Damascus Countdown

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  Birjandi could hear the chopper approaching from the northeast. By God’s grace, it was coming a little later than he had expected—later, at least, than Hosseini had said. The delay, whatever the reason, had given him a few minutes to put some clothes and a toothbrush and toothpaste in a small suitcase and to get the satellite phone David had given him and hide it under his robes. It had also given the three of them a few moments to pray together one last time, and for this he was grateful.

  They stood, and Birjandi took his cane and walked them to the door. “Now, quickly, both of you, give me a kiss good-bye.”

  Ali turned and gave the old man a bear hug and then kissed him on both cheeks. Ibrahim did the same, though he held on longer, despite the fact that the chopper was less than a quarter mile away and coming in fast. They said nothing. There was nothing more to say. But Birjandi could feel the tears running down their cheeks. They knew this was the last time they would see him. He knew it as well.

  30

  JERUSALEM, ISRAEL

  Levi Shimon and Zvi Dayan arrived in unmarked, bulletproof cars with heavy security. They were immediately ushered into the prime minister’s spacious, wood-paneled office, where Naphtali was finishing up a call with the U.N. secretary-general.

  “Absolutely not,” said Naphtali, pacing the room and red in the face. “That is completely inaccurate. . . . No, that’s simply not true. . . . I . . . Mr. Secretary-General, I can assure you that at no time have Israeli forces purposefully attacked unarmed civilians either in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, or Gaza. . . . No, to the contrary, we are hitting legitimate military targets in self-defense. . . . How can you say that? . . . No, that’s—sir, we are under attack from missiles and rockets and mortars that are being fired indiscriminately at our innocent civilian populations, and yet you have not issued a condemnation of our enemies but rather persist in portraying us as the aggressors. Well, I reject that characterization. . . . Mr. Secretary-General, again I direct your attention to the illegal testing by Iran of a nuclear warhead a few weeks ago in direct violation of a dozen U.N. Security Council resolutions, combined with the repeated illegal statements by Iranian leaders and by the Mahdi inciting the forces of their Caliphate to genocide against my people. . . . No, that is precisely the point—this is cold, hard, international law—the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which went into force on January 12, 1951, in which incitement to genocide is specifically outlawed in Article 25(3)(e) of the Rome Statute.”

  The sixty-three-year-old Shimon was antsy. He took a seat when Naphtali motioned for him and Dayan to do so, but he was in no mood to sit quietly. Too much was happening and much too fast for his liking. He already hated being away from the IDF war room in Tel Aviv to come all the way to Jerusalem for a face-to-face meeting, but it couldn’t be helped. The situation was as sensitive as any in his forty-five years in public life since joining the army at the age of eighteen. He needed the prime minister’s ear, and he needed it right now, and it was all he could do to not stand up, walk over to the PM’s phone, and hang up on the secretary-general.

  “You are certainly entitled to your opinion, Mr. Secretary-General,” Naphtali replied, “but you are not entitled to your own facts. We . . . No, again, that is not accurate. Look, that’s just . . . Good sir, let me make this as plain as I possibly can. My country is facing annihilation from an apocalyptic, genocidal death cult. We will defend ourselves as we see fit, as we have a right to do under the U.N. charter. Need I remind you of chapter VII, article 51? Let me quote it for you, as you have obviously forgotten either its words or its meaning. ‘Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.’ . . . What do you mean we weren’t attacked first? What do you call Iran’s attack on my life in New York City last Sunday, an attack that killed President Ramzy of Egypt and nearly killed President Jackson and did kill several dozen others? . . . Okay, look, this isn’t going anywhere. Let me simply restate my objection to where the Security Council is headed on this and ask you, humbly, to reconsider. . . . Very well. I look forward to hearing from you then. Good day, sir.”

  The moment the prime minister hung up the phone, Shimon could see he and Dayan were about to get an earful, but there simply wasn’t time. He stood and stepped toward the PM’s desk.

