The Island--A Thriller

by Ben Coes

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  To Mabel

  A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.

  —G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

  1

  8:00 P.M. TEHRAN

  11:30 A.M. U.S. EST

  QUDS FORCE HEADQUARTERS

  CORRIDOR 11S

  AHVAZ, IRAN

  It was seven o’clock in the evening in Iran. The sky was a smoky gray as sunset approached. Yet inside the office of Major General Muhammed Shakib, Iran’s top military, national security, and intelligence officer, whether it was day or night was irrelevant.

  On this day, this was especially true. For on this day, Shakib would make a decision that had the potential to turn all Iranian days into darkness—or perhaps strike so deeply into the Republic’s greatest enemy so as to ensure daylight for centuries.

  Today was what Shakib had been born, raised, trained, and groomed for. A simple “yes” or “no” was all that was required. One small word, yes or no. He chuckled grimly as he contemplated the fact that one word could change the future in such a dramatic and permanent way.

  Attack America? Yes or no, Muhammed?

  It was what he alone was chosen to decide, and yet he had grave misgivings. The proposed attack was audacious, and had the potential to bring the United States of America to its knees. But what if it failed? he kept asking himself. If we fail, the United States will turn Iran into a glass parking lot. Even if Mansour and his Hezbollah army succeed, in all likelihood they would still turn Iran into a radioactive crater.

  So why do it?

  But then he remembered his calling—and his fealty.

  Shakib’s office was vast. It occupied the Tehran-facing corner of the top floor of the headquarters of QUDS Force, in the beautiful southern-Iran city of Ahvaz. The office had fourteen-foot ceilings decorated in ornate woodwork and windows that looked out upon the base.

  Shakib had responsibility for two other Iranian entities in addition to QUDS. VEVAK, the Republic of Iran’s secretive international clandestine agency, and Hezbollah, the foremost terror entity in the world. While Al Qaeda and ISIS often garnered greater attention, it was Hezbollah that, in the background, undergirded almost all lethal, illegal actions against the West. Hezbollah was where Shakib put his best men from both QUDS and VEVAK. Hezbollah was Iran’s bomb builder, assassination factory, and terror machine, the front edge of a war Iran believed it was in.

  Yes or no … that was the question before Shakib. His mind replayed the operating briefing.

  Shakib had barely slept—and on the black leather sofa in his office at that. What the Supreme Leader wanted was what should happen, and Suleiman wanted the attack, whatever the consequences. Shakib realized that Suleiman was senile, and before that insane, and yet to say or do anything to oppose him would be suicide. Even voicing his misgivings might result in Shakib being relieved of his duties … or imprisoned … or hauled in front of a firing squad and shot. Of course he would approve Mansour’s design—but something bothered him on a level that was beyond official duty. Shakib was angry, for Mansour had lied to him and only him, and now Shakib was cornered.

  * * *

  Mansour’s lie had occurred that afternoon. Following prayers, General Shakib, along with Iran’s top military, intelligence, security, and religious leadership, had met inside the office of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Suleiman.

  The briefing had lasted less than thirty minutes. It was about a proposed Hezbollah action against the United States of America, on American soil.

  The briefing had been led by Zakaria Mansour, the commander general of Hezbollah. Mansour had been handpicked by Shakib himself after time in QUDS and VEVAK.

  Mansour had designed the entire operation. He chose an Arabic word. He called it Aljazira.

  The Island.

  Aljazira was about turning Manhattan into an island, literally.

  Mansour was tall and thin. He was muscular, but there was something else about him that made him more powerful than men much bigger and stronger. He had a dashing look and way about him, his black hair parted in the middle and long, feathered back. His face was chiseled and handsome; sharp features, aquiline nose—and yet an overall sense of the potential for violence, a scar beneath his right eye clearly visible—and eyes that had a savage, calculating quality. He wore a blue button-down beneath a smart-looking Canali suit. He was the only one standing, amid large, long leather sofas, beneath twenty-foot ceilings and the ornate woodwork of the Supreme Leader’s office.

  A large screen displayed Mansour’s presentation for all to see. Mansour began by nodding respectfully to Suleiman and saluting Shakib. He held a small black remote.

  The first slide showed all New York City from above. A crystal-clear photo taken by drone over the city and its five boroughs. Suddenly, a red digital line illuminated the border of the island of Manhattan.

  “Your Excellency, what I present today is an operation designed to inflict great damage on the Great Satan,” said Mansour.

  “I look forward to hearing about it, Zakaria,” said Suleiman.

  “The pieces are all in place, Imam,” said Mansour thoughtfully. He counted out with his fingers. “Manpower, weapons, and most important, opportunity.”

  “Will you be there?” said Suleiman.

  “Yes,” said Mansour. “I leave tomorrow.”

  Several heads turned, and glances were exchanged.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” said Suleiman. “Please, go on,” he said, waving his long, spindly fingers through the air.

  “Time requires, if it is all right, I summarize,” said Mansour.

