by David Bruns
Don stared at the screen for a long moment, then hit PRINT. He took the long walk to the printing station—Clem had denied his request for a personal printer, too—and stared at the page all the way back to his desk.
Liz had concluded that the detainees were of Iranian origin, and the reference to “the blade” was most likely a code name for a new weapon they were planning to use against the coalition forces.
Don stared at the paper, the buzz of curiosity tingling in his brain. He was onto something here; he could taste it. He fired up his connection to the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, or JWICS—the US government’s top-secret Internet—and started a search around the term blade, adding in some parameters to focus on Iranian origins. It always gave Don a chuckle that the most-used search engine inside the most secure intelligence network in the world was also the most popular search engine in the civilian world: Google.
Multiple hits came back. Some about various ancient weapons, some about the latest knives being bought and sold for use by foreign militaries. The analyst who had written the report obviously had a thing for ancient weaponry. Don read through the description of the curved ivory handle and ancient blade, then clicked on the link for the picture of the weapon.
He nearly dropped his soda.
He’d seen this knife before. In Iraq. The Iranian diplomat that Brendan had picked up back in 2007 had been carrying it.
Using his CIA login, he called up the data from the raid. Clem would have a kitten if he found out Don had bypassed the RFI process—which he wouldn’t approve in the first place—but Don could feel that he was on the verge of a breakthrough. There was a connection between Liz’s report and that raid. Somewhere in this puzzle was the magic link he needed to make all the pieces fit together. He just needed to keep looking.
He scanned through the folder. They’d uncovered a major weapons cache, including the source of the more sophisticated EFPs that were just showing up in the region. The explosives were of Iranian origin and the technology impressive, especially for local militia. These guys obviously had advanced training.
He pulled up the digital photos from the raid, tapping the cursor until he found the one he was looking for. The knife was in someone’s flat palm. It had a curved white handle and a short arced blade, wrought with filigree designs. The next picture showed a crushed pack of Marlboros and a silver Zippo lighter.
He scanned the text of the after-action report from Brendan. The Iranian diplomat’s bodyguard had been killed in the raid. How important did you have to be to rate your own bodyguard?
Don pulled up the picture page of the Iranian diplomat’s passport next to the photo of the ivory-handled knife and focused on the man’s face. A classic face, with a noble nose, steady dark eyes, and thin lips set in a cruel smile.
Alizera Mogadaham, who are you?
He flipped back to the text from Liz’s report. What about the blade? That was what the Farsi-speaking prisoner had asked.
The puzzle pieces in Don’s mind snapped together: They weren’t talking about a weapons system, they were talking about a person.
And now Don had his picture.
CHAPTER 14
Somewhere in the Zagros Mountains, south of Gerash, Iran
06 June 2010 – 0200 local
Hashem paused the Range Rover on the top of the rise and flashed the headlights three times, leaving them off after the final flash.
He stared at his watch, letting the second hand sweep around the face twice. Two flashes poked out of the darkness.
The sign for all clear.
Hashem turned his lights back on and put the car in drive. The chains he dragged behind the Rover to obliterate his tracks in the sand rattled gently as he pulled forward. Satellite imagery of the area was unlikely, but one could never be too careful.
It amazed him how much these desert drives relaxed him. He barely glanced at the GPS monitor on the dashboard. When he first began to make the treks into the desert, he’d always taken a security detail of two or three. Then it was just Delir—he paused at the memory of his driver. Now he preferred to make the drive alone.
He’d come to the secret cave so many times over the years he could find his way even in the dark. But it was good to have a backup plan. He smiled to himself. He could hear his brother’s voice in his head: “Always the cautious one, brother.”
And his trademark response: “The cautious ones keep their heads, Aban.”
