between the Great Indian Desert in the Rajasthan province of India and
the Thar Desert in Pakistan. But more than that, the Indian
subcontinent was the place where the next big war would begin, perhaps
triggered by a nuclear exchange. Friday wanted to be in there, helping
to manipulate the politics of the region. It had been a dream of his
ever since he was in college. Since the day when he had first gone to
work for the National Security Agency. Friday put the key in the door
and listened. He heard the cat cry. Her mewing was a normal welcome.
That was a very good indication that no one was waiting for him inside.
Friday had been recruited by the NSA when he was in law school. One of
his professors, Vincent Van Heusen, had been an OSS operative during
World War II. After the war. Van Heusen had helped draft the National
Security Act of 1947, the legislation that led to the founding of the
Central Intelligence Agency. Professor Van Heusen saw in Friday some of
the same qualities he himself had possessed as a young man. Among those
was independence. Friday had learned that growing up in the Michigan
woods where he attended a one-room schoolhouse and went hunting with his
father every weekend--not only with a rifle but with a longbow. After
graduating from NYU, Friday spent time at the NSA as a trainee. When he
went to work for the oil industry a year later, he was also working as a
spy. In addition to making contacts in Europe, the Middle East, and the
Caspian, Friday was given the names of CIA operatives working in those
countries. From time to time, he was asked to watch them--to spy on the
spies, to make certain that they were working only for the United
States. Friday finally left the private sector five years ago, bored
with working for the oil industry. They had become more concerned with
international profits than with the vitality of America and its economy.
But that was not why he quit. He left the private sector out of
patriotism. He wanted to work for the NSA full-time. He had watched as
intelligence operations went to hell overseas. Electronic espionage had
replaced hands-on human surveillance. The result was much less efficient
mass intelligence gathering. To Friday, that was like getting meat from
a slaughterhouse instead of hunting it down. The food didn't taste as
good when it was mass produced The experience was less satisfying. And
over time, the hunter grew soft. Friday had no intention of growing
soft. So when his Washington contact told him that Jack Penwick wanted
to talk to him, Friday was eager to meet. Friday went to see him at the
Off the Record bar at the Hay-Adams Hotel. It was during the week of
the president's inauguration, so the bar was jammed, and the men were
barely noticed. It was then that Fenwick suggested a plan so bold that
Friday thought it was a joke. Or a test of some kind. Then Friday
agreed to meet with some of the other members of the group. And he
believed. Oh, how he believed. They sent him here and, through contacts
in Iran, he was put in touch with the Harpooner. Iran did not realize
they were going to be double crossed That once they had an excuse to
move into the Caspian Sea, a new American president would move against
them. And the Harpooner? He did not care. Friday and the Harpooner had
worked closely organizing the attack against Battat and the program of
disinformation to the CIA. Friday was still dressed in yesterday's
clothes. In case anyone saw him, that would support the story he would
tell them. It was just one of the many stories he had perfected over
the years to cover meetings he had to make with operatives. Or targets.
Friday was glad the Harpooner had put one of his other men inside the
hospital as backup. They had hoped that Friday would be able to get
both Moore and Thomas while they were outside. But the way the
ambulance was parked he did not have a clear shot at Thomas. Friday
hoped the Iranian assassin had been able to get the other man. It would
have been easier, of course, if Friday could have taken all three men
out in the embassy. But that might have exposed him. The embassy was
not that large, and someone might have seen them. And there were
security cameras everywhere. This way had been cleaner, easier. After
him. It was a G3, a Heckler & Koch model, Iranian manufacture. He had
others at his disposal if he needed them. Friday had tossed the weapon
in a shallow pond near the hospital. He knew the local police would
search the area for clues and would probably find it. He wanted it to
be traced back to Teheran. Friday and his people wanted to make very
sure that the world knew Iran had assassinated two officials of the
United States embassy. The Iranians would disavow that, of course, but
America would not believe the Iranians. The NSA would see to that. The
Iranians who were working with the Harpooner had made cell phone calls
to one another during the past few days. They had discussed the attack
on the oil rig and described the two pylons that had to be destroyed:
"target one" and "target two." The Iranians did not know that the
Harpooner made certain those calls were monitored by the NSA. That the
conversations were recorded and then digitally altered. Now, on those
tapes, the targets the Iranians were discussing were embassy employees,
not pylons. In a phone call of his own, the Harpooner had added that the
deaths would be a warning, designed to discourage Americans from
pursuing any action against Iran in the coming oil wars. The Harpooner
pointed out in the call that if Washington insisted on becoming
involved, American officials would be assassinated worldwide. Of course,
that threat would backfire. After President Lawrence resigned, the new
president of the United States would use the brutal murders as a
rallying cry. He was not a live-and-let-live leader like the incumbent.
