The Mingrelian

by Ed Baldwin

  “Ms. St. Clair, can you clarify the purpose of your visit to Tehran?”

  Bewildered, Dabney St. Clair made her way through the airport amid a crush of reporters and television cameras more fitting for a rock star than a diplomat. A microphone was thrust into her face.

  “I’m here at the invitation of the government of Iran,” she said, beginning to regain composure.

  The people of Iran were eager to have dialogue with America. Dabney was in the right place at the right time.

  “I am delighted to meet with your senior leaders and discuss the future of Iran as a fully participating major world power,” she said.

  Dabney was swept along with the crowd, Farhad Shirazi at her side, parting the reporters, urging people to let her pass.

  *****

  “Goddamn! Who is that woman?” The president of the United States of America leaped to his feet as the screen in the White House Situation Room was filled with the face and words of Dabney St. Clair.

  “She’s the CIA station chief in Tbilisi, Georgia, serving as the deputy chief of mission there. The State Department agreed to let her go to Tehran on some kind of exchange program.”

  “She’s not even a diplomat?”

  “No, sir.”

  “They’re characterizing this as some kind of negotiation!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Goddamn it! Get the secretary of state over here! And, where is the president of Iran?”

  *****

  “Hello, Mrs. Dadiani,” Ratface said, entering Ekaterina’s cell in Evin Prison. “I believe we have a mutual acquaintance.”

  He was accompanied by two burly guards.

  “Is Captain Chailland your lover? Is he the father of your child, Niko? Is he your contact with the United States spy agency? We have so much to talk about, don’t we?”

  His smile was benign, fatherly. He took in her bewildered, exhausted, unkempt appearance, finding the fear he wanted. He would let her bathe, give her some clean clothes and then they could begin. He didn’t like to work with dirty, unwashed bodies. It covered up the smell of fear. He wouldn’t let her give it all to him at the beginning. This needed to take a while. Yes.

  Chapter 35: Damascus, Syria

  T

  he flash of light was brighter than any noonday sun. Behrooz Zandi had worn sunglasses in anticipation of it. Still, he was astonished at its intensity. He quickly scanned the neighborhood as he approached the airport. He had less than a minute before the shock wave arrived. He ducked into a parking garage and drove to the far side, then lay across his front seat and covered his face with a jacket from the back seat of his rental car.

  The engineers had hoped to achieve 20 kilotons of blast, but they had no idea, really, what it would turn out to be. Or, if it would even explode. It was their first nuclear bomb, after all. This degree of flash indicated to Behrooz that they had achieved at least 20 kilotons and possibly much more. They’d put in enough plutonium for a much larger blast. It was all in details he didn’t fully grasp.

  The blast wave wasn’t a sound so much as a deep visceral crushing feeling that took his breath. Cars fell from the top of the parking garage, and windows were blown out all over Damascus, 50 miles from the detonation.

  The wind was blowing from the north. Perfect. The surface blast would pick up thousands of tons of dirt out of a crater a mile across and mix it all up with the incredible burst of neutrons and gamma radiation from the nuclear fission. That initial blast of radiation would change benign elements like iron and calcium to unstable isotopes that would emit gamma rays, alpha and beta particles, and neutrons for centuries. Those unstable isotopes would drop in chunks along the direction of the prevailing wind all the way to Tel Aviv. Then a fine, white dust composed of unexploded plutonium and other unstable elements would fall softly like snow over the next week. Any activity would stir that dust up, and people would breathe it in; it would contaminate food stores and water supplies. Anyone breathing or ingesting that dust would be poisoned by the alpha and beta particles emitted from it. It would make most of Israel dangerously radioactive.

  He started his car and drove out of the parking garage. There wouldn’t be any flights out now; just as well. Car alarms blared from every locked car along the street. Broken glass was everywhere, but the road was mostly open. He was alive; that was good. He drove around the airport toward northern Syria. It would be a safe place to wait out the coming holocaust.

  Ten minutes later, two smaller flashes lit up the night sky behind him.

  *****

  Air Force Capt. Richard “Buzz” Sawyer was flying his U-2S reconnaissance aircraft at 65,000 feet over eastern Iraq. He’d been up for 10 hours already and was flying a predetermined circuit while the side-looking camera on board recorded details about Iran’s missile base at Khorramabad. He was bored and looking forward to finishing his flight, getting back to Cyprus where he was based and going for a run before dinner. It was steak night at the hotel where the pilots were billeted.

  A flash of light coming from behind him caught his eye, and he turned in the cockpit to see it. It seemed to grow in intensity until it was nearly blinding despite the heavily tinted plastic shield of his space helmet. The light faded after 10 seconds, and Sawyer turned his aircraft on a predetermined circuit, glancing back toward the horizon southwest of his position. From this altitude, he could easily see 200 miles in each direction, and this was beyond the horizon.

  Sawyer had been trained for nuclear detonations and began to go through the checklist: Don’t look at the flash; be prepared for the shock wave; and prepare for an alternate landing field.

