The Project 02 - The Lance

was formed from a series of high, vaulted passages lined with eighty-eight rows of pillars and arches, some of the arches thirty feet wide. A thousand years after Herod, the Crusaders had stabled their horses there and left the name. Holes in the rock could still be seen where the Templar knights had tied the animals' reins. Now the Stables housed the el-Marwani mosque, open to tours except during prayers.
    T hirteen meters above the floor of the cavernous space, preparations for President Rice's speech were under way. The halls and arches of the stables extended beneath the spot where Rice would stand and partway under the al-Aqsa Mosque.
    The tour guide led his charges into the famous chambers and began his commentary. The students straggled in spite of the guide's admonitions. The tall young man drifted further behind the group, then ducked into one of the side passages.
    He knew where to go. He stopped in a dim recess. He opened the book and removed the bomb. He checked his watch. He set the timer and molded the explosive against the stone, in the exact place where aerial sonar scans had shown a serious fracture in the bedrock supporting the mosque above.
    It took only a minute. His father was going to be proud of him.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

    Ronnie and Selena were on the rifle range at Quantico. Time to get Selena familiar with M4A1 rifles. Their sat phones signaled. Ronnie grunted when he read the message . Selena looked at her display.
    Alpha Red. 3P.FC.XG.E5.
    " What…," Selena started to say. Ronnie placed his finger on her lips, shook his head. He tore a page from his pocket notepad and wrote on it.
    T alk about the weapons. Act normal. Trouble.
    Selena began loading magazines for the rifles. She asked him about the laser range finder.
    "We'll get to it in a bit," Ronnie said. He rummaged around in his bag and took out a black metal box about eight inches square. He set it on the shooting bench and pressed a button. A green light began blinking on top of the box.
    " We can talk now. This will scramble any electronic surveillance aimed at us. I'll fill you in, then we'll turn it off and get on with the guns. Don't say anything important unless this box is on."
    " Ronnie, what's up? What's 'Alpha Red'?"
    " I don't know what's up. Alpha Red is an emergency code. It means the shit has hit the fan."
    "Nice choice of words. What's the rest of it?"
    "3P means we meet the Director at three o'clock this afternoon. FC means change our sat phones to a shifting frequency. It's not much used."
    "What about the rest?"
    "XG means deactivate the GPS locator in the phones."
    Ronnie took Selena's phone and entered the new frequency. He showed her how to shut down the signal that told anyone with access to the Global Positioning System where she was.
    "E5 is something Stephanie set up," Ronnie said. "It routes email and the internet through so many countries and servers no one can find the point of origin."
    " Where do we meet Harker?"
    " At the Marine Corps War Memorial."
    " What about Nick?"
    " He'll get the message. He'll be all right."
    Selena waited.
    "We shoot for a while, like we planned." Ronnie gestured at the weapons. "We get back to the car, I'll run a sweep. It's all part of Alpha Red. Clear?"
    Selena nodded. Ronnie turned off the box and put it back in his kit. He picked up a rifle. They'd been blacked out from eavesdroppers for less than a minute.
    "You're familiar with the MP-5," Ronnie said, "so you know how to control rate of climb and get off a three round burst."
    The Heckler and Koch MP-5 in its many variations was a favorite weapon of SOCOM units all over the world. Selena knew how to use it. It had been part of her baptism in blood.
    " The M4A1 is different from the H-K, but the principles are the same. This is what most of our troops carry. It fires a 5.65 by 45 millimeter NATO round, high velocity, good penetration. After five or six hundred rounds it can heat up and jam in a bad firefight. That's why we use the MP-5. But you should get familiar with this weapon."
    He handed it to her. "It's not much good beyond 300 yards. It's meant for close combat. Let's get you set up at a hundred and we'll try it out."
    He showed her the attachments, scope adjustments, stock configurations. They began shooting. After two hours they packed up and headed back to Ronnie's Hummer. He took a detector from his bag and walked around the car. He reached down and found a tiny device the size of a grain of rice, covered with