Then he remembered his mission, the mission he was supposed to be executing right now.
If I can’t make the American devil pay for his crimes, at least I can make certain that his friends and brothers pay the debt for him. They will all die. Persia will be served, and the Modiri blood debt will be satisfied.
He tapped his breast pocket where he kept the orders with his uncle’s signature. This was the final dagger, and he would plunge it into his enemy’s heart.
CHAPTER 38
190 km East of Tehran
June 2
1135 Local Time
Cyrus’s palms were sweating, and not because this was his first time in a helicopter. He scanned the skies from the copilot seat, fully expecting to see an Israeli F-16 materialize on the horizon and blow them out of the sky with an air-to-air missile. No matter how much it pained him to admit it, the Israelis owned the Persian skies. If his aunt had said anything to the American operator about the nuke before she let him escape, then he would have certainly warned the Zionists, and all suspected Persian convoys would be targeted. The sooner he took control of the warhead the better, because he had no intention of letting the warhead disappear or even find its way to Hezbollah. He had his own plans for the weapon now. One that would inflict pain directly on the American devils who had decimated his family.
The Artesh was utilizing a strategy similar to what the Pakistani military used to protect its nuclear warheads—subterfuge and mobility. This particular convoy was carrying a Shahab-3C medium-range ballistic missile, which, if fired from western Iran, was capable of striking Tel Aviv. The Artesh had over two hundred Shahab-3 missiles in inventory and three dozen mobile launchers. This was one of three designed to be fitted with a nuclear warhead.
“There it is,” the pilot said, pointing to three vehicles traveling in a line and kicking up dust on the road below. The convoy was organized in a sandwich configuration, with the mobile missile–carrier vehicle in the middle flanked by a Rakhsh APC up front and a KrAZ off-road 6x6 heavy truck in back. “What do you want me to do?”
“Call them, authenticate, then direct them to stop,” Cyrus said. “Then set the helicopter down and let me out.”
The pilot did as instructed; once the convoy braked to a halt in the middle of the road, he landed the helicopter fifty meters away, kicking up a tremendous dust cloud in the process.
With the rotors still spinning, Cyrus stripped off his headset, opened the passenger-side door, and climbed out. Ducking, he ran from the helo to the lead vehicle, where an Army officer and his First Sergeant stood waiting, their expressions tight with anxiety and irritation at this strange breach of protocol.
“What is the meaning of this?” the officer demanded.
Cyrus wasted no time with small talk and simply handed the man his papers and recited the ten-digit top-secret authorization code he had committed to memory. The officer read the signed orders and grumbled, “This is highly unconventional.”
“I know,” Cyrus said, taking the papers back. “But recent intelligence suggests that the Zionists have designated this convoy as an HVT priority. We’re obligated to separate the payload from the missile.”
The Army officer’s face went pale at the implication of Cyrus’s words: Cyrus would be taking the warhead while he would be forced to continue on with the missile—a doomed asset targeted for destruction by the next Israeli Air Force strike.
Cyrus shifted his gaze to the nosecone of the missile on the carrier. “Is the warhead installed?”
“No,” the Sergeant said, answering for his superior. “That is a dummy nosecone. Authorization to mount the nuclear payload has not been given.”
“Good,” Cyrus said, glancing at the KrAZ truck in back. “It’s in there, I assume?”
The Sergeant nodded.
“What about the technician responsible for mounting it? Is one traveling with you?”
“Yes, the technician rides with the warhead at all times.”
“Good,” Cyrus said with a malevolent smile. “Here’s what’s going to happen. The APC and the missile will continue on together. I am taking command of the KrAZ and custody of the warhead. I will need a driver, two soldiers, and the warhead technician. Understood?”
The officer and Sergeant looked at each other, their expressions both grim at the prospect of turning a twenty-kiloton atomic warhead over to a boy.
