The Iran War

by Jack Strain

  Dutch Schultz cut in and asked, “How dangerous? What are we looking at?”

  Jesus Christ do I have to spell it out for them.

  Tomasso testily responded, “My people are saying there is going to be rioting in the streets across the entire Muslim world. We are picking up an unprecedented level of chatter on the web from dozens of suspected extremist groups. NSA can back me up on this. But what is scaring the shit out of me is the threat from lone wolves. I know my European counterparts are . . .”

  A powerful BAM! reverberated throughout the room as the president’s hand slammed the table and he shot up from his seat and bellowed, “Enough! I’m tired of hearing about those goddamn videos that our own media keeps showing over and over again! I haven’t heard the media speak about my Lily once in the past two days. They want to forget, well I haven’t forgotten. What the hell did they expect us to do, drop fucking flowers on them? Those bastards asked for this, and I’m giving it to them in spades.”

  Schultz did not like how his old friend looked (or sounded, for that matter) and tried to calm things, “Mr. President, I think what Nick was trying to say is that we may have underestimated the outrage in the Muslim world with what we are doing. Maybe we need to . . .”

  Before Dutch could finish his thought, a visibly angry Wolfe interjected, “We need to what, Dutch? Back off? Say we’re sorry? Cut a deal or some other such bullshit? I told everyone in this room and the American public that this is a real war on terror, and I meant every word of that. So, if the bastards want to riot then let them. The hell with them and anyone who supports them.”

  The room became deadly quiet, no one wanted to say anything else and just nervously eyed random members around the table.

  Finally, Schultz very somberly asked, “Mr. President is there anything else that we can cover before we adjourn the meeting?”

  President Wolfe was staring off distantly and seemed to have barely heard his Chief of Staff, but then he suddenly whipped his head around and pointed at General Duncan and asked, “Yeah there is something else. Where are we on hunting down those killers who murdered my daughter? None of this ends until that bastard and everyone with him are dead.”

  Clearly uncomfortable, General Duncan responded with great care in his voice, “Mr. President, I can assure you that the hunt for your daughter’s killers remains an absolute priority. As I mentioned earlier, we continue to build up our forces in and around the Syrian airbase at Deir ez-Zor. The 75th Ranger Regiment and two brigades of the 82nd Airborne are on the ground. Within three days, the balance of the 82nd will be fully deployed and will begin combat operations throughout western Syria.

  More importantly, sir, we have deployed a Joint Special Operations Task Force composed of units from Seal Team Six, Delta Force, and the entire 5th Special Forces Group. Even as we speak, sir, our boys are hunting for Allah’s Avengers. It will only be a matter of time before we make contact. I will inform you the moment we confirm anything. Is there anything else, sir?”

  Seemingly spent, Wolfe just stood and waved for everyone else to sit. He shook his head, and with a grave look on his face walked out of the room leaving his most senior national security and military officers feeling deeply worried for their commander-in-chief. The United States was at war - a war he ordered, but right now he looked barely able to take care of himself, let alone lead the nation.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  October 17th

  Iranian Armed Forces Cyber Command, Tehran

  Few thought the Americans would be able to pinpoint the bunker complex housing Iran’s Cyber Headquarters, but even if they had, no one thought they would strike a university hospital. They were wrong. Six hours ago, a flight of four F-15E Strike Eagles each dropped a single 5,000 lb. GBU-28 bunker buster that struck within seconds of one another. The effect was nothing short of cataclysmic. The three-story underground bunker collapsed in two sections, killing nearly a two hundred people and burying alive dozens of Iran’s most talented programmers and hundreds of millions of dollars of computer hardware.

  Brigadier General Behrouz Soroush was moaning slightly as he slowly began to regain consciousness. He struggled to open his eyes. A thick layer of blood mixed with dirt and plaster dust had caked together rendering him blind for the moment causing a wave of panic to wash over him. He next became aware of a heavy weight on his chest and started to squirm, but intense pain shot up his shoulder and a piercing pain along his ribcage caused him to cry out. He began screaming, “HELP! HELP! Anyone…I’m in here…anyone.” Nothing.

  A voice from deep inside his mind rang out, get ahold of yourself Behrouz…think…think.

  Taking three deep breathes and slowly exhaling, he willed himself to take stock of the situation. He struggled to remember what happened and the last images that came to mind placed him at his desk when a deafening sound struck and then nothing…blackness.

  He was injured, that much was clear, but how injured, he wasn’t certain yet. Clearly, the Americans found them and struck with one of their bunker bombs. Many are probably dead. No one was coming. I must get myself out of here.

  He cried out in pain as he freed his pinned left arm and began wiping clear his eyes so that he could at least see. A dim red emergency light flashed overhead slightly illuminating the room, but from his vantage point, he couldn’t see much. But he could smell gas and could see smoke filtering into the room, and a powerful fear gripped him again.

  Allah, help me. I don’t want to die like this - roasted alive. Must find a way out of here. Need to get to the escape capsule.

