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Excerpt
Prologue
Carthage, Tunisia
3:32 A.M.
The driving rain was unrelenting, whipped into a frenzy by howling
winds, and the waves surged and crashed against the coast, a maelstrom
in the black night. In the shallow waters just offshore, a dozen
or so dark figures bobbed, clinging to their buoyant, waterproof
haversacks like survivors of a shipwreck. The freak storm had caught
the men unawares by was good; it provided better cover than they
could have hoped for.
From the beach, a pinpoint of red light flashed on and off twice,
a signal from the advance team that it was safe to land. Safe! What
did that mean? That this particular stretch of Tunisian coastline
was left undefended by the Garde Nationale? Nature's assault seemed
far more punishing than anything the Tunisian coast guard could
attempt.
Tossed and buffeted about by the heaving swells, the men made their
way toward the beach, and in one coordinated movement clambered
silently onto the sand by the ruins of the ancient Punic ports.
Stripping off their black rubber dry suits to reveal dark clothing
and blackened faces, they removed their weapons from their haversacks
and began distributing their arsenal: Heckler & Koch MP-10 submachine
guns, Kalashnikovs, and sniper rifles. Behind them, others now came
ashore in waves.
Everything was precisely orchestrated by the man who had trained
them so exhaustively, so tirelessly, for the last months. They were
Al-Nahda freedom fighters, natives of Tunisia come to free their
country from the oppressors. But their leaders were foreigners ---
skilled terrorists who also shared their faith in Allah, a small,
elite cell of freedom fighters drawn from the most radical wing
of Hezbollah.
The leader of this cell, and of the fifty or so Tunisians, was the
master terrorist known only as Abu. Occasionally his full nom de
guerre was used: Abu Intiquab. The father of revenge.
Elusive, secretive, and ferocious, Abu had trained the Al-Nadha
fighters at the Libyan camp outside of Zuwarah. He refined their
strategy on a full-scale model of the presidential palace and instructed
them in tactics both more violent and more devious than anything
they were used to.
Barely thirty hours ago, at the port of Zuwarah, the men had boarded
a five-thousand-ton, Russian-built break-bulk freighter, a cargo
ship that normally hauled Tunisian textiles and Libyan manufactured
goods between Tripoli and Bizerte in Tunisia. The powerful old freighter,
now battered and decrepit, had traveled north-northwest along the
Tunisian coast, past the port cities of Sfax and Sousse, then swung
around Cap Bon and entered the Golfe de Tunis, just past the naval
base at La Goulette. Alerted to the schedule of the coast guard
patrol boats, the men had dropped anchor five miles from the Carthage
coast and swiftly launched their rigid-hulled inflatables, equipped
with powerful outboard motors. Within minutes, they had entered
the turbulent waters of Carthage, the ancient Phoenician city so
powerful in the fifth century B.C. that it was considered Rome's
great rival. If anyone in the Tunisian coast guard happened to be
monitoring the ship on radar, he would see only a freighter pausing
momentarily, then heading on toward Bizerte.
On the shore, the man who had flashed the red signal was hissing
orders and cursing in a low voice with unquestioned authority. He
was a bearded man in a military-issue rain anorak worn over a keffiyeh.
Abu.
"Quiet! Keep it down! What do you want, to bring out the whole godforsaken
Tunisian Garde? Quickly, now. Let's move it, move it! Clumsy fools!
Your leader rots in jail while you dawdle! The trucks are waiting!"
Next to him stood a man wearing night-vision goggles and silently
scanning the terrain. The Tunisians knew him only as the Technician.
One of Hezbollah's top munitions experts, he was a handsome, olive-skinned
man with heavy brows and flashing brown eyes. As little as the men
knew about Abu, they knew even less about the Technician, Abu's
trusted advisor. According to rumor, he was born to wealthy Syrian
parents and raised in Damascus and London, where he was schooled
in the intricacies of arms and explosives.
Finally the Technician spoke, quietly and calmly. He pulled his
black, hooded waterproof garment tight against the torrential rain.
"I hesitate to say it, my brother, but the operation is going smoothly.
The trucks loaded with matÈriel were concealed just as we had arranged
and the soldiers encountered no resistance on the short drive along
the Avenue Habib Borguiga. Now we have just received the radio signal
from the first men --- they have reached the presidential palace.
The coup d'etat has begun." As he spoke he consulted his wristwatch.
Abu nodded imperiously. He was a man who expected nothing less than
success. A distant series of explosions told Abu and his adviser
that the battle was underway. The presidential palace would be seized
imminently, and in a matter of hours, the Islamic militants would
control Tunis. "Let us not congratulate ourselves prematurely,"
Abu said in a low, tense voice. The rain was letting up now, and
in a moment the storm passed just as suddenly as it had appeared.
Suddenly the silence on the beach was shattered by voices shouting
at them in strident, high-pitched Arabic. Dark figures raced across
the sand. Abu and the Technician tensed and reached for their weapons,
but then saw it was their Hezbollah brethren.
"A zero-one!"
"An ambush!"
"My God! Mighty Allah, they're surrounded!"
Four Arab men approached, looking frightened and out of breath.