  “Asher, you need to listen to me,” he said as firmly as he could. “As much as I’d like to let you vent about that call, I need you to listen to me very carefully.”

  Naphtali was clearly taken aback by his defense minister’s forceful manner, but as far as Shimon could tell, he didn’t seem offended. Shimon wouldn’t really have cared if he was. Not now.

  “Of course. How can I help you, gentlemen?” Naphtali replied, a bit sarcastically.

  “Zvi, tell him,” Shimon said.

  The Mossad director stood as well. “Mr. Prime Minister, for the last several days, my men and I were pretty confident we knew where the Twelfth Imam was,” he began. “Somewhere on the Mehrabad Air Base, just outside Tehran. That’s why we strongly recommended you authorize repeated air strikes and cruise missile strikes on the military portions of the facility, not the civilian airport.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Naphtali. “I’ve read your reports. And I’ve authorized everything you’ve asked for.”

  “Yes, sir, and it’s had a real impact on neutralizing the Iranian Air Force,” Dayan continued. “But I can now report to you that my men and I have pinpointed the Mahdi’s precise location.”

  “Where?”

  “He’s on the grounds of the air base, but not on the military side,” Dayan said. “It turns out that he and his senior team are actually working from a facility on the civilian side of the airfield. We’ve learned that the war room for the Revolutionary Guards is located beneath a three-story administrative building connected to the main terminal at Imam Khomeini Airport.”

  “You’re sure?” the PM asked.

  “One hundred percent,” said the Mossad chief.

  “Don’t tell me you want to hit it?”

  The defense minister took that one. “Absolutely, and now, sir. We’ve got an armed drone keeping surveillance on the location. We’ve got a squadron of fighter jets racing to Tehran right now, each carrying bunker-buster bombs. They should be in range in the next thirty minutes.”

  “You want me to bomb Iran’s civilian airport?” Naphtali asked incredulously. “Were you not listening to that call with the secretary-general? We’re already being accused of war crimes. We’re being accused of attacking innocent civilians. We’ve got radioactive clouds spreading across Iran into civilian areas because of the strikes we’ve already made on their nuclear facilities. We can’t just hit their airport, Levi. The whole world will turn against us.”

  “Sir, I understand, but I’m telling you we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to decapitate the enemy and end this war in the next thirty minutes,” Shimon said. “We have to take it. History won’t forgive us if we don’t. And I must add that we have an unconfirmed but credible report that the Mahdi may be relocating and soon.”

  “To the Imam Khomeini Mosque?”

  “Perhaps, but the report says he might go to Tabriz.”

  “Why Tabriz?”

  “We don’t know, sir. We’re still tracking that down.”

  Naphtali stared at both men, but Shimon couldn’t quite read him. The prime minister obviously didn’t want to take more international condemnation. It could, after all, lead to U.N. sanctions on Israel for the first time in history. But Naphtali, Shimon knew, was also a patriot and a pragmatist. He might still say yes, and for this Shimon silently prayed to a God he wasn’t sure really existed.

  “Where’s Mordecai in all this?” the PM said at last, abruptly changing the subject to the Mossad’s top mole inside Iran’s nuclear program�
��a mole who had gone dark in the last several days, much to the anxiety of everyone in Naphtali’s War Cabinet. “Have we heard from him?”

  “No, sir, we haven’t,” Dayan said.

  “So we don’t know if he’s alive?”

  “No—the last communiqué was on Thursday morning. He did say that was going to be his last report, but of course we’ve been hoping he would reestablish contact.”

  “We have no contact information for him?”

  “The protocol was always for him to call us,” the Mossad chief explained.

  “And we still don’t know where the warheads are?”

  “No, sir, not yet.”