He descended down a steep rock slope onto a flat valley floor, the last stretch of road before he reached the cave. Hashem shifted in his seat to ease the tightness in his back. There was a shorter path into the secret base, one that stayed to the lowland flat stretches and was used for bringing in supplies or heavy equipment. His security forces normally kept it blocked with heavy boulders to discourage unwanted visitors. He could have had them unblock the access road, but it was a point of pride with Hashem to follow the same security protocols he demanded of his men.
He kept his speed low, giving his men plenty of time to scan his vehicle for heat signatures, verifying he was alone. Hashem always felt a rush of nostalgia when he pulled into the entrance of the cave. The delicate hood of rock extended out over the sand, blocking the stars from his view.
When he and Aban and their father had first found this cave, it had looked to them like just another of the hundreds of ancient lava tubes littering the area, extending back into the mountain ten or twenty meters until deadending in a blank wall. But this one kept going. The three of them had gotten out their headlamps and crawled on their hands and knees the last ten meters—Hashem remembered fearing they would crawl into a nest of snakes—until the cave expanded into a vast cavern. They’d shouted and called into the darkness, and Aban lit a flare.
The cave was a vast complex of linked caverns that extended three hundred meters in either direction, with a source of fresh water and links to the outside world for fresh air.
Hashem parked the vehicle in front of the gunmetal gray steel doors that covered the entrance now. The blackout screen lowered behind the Rover, shutting out the dim desertscape in his rearview mirror. He closed his eyes, trying to preserve that memory for a few more seconds. It had all been perfect then, the three of them exploring the natural beauty of this underground wonderland.
It had all gone so wrong after that.
The light from the opening doors reddened his closed eyelids. He opened his eyes and put the Rover in drive.
His father and brother would not recognize the cave today. Gone was the warren of caverns, replaced by a floor hewn smooth by the chisels of his stonemasons. Pillars of steel sprouted out of the bedrock and lined the walls in weak areas. Over the course of three years, Hashem had brought in over two hundred immigrant laborers—Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, North Africans, wherever he could find desperate men who would work without asking questions.
They never returned to their families, of course. The next of kin did receive a handsome stipend from an anonymous donor, but their loved one never came home. Eventually, the men figured it out, and a few tried to escape. Three even made it to the open desert, but Hashem’s men assured him they would never survive the harsh environment to reach civilization. But most never complained. It amazed Hashem how many men simply accepted their fate.
A golf cart and driver waited next to where Hashem parked his Rover. He returned the salute, dropped his duffel bag in the cargo space, and slid across the vinyl seat. The driver pulled off immediately, racing around the perimeter of the cavern. They paused at the barracks, where Hashem changed from civilian clothes to a dark blue jumpsuit, the uniform of his operation. The only adornment to the uniform was a belt which held a radiation monitor.
He splashed water on his face and closed his eyes again. His room, barely the size of his walk-in closet in Tehran, consisted of a bed, a desk, a washstand, and a small prayer rug on the floor, but it felt more like home than any house he’d ever owned.
He dried his face and rejoined the
driver on the golf cart. “Take me to Yusef.”
Yusef Kharmanian looked up from the video screen as Hashem entered his workbay. Wild locks of unruly black hair and a thick black beard framed his face.
It had taken Hashem a long time to adjust to Yusef’s eyes. One solid black pupil stared at him intently, burning with passion. The other eye wandered as he spoke, first seeing Hashem’s shoes, then over his shoulder, then the ceiling. Hashem smiled at Yusef; after nearly three years, the wandering eye didn’t bother him anymore.
“What present did you bring me on this trip, Colonel?” The young man’s voice was surprisingly soft, and he had a lopsided smile to match his uneven eyes.
Yusef was perhaps his greatest find of the entire program. When he’d come across the boy at the age of eighteen, he’d already graduated from the University of Tehran with a double major in aerospace engineering and astrophysics. His passion was missiles. He watched videos of test flights constantly, dissecting the details of the flights and sending long missives to flight engineers in other countries telling them how to correct their failures.