Cyrus picked up on the cue and said, “I understand your reluctance. After all, you have one of Persia’s most valuable and secret possessions in your care, and you look at me and think I’m barely old enough to grow a beard. But I am Cyrus Modiri, nephew of Director Amir Modiri and a VEVAK operative with official orders approved at the highest level. It doesn’t matter that I’m VEVAK and you’re Artesh; we are on the same team. We have the same goal—to safeguard Persia and defend her from the Zionists who are trying to destroy us. What we do now, we do to protect the only weapon in our arsenal that can tip the balance of power. So, you call your superiors if you want, but they have already been informed of this operation. Every second we delay is a second longer we give the IDF to observe what we’re doing and jeopardize the likelihood of our subterfuge going unnoticed.”
“Very well,” the Artesh officer said. “The warhead is now in your custody. I will have my Sergeant accompany you. Good luck, and may the grace of the Mahdi be with you.”
CHAPTER 39
Route 48
Twenty-Five Miles South of Azadshahr, Approximately Two Hundred Miles Southwest of Tehran
June 2
1445 Local Time
Dempsey looked at Farvad, the young man at the wheel who had risked everything to make the mission a success. Had things gone according to plan, he would be risking his life to smuggle Modiri out of Iran. As it was, he was still risking his life to drive Dempsey where he needed to be. He doubted there were many who would not have just disappeared when the operation went south. He had misjudged Farvad badly. But there were still questions that needed answers.
“Did you know?” Dempsey asked Farvad from where he sat cross-legged in the back of the van. “Did you know Elinor was a double agent?”
“Yes, but I had it backward,” Farvad said. “She recruited me for Mossad. She confided she was a double, but I thought her loyalties lay with Israel.”
Dempsey shook his head. “I still can’t believe it.”
“I know,” said the Persian. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“I left her,” Dempsey said, his stomach an acid bath of guilt and anger. “Bleeding to death on the floor . . . I left her.”
“What else could you do? She was turning you over to them. It’s clear.”
“Is it? I don’t know,” he said, hearing himself echo Elinor. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
What was really going on? Who were his allies? Who were his enemies? How had they escaped Tehran so easily in this white panel van after a massive attack in the Grand Bazaar? Who was helping them now? Was it Modiri’s wife? Had she tricked her husband and walked him into a trap in that hookah bar? Where had his security personnel been? Nothing made sense.
“Listen to me,” Farvad said. “I know you’re upset and so am I, but you need to tell me what to do. I was not trained for situations like this. How do we stop this nuclear weapon? We are only two.”
Dempsey ran his fingers through his hair and did two rounds of four-count tactical breathing to center himself and clear his head. When he was finished, he said, “First and foremost, I need a phone. There are people I can call to help if you can find me a fucking phone that works.”
“I have a mobile phone, but there is no coverage here. The network has been weak and unreliable since the Israeli attack.”
“Then we need to find a satellite phone.”
“I d-d-don’t know where,” Farvad stammered, his nerves finally starting to get the better of him.
“There must be more people like you we can contact—assets that can help us get word to my people.”<
br />
“Okay, okay, let me think . . .”
“And we need firepower,” Dempsey added, pulling the one weapon he had—the subcompact Sig Sauer—from where he’d tucked it in his waistband. “Real firepower. Something we can actually use to assault an armored convoy.”
“Okay,” Farvad mumbled, as if Dempsey were asking him to turn water into wine.
“And fighters,” Dempsey continued. “Real fighters who can help assault an armored convoy.”
Farvad seemed to deflate in the driver seat at this, and then suddenly he sat up straight. “I know what to do! I know where to get all of these things.”
“Where?”
“There is a man who lives in Iranian Kurdistan, not too far from here. He was a leader in the PJAK as recently as a few months ago. He will have a satellite phone, he will have guns, and he will know fighters who can help us,” Farvad said, his bravado back in earnest.
Dempsey knew little about the PJAK—aka the Kurdistan Free Life Party—only that they were a resistance group dedicated to Kurdish self-determination. The PJAK employed both political and militant tactics in dealing with Tehran and was officially labeled as a terrorist organization by Iran, Turkey, and, oddly, the United States.
