “We have less than an hour to come up with a cohesive plan the team on the ground can execute if we want to do this thing tonight—and we do.”
He finished pouring the coffee and walked back to the table. “Like Halpert said—how did Hickman get the meteorites switched in the first place?”
“He had to somehow disable the guards,” Meadows said. “There is no other way he could have pulled if off.”
“Then why wasn’t the theft discovered soon after,” Seng asked, “and reported?”
“He had an inside man,” Murphy said, “that’s the only way.”
“We checked out the guards,” Seng said. “If one of them was on to what was happening, he’d be out of Mecca by now. They’re all still on the job.”
The conference room was quiet for a moment as the team thought.
“You said you checked out the guards,” Linda Ross said, “so you have the schedules and such?”
“Sure,” Seng said.
“Then the only way I see this going down is to switch all four,” Ross said.
“That’s good,” Halpert said, “hit them at shift change—replace the oncoming guards with our team.”
“Then what?” Seng asked.
“Turn off the power to all of Mecca,” Reyes said, “and have them make the switch.”
“But then we have four guards that will be found at the next shift change,” Seng said.
“Boss,” Gannon said, “by then the teams from Qatar will be safely away and the Saudis can do what they will.”
The room was quiet for a second as Seng thought.
“It’s crude,” he said at last, “but doable.”
“Sometimes you need to split a coconut with a rock to get to the milk,” Gannon said.
“I’ll take it to Hanley,” Seng said, rising.
WHILE THE PLANNING session on the Oregon was finishing, Skutter and his team found one of the hatches leading into the tunnel beneath the Prophet’s Mosque and slipped inside. They were only five minutes underground when the first of the explosive packages was located.
“Spread out up the tunnel,” Skutter said to the others, “and find out how many of these there are in here.”
Then he turned to the only man on his team with any training in demolition. “What do you think?”
The man smiled, reached in his pocket for wire cutters and pulled them out. Reaching down, he pulled up a wire and snipped it in two. Finding a few others, he cut those as well, and then started unwrapping the duct tape from the pipe.
“Crude but damned powerful is how I’d describe these,” the man said, laying the C-6 and the dynamite separately on the ground of the tunnel.
“That’s it?” Skutter said in exasperation.
“That’s it,” the man said. “One thing, however.”
“What’s that?”
“Be careful and don’t kick or drop the dynamite or anything,” the man said. “Depending on its age, it could be unstable.”