  He held a remote with a red laser pointer, pointed it at Manhattan, and detailed his plan.

  It took Mansour less than five minutes to outline the operation. A low chorus of mumbling and exchanged glances—most indicating disbelief—cut through the room, but Mansour continued. His voice throughout remained calm, patient, and above all respectful.

  After he was finished, there was a long hush. All eyes went to Suleiman, who stared at Mansour. Slowly, Suleiman’s head began to move up and down, nodding his approval, nodding to Mansour to continue.

  One of Shakib’s deputies, his chief of staff, Brigadier General Ghaani, spoke up.

  “Surely trying to kill the president, even just an attempt on his life, will provoke a response that could prove catastrophic?” said Ghaani.

  “I disagree,” said Mansour. “The Americans are weak. Their military is spread thin and has been devastated by decades of war. With Dellenbaugh dead, there will be pandemonium. A power vacuum. They don’t
have a vice president. Under their constitution, the Speaker of the House will become president. This man, Congressman Healey, is a pacifist and can be bought off. Besides, killing Dellenbaugh is just one part of the plan. A distraction. While they focus all their efforts on stopping us, we will execute the second half of the operation, which will devastate the entire country. They will be so ruined that they will be unable to respond.”

  For his part, Mansour had kept his boss, Shakib, apprised of his work over the four months it took to design and prepare the attack on the U.S. president. Shakib knew the details, yet now, hearing it out loud before the uninitiated at the highest levels of the Republic was astonishing. Everyone in Suleiman’s office understood that, if executed properly, it would be the greatest terror attack ever, larger than 9/11 by a long shot—and would inflict unimaginable devastation on America.

  “You have my blessing,” said Suleiman. “Now, is there anything else?”

  “Thank you, Imam, Commander in Chief,” said Mansour, referring to the Supreme Leader’s title in times of combat, a subtle but dramatic display of honor. Mansour glanced at Shakib as he spoke. “There is one other aspect to the operation I would like approval for,” he continued.

  He hit the remote and a photo appeared of a man. It was a grainy black-and-white image showing an American, rugged-looking and tough, with thick, dark hair cut short, and his face had a layer of stubble across it. Beneath the man’s eyes were thick stripes of eye black. He had on a military uniform and clutched an M4, aimed up at the sky. The man had a faraway look, past the photographer, a cold look. In the original photo, he was one of six men. But the technologists had the face of this man isolated and blown up.

  Suleiman visibly sat up, and his demeanor turned sharply, his nostrils flaring in barely concealed anger.

  Every man in the room knew who he was. This was the number one enemy of the Republic.

  An American soldier named Dewey Andreas.

  They all knew who he was and what he’d done, entering Iran two years before and stealing the Republic’s first nuclear device in an operation that was disavowed by the CIA. A year later, Andreas killed the chief of all Iranian intelligence and military activities, Abu Paria, Shakib’s predecessor and mentor, a beast of a man who built QUDS Force from its very beginnings. Andreas had killed Paria—a 280-pound man of mostly muscle—in a brutal, bloody fistfight in the restroom of a Macau casino, stabbing a ballpoint pen into Paria’s carotid artery then leaving Paria to bleed to death on a linoleum floor.

  Andreas was a menace to Iran.

  “And what is it you would like, Zakaria?” said Suleiman, his obvious admiration for Mansour visible to all in the room.

  “An insurance policy,” said Mansour. “I would like to eliminate Iran’s top enemy, today, near his home.”

  “And if you don’t succeed?” said the cleric.

  “I would never bet against a great adversary,” said Mansour, “and if we fail at killing Dewey Andreas, the operation will still succeed. Anarchy will reign. He will be irrelevant.”

  “Son, why not simply surprise the Americans?” said Suleiman, waving his fingers.

  “It is just an instinct, Imam,” said Mansour. “I am not scared, if that is what you are asking. He is a worthy adversary and thus I choose to kill him. That is not fear. That is strategy.”

  Suleiman cleared his throat. He looked at Mansour, then signaled for him to come and sit in an empty chair next to him. Suleiman placed his hand on Mansour’s.

  “Allah will be with you,” whispered Suleiman, gripping Mansour’s wrist and speaking quietly so that only the two of them could hear what was being said. “Take your vision to its future, my blessed one. I trust that you will spill only as much blood as necessary.”

  “So I have your blessing?” said Mansour.

  “Yes,” said Suleiman, nodding. “Kill them.”

  2

  11:38 A.M.

  WASHINGTON NAVY YARD

  NAVAL SUPPORT ACTIVITY—ANTITERRORISM

  716 SICARD STREET, S.E.

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Dewey Andreas was a proficient swimmer. He grew up near the ocean and learned how to swim in the bitter-cold water of Penobscot Bay, off a small Maine town called Castine, where currents ripped across the headlands of the remote, pine-crossed peninsula with fury and might.

