The War Planners Series

by Andrew Watts

  Waiting for orders.

  Most in the group had thought they would never be called upon. If he was honest about it, Javad had thought that too. Their sleeper cell was a nice weapon for Iran to have in its arsenal. But like other weapons of mass destruction, it could only be used once, and it would trigger swift retribution. So it was illogical, when one thought about it, that they would ever be used. Because that would mean…well, that Iran had reached a decision to irreparably harm itself, and sacrifice the lives of Javad and his men.

  Javad and his men weren’t terrorists. They were soldiers. Patriots. Few of them had any desire to be martyrs. They were too smart for that. But ideology, religion, and nationality were very closely related in Iran. And he had been briefed on the many ways his group might be used. Suicide missions and suicide attacks were very different in his mind. In a suicide mission, one still held hope that they might overcome all odds and make it out alive.

  He reminded himself that suicide attacks had been used several times throughout history, often in military campaigns. Most notably, the Japanese had launched Kamikaze bombers at the end of World War II, sinking around fifty ships. It could be an effective weapon, Javad told himself. Iran must have a great need for it.

  Over the past few weeks Javad had grown increasingly worried as he watched the news. Iran and the United States had already fired shots at each other in combat. While outright war still had not broken out, the media made it seem like it could happen at any time.

  A part of him wished he could be in Iran, serving his countrymen. But another part of him was thankful that he was here, safe from the guided munitions of the deadliest military in the world. Despite what the Iranian propaganda machines would tell them, Javad knew the truth. No country on earth could make war like the United States of America.

  The growing probability of war between the two nations brought his life’s most important question to the forefront of his thoughts. Would they be called up into action? He’d made the rounds. He had spoken to his team leaders. And they had spoken to their team members. All twelve men had been told to be on the alert, but not to do anything that might raise suspicions. They didn’t want the Department of Homeland Security or the FBI knocking on their door.

  A few weeks ago, Javad had been almost certain that his network would not be activated. In the face of an almost certain military defeat, even the Ayatollah would know not to provoke America by using Javad’s team. Javad was like one of the American soldiers that manned a nuclear missile silo. A highly trained overseer of a terrible, never-to-be-used weapon. This was the way he had thought of himself.

  The activation order had come three days ago.

  It was in the form of an email from a clothing company, and it went straight to his spam folder. His handlers—or, more accurately, the people they hired—could make any message appear as if it had originated from a different and innocent source. Javad was trained to check both his inbox and spam folder each day, looking for the right passphrase. The body of the email, to the untrained eye, would also look like a normal advertisement. But it contained coded instructions.

  He immediately headed to the predetermined location and found the vehicle. It was an unmarked minivan. An older model. Blue. American-made. The keys in the glove compartment, inside a manila envelope. Also inside the envelope were detailed plans. A timeline with targets and locations. Where to get equipment. And a lighter, to burn the instructions.

  The van was unlocked, parked in an alleyway and sandwiched between two windowless brick buildings. A trashy apartment complex rose up across the street in front of him. He wondered if there was a team of FBI agents watching him behind one of its dark windows. He looked up as he read, knowing instantly that he was being watched. There was no way whoever had left written plans like this would allow them to fall into the wrong hands. If it wasn’t the FBI in that building straight ahead, it was whoever had left these instructions. He could feel their crosshairs on his forehead.

  When he finished memorizing the plans, he got out of the vehicle and lit the papers on fire, just as the instructions has prescribed. The alleyway kept any wind from blowing out the flame, and he didn’t let go until the last morsel of paper was consumed. Then he got back inside the van and drove away.

  That had been only three days ago, but it seemed like it had been a lifetime. The others were excited when they found out that they were to be activated. Their time had finally come. They would carry the sword. Strike at the heart of America. Death to America. They would show the West that Iran was not to be trifled with.

  Javad hoped he could fulfill his duty without being caught. He gave himself about a one in four chance that he would execute his mission and get away alive. He had little confidence that his men would survive, but that was not something he would ever tell them.

  When the day came, they found the minivans unlocked and parked behind a grocery store, just as the instructions had said they would be.

  Each of Javad’s men wasted no time putting on the heavy protective vests that they were each to wear. A phone was strapped to each one of the vests, facing outward so it could record and transmit everything. Javad assumed that someone in Iran would then weaponize the footage, putting it out to the media and on social networks.

  The vehicles also contained firearms. One semiautomatic long gun for each of Javad’s men. Boxes of 5.56mm ammo. And several plastic five-gallon gas cans, each one filled.

  For operational security, Javad hadn’t told his men exactly what their assignment was until they were ready to execute. They only knew to be prepared for bloodshed.

  When he told his team what they were to do, they grew excited. A few had fear in their eyes, but Javad quickly spoke words of confidence to them. At exactly the right time, just before rush hour, he sent the three vehicles away to complete their mission.

  He drove a fourth vehicle. As he turned onto I-495, the Washington, D.C., Beltway, he wondered if there was really a God. After all the time he had spent in America, he now knew that the Americans were not the demons his government made them out to be. If there truly was a God, he wondered if He would forgive him for what he was about to do.

