WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller (25 page)

For none of it was the real man. The al-Saud family connections, the job at the Ministry – even his wife and children – all were just affectations, a smokescreen to throw the authorities off the scent of the
real
Abd al-Aziz Quraishi.

For the
real
Quraishi was embodied in the Lion, the feared, hooded leader of Arabian Islamic Jihad. The silk hood didn’t mask his real face; the hood
was
his real face, and everything else was the mask.

He wondered sometimes where it came from, this drive to change the world, his passionate, zealous fury against the House of Saud and
the Great Satan. The truth was, he didn’t know. His life had been blessed – he had had a happy childhood, he had never wanted for anything – and yet it had not been enough. There was something inside of him, something –
unknowable? –
that demanded that he take action, do what he was doing, rise up against the status quo and demolish it in its entirety.

He
was destined for great things, that much he knew. And what could he ever hope to attain as a minor relative of the royal family? An
assistant
minister, who the corrupt regime would allow to rise no higher?

He knew that American psychoanalysis might suggest that he was driven by greed, the insatiable desire for power and control. Perhaps there were incidents in his childhood which had made this important for him – a feeling that he couldn’t control things
, which had ultimately led to an overriding need to control
everything
, to
change
everything.

And yet Quraishi had no use for psychoanalysis; it was yet one more trick used by the West to conceal and hide the truth, the only thing that really mattered.

The will of Allah.

And so Quraishi never questioned his motives, his intentions. He was what he was because Allah had made him so. And if Allah had made him so, then it must be for a reason; and who was Quraishi to stand in the way of His will?

His plan was about to come to fruition, and the United States would never be the same again, and neither would Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East.

Indeed, the very fabric of the world was about to change, just as Allah required.

And if this man before him was a threat to that, then Quraishi would find out what he wanted, and make him pay for his effrontery.

Quraishi finished his tea and handed the cup back to the assistant, smiling as Adil made the final approach, his black jaws gaping wide.

8

It was now or never, and Cole didn’t have to think twice; he just reacted.

As the dark alligator opened its jaws to take its first bite, Cole pivoted up on his hips and pulled his legs free of the guards’ grasp. He had been purposefully jerking them forwards and backwards to simulate panic for the past few minutes, as well as to get the guards used to his movements, and now they arced up in the air and caught around the nearest security guard’s neck, pulling him down in one fast blur.

The man’s head was inside the alligator’s hungry mouth before anyone could react, and the writhing of his body as the jaws clamped closed, blood flying from the severed neck as the alligator twisted the head clean off, caused
immediate panic in the others.

The two men holding Cole down instinctively let go to help their comrade, hands pulling the headless corpse back to the blood-drenched concrete poolside.

Cole was moving again in the same instant, on his feet and barreling into one of the men covering him with the Uzi. The startled man – his focus on his friends who were now trying to fend off the rest of the alligators – was knocked to the ground, dropping the submachine gun.

Shots rang out, and Cole realized that the snipers were firing at the alligators, who were storming out of the water, activated by the smell of the blood and the sight of the headless corpse.

Cole stooped to the ground and grabbed the Uzi, his hands still bound at the wrists, and shot the other armed guard in the chest before he even knew what happening.

One of the other men broke away from the group by the water, running towards Cole, but Cole opened up with the Uzi and the man flew back into the water, blood geysering out from the wounds in his chest.

Within seconds, the alligators moved in to tear the body to pieces.

Cole saw Quraishi backing away from the area, gesturing for the men on the roof to leave their friends to it and fire at Cole.

Cole immediately started firing at the rooftop snipers, hitting one and pinning down the others.

Cole waited – Quraishi was still backing away, and the men by the pool were too occupied with the gators to bother him – and then one of the snipers showed
himself, and Cole fired two shots, hitting him in the mouth and shoulder.

He knew the other sniper would take his chance while Cole was occupied, and – anticipating the man’s movement – Cole pivoted and fired the last of his rounds. He saw blood fly from the sniper’s arm and chest and knew that – although he might live – at least he could no longer fire his rifle.

Cole turned to Quraishi, but felt the heavy impact of a body as he was tackled by one of the guards who had earlier been controlling the alligators with the pole.

The air was knocked from Cole’s lungs, and both men fell into the writhing, bloody waters of the alligator pool.

It took a lot to surprise Quraishi, but the agent’s actions had managed to do so.

One moment the man who had been posing as Daniel Chadwick was lying there, terrified he was about to have his legs chewed off; and the next, he was moving more quickly than anyone Quraishi had ever seen, except perhaps for Amir al-Hazmi.

And then one of his men was nothing more than a headless corpse, the g
ators were attacking the others; some fell into the water, others escaped, screaming as they went; then the agent got hold of one of the Uzis, another man was down, then his snipers too . . .

And still Quraishi wasn’t moving.

What the hell was wrong with him? What was he waiting for?

He didn’t want to admit it, but it must have been shock, rooting him to the spot. But he was unarmed, and against a man like this, he would stand no chance. He had to get away.

Yet still his legs refused to move.

But then – yes! –
one of his men sacrificed himself, tackling the agent right into the middle of the alligator-infested pool.

