The Natanz Directive

by Wayne Simmons

  First, I had to finalize my entry into Iran. I needed a location within reasonable driving distance to Tehran, but not so close that someone could spot my drop. I’d done a preliminary search back in D.C., but that had been with three or four people looking over my shoulder. I didn’t need three or four people times three or four other people knowing anything about my entry. I pulled out my iPhone and activated my mapping app. I plotted three possibilities, all north of the city and all deep in the mountains. Google Earth allowed me to study the sites from above, and the hills outside the village of Fasham looked ideal.

  I noted one landing point in a broad valley crossed with an unpaved road moving east to west and a two-lane piece of asphalt that traveled north and south. I marked the coordinates in the phone’s memory. This would be my diversionary landing point. Then I zeroed in on a less-trafficked valley a kilometer to the northwest and hidden by a low-lying ridge. The high-desert terrain was passable, and it would need to be. I marked those coordinates as well.

  Next, I opened the secure-communication app. While I waited for the protocols to signal the all clear, I glanced back at Roger. He was still busy chatting on his phone.

  The first prompt from the app told me that General Rutledge was unavailable, so I activated a recording feature that would ensure he had a transcript of the call.

  The second prompt patched me through to the phone I had given to the CIA’s deputy director of operations, Otto Wiseman. It was the middle of the day in D.C.; he picked up after a single ring. “You’re not much of a communicator, are you, soldier? What happened to our deal?”

  “How’s the saying go? Deals are like babies: easy to make, hard to deliver. Especially when the shit hits the fan the way it did in Amsterdam,” I remarked.

  “Yeah, I heard about your troubles,” Wiseman said deliberately.

  A shootout in downtown Amsterdam struck me as a bit more than “troubles,” but maybe the DDO was used to a bit more action than I was.

  The less Wiseman knew about my plan the better, but he was the only one with the assets I needed for the next stage, assets that neither Rutledge nor Mr. Elliot could provide.

  No use beating around the bush. “I need a C-17. One of the high-altitude jobs.”

  The venerable C-17 had gone through any number of variations, but the Globemaster III was built for high-altitude clandestine missions of the max variety, and that’s what I needed.

  “When and where?” Wiseman said without missing a beat. No Are you out of your mind? or even a What the hell for? I had to give him credit.

  This was a $250 million airplane I was requesting, crewed by highly trained and combat-seasoned aviators. Wiseman’s casual tone made it sound like I was asking for a neighborhood delivery of groceries.

  “Field Twenty-seven.” That’s all I needed to tell him. Field 27 was a remote airstrip in Turkey where, during the Cold War, the CIA used to launch U-2 spy planes for look-sees over the Soviet Union.

  “You sure about that?” Wiseman asked. “Twenty-seven’s not exactly in prime condition. In fact, it’s desolate as hell.”

  Even better. “I’ll be ready at 0100, local time. Day after tomorrow.”

  “You’re not cutting yourself much slack.”

  “Can you have it there, yes or no?” In other words, don’t waste my time with small talk.

  “Consider it done. Day after tomorrow, 0100 local time.”

  “Good. And the less noise the better.”

  “I guess that goes without saying,” the DDO said. In his eyes, maybe. Not in mine. “What’s your ten-twenty? Amsterdam?”

  Yeah, he was the deputy director of operations for the CIA, and one of the most powerful men in the world, but he really didn’t need to know where I was at the moment. When I didn’t answer, he threw out another question: “How will you get to Turkey?”

  At the moment, I didn’t know, so I said, “Director, just make sure the C-17 is ready, okay?”

  “I think we’ve already covered that ground,” he said. “What’s your MO once you get in the country?” Inquisitive guy.

  I had to know if there was a leak in his office, and the bait was entrance into the country. I said, “Have your people at this location at dawn. And tell them to keep their eyes open. Once I touch down, we’ll want to move fast.”

  I transferred the coordinates of the first landing point, at the crossroads just outside Fasham. I waited. Heard computer keys clicking on his end.

  “Fasham?”

  “Yeah, basically the middle of nowhere.”

