by Jack Winnick
Sean reasoned that the jihadis were headed for the Oakland community center. Though troubled by the failure to find any of the poison, he took two deputies and drove directly to the center, sirens loudly blaring to make their way through the evening holiday traffic. When they reached their destination, the building appeared unoccupied. There were no vehicles in the lot and the large double doors were shut.
Soroush and what remained of his troops were hidden in the large meeting room of the community center; their van was parked inside, out of sight from the street. The sheriff and his deputies burst into the center through the main entrance, guns drawn, but were surprised by the sight of the SUV. As they examined it, the terrorists emerged from behind them, bludgeoned one of the surprised deputies and took Sean prisoner at gunpoint. Overwhelmed, the other deputy dropped his pistol and raised his hands. Soroush, anticipating more police, had one of his men drag the unconscious deputy to the center of the room, forcing Sean and his remaining officer to the same location.
At that point, Lara, Uri, and Ivan, who had been hiding in the adjacent building, rushed into the center. They had seen Sean and his men enter the building and were coming to assist in the anticipated arrests. Instead, a triumphant Colonel Soroush appeared from the shadows, waving an AK-47. He ordered the trio to drop their weapons just as another patrol car noisily pulled up outside. While Soroush’s men herded the federal team toward the center of the room, the arriving police officers raced in through the open door, pistols drawn. Soroush used a megaphone to warn them that the sheriff and the others would be killed if the jihadis were not permitted to escape in their SUV. Four other jihadis appeared, all carrying automatic weapons.
Soroush ordered the newly-arrived CHP officers to drop their pistols. When five seconds passed without any response, one of the jihadis, on a hand signal from Soroush, shot another deputy in the knee; he dropped to the ground, screaming in pain. “Get in that vehicle,” Soroush ordered the Americans in a commanding voice; he was finished fooling around.
“Take me instead,” Uri offered. Soroush, surprised by this surrender, didn’t see Lara slip around the back of the car and crouch behind a hot-water tank. With everyone watching him Uri surrendered, noisily dropping his pistol with a flourish. The jihadis seemed transfixed by the Baby Eagle III lying on the wooden floor; none of them had ever seen anything like this strange new weapon.
This bizarre break in the action allowed Lara to move closer in the dim light. She came out of the shadows behind Soroush, her weapon drawn.
“Tell your men to drop their guns!” Lara commanded in fluent Farsi, jabbing her pistol in Soroush’s back. “You have ten seconds or your life ends!”
The mortified colonel just stood there transfixed. The jihadis all looked to Turan, the second-in-charge, who was well-acquainted with the stories about Lara; she was a fearless killer, they all knew. That she-devil will not hesitate to kill our beloved colonel, Turan reasoned. Without our leader our team will be like a rudderless ship in a terrible storm; we will be slaughtered like sheep. We must remain alive for another opportunity to reach glorious martyrdom and Paradise. He dropped his AK-47. The remaining jihadis, overwhelmed by Turan’s surrender, glumly dropped their firearms, even as Soroush spun around, glaring at them furiously.
Meanwhile, Ivan silently eased closer and floored the nearest jihadi with the butt of his automatic rifle. He then stepped into the light, taking command along with Lara. At that moment the silence in the room was broken by the thunder of powerful police megaphones, blaring from outside.
To put an end to the confrontation before the highway patrol officers stepped into a gun battle, Uri stepped hard on the instep of the confused jihadi next to him, simultaneously twisting the man’s arm behind his back. The overwhelmed young terrorist screamed out in pain and dropped the weapon he was holding; it was Uri’s Baby Eagle. Uri picked it up and threatened Soroush once more with a determined command: “Tell your men to drop their guns now, or you all die!”
“Aghaz-na-see-sheem!” roared Soroush in reply, knowing that the two American agents were quite familiar with the obscene phrase. It translated roughly to: “I’ll use your mouth as a toilet!” The jihadis seemed heartened by this demonstration of courage by their colonel.