  At ten years old, Dewey and his older brother, Hobey, were out sailing and got caught up in a sudden summer squall. It turned into a microburst, on what had seemed like a perfect, sunny July afternoon. Winds from a rapidly approaching steel-black sky cut overhead and moved in an attack pattern toward Castine, like a tornado. The 420 the Andreas brothers were sailing was like a leaf in a hurricane, thrown about as they attempted to tack back to shore. But the boat capsized and threw both boys into a bitter-cold, swirling, purple-blue, current-crossed, ferocious ocean. Hobey managed to hold on to a line attached to the sailboat but Dewey was thrown under the roiling sea. They were only a few hundred yards offshore, but the sudden winds, the overwhelming waves, the frigid temperatures, and the chaos of the swirling whitecaps soon had the ten-year-old struggling simply to get back to the surface each time a wave took him under.

  All Dewey could remember was struggling to get enough air—to get kicked under and then swim back up to the surface for one more breath, thinking in those last moments only about his favorite horse, a black mare named April. Then he blacked out under the violent water.

  Mr. Gilliam, a lobsterman from Stonington, had seen the Andreas boys get flipped into the water by the storm’s first gale winds. Gilliam’s lobster boat came out of nowhere alongside where he knew Hobey and Dewey had gone down. Gilliam’s stepson, Matt, leaned down off the side of the boat with a long wooden pole usually used to retrieve lobster pots, and grabbed Dewey from the unforgiving waters with a hook at the end of the pole, catching Dewey’s life preserver at the back of his neck as Dewey lay facedown in the crest of a deep wave, before rescuing Hobey, who was still clutching to the small sailboat.

  Dewey was a competent swimmer, but ever since that July day he preferred to feel the ground beneath his feet.

  After graduating from Boston College, Dewey joined the U.S. Army Rangers, despite the fact that a recruiter from the Navy SEALs tried to get him to head out to Coronado. The recruiter was an alumnus who’d watched Dewey run the football for BC for four years, during which time Dewey broke several BC rushing records including the most important one, most touchdowns during a single season. But as much as Dewey respected the Navy SEALs, and even longed to be one, he knew he would have a hard time with the water. At the very least, he knew it would bring back memories, memories of nearly drowning, and he didn’t want to earn a living doing something he wouldn’t enjoy. He had a deep-seated fear of the ocean that he couldn’t shake, though he’d spent plenty of time on the water, near the water, in the water, and underwater.

  So, he joined the U.S. Army Rangers. Dewey learned how to operate on land, to jump from airplanes and helicopters, to use all manner of weapons, to climb with rope and without, but mostly how to distance himself from all distractions and all competition in virtually every challenge placed in front of him and his fellow class of Rangers by the hard-driving trainers at Fort Benning.

  Which was why it seemed unusual that, at this very moment, Dewey was in a building at the Washington Navy Yard in southeast Washington, in a windowless building that housed a large swimming pool. The pool was designed for training purposes only. It was twenty feet deep, and surrounded by equipment used to test and train individuals in various forms of water survival.

  Dewey was here because Polk ordered it. Bill Polk, the head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, which included Special Operations Group, believed Dewey needed to understand how to survive in water.

  At this particular moment, Dewey wasn’t showing a lot of progress. He was in the water, submerged deep. His hands were tied together—bound tight behind his back—and his ankles were bound as well. In addition,
a blindfold was tied tight across his eyes. He appeared lost, halfway to the bottom of the pool, already having made a fatal mistake in the calibration between air inside the lungs, body weight, and gravity. The goal was to learn how—while shackled and blindfolded—to survive by bobbing to the surface for a breath of air then sinking so as to be able to kick the bottom and reach the surface for another breath of air. Dewey was trying to exhale so that he could sink all the way down and kick his feet against the concrete pool bottom in order to push himself back to the surface for a breath of air, but he was horizontal, several feet above the bottom of the pool, and had lost his equilibrium and therefore where he was in the pool, and he was out of air. He stopped struggling and drifted listlessly toward the bottom.

  A tall man in a mid-thigh red-and-white tactical wet suit was watching from the side of the pool. Rob Tacoma’s hair was wet. His only accouterment was a fixed-blade combat knife, sheathed to his outer thigh. Tacoma had had to jump into the water twice already in order to help get Dewey back to the surface.

  Tacoma was an ex–Navy SEAL. He was also Dewey’s closest friend. After Polk spoke to Dewey, Dewey asked Tacoma to help him learn how to survive in water. Tacoma could never teach Dewey even half of what he knew, but he’d been trying to teach him the basics. This exercise was about understanding the relationship between water and the human body, specifically about oxygen and its impact on body weight, as well as determining one’s position in the water relative to the surface in simulated nighttime or hostile conditions. Another goal of the exercise had to do with managing emotion and controlling panic, which the blindfold only exacerbated. Ideally, Dewey should have by now fallen into a steady pattern of up and down, getting air from the surface then slowly exhaling, thus decreasing the amount of oxygen in the lungs and rendering his body less buoyant.

  Of course, some believed there was an even deeper meaning to the exercise.