The Red Cell

by André Le Gallo

  “The FBI takes the lead investigative role in any terrorist threat in the US and our San Francisco field office will stand up a command post to manage all investigative activity and leads,” Fairbanks said, pulling the cuffs of his sleeves to reveal monogrammed cufflinks. “The Joint Terrorist Task Force includes all law enforcement agencies in the city, as well as the Coast Guard.”

  “And the CIA,” LaFont added.

  “We are well aware of the JTTF,” Maloney said, “and we have already sent Jonathan Spencer to chair the San Francisco group. He is FBI and knows the Iranians well.”

  “Alright, so we’re agreed.” Baxter said. “The JTTF will stand up as a command post. Steve and Kella will reinforce the city’s capabilities, but they are not under JTTF or FBI control. They have White House authorization to obtain assistance from any JTTF agency as well as from the military if they so require it.”

  “I do have requests that will need immediate action sir.” Steve said.

  “Let Hank have them after this meeting.”

  “There’s one more thing,” LaFont said. “Go ahead, Bob, about the timing.”

  “Yes, we have reason to believe the retaliation will take place very soon after the attack on Syria,” Bob Trent said.

  “Don’t give me ‘we have reason to believe,’” Baxter said. “Speak English.”

  “Yes, sir, we know directly that Khazaee, the Iranian Intelligence Officer at the U.N., plans to explode a bomb inside the CIA. The agent believes this is supposed to occur right after our missiles rain down on Syria. Knowing how the Iranians operate, we conclude the CIA and the San Francisco attacks will occur simultaneously.”

  “Steve,” LaFont said, “should I alert Hunter and McCabe?”

  “Definitely, thanks.”

  43. Tiburon Compound

  General Yosemani, his bodyguard, and Kazemi were in the movie star’s garage as the four Quds Force commandos, all wearing newly purchased baseball caps with California logos, retrieved the Semtex from the lettuce truck and from the scores of falsely addressed packages in the UPS truck.

  “Having your soldiers here,” Khazaee said, “is a big help. But unloading the Semtex and reloading it into the UPS truck is going to take more time. And setting up the explosives on the bridge and securing the perimeter seems more than four men can do. So a couple of days ago, I sent a message to our Electronic Warfare Department in Tehran to see if they could hack into the bridge’s CCTV system. Tehran did the basic work and our consulate techs in Vancouver did the rest. Now we can see exactly what the bridge security office can see on its six cameras in the administration building near the tollbooths on the south side of the bridge. There are three cameras on each tower, two facing the bridge itself and another facing the approach. More important, we can stop the feed to the security office at any time we want. And there is a seventh camera that covers the parking lot to the administrative building.”

  “Good,” the general said. “That will make our job much easier. And you are right about the work on the truck. The two of you go help them.”

  As his bodyguard and Kazemi helped the commandos, Yosemani stepped outside to examine the five sheets of metal and the bags of sand that had been delivered that morning. He had never seen the preparations necessary to explode one thousand pounds of Semtex, a third again more powerful than TNT, and ensure the force of the explosion did not dissipate in all directions. His Quds Force experts had told him tamping, packing the explosive material tightly on all sides—except on the side adjacent to the target—would multiply the effective force of the explosion. If twelve ounces of Semtex could bring down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, if fertilizer could destroy the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, then a half-ton of Semtex should be able to cut a three-foot steel cable.

  Molding the high-energy, plastic-like material into shaped charges, cone-like concave spaces pointing at the target, increase the effectiveness considerably. That he was not someone to trust to chance had often allowed him to succeed where others had failed. He was therefore going to use all the complementary force-multiplier techniques available. The mission had become a professional challenge to accomplish several goals: revenge for Aisha’s death; retaliation for the expected missile attack on Syria, which was virtually an extension of Iran; and a promotion to the command of the IRGC. Or would it be a suicide mission? But he had every intention to succeed and escape with his men.

