Davar said nothing. She became even more engrossed in a set of blueprints. Ghasem rose from his chair and looked over her shoulder. These were blueprints for a large underground city. The regime had worked diligently for years to get all nuclear weapons and missile fabrication activities completely underground.
“Which tunnel is that?”
“The executive bunker,” she said. “The galleries are over a hundred meters below the surface. If the Israelis or Americans attack with conventional or nuclear weapons, the Supreme Leader, President Ahmadinejad, and the key mullahs and parliamentary supporters will ride out the hostilities in this bunker. They could stay down there, cut off from the world, for years before their supplies ran out.”
“What about the people on the surface?”
“In a nuclear war, anyone without a bunker ticket is going to be cremated alive or die of radiation poisoning, either fast or slow.”
“While the mullahs will be safe below,” Ghasem mused, “urging us martyrs on to glory.”
“Something like that,” Davar muttered. She made a note on a sheet of paper and continued to stare at the blueprints.
Realizing the conversation had reached a dead end, Ghasem left, closing the door behind him.
When the door latched, Davar stood and took a deep breath. She went to the window and gazed out. Across the rooftops she could glimpse the mountains’ snow-covered peaks and the clouds building on the windward side.
The chador was loathsome, to be sure, and the manteau only a little less so, but they weren’t very high on her list of things she hated about life in Iran. Shia Islam-the way it permeated every nook and cranny of life-was perhaps first on her list. Then there was the status of women. Oh, women could and did have careers, but in Muslim society they were strictly second-class citizens.
Then there was her father, who thought Khomeini was sent by the Prophet to straighten things out here in Iran. He was arrogant and small-minded, with a nose for which way the wind was blowing. After the Islamic Revolution he landed lucrative government contracts and became even richer. Her father was precisely what was wrong with Iran, Davar thought.
If her mother had been gone when she graduated from Oxford, she would have married that American boy who followed her around like a shadow and gone with him back to Tulsa. Her mother had still been alive, though, only dying last year. So she had made her choice. She kissed the boy, told him good-bye, donned her manteau and flew home.
Remembering her mother, she rubbed her forehead.
At least there were no more tears.
Then there was her younger brother, Khurram, whom Davar loathed. A devout Muslim and member of a volunteer paramilitary branch of the Revolutionary Guard called Basij, he believed in the revolution with all his heart and soul, and tried to make the rest of the world believe as he did. He was always getting in fights with people who criticized the revolution, the government or the president. No scholar, he was lazy and self-righteous, his sole virtue his love for fighting.
Oh, how she would love to get out of this house. Out of Iran. Out, out, out.
Unfortunately, death was the only escape.
Davar glanced at the plans for the executive bunker. Those fools… Carmellini had photographed these blueprints, she knew, so at least the Americans knew where Ahmadinejad and the mullahs were going to hide.
She had lied to him. Told him all her information came from dead drops, when in truth there was only one drop. Much of her material came from the people she knew and talked to, the young professionals who made Ahmadinejad’s nuclear program possible. If Carmellini knew their names and he was tortured, they were as good as dead.
And yet… the truth was, they were all doomed. Death would come soon for a great many Iranians, she thought, and she knew she was one of them.
“Okay,” George Washington Hosein said and handed me a folded sheet of paper, which I pocketed. G. W. was our illegal in charge in the heart of the beast. “The names on that paper are the people we know she had been meeting. There are some others, but I don’t know their names. Those four are prominent critics of the government. It’s a wonder that they’re still aboveground and breathing.”
“She figured out she’s being tailed?”
“If she knows we’re following her, she doesn’t seem to care. Nobody else is tailing her. She isn’t taking any precautions. Takes her car and goes wherever.”
“How about you and Ahmad and Joe’s guys? You got tails?”
“Clean as new pennies. Not a soul is interested in us.”
We were in the main bazaar, and Hosein was again selling fruit and veggies from his stand. He had to keep up appearances. I paid him for a pear and automatically rubbed it on my sleeve without thinking.
“Don’t you dare eat that without washing it,” he whispered fiercely. “They’ll have to hammer a cork up your ass to keep you from shitting yourself to death. This is a non-toilet-paper country, Tommy. Use your goddamn head.”
I felt foolish. After all, I spend half my life in the third world. I acknowledged the point and inspected the apples.
“So what do you think?” I asked.
G. W. glanced around to see if anyone was listening to us. “I think Davar is skating on damn thin ice,” he muttered.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The ScanEagle drones arrived over the southern part of the Iranian city of Tabriz in midafternoon. There were two of them; one went into an orbit at nine thousand feet above the ground, the other ten thousand. They were very small, weighing just forty pounds each, with a wingspan of about ten feet, and if they were detected by Iranian radar, there was no Iranian response. The Iranian radars were indeed sweeping-black boxes in the drones detected every pulse-yet the skinpaint returns were very small, easy to overlook on the Iranians’ air traffic control scopes, if they were displayed at all. Usually returns this small were classified as static and automatically eliminated from the presentation.
