by Mark Alpert
“But I told you, we’re not planning any more—”
“Wait just a moment, General. Then everything will become clear.”
The tunnel was less than a hundred feet long, so they soon reached the impact chamber. It was fitted with a large viewing window, about the same size as one of the windows in a public aquarium. Cyrus and Jannati stopped in front of the window and Nico shone his flashlight at the thick sheet of glass. Inside the chamber was the long aluminum cylinder that Cyrus’s men had just positioned. The sliding panel on the cylinder was open, and Cyrus could see the twelve laser rods inside, each four feet long and composed of hundreds of slender strands that had been bundled together. The rods were held in place by struts projecting from a central pole. The assembly resembled the skeleton of a folded umbrella, with the rods corresponding to the umbrella’s ribs, all of them aimed at a focal point inside the cylinder. The Omega Point.
Cyrus stared for a moment at the laser rods, enraptured by their beauty. Then he turned back to Jannati. “Are you familiar with the B83 warhead?” he asked.
“B83?” The general looked befuddled. His eyes darted back and forth between Cyrus and the window of the impact chamber. “Isn’t that an American nuclear bomb?”
Cyrus nodded. “It was originally a gravity bomb, but the air force gave it a GPS guidance system and turned it into a bunker buster. It’s designed to burrow below the surface before exploding, so it can maximize the damage to an underground facility. To destroy an installation like yours, located in a cavern under a mountain, the best target would be a patch of sandy ground next to the mountain’s base.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t see what this—”
“We’re standing at the target right now. In a few hours a Stealth bomber will deliver a B83 that will strike the ground directly above this chamber and burrow twenty feet through the sand. The target was preplanned, you see, and I already knew the coordinates when we dug this pit. And military GPS is very precise. Any targeting error would be less than a meter.”
Jannati was silent for a few seconds. Then he burst out laughing. “Very good, Mr. Black! And now you’re going to tell me that you’re an American spy? And you delivered the uranium to the Revolutionary Guards just to give the U.S. Air Force an excuse to blow us up?”
“No, not quite. I had to arrange a more significant provocation to ensure that the president would retaliate with the B83. The earthquake in Turkmenistan was actually a nuclear explosion that incinerated a hidden army base called Camp Cobra. And I planted very convincing evidence of Iranian involvement in Cobra’s destruction.”
The general stopped laughing. He rocked unsteadily on the balls of his feet. “All right, enough of this nonsense. What’s going on?”
“The policy of deterrence requires the Pentagon to respond with a nuclear strike. And I have followers in Washington who’ll make sure that the president launches the attack on this facility. General Bolger of Global Strike Command is a True Believer, and so is General Estey of Special Operations Command.” Cyrus pointed at the top of the impact chamber, which was covered with a steel grate. “The warhead will enter the chamber there. Its nose will lodge in the grate and the bomb will explode. We’ve already pumped the air out of the chamber, so the radiation can travel through the vacuum to the laser rods. And because the warhead will be so close to the rods when it explodes, the energy delivered to them will be tremendous.”
Jannati stared at the chamber. A spark of fear belatedly flashed in his bloodshot eyes. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” he shouted, turning to Cyrus. “What the hell have you done?”
“You see how the laser rods are angled toward a focal point? The beams will converge inside the cylinder, in a specific pattern that will maximize the flow of data to the memory caches in that tiny volume of space. And when those caches overload—”
“Damn it, answer me! What have you done?”
“I’m trying to explain, General. We’re going to open the gates to the kingdom.”
Curling his lip, Jannati reached for his pistol. At the same moment, Nico slammed his flashlight into the back of the general’s head. As Jannati staggered, Nico removed the SIG Sauer nine-millimeter from the man’s holster. Then he grabbed Jannati’s hair, pulled back his head, and used a combat knife to sever the general’s throat.