  “Where a shitload could go wrong. You know that, right?” Wiseman said.

  “Yeah, well, plenty has already gone wrong.” It was a lure. I wanted to see how he’d respond.

  “There’s still time to abort. We’ve got other options.”

  I wondered for a split second whether the DDO had ever heard the term superpatriot. Not likely. I said, “Actually, we don’t. And I’ve got my orders. And it’s only a round-trip ticket if I succeed.”

  Wiseman cleared his throat. He was basically a desk jockey. Desk jockeys didn’t like being reminded that, for some of us in the national-security business, a mission screw-up had consequences a helluva lot more damaging than a black mark on an efficiency report.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  I wanted to say, You do your job and I’ll do mine, but I’d probably pushed the envelope far enough for one conversation. Instead, I said, “No, sir. Field Twenty-seven. Day after tomorrow. Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.”

  I terminated the call before he tried to fit one last word in, which I knew he sure as hell would. I quit the recording function, a fraction at ease knowing that Rutledge now had a copy of the conversation.

  Next, I palmed the last of my disposable phones from my jacket and punched in Mr. Elliot’s secure number. I expected him to let it go to voice mail, but he answered three rings in, saying, “Good to hear your voice, young man.”

  “Likewise,” I replied. That was the sum total of our niceties. I gave him a quick summary of my plans going forward: requisitioning the HALO gear, transportation from Amsterdam into Istanbul care of Roger Anderson, and my arrangements with Wiseman for the C-17 drop into Iran, including the misdirection about my landing point.

  “Straightforward. Direct,” he allowed. “I approve. And the less you-know-who and his morons know, the better.”

  “So here’s what I need,” I said and sent him the coordinates of my second landing point.

  We waited for the message to go through. Here I was communicating from the bow of a launch in the middle of one of Holland’s biggest lakes and getting impatient because our communications were subjected to the laws of physics.

  “Got it,” Mr. Elliot said a split second later. “Looks good. Dawn, the day after tomorrow.”

  “Affirmative. And I’ll need transportation.”

  “No shit. In the middle of goddamn nowhere. I would have never thought of that.” He chuckled, and I let out a slow breath. “Look for a guy on a camel.”

  I grinned. “See what I had to put up with for thirty-odd years.”

  “And you loved every minute of it,” he said, doing what a good case officer did to keep things on an even keel. Then he got back to business: the challenge code for my contact. “Ask him for Marlboros. He’ll say he prefers Montecristo coronas.”

  “Got it.”

  “How’s your finances?”

  “I’m burning through money like a roadrunner on crack.”

  “I’ll send a care package.” He paused. When Mr. Elliot paused, you knew something important was coming. “Hey, listen. Watch your six. There are a lot of people who want to see you fail.”

  “I’ll do my best to disappoint them.”

  “You do that. Take care.”

  His phone beeped, and the line went dead.

  I turned off my phone. There was a sense of finality to the decisions we’d just agreed to. I could feel the heat on my face and liked it. I could he
ar a song lyric coalescing in the back of my mind: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try some time, you might find, you get what you need.” Yeah, every once in a while the Stones came through. Nice job, Mick. Very appropriate. You go in, doesn’t mean you come back.

  I broke apart the disposable and dropped the parts into the lake. I stepped back to the stern. Roger had the tiller in his hand and a satisfied look on his face.

  “So?” I said.

  “Your ride is on the way. Amsterdam to Istanbul, direct,” he said. “I wish I could say I got you a real good deal, but I thought quality was a tad bit more important than bargain shopping.”

  “Someone you trust?”

  He smiled, a perfect wave of irony filling out his face. “This guy has the same view of politics as I do. You pay, he performs.”

  “My kind of guy.”

  Roger veered from the middle of the lake toward the entrance near Stede Broec and the dike that signaled landfall northwest of the city.

  We were one of three boats queued to cross through the dike. If anything bad was going to happen, this was the place. You couldn’t find a more perfect spot for an ambush than the narrow concrete passage connecting Markermeer with Lake Ijsselmeer. And if Roger Anderson, an apolitical man of profit, decided to sell me out, no better opportunity would present itself. I tossed him a cautionary glance and made it look as if I were studying the dike.

