by E. L. Pini
For a brief moment, the picture of his dead father rose in his mind, but it was gone with the words, “Are you there, Colonel?”
He blinked and replied immediately. “Yes. What I’m offering you, general, are sixty warheads that fit those K-25 Khorramshahr missiles the Koreans stole from us.”
Silence fell on the other side of the line.
“General Gaani? Are you still with me?”
“Yes, Colonel. Could that be why they are offering them at such an attractive price? The Koreans didn’t have to invest in their development, I suppose.”
“This isn’t the bazaar, mon General, but I can get you an attractive price – just remember, a low price isn’t everything. You need warheads that’ll get the job done.”
“What are you proposing?”
“Some help. A barter deal that won’t eat into your budget. You give us your already overflowing barrels of that crude oil that you can’t sell. We give you the goods.”
Another silence. The General broke it eventually by clearing his throat, and said, “There is one thing I do not understand, Colonel. On one hand you claim to want our oil. On the other, you’ve been torching the wells in Irbid and Ar-Raqqah, destroying the ISIS oil reservoirs, which you could have obtained at zero cost.”
“This is true, my dear General Gaani. But scattering the ISIS state across the western world has other advantages. I’d love to discuss this some other time.”
“Very well. I shall consider your proposal and discuss it with my Ayatollahs. You make an interesting offer.”
“I hope that now you’ll accept a small token of my friendship. Consider it a marketing gift if you like.”
“Go ahead.”
“Listen closely, now. Your colleagues in Israel are planning to change the target of their criminal acts from your reactor scientists to your weapons engineers. The decision has already been made.”
“Hmm. Interesting. Do you by chance have the names of the specific targets?”
“Not yet, but my source is on it. I should have more very soon. I will call you once I have it. Sergei’s guys are also on it.”
“Please do, whenever you know. Day or night.”
Rasputin smiled briefly, then took the bud out of his ear and his legs off the table. Grisha’s voice immediately piped out of the intercom – “Hey boss, why didn’t you tell him they’re targeting Professor Hamdani?”
The question made Rasputin laugh. “You’re such a muzhik, Grisha. What good is a whore who’s given everything she has?” he scolded, adding, “No matter. You’ll learn.”
11.
The vegetable warehouse was set up nicely when we got there; mattresses and sleeping bags were laid out on the floor, and the rooms were stacked with vegetables and eggs. In the kitchenette I found a little gas burner stove along with skillets and coffee. Fatima and Miriam slept at her parents’ house – they were out of the country – and came the next morning in her father’s car, with bags laden with fresh pitas and sticky cakes.
The Iran Division’s lookout, who’d been tracking Hamdani, provided hourly reports to Nora up in the command center in Camp 80 – she updated me only when it was necessary. This was a bit clumsy, but keeping communications to a minimum usually did more good than harm.
I was surprised that Moshe hadn’t tried to reach me – I had no doubt that Mordechai had been riding him, and no matter how you look at it, I had royally violated a shitload of orders and combat regulations. Not even Froyke could shove this under the “violations we can live with” category. I assumed that the DM had decided – as I had – that taking out Hamdani came before all other considerations.
Hamdani and his family followed their projected behavior patterns perfectly, and so I scheduled H-hour to the next day at 19:00, give or take any small delays the professor might have leaving the university.
During the first half of the day we made dry runs of the plan. The routes were sketched on a white paper tablecloth, with matchboxes serving as the vehicles. We went over the motions at least twenty times, and by the time we were done each member of the team knew the plan inside and out.
After that I asked Rassan to run a complete weapons check, including weapon disassembly and reassembly drills, followed by mandatory rest. Later I went with Fatima in her dad’s car for a tour of the relevant areas.