Both ScanEagles contained a variety of sensors, the size, type and sensitivity limited only by their small carrying capacity. Today one broadcast an encrypted television camera signal to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit; the other sent an infrared picture.
The area of interest was a large, low, flat-roofed building, a factory, in the southern suburbs of the city. The cameras watched as the workers left for the evening and the parking lot emptied. The watchmen on their hourly hikes around the building were picked up by the sensors, and their routes and times carefully noted and compared to past observations.
The people doing the comparing were sitting in a command and control center at Balad Air Force Base in Iraq. The data the ScanEagles were broadcasting was painstakingly compared to the database, which had been compiled in evening and nightly observations by drones every evening for the last two weeks.
Two colonels conferred, then went to the general, who was standing behind the monitors looking at the raw video.
“Everything is the same as it was,” one of the colonels said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Have we heard from our guy on the ground?”
“Yes, sir. He said the right code words.”
“Then it’s a go,” the general said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Launch ’em.”
“Yes, sir.”
The general walked over to an encrypted satellite telephone and placed a call to the duty officer in the War Room of the Pentagon.
It was nearly midnight in Tabriz when three Russian-made Mi-24 Hind heli cop ters swept across the rooftops of the city and landed in the parking lot of the factory. Six soldiers in Iranian uniforms, armed with AK-47s, jumped from each helo. As the members of one squad took up defensive positions around the building, an officer led the other two to the main entrance.
The guard there looked at them in bewilderment.
He was summarily disarmed, handcuffed and led away. The officer opened the door, and the troops trotted through it.
On the other side of the wor
ld it was midday Sunday. In the War Room of the Pentagon, the president’s right-hand man, Sal Molina, shifted uncomfortably in a padded chair. He was surrounded by six generals, four army and two marine, and one civilian, Jake Grafton, who wore a sports coat and white shirt but not a tie.
“Who is leading this expedition?” Molina asked.
“Captain Runyon Paczkowski, U.S. Army,” he was told.
Molina just shook his head. “An O-3. Really!”
“Yes. Really,” said the army four-star who served as the deputy chief of staff.
Molina eyed the bemedaled general and said, “Oh.”
Grafton sagged an inch or so down into his seat. He knew Molina well enough to recognize the warning. He watched the ScanEagle feeds being presented on big screens in front of the pit, behind the podium and desk where two duty officers were seated before a bank of phones and computer screens. The natural light picture was nothing but a collection of spots from lights on the ground. The infrared picture, however, was quite good.
Due to the magnification of the lens, it was as if the viewers were hanging about five hundred feet over the factory. Jake could see the bright spots of helo exhaust, the warm people moving around and the cold, black streets leading to the factory. Empty streets… He consciously crossed his fingers, hoping the streets stayed empty.
“I’d like to know,” the army four-star said, “why we didn’t just bomb this damn factory and be done with it. Why are we putting boots on the ground, risking our men?”
“We’ve been through all that,” Molina said with finality.
The senior marine four-star weighed in. “We bought all those damn B-1s for the Air Force, two billion dollars each, and they can’t even use one to bomb a factory in Iran making EDs to kill our kids?”
“This isn’t Korea or Vietnam,” Molina said testily. “We’re trying to save GIs’ lives without goading Iran into a declaration of war.”
“Well, by God,” the army general declared, “you’d better take a good look around, Molina. Iran is fighting a war with us. They know it and the troops know it. ‘Death to America!’ How many times does that asshole Ahmadinejad have to shout it before you start listening?”
“I didn’t come over here to listen to your insubordination, General,” Molina shot back. Silence greeted that sally.
Jake watched as two soldiers carried what appeared to be boxes from a helo into the factory. Those boxes, he knew, contained demolition charges to ignite the explosives in the factory. Since they lacked certain knowledge of the munitions available inside, the troops had brought their own.
Sal Molina was still stewing. Sometimes people in uniform affected him that way. “I seem to recall that just last week the army asked the administration for more tanks in the next fiscal year,” Molina said. “Tanks don’t kill terrorists. Neither do F-35s or F-22s or attack submarines. I know you Pentagon boys like your toys, but you keep asking for crap to fight World War II all over again. This is another century, gentlemen; WW II and the Trojan War are ancient history. Get over it.”
“We need-”
Molina wasn’t in the mood. He gestured at the screens in the front of the room. “Drones! We have to contract for drone services because the army and marines don’t have the organization or supply system to operate them. The air force doesn’t really want them, insists they be flown by rated pilots, not enlisted men-but there ain’t no glory for drone pilots, no medals, no parades.”
Sal Molina smacked his hand down on the arm of his chair. “The brass running the American armed forces had better figure out how to fight twenty-first-century wars-the wars we have right now-or we are going to get some new generals pretty damned quick.”
He sprang from his chair and snarled at Grafton. “Call me and tell me how Captain Paczkowski’s little adventure turns out.” Then he stalked from the room.
Captain Runyon Paczkowski was in the middle of his adventure, and he didn’t think of it as small. In fact, it was the biggest adventure of his life. He was leading a military raid into a foreign country, and his men were wearing that country’s uniforms. All their lives were very much on the line; if they were caught, they would be shot as spies.
