Day of Wrath

Well, so be it, he thought wearily. At least a bullet in the brain would be quick. Perhaps it would even be painless.

Serov hawked, turned his head, and spat toward the floor in one last, futile gesture of defiance. “All right then, damn you!

Get on with it!” He nodded toward the silenced pistol in Kurgin’s hand. “You have your weapon. Use it.”

“This?” Reichardt’s agent glanced down at the pistol in surprise.

He laughed softly. “No, no, General! This is not for you.

After all, we do have appearances to maintain.”

Before Serov could move, Kurgin’s companion gripped his right arm in a vise grip and tore the pajama sleeve up above his elbow.

Gasping now, Serov rolled his eyes toward Kurgin.

The sergeant had set his pistol aside. Moving with deadly precision, he reached into his tunic and took out a hypodermic needle and a length of surgical tubing. He held the needle up to the light, tapped it gently, and then smiled cruelly. “No bullet for you, Colonel General.

Nothing so easy, no. I’m afraid you will be taking a long and painful trip to hell.”

Serov started screaming even before the needle touched his skin.

King Khalid International Airport, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Grateful for the air conditioning that kept the blast furnace heat of the Saudi summer at bay, Anson P. Carleton, the U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arab Affairs, strode forward to a podium inside the King Khalid Airport’s official reception area. His aides, U.S. Secret Service agents, and Saudi security personnel trailed after him and then filed off to either side.

Outside, the honor guard and band that had greeted him on his arrival began dispersing. Heat waves distorted their figures as they marched away under a merciless sun that baked the tarmac like pottery in a kiln.

Carleton noted the brandnew mural decorating the wall behind the podium — a stylistic rendition of a map of Saudi Arabia, its flag, and a verse from the Koran. It hadn’t been there on his last visit to Riyadh. The Saudis must be sprucing up their airport — yet again. He shrugged mentally. His hosts always seemed to have the money for bold and lavish interior decorating. Now it was his job to persuade them to move boldly in other, more important areas — to continue the process of making a full peace with Israel.

He looked down at the notes of his prepared arrival remarks.

His words would be carefully chosen and indirect, as was usual when dealing with sensitive political issues in Arab countries.

But they would leave his real audience, the ruling Saudi elite, in no doubt that the United States was committed to yet another serious and sustained effort to reconcile Jerusalem and its Arab neighbors.

Carleton cleared his throat, looked straight up into the unwinking lenses of the dozen or so television cameras assembled to record his statement, and opened his mouth — The mural behind him erupted in flame.

The fiery blast enveloped Carleton a millisecond before the fragments thrown by the explosion tore him to pieces and then sleeted outward-killing or maiming dozens of the aides, security guards, and reporters clumped near the podium.

Two rooms away, Yassir Iyad, an airport maintenance worker, felt and heard the short, sharp concussive thump that told him the explosive charge planted inside the new mural by the Radical Islamic Front had detonated. He smiled broadly and then wiped the smile off his face.

Working swiftly, the young Palestinian guest worker detached a small controller from the piece of wire hanging out of an electrical conduit inspection plate. He concealed the controller in his pocket. Next, he tugged on the wire — pulling it out through the conduit. Since the wire had only been attached to the bomb’s trigger mechanism, it came out easily. If it had hung up on the wreckage, Iyad had come prepared to cut it off and conceal it in place. Fortunately, that wasn’t necessary.

Instead, the Palestinian simply reeled the wire in — all twenty meters of it — gathering it up on the same spool it had come from.

Then he clipped off the scorched, twisted end and dropped that in his pocket beside the controller. He planned to drop both pieces of incriminating evidence somewhere deep in the desert outside the Saudi capital.

After replacing the access plate, Iyad left the storage room — locking the door behind him.

Then, donning a look of anguished concern like a mask, the Palestinian hurried, along with everyone else, toward the scene of the tragedy.

_{Near Tail, Saudi Arabia (D MINUS 15)}

“Officials have characterized this as the most serious terrorist attack on the United States in two years — pointing out that Undersecretary of State Carleton is the highest-ranking U.S. official ever assassinated on foreign soil. The White House is preparing a statement … Prince Ibrahim al Saud snapped the television off. A slight smile graced his lips. Carleton’s death was only a fraction of what he hoped to accomplish, of what he planned to accomplish but the Americans had suffered today.