Ivan used the opportunity to kick an AK-47 away from the nearest jihadi; the youngster cursed himself loudly for his negligence. Ivan, still in a great deal of pain, grimaced as he picked up the weapon, using it to prod its former owner with a reminder of what was in store at the slightest provocation.
Another jihadi, seemingly emboldened by their apparent numerical advantage, struck the sheriff across the face. Ivan, in reply, fired a short burst of 7.62 mm slugs just over the man’s head, the rounds ricocheting wildly off the concrete walls. The terrified youngster dropped to his knees, his rifle thrown aside, his hands in the air. Just then, more patrol cars arrived outside, their sirens screaming loudly. Flashing red lights illuminated the room through the row of windows at the top of the far wall, lending a vision of Dante’s “Inferno” to the horrific scene. To a man, the terror team dropped their weapons in surrender.
Within seconds, the newly arrived police and Homeland Security agents, with Tom leading, stormed in and ended the fight. But not before the humbled Soroush ended his own life with a dose of cyanide.
The terrorist attack was finished.
Chapter 40
As the combined forces of federal and state officers arrested the disheartened and disappointed Iranians, Tom asked Lara and Uri to come with him to the Oakland offices of Homeland Security. They drove the short distance in less than five minutes, vivid memories of the action-filled night reverberating in their heads. It had been the most exhausting and unnerving night in their immediate memories.
“Take a couple of seats there in the front row,” Tom said with a forced casualness. A large high-definition television screen was mounted on the wall of the small theater. Filling in the room behind them were most of the nonessential personnel awaiting the anticipated show. Drone strikes at unannounced targets were on the menu, according to Tom’s brief introduction.
The presentation began with grainy images that were somewhat familiar to Lara. Uri was not acquainted with the facilities Lara had visited as a guest of Iranian military intelligence. These first views were taken from a high-flying aircraft above the Alborz mountains north of Tehran. The brown cloud of smog was distinctly visible just below the aircraft. As the supersonic plane dropped into the highly populated area, a smaller projectile dropped into view. The mother ship regained altitude, though its cameras continued to follow the path of the smaller craft. As the larger plane picked up speed, heading back for the safety of the Caspian Sea to the north, two vapor trails appeared in the sky directly beneath it. Only moments later, two antimissile rockets spewed out of the mother ship, erasing the attackers in bursts of smoke and debris. Shouts of glee erupted from the audience as the screen filled with the remnants of the Iranian defensive shields.
The screen now abruptly changed, showing another offensive missile dropping into Tehran airspace, but this time no pursuers appeared. Far below, signs of explosions appeared as distant cloudbursts near ground level. These brought on more excited cries from the gallery.
The scene now shifted to an apparent onboard vista as one of the Hellfire missiles from the first US plane tracked its own death spiral out of the sky above the outskirts of Tehran. Lara recognized some of the scenery as that of the northwest suburbs, even as the missile streaked by at high speed. She watched, spellbound, as it bore in. Then, suddenly, the camera slowed as the missile neared the ground. Lara was then able to identify some of the structures in the thinly populated area she’d visited on her first trip with Major Asani. The trees vanished as the missile leveled off in flight, heading straight into what was clearly a parking lot. She was able to even distinguish individual government vehicles at this speed.
The digital image on the screen stopped abruptly as a voice came over th
e speakers.
“What you’re about to see is not pretty, but remember, we’re down to very low speed here. A warning was issued two hours before impact to all personnel in this, the polonium-packaging facility. We were hoping to avoid any civilian or even military casualties.”
There was complete quiet in the viewing room as the screen once again displayed the images from the missile. The entrance to the building, recognizable to Lara, vanished from the screen just before all evidence of the concrete structure disappeared in a flurry of smoke, dust, and flame. She hoped the warning given to the Iranian personnel had been taken seriously. The transmission ended abruptly; this time, however, there was nothing but anxious, guarded silence from the audience.