The Elahiyeh district in northern Tehran, where the professor lived, was wealthy and laid back; but most of Tehran was quite depressing. It looked as though the contractors building the city ran out of budget halfway through, and the dominant color was black, carried in the sooty air and on the clothes of veiled Shiite women. The streets were crawling with Basij and Sepâh patrols, military vehicles, and lowered gazes – all under the watchful eye of Khamenei, from the huge Soviet-style posters of him hanging over strategic locations.
There was no joy anywhere in these streets.
At 16:00 we headed down the agreed-upon route, stopping at key points and making little checks. It was only training on a model, but it was all we could do. That evening we divided into twos and threes and went to get dinner at the stalls next to the spice bazaar.
At 23:00 I ordered lights out in the vegetable warehouse. Fifteen minutes after that, I called Nora.
“Everything seems to be in order,” said Nora. “Our project is running along smoothly. Mordechai authorized Mookie from his division to join you guys tomorrow. Froyke is still in the hospital. Bella says to tell you that you’ve pissed Moshe off. Good night.”
This convinced me of what I’d already suspected – Froyke was able to convince himself that this was a violation we could live with, after all. The DM apparently hadn’t, and for Mordechai this could be the opportunity of a lifetime. But gathering all of this intel again, the resources, the personnel – that would be a lengthy ordeal, and ordeals can be deadly.
And so, the next day we all got up and followed the schedule.
08:00 – I made some final adjustments to the plan and went over it with each member of the team. We were feeling prepared.
08:30 – Albert ran a pilot from the command center in Camp 80 and froze the municipal traffic light grid for less than a second. It worked. I informed Rassan that I’d be joining him and Fatima in their rooftop lookout post. He was actually thankful for the assistance. They were not as pleased about this at Camp 80 – Nora told me that Mordechai had been riding the DM like a pony.
09:05: “Crown12, we have a problem,” it was Mookie, the lookout from Mordechai’s team, who was apparently clever enough to contact me directly and save some time. “What is it?” I asked in Hebrew, and the Kurdish-Iranian team around me started to look nervous.
“They changed the target’s security arrangement. I repeat, they doubled the target’s… two more vehicles just arrived with four heavily armed bodyguards. Wait… here comes his Mercedes. He’s coming out of the parking lot. His bodyguard is driving the Mercedes; the other car is a military jeep armed with a .50 heavy machine gun. Two more men in the rearguard. Do you read? Over.”
“I read you,” I said, trying to figure out what was going on.
“Crown, do you read?” Mookie asked again.
“I read you. Repeat, I read you. We stick to the plan for now. Adjustments will follow. Out.”
09:15 – Nora called, sounding alarmed. “Number One demands immediate cancellation and return of all personnel to 80. The Jew,” she lowered her voice, “asked permission to recall his team.”
“Do you have any idea what’s happening?”
“Something was intercepted. The Russians alerted them.”
“What? How did those schmucks find out?”
“Fuck if I know. We started snooping, your friend Kahanov’s also gotten involved. You’ve been recalled, come home.”
She paused a beat.
“Ehrlich, do you read? You’ve been recalled – come
home! Ehrlich…”
“Negative,” I said. “Tell One that we are not standing down, at least until the end of the day, unless there are any more surprises. I can make this work with what we already have available.”
“Ehrlich, what the fuck!”
“Nora, please, tell One I’m staying. A slight modification of the plan and I can make this go like clockwork. Just don’t let that asshole recall his team.”
"They’re already packing up. You should too.”
“Say again. Say again. Do not copy.”
“Ehrlich, don’t do this.”
“Say again,” I hung up.
09:20 – I asked Rassan to come for a talk. We went into the kitchenette. Rassan placed a small coffee pot on the stove. He looked tense. Although he understood only a few words in Hebrew, he knew what trouble sounded like. I didn’t know how he would react. Retreat was a reasonable option, just as much – and perhaps more so – than continuing under the new parameters.
I told him what I could. He liked that I didn’t call off the op and told me what I already knew – recalling the team would’ve gravely disappointed them, and the long term effects of this disappointment were difficult to estimate. Our Israeliness annoyed them enough as it was. Rassan also like the fact that my modified plan had him and his RPG in the van on the front line, rather than perched on a roof.
