“I was hoping you might take it to the university’s language department, see if anyone there can read it. Have them translate a few pages, give me some idea of what’s in it.”
Callie nodded. “I can do that.” She loosened the string holding the manuscript together and reverentially turned the loose pages. The fine, cramped script ran on and on. The miracle of the human mind, she thought, for she had always been in love with words and language and books. It wasn’t really the words she loved, she thought now, but the ideas that they captured and held tightly, until another human found and read them. This passing of ideas across the abysses of time and distance was the miracle, she knew, the greatest triumph of the mind of man in the history of the earth.
His triumph or his curse.
What, she wondered, could be in this manuscript? Love, hate, or dry, unemotional facts?
“Tommy thought this book important?” she said now, absently, as she rubbed her fingertips across the page, caressing it.
“Yes,” her husband murmured, unwilling to say more.
Habib Sultani was torn between two loyalties. He was an Iranian through and through, a patriot who loved his country and its people, and he was a Muslim who believed in Allah and Paradise and obeying the teachings of the Prophet, may he rest in peace. Still, he knew the power of the infidels. Israel, America and Great Britain were nuclear powers and perfectly capable of meeting fire with fire. Then there was Russia, the wolf to the north, which professed friendship, yet would swallow Iran whole if Putin thought he saw an opportunity.
Sultani thought Ahmadinejad was on a course that would destroy the nation, sacrifice it on the altar of jihad. He spent a long twenty-four hours meditating upon it and gave voice to his fears the following day when he saw Ahmadinejad. It was before a large meeting was to begin. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was also there. By reputation, Khamenei was a shallow lightweight who represented the clergy, the mullahs, and fiercely defended their privileges.
“The decision has been made by the Supreme Leader,” Ahmadinejad said to Sultani, frowning as he did so, “and there is nothing we can do about it. Our legal duty and religious duty are clear. We must all obey.” Then he brushed on by Sultani.
The minister of defense looked around the room, which contained the senior military commanders and the heads of the MOIS, the Islamic Republican Guard, and the Qods Force. He also saw Hazra al-Rashid in the back of the room, wearing her black chador, the uniform of female government employees.
The people Sultani didn’t see were civilian politicians, senior members of Parliament or the civilian ministers of the government.
Ahmadinejad got the meeting under way. It quickly became clear that President Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei were taking the nation in the direction they wanted it to go, and there were to be no arguments or foot-dragging.
General Hosseini-Tash was the man of the hour. He reported how the nuclear warheads were even now being transported to selected missile sites for installation, which would be completed in twelve days, by the end of the month. The technicians were on site, and they had the tools they needed; Hosseini-Tash swore that the job would be done and the nuclear missiles ready to launch at the designated hour.
All the missiles would be ready, the general in charge of the missile force reported. A massive effort had been made. All the transporters and missiles had been checked once again. Approximately 90 percent were operational, which the general thought quite good, and trained crews manned every one. He glared at his audience, inviting someone to make a disparaging comment, but no one did. After all, the nation had over a thousand missiles. Nine hundred operational missiles should be enough to accomplish any military mission.
When Sultani nodded at them, the heads of the army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards stood and reported that they were ready to do battle with any foreign invaders. The general in charge of the air force announced he was ready to launch his fighters to intercept and shoot down any intruders.
What no one discussed, Sultani thought wryly, was the chances of all these troops and Revolutionary Guards and air force ground crews surviving if America or Israel retaliated with nuclear weapons. He courageously decided to make that point, and stood.
Ahmadinejad recognized him. “Supreme Leader, Mr. President,” Habib Sultani began. “Our soldiers and airmen and revolutionary guards have no shelters or protective clothing in the event our enemies launch nuclear missiles at us in a counterstrike. Our civilian population will also be defenseless. It is quite conceivable that within twenty-four hours of launching our missiles, ninety percent of our population will be dead. That is over ninety million people, men, women, the elderly, children-all dead of the initial blasts or massive doses of radioactivity. We do not even have public showers so that survivors can wash the radioactive dust and dirt from their clothes. We don’t have masks to distribute so that people will not breathe lethal dust into their lungs. We do not have-”
“Enough!” Ahmadinejad roared. “If the infidels murder innocent people Allah will take them to Paradise. All of them, each and every one. The blood of martyrs is holy, glorious beyond description, and will unite believers worldwide in a jihad that will wipe the nonbelievers and their filth from the face of the earth. The final triumph of the Prophet is at hand, if only we have the courage to seize the moment.”
Ahmadinejad went on, shouting and gesturing and demanding that everyone do his duty and stand upright before Allah.
Habib Sultani sank into his seat.
Hazra al-Rashid met him at the door when the meeting broke up. She escorted him to a small room off the conference room and was sitting there with him, silently, when Ahmadinejad came in.
“General Sultani,” the president began, his tone much different than it had been when Sultani had spoken at the meeting. “I understand your concerns. Yet the decision to proceed had been made at the very highest level, by the Supreme Leader. Each of us must do our duty. I come to you, a loyal Irani an, and ask you to put aside any private reservations and do your duty with all your heart and soul.”