It was damned heady stuff for a twenty-eight-year-old graduate of Texas A &M, and he felt his responsibility keenly. He also felt the weight of his superiors’ expectations; they believed that he could successfully blow up this Iranian bomb factory and bring his men back. They wouldn’t have given him the job if they didn’t think he could do it-and by God, he could!
In one ear he was listening to the tactical net, the net his noncoms were on. In the other ear he listened to the frequency that allowed the Tactical Operations Center in Balad to talk to him. The TOC, which was also monitoring the feeds from the ScanEagles overhead, would give him the first warning if real Iranian troops put in an appearance.
Inside the factory his men were busy placing de mo lition charges around the machinery and in the stockpiles of completed roadside bombs awaiting shipment to Iraq and Afghanistan. Paczkowski strode into the office. Two of his troopers were hurriedly packing every sheet of paper they could find into boxes. One of them already had the only computer unplugged and was wrapping it in bubble wrap, which he had brought along just in case he got this opportunity. The monitor and keyboard he left on the desk.
“Hurry up,” Captain Pac muttered, but his men didn’t need encouragement. They were working as quickly as possible.
“We have a visitor.” He heard these words in his left ear. Sounded like the pilot of the lead helo, who was still strapped in with engines turning. “Police.”
“Fry?” Paczkowski said on the tac net.
“I’m on it, Captain.”
Fortunately Warrant officer Fry, the Special Forces team’s second in command, was a fluent Farsi speaker.
“Rodriquez?”
“Got him covered, boss.”
Paczkowski checked his watch. The men had another two minutes before they were scheduled to leave.
The two cleaning out the office grabbed their bundles and headed for the front door of the factory. Another two sergeants came in and picked up boxes of paper. The enlisted men on the team were all sergeants and, as Paczkowski well knew, were probably capable of running this mission without him; they were that good.
One box of documents remained, so the captain called another sergeant in to get it. The captain needed both hands free to make calls on the two networks.
When his men inside had their charges placed and the fuses running, Paczkowski joined them at the door. Fry was still talking to the police.
Paczkowski now had a decision to make, one that he hadn’t planned for. Should he lead his men to the helos and get aboard while Fry talked to the police, or should he give Fry a moment or two longer to get rid of them? Or should he have the cops taken down?
He knew that he had two other men watching the cops. If the policemen made the slightest move to harm Fry, or to detain him, the troopers would kill them both on the spot.
He keyed the radio to talk to the TOC. “Sixty more seconds.” Then he keyed the tac net. “Sixty seconds, and if the cops are not leaving, drop them.”
He got mike clicks in reply as he checked the second hand on his watch.
Captain Pac stared through the door at the two cops like a wolf watching sheep. He was perfectly willing to kill the two Iranian cops-he could clearly see that there were just two. He had seen the results of roadside bombs up close and personal, had seen men with arms and legs blown off, had seen men killed. These two weren’t responsible for that carnage, but this was their country and they were in the way, so if they didn’t leave they were going to have to take the fall.
Without thinking, Captain Pac pulled the.45 automatic from the holster strapped to his thigh. He kept it pointed down, at the ground. Fortunately Fry had turned so he was facing the factory, which meant he had maneuvered the cops into turning their backs on the building.
Pac glanced one last time at h
is watch. Ten more seconds. Fry had crossed his hands in front of his chest and shifted his weight to one foot. Very good. Fry was one cool customer.
“Five… four… three… two… one,” Paczkowski muttered, then motioned to his men and walked through the door. He headed straight for Fry, who looked completely relaxed and nonchalant.
When Pac was fifteen feet from the cops, one of them saw the troops trotting toward the chopper and turned quickly to look at the factory.
Pac already had his pistol up at arm’s length. He fired once, dropping that cop, then shifted and shot the other one, who was trying to turn and draw his pistol at the same time.
“Let’s put them in the police car,” he shouted at Fry, “then drive it over by the building.”
“Looks like more police heading your way,” said a voice over the radio. “Two minutes, maybe.”
One of the cops was still alive. Fry shot him again; then Fry and Captain Pac loaded the Iranians into the car. Fry drove it over to the building as the rest of the team piled onto the choppers. The one in front was filled first, so it lifted into a hover amid a spray of loose gravel, turned left ninety degrees, then accelerated as it climbed. The second one, with Warrant officer Fry aboard, went as Paczkowski ran for the last one. He was barely aboard when he felt it lift from the gravel.
As the chopper went over the street, he saw another police car coming around the corner of the factory.
Runyon Paczkowski dug into the backpack he had left aboard the chopper and pulled out a radio transmitter. He turned it on, waited for a green light, then checked the frequency.
The chopper was about a mile from the factory, flying at two hundred feet above the city, when Pac lifted the red shield that guarded the detonator button and pushed it. He glanced out of the open chopper door, looking back the way they had come. Sure enough, the factory was going up in a huge ball of fire. Lord, it looked like half of Tabriz was exploding!
Sergeant Rodriquez eased his head out, too, and pounded Paczkowski on the back.
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