"Our prisoner has given us the names of many of your leaders in the FFA, and as soon as they are arrested, I can a.s.sure you they will give us the names of all of the members. You will have no place to hide once this isover. So, be forewarned, your time is at hand unless you rededicate yourselves to serving your country."

The picture of Claire flickered off and an announcer came on to restate what had been seen.

Waters reached down and turned the television set off.

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269.

And then he turned back to face the three Arabs, his arms crossed across his chest.

"Well?" he asked, his face stern.

Farrar shook his head. His entire plan seemed to be coming down around his head. He glanced at Kareem and then at Waters. "Well, what, John?"

Farrar asked.

"Is what Sharif said true?"

Farrar laughed, a low, nasty laugh without any mirth in it whatsoever.

"Of course it is, you fool," Farrar said, turning to walk back to the table with the maps on it. "Did you really expect me to share my government with fools like you who would betray their own country?"

"But. . ." Waters stammered. "We had a deal."

Farrar shrugged. "I don't consider deals made with traitors to be binding."

Waters's face froze in an expression of rage as his skin turned bright red. "I'm getting out of here," he said. "I'm gonna tell all my men to quit helping you as of now."

"No, you're not," Farrar said gently. He glanced at Kareem, who had his hand on the hilt of the dagger in his belt.

"Mustafa, take Mr. Waters into the next room and deal with him."

"What? No . . ." Waters said as Kareem grabbed him by the arm, the blade of his dagger at his throat.

"It will go easier on you if you don't struggle," Kareem said in an even voice, his eyes as flat and dead as river ice in winter.

A few minutes later, Kareem came back into the room, wiping the blood off his blade with a hand towel from the bathroom.

Farrar didn't look up from the map he was studying.

"What are we going to do now?" Araman asked, his face a mask of worry.

"Should I call our commanders and warn them of this 270.

message to the FFA men?" Kareem asked as he sheathed his dagger.Farrar shook his head. "No, I am afraid our phones are no longer secure."

"But how will we keep in touch with our group commanders to guide them in their attacks?" Araman asked.

Farrar sighed. "We won't. I will call them with one last message, and it won't matter if the infidels intercept it."

"What will you say?" asked Kareem.

"To press on toward the American capital and to take no prisoners and to spare no one. This is to be a war to the death and we will either win and survive, or lose and die," Farrar said, a glint of mania in his eyes.

"Then," he added, "I must make one other call."

"To whom?" asked Kareem.

"To my family ... to warn them of possible retribution from Ben Raines,"

Farrar answered.

Kareem grimaced. "Do you think he really means to attack your home in Iraq?"

Farrar looked up at his longtime friend. "Of course," he said. "Ben Raines is a warrior, just as I am, and it is a thing I would not hesitate to do."

"But the United Nations would not allow such a thing," Araman said.

Farrar laughed. "Do you really think we are in any position to complain to the U.N., my friend?"

271.

On the trip back to the SUSA, Buddy Raines and Mike Post reviewed their plans for the upcoming a.s.sault on Abdullah El Farrar's home turf.

"IVe checked with my sources, and we don't have any a.s.sets in Kuwait that would be suitable for an a.s.sault on the refinery owned by El Farrar's family near Al Basrah on the Persian Gulf," Mike said.

"No problem, Mike," Buddy said, smiling. "I'll just take an insertion team over there and do the job myself."

"You're gonna have to be careful," Mike said. "If the Far-rar family is as important as Ben says they are, they'll likely have spies and paid informers in the Kuwait government offices. You'll have to be very discreet to get your men into the area without Farrar's family knowing you're coming."

"I've already thought of that," Buddy said. "The oil minister of Kuwait has been trying for over a year to get President Cecil Jeffreys to sell him some helicopters to use to patrol their oil fields. I'm gonna go over there with some choppers in a C-130 and offer them to him at a very advantageous price. The technicians I take with me are gonna be SEALs, and after we've unloaded the choppers, naturally we'll have to take them on a field test to make sure they're working properly."

"You're not planning on flying all the way into Iraq on a272 chopper, are you?" Mike asked. "They'd shoot you down before you got within fifty miles of the refinery."

Buddy grinned. "No, that's not it. I'll keep us out over the Gulf, and we'll drop into the water along with one of our jet-powered Zodiac a.s.sault boats. Once we're in the water and transfer into the boat, it shouldn't be too hard to find a place to land un.o.bserved. Then we'll make our way overland to the refinery, blow the s.h.i.t out of it, then back to the boat for our return to Kuwait by water."

"But that's a fifty-mile trip across an ocean that can be very tricky if the weather's bad," Mike said.

Buddy shrugged. "Then let's hope the weather holds, partner, or we'll be getting our feet wet."