  TEHRAN, IRAN

  Darazi went upstairs to the main floor and cleared Rashidi and his mysterious trunks through security. Then he strolled around the lobby for a few minutes, staring out once again at the destruction and misery all around him. He was careful to keep his emotions off his face, but internally he was seething. Hour after hour, day after day, the Twelfth Imam was belittling his existence. The Mahdi’s contempt for Darazi’s presence was palpable—and infuriating.

  Searching his soul, Darazi tried to see what engendered such hostility. Wasn’t he doing everything he possibly could to serve the Mahdi? Wasn’t he risking his own life and the lives of his family to help destroy the Little Satan and eventually the Great Satan as well? He wasn’t a perfect man. He conceded that right up front. But who was? What sin could he possibly have committed to make the Lord of the Age so agitated whenever they were together?

  What bothered Darazi most, however, was not that the Twelfth Imam seemed to despise him so, though that did weigh heavily on his heart and mind. Far more egregious was a thought that Darazi dared not speak aloud and had resisted for days even letting himself actively consider. They were two thoughts, really, and he feared both were heresy. But he couldn’t help himself. They were beginning to dominate his thinking whether he wanted them to or not.

  The first was this: Why was Iran losing this war to the Jews? Hosseini and Jazini and the rest of the high command could spin it all they wanted, but that was the truth, wasn’t it? They were losing. Naphtali had fired first and knocked out most of Iran’s nuclear forces. They still had two warheads, to be sure, but they couldn’t even fire them from Persian soil. Why not? Didn’t the Mahdi carry the full weight and force of Allah himself? Wasn’t he a direct descendant and messenger of the Prophet, peace be upon him? Then why was Iran’s air force a smoldering wreckage? Why was Iran’s mobile phone system almost completely down? Why were they cowering in an underground bunker, no better than Osama bin Laden, in his day, cowering in a cave in the Kandahar mountains? The Jews should have been obliterated by now. The Caliphate should be triumphant. That was what the Mahdi had promised, yet thus far it was all talk, all empty promises and mounting casualties.

  The second revolved around a deeply troubling conversation that he and Hosseini had had with Dr. Alireza Birjandi over lunch on Wednesday, less than twenty-four hours before the start of the war. Birjandi had not seemed himself, and when they had pressed him to talk about what was on his mind, he was reluctant, at best. But as Darazi thought back on Birjandi’s words, he was increasingly concerned his old friend was onto something he and Hosseini were missing.

  “I just find myself wondering, where is Jesus, peace be upon him?” Birjandi had said.

  Darazi remembered there was dead silence. It wasn’t a name that often got mentioned in the presence of the Grand Ayatollah and the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yet the old man had a point. Darazi himself had given sermons from the ancient Islamic prophecies stating that Jesus would appear and serve as the Mahdi’s lieutenant. So had Hosseini and Birjandi. Yet Jesus had not come, as far as any of them knew.

  As though he were now hovering over the conversation, Darazi could see himself shifting uncomfortably in his seat and asking, “What exactly are you implying, Ali?”

  “I am not implying anything,” Birjandi had replied calmly. “I am simply asking where I went wrong. You preached that one of the signs preceding the Mahdi’s return would be the coming of Jesus to require all infidels to convert to Islam or die by the sword. You did that because I taught you that. I taught you that because of a lifetime of studying the ancient texts and so many commentaries on the same. Yet Jesus is nowhere to be found.”

  Nor was that all. Birjandi had gone on to list five distinct signs that his lifetime of research suggested should precede the arrival or the appearance of the Hidden Imam. The first was the rise of a fighter from Yemen called the Yamani, who would attack the enemies of Islam. Darazi thought it was possible this had actually happened; certainly there had been any number of violent attacks against Christians in Yemen in recent years. But the second sign, the rise of an anti-Mahdi militant leader named Osman Ben Anbase, also known as Sofiani, had not occurred.

  The third sign, voices from the sky gathering the faithful around the Mahdi, hadn’t happened either. Yes, there were reports of some kind of angelic voice speaking in Beirut after the failed attack on the Mahdi the week before, but that hardly qualified as a host of angels.