  His right arm was pinned as was most of his entire right side. Using his uninjured elbow to brace himself, he was able to bend his knee and pushed with all his might against a heavy bookcase that was once the pride of his office. Filled with the latest journals and even fiction books once used to help pass the time, now the heavy oak shelf may be the death of him if he couldn’t escape its immense weight.

  He had no choice but to shift his weight to his injured right side and a terrible pain caused him to cry out, “AAHHHH!” But he needed to use both his left leg and arm to gradually shift his broken body out from underneath the shattered remains of his office. After ten ungodly minutes of pain mixed with fear, General Soroush was finally able to free himself.

  Coughing as he struggled to stand, he looked across the room, and the sheer devastation shocked him. The entire entrance to his doorway was now covered in a pile of concrete and debris. Half his own ceiling had collapsed, but the escape hatch remained intact on the other side of the room. Each corner office in the bunker complex held a steel cylinder that extended up to the surface with a ladder attached to enable the bunker’s occupants the prospect of escape. No one else would be making this climb today other than himself.

  Fortunately, his legs were fine although his shoulder and ribs were clearly broken. He was having trouble breathing, probably due to a punctured lung. Reaching up, Behrouz used his left hand to open the hatch door and pulled the ladder down to the floor and began the laborious climb. Emergency LED lights were only partially functioning and for every ten feet in the light, ten more was in complete blackness.

  Struggling to manage his fears but desperate to escape the underground death trap below, the pudgy fifty-seven-year-old software engineer reached up with his left hand and one at a time pulled himself up yet another rung. Sweating profusely, his hand slipped several times, but still, he held with a death-like grip determined to see his wife and daughters again.

  Finally, he could see a cluster of LED lights at the top and struggled to force the latch open. He pushed up with his upper back and left shoulder until finally, it gave way. The heavy hatch cover swung open and struck with a metallic thud as it hit the pavement of the parking lot. Expecting blue skies and bright, glorious sun, Soroush instead was greeted by clouds of billowing dark smoke and ash lightly falling to the ground as if it was wintertime.

  Overwhelmed with a mix of emotions, he was elated to be a
live, but also in tremendous pain from his many injuries. He turned around in a circle taking in the sights around him. The Tehran University Medical Building had two blackened gouges in its side, and bright flames seemed to have engulfed the bottom two floors. Loud cries of pandemonium could be heard all around as doctors and nurses mixed with patients and frantic family members.

  Walking very slowly himself and not realizing how torn and tattered his uniform was after everything he had been through, he managed to cross the lot and saw droves of people in Laleh Park. It was the sounds of crying children and women that assaulted his senses. Packing the normally picturesque park were thousands of his countrymen carrying what personal effects they could escape with at the time. The shock was starting to give way to anger.

  Seeing a man about his age wearing the uniform of the Basij paramilitary militia who was directing people down the road to a water dispersal area, Soroush went up to him and said, “Brother, I am Brigadier General Behrouz Soroush. My bunker was struck by the Americans, and I just managed to escape, what is happening?”

  The dark-skinned and thick-bearded Basij officer pulled down a scarf that he was using to protect against the smoke, and burning ash falling from the skies and just shook his head and said, “You’re a general. You don’t know? Look around. Look what the Americans and Jews have done to our people. The city is on fire, many have died.”

  Still shaken by everything of the past two hours, Soroush held his hands out as if shocked and said, “But brother what of our fire departments? We have practiced air raid drills and emergency services for two decades. This makes no sense.”

  With a voice full of rage and sorrow, the Basij officer shook his head and said, “What good are fire departments if there is no water to put out the flames? Nothing works, General . . . no electricity, no water . . . just death.”

  Then it hit the commander of Iran’s Cybercommand, the Americans didn’t just target military networks, they targeted everything. Pigs!

  He started to feel through his ripped uniform praying to Allah that it was still there, that he hadn’t lost it, until finally he reached his back pants pocket and felt it - his cellphone. His hands trembled as he took it out. The power was on, and the display was partially cracked but readable. He quickly scrolled through his recent calls until he found the one he needed and pushed call.

  On a small goat farm on the outskirts of Tehran, a familiar voice answered, “So, you’re still alive? I would have thought the Americans would have killed you by now.”

  Cutting off the sarcastic young voice on the line, Soroush spoke with a venomous hatred in his voice. “Shut up, you dog, and listen. I am ordering you to immediately initiate the Khomeini 79 attack sequence. It is time to make these American infidels pay for their crimes.”

  The leader of the Iranian Cyber Army, Samen Khorasani, was suddenly gripped by a combination of excitement and fear. Gripping his phone even tighter and pressing it closer to his face, Khorasani spoke almost in a whisper, “Truly? Khomeini 79? You’re not fucking with me? You really want me to unleash version 79? You know what that means.”

  Soroush took one last look around his burning city, wondering if his beloved wife and daughters were alive and refusing for the first time in his life to ask for permission from a superior, he nodded and said, “Just do it. It is now in the hands of Allah.”

  With that finished, Soroush dropped his phone to the ground and crushed it beneath his feet and began walking towards his home.

