Page 20 of Her Ruthless Protector

“Hopefully it’s a false alarm,” Kane answered.

Ed stood up from the small table. He was a small wiry man, but it was clear that he was former military. He put out his hand to Asher and Kane.

“I spoke to Don for just a second before he ran off to put out another fire. He said you were SEALs. I’m Ed Llewellyn, former Major, SAS, at your service.”

Kane and Asher provided their names and ranks and shook the man’s hand. “Here’s what we know,” Kane began. “We have strong evidence that Saif al Fadi and Hamza al Libi are alive and have one of four events targeted for a terrorist incident. Originally there were fifteen mentioned, but we’ve narrowed it down to four.”

“And the Eurovision Song Contest is one of them?” A.J. questioned. “There’s an Amnesty International Conference going on the same time our event is taking place, wouldn’t that be a more likely target? After all, we’re just entertainment, the Amnesty Conference has some real bigwigs attending.”

“You and I are thinking along the same lines,” Kane agreed with a sigh.

A.J. laughed. “It must kill you to be assigned to this sideshow.”

“Not me,” Asher said. “I’m pumped. I’m going to get some autographs.”

“If I see you asking for autographs your ass is going to be grass and I’m going to be the lawnmower,” Kane growled. Asher just laughed.

“I want to hear more about the threats,” Ed interjected. “Also, why aren’t any of the Sultan’s Special Forces involved in this? I helped to train them, they should be involved.”

“First, you explain to me why the regular army isn’t on guard inside the arena with you,” Kane wanted to know.

Ed sighed. “Oman understands how important this show is to their country, but the Sultan has deemed some aspects of the show, like the women acrobats, inappropriate for his troops, therefore they are guarding outside the arena. Now tell me why just two US SEALs are here if there’s a terrorist threat, and the Sultan hasn’t sent his Special Forces.”

Kane sighed again. “It’s political.”

“Of course, it is,” Ed clipped out. “Explain it to me.”

“The US Ambassador has been trying to convince the Sultan and his ministers that Saudi Arabia and the US have nothing to do with this threat, that this is all al-Qaeda. But they’re convinced that we’re turning against them because they’re taking in Yemeni refugees.”

“I’m not buying it,” Ed said. “It has al-Qaeda written all over it. Those little bastards are trying to make the Omanis get into bed with the Yemenis once and for all. With Iran, al-Qaeda, and AQAP in Yemen, most of the world wouldn’t be able to differentiate if Oman would be backing the Houthi’s or AQAP. It’d be a shit-show.”

“Exactly,” Kane agreed.

“So that’s why the Sultan’s Army and Sultan’s Special Forces aren’t in on this. It’s just you two?” Ed asked. “I’m going to have to call in a hell of a lot more people.”

“We have a couple of teams working on this,” Kane explained. “Right now, one SEAL team is in Afghanistan tracking down al Fadi and al Libi. If they can pin them down, we can determine the exact target or stop anything from happening. In the meantime, our team is spread out between the four potential targets here in Oman. A.J. was right. We have the Amnesty International Conference, the OPEC Summit, the new terminal opening at the Muscat Airport, and this event. All of them are coinciding within ten days of each other. The closer we get to the dates, we’ll bring in more men.”

“Bloody hell.” Ed shook his head. “You won’t need to bring in more men here. I have twenty right now. I plan to have one hundred total on show nights. Just tell me what you need and it’s yours.”

“I appreciate that,” Kane said. “Hopefully our team in Afghanistan will shut this down and we won’t need anything.”

“That is the hope,” Ed agreed.