Kremer glanced around to ensure the lobby was empty, then handed me a key to a room, and G. W. and I went up the stairs to find it. It was that simple.
Maybe too simple. When we got into the room I motioned to G. W. to remain silent, and I began to inspect for bugs. It was actually a nice room, with two beds and a French door that led to a small balcony. Fortunately the sewer pipes were European-sized, so unlike many Iranian hotels, this one didn’t have a basket strategically placed beside the commode to receive used toilet paper. Some people savor the adventure of a third-world vacation, but it’s really an acquired taste.
I didn’t have my electronic antibug kit with me, so I worked the old eyeballs. I doubted that Kremer had sold out to the other side, yet after a session with Hazra al-Rashid, he might have. So I checked. Found nothing.
“Where do we meet the others?” I asked G. W.
“They’ll be in the tunnel. We go in from the basement of this place.”
“Okay.” I looked at my watch. Four hours until the meet.
George Washington Hosein lay down on the bed and put his pistol on his belly. “Relax, Tommy,” he said. “Try to get a nap.”
I was too keyed up to relax. In a few minutes I went over to the window and looked out at the Tehran that Ahmadinejad was willing to sacrifice. There were maybe twenty million people, more or less, in Tehran, and Ahmadinejad didn’t give a rat’s ass if they all went up in a mushroom cloud as long as he could do it to the Israelis and Americans first. Twenty million people… and Ghasem and Davar were two of them.
I flopped on the other bed and shut my eyes. I couldn’t get Davar out of my mind. She wasn’t soft and sexy with a figure that would stop traffic, and she wasn’t one of those dazzling personalities that I always found so charming. She knew what she believed in and was absolutely convinced she was right. Not that that was a unique quality, to be sure; half the young women I had ever met thought they had life figured out and didn’t want to hear any facts that might complicate their world. On the other hand, Davar’s courage made her unique. It is easy to be brave if the dangers are unknown; yet she knew the dangers, the evil. She had lived her life with it and saw it every day. Still, she was ready to fight, to confront it head-on. Smart, committed, tough as leather, Davar was a woman to face the storms of life with.
No wonder the guy from Oklahoma had fallen for her! If I had been him…
How would a guy win a heart like hers?
As if there were time and a future in which to try…
I felt as if I were on the bank of the River Styx, and Charon, the boatman, was poling over to ferry me across to hell. Through the fires and smoke and stench of burning flesh, I could see him… coming relentlessly, mercilessly on, closer and closer.
A