Someone who was willing to cooperate with the United Nations to the
detriment of his own nation. The assassinations, like the attacks on
the oil rigs, would underscore that the United States had unfinished
business from the previous century: the need to strike a decisive, full
scale blow against terrorist regimes and terrorist groups that were
being protected by those regimes. Friday entered his apartment. He saw
the red light on his answering machine flashing. He walked over and
played the message. There was only one, from Deputy Ambassador
Williamson. She needed him to come to the embassy right away. She said
that she had tried his cell phone but could not reach him. Well, of
course she could not. His cell phone had been in his jacket, and his
jacket had been slung over a chair in another room. He had not heard
the phone because he was in the bedroom of a woman he had met at the
International Bar. Friday called her back at the embassy. Williamson
did not bother to ask where he had been. She just told him the bad
news. Tom Moore had been shot and killed by a sniper outside the
hospital. Pat Thomas's thro
at had been cut by an assassin inside the
hospital. Friday allowed himself a small, contented smile. The
Harpooner's assassin had succeeded.
"Fortunately," Williamson went on, "David Battat was able to stop the
man who tried to kill him." Friday's expression darkened.
"How?"
"His throat was cut with his own knife," she said.
"But Battat was ill--"
"I know," said the deputy ambassador.
"And either Battat was delirious or afraid. After he stopped the
killer, he left the hospital by the window. The police are out looking
for him now. So far, all they've found was the rifle used to kill Mr.
Moore. Metal detectors picked it up in a pond."
"I see," Friday said. The assassin did not speak English. Even if
Battat were lucid, he could not have learned anything from the killer.
But Fenwick and the Harpooner would be furious if Battat were still
alive.
"I'd better go out and join the search," Friday said.
"No," Williamson said.
"I need you here at the embassy. Someone has to liaise between the Baku
police and Washington. I've got to deal with the political
ramifications."
"What political ramifications?" Friday asked innocently. This was going
to be sweet. It was going to be very sweet.
"The police found the rifle they think was" used in the attack on
Moore," she said.
"I don't want to talk about this on an open line. I'll tell you more
when you get here." That was good news, at least. The deputy ambassador
had concluded that the killings were political and not random.
"I'm on my way," Friday said.
"Watch yourself," Williamson said.
"I always do," he replied. Friday hung up, turned around, and left the
apartment.
"I always do."
Baku, Azerbaijan Tuesday, 6:16 a.m.
The Harpooner and his team reached the oil rig just before dawn. The
boat cut its engines one thousand feet from the nearest of the four
columns. Then the Harpooner and four members of his Iranian team
slipped into the water. They were all wearing wet suits and compressed
air cylinders. Slipping beneath the dark surface of the sea, the men
swam toward the rig. Two of them carried waterproof pouches containing
water gel high-energy explosives. The Harpooner had carefully injected
the blue sticks with heat-sensitive pentanitroaniline. As the sun rose,
the heat would cause the foil packet to warm. The sunlight itself would
detonate the explosion. Two other men carried an inflatable raft. This
would allow them some stability underneath the platform. Many rigs had
sensors on the columns and motion detectors along the sea line. Avoiding
the columns and going under the motion detectors was the safest way to
get inside the perimeter. Once the explosives were placed, it would be
virtually impossible for the crew of the rig to get to them in time. The
Harpooner carried a spear gun and night-vision glasses. He would use
the gun to fire the water gel packets around the support struts beneath
the platform. The Harpooner had brought along only a dozen of the seven
eighths-inch sticks of explosive. He had learned long ago that the
trick to destroying something big is not necessarily to hit it with
something big. In hand-to-hand combat, a foe could be driven back with
a powerful roundhouse punch. He can be debilitated faster, more
efficiently, and with more control, with a finger pressed against his
throat, just below the larynx and above the clavicle. Hooking the top
of a foot behind the knee and then stepping down with the side of the
foot will drop someone faster than hitting them with a baseball bat.
