Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist Aftermath (25 page)

33

BEFORE
climbing into the Humvee, Fisher stole a moment to have a word with Grim, who’d been
monitoring the conversation he’d had with Prince Shammari.

The wind was beginning to howl in his ears as he listened to her through his subdermal:
“I don’t know, Sam, I was positive all the dots were connecting.”

“They still are.”

“Maybe Abqaiq’s not the target.”

“Then why are those Russians in Dammam?”

“Maybe it’s been the port all along. Or maybe the capital. Maybe it’s Riyadh. That’s
only two hundred miles southwest.”

Fisher mouthed a curse and said, “We’re heading over to Dammam. We’ll see what we
can pick up there. You keep working with Kasperov and his right-hand guy. I’ll be
in touch.”

As they drove away from the warehouse, Prince Shammari glanced up from his surfboard-sized
smartphone and announced that out to the west, a thunderstorm traveling at up to 45
knots was beginning to collapse and dump torrents. Wind directions were reversing
and gusting outward from the storm. Reports from Riyadh said a haboob was beginning
to form and that everyone should seek cover.

“Haboob” was an amusing word for a very deadly and intense sandstorm common on the
Arabian peninsula.

“Where are you headed now?” Shammari asked Fisher.

“Dammam.”

“Then you’d best hurry.”

“We will. I’m sorry we wasted your time. Your security is impressive.”

“As I’ve demonstrated.”

“Your deliveries here, they all come in by truck?”

“And by rail. With a few small ones by helicopter.”

“The oil is shipped by pipeline up to Dammam.”

“That’s correct.”

Fisher sat there, considering that.

“I hope for our sakes that you’re wrong,” said Shammari. “There is no plot. There
is no bomb. I know we’ve been talking about terrorists with nuclear weapons for years,
but the world cannot afford it. Not ever.”

“I agree. But I’ve been doing this for a long time.” Fisher glanced out the window.
“There’s a bomb out there. And we’re going to find it.”

* * *

BY
the time they hit the helipad, the chopper was already warm since Fisher had called
ahead to the pilot. They bid their tense and somewhat awkward good-byes to the prince
and his troops, then started for the helicopter.

While stars shimmered directly overhead, the western sky was no more than a churning
brown wave that consumed the entire horizon. Briggs pointed, and they both gasped.

This could be the largest and most formidable haboob Fisher had ever seen, and that
was saying something because he’d spent enough time in Arab countries to ride out
his share of storms. This bad weather could buy them some time. If the storm extended
all the way up to the port it could shut down operations, perhaps delaying the oligarchs’
plan.

They climbed into the chopper, Briggs taking one of the backseats, Fisher up front
with the pilot. They rolled shut the door, and just as they were lifting off, Grim
called.

“Sam, I’ve got new intel from Kasperov. He called one of the oligarchs directly. Kargin,
the guy who was talking to Chern. Kasperov threatened to unleash the Calamity Jane
virus on the man’s company and holdings if he didn’t call off the attack.”

“Then it’s over?”

“Kasperov thinks Kargin killed himself while he was on the line. The guy said it’s
too late. There’s nothing that can stop them now.”

“Aw, shit. Did he get anything else?”

“He didn’t, but his partner Kannonball did. More intercepted comms between the GRU
and an agent in Dammam. Best we can tell there are four Iranian MOIS agents at the
port. They’ve linked up with the rogue GRU agent and were ordered to meet up with
a railcar broker.”

Fisher’s OPSAT flashed as Grim sent him a satellite map of the desert between Dammam
and Abqaiq, with a flashing red line between the two. Fisher zoomed in on that line
to expose a set of railroad tracks, noting how the railway left Dammam, ran right
through Abqaiq between the Saudi Aramco compound and the processing plant, then arrowed
farther south to Riyadh.

“Grim, what if they—”

“I’m ahead of you. The Saudis have GID agents at the port, and I confirmed with them
that one of the Iranian ships offloaded an HEP car.”