So I am not to be immediately shot, Sultani thought. I have earned a reprieve. No doubt a brief one.
“I am a loyal Iranian soldier,” he said.
“Which is precisely why I am speaking to you,” Ahmadinejad said, using all his charisma and charm. “In a war there are always casualties. Those we must accept as we do our best to prevail upon Iran’s-and God’s-enemies. With nuclear weapons we can and must strike them a blow from which the Zionists and the Great Satan will never recover. We must light the fire of holy war in the heart of every believer. If we can achieve that-and the Supreme Leader and I believe it is within our grasp-we will set the people of the world on the path that leads to Allah’s kingdom on earth. That was the task the Prophet set before us. That is the highest and best use of our lives.”
“I understand,” Sultani said.
“Good. We need your help. The forces of Satan are well armed and aggressive. They will do their best to serve the Devil by defeating us.” He paused, then placed his face inches from Sultani, uncomfortably close. “We have successfully fooled them so far. It has been a great deception, and our triumph will soon be plain. But that was merely one battle. Allah requires us to try to win the war for the souls of all mankind. That is our duty. And Allah will reward each and every one of us who does his duty.”
Ahmadinejad drew back, scrutinized Sultani’s face. Seemingly satisfied, he turned and left the room. Hazra al-Rashid followed him, leaving Sultani alone with his thoughts and his conscience.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Pentagon briefer, an air force major who wore an impeccably tailored uniform, pointed at the screen with a small penlight that emitted a red light. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are here today to do a preplanning brief. We will try to outline the military problem as we, the staff of the Joint Chiefs, believe it to be.”
No one had any comments, so the major continued smoothly, “We h
ave identified twenty-five missile sites using satellite imagery. They are all located near a small population center, all have a military presence-ranging from a little to a lot-and all are underground, in what appear to be drift tunnels bored into cliffs.” Using the penlight, he pointed them out. “They are spread out over an eleven-hundred-mile arc that runs along the western and southern sides of Iran. These locations were obviously chosen for geological reasons, but siting them too deep into Iran would have given the enemy too much warning when the missiles were launched. Conversely, placing the sites too near the frontier would have made them easier to attack with air strikes or commandos.”
On the image projected on the screen, each site was depicted with a letter of the alphabet, starting with A.
“If you look closely,” the major continued, “you will see a ballistic missile sitting on its tractor-trailer launcher outside Tunnel Hotel.” The red light rested momentarily on the missile. “Each tunnel contains missiles, anywhere from one to fifty or more, and we believe all are on launchers. When the order comes to shoot them, the transporters are simply run out of the tunnel into the desert, a hydraulic ramp on each lifts the missile into a launching position, and when the systems are running and checked out, it is fired. It’s the old Soviet system, simple, reliable and-for a strategic offensive weapon-reasonably fast. Ballistic missiles will be launched from a vertical position, the cruise missiles from approximately thirty degrees of elevation. We estimate that a missile could be pulled from the tunnel and launched within twenty minutes.”
Jake Grafton looked around at the other thirty or so people listening to the brief. In the front row, beside General Heth, sat the president and Sal Molina. Arranged down the row and onto the next one were flag officers, including the entire Joint Chiefs and the heads of some major commands, including the U.S. Central Command, into whose jurisdiction Iran fell.
The briefer motored on, discussing missile guidance systems. The old Soviet missiles used gyro-based guidance systems, and the limiting factor on the speed with which the missile could be launched was the time required for the gyro to spin up to operating speed and be properly aligned. Gyros were wildly inaccurate-some of the Scud missiles fired from Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War had missed Israel. Iranian missiles were thought to have updated guidance systems, perhaps an inertial nav system or even GPS, the global positioning system, either of which would dramatically improve their accuracy.
“The military problem is quite simple,” the briefer said. “For political reasons we must wait until at least one missile is in the air, and then react as best we can. Since we don’t know the Iranian launch schedule, one assumes that they will get more than one missile in the air before we manage to destroy the ones still on the ground.”
“There will be a lot more than one missile in the air,” General Heth said heavily. He spoke directly to the briefer. “Tell these folks how we think they are going to do it.”
“The limitation on the Iranians’ ability to launch a cloud of missiles has always been the number of trained technicians they have,” the briefer explained. “We believe it takes about eight men to fire one missile. If each site has five eight-man crews, that is a thousand trained technicians. That many, we believe, is about the practical limit. Analysis of the living quarters around these sites supports that.
“Our best guess is that they will roll out five missiles, each with its own crew, and fire all five. Then the technicians will go back into the tunnel and bring out five more. That implies a maximum launch rate of about two hundred fifty missiles per hour.”
There was more, a lot more, in the general overview, which didn’t go into details. Fifteen minutes into the briefing, the president asked to see a certain map again, one that had been displayed early in the brief. In a moment it filled the giant screen behind the briefer.