Besides, all it takes to neutralize a bat attack is to move in close to
the attacker. The Iranian oil rigs in the Caspian Sea are mostly semi
submersible platforms. They rest on four thick legs with massive
pontoons that sink below the waterline. There is a platform on top of
the legs. The riser system--the underwater component, which includes
the drill--descends from the derrick, which is mounted on the platform.
The key to destroying a platform like that is not to take out the
columns but to weaken the center of the platform. Once that has
happened, the weight of the structures on top will do the rest. The
Harpooner's team had been able to get copies of the oil rig blueprints.
He knew just where to place the water gel The men reached the underbelly
of the rig without incident. Though it was dark in the water, the
higher struts of the rig caught the first glint of dawn. As the
Harpooner eyeballed the target, two men inflated the raft while the
other two attached a pair of water gel sticks beneath the tip of three
spears. The twelve-inch-long sticks were carefully taped
belly-to-belly. This configuration allowed the spear to be fitted into
the tube muzzle. It also made sure that the sticks of water gel would
not upset the balance of the spear. Though it would have been easier to
assemble the package on the boat, the Harpooner had wanted to keep the
water gel packets as dry as possible. Though moisture would not harm
the explosives, wet foil would take longer for the sun to warm. These
packets would only be exposed to direct sunlight for a half hour. He
had to make certain they were dry enough--and thus hot enough--to
explode within that time. The raft was a six-man hexagonal platform. The
Harpooner did not need it to hold six men. He wanted the larger size
for stability. Larger rafts tended to ignore the smaller waves. That
was important when he lay on his back to fire. He had removed the
canopy to make it lighter. The large case in which it had been carried
was discarded. The Harpooner climbed on board while the other men hung
onto the sides to steady the raft even more. The spear gun was made of
stainless steel. It was painted matte black to minimize reflected
sunlight. The spears were also black. The weapon was comprised of a
forty-inch-long black tube and a yellow grip and trigger at the end.
Only a foot of spear protruded from the end. Normally, a rope was
attached to the spears so that prey could be hauled back to the
spearman. The Harpooner had removed these back on the boat. There were
six-inch-thick acoustic dampeners beneath the platform. They were
located fifty feet above the sea. The hard rubber pads had been placed
there to muffle the sounds of activity. This was done so that people
who lived on the rig would suffer as little noise pollution as possible.
The Harpooner had chosen his targets from the blueprints. He would fire
two harpoons. The first would go into the padded area below and to the
northeast of the derrick. The derrick was in the southwest corner of the
platform. When the detonation occurred, the derrick would fall toward
the center of the platform. A second harpoon would be fired into the
platform at the point where the heavy center of the derrick would land.
The second explosion, plus the impact of the derrick, would shatter the
platform and cause it to collapse inward. Everything would slide to the
center and tumble int
o the sea. The Harpooner would not need the third
harpoon to destroy the rig, though he did not tell his people that. The
terrorist donned night-vision glasses and lay on his back. The spear
gun had terrific recoil, equivalent to a twelve-gauge shotgun. That
would give him quite a bump. But his shoulder could take it. He aimed
the weapon and fired. There was a sound like a metallic cough and the
spear flew through the dark. It hit the target with a faint thunk. The
Harpooner quickly repositioned himself to fire the second shaft. It,
too, struck its target. He motioned the men to start back. As soon as
the others ducked underwater, the Harpooner pulled the tape from the
spear, grabbed one of the equipment bags, and slipped the water gel
sticks inside. Then he slid into the water and followed his men back to
the boat. Upon boarding the vessel, the men dropped the remains of
Sergei Cherkassov into the sea. On the way over, they had burned the
body. It would look as though he had been killed in the blast. The
photographs that had been taken from the airplane were already in his
pocket. As far as the Iranians on board knew, the Russians and the
Azerbaijanis would be blamed for the attack. The Harpooner knew
differently. When Cherkassov was in the water, the boat departed. They
were nearly out of visual range when the oil rig exploded. The Harpooner
was watching through high-powered binoculars. He saw the puff of yellow
red smoke under the platform. He saw the tower shudder and then do a
slow pirouette drop toward the center. A moment later, the muted pop of
the first explosion reached the boat. The Iranians on the deck all
cheered. Which was odd, the Harpooner thought. Even though they thought
they were doing this for the national good, they were happy about the
deaths of at least one hundred of their countrymen.
A moment before the derrick hit, the second water gel packet exploded.
The Harpooner had positioned the two to go off nearly at the same time.
It would not have done for the derrick to crash, knock the spear from
the rubber padding, and drop it into the sea. A second cloud of red and