  The most important question, of course, was when would the Americans strike Syria? Lucky, he thought. The American media, as well as the White House, would be so cooperative by informing him of their most detailed thoughts. Now that the U.S. president was trying to persuade Congress to share responsibility for any unexpected consequences, the general had more time to perfect his preparations. He was confident the White House, the media, or leaks from the various government agencies would give him sufficient warning.

  He was ruminating over American hypocrisy, its total lack of concern when Saddam Hussein had gassed thousands of Iranians during the Iraq-Iran war and its sudden moral indignation over the recent deaths of 1500 Syrians from the same cause, when he was interrupted by Kazemi, who emerged from the garage and said, “The Semtex is old. A lot of it is too dry to mold. What we have are five hundred, two-pound briquettes wrapped in wax paper. Semtex is a mixture of RDX, PETN, and oil. Someone is going to have to go buy vegetable oil to revive the material’s clay-like quality. That is going to take us at least ten hours.”

  “We will all work through the night if that is necessary,” the general said and went back inside to make himself a cup of tea. He grinned as he thought President Tremaine, a Nobel Prize winner, was about to be charged as a criminal at the International Court in The Hague for attacking a country that had not attacked him, thus breaking all international rules, and for killing civilians as well.

  As he boiled the water, he put on the TV news. The Russians, he learned, had just moved their knight in the chess game of diplomacy. They had suggested, and the Syrian president had of course agreed, that Syria’s chemical weapons be placed under Russian jurisdiction, thus eliminating the need for a missile strike by the Americans.

  Brilliant, Yosemani thought. A master’s lesson in power politics, using diplomacy as a veil while Syria, Iran, and Russia continued to pursue their geopolitical objectives. An unfair fight, he thought, smiling as he sipped his tea, a community organizer against a KGB officer.

  But he wondered what this international dance would do to his mission. If the American attack was being delayed or postponed, he could not wait indefinitely. The Soledad, now at anchor off the Port of Oakland, would leave without him. He had no choice but to go ahead. He opened the computer and sent a message to Tehran and to Khazaee in New York.

  “Current paralysis of American diplomacy makes a military strike against Syria highly unlikely and therefore deprives us of the trigger for the attack. However, I still plan to destroy the bridge. And I expect the CIA operation to go forward also. There have been enough American strikes against our country, such as STUXNET and FLAME as well as the targeted assassinations of our nuclear scientists, and we need not depend on another attack before retaliating. Unless ordered otherwise by the commander of the IRGC, I will destroy the bridge in two days between 0600 and 0630, local time, on Friday. The CIA bomb should go off at the same time.”

  ***

  Thursday morning, the general and his team sat in the mansion’s dining room, a map of the Golden Gate Bridge and its surrounding area unfolded on the table.

  “Tomorrow is the day,” Yosemani said. “All the material preparations are finished, and I want to review the scenario, one more time. I want to pull the trigger just before sunrise. You,” he said, pointing to his bodyguard, “will drive the truck. And you,” he continued, pointing to two commandos, one wearing a cap with the San Francisco 49ers football team logo and the other a San Francisco Giants baseball cap, “you will prevent the security guards from the administrative
building from interfering. You two,” he said, looking at his other two commandos, one wearing an Oakland A’s baseball cap and the other one with an Oakland Raiders logo, “will prepare the site for the truck while the other two prevent police cars from the administrative building near the toll booth from interfering.

  “Hayder,” he said, looking at Kazemi, “you make sure you’re at the bridge by oh six hundred. I will take the Hummer and plan to be at the Headland overlook before that. I will detonate the truck from the overlook once Hayder has told me the five of you are with him. I will be at the pickup point, here,” he pointed to a spot on the map, “by 0630.”

  44. Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base, California

  “I’ve received orders from the Chief of Naval Operations to give Steve Church and Kelly Hastings my full support,” said Robert Holm, commanding general of the First Marine Division, as he sat at his desk across from the two civilians. “And I also was told a Captain Templeton and Lieutenant Colonel McCabe would call on me as part of the Church-Hastings team. Number one, you don’t look military to me, and number two, somebody better give me more information. Unless I’m mistaken, we’re still in the CONUS, and the military is prohibited from operating stateside.”