  That flash was in the direction of Israel. Was this it, the war in the Middle East; Armageddon? Two smaller flashes, close together, came from the same area. He looked away. The sky lit up as before. When these flashes faded, he looked back. Now he could see a mushroom cloud rising from beyond the horizon. This was it.

  Should he complete his mission, turn his camera to catch the mushroom cloud or what? He flew on, contemplating his options. He was trained not to break radio silence. If the Iranians hadn’t found him on their radar, don’t make it easier. He overrode the automatic sequence of his camera and put it on manual set to wide angle. He was going to turn his aircraft to catch the mushroom clouds coming from Israel.

  Rockets streaked up from in front of him, from Khorramabad where his camera was still aimed. Within a few seconds, they were at his altitude and still climbing, arcing slightly to the south before disappearing in the haze above. Then smaller rockets emerged in a ring around Khorramabad, slower and smaller; surface-to-air missiles, he reasoned.

  At that moment, a streak of light descended from a clear blue sky and merged with the smaller missiles just launched. It was straight and fast and bright in the daytime sky. Like the finger of God, the light merged with the missiles and they exploded all around it, but it streaked through them and flashed brilliantly over Khorramabad.

  Sawyer looked away. When the flash subsided, he looked back to see an angry orange fireball climbing into the sky. He kept his camera running. Another streak of light from the sky came from the south, and then another, and another. Their graceful arcs crossed from his perspective and approached targets further east – Parchin and Bandar Abbas, he guessed. They were over his horizon when the bright flashes came. He turned away. The mushroom cloud over Khoramabad was climbing toward his altitude, the others were just coming over the horizon. He filmed until the end of his scheduled time on station then turned off his camera and turned toward Cyprus.

  Chapter 36: The White House

  “M

  r. President? Sir, we have a situation. Sir …” An aide tapped respectfully on the door of the presidential bedchamber. “Sir, it’s important.”

  “Yes?” The irritated president peered around the partially opened door to see an aide accompanied by a uniformed Air Force officer carrying the nuclear security briefcase with secure communic
ation to STRATCOM, the nation’s nuclear strike command. He knew the man, having worked with him on dozens of exercises. He’d never seen him here before, in the presidential quarters.

  “A nuclear exchange is in progress between Iran and Israel, sir.”

  “In progress?”

  “We detected a large nuclear detonation in Israel, near the Golan Heights, sir. Israel responded, and Iran launched from Khorramabad, and Israel responded again. There have been at least six detonations.”

  “Responded?”

  “With nuclear weapons, sir. There’s a nuclear war going on.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yes, sir. I have CINCSTRAT on the line, sir.” They walked down the hall to a nearby sitting room, and the president put on his glasses and took the telephone.

  “Yes?” the president said irritably, as if this crisis were the fault of whoever was on the other end of the line.

  “Sir, this is CINCSTRAT, in Omaha. We’ve confirmed by our sensors in the region and by communication from Israel as well as our command center at Al Udeid in Qatar that there has been an exchange of ballistic missiles between Israel and Iran and that there have been six or more nuclear detonations. In addition, there were missiles launched from Iran into Saudi Arabia, sir. It appears as though they’ve targeted the Saudi royal family. We have options for you to consider, sir.”

  “Who started it?”

  “Sir, the first detonation was in Israel.”

  “Do we need to do something now?”

  “Well, sir, that would be your call. There are treaties, agreements with allies in the region, promises to protect Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other nations.”

  “Were the missiles launched at Saudi Arabia nuclear?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Are there missiles headed toward any of those other nations?”

  “Not at this moment.”

  “What is the status of the Saudi royal family?”

  “Sir, we don’t know. It just occurred 20 minutes ago.”

  “What are the options?”

  “We have the nuclear option, of course – everything from no nuclear weapons to complete annihilation of Iran with ICBMs. We have the kinetic non-nuclear options we talked about before, to take out their command-and-control and second-strike capability, and we could do nothing.”

  “OK,” the president said, head clearing from sleep. “How long does it take to deliver a nuclear weapon?”

  “A submarine in the Atlantic Ocean can deliver a nuclear weapon to Tehran in 20 minutes with a sea-launched Polaris missile. We can have one from a missile silo in Wyoming in about 10 minutes more.”

  “Don’t do anything yet, let me get some more information,” the president said, handing the phone back to the waiting security officer without waiting for a response from CINCSTRAT. He rushed back into his bedroom and emerged moments later pulling up sweatpants and a presidential sweatshirt. He ran down the hall to the stairs to the basement and the Situation Room.

  “Sir, we have an update from Central Command, there have been seven nuclear detonations in the Middle East,” an Army colonel announced as the president entered the Situation Room. A bank of news monitors showed no mention yet, and a live feed to Strategic Command and Central Command’s command centers showed frantic activity.

  “Where?” the president asked, taking a seat and scanning the monitors.

  “Sir, we have the acting commander from Central Command in Tampa.”

  An Army brigadier general’s face filled the corner box in the CENTCOM monitor.