His parents had been killed in a car accident a few months prior to their meeting and Yusef had become a complete recluse, living in his university lab. Convincing him to join Hashem’s cause was easy: a state-of-the-art lab, freedom to build missiles to his heart’s content, and complete seclusion from the outside world.
Yusef didn’t realize he would never leave the secret cave alive, but Hashem would deal with that issue when it came up.
The “present” comment was their own private joke. Before Hashem had moved Yusef to the cave, he’d had the scientist draw up a shopping list of all the possible components and tools he might need. On each visit to the cave, Hashem always tried to bring some item from the list for his missile engineer. Behind the glass walls, Hashem could see the rows of machining equipment and 3-D printers.
Building a missile inventory had been surprisingly easy. Over the years, he’d put on the payroll a small group of quality assurance engineers who worked at Iranian missile factories. Using falsified documents, the QA engineers would pull Hashem’s shopping list items off the assembly line for quality control. Invariably, the parts never made it back into inventory. Labeled as “Substandard, destroy,” they eventually found their way into Yusef’s secret lab.
Given the length of time that had passed, the Iranian missile models would occasionally change as new updates came available, but that mattered little to Yusef. He took the parts and, using his machine shop, was able to modify or fabricate new replacements. He often gave Hashem revised engineering drawings to pass along to the Iranian government missile development teams; Hashem destroyed them.
Yusef rose, jittery with anticipation for his mentor to see his work. “Show me, Yusef. Show me your babies,” Hashem said.
Yusef’s wild locks swayed from side to side as he made his way through the lab to a cleanroom airlock. The two men donned white coats, hairnets, and covers for their mouths and beards. With all his bushy facial hair tucked away, Yusef looked like his face was surrounded by puffy clouds.
The three missile guidance sections lay gleaming white in the harsh theater lights of the cleanroom. The solid rocket boosters were housed in a separate part of the cave. About the size of a phone booth, the open guidance section was packed with electronics. Yusef pointed out various new components in an excited voice. Hashem let the words flow over him. He only cared that they flew where he programmed them, and he knew Yusef was as good as his word.
His eyes strayed to the next workbench over—the warhead section. The missile shells lay open and empty. “What is Valerie’s progress?” he interrupted Yusef.
Yusef blinked at him, his lazy eye making a slow survey of the room to Hashem’s right. He shrugged. “You’ll have to talk to the Russian about that,” he said.
The Russian. Yusef never used Valerie’s name.
“Good work, Yusef. Very good work.”
Yusef beamed from behind his facial coverings, his eye swiveling momentarily forward.
Hashem left the cleanroom, stripping off the sterile robe and dropping it into a basket for cleaning and reuse. He’d dismissed his driver, so he walked the fifty meters to Valerie’s lab.
The overhead gantries made shadows across his path as he passed the booster section of a missile. He shook his head. Stealing something the size of a tractor trailer was no easy task. He’d finally managed to pay off the general manager of the facility where they tested the boosters. The man had falsified the testing of one booster and sold it to Hashem’s man. The plan had worked—barely—but he’d ended up needing to have the general manager replaced with a more compliant choice when he went back to him for a second unit. These operations took time.
He pushed open the doors to Valerie’s lab, spying the man’s gray head hunched over his workbench. Valerie looked up at Hashem’s entrance and gave him a sad half-smile as he rose to meet him. Sad was the only adjective to describe Valerie. The bear of a man approached Hashem with a shambling gait, his belly straining against the belt on his uniform. He folded the Iranian into his massive arms, holding him so tightly that Hashem could hear the slow thud of the man’s heart in his chest. Even his heartbeat sounded mournful.
“Colonel,” he rumbled. “How good to see you.”
Not that Valerie didn’t have much to be sad about. Hashem had first met Valerie Aminev in Chechnya in 1994. Even then, in his late thirties, the man had made a name for himself as a nuclear weapons specialist. Of course, in those days, he was primarily concerned with dismantling them.