“A what?”

“An HEP car. These are high-end power cars that sit directly behind the locomotives.
They look like engines sitting backward and they generate extra power needed for refrigerator
cars and tractor trailer cooling units. The Saudis have some older diesel locomotives
and still use some of these power cars on their lines. There was nothing unusual about
this shipment, and all the paperwork checked out with the railway.”

“So why are we interested?”

“Because that HEP car was attached to a locomotive carrying oil containers, twenty-one
in all, and it’s the only shipment scheduled to run through Abqaiq this evening. It’s
number 116.”

“So you’re saying they don’t use HEP cars with oil container trains.”

“No—but they attached one anyway because they wanted that car to move out tonight.”

“Tell me why oil is being shipped down by train when there’s pipeline from Abqaiq
to Dammam.”

“That oil is headed for Riyadh. They still need to ship the processed oil back down
to the city by rail, and as you’ve seen, that railroad passes right through Abqaiq.”

“So they got past security at the port and the bomb’s inside the HEP car.”

“It has to be.”

“So the bomb
is
part of a larger shipment.”

“Yeah,” said Grim. “We weren’t thinking big enough.”

“So now all they have to do is wait until the train passes through the processing
facility and detonate it for maximum impact. Just like the thorium operation, they
either have a spotter in Abqaiq or like Kasperov said, they’ll have someone to trigger
it manually, someone on a suicide mission.”

“Plus they have the storm to cover them. No way they could’ve planned that, but they’ll
take advantage of it.”

“Call Shammari. Tell him to stop the train.”

“I already did,” she said. “The train’s still coming. It’s been hijacked. Just a single
rail between Abqaiq and Dammam. No way to divert it.”

“What’s our ETA to the train?”

“About fifteen minutes.”

“Backup?”

“Shammari’s troops are leaving the compound now, but his F-15s have been grounded.
He says he’s got some light helicopter gunships en route.”

“Tell him to hold back those gunships until I give the order—otherwise they could
spook the triggerman.”

“Roger that. And, Sam, once the storm hits we’ll lose the satellite feed and maybe
the rest of our comms.”

“That’s all right. We know what to do now.”

“Sam, I, uh . . . I think this time we’re right.”

“Is your gut telling you that?”

“It is.”

“Good. Mine, too.” He closed his eyes and could almost see her face. She wore the
barest hint of a smile.

He wanted to say something else, something more meaningful because she was right,
this was it—possibly the last conversation they’d ever have after years of working
together.

“Grim?”

“Yeah?”

He stammered. “We’ll be okay.”

After a long pause, she answered, “Talk to you soon, Sam.”

Briggs, who’d been listening in on the conversation via the chopper’s intercom system,
reached over and proffered his hand.

“What’s this?” Fisher asked.

“Just in case,” said Briggs. They shook firmly. “Someday, when I grow up, I’m gonna
be just like you.”

Fisher shoved Briggs and smiled. “Let’s go kick some ass.”

34

THE
chopper pilot from Dubai, who’d introduced himself as Hammad, knew some English—enough
to deal with tourists—but that wasn’t an issue since Fisher and Briggs spoke Arabic.

However, convincing the thirty-year-old man with closely cropped beard to engage in
the unthinkable with his rotary wing aircraft was the real challenge.

“We just need a ride to the train,” Fisher said over the intercom.

“To the train? The storm’s coming. We can’t do that. Besides, why there? How were
you planning on boarding?”

Fisher sighed. “Very carefully. You’ll take us to the train. Now.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I won’t.”

“Then you can hop out right now, and my buddy will take over.”

Briggs reached in beside the man and began to open the side door.

“What’re you doing?” The pilot swatted away Briggs’s hand and cried, “You’re crazy!
Crazy! We have the storm. We have to get back to the port and get under cover!”

“Hammad, we need you,” said Briggs, who looked to Fisher for approval and got it.
“We’re talking about terrorists on board that train.”