On this map were displayed the targets the CIA believed the Iranians wished to hit, almost fifty targets. The twenty-five suspected launch sites were depicted. Connecting the launch sites and possible targets were hundreds of black lines, lines generated by a computer based on probabilities, such as range of missile, terrain, flight time, defensive reaction time and a half-dozen other factors. No one suggested the map was accurate: It was merely a prediction.
“The whole purpose of their attack,” said William Wilkins, the CIA director, “if they attack, is to fire up Muslims worldwide and put Iran in the driver’s seat for World War III. They have to sell their story worldwide, and they don’t want doubts.”
“This may sound ridiculous,” the president replied, “but we don’t want to wind up on the short end of the political stick either. If only a few cruise missiles squirt out of Iran and we whack them hard, believe me, the Iranians and Al Jazeera will say we attacked first, and the Iranians launched a few in self-defense.”
General Heth weighed in. “Mr. President, if everything goes perfectly, and in war it never does, there is no way we can smack all those missile sites before the second salvo. We took a hard look at the Special Forces option, which was inserting Green Berets near enough to the launch sites that they could launch antitank weapons at the tunnel entrances and effectively shut them down. Unfortunately, every one of those sites is guarded. We think there are perhaps five sites where we can insert teams that have a reasonable chance of surviving until missile launch. Five! Believe me, a cloud of missiles is going to come out of Iran.” General Heth gestured at the map on the wall.
The president stared at the map, which was certainly an impressive piece of work. General Heth filled the silence. “We can’t keep forty planes airborne over Iran until Ahmadinejad gives the launch order. Our forces must be outside Iranian airspace. A lot of them will be on the ground when the first missile is rolled out, which creates another problem. If we launch then, on first rollout, the Iranians may not shoot, and our birds will run out of fuel and have to be landed. Then they’ll do it.”
Sal Molina muttered to the president, “This is what has the Israelis in a tizzy. We must shoot down the missiles in the air.”
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs spoke up. “One nuke detonating anywhere in the Middle East, such as over an airbase in Saudi Arabia, will change the world as we know it. I want everyone in this room to understand: If one single nuclear weapon detonates over Israel, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, our task forces in the Arabian Sea-anywhere-life on this planet will never be the same. We are playing a game for all the marbles, with the collective lives of our nation and our allies all on the line. And the lives of millions of human beings.”
In the silence that followed, someone said, “I don’t believe there is a chance in a million that they will launch a nuclear weapon. No sane man would initiate nuclear war.”
The president didn’t bother to reply to that. He motioned for General Heth to continue the briefing. Everyone else thought this was a “What if” exercise, but the president didn’t. He had received a Top Secret memo this morning relating the facts of Tommy Carmellini’s telephone call.
Of course, Jake reflected, maybe the president didn’t believe Ghasem’s warning. Jake didn’t even know if he believed it himself. No doubt the National Security Council would have a fiery debate later today on the value of the intelligence. The experts would debate the credibility of the message, the history of the source, the lack of confirmation from other sources-in short, all of the factors one had to consider when weighing intel.
Intelligence came from many sources. Some people believed that a trained ear could discern which bits of noise were true and which weren’t. Unfortunately, we humans tend to give more weight to information we expect to hear than news that we don’t. Yet even if Ghasem’s message was labeled a lie, an Iranian attack on Israel and American assets within range of its missiles was a serious possibility.
“What we are going to have to do,” General Heth said, “is try to cut down the number of missiles that get launched. It will take hours for them to launch everything in their inventory. While t
hey are hard at it, there are some things we can do.” The briefer then took over, referring to the map with a red dot pointer.
Ten minutes later, when the briefing broke up, Sal Molina stood and motioned to Jake Grafton. He waited in the back of the room until Molina came over.
“The president wants to hear your plan for slaying the dragon,” Molina said. “As you predicted, the president isn’t going to approve invading Iran for any reason under the sun. The army and air force say they can’t destroy those deep bunkers without adequate forces on the ground. They are talking armored brigades that can be heavily reinforced, and that ain’t gonna happen.”
After the crowd filed out, there were only a half-dozen people in the large briefing room. The president sat in the same chair he had occupied for two hours, seemingly quite comfortable. Near him sat the National Security Adviser, Jurgen Schulz, William Wilkins, General Heth, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Sal Molina dropped into a chair on the end. Jake Grafton started to sit down beside him, but the president motioned him up. “I saw the memo that Wilkins sent to the White House this morning, and the copy of the document that was attached. Will you explain to these gentlemen what was in it?”
Every eye in the place went to Grafton’s face. “We just acquired a list we believe to be the target list for Iran’s nuclear missiles,” he said. “A dozen locations are on it. One of them is Tehran.”
“They are going to nuke their own capital?” the chairman asked, his face expressing his doubt.
“Yes, sir,” Jake replied.
Schulz turned to Wilkins. “Where’d this hot tip come from? How reliable is it?”
“I’m not going to share any of that,” the director of the CIA said frankly. “Grafton received it, and we discussed it thoroughly. We think this information is genuine, and we are not going to open that assessment to debate. I said precisely that in the memo to the president that he just mentioned.”
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