“Do you really think he’ll help us?” Dempsey asked.
“Yes, his daughter fought under Gulistan Doganin, the PJAK Women’s Defense Forces, but she was killed by an IRGC counteroffensive in 2011. Believe me; he will help us.”
“Okay, let’s do it. How far?”
“Forty kilometers, plus or minus,” Farvad said.
Dempsey nodded, and the two men rode in silence for ten minutes until Farvad began to slow.
“What is it?” Dempsey asked, popping his head up.
“Look,” Farvad said, the tenor of his voice suddenly crisp and urgent.
Through the dusty windshield, Dempsey saw two armored pickup trucks blocking the road ahead.
“What should I do?” Farvad asked. “Should I turn around?”
“No,” he barked. “Then we look guilty. They’ll pursue us for sure.”
“Then what do I do?”
“Go to the checkpoint, stop, and try to act normal,” he said, ducking down in the back and pulling the black curtain across behind Farvad’s seat to hide the cargo area.
“Normal?” Farvad said.
“You have papers for the van, right?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then get out your papers and have them ready. Be cooperative. Be polite.”
And let fate decide, he thought, keeping the macabre sentiment to himself.
“All right, I’ll try.”
As Farvad braked, Dempsey pulled out his pistol, checking that a round was chambered. He had used two rounds in the Grand Bazaar—that left thirteen rounds in the weapon. “How many soldiers do you see?” he asked Farvad through the curtain.
“There are two soldiers in front of the trucks,” Farvad said. “And . . . there are two other soldiers behind the trucks. I see nobody in the driver’s seats. The truck on the right has a big machine gun.”
“Is the machine gun manned?”
“No.”
“Okay, listen carefully,” Dempsey said, taking a knee in the center of the empty cargo area of the van. “If soldiers demand to check the cargo area, cough. Then, cough one time for each soldier walking back. If they man the machine gun, you say inshallah. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“Is your weapon accessible?”
“Yes. It’s under my shirt.”
Dempsey felt the van slow and then settle to a gentle stop. He tensed but took two four-count tactical breaths and felt his pulse slow. Next, he heard the squeak of the window coming down and then Farvad speaking in Farsi. If a security alert on a white panel van had been issued, they were dead. If not, they probably had a coin-flip chance of surviving. Even if they opened the cargo doors, so long as nobody manned the machine gun and Farvad managed to take out one guard, they could probably pull it off. Death had been his dancing partner for years and always let him go when the music stopped. He smiled wryly.
Two more dances, he mouthed silently. This and one more. That’s all I ask.
He listened carefully to the exchange happening at the driver’s window—the Farsi words meant little, but the tone, the inflection . . . That spoke volumes. The interrogating soldier’s voice was stern and commanding, but not full of stress. He detected arrogant belligerence, maybe, but nothing to suggest the soldier believed he’d apprehended the getaway vehicle housing the assassins who had just killed a high-ranking VEVAK official.
Farvad coughed—once.
He said something in Farsi, then coughed twice more in rapid succession. More talking, then another cough, but Dempsey couldn’t tell if it was from Farvad or the soldier at the door. He gritted his teeth. Shit, was it two or three? He readied himself, leveling the muzzle of his Sig at the vertical seam between the two windowless back doors. He tried to recall if he’d seen the rear of the van from the outside. Which door opened first? It made a difference.
He dropped his gaze and saw that the left-hand door had a paddle handle and a toggle lock. His mind projected the most likely scenario: one soldier standing slightly offset behind the left door, the other standing a pace behind and centered, sighting over a rifle pointed into the cargo hold. Dempsey exhaled slowly and moved his index finger onto the trigger.
The door handle clicked.
The left door opened, but after a few inches it stopped. One of the soldiers said something to the other. Dempsey’s pulse was pounding in his ears like a bass drum, and he couldn’t make out if the other answered.