  Chase kept looking forward through the windshield of the Ford Mustang.

  “What is it?”

  Chase’s instincts were honed from years of experience on battlefields around the world. To the uninitiated, the sputtering of a motorcycle or the crack of fireworks might sound an awful lot like gunfire. But Chase’s fine-tuned ears were the first defense of a highly trained operative.

  “Stay here. Get in the driver’s seat,” he said to his brother. “We’re in the outer lane, so if you see someone coming, drive off the road and get the hell out of here.”

  David looked aghast. “What are you gonna do?”

  Chase opened the door and shut it behind him, walking forward with his arms extended, his weapon pointed toward the ground.

  His eyes scanned down the lanes of traffic as he weaved in between vehicles, searching for the source of the gunfire.

  A wall of black smoke rose up about fifty yards ahead. A few people honked their horns. Then he heard some screams, and more of the loud, unmistakable cracks of semiautomatic weapons.

  The left side of the highway was a five-foot-tall median barrier. On the right side of the road rose a sloped area of grass. The grass ended at a twenty-foot wall—a sound barrier, separating the busy highway from suburbia. There was nowhere for people to run.

  When the gunfire erupted and the screams began, Chase could see car doors ahead of him flying open, the passengers fleeing to either side of the stopped traffic, running away from the black smoke. A heavyset woman in heels ran right by Chase as he jogged toward the noise. She was panting and saying, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” tears rolling down her red puffy face.

  Chase side stepped to the left side of the highway and began making his way forward, faster now. He brought his weapon up, scanning the horizon by tracing the gun sight al
ong his field of view. A yellow school bus motored in place a few cars ahead. He needed to find the shooters before…

  Target.

  The man wore blue jeans and a dark grey vest, and held what looked like an AR-15. He walked toward Chase along the highway shoulder. The same section of the road that Chase was using. Every few steps, the man fired into the traffic. A few more seconds and he would be at the school bus.

  Chase opened the rear door of the bus and found himself staring at a group of middle schoolers. “Come on, hop down!” He called. A large man appeared next to the kids. Chase asked, “You the bus driver?”

  The man nodded.

  A woman in a sedan next to them saw what he was doing and got out of her car to help. Chase looked at her and the bus driver and said, “Help get everyone out the back door. Bring all these kids that way, away from the gunfire.” He pointed back in the direction he had come from.

  The woman and the bus driver nodded and started helping the kids hop down and run away from the screaming.

  Chase left them and headed towards the gunfire.

  Lena stood in the back of the room, watching the operation unfold. Chinese satellites were still effective. The ARES cyberattack had only affected US satellites—GPS and military birds, mostly.

  With David Manning and Henry Glickstein escaping, she knew that there was an increased level of surveillance on the island. But now that the US network of reconnaissance satellites was inoperative, that greatly reduced the information they could obtain.

  The biggest threat to the secrecy of this operation was US submarine and aerial reconnaissance. US Navy EP-3s and Air Force RC-135 aircraft routinely flew through the area. But the island had received several upgrades—electronic countermeasures, mostly—that would help shield their work. This island was still the best place for her. While Jinshan’s power and connections protected him from the political scrutiny he faced after Dubai, she was a different story.

  Officially, Lena Chou was not, and had never been, a citizen of China. She was an American, despite what the US intelligence agencies were now saying. That it had taken them ten years to realize her true identity was a testament to her ability, and the professionalism of Jinshan’s operation.

  “Ms. Chou?”

  She looked at the Chinese military intelligence officer that was in charge of the room. “Yes?”

  “Ma’am, it’s time. You can now see our satellite feeds from over Washington, D.C., on screens one through three.” He pointed to a set of displays strung out along the ceiling.

  “Thank you.”

  The resolution was, surprisingly, good enough for her to be able to make out individuals. The video all came from a single Chinese intelligence satellite, in a permanent geosynchronous orbit above Washington, D.C. It was used to eavesdrop on the US government agencies and officials who ran them. But it also had great cameras.

  All three screens showed different sections of the circular highway that ran around the capital of the United States: I-495, the Washington, D.C. Beltway.

  She looked at her watch and did the math in her head. It was time. The afternoon rush hour was picking up. Exactly what they wanted. Maximum impact. Maximum casualties.

  “Teams one and two have begun,” said one of the Chinese intelligence personnel.

  She saw two of the screens zoom in on the highway. Each showed similar scenarios unfolding. A minivan stopped on the Beltway, slowing and eventually blocking traffic. Then the third screen showed that the last of the teams had done the same thing with their minivan. At each location, men from the minivans got out and began pouring gasoline across lanes of traffic. Then they stepped back and lit the liquid, transforming it into a flaming barrier. The smoke distorted some of the overhead view, but it was still good enough for Lena to decipher what was happening.

  In each scene, three men spread out across the highway. One man on either side, and one in the middle of the major road. Then they raised their black semiautomatic weapons to their shoulders and began firing into traffic.