Jannati landed on his back. He clamped a hand over his neck but the blood spewed between his fingers. Cyrus bent over him. “Well, we won’t have time for the full explanation. But we will meet again, General. In the Kingdom of Heaven, the Lord will gather all of us in His arms, every creature He ever—”
Jannati arched his back and spat a mouthful of blood at Cyrus. Then the general’s hand slid off his throat and the rest of his blood poured out of him.
Cyrus removed a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his clothes. The corruption of the world never ceased to amaze him. But it would be over soon.
He turned to Nico. “Go back to the hangar and retrieve the general’s radio. If his soldiers try to contact him again, tell them that their commander is indisposed.” He put the bloody handkerchief back in his pocket. “I don’t think the Iranians will give us any trouble before nightfall. But just in case they do, order our men to dig defensive positions around this tunnel.”
39
DAVID OPENED HIS EYES AND SAW MONIQUE. HE COULDN’T SEE HER FACE SO well—his eyes were full of grit and stung like crazy—but he noticed that her cornrow braids were speckled with sand. It actually looked sort of cute, although he knew she’d be mortified if she saw her hair in the mirror. She bent over him, biting her lip and wiping tears from her eyes, and he wanted to say something about her hair, something that would make her laugh, but his throat was so sore he could barely swallow. Then he looked a little closer at her face and saw a jagged cut on her left cheek and another on her chin. And he started crying, too, partly because he hated to see her hurt, and partly because he was so glad she was alive.
He was inside some kind of vehicle, in a gray and boxy cabin, lying on a stretcher that jutted from the steel wall like a shelf. He tried to prop himself up and noticed that his forearms were covered in bandages. Because of the burns, he remembered, the sulfuric acid burns. Agitated, he sat up and grasped Monique’s shoulders.
“The mountain,” he gasped. “The soldiers. In the mountain. We have to go back. We have to see . . .”
Monique shook her head. “No, David. We can’t go back. The mountain collapsed. And there’s radioactive debris.” More tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. “I saw it from the air. Fire shot from the mouth of the cave. Then the cliff crumbled. And everything slid down.”
“Wait. You saw it from the air?”
“We’re in a helicopter.” She pointed to the front of the cabin, and David saw the cockpit. But there was no rotor noise, and they didn’t seem to be moving. “That’s how we spotted you. After we pulled away from the explosion, we saw movement in the ravine. We picked up you and seven other men, U.S. Army soldiers. It looks like they belong to a Special Operations unit.”
“Yes, they were getting ready to attack Iran. But there were hundreds of men in that cavern! You found only seven?”
“Those were the only survivors. Four of them were snipers posted on the slopes near the cavern and three said they left the cave because they were chasing you. We searched the rubble for a long time, and so did the pilots in the other helicopter. Then we flew about ten miles west and landed on this mountaintop. The wind is blowing east, so we should be safe from the fallout here. And now we—”
“Shalom!” boomed a familiar voice. “Is the instrument of Keter awake yet?”
Olam ben Z’man stepped into the helicopter’s cabin, still wearing the black clothes he’d put on for the raid at Yangykala. But before David could react to this remarkable sight, he saw someone else standing beside Olam. It was a tall, young man with unkempt hair and a bruised face. The young man turned his head slightly to the left, his eyes avoiding David’s, but
he walked over to the stretcher without any hesitation and raised his right hand as if he were taking an oath. “Where were you?” he asked in an even voice. “I was looking for you.”
David also raised his right hand. This was the greeting he always used with Michael. The boy didn’t like to be touched. “I’m here now,” David said. “And I’m so happy to see you.” Then he turned his head away and covered his eyes. Emotion squeezed his chest and throat. He held still and waited until he could breathe again. The tears made his eyes sting even worse, but he didn’t care. He was so grateful.
The cabin was silent for a few seconds. By the time David removed his hand from his eyes, Michael had gone to one of the helicopter’s porthole windows and started tracing figures in the condensation on the glass. Monique touched David’s shoulder. “Six of Olam’s men are still alive,” she said. “Shomron, the radioman, was injured at Yangykala, but the rest are all right. They’re outside now, trying to send a radio message to the American bases in Afghanistan. There’s a transmission tower on this mountain.”