He gritted his teeth.
Open the fucking door . . .
The door moved a fraction of an inch . . .
His index finger twitched . . .
Then the door swung open.
In a millisecond, his eyes confirmed what his mind had previsioned: two men, one with a rifle at combat ready dead center, the other offset with his hand on the door. Dempsey fired twice, felling the ready shooter with two headshots. He shifted his aim left, targeting center of mass on the second soldier, who was backpedaling and trying to raise his rifle. Dempsey’s first round caught the man in the left chest as he ducked behind the door and out of the line of fire.
Behind Dempsey, at the front of the van, two pistol shots rang out. Dempsey prayed this was Farvad firing, but he didn’t dare look back. Instead, he leaped from the back of the van, twisting in midair to get eyes on the second soldier he’d wounded. The man was on his hands and knees, crawling away. Dempsey landed in a crouch and fired once, the bullet hitting the crawling soldier in the back of the head. He spun around, dropped flat, and sighted under the van. A soldier lay crumpled against the side of the van along the driver-side doorsill.
Hooyah, Farvad.
Three down, one to go.
An instant later, Dempsey was back on his feet, scanning over his pistol and trying not to cough from the dust. He moved in a combat crouch along the passenger side of the van, fully expecting the fourth guard to be making a beeline toward the pickup with the machine gun. No matter what, Dempsey had to make the shot before that happened. As he cleared the front of the van, he spotted the fourth soldier. But instead of running toward the heavy gun, this guy was running away down the dusty road. Dempsey sprinted after him, closing the distance while veering right for a better angle. When he reached the armored pickup trucks, he skidded to a halt, dropped to a knee, and sighted. Steadying his shooting hand with his left, he squeezed the trigger twice. The soldier jerked midstride, stumbled, and fell. After a moment, the wounded soldier struggled to his knees and tried to get back to his feet, but Dempsey fired again—this time a headshot pitching the man forward.
Dempsey ran his tongue across his teeth, coughed up what felt like an entire lungful of moondust, and spat until he cleared his mouth of gritty desert.
“When they stopped us, I was sure we were dead,” Farvad said, runni
ng up to him.
“If you hadn’t handled the guy at your window, we probably would be,” he said, realizing that this might have been the first time Farvad had killed. “You did well.”
“Now what do we do?” the Persian said.
“We take that,” Dempsey said with a crooked smile, fixing his gaze on the six-barrel, Gatling-type Muharram machine gun in the back of the armored pickup, “and we haul ass to meet your PJAK friend.”
CHAPTER 40
National Counterterrorism Center
McLean, Virginia
June 2
0630 Local Time
For the first time in days, Jarvis smiled.
Somehow, they’d done it. They had confirmation from Harel’s assets in Tehran that an event had occurred at the Grand Bazaar. Despite missing the last check-in, the white van Dempsey and Elinor were using for egress was confirmed via satellite as heading west out of Tehran. While the tactical picture was far from definitive, it would appear that despite the odds, John Dempsey had actually managed to kidnap the most dangerous man on the planet. With Amir Modiri in their custody, he would be able to hand President Warner the perfect scapegoat he could use to broker a de-escalation between Tehran and Tel Aviv that would allow both nations to save face and stop the angular momentum of war.
Despite not having comms with Dempsey and Elinor, Jarvis wasn’t nervous. He’d taken Harel’s advice to heart and delegated the supervision of Dempsey’s EXFIL to Smith in Tel Aviv. He’d resisted the compulsion to plant himself in the Ember TOC and take control. Smith could do this without his help. And besides, this was John Dempsey they were talking about . . . God help anyone who tried to get in his way.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come,” he barked.
The door opened, and a young woman, dressed in the modern-day counterterrorism uniform of blue jeans and a Pink Floyd world tour T-shirt under a denim jacket, stepped only partway in. The staff at the CTC was not sure what to think of Jarvis taking over an office here—though an order from the President of the United States to accommodate him squelched any complaining.
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