This was his chance.

Run!
he ordered himself.
Run!

Cole saw the movement of green reptilian armor in the dark water and pulled free of the guard, kicking with his legs to the bottom of the pool. He sensed the huge beast sail past above him, felt the movement of the water as the big head collided with the other man’s body.

Cole felt the thrashing, and heard the screams as the guard was eviscerated by the gator, then something floating past him in the water caught his eye.

It was a severed arm; from who, he didn’t know.

But he sensed another gator approaching from behind, and pivoted in the water, grabbing the arm as he moved and holding it out in front of him between his bound hands, the gators jaws chomping down into it.

Cole kicked away from the thrashing bodies. He was used to swimming with his hands tied – in fact, during SEAL training, he had been forced to repeat lap after lap with both his hands
and
his legs tied – but the presence of the gators in the murky, bloody water made his heart rate go involuntarily higher, which hampered his progress.

He could feel the water being disturbed as the alligators got closer and closer, but then he was there – back at the concrete slope leading out from the pool – and he pulled his body out, until his feet hit the bottom.

And then he was running, breaking free of the water even as the big head of one of the gators snapped towards him, missing his heels by mere inches.

He turned around and saw the poolside was pure chaos, gators gorging themselves on the guards’ bodies, dragging them back half-eaten into the churning water.

But where was Quraishi?

Cole’s keen eyes scanned the concrete expanse of the city zoo around him, and quickly picked out movement.

Quraishi was running down the dusty main alleyway back to the steel gate, shouting at a shocked zoo employee as he ran.

Cole took off after him as the gates started to open.

Yes!
The steel gate eased open, and Quraishi could breathe a sigh of relief at last; he would be back at the Ministry before long, and could order a city-wide manhunt for this crazed man. If the gators hadn’t already killed him, that is.

He risked a look over his shoulder, and his jaw dropped open.

There he was – barefoot, soaking wet, hands still bound in front of him – sprinting down the alleyway towards Quraishi.

Who was this man? A test sent by Allah? A demon sent by Satan?

It wasn’t that Quraishi was afraid to die; he had in fact become used to the idea many years before, and realized that the threat of death was part and parcel of the existence Allah had decreed for him.

But to die
needlessly
, to die before he had realized his full potential and achieved his great aims, was unthinkable.

The agent, even barefoot on the scorching hot concrete, was faster than Quraishi could hope to be, and would be upon him soon. The man was unarmed, but Quraishi was a realist, and had no delusions about his ability to win a fight with him.

But traffic was at standstill in the streets outside the zoo.

What else could he do?

It was then that he remembered the hot air balloon.

Cole couldn’t believe his eyes.

Ahead of him, he watched as the hot air balloon which had been giving people joy rides all morning, lifted off once again into the air.

But this time it had the relieved features of Quraishi in the basket, his face once more regaining its familiar arrogance.

Quraishi turned to the balloon’s frightened pilot and barked an order, and the flames rapidly burst higher, forcing the balloon to ascend more quickly.

Cole didn’t stop to think; there simply wasn’t time.

Instead, his soles burning on the heat-soaked ground, he increased his pace again and surged towards the lifting balloon, the queue of waiting passengers staring with mouths agape as he jumped.

9

Quraishi felt the basket move as it was pulled a few inches earthwards, as if it had picked up a large weight of some kind.

He had seen the agent sprinting towards him, but by then the balloon had been too high, and he hadn’t seen what had happened below the basket.

But now, the zoo getting smaller and smaller below him as the balloon gained height rapidly, Quraishi risked leaning forward over the side.

What he saw amazed him, although by now he realized that it shouldn’t.

The agent, the ‘asset’, had somehow managed
to jump and grab hold of the anchor rope that hung below the balloon. He was now hanging on with his bound hands, suspended by the rope hundreds of feet above the city, wind billowing him from side to side.

What did he hope to accomplish?

But then Quraishi saw his knees rising, the rope steadied by his feet as he extended his legs and reached up with his hands, and he knew.

The son of a bitch was
climbing.

Cole tried to steady his breathing as the balloon pulled him higher and higher into the sky, his body swaying from side to side as he tried to climb the anchor rope.

Nothing was in his mind now except getting to Quraishi; the man was only twenty feet above him, in the basket, and as far as Cole knew, he was unarmed. He would get to him and make him
talk, make him admit to whatever heinous plan his evil mind had conjured up.

But with his hands still tied at the wrists, the climb was hard; he didn’t want to risk letting go of the rope for long enough to move them a useful distance with each effort, and was so forced to make a series of shorter moves, inching up the rope slowly and methodically.

His focus was so intense that he almost failed to see the long spire of a mosque’s minaret coming quickly towards him. But as the last moment, he sensed it and reflexively gripped tight to the rope and swung his body out to the side, missing the concrete crown with just inches to spare.

The movement sent him into a spin, and his body freewheeled around the hot skies like a spinning top as the balloon continued its progress across the city.

Cole felt the balloon turning as he contracted his core, trying to stop his unending spin so that he could start climbing again. He looked towards the new path of the balloon, and saw another minaret in the distance. Quraishi’s plan was obvious; to knock Cole off the rope by flying towards the tallest structures in Riyadh.