  She checked her watch. Right on time.

  Lena heard a few muffled gasps from the Chinese personnel in the control room. She took a mental note of who seemed the most disturbed. She would have to give their names to the duty section head.

  Loyalty and dedication were very important at this stage of the operation. Everything they did was still highly confidential. If word of their operations were to get out to the wrong people now, it could ruin everything.

  It was understandable that some of these Chinese military and intelligence personnel were upset by this operation. This team hadn’t participated in anything this gruesome before now.

  Innocent women and perhaps even children would die. But it was necessary, Lena reminded herself. Was she rationalizing? Yes. But the ends justified the means, however horrible they were.

  Lena watched one particular woman, manning her station. She looked to be about thirty years old. The woman covered her mouth as she watched the Iranian men on the screen, gunning down civilians stuck in the traffic jam.

  Lena cocked her head. She wondered if this woman had a child at home. Unlikely, as the group assigned to this island was well-screened. But this woman was quite upset. That much was clear. That was fine, Lena told herself. Let them be upset. As long as their being upset didn’t transition into anything more dangerous, like dissent.

  The Beltway attacks hadn’t been planned by the Americans in the Red Cell. Jinshan’s covert team from the Ministry of State Security had come up with this one.

  The operation still fit the Red Cell’s overall strategy—frame Iran as the most dangerous enemy of the American people. An enemy that needed to be dealt with immediately. Get the US committed to war with Iran. And while the Americans are focused on Iran, China will make her move.

  Jinshan’s group of Chinese spies operating in the US had been there for years. Some of his agents had even been there for decades. Lena herself had begun her work for Jinshan that way. A deep seed into the heart of America.

  One the objectives Jinshan had laid out for his team was to uncover agents from other nations who were also conducting espionage inside the US. All the major players had operatives in the D.C. area. The Russians, the Israelis, the British.

  Jinshan’s team had stumbled onto the Iranian sleeper cell a few years ago. At the time, Lena had been working as a mole in the CIA, stationed in the D.C. area. Jinshan had notified Lena of the Iranians and asked her to gather more information on the group. Information of that sort could be very valuable, should they ever desire to conduct a false flag operation in the future.

  When the CIA had transferred Lena to Dubai, she’d handed off the work to another of Jinshan’s men. Jinshan’s team had continued to find out everything they could about how the Iranians conducted their communication. What were their methods of communication? Their chain of command structure? Who made contact with whom? How often? What types of missions were they intended to conduct? What were their standard operating procedures?

  And, important to Lena’s current operation, what activities would the Iranian sleeper cell perform on short notice, without having any in-person communication?

  Lena had been surprised to hear how amateurish the Iranians were at some things, but how disciplined they were at others. They were great, for instance, at keeping low profiles. Out of the thirteen of them, including the group’s leader, only one of them had ever shown up on a US government watch list. Lena had used the CIA’s database to check.

  But when Jinshan’s cyberwarfare hackers had infiltrated the Iranian intelligence organization’s computers in Tehran, they had been astounded to find out how many details were kept on file about the group. Everything was there. Their identities, their codenames (which were comically unoriginal), and their method of communication.

  Jinshan had been very pleased to find out that they would not use steps to double-verify orders if they were to be executed within one week’s time. Double-verification of an action o
rder was standard practice with Chinese sleeper agents. This prevented another foreign entity from exploiting the group.

  Once Lena and her team had gotten their hands on the Iranian files, they’d begun to draw up plans for what they wanted the Iranian sleeper cell to do, and how they would anonymously communicate it.

  The consensus was that an attack on a soft target—highly visible, easily achievable for this group of amateurs—would work best. But it would have to be done in a way that would tie up all loose ends.

  “Sir, we’re getting video feed from the phones on their vests.”

  “Please show it on screen,” said the duty officer.

  One of the large screens in the front of the room changed from overhead satellite footage to a cross-section of twelve video feeds.

  “Why are we seeing only twelve?”

  “The leader’s feed isn’t on for some reason.”

  Lena frowned. That wasn’t part of the plan. “Is the cleaner crew ready if we need them?” She had a two-member group ready to take out any of the Iranians that survived the attack. But she didn’t want to expose them unless she absolutely had to. It defeated the whole purpose of using the Iranians in the first place. The cleaner crews had connections to the Chinese.

  “The cleaners are standing by, if needed,” the duty officer said, looking at Lena.

  The video feed from the phones was surprisingly clear, but not well focused. The gunmen were walking and jogging, shooting passengers as they sat in their cars or ran in the streets. Lena heard some more gasps from inside the room.

  “It looks like one of them has been hit,” the duty officer said, pointing to a video screen.

  Lena saw the lone video feed that was no longer moving. The image was now half-covered by pavement. She looked up at the overhead satellite feeds until she found the one where the man lay.

  A dark patch spread out on the ground next to his now-misshapen head. She searched and found the man who had shot him. A white man with dark hair and civilian clothes held a handgun and was taking cover behind a school bus.