  My paranoia was unwarranted: all I saw was a man tending to the details of our crossing. We squeezed through the watercourse without so much as a short pause and continued across Ijsselmeer to the end of the peninsula and the commercial shipping district of Den Helder. Container ships as big as apartment buildings and frigates with rust from one end of their superstructures to the other were berthed here. Loading cranes towered over the ships, and night crews worked in the shadows of yellow spotlights.

  Anderson pointed us to a pier south of the main port. There were two other boats moored here, both similar to ours in their insignificance. Our launch tapped against the dock, Anderson shut off the motor, and I helped a deckhand with our ropes.

  Anderson clambered onto the dock beside me. He seemed in a hurry. He said, “This way,” and moved down the pier.

  Like all commercial harbors, the scale of the facilities and the vessels that used them dwarfed everyone and everything. Huge cranes serviced enormous ships. Stack after stack of pallets marked seemingly endless rows of giant warehouses. The immensity created an ambience that was at once eerie and humbling. We crossed over a set of railroad tracks, passed through a chain-link fence, and headed to a shabby, redbrick warehouse. There were two doors: a wide bay door flanked by a regular-size door made of steel. Anderson halted outside the steel door and punched a code into a cypher lock.

  A lock buzzed. Anderson pushed open the door and I followed him in. He reached for a light switch, and the ceiling lamp directly above us illuminated the corridor. Metal bay doors on opposite sides receded into the gloom. A forklift sat idle, like a sleeping beast, the concrete floor around its tires marred by skid marks.

  As we proceeded down the hall, the next set of overhead lights would blink on, and the ones behind us switch off. The effect was like walking in a tunnel collapsing to the beat of a metronome.

  Roger halted at the fourth door and fished a set of keys from his pocket. He opened three stainless steel padlocks that secured both sides and the bottom. He grasped the bottom handle and gave the door a yank. It scrolled open with a tinny rattle. The familiar, musty odor of military equipment wafted out.

  He reached to the left and flicked a switch. Overhead fluorescent lamps sputtered on. Shelves filled with boxes and crates and duffel bags in shades of military green lined a wall to the left. Roger knew exactly where he was going. He walked straight to a shelf in the middle of the wall, bent over, and dragged out a metal crate the size of a footlocker. The lid was stenciled USMC FORCE RECON, SPECIAL OPS TEAM TANGO.

  “Here you go.” He snapped open the latches and swung open the lid. “This shit is so new, the jarheads don’t even know it’s missing.”

  I crouched beside the crate and inspected the gear. A Mark Seven HALO rig. Harness. Instrument module fitted out with GPS, radio, altimeter, and clock. An MC-5 ram air parachute. Reserve chute. I was liking it already. Pressure suit with electrical heater. Gloves, also heated, and very cool the way they plugged into the suit. Helmet with oxygen mask and regulator, microphone, and ear speakers. Goggles with built-in display and a direct feed to the instrument module. Did I say cool?

  Touching this equipment made my nerves tingle with anticipation. Yeah, I admit it: carnivores like me were adrenaline junkies even at my age and completely unapologetic about the fact.

  “Got everything but the oxygen,” he added. “There will be a fresh tank when the time comes.”

  I arranged the equipment back in the crate. “Weight?”

  “Come on, hotshot. Take a guess,” he said.

  I shrugged. “In pounds, a 102.5, give or take.”

  “More like 104. You’re rusty.”

  “Rusty or not, I can’t see myself dragging this gear from here to Istanbul. And a couple of miles down the road from there as well.”

  “You tell me where, and it’ll be there.”

  “What’s this? You taking a sudden interest in my mission?” I said.

  “Let me guess.” Anderson quirked an eyebrow. He tapped his windbreaker over the spot where he’d pocketed the envelope. “If I’m wrong, well, hell, you got a full refund coming.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “A C-17 Globemaster. Am I right?”