"A zero-one distress signal," panted the one carrying a PRC-117
field radio on his back. "They were able to transmit only that they
were surrounded by the security forces at the palace and taken captive.
Then the transmission was killed! They say they were set up!"
Abu turned to his adviser in alarm. "How can this be?"
The youngest of the four young men who stood before them said, "The
materiel left for the men --- the antitank weapons, the ammunition,
the C-4 --- all of it was defective! Nothing worked! And the government
forces were lying in wait for them! Our men were set up from the
beginning!"
Abu looked visibly pained, his customary serenity vanished. He beckoned
his number-one adviser. "Ya sahbee, I need your wise counsel."
The technician adjusted his wristwatch as he came close to the master
terrorist. Abu put one arm around his adviser's shoulders. He spoke
in a low, calm voice. "There must be a traitor in our ranks, an
infiltrator. Our plans were leaked."
Abu made a subtle, almost undetectable gesture with a finger and
thumb. It was a cue, and his followers immediately grabbed the Technician
by the arms, legs, and shoulders. The Technician struggled mightily,
but he was no match for the trained terrorists who held him. Swiftly,
Abu's right hand shot out. There was a flash of metal and Abu plunged
a serrated, hooked knife into the Technician's abdomen, yanking
the blade down and then out to inflict the maximum damage. Abu's
eyes were blazing. "The traitor is you!" he spat out.
The Technician gasped. The pain was obviously excruciating, but
his face remained a stolid mask. "No, Abu!" he protested.
"Pig!" spat Abu, lunging at him again, his serrated knife aimed
at the Technician's groin. "No one else knew the timing, the exact
plans! No one! And you were the one who certified the materiel.
It can be no one else."
Suddenly the beach was flooded with blindingly bright carbon-arc
light. Abu turned and realized that they were surrounded and vastly
outnumbered by dozens upon dozens of soldiers in khaki uniforms.
The Groupement de Commando of the Tunisian Garde Nationale, machine
guns pointed, had abruptly appeared from over the horizon; a thundering
racket from above announced the arrival of several attack helicopters.
Bursts of automatic gunfire hit Abu's men, turning them into jerking
marionettes. Their bloodcurdling screams were abruptly silenced,
and their bodies toppled to the ground in strange and awkward positions.
Another burst of gunfire, and then it stopped. The unexpected silence
that followed was eerie. Only the master terrorist and his munitions
specialist had not been fired upon.
But Abu seemed to have only one focus of attention, and he spun
back around to the man he had branded a traitor, positioning his
scimitar-shaped blade for another attack. Badly wounded, the Technician
tried to ward off his assailant, but instead began to sink to the
ground. The loss of blood was too great. Just as Abu lunged forward
to finish him off, powerful hands grabbed the bearded Hezbollah
leader from behind, slamming him down and pinning him to the sand.
Abu's eyes burned with defiance as the two were taken into custody
by the government soldiers. He did not fear any government. Governments
were cowards, he had often said; governments would release him under
some pretext of international law and extradition and repatriation.
Deals would be struck behind the scenes, and Abu would be quietly
released, his presence in the country a carefully kept secret. No
government wanted to bring on itself the full fury of a Hezbollah
terror campaign.
The terrorist master did not struggle, but instead caused his body
to go slack, forcing the soldiers to drag him away. As he was dragged
past the Technician, he spat full in his face and hissed, "You are
not long for this world, traitor! Pig! You will die for your treachery!"
Once Abu was taken away, the several men who had grabbed the Technician
gently released him, easing him down onto a waiting stretcher. Obeying
the instructions of the battalion captain, they backed away as the
captain approached. The Tunisian knelt beside the Technician and
examined his wound. The Technician winced but uttered not a sound.
"My God, it's a wonder you're still conscious!" said the captain
in heavily accented English. "You have been badly injured. You have
lost a great deal of blood."
The man who had been known as the Technician replied, "If your men
had responded to my signal a little more speedily, this wouldn't
have happened." He instinctively touched his wristwatch, which was
equipped with a miniaturized high-frequency transmitter.
The captain ignored the barb. "That SA-341 up there," he said, pointing
up to the sky, where a helicopter hovered, "will take you to a high-security
government medical facility in Morocco. I'm not permitted to know
your real identity, nor who your real employers are, so I won't
ask," the Tunisian began, "but I think I have a good idea ---"
Just then the Technician whispered harshly, "Get down!" He quickly
pulled a semiautomatic pistol from the holster concealed under his
arms and fired off five quick shots. There was a cry from a copse
of palm trees, and a dead man toppled to the ground, his sniper
rifle clutched in his hand. Somehow an Al-Nahda soldier had escaped
the massacre.
"Mighty Allah!" exclaimed the frightened captain of the battalion
as he slowly raised his head and looked around. "I think we're even
now, you and I."
"Listen," the Arab-who-was-not-an-arab said weakly, "tell your president
his minister of the interior is a secret Al-Nahda sympathizer and
collaborator who conspires to take his place. He's in league with
the deputy minister of defense. There are others...."
But the loss of blood had been too great. Before the Technician
could finish his sentence, he passed out.
Excerpted from THE PROMETHEUS DECEPTION (c) Copyright 2000 by Robert
Ludlum . Reprinted with permission from St. Martin's Press. All
rights reserved.
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