10:05 – Mookie from Team Mordechai joined us and said that he wasn’t going back to base but going with us. I explained that there might be serious professional repercussions to his decision, and that he was more than welcome. We decided that his part shouldn’t change much – he was still to observe the University department and alert us of any movement the professor made. Assuming that the professor’s schedule hasn’t changed, we had nine hours to H.
10:32 – Rassan exhibited both sense and good leadership by sending his team off to rest until the final briefing before we left.
11:00 – We moved out, heading north, to Elahiyeh district. When we got there, the Raven and I found a table on the second floor of Bamdad Café, by the corner of Razashi Street, relatively close to the estimated line of fire. The second floor had several advantages: it was empty during the day, and you could smoke in peace, and it also had a nice view over the segment of road where the bulk of the plan would unfold.
Again we went over the alterations to the plan. The most meaningful change was cancellation of the injection in favor of a sniper shot executed by Fatima, directly from the van into the professor’s Mercedes. Rassan and his RPG would provide backup if necessary. Rassan shared my opinion that the heightened security came from a general alert, nothing specific – if they knew the professor was being targeted, they would most likely extract him in a chopper or an armored vehicle procession, transfer him to Camp Muhammad Rasūl Allāh, and flood the whole area with soldiers and cops.
Still, the change in security measures demanded our attention. Rassan suggested a car bomb positioned near the Lebanese embassy, which was for all intents and purposes a Hezbollah embassy. I agreed that it was a good place for a diversion. The charge would be activated by Miriam and Muhammad, who had become available due to the injection being cancelled; the bomb would hopefully draw any pursuing Iranian forces to the other side of the city. Rassan the Raven discussed this with Jojo the explosive specialist, his twin, who was overjoyed at the notion of blowing up more of “the criminals who murdered dad.”
12:15 – Before Rassan left to join up with Jojo and pick up Muhammad and Miriam, he carefully inquired how I intend to get myself out of there after the deed was done.
“It never came up,” he said.
“I was just about to plan that part,” I said.
Rassan nodded. “Forgive me for saying, boss, but you should have planned it long ago. Do well, boss,” he concluded.
Spontaneity has its price. I had my German passport – or Dr. King Schultz’s passport – but it had no entry stamp to Iran. Our only option would be to rendezvous with the Mujahedin after the op, and hide among them until we could get back to Camp 80.
The friendly waiter meanwhile brought me another coffee on a hammered copper platter, and added a sticky square of baklava.
I sniffed my little Cohiba and he got the hint and lit it for me. I drew the smoke in, letting it roll through the cavities of my nose and skull. The smoke provided a sort of temporary shield, clearing my head and raising my adrenalin slightly, allowing me to slip into battle readiness.
I finished my cigar, coffee and baklava, and felt good and ready. I glanced at my watch. So far, we were on schedule.
13:30 – Rassan and Jojo finished loading 90 pounds of Semtex, taken from Jojo’s personal stash, into a cab they’d stolen. That should suffice to blow the Lebanese embassy into a bad enough state to draw the local armed forces away from us.
Jojo placed another charge in the car, Semtex and iron nails, which he planned on placing in a trash can by the embassy. “For dad,” he said, explaining that he would place the trash can just at the entrance to the embassy and add a fifteen-minute delay, the estimated time of arrival of the IRGC and the VAJA, thus “setting them up on a date with their seventy-two stale-ass virgins.”
15:00 – The car bomb was ready. Time to eat lunch. The khoresht sabzi and polo at Bamdad café were more than adequate.
15:45 – I went over the outline again, first by myself, then with Rassan and Jojo, who left immediately after to meet the rest of the team at the vegetable warehouse, and memorize each of their roles for the last time.