“I’ll put it to you this way,” Fisher interjected. “If you don’t help us, we won’t
kill you—but what they have on that train will.”

The pilot hesitated. “What do you mean?”

Fisher sloughed off his shirt to expose his tac-suit. Behind him, Briggs held up their
machine guns. “Our business isn’t exactly oil.”

Hammad’s eyes flared. “Holy shit, holy shit.”

“Exactly,” said Briggs. “We’re just asking for a little help.”

“Don’t shoot me. Please.”

Fisher snorted. “Are you kidding? Today’s your day to be a hero. You up for it or
what?”

Hammad was visibly trembling now. “My boss will kill me if I put even a scratch on
the helicopter.”

“It’s cool,” said Briggs. “I know you can do this.”

Hammad gestured to a picture of two little girls taped just above his instrument panel,
two gems about five and six years old. “They need their father!”

“I know,” Fisher said. “So do we.”

The man’s eyes were burning now. “Who are you?”

Fisher tensed. “We’re the passengers you’ll never forget.”

“Maybe
you’re
the terrorists!”

Fisher tapped a few keys on his OPSAT, bringing up some digital photographs of his
daughter Sarah when she was nine. He held up his wrist for the pilot to see. “That’s
my daughter. She’s all grown up now, but she still needs her father. And her father
needs you. So let’s get this done. For all of them. Okay?”

Hammad pursed his lips, swallowed, then took another look at Briggs and Fisher.

Briggs put his hand on the pilot’s shoulder. “We have faith in you, Hammad. More than
you know.”

After taking a deep breath and reaching out to touch the photograph of his girls,
Hammad said, “I don’t want to die.”

“You won’t,” Fisher assured him. “Now take us a mile or two south, and get us up high,
another thousand feet.”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” the pilot muttered, banking sharply, then gaining
altitude, the chopper buffeted hard by a sudden gust that left Fisher’s stomach about
thirty feet below.

“Continue nice and wide,” said Fisher. “Anyone on the train spots us, they’ll think
we’re heading to the port.”

“I understand,” said Hammad. “You’re not the terrorists, then, right?”

“I know it’s hard to tell who the good guys are these days, but Allah’s on your side.”

“Yes, always.”

Hammad kept several pairs of binoculars on board for sightseers. Fisher grabbed a
pair and focused on the train, just a metallic serpent chugging forward across the
broad plains of desert. Twin headlights reached out into the gathering dust. Fisher
panned up toward the haboob and regretted that decision.

The storm was a living, breathing creature of wind and sand, consumed by hunger and
unaffected by politics, religion, or any other differences men used to justify killing
each other. It was motivated only by the laws of physics, a perfect killer.

“All right,” Fisher told Hammad, shaking off the thought. “Come back around and descend
hard and fast. You’re like an old fighter pilot in World War II, coming in to strafe
the enemy, got it?”

“Holy shit, yes. I got it.”

Briggs had finished stripping down to his tac-suit and was double-checking their pistols
and spare magazines. He handed Fisher his Five-seveN and SIG P226, then holstered
his own weapons. Next he handed Fisher his submachine gun with attached sling and
clutched his own tightly to his chest.

“Good to go,” Briggs said over the intercom. “Nothing beats the smell of factory-fresh
ammo in the evening.”

Fisher almost smiled, then glanced to Hammad. “You’re doing great. Keep descending.
Okay, now over there, we need to get lower, that’s right, bank right . . . right . . .
descend again! You see it now?”

Hammad swooped down like a vulture, then he pitched the nose and descended even more
aggressively. Fisher found himself clutching the seat with one hand as they came within
five meters of the desert floor before Hammad pulled up and leveled off to check his
altitude. Not two seconds later, he descended a few more meters.

“That’s how to do it,” Fisher said. “That’s perfect. You could be a military pilot.”