Lara, as no doubt all in the room, knew that the few hundred grams of deadly polonium would be scattered throughout the unpopulated area around the now-obliterated facility. But the short half-life of the isotope would present a danger to the residents for about a year or so; it was not the same as a nuclear power plant meltdown. She felt certain the Iranian government would claim that only a lab accident had occurred; residents would be told to avoid the immediate area until cleanup could contain the wreckage.
Another video display began after just a short pause, during which Tom informed his audience that what they were about to see was an even more deadly display. There was complete silence as the screen showed an even-higher altitude flight over northern Iran. This time, there was no sign of enemy defense missiles. Lara had no doubt of what she was about to see. Her knowledge of the vicinity told her they were viewing the area well northeast of the city of Tehran, far into the unpopulated foothills of the mountains. She remembered clearly her second tour with the major, this time to the polonium-production facility at the illegal heavy-water nuclear reactor. The world would do well without it.
Still, Lara’s heart was in her throat as the killer drone was released, high-altitude cameras following it down through the clouds, into the forest below. A soundless mushroom-shaped cloud appeared, rising into the air well below the mother ship; then the view shifted to that coming directly from the deadly missile itself. Lara recognized the building; she knew she would. All the fencing and the guard stations were visible, apparently unoccupied. Thank you for that. She was even able to see the radiation-hazard warning signs at the slowed camera speed; then nothing but static. Visions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki flashed through her mind, even though she realized that no nuclear-fission reaction was possible from the destruction of a heavy-water reactor. She could only hope the Iranians had been judicious enough to get all personnel out of the building after the warnings, just as at the destruction of their packaging plant earlier that day.
The presentation concluded, and the room lights came on to a silent, stunned audience. It was a few minutes before the select group slowly and silently left the room.
Chapter 41
Tom escorted Lara and Uri to his temporary office in the Oakland headquarters. He was exhilarated by the excellent outcome of the night’s activity. The scene at the community center had been sorted out by then, with the surviving jihadis arrested. The others had been taken to a nearby hospital; Soroush was sent to the morgue. Tom sat the agents down in a pair of comfortable chairs; he had something else to tell them.
“I thought you’d like to know . . .” Tom began with a big smile on his face. Both agents, despite their weariness, showed their full attention. “The president—ours, that is—sent all the satellite and drone data from the attack you just saw to our international partners . . . and other countries as well. We wanted to be sure that all nations recognized that the Iranian preparations constituted an act of war. Preparing for a large-scale chemical attack on civilians is certainly that; and the US preemptive measures were totally justified.” He paused for just a second to let that sink in. “The international response has been damn-near unanimous. The heads of state from all major countries viewed our attacks from their own satellites and were hoping to hear from us as to what led to them.”
“Please go on!” Lara was practically jumping out of her chair.
“Well, first of all, Iran already filed an official complaint to the United Nations, claiming an act of war had been perpetrated by us. That’s to be discussed at an emergency meeting of the UN next week. The Iranians were furious at the delay.” Tom waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “That’s not going anywhere; our allies have seen and understood everything we sent them. France, Germany, and the UK are totally convinced our attack was justified. Iran had to allow the UN ‘discovery team’ access to the areas. Elemental analysis of the remains of the two facilities we destroyed shows just what you would expect from destruction of a heavy-water reactor: uranium, bismuth, and polonium, for starters. Then there’s the fact that there is no sign of a nuclear-fission event—none of the elements that are produced by a nuclear missile or bomb. So, there was no nuclear assault by our side; all the radioactive material in that debris was from the Iranian reactor itself.” Tom watched the agents’ faces: they were spellbound.
“Within an hour, we heard from both the Israeli and Saudi governments approving our actions as well. That was to be expected; still, it’s nice to get the official word.” Tom paused to see what Lara and Uri might have to say, but they were waiting for the rest of the story. “Belgium and the Scandinavian countries were very guarded in their responses, not casting blame on either side but not happy, either. You know, of course, that those countries have large numbers of Shia-Muslim refugees.”