  “Time to go,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Not yet.” Roger pulled back his sleeve and read his watch. “Not yet. First we eat.”

  “I’ll eat when the mission’s over.”

  Roger cracked up when he heard this. “Same old Jake.”

  “I keep hearing that. ‘Same old Jake.’ What is that? Like a compliment?”

  “A compliment, my ass.” Roger led me over to an improvised kitchenette, meaning a coffeepot, a cupboard filled with canned soup, and a microwave. The coffee was strong and the soup was hot. We ate it standing up. When he was done, Roger tossed his dish into a tub sink and looked at his watch again. “Now it’s time to go. Finish your coffee. You got a plane to catch.”

  He locked up. We retraced our steps through the warehouse district and made our way back to the boat. Motoring past the Channel Islands and into the North Sea, Roger switched on the GPS mounted on his instrument console. The readout counted down the distance to the location, which was apparently in the middle of nowhere.

  One thousand meters. Five hundred. One hundred. Fifty.

  Roger pulled back on the throttle, and we came to a slow stop amid gray and blue swells. Behind us, the Channel Islands were smudges in a sea of haze.

  “Nice,” I said, with an undisguised bite of sarcasm in my voice.

  “Patience, my son.”

  I heard the drone of the airplane five seconds before I saw it. I craned my neck and studied its features as they came into view. Twin turboprops, a high-mounted wing, floats adjacent the engine nacelles, a V-shaped fuselage. Very impressive. The airplane circled once, displaying the lines of a Bombardier 415 amphibious flying boat, painted light gray with only black buzz numbers on its rudder fin. My ride to Istanbul. Excellent.

  The flying boat descended, skimmed the water, then sliced across the surface with plumes of spray dancing in its wake. The Bombardier settled into the water and glided toward us, propellers slowing, engines whistling. A hatch opened in the fuselage behind the left wing. Roger advanced the boat’s throttle and guided us to the airplane. A crewman in a white helmet, yellow life vest, and blue overalls waved from the hatch.

  “Let’s move,” he shouted.

  “Well done, Rog,” I said.

  “We aim to please. Now get your ass going,” he replied.

  “Thanks.” I snapped off a salute, knowing it
would piss him off, and it did.

  “Don’t salute me.” He winced. “I was a sergeant, not some candy-ass officer.”

  Roger nudged the bow of the boat up against the open hatch of the plane, and I climbed aboard. I turned and gave Rog a thumbs-up. The crewman swung the hatch closed.

  “I’m Lauflin,” he said, his accent very German. He led me up a passageway to a cabin aft of the cockpit. He pointed to the man in the left-hand seat. “He’s Darby. Best pilot I know without a license.”

  Darby glanced over his shoulder and gave me a nod. “You bring the money?” he shouted. I patted my pocket. “Let’s see it,” he called. “No offense.”

  I reached for my stash and peeled off twenty-five hundred dollars. I handed it to Lauflin, and he pointed to the four empty seats in the cabin. “We’re in business. Have a seat.”

  He handed me a headset. “Get comfortable. It’s seven hours to Istanbul. We’ve got sandwiches and coffee, and plenty of both. Let me know.”

  “Thanks. Think I’ll catch up on some sleep first.”

  I took a seat on the far left next to a window. Lauflin strapped into the right-hand seat next to the pilot. The turboprops roared, and the airplane surged forward. I sank into the seat. The flying boat bounced across the water, accelerating until we broke free. The pilot put us in a gradual climb and we turned southwest and back over Amsterdam.

  We leveled off. I closed my eyes. Sleep came so fast that I didn’t even have time to dwell on how exhausted I was or how risky it was to go to sleep in the company of two guys I’d never met before and would never see again. Especially after the really great time I’d had dodging bullets in Amsterdam.

  When I woke up, we were over water again. The Black Sea. It had to be. The sun was breaking over the horizon, a sliver of pale orange light. My headset had slipped down around my neck. I reset it. “Where are we?” I said.

  Darby answered. “We’re an hour out,” was all he said.

  “Any chance that coffee’s still hot?”

  “We just brewed a new pot.”