“Yeah, man,” said Hammad, sounding only half as confident as Fisher.

The helicopter was on a straight and level path directly behind the train, with the
rail ties ticking by. Despite being jarred by the train’s wash, Hammad kept them less
than two meters above the railway, with only the caboose container’s tiny red taillights
as a reference point.

Their approach was about as stealthy as Fisher could’ve hoped for, but he still wasn’t
sure how loud the locomotive and HEP car were and if they’d been noisy enough to conceal
the chopper’s engine and rotors to anyone posted outside the train. The plan, of course,
was to go in ghost.

Fisher lifted his binoculars. The tank cars themselves were as expected—long black
cylinders with well-rusted bellies and ladders both fore and aft. There were grab
irons mounted to the sides and narrow, flat upper decks with railings that allowed
maintenance workers to pass from car to car.

“Okay, great job, Hammad,” he said. “Stand by to get us up top.”

As Fisher unbuckled and climbed toward the backseat, ready to give Hammad his final
instructions, gunfire ripped across the canopy—

And suddenly Hammad was jerking the stick, throwing Fisher backward.

“Get above the last car!” shouted Briggs. “Don’t pull away!”

“He’s shooting at us!” cried Hammad.

Fisher crashed into the backseat and then whipped his head around, catching the barest
glimpse of a man posted between the caboose and the next tank car. He repeatedly swung
out from the side of the train, single-handedly firing his rifle, the muzzle flashing—but
oddly not a single round struck the chopper. Was he the world’s worst shot?

Fisher squinted for a better look.

“Oh, you’re kidding me!” cried Briggs.

In that instant oil began spraying across the canopy, mixing with the swirling dust
and clouding Hammad’s view as the agent continued spraying the oil container with
bullets, releasing more streams of oil.

“Pull up now!” Fisher cried.

Hammad shook his head. “I can’t see!”

The oil kept splashing and bleeding off, the streaks beginning to blur like a kaleidoscope.
One false move by the pilot, and they’d either plow into the back of the train or
smash into the tracks—and Fisher’s imagination took him through both of those scenarios
in an instant.

“Come on, Hammad, do it!” Fisher cried, slapping his palm on top of the pilot’s and
ready to take over if Hammad backed out.

Hammad’s eyes bulged. “Okay, I got it!” He gasped, shuddered, then pulled back and
brought them above the oil spray, coming directly above the container car. He was
leaning forward now, staring through a meager opening on the canopy no more than twelve
inches wide and not yet stained with oil.

“Here,” shouted Briggs, handing Fisher his pair of trifocals.

With his goggles on, Briggs threw the latch and yanked open the door.

The wind literally screamed into the compartment.

And the sand came in needle-like torrents.

Hammad coughed and cried, “Hurry!”

“Just hold position!” Fisher told him. “You’re a hero today, my friend!”

“Holy shit, yes!”

Briggs leaped from the chopper and hit the container hard, falling forward, sliding
for a second, then latching onto one of the railings. One hand slid loose and he was
thrown back by both the train’s velocity and the storm, but he leaned forward and
returned that hand to the rail.

Ignoring the desert blurring by and the sand beginning to rip through the rotors,
Fisher couldn’t help himself. He chanced a look at the sandstorm—perhaps a quarter
mile away and barreling toward them.

Oh my God . . .

The diminutive train and even tinier chopper lay directly in the path of what resembled
a thousand-foot-tall tidal wave as murky and thick as the ocean itself.

Chilled, Fisher flicked his gaze back on the oil container, focusing on his upper
deck landing zone.

Then, with a curse that really meant
no, I’m
not
too old for this shit,
he pushed away from the helicopter and plunged two meters to the top deck.

As his boots made impact, they gave way on a thin coating of oil that had whipped
up from the rotor wash and was dripping off the railings.

He hit hard on his rump and began slipping off the deck, a hairsbreadth from being
blown right off the container—when Briggs’s hand latched onto his, just as Fisher
went swinging off the side and across the oil-slick surface.