  “Sir, I have an update. At 1123 hours this morning, a nuclear detonation of approximately 35 kilotons was detected near the Golan Heights in Israel. It appears to have been launched from Syria by some sort of missile, perhaps a cruise missile that malfunctioned. It landed only a few miles inside Israel, but the detonation took out most of their anti-missile defense in the northern third of the country. Israel responded immediately with two nuclear weapons that detonated along the borders of Syria and Lebanon. Five minutes later, all the missiles from Khorramabad, at least a dozen, launched.

  “In addition, mobile launchers at Bandar Abas with medium range missiles launched six missiles targeting the Saudi royal family’s residences in Riyadh. Israel immediately launched ICBMs from several places within Israel that impacted Khorramabad, Parchin, near Tehran, and Bandar Abas at the Strait of Hormuz. All but two of the missiles from Khorramabad were intercepted by the Israelis or our Patriot Missile batteries in Israel, Jordan and Qatar. The two that got through were not nuclear armed and caused minor damage. There were no further nuclear detonations in Israel. Five of the six conventional missiles launched at Saudi Arabia were intercepted, the sixth hit the King’s Palace in Riyadh.”

  “They launched non-nuclear ICBMs?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s an attempt to jam the interceptors. We think they have a half-dozen nuclear weapons, but they launched twice that many missiles. We don’t know how many of the intercepted missiles were nuclear, but we’ll know in a few hours as the debris fields are analyzed. We have to assume they haven’t launched all they have. The Iranians may have a second-strike capability in submarine-launched missiles, similar to our Polaris missiles. We don’t know if they’ve loaded nuclear weapons onto their submarines or not.”

  “So, it’s over?”

  “No, sir. Iran could still launch those submarine-based missiles, and they might have some ICBM capability elsewhere we don’t know about. Saudi Arabia responded with some medium range missiles into Bandar Abas and toward Tehran. We think they were intercepted but don’t know for sure. Israel was already entirely mobilized for war. Now Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates are mobilizing for war.”

  A staffer called from the control room: “Sir, we need an interpreter. The Russian president is calling on the hot line.”

  Verifications and passwords consumed several minutes while a complex party line was set up that allowed each side to have its own interpreter to verify that what each world leader said was accurately conveyed to the other.

  “Good morning, Mr. President,” the Russian president said. It was already afternoon in Moscow.

  “Good morning.”

  “Our sources in Tehran tell me that that city has been devastated by a nuclear explosion. Is that yours or the Israelis’?”

  “It came from Israel.”

  “We also have detected detonations at Bandar Abas and Khorramabad. Theirs or yours?”

  “Theirs.”

  “Have you launched an attack?”

  “No.”

  “Good, then the world is not completely mad.”

  “No. This attack began with a detonation in Israel, a large one, and they responded. We think there have been a total of seven detonations. There was also a conventional attack on Saudi Arabia.”

  “Do you plan to respond with nuclear weapons?”

  “We haven’t decided.”

  “It appears your allies the Israelis have gained the upper hand and retain the capability to respond again. There is no need for you to respond.”

  “We haven’t decided.”

  “I remind you we have pacts with Iran to support them.”

  “I am unaware of any treaty with Iran that would require you to respond if they started a war with Israel. That would be foolhardy in light of threats they’ve made.”

  “We are not required to respond.”

  “Have you been in communication with the president of Iran?” the American president asked. “We’ve been unable to reach him.”

  “No, my information has come from our facilities.”

  “Do you have any contacts in Iran, someone to try to find out what their plans are? If they’re done, we can hold back. If they plan to launch more nuclear weapons, we will have to respond.”

  “I will try to reach someone. Will you restrain your attack until I can find who is in control?”

 
“As long as they don’t launch anything else, I can.”

  *****

  A bright flash of light illuminated the tiny cell at Evin Prison in Tehran where Ekaterina Dadiani awaited her appointment with Ratface. She was nude beneath a simple cotton hospital gown that opened in the back, and she wore paper slippers. The only window was high on a stone wall, and still the light was so bright she was momentarily blinded by it. Twenty seconds later, the window shattered and the blast wave knocked her to the floor. The roof was blown off, and several walls collapsed. The heat from the blast set wood structures in the prison yard on fire, but the main building made of stone was only scorched. Then it was silent.

  Chapter 37: American Embassy, Paris, France

  M

  aryam Rajavi, president of the National Council of Resistance, the political arm of the PMOI, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, adjusted her headset and settled into her chair in the secure teleconference room in Paris. She is the visible face of the clandestine organization bent on the overthrow of the Islamist dictatorship of Iran and its replacement with a secular democracy. A political activist since her college days, Rajavi was an organizer of the revolution that overthrew the Shah of Iran and went underground with the PMOI when Ayatollah Khomeini usurped the revolution for his own purposes.

  She was tense. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians were dead or dying, and her country was in flames two days after a nuclear exchange with Israel.

  “Greetings, Madam President, I’ll be your interpreter,” a female voice in her earphone said in Farsi.

  The screen showed a meeting room at the State Department, where staffers milled about, adjusting headsets, microphones and web cams. She recognized several staffers she knew from numerous negotiations with the Americans, and one of them sat at the head of the table and engaged her in small talk, recalling their last meeting some months ago and filling her in on some details the American government had about Tehran and surrounding areas.