House Divided (A Luke Stone Thriller—Book 7)

CHAPTER ONE January 28 11:05 a.m. Sinai Time (4:05 a.m. Eastern Standard Time) Near Sharm El Sheikh International Airport Sinai Peninsula Egypt “It’s coming,” the young spotter said, his voice edged with a hint of worry. “The plane is coming.” A few feet away, Hashan al Malik sat cross-legged on the rugged ground, smoking the last of a Turkish cigarette. His long fingers were thin and dark, dirt embedded so deeply into them that they might never come clean. His face was leather. His thick beard was white, with a few streaks of black remaining, but his eyes were sharp and alive. His gaze was piercing. He had been alive a long time, and it was not an accident. In the world of itinerant fighters for Allah—the martyrs, the mujahideen—he was often known as Alshaykh, the Arabic word for “the Old Man.” Today, he felt every minute of his years. He was certainly too old for this. His hands were cold—almost like ice—and his body was not much better. It was freezing up here. He glanced at the spotter, a dark-skinned Bedouin in a light blue turban, who had spent his entire short life traversing these dry, barren mountains. The boy wore sandals on his bare feet. His cheeks were soft and clear—he could not grow a beard if Allah himself demanded it. He stood, gazing into the distance, his high-powered binoculars trained far to the north and west. “Can you read the markings?” Hashan said. The boy hesitated. “Moment… in a moment… yes.” Hashan could just hear the airplane now, the noise of its engines fighting to be heard above the roar of the wind. He fancied he could almost hear the sound of the landing gear engaging. “What does it say?” “It says TUI?” the boy said, almost asking a question. Then, with more confidence: “Definitely. TUI.” Hashan consulted the watch on his skinny wrist. It was quite a thing, that watch. Black and heavy, with a thick band, its big face set behind tempered glass. It was shockproof, waterproof, resistant to extremes of cold and heat, and perfectly accurate at high altitudes. If he sold the watch, the proceeds would feed an entire peasant family for a year—but the watch was more important than the family. The family could starve, but a man like Hashan needed to know the time. As it happened, the time was right. In fact, the plane was twenty minutes late. “That’s it,” Hashan said. “That’s the one.” He took one final drag of the cigarette, then flicked it away with his thumb and forefinger. He stood and threw off his heavy, scratchy wool blanket. He allowed himself a few seconds to admire the jagged hillsides all around them, and the taller mountains just to the west salted with white snow. Two seconds, maybe three—there wasn’t much time. Already he could see the black speck moving through the sky, growing in size, coming their way. He hefted the brown and green rocket launcher from the ground where it lay. It was a beautiful thing—a Strela-2, Russian-made surface-to-air missile system, liberated from the personal stockpiles of the recently departed Western stooge, Muammar Gaddafi. Hashan moved quickly through his pre-firing preparations. The Strela could be reloaded, but not in the field. He was only going to get one try at this, so he’d better be ready. He removed the covers and extended the sights, then mounted the tube on his shoulder. He activated the power supply to the missile electronics and waited a few seconds for the power to stabilize. The launcher weighed heavily on his bones—he had made the boy carry it here. Hashan’s sixty-two years settled more heavily onto him than the rocket itself. He’d fought many wars in many places, and he was tired. Being sent here felt more like a punishment than an honor. Yesterday, he had hiked through these trackless mountains with this young local boy as his guide, and they had spent the night with no food, and no fire, huddled together on the frozen ground for warmth. The journey had been difficult, but Hashan had been cold and hungry before, many times. Taking down jetliners with old Soviet shoulder-fired missiles was even more difficult. You must be an expert to do it, which Hashan was, but even then… Even then… He shook his head. Silly old man. Allah was the one who sharpened his sight. Allah steadied his hands. Allah guided the missile to its target. Hashan was too tired even to pray. An image passed through his mind—Allah bathed in bright light, beckoning him to Paradise. He sighed. It would have to do. The Perfect One knew everything, including his most inadequate servant’s intentions. “Give me strength,” Hashan muttered under his breath. He positioned his right eye behind the iron sights, steadied the tube with his left hand, and applied half trigger with his right. It happened almost automatically, as if the launcher was doing it by itself. Hashan could now see the plane clearly enough—a big boat of a thing, like a fat bumblebee moving slowly left to right, coming down for a landing at the airport twenty miles south of here. The winter sun glinted off its cockpit windows as it approached. It didn’t matter what Hashan saw. The missile would decide if the shot was clean. Suddenly, a light appeared in his iron sights and a low buzzer went off. The missile had acquired an infrared signature from the plane. Hashan aimed the launcher in front of the plane, leading it just a bit. He planted his feet and fully depressed the trigger. The missile left the tube with a WHOOOSH, the force of it rocking Hashan’s slender frame. He watched it go, the front and rear fins popping out instantly. It seemed to fly away in slow motion, and he almost imagined that he could see it spinning. “God is great,” the boy said beside him. Hashan nodded. “Yes.” That much was true, no matter whether the missile found its target. * * * Congressman Jack Butterfield of Texas lounged in a first-class