  ◆◆◆

  The RQ-170 Sentinel UAV drone flew high above the city of Tehran searching for voice transmissions of high-value target. Twenty seconds into the conversation between Soroush and Khorasani, it locked into the conversation and captured it for later analysis at the National Security Agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade. But of far greater importance, the GPS location from the cellphone signals of both of these high-value targets was sent to Langley.

  The CIA was operating half a dozen Hellfire-armed Reaper drones above Tehran waiting for kill orders for ranking military and government officials. It had been a busy thirty-six hours with more than a hundred kills already attributed to CIA drone operators. With cell towers as the only piece of modern technology still working in Iran, military and government officials couldn’t help themselves, and it became a killing ground.

  Operating out of a ground station at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, a CIA contract employee, a twenty-seven-year-old young woman who recently finished her Air Force enlistment and instead of re-upping joined the CIA for triple the money and better hours. Her almost matter-of-fact tone announcing a positive identification of one Samen Khorasani got several in the room very excited.

  Her section leader, Tyler Eggars an old hand at the drone game at the ripe old age of thirty-three, immediately reacted to the name. We missed the bastard yesterday. Not again. “Okay, people do we have movement?”

  “Negative. Target is not moving. Location appears to be thirty miles northwest of Tehran. Reaper 25 on the way. Estimate five minutes to contact.”

  Wiping the sweat from his rapidly vanishing hairline, he calmly said, “Okay, Kristi, you’ve got the stick for Reaper 25; bring her in from the west and let’s lock this one down. He’s not moving so don’t rush. What can he do in another four minutes?”

  ◆◆◆

  The ostensible leader of the loosely structured Iranian Cyber Army was torn about what to do. He knew the conversation with Soroush lasted too long, and the Americans may have gotten a hit on him, but the only place he could flee was to the mountains, and chances of finding a secure Wi-Fi connection would be nearly nil. Not sure what to do, Samen suddenly moved from his desk chair and began grabbing clothes and personal effects from a dresser drawer and began stuffing them into his duffel bag.

  He suddenly stopped and said aloud, “Soroush, you old fool, if you had let me launch this yesterday when we still had time I could have done it right. Now I have to rush. Damn you.”

  Throwing his half-stuffed duffel bag to the floor, Samen raced back to his desk, opened his laptop, and immediately his fingers began furiously pounding the keys trying to quickly access the Khomeini 79 files. Sweating profusely now, his long greasy hair kept falling across his face distracting him as he tried to concentrate.

  Where is it . . . where is it? There, got it. I need time to get into their networks. Khomeini is supposed to be an elegant attack. I need my brothers with me on this, but most dropped off the grid hours ago. Think. Think.

  ◆◆◆

  The tension in the room was real as half a dozen other targets were being hunted, but the intense former college national debater, Tyler Eggars, wanted this kill. He walked up behind Kristi and tried to control his own emotions and not pressure her too much and said with an even tone, “Okay, Kristi, talk to me. Do we have this gomer or what?”

  Drone operators dressed like flyers and Kristi shifted in her console seat trying to remain focused and simply replied, “Got him locked up. Need one more minute.”

  She had three older brothers and learned to love all the first-person shooter games from Call of Duty to Halo, and nothing made her happier than when she started schooling her big brothers at their own games. The rush of a kill was better than any sex she ever had; not that she had all that much experience.

  Eggars tried to control his own breathing. These Iranian Cyber Army dudes are no joke. I want this bastard Khorasani’s ass scattered to the wind. The brass will cream their pants once I report this kill.

  “Are you sure? We can’t afford to miss this guy again.”

  Responding in an annoyed voice, Kristi said, “GPS signal is still in the green. The dumbass forgot to turn off his phone. We have a single residence; an old farmhouse and no movement. He’s toast, so chill.”

  “You better be right. Stay focused and nail the sucker.”

  ◆◆◆

  Khomeini 79 was an updated derivative of the BlackEnergy3 malware virus used by the Russians against the Ukrainians to sh
ut off the electric grid in Kiev back in December 2016. The code was released out into the “dark web” for other hackers to modify and improve. Samen saw the potential immediately, and his people began working on a way to target the American power grid.

  Unlike the Soviet era infrastructure of the Kiev utility, it was expected that the American grid network would be far more difficult to crack. Yes and no. While the American grid was far more complex and getting even more so with the introduction of so-called “smart-grid” technology, much of the infrastructure, especially in aging Rustbelt states was a combination of new and aging systems with many vulnerable access points. Major cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Boston invested significant money to protect against cyber attacks. They updated their systems while smaller mid-sized cities struggled to maintain service and upkeep. These became the target points for Khomeini 79.

  The full plan intended to launch attacks aimed at creating kinetic mission kills by destroying the power transformers themselves. Similar to what the Americans actually did against Iran’s own power grid to cause long-term damage. Unfortunately, Iranian capabilities dwarfed that of the United States. Samen could feel the sweat running down his back as the reality of what he was about to do filled him with pride that he alone was striking a blow to hurt the Americans.

  Closing his eyes, Samen whispered one last quick prayer to Allah thanking him for allowing him to be his willing vessel against the infidel. Then with a flick of his index finger, he pushed the [enter] button and released a powerful DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) malware attack aimed at a dozen American cities from Illinois to Pennsylvania.