Hashem spied the 8 × 10 picture on Valerie’s desk. Raisa, his late wife, a smiling raven-haired beauty, and a Chechen Muslim of the minority Shia sect. Hashem had heard the story of Valerie’s love life dozens of times: the whirlwind romance, his conversion from Russian Orthodox to Islam, their beautiful children—Hashem’s eyes shifted to the photograph of the twins—and the slaughter of all three while Valerie attended a nuclear physics symposium in Japan when the Second Chechen War began in 1999.
When Hashem sought to recruit his Russian friend to his special team years later, he’d been shocked at the change in the man. Once a dark-haired, friendly giant whose booming laugh filled the room, Valerie had gone completely gray and silent. Only two things kept him going: vodka and hate. Hashem, despite his personal disapproval of alcohol, kept the vodka coming to Valerie by the case, and over the years, he carefully stoked the hatred for his own ends. The Russian’s hate had no direction, he simply hated the world that had taken his family from him.
“My friend,” Hashem said, pushing back from Valerie’s food-stained uniform. He smelled of stale vodka and sweat. “Give me some good news.”
Valerie’s half-smile spread slowly—another joke between Hashem and his team. When he’d first shown the Iraqi nuclear weapons to Valerie, the man had snorted angrily, called them “nuclear firecrackers.” For a long moment, Hashem’s stomach had dropped, until the Russian took another long pull of his vodka and said, “But I can make them better.”
And he’d been as good as his word. Hashem had learned more from Valerie about nuclear weapons than he’d cared to admit. The Iraqi weapons had been gun-type warheads, essentially a gun barrel that fired two subcritical masses of low-purity, weapons-grade plutonium at each other to cause a nuclear detonation. They were crude, but would have been effective in a small area.
Valerie had painstakingly harvested the material from the three Iraqi bombs and refashioned them into spherical warheads, increasing the yield tenfold and repackaging them for Yusef’s missiles. Delivered accurately and detonated at the right altitude, each warhead could now destroy an area kilometers in diameter, not to mention the nuclear fallout which would devastate a much larger area.
Valerie held Hashem by both shoulders, and his half-smile grew fractionally wider. “Come, I have much to show you.”
He led Hashem to a window at the back of his lab. On three metal tables inside the cle
anroom laid three boxes, each the size of a filing cabinet drawer. The covers were removed, exposing a ball the size of a large melon, and covered with wires that led to a series of circuit boards.
Hashem’s breath fogged the glass as he leaned in. “They’re finished?” he said.
Valerie nodded gravely.
Hashem squinted at the nearest device. A small metal tag was glued to the base of the unit, next to the explosive sphere. The tag looked hand drawn. “What is that?” he asked, pointing to the label.
Valerie pursed his lips. “I’ve named each of the bombs after my family, Colonel. That one is Raisa, that’s Tanya, and Little Valerie.” Tears seeped out of his eyes, and were lost in the gray nest of his beard. Hashem wondered how much he’d had to drink already tonight.
He gripped Valerie’s arm. “Your vengeance will come, my friend. I promise.”
The Russian nodded, the tears flowing freely now. “When, Colonel? When?”
When. That was a good question. He had one completely functional nuclear missile now, but the launchers were the one thing he could not steal from the Iranian weapons program. It had been nearly two years since he’d ordered three mobile launchers from the North Korean agent, Pak Myong-rok—and paid cash up front.
Everything depended on Pak now. Without those launchers, his missiles were no more than giant paperweights. The thought made his stomach churn. He forced a smile.
“Soon, Valerie. Soon.”
CHAPTER 15
Washington, DC
01 November 2010 – 1830 local
Going to Sine’s Irish Pub the night before the election had been a mistake.
Don scanned the packed bar from his high-top table. Already he’d had to fend off three guys who wanted to take the empty chair opposite him. He flagged the waitress down.
“I’ll have another. Harp,” he said, holding up his empty glass. She eyeballed the empty chair and the standing-room-only bar. “And I’ll have a grasshopper for my friend.”