window seat, simultaneously sipping a vodka tonic, watching the mountains pass below them, and listening to white-haired English billionaire Marshall Dennis prattle on beside him about some hedonistic misadventures he’d enjoyed in Ibiza as a young man. “That’s a riot, Marsh,” Jack said, and he meant it. The whole trip had been a riot so far. This was the party plane. They had all started drinking in an airport VIP lounge before they left Gatwick. Everyone had roamed about the cabin at will for the duration of the flight, as though they were at a flying cocktail party. And the young redheaded stewardess had just served him another drink, even though they were landing. Jack’s eyes followed her as she moved up the aisle and stopped at the Egyptian Consul General’s row. Boy oh boy, Jack would love to have a few misadventures with that stewardess. He needed to think of a reason to call her back here. “If it’s okay with you,” Jack said, “I probably won’t share that story during the unveiling.” “Oh, I doubt a single person would be surprised,” Marsh Dennis said. “I’ve been the sporting type my entire life.” “I know you have. Believe me when I say I’ve followed your—” Just then, the plane banked hard and lurched violently to the left. A voice came over the airplane’s public address system. Jack recognized it as the Oklahoma drawl of the pilot, an old US Navy vet Jack had briefly met when coming aboard. But the voice was different now. The man spoke fast and loud. “Flight attendants! Prepare for emergency landing.” Someone two rows back gasped. The pretty red-haired flight attendant had fallen across the Consul General’s lap. The plane was banking so steeply, she was nearly upside down, her legs in the air. She could not regain her feet. Jack Butterfield turned to Marsh Dennis. Everything seemed to slow down and take on a surreal cast. Marsh’s bloodshot eyes had opened wide, nearly round with sudden fear. For the first time, Jack noticed the deep lines in Marsh’s face—long, narrow slot canyons that undulated down his cheeks. Jack glanced down at his own hand, holding his vodka drink in a plastic airplane cup. He hadn’t spilled a drop of it, despite the commotion. He felt a moment of absurd pride about that—he’d been drinking a long time. Hell, he was a Texas man. “Hard stick right!” someone shouted over the speakers. “Hard right, I said. Oh God, it’s tracking us!” Jack looked around for his seatbelt. He found it, clipped it in, and cinched it tight. A moment passed. “Prepare for impact,” someone said. Impact? Beside him, Marsh Dennis placed his weathered hands on top of the seat in front of him. Somewhere behind them, far back in the main cabin, a sound came. Congressman Jack didn’t understand the sound. It was so loud, it was beyond his understanding. It was like a thunderclap, multiplied by a thousand. An instant later, the flight trajectory changed drastically. The plane was falling—a sickening plunge. A rushing sound came… there was nothing to compare it to. Things went flying by now, sucked backward. The pretty redhead was one of those things. Her drink cart was another. After that, another person went—a fat man in a suit. “Crash positions!” a booming voice shouted. Jack screamed, but he couldn’t hear himself. He dropped his drink and clapped his hands over his ears. The cabin of the plane was like a narrow tunnel in front of him. When it flipped upside down, he closed his eyes tight. In the midst of his terror, no thought came to him, only a dim awareness that whatever happened next, he did not want to see it. * * * “Here it comes,” Liz Jones said. She stood with her advance hospitality team in the international VIP passenger greeting area in Terminal 1 at Sharm El Sheikh Airport. Her team all wore black and gold Dennis Hotels Worldwide uniforms. She wore a tan business suit. The windows here were four stories high, giving a commanding view of the surrounding mountains, and the desert approach to the airport itself. She felt a trickle of nervousness run down her spine—this one was a major deal. A planeload of heavy hitters was coming in, including Sir Marshall Dennis himself, and most of them were going to be roaring drunk by now. But Liz could handle it. She knew that about herself. She had run with the big dogs, all over the globe, for years and years. “Let’s look sharp, everybody,” she said. Suddenly, a young man in her group, a guy from Ireland, gasped. Then a young woman screamed. Now more people all over the lounge were screaming. Liz stared out the window, her pretty middle-aged face numb, her brain frozen in shock. For a long moment, she could not understand what was happening out there. It didn’t make sense. The unfamiliar data simply did not compute. On the other hand, somewhere deep inside her mind, she knew she had stored footage of what had just transpired. If she replayed it, she knew what she would see—the plane approaching over the mountains, then a flash of light on the right side of the plane about halfway back, just behind the wing. She had seen it happen in real time, but had been unable to process it. She had been psyching herself up for the disembarking, and didn’t realize what she was looking at. The plane had cracked apart in midair. There were two pieces at first, then three, then four. The rear of the fuselage spun away like a boomerang. The front section came forward and down. It turned upside down, moving very fast, crashing into the foothills and spraying into a thousand shards. The wings disintegrated as they fluttered to the Earth. Liz stared and stared. Now there were fires all over the hillsides. All around her, her team stood silently, statues in Dennis black and gold. Behind them, in the terminal, people were still screaming, and now people were running. Several people had collapsed to the floor. “Was that really the plane?” Liz said to no one.