Slaton had no trouble locating the RosAvia complex—against the pitch black desert, twenty miles outside Ouarzazate, its cluster of floodlit buildings stood out like a neon-clad Vegas casino.
He dismounted half a mile short of the facility, and walked the bike carefully into the brush beside the main road—ease of concealment being another reason he’d not opted for a car. The air was thin and crisp, the warmth of the day already giving way to a still mountain coolness.
With the bike out of sight, he took his bearings carefully. He saw a traffic sign nearby, and a hundred yards to the east was a distinctive curve in the road sided by a high guardrail. Hiding transportation was a useful bit of tradecraft, but one that backfired readily if you couldn’t find your ride on the way out. Particularly when one was on a dead run with gunfire blazing behind—something Slaton had had the displeasure of experiencing more than once.
He set out toward the floodlights under a dim moon. He moved with the land where he could, keeping to wadis and avoiding high ground. The terrain was scarred and dry, the earth’s skin suffering the harshness of the elements. Slaton slowed as he neared the tiny airfield, and three times he paused to study the complex under its array of high-mounted amber floods. From a distance he saw a few small buildings nested beside the lone hangar. There was one long runway, and the standard mesh of taxiways connecting it all. It struck him that everything looked relatively new. The corrugated buildings appeared freshly painted, and the concrete was neither potholed nor weed-encrusted. The tall floodlights had not a single failed bulb in their luminous arrays.
When he was a hundred feet shy of the perimeter fence, Slaton turned right and moved parallel to the boundary. He’d so far seen no sign of security. No roving guards with dogs, no vehicles parked at the fenceline with headlights trained outward. He also saw no sign of intrusion-detection hardware—no wiring or hardware for motion sensors, no pole-mounted infrared cameras.
As his angle of view changed, he noticed that the hangar’s big main door was partially open. Inside, under the hard fluorescent light, he saw the first signs of life—a pair of men wearing drab coveralls. Slaton lifted his binoculars and watched for a full minute as they disassembled what looked like an equipment stand. From the tight angle he couldn’t see what else the hangar contained, but as he imagined it Slaton was struck by the airfield’s one glaring deficiency—there was not a single airplane in sight. He kept moving, knowing there had to be something in the hangar, and was rewarded fifty feet later. First a nosecone, then a fuselage, and finally a tail. He did a double take before yielding to the unexpected—he was looking at a vintage MiG-21. Of all the aircraft he might have expected here, that hadn’t made the list.
For Slaton, it was a throwback to his early days in Mossad. He’d seen MiG-21s in Syria, and knew that the Egyptian Air Force had once flown them. Today, however, even those countries, which weren’t known for fielding state-of-the-art fighters, had put their 21s to the dustbin. So what’s a relic like that doing here? he wondered. And at a brand-new airfield on the edge of the Sahara?
He saw what looked like a second jet behind the first—same make and model, but missing an engine and some panels. Then, far inside, the tail of a third. All three jets shared one peculiar commonality—bright orange paint on the tail. This too Slaton recognized: He’d seen test aircraft at Israel’s Palmachim Air Base with similar markings. Those jets, however, had been cutting-edge experimental aircraft, not fifty-year-old Russian cast-offs.
He looked out across the rest of the airfield. Aside from the lack of aircraft, he saw the same things one would see at any airport. A fuel truck and some support vehicles, two standard shipping containers. A pile of discarded sheet metal next to a stack of empty wooden crates. RosAvia seemed a compact setup, a tiny flight operation in the middle of nowhere. To Slaton, that remoteness, combined with the lack of security, suggested one of two things. Either what was going on inside was harmless and didn’t need protecting, or someone was trying to make it appear that way. A variation of hiding in plain sight.
Ready to document his finds, he moved toward a rock outcropping that would give some elevation. He climbed from the backside, and on reaching the top he had what he needed—a line of sight to the hangar that cleared the perimeter fence. He set up shop quickly, choosing a flat stone shelf for his platform. He was removing his recently purchased camera and binoculars from the backpack when his phone vibrated with a message:
TARGET ARRIVING FOUR MINUTES
Slaton swept his eyes toward the ebony sky to the north. Sure enough, along the extended centerline of the runway, he saw an aircraft beacon. It twinkled red in a halfhearted warning, like the heartbeat of a weary traveler looking for respite. He checked his watch. Eighteen minutes ahead of the estimated arrival time the CIA had given him hours ago. Not bad. Perhaps an unexpected tailwind. Or a pilot with a hot date.
How Langley had tracked the jet across the wilderness of airspace that was northern Africa Slaton couldn’t imagine. Was it some new kind of satellite capability? Had they hacked into the air traffic control systems of a half dozen countries? Whatever the case, they’d gotten it right.
The red beacon was soon lost to the glare of bright landing lights, all of it sinking with precision toward the end of the runway. The jet landed and taxied a short distance to the hangar. The engines spooled down, an entry door was lowered, and a lone figure descended to the ramp. A figure that, even as a shadowed silhouette, set Slaton immediately on edge.
He picked up the camera, adjusted the focus on the long lens. The man was momentarily caught in the spill of the ramp lights, his face clear in the viewfinder. In that moment, Slaton realized why the CIA had sent him here.
It was, he was quite sure, a face he’d seen before.
* * *
President Petrov sat fidgeting behind the desk in his Kremlin office. He looked at the secure phone as he had done a hundred times in the last day. Or so it seemed. After so many years in power, he was not a man used to waiting.
As far as he knew, his plan was going well. Yet things would move quickly now. He spun a half turn in his chair and gazed out the window. Red Square was lost to the gloom, winter ahead of its cruel schedule. He thought acidly of the infernal Paris Accord, the climate agreement he’d signed, but had no intention of honoring. Try to convince a Russian the world is getting warmer.
The square was quiet now, yet there had been a protest two days earlier. Kremlin security had stamped it out quickly, but such outbreaks had been materializing more often. More spontaneously. Something had to change, and very soon.
His musings were interrupted when his secretary announced a visitor.
“Send him in immediately!” Petrov said.
He spun to face the door, but remained in his seat to receive Sergei Durov—the man he’d anointed as director of the FSB.
“What news from Saudi Arabia?” the president asked, knowing Durov wouldn’t be here for any other reason. Not today.
“Our source there tells us everything is operating on schedule.”
“Is he sure?”
“He is only a mid-level man in the National Guard, but very conveniently placed. He’s never been wrong before. Our staff from the Riyadh post have also been keeping their eyes open—everything they’ve seen correlates. The royals will be under way soon.”
Petrov nodded, relieved. “Good. And what of our attribution plan?”
“That is why I came. We finally managed it—the phone intercept we were working on.”
“You can influence our target as hoped?” asked Petrov.
Durov, who was relatively new to his position, said confidently, “Our man will be in place soon. Everything is lining up perfectly.”
Petrov almost relaxed, but saw fit to add a bit of incentive for his latest FSB head. “For your sake … let’s hope that it does.”