“Yes, that’s why we landed here,” Olam said. “The radios on the helicopters weren’t strong enough. It’s strange, but someone seems to be jamming the military frequencies in this area.”
No, it’s not strange, David thought. “It’s the U.S. Air Force,” he said. “They’re probably following orders from one of Cyrus’s True Believers. They’re jamming the airwaves because Cyrus doesn’t want anyone to know what really happened at Camp Cobra.” He remembered Cyrus’s round, pink face, so ordinary and familiar. “I saw him take off his head scarf before he left the camp. It’s Adam Bennett.”
Monique stared at David, her mouth half open. She raised her fingers to her lips. “What? The DARPA director?”
He nodded. “His whole confession in Jacob’s lab was an act. He just wanted us to find Olam for him. The guy’s crazy, but he has an impressive organization, probably funded with all the money he siphoned off from DARPA. And some of his followers have important jobs in the military. Like the Special Operations general who let him put a nuke inside that cavern.”
“Charah!” Olam cursed. He turned his head toward the cockpit, his lone eye blazing. “I told you these Qliphoth were powerful! This is how they infiltrated so many agencies!”
“But this is insane!” Monique stood up suddenly. “Why would they blow up an American base?”
“Cyrus needed a more powerful explosion,” David answered. “To give the X-ray laser enough energy to trigger the quantum crash.”
“I still don’t—”
“He destroyed Camp Cobra to provoke a response. He knows the president will order a nuclear strike on the Iranians now. So Cyrus is going to put the X-ray laser at the target coordinates.”
The cabin went silent again. Monique scrunched her eyebrows together, and a vertical line appeared on her forehead, above the bridge of her nose. David knew exactly what it meant. She wasn’t scared or confused anymore. She was pissed. “Where’s the son of a bitch now?”
“Cyrus said he was going to a Revolutionary Guard facility near the Iranian town of Ashkhaneh. That’s the target for the American nuke.”
Olam pulled a map out of his pocket and unfolded it. After a few seconds he poked the center of the page. “Yes, Ashkhaneh. It’s about a hundred kilometers south of here. Also in the mountains, the southernmost ridges of the Kopet Dag.”
Monique grabbed Olam’s arm. “We have to stop this! We gotta get on the radio and call the fucking White House!”
Olam shook his head. “Even if we can manage to get a signal through all the jamming, how do we know that anyone will listen? If these True Believers have infiltrated the Pentagon, they’re not going to let us communicate with the president.”
“Well, what are we gonna do? Just wait here on this mountain until the universe crashes?”
“No. We’re not going to wait.” Olam folded his map and put it back in his pocket. “Five of my men can still fight, and we have seven Army Rangers. We also have two built-in machine guns on each of our helicopters. And we have enough fuel to fly to Ashkhaneh.” Turning around, he marched to the helicopter’s doorway and shouted at his men in Hebrew. Then he turned back to David and Monique. “Shomron will stay here and continue working on the radio tower. So you have a choice to make. Will you stay here or come with me?”
David heaved himself off the stretcher and rose to his feet. He felt a little rocky and his arms were bandaged and stiff, but he could still fire a pistol. He turned to Monique and she nodded—they were both going with Olam. But they would have to leave Michael behind.
David stepped toward the teenager, who was still tracing figures on the porthole window. “Michael?” he said. “Listen, you’re going to stay here with one of the Israelis, okay? Monique and I are going away, but we’ll come back as soon as we can. We’ll leave you some food and water, and maybe Shomron can give you a puzzle to work on. All right, buddy? You think you can handle that?”
The boy grimaced but kept his eyes on the window. David noticed that he was drawing a picture of a fire, with dozens of squiggly flames rising from a large bowl.
“I promise I’ll come back, Michael. You hear me? I promise.” And David raised his right hand again, as if taking an oath.