Lara and Uri remained silent at the unstated inference.
“Then there’s Russia: we were most worried about them.” Another long pause, then: “The guys at the Kremlin only said they were waiting to fully analyze their own satellite data. Which means they’ve got nothing to refute our arguments; they’re solid, and the Russkies know it.”
The tension in the room dissolved with a shaking of hands all around. Genuine smiles appeared on the agents’ faces for the first time that evening.
After a minute or so, Uri had a question.
“One thing I still don’t understand, Tom.” Uri had a seriously quizzical look about him. “How did the Iranians connect me with the fake signals?”
“That’s right, you don’t know about that yet. It was your hostess. ‘Tala’ is the name she went by.”
Uri looked at Lara, who shrugged her shoulders. Uri had not mentioned anything about a liaison with a woman, and she hadn’t asked.
“Tala was a double agent, it turns out, actually working for the Iranians.”
“Hard to believe. She had me fooled.” Uri was dumbfounded. Lara glanced his way, seemingly indifferent, but relieved. “So, how did you find . . . ?”
“One of our own deep-cover people, Gharoub’s secretary, known as Mrs. Khorasani. I’m pretty sure you met her.”
The woman was known to both agents; General Wainscroft had also told them about her in his briefing on their transport to Oakland. So, it was the two women, so innocent-seeming, working for opposite sides. . .
“Tell us, then; what happened to them?” Uri asked.
“Your hostess, Tala, was responsible for the elimination of one of our top field agents in Tehran; she told you about him. How she took over for him as Agent U37FGI.”
Uri nodded; she had indeed.
“It was she who had him . . .” Tom didn’t need to elaborate.
“And what has happened to Tala, may I ask?”
“Mrs. Khorasani took care of that.” Tom again didn’t go into details.
“What’s happened with the poison? Any word?” Lara changed the subject after a moment. She hoped Mrs. Khorasani was safe.
“All good, I’m happy to say.” Tom looked relieved. “First, our guys found all the polonium, we believe. Of course, we’ll still be checking the water, but at any rate . . .” He held up his hand to indicate he would get into details. “We discovered a bottle of the powder caught in the rocks just below the top of the Pilarcitos Dam. Looks lik
e when the bad guys got surprised, they quit climbing and one of them just tossed his poison over the dam, thinking the bottle would make it into the reservoir. They’re constructed of a polymer material that dissolves in a few hours; the polonium then would . . . well, you get the picture.”
“But how do you know you got it all?” Lara implored him.
“That’s more good news. That new detector we got . . . it works just as advertised. When we tested five gallons of clean water with just a dusting of the powder in it, the indicator lit up like crazy. Even with the water diluted down another thousand times, the membrane caught the polonium and immediately detected it.” Lara and Uri visibly relaxed at this news, waiting expectantly for more.
“We found four more containers, all intact, in the bushes along the access road from the San Andreas reservoir to the freeway. Again, the water in the lake showed negative on the poison. Of course, we’re holding off on letting water from the reservoirs into the municipal system until we get complete verification from the federal labs, but . . .”
“You seem so sure of this newfangled membrane-detector gadget . . .” Lara wasn’t convinced.
“Well, we did get a positive at Crystal Springs, but not in the lake itself. There was a garbage barrel where the road meets the highway. Our guys figured they might as well test it; turns out all the rain we had this season just about filled the barrel—”
“And the water in it tested positive!” Lara yelped.
“You guessed it: big-time positive. That terrorist team must have tossed their stash into the barrel while they were hightailing it out of there.”
Uri was keeping track. “So, you figure that’s all of it?”
“Seems like it for now. We’re started live-animal testing on the lakes already . . .”
Lara shrieked. “Live animals!”