Brad Thor - Blowback

Reynolds watched as al-Hafez entered the hangar. “I have a security matter I’d like to discuss with you. I’m concerned with some activity we’ve seen around one of the northern pumping stations. I’m going to be near your office later today and was hoping we could meet.”

“That won’t be possible,” replied the deputy minister. “I’m on my way out of the country and will be gone for several days.”

“Vacation?” asked Reynolds.

“Business,” said Faruq as he climbed the Falcon’s retractable stairs and paused before entering the cabin. “Whatever this is, I’m sure it’s nothing. If there’s still a problem when I get back, we can discuss it then. “With that, the deputy intelligence minister punched the end button on his cell and climbed into the plane.

Hiking back to his Land Cruiser, Reynolds downed a liter of water from the cooler on his back seat and then reached for his body armor. He had one last lead to pursue, and something told him that with that much money lying around, Mo(hammad), Larry, and Curly were going to be in a shoot first, ask questions later kind of mood.

There was only one road back to Riyadh, and Reynolds got on it as fast as he could. He pushed his Land Cruiser as hard as it would go and beat the militants to the outskirts of the city by a good twenty minutes. By the time they passed him, Reynolds was secreted on a small side street, and they never noticed as he pulled back onto the road and began to follow them.

He had expected the men to return to the small apartment they shared near their mosque, but instead they led him to a large warehouse in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Riyadh. So much for the Saudi government’s campaign to eradicate poverty, thought Reynolds as he passed dwelling after dwelling where the inhabitants were so poor they couldn’t even afford electricity. People could say what they wanted about America, but he had never seen such an enormous or hopeless chasm between the haves and the have-nots than he did in Saudi Arabia.

Risking only one casual drive-by, Reynolds noticed that the building apparently belonged to yet another good-for-nothing member of the Saudi Royal Family-a young prince named Hamal. Reynolds didn’t know which type of Saudi royal he hated more-the heavy-drinking, whoring, spend-like-there’s-no-tomorrow kind, or the ultrareligious, hypocritical, spit-in-the-face-of-the-world, bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you kind. As far as he was concerned, Prince Hamal fell into the latter category. With an Oxford education and a bottomless bank account, Hamal didn’t want for a single thing in his life, yet as a convert to extremist Wahhabism, he never missed an opportunity to strike out at the Saudi monarchy for being bloated, lazy, and corrupt.

Recently, Hamal had taken a page from the British monarchy and had begun issuing royal titles to merchants who were furthering the greater good of Islam and the Islamic world. Much as pastry shops and shirt makers were being recognized as official purveyors to the crown in England, Hamal was recognizing businesses that made life better for Muslims around the globe. While quietly the higher-ups in the Saudi Royal Family were more than a little upset at not having been consulted before the young man embarked on his endeavor, they liked the idea of the Saudi name supporting people who bettered the lives of the followers of Islam. What’s more, Hamal was the brains behind the bottled water that supposedly came from a secret spring beneath Mecca. Reynolds thought it was all a crock, right down to how Hamal claimed he was donating all the proceeds to worthy Muslim charities.

That move was surely a winner with the Royal Family. Ever since 9/11, the Saudis had been forced to discontinue their highly successful charity drives on television, which had brought in hundreds of millions of dollars for various Islamic groups worldwide. The U.S. had seen it as blatant fundraising for terrorists, and though the Saudi monarchy didn’t necessarily agree, they had buckled under the pressure from their staunchest Western ally.

The money Prince Hamal’s venture stood to raise and the positive spin it placed upon the Royal Family meant that the powers that be were willing to look the other way and forget that he had never even attempted to go through the proper channels before setting up shop. At the end of the day, the Saudi monarchy had seen his effort at worst as worthwhile and at best as a way to keep the radical young prince out of their hair and maybe a means by which he could grow to be less of a pain in their collective ass.

After parking his car and surveying the building from the rooftop of an abandoned building down the street, Reynolds knew he wasn’t going to be able to leave until he got a look at what was going on inside. Finding a small slice of shade, he waited until most of the neighborhood’s residents had left for afternoon prayers before making his way down to the pavement. He had hoped that Mo, Larry, and Curly would leave the warehouse to attend prayers as well, but today just wasn’t turning out to be his day.

Stopping at his Land Cruiser, Reynolds pulled a twelve-gauge Remington 870 tactical shotgun from inside the cargo area and wrapped it inside a cheap prayer rug he had bought at one of Riyadh ’s many souks.

He did one complete turn around the outside of the warehouse by foot, trying to find the best entry point. He stopped outside the blacked-out, bar-covered windows of what appeared to be the ware-house’s office, but was unable to hear anything above the steady roar of the industrial-strength air conditioners. With his sweaty right hand shoved inside the wool rug and wrapped around the Remington’s pistol grip, the whir of the machines only served to remind him of how goddamn hot he was. Jesus, was he sick and tired of Saudi Arabia.

Continuing on to the loading dock area, Reynolds kept looking for a way in, but the building was more secure than a bank vault. With steel-reinforced doors and bars covering what other few windows there were, the three Wahhabi stooges were obviously a lot more capable of keeping people out of their warehouse than they were of keeping people off their tail while driving. Reynolds realized that the only way he was going to get a look inside was if someone invited him.

By the time he came back around near the office, he had come to the conclusion that the best way to gain an invitation was to first smoke somebody out from inside. Setting his shotgun cum prayer rug against the side of the building, he removed his Benchmade tactical folding knife from his back pocket, popped open the circuit breaker covers for the air-conditioning units, and started knocking them offline one by one.

With one hundred plus degree temperatures raging outside, he figured it wouldn’t take too long for the people inside the building to start feeling the heat. The other thing Reynolds hoped he was right about was that with only one car parked in the warehouse’s parking lot, there was no one other than Mo, Larry, and Curly inside. Any more than that, and he could end up with a serious problem on his hands.

Picking his prayer rug back up, he leaned behind the office door and waited. Ten minutes later, he heard the sound of someone unlocking the door from the inside. Quietly, he unwrapped the shotgun and threw the rug off to the side.

There was the sound of voices from inside as the man’s colleagues urged him to hurry up and figure out what had gone wrong with the air conditioners. Reynolds waited until the man had stepped all the way outside and the door had closed behind him before pursing his lips and making the sound of two quick kisses.

The man spun around, only to be knocked unconscious by the butt of Reynolds’s shotgun. The only thing he would remember, if anything at all, was that his assailant wasn’t an Arab. That was probably one of the biggest advantages Reynolds had going for him. Saudi Arabia was awash with foreign contractors and consultants, and outside the people he worked with, nobody knew who the hell he was.