40
THE PRESIDENT SAT ALONE IN HIS OFFICE ON THE E-4B, WHICH WAS FLYING somewhere over the Midwest. It was midmorning in the United States and early evening in Iran. The sun shone through the aircraft’s windows, casting shadows across the president’s desk. His office here was small, about the size of a walk-in closet. Most of the E-4B’s middle deck was occupied by the air-force communications specialists, who kept the plane in touch with the rest of the military. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs was also on the plane, along with the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense. But none of the White House staffers who usually advised the president had come on board, and there were no congressmen or reporters or political aides either. He was surrounded by men in uniforms now.
His desk was covered with classified documents. Every ten minutes or so, an air-force colonel knocked on his door and delivered another report on the Camp Cobra explosion. The first search-and-rescue teams had arrived at the site, garbed in Hazmat suits, and started looking for survivors. So far, they hadn’t found any. The State Department had contacted the Iranian government and demanded information on the two aircraft that had flown across the border to the Ashkhaneh facility, but the officials in Teheran denied any knowledge of the flights. The news services were reporting an earthquake in southern Turkmenistan, and the Pentagon had refrained from correcting them. At some point the president would have to address the nation and reveal the awful dimensions of the tragedy. But not yet.
After a while he realized that the air-force colonel was wasting his time. The president couldn’t read the reports. He couldn’t do anything except think about the moment when the bomb exploded. He thought of the soldiers at Camp Cobra preparing for their mission—cleaning their rifles, loading their packs, maybe writing letters to their parents or wives or girlfriends. Then he pictured the explosion, the sudden flash of light, incinerating everything in the cavern. And then he saw the mountain falling, burying their ashes.
If the Iranians did it, they had to be punished. Nine hundred and sixty American soldiers were dead, and one of them was a lieutenant general. More important, it was a nuclear attack, the first ever against the United States. The country was obligated to retaliate in an overwhelming way, with its own nuclear weapons. Still, the president felt uneasy. Talking about deterrence was one thing, but actually dropping the bomb was another. It would change the world, and not for the better.
He heard another knock at his door. He said, “Come in,” but this time it wasn’t the air-force colonel. The director of national intelligence stood in the doorway.
“Sir, we’ve finished analyzing the debris from the Camp Cobra explosion,” the DNI said. “The radioisotope signature is identical to the f
allout from the Iranian nuclear test.”
It felt like a kick to the stomach. Wincing, he stared at the reports on his desk. “Are you sure? Absolutely sure?”
“The percentages of U-235 and U-232 in the fallout are the same. We also found identical amounts of beryllium, a rare element that’s used in the structure of uranium bombs.”
The president said nothing. He knew what he had to do, yet he remained silent.
“This is solid proof, Mr. President,” the DNI added. “The radioisotope signatures are as unique as fingerprints. We know that the uranium in the weapon that destroyed Camp Cobra came from the same stockpile that supplied the fuel for the Iranian nuke tested in the Kavir Desert. And the beryllium results indicate that the two bombs also had the same design and structure.”
The president stared at the man for a few more seconds. Then he shook his head. He couldn’t put it off any longer. It was time. “Tell everyone to gather in the conference room. We’ll open the Football there.”
41
SWEATING INSIDE THE WINDOWLESS TRAILER IN SHALHEVET, ARYEH GOLD-berg continued to decipher encrypted messages using Olam ben Z’man’s quantum computer. He began analyzing the communications intercepted by Israeli listening stations earlier in the year and found additional evidence of Adam Cyrus Bennett’s plot. Since January, Bennett had exchanged dozens of messages with Lieutenant General Samuel McNair, a U.S. Army Special Operations commander, and Nicodemus Aoun, a Lebanese terrorist well known to the IDF. Aryeh didn’t understand the how and why of Bennett’s plan yet, but he felt he had enough proof now to persuade the IDF General Staff to take action. At 5 P.M. he was about to call the Unit 8200 headquarters in Herzliya and ask to speak to the unit’s commander again. But General Yaron called him first.