  “Yes sir,” McCabe said. “The Posse Comitatus Act is a nineteenth-century law, but it still applies, and despite our appearance we are in compliance with it. I am McCabe, and he is Templeton. I am retired from the First Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment and from the Fifth Special Forces. I have tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Hunter can speak for himself.”

  “Is this true?” Holm asked Hunter.

  “Yes, sir—and my tour was in Afghanistan. I am retired now.”

  “Right. And what are you doing in my office?” General Holm, not a tall man but one who exuded command authority from every pore, had been the First Marine Division’s chief of staff during Operation Vigilant Resolve in 2004, the bloodiest battle of the Iraq war. He had been awarded another star when, replacing the head of a combat unit killed by enemy fire in Fallujah, he led his men in an engagement that broke the back of the insurgents.

  “We have been with OGA, Other Government Agency, for about eighteen months, sir,” McCabe said, “and we are here on behalf of that agency under special direction of the president. The CIA has information that strongly suggests there is an Iranian Quds Force team in the San Francisco area preparing a terrorist attack. It might be in retaliation for the missile strike against Syria, or it might be for other purposes such as personal vengeance. Although the usual law enforcement agencies have been placed on high alert, the White House has assigned us to assist the JTTF, because we have gained some experience with the Quds Force team commander, General Yosemani, who is also the Commanding General of the Quds Force.”

  “Yosemani,” Holm said, “that name is not unknown to me. I get intelligence briefings at least once a week about him. Wasn’t he in Europe? Wasn’t it Brussels, recently, connected to the V.A. Dalton suicide? So, the Commanding General of the Quds Force is on American soil to lead a commando team? Doesn’t he trust his field officers? That is totally off the hook!”

  “Yes sir, that is unusual, but the fact is he’s here,” Hunter said. “You’re right. Brussels is where we came up against him. This time, we’re on our own turf, and we’re going to get him. We understand you’re prohibited from committing your men on U.S. soil but what we need is equipment.”

  “Is there a Rent-A-Tank sign on my door?”

  “No sir,” McCabe said, grinning. “But you are authorized to lend us equipment. There is a precedent. Do you remember the siege at Waco? The Army provided armored personnel carriers to the FBI without breaking any laws.”

  “We don’t need tanks or APCs,” Hunter said. “The potential target we are trying to protect is the Golden Gate Bridge. In Iraq, I saw the Marines using the Skylark, a mini UAV. And, since most of the IEDs in Iraq were of Iranian manufacture, we could use your Ultra Band High Powered Electro Magnetics Technology system.

  “The guy you need to see is Al Costantini, former helicopter pilot with the Night Stalkers.”

  “I know that outfit, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, aka Task Force One Sixty,” McCabe said. “Night infiltration and exfiltration of special ops teams from hot areas. Popular guys, especially when they came to get us out.”

  “Al is now a civilian,” Holm said. “He can help you with the Skylarks as well as with the counter-IED stuff. Since he’s no longer in uniform, you can even take him with you.”

  45. Beirut

  “Okay guys,” said Monty Rogers, the CIA station chief. “I just got a secure-line call from Nortsen. He wants us to get somebody to Paris yesterday, highest priority, highest urgency, highest sensitivity.”

  Wearing his signature open-necked khaki shirt with epaulets, he ran his hand through his wavy blond hair and moved from behind his desk, motioning to the two men who had just come into his office to sit at a small round table, where he joined them.

  The office overlooked the hustle-bustle of Hamra Street in the more upscale section of Beirut. The city had been called the Paris of the Middle East for its luxury stores, its five-star hotels, and its world-class nightlife. It had then been called the Geneva of the Middle East for its commercial activity, and the acumen of Lebanese businessmen. But its stellar reputation had been shredded by years of civil war, car bombs, political assassinations, and kidnappings. Two of Monty Rogers’ predecessors had been murdered by groups acting on Iran’s behalf: the PLO and the Islamic Jihad.