Suspended now, Fisher caught another glimpse of the man who’d been firing at them,
illuminated in the pale green glow of his trifocals. He was an Iranian MOIS agent,
Fisher assumed, with balaclava tugged over his head, Kevlar vest strapped tightly
at his chest and waist, and baggy combat trousers. Two pistols were holstered on his
right side, one at the waist, the other on his lower hip. The rifle was an AK-47—and
it popped again as Briggs dragged Fisher up and onto the deck.

Another salvo cracked from the AK, and Fisher swung back toward the chopper.

Hammad was just pulling away, taking heavy fire now from the agent, rounds sparking
and ricocheting off the fuselage, a few punching into the side window.

Salvo after salvo tracked him.

He banked hard to the right. Too hard. Blood splashed across the side window. He lost
control of the bird—

And before Fisher could open his mouth, the helicopter flipped onto its back, pitched
slightly, then crashed with a thundering explosion into the desert behind them, the
flickering fireball sweeping into the rising gale. Secondary explosions lifted into
the first, with contrails of black smoke instantly shredded by the sand.

With the picture of Hammad’s little girls abruptly and permanently etched in Fisher’s
memory, he gritted his teeth and sprang to his feet.

Thoughts of payback did not blind him with rage, but the anger did trigger a massive
adrenaline rush. There wasn’t a combatant in the world who could stop him now.

He raced across the top of the container car, reached the end, and just as the agent
glanced up from his perch at the foot of the ladder, Fisher unleashed a volley of
9mm NATO rounds directly into the bastard’s head, punching him back and sending him
tumbling off the train.

“Sam, duck!” cried Briggs.

Fisher dropped to his haunches as more gunfire whirred over his head. Two cars up,
another agent had mounted the ladder, placed his elbows on the top of the container,
and begun trading fire with Briggs, whose submachine gun fire drove the man back behind
the tank.

“Keep him busy,” cried Fisher, who crawled forward, slid under the upper deck railing,
seized one of the grab irons, then allowed himself to slide down, off the right side
of the container. He descended on two more grab irons until he was able to latch both
hands onto the base of the upper deck railing. Now, with his legs dangling freely,
he worked himself sideways across the deck, concealed from the agent’s view, while
Briggs squeezed off another volley of suppressing fire, the MPX booming over the rattle
and clack of the train.

Fisher continued slipping across the container until he reached the end and once more
shifted down to the grab irons. He lowered himself between the cars, crossing over
the coupler receiver hitch and reaching the next ladder.

Three more rounds cracked overhead, these from the agent, and Briggs answered with
another triplet of fire.

“Almost there,” Fisher told Briggs.

“Roger, let me know.”

Fisher scaled the ladder and once more began skimming his way across the side of the
container—

But without warning the train lurched forward, thundering at what must be full speed
now, the diesel locomotive running at least sixty-five miles per hour. Fisher felt
his grip falter and he tensed, fighting to pull himself higher and keep moving, each
release of his gloved hands coming in smooth, practiced strokes. All those pull-ups
and all that French Parkour training focusing on using momentum to breach obstacles
always paid off.

“Sam, if you can still hear me, the train’s only about ten minutes away from Abqaiq,”
Grim said. “We’re running out of time here!”

“Okay. We’re on the train. We’ll get it done.”

“You’re breaking up now. I didn’t get—”

Static broke over the subdermal as a gust wrapped around the tank, rattling the undercarriage.

When he was about two-thirds of the way down the container, he took a deep breath.
“All right, Briggs. Hold fire.”

“Holding.”

Fisher reached up, slapped a gloved hand on the bottom rung of the upper deck’s railing,
then, hanging by one hand, he drew his Five-seveN and swung up a leg, latching it
around a support post. As he forced himself back onto the upper deck, sliding on his
belly, he brought up his pistol and watched as the agent chanced another look.