Back at the SUSA headquarters, Buddy went immediately to contact the Kuwait oil minister and make arrangements for the transport of the helicopters, and to meet with and brief his SEAL team.

Mike went to his office and picked up the telephone. He dialed the number of his computer center control room.

When the phone was answered and a high-pitched voice said, "Mac the Hack," Mike could hear raucous rock-and-roll music playing loudly in the background.

"Mac," Mike said, speaking to Johnny MacDougal, the fifteen-year-old computer genius that practically ran his computer center.

"Hey, Mike, how're they hangin'?" Mac asked irreverently. He'd never quite gotten the idea of rank and the respect that was due it, but his skills made him irreplaceable and he knew it, so he continued in his informal ways.

"I've got a job for you," Mike said.

"Hey, I'm pretty booked up right now," Mac said, a whining tone in his voice. "I'm tryin' to debug your latest scrambler program and it's a b.i.t.c.h."

"This is more in the way of your . . . hobby," Mike said.

273.

273.

"Oh?" Mac asked, sounding more interested to know the job wasn't a routine one.

"Yeah. I need you to do some hacking for me," Mike said, knowing that would trip Mac's trigger.

"But Mike," Mac said, sounding a bit suspicious, "you know hacking is illegal and you made me promise last month not to do it anymore."

Mike laughed. "So you havenft been hacking lately?" he asked."Of course not."

"Then you won't mind if I send a couple of experts over to your room to check out the three machines you have there, will you?" Mike asked.

"Uh . . . wait a minute . . ." Mac stalled.

"Don't worry. This operation has been cleared all the way to the top.

And," Mike added, "I think you'll have some tun with it."

"Well then, my man," Mac said, sounding more chipper, "take a jaunt down to the cave and let's talk."

The cave was the name Mac used for the bas.e.m.e.nt computer center that housed the SUSA headquarters' banks of mainframe computers they used to monitor all of the intel that Mike relied so heavily upon.

When Mike entered the room, he found Mac leaning back in his chair, his feet up on a desk covered with candy-bar wrappers, empty potato-chip bags, and several empty bottles of a high-caffeine soda popular with teenagers.

"Jesus," Mike said, "what a mess."

"Hey," Mac replied, sitting up and putting his feet on the ground. "This is a high-stress job. I need my carbs and my caffeine to keep sharp."

Mike smiled and nodded. "Yeah, right." He handed Mac a sheet of paper on which he'd outlined the task he wanted 274.

him to do, complete with the names of El Farrar and all of his family members.

Mac read the sheet silently for a minute, then looked up and grinned.

"This is all?" he asked sarcastically.

"What do you mean?" Mike asked.

"You want me to break into the Central Bank of Iraq, somehow get past all the firewalls and encryption codes, and steal these guys' money and transfer it somewhere else, all without knowing their bank account numbers or codes or anything?"

"Yes," Mike said quickly.

"Jeez, Mike, do you realize what's involved in doing all that?"

"Oh, well," Mike said, reaching for the paper. "If it's too tough for you . . ."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Mac said, pulling the paper back. "I didn't say it couldn't be done, just that it's gonna be hard."

"You want me to give the job to somebody else?" Mike asked, knowing Mac would rather cut out his tongue than admit anyone else was better on a computer than he was.

"Are you kidding?" Mac asked, a smirk on his face. "You know there's notanother soul who could pull this off."

"How long will it take you?"

Mac shrugged as he turned his chair toward the large computer console in front of him. "Depends."

"Depends on what?"

"Depends on how good the security of the Iraq bank is, depends on how long it takes me to identify the Farrar family's account numbers, and most of all it depends on whether the bank will allow me to transfer funds out of the country, and one other thing."

"What's that?"

"What am I going to get out of this?"

Mike hesitated. The boy was right. This was not part of his job description and was highly illegal to boot.

275.

275.

"What do you want?"

Mac pursed his lips, thinking for a moment. "Let me decide who gets the money I steal."

Mike thought about that. It didn't make any difference to him where the money went, as long as the Farrar family couldn't get to it.

"Deal," Mike said, sticking out his hand.

Instead of shaking it, Mac slapped his palm. "Deal."

Mac turned back to his computer, the screen casting an eerie flickering glow throughout the room, like ghosts dancing on the walls.

"Now, get out of here and let me get to work."

Buddy Raines made the deal with the delighted oil minister, and he and his team of SEALs were on the way across the world by supper time in a C-130 loaded with three state-of-the-art Bell Kiowas and one Boeing CH-47 Chinook. It would take the C-130 almost twenty hours for the flight, and it would take multiple in-air refuelings before it would land at Kuwait Airport the next day.

Captain Matt Stryker, leader of the SEAL team, sat next to Buddy on the metal benches along the wall of the cargo compartment of the C-130.

"Now that we're airborne, you wanta tell me and my men what the mission is?" Stryker asked.