  The fourth sign was the destruction of Sofiani’s army. But since Sofiani had never appeared, much less raised an army, the fulfillment of this sign didn’t even seem possible. Then there was the fifth sign, the death of a holy man named Muhammad bin Hassan, which Darazi didn’t think had happened either.

  “I feel a great sense of responsibility,” Birjandi had said. “I have been studying the Last Things most of my adult life. I have been preaching and teaching these things for as long as you have been gracious enough to give me the freedom to do so. But something isn’t adding up. Something’s wrong. And I keep asking: what?”

  Birjandi was right, Darazi thought. Something was wrong. If the prophecies were all from Allah, why weren’t they being fulfilled in their totality? If the Mahdi had truly come, why were there so many discrepancies between the ancient writings and current events? If the Twelfth Imam had truly come, how could he—and the entire Muslim world that was following him—be losing to the Jews?

  And then another heretical thought flitted at the edge of Darazi’s mind, if only for a moment before he banished it with all the vigor he could muster: what if the Mahdi had not really come and they were actually being deceived?

  31

  David glanced at his watch. It was precisely 6:45 p.m. The round trip to the safe house in Karaj to drop off Javad Nouri—sedated but with both kneecaps intact—had taken Matt Mays just over an hour, and he was back by the time Zalinsky called to report that Predator surveillance indicated Omid Jazini was home and that they were a go for the hastily conceived operation.

  Now Mays circled the block once so everyone could get the lay of the land; then—not seeing any immediate threats—he drove into the parking lot at the rear of the building and stopped in front of the loading dock. David put a fresh mag into his silencer-equipped pistol, double-checked his MP5 and the rest of his equipment, then pulled on his ski mask and led his team into the back of the apartment complex.

  Once inside, Fox found the mechanical room and disabled the building’s alarm system and the video surveillance system. At the same time, Crenshaw found the telephone switch box and cut the main line, rendering inoperative all landline calls out of the building while Zalinsky used the Predator drone above them to jam the ability to make cell phone calls in the building, at least for the next few minutes. Fox then followed David up the north stairwell, while Crenshaw followed Torres up the south stairwell, headed for the twelfth floor.

  Less than a minute after the team entered the building, Mays watched a police cruiser drive up the street, slow down for a moment—Mays wasn’t exactly sure why—and then continue on its way. Not liking the feel of that, Mays decided he wasn’t comfortable idling in the parking lot. Instead, he took the van down a tree-lined side street nearby, turned around, and then found a spot on the side of the road, not far from the intersection. This actually
gave him a better view of who was coming in and out of the front of Omid’s building as well as of any car that might pull into the rear parking lot.

  “Bravo One, are you in position?” Mays heard David ask over the radio.

  “Negative, Alpha One,” Torres replied. “We’re passing the ninth floor. Need another minute.”

  “Roger that,” said David. “We’re in position. Let us know when you’re ready.”

  As Mays monitored the radio traffic, he saw a medium-size white truck pull up to the front of the apartment building and park in a fire lane. As two men got out, Mays’s instincts went on alert. Both men were about six feet tall, muscular, dressed in suits, and near Omid’s age. Mays grabbed a digital camera off the seat next to him, pointed it at the men, zoomed in, and snapped several pictures, but not in time. He had gotten their profiles and backs, not their faces, but he instantly transmitted the images to the Predator, which relayed them to a satellite, which sent the digital pictures to Langley for analysis. Ten seconds later, Zalinsky was on the radio.

  “Home Plate to Alpha One and team—you’ve got company on the way, and they may be trouble,” Zalinsky told them. “Bravo Three just snapped a photo of two men entering the building. Thermal imaging shows they’re entering the lobby elevator.”

  “Roger that, Home Plate,” said David, crouched in the stairwell just outside the exit door to the twelfth floor and slipping the fiber-optic camera snake under the door. “Who are they?”