16:45 – I finished another small local cigar at the café and climbed into the van, which had been stripped of its university identity and became an Esfahan Bakery van. With me in the van were Rassan the Raven, his RPG, and Fatima, who was busy cleaning the bajillion parts of her sniper rifle. “I’ll be your number two,” I told Rassan, who smiled amiably and offered me a cigarette.
“Don’t you dare light that in here,” Fatima lunged at him, plucking the still unlit cigarette from his mouth. He stared at her. “The smoke’ll disrupt my shot,” she explained, and an odd giggle escaped her lips.
17:05 – Mookie reported that Faiza Hamdani had arrived at the university in her red Beetle, and was being checked at Gate 10. He added that little Ali leapt out of the car and ran toward the stairs of the physics department. Faiza spread her arms in a helpless gesture and the security guard smiled and let her in.
17:11 – “Fuck. You’re not gonna believe this,” Mookie said, sounding horrified. “What is it?” I asked. He reported that the armored vehicle of none other than Major General Qasem Gaani had just entered Gate 10, followed by a regimental military convoy. An entire battalion – two companies spread out across the perimeter, another taking over the physics department building. The General went straight to see the dean, Professor Muhsan Parizadeh – who was sitting in his office with six professors and lecturers, including Hamdani, who had Ali on his lap.
17:15 – Mookie found a better spot and managed to get a nice reception angle in front of the dean’s office window, which luckily was on the ground floor. “The general’s talking,” he whispered. “Aiming at him.” Soon, we all had ears in the dean’s office, with Mookie translating. “We have no name or concrete target,” said General Gaani, “So every one of you is currently considered a target. As you see, we’ve doubled your security, set up teams in each of your homes, and the campus here is being secured by the battalion that accompanied me. All of our intelligence branches are now focused on tracking down the Israeli criminals and their local collaborators. Tonight you’ll sleep at your homes, with one security team in the house with you and another securing the exits. I am convinced we can find them before the day is done, but if the threat continues tomorrow, we’ll provide accommodations for you and your families at my camp. It’s not that terrible. Questions?”
“Which locals would possibly collaborate with them?” asked one of
the professors. The general said that it could be traitors like the Mujahedin Khalq, enemies of the state such as the Pêshmerga, and of course, local Jews.
Anything else said was swallowed in the sudden thunder of a tank or an APC, which took over the entire range of reception. Mookie was forced to retreat. I asked him to replay the last thing the general said. After that I no longer had any doubt that the jig was up, and the only sensible solution was to call it off and get the hell out of Dodge.
“So what’s the word, boss?” Rassan asked, looking at me miserably, and before I could say that I’ve decided to abort and retreat, Mookie’s voice crackled up on the radio – “Professor Hamdani is on the move. Escorted same as this morning – a jeep with a .50 HMG and the VAJA car with the two gorillas. He’s driving the Mercedes himself, this time.”
Ability is nothing without opportunity, Napoleon famously said. And I knew from experience how very right he was.
“Here we go!” I shouted at Rassan in Hebrew “Go!”
* * *
12The IDF call sign for “Commander.”
12.
Mookie hopped into Jamil’s cab and they followed the professor’s procession until they slowed to a halt in a traffic jam on Daneshju Boulevard, caused by a cluster of brown cars. Jamil spotted a bunch of civilian VAJA cars, as well.
18:15 – Traffic started moving again and Mookie estimated 15 mikes to target. Things were heating up – in the van, Fatima finished cleaning and reassembling her modified sniper rifle. She cocked the empty rifle and squeezed the trigger, pleased. Suddenly she burst into strange giggles.
Mookie reported that Hamdani’s procession had just passed the Lebanese embassy. I decided on the spot to move up the car bomb distraction at the embassy, and Rassan ordered Miriam to set off the charge.
“Activated!” Miriam radioed, but nothing happened. The charge was bust. Jojo, who put it together, might’ve been able to make it work – maybe – but Jojo was in the blocking truck, nowhere near the embassy. I had no choice but to continue as planned, and manage somehow without the distraction.