  “Are we talking unilateral,” asked John Callahan, the chief of operations, a man in his forties with more academic degrees than a case officer is usually allowed to have and the Blarney Stone in his pocket. “Or do you want to do this with liaison?”

  “Highest sensitivity means unilateral,” Rogers said. “This would be best handled by SCRIBE/1. He’s been on board for several years and is a proven quantity. Besides, he’s older, and it will be easier for him to establish trust with the subject.”

  “Who’s the subject?” asked Carl Keller, tall and heavy set, who handled working level contacts with the Lebanese Service. “If we hand it over to liaison, there will be no problem with passports or other bureaucratic issues. I take it this will be a surprise to the individual? They will also be more convincing than SCRIBE/1.”

  “The subject’s daughter is SCONE/1. She’s a double. Started out with Hizballah. Now she’s in direct contact with Iranian Intel in New York. Turns out the Iranians are holding her mother hostage against SCONE/1’s cooperation. Nortsen couldn’t give me the whole story, but it sounds like the agent is on the edge of a major operation, and she’s asking that we get her mother to safety. The mother lives in South Beirut. She has cancer, and it’s up to us to get her to Paris, where we have a bed reserved for her at the American Hospital.”

  “What are the odds the Iranians will know what we’re doing before we get her to the airport if we work through liaison?” Callahan asked. “The bad news is SCRIBE/1 is in Damascus right now. He won’t be back for another week. He has contacts with Assad’s personal bodyguards through his wife’s brother. He should have the mother lode of intelligence when he gets back.”

  “In that case the best solution is to ask XIMITAR/32. He’s a captain with liaison, but I’ve been working on him for six months. He hates his boss and loves us because we give him recognition. Plus, I put him on salary last month. He’s now unilateral. He will do everything liaison could do officially, but he will act unilaterally. His service won’t know what he’s doing and neither will the Iranians.”

  “Nortsen said ‘immediately,’” Rogers said. “So when can you get in touch with XIMITAR/32 to make this happen?”

  “I’ll call him out tonight. If SCONE /1 calls her mother to tell her what’s going on, she should be on a plane out tomorrow.”

  “Oh, by the way,” Rogers said, “the Iranians have promised, or threatened, they would bring her to a hospital in Tehran. So tel
l XIMITAR/32 to bring a couple of friends.”

  46. The Knolls, San Rafael, California

  “Elise and Didier are going to have a lot of questions from their neighbors,” Kella said to the group as she stood in the honeymoon condo by sliding glass doors giving access to a common area with a pool. On her right was a fireplace topped by a tall mirror going up to the high ceiling. Two large, olive-drab duffel bags lay in front of the fireplace. “Two big, black suburban SUVs and three motorcycles like you see on an ultra-sports TV show parked in front is probably going to trigger an emergency board meeting of the condo owners. The Knolls will never be the same.”

  “They will handle it,” Steve said. “I’m not worried.”

  He stood facing his team in the living room of the honeymoon condo. “I got two calls during the night. One was from Marshall and the other from Bob Trent. The message was the same. The Iranians have something cooking in the D.C. area, as well, a double-agent operation, I’m guessing. Anyway, headquarters thinks the Iranians are planning to pull the trigger on both operations at the same time. Tomorrow. Friday.”

  Al Costantini, the new member of the team, tall, dark-haired, and tanned, weighed in. “I’ve never been this close to an OGA operation before. I’m impressed. Good information and nice digs. I’m surprised you don’t have the time of the attack against the bridge as well as the mother’s maiden name of each terrorist.”

  “What’s ‘OGA?’” Kella asked.

  “That’s the military term for CIA, an acronym never mentioned in the field – Other Government Agency,” McCabe said. “I’ve never had to sleep in the mud ever since I started working for this outfit.”

  “Our quarters in Brussels weren’t bad, either,” Hunter added.

  “Based on the time of the operation on the East Coast,” Steve said, “we should expect this shoe to drop tomorrow morning between 0600 and 0630. How did your mini UAV trials go yesterday evening, Al?”