The rope unwound and finally started to spin back the other way, but it was too late – the next minaret was there, this one even taller, and Cole knew he wouldn’t be able to swing his body wide enough to avoid it.

Taking a deep breath, he gripped the rope hard and raised his feet, legs bent at the knee. He timed the impact perfectly, his bare feet compressing onto the minaret’s shaft, legs bending further with the pressure, and then he extended his legs with a powerful push, projecting himself away from the tower, the momentum of the balloon pulling his body around the structure in a wide arc.

The minaret behind him now, Cole again wrapped his feet and hands tight around the rope and concentrated on getting it to stop moving.

He hoped he had time before they reached the next tower.

Quraishi looked over the side of the basket in despair. He was still there!

He had managed to avoid hitting two of the minarets now, and would doubtless start his climb again as soon as he was able.

Suddenly he remembered his phone, and pulled it violently out of his pocket, calling a friend in the Ministry of Interior. He spoke rapidly but coherently, describing the situation and ordering the man to get some helicopters from Riyadh Air Base on the move immediately.

He finished the call,
but knew he couldn’t just sit and wait for the choppers to come; by the time they arrived, it could already be too late.

Quraishi looked around the basket desperately, trying to find some sort of weapon. But there was nothing, and he turned to the frightened pilot, snapping at him. ‘A knife!’ he ordered. ‘Let me have your knife!’

He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before; the pilot would have to have a knife, wouldn’t he? In an emergency, a knife was a must – he might need to cut the ropes to free the balloon if it became caught.

The pilot nodded mutely and fished in his pocket, pulling out a box cutter which he handed over to Quraishi with a shaking hand.

Perfect
, thought Quraishi as he took the knife. Purposefully designed for cutting the anchor rope, it would finish the American agent once and for all.

Cole saw a man – presumably the pilot – above him, maneuvering out of the basket, secured by a length of rope. His hands held the basket’s edge and his feet rested on the bottom guard rail, and Cole watched as the man bent his legs and let go with one hand, searching blindly below for the rope that was attached to the bottom of the basket. The rope that held Cole.

Cole
wasn’t surprised that Quraishi had sent the pilot instead of doing it himself; he was a man who was used to sending others to their deaths, but rather more reluctant to take the risk himself. And then he saw the glimmer of metal in the pilot’s searching hand, and knew what it meant. He was going to cut the rope.

In the next moment, Cole could feel the rope moving as
the knife found its mark and started to saw through it; forwards and backwards, forwards and backwards, every movement taking Cole one step closer to his death.

Cole immediately began to climb harder, allowing his hands to come off the rope for longer periods of time now to gain more distance with each pull, knowing that it was worth the risk, that if he didn’t make it to the basket before the rope was cut, he’d be a dead man.

He ignored the action of the man’s knife sawing back and forth through the rope and just concentrated on the one thing he could control; knees went up, feet secure around the rope, and then he extended his body, letting go with his hands as he reached high to grab hold again.

Cole continued like that for what seemed an eternity, gaining distance at a pace he feared was too slow, much too slow,
and yet he persevered, working hands and feet in tandem as he edged ever upward.

Cole could feel the shadow of the basket and risked looking
upwards; he was so close now, so tantalizingly close. But the rope was almost completely cut through now, and Cole saw that he was just hanging by a thread; the knife seemed to move in slow motion as the pilot worked through the last remaining fibers.

Knowing it was his last chance, Cole pushed violently upwards with his legs, bound hands reaching upwards
as the rope finally gave way; Cole watched it fall to the city streets below even as his hands extended and then gripped down tight on the metal frame underneath the basket, legs swinging wildly.

And then he sensed a shadow approaching him and pulled his legs clear out of the way, the sharp edge of an apartment building’s flat roof just missing him.

He kept his body in an L-shape, his legs extended as the building passed beneath him, but was forced to react again when he felt the passage of the box cutter’s blade slicing towards his face.

He swung a leg up, his bare foot making contact with the pilot’s wrist, deflecting the blow; but his other leg came down in reflexive compensation, banging hard onto the roof, dragging across the hot, rough concrete before Cole pulled it back up.

He glimpsed the pilot bending lower, other hand gripping hard to his support rope as he swung the knife again at Cole.

Cole kicked out again, striking the arm and knocking the knife to one side; and then they were clear of the apartment building and Cole gripped even more t
ightly to the metal frame as he let both of his legs snake out, calves securing themselves forcefully around the pilot’s neck.

The man lashed out with the knife and Cole felt a searing, hot pain in his thigh as the blade sliced into him, but in the next instant Cole pulled hard on the metal frame, yanking his legs down in synchronization, and the pilot was ripped free from the side of the basket.

It all seemed to happen in slow motion; the man dropped the knife, his hands scrabbling for the rope, for the basket, for
anything
; and then his entire body was in motion as Cole’s legs pulled him clear and then relaxed their grip, dropping the man over a thousand feet to the unforgiving concrete streets below.

The pilot’s s
creams carried all the way down.