Day of Wrath

Thorn looked back up toward the top of the tree, calculating how long it would take him to get there and get set. He glanced down at Helen, held up three fingers, and saw her repeat the signal.

Her voice came over the radio again, issuing instructions to Sam Farrell. “Delta Three, this is Two. Set your timer for three minutes on my mark.”

Thorn saw the second hand sweep through the number twelve on his faintly luminous watch face.

“Mark.”

“Got it,” Farrell’s laconic voice replied. “Timer set. I’m backing off.”

Climbing back to his chosen perch was a little more difficult this time — mostly because he had to avoid snagging the Mossberg or any of its attachments. Once in the right spot, he settled carefully into position — straddling a thick bough with both legs, his back firmly planted against the oak tree’s trunk.

Thorn pulled the converted shotgun off his shoulder and carefully sighted down the length of the barrel. His eyes narrowed. A tiny droplet of sweat rolled down his forehead. He shook it off impatiently.

He didn’t need anyone else to tell him how crazy this was — in every detail. The Mossberg line launcher kit was designed to fire precisely shaped flotation or distance heads. With the completely unaerodynamic, six-pronged grappling hook attached, its maximum range and the trajectory would both be wildly imprecise — at a time when precision was at an absolute premium.

If he fired just a fraction of an inch too far up or down, or left or right, the grappling hook and the line it carried would slam through the tangle of the surrounding foliage and veer completely off course.

If his shot fell short or the grapple failed to bite on target, a couple hundred feet of super-strong line was going to fall right over the perimeter fence — triggering every alarm system in the compound.

And millions of people would die when Ibrahim’s strike aircraft reached their chosen targets unmolested and undetected.

Plus, he couldn’t be absolutely sure just how his improvised attachment would affect the shotgun’s aim. There hadn’t been either the time or opportunity to test the jury-rigged system. Besides, he thought wryly, where the hell would you go to practice firing off a grappling hook and eight hundred feet of tightly wound line?

Noise should also have been a factor. Nobody could build a silencer for a 12-gauge shotgun. But at least they had a way to deal with that.

Thorn’s hands steadied. He and Helen had gone over the plan a dozen or more times. And this was the only way that offered them even the ghost of a chance to get far enough inside Ibrahim’s heavily guarded compound to make a difference. Well, he thought calmly, if you only had one roll of the dice, you rolled the dice and prayed that you didn’t crap out.

The second hand on his watch swept past the number twelve for the third time since Helen’s signal.

Now.

Two hundred meters away, on the other side of the compound, a digital timer blinked from 00:00:01 to 00:00:00. An improvised circuit closed, sending electric current through a short length of tungsten filament.

The filament heated rapidly — glowing white.

hot. That, in turn, ignited a fireworks squib. Flame hissed through the gunpowder-filled tube and lit the closest fuse of one of the more than two dozen firecrackers daisy-chained together to a piece of cardboard.

The firecrackers began detonating off one after the other — each small explosion echoing loudly through the trees.

Pop-poppop.pop … Thorn pulled the trigger. The Mossberg kicked back in his arms as it fired — propelling the grappling hook straight through the ragged hole he’d hacked in the tree’s leafy canopy and up into the night sky.

Trailing behind the hook, the Spectra line unwound with dizzying speed from the spool and through the smoking barrel — whining shrilly as it payed out.

He held his breath, waiting.

The grappling hook arced down out of the darkness and disappeared somewhere in the forest of radio and microwave antennas on top of the building seventy meters away.

Security Command Post With Talal close at his heels, Prince Ibrahim al Saud took the steps up from the basement two at a time. He hurried across the open area that filled most of the building’s first floor — ignoring the sleeping figures huddled on cots in the middle of the open space. Since they’d only arrived three days ago, the eight pilots he needed to remotely control his planes hadn’t required more elaborate living quarters.

They were being paid more than enough for their part in the Operation to justify temporary discomfort and a certain lack of privacy.

By rights he should have been asleep himself. But sleep had proved impossibly elusive. The growing excitement as he watched the carefully hidden dream of nearly a lifetime drawing ever closer to reality had kept him awake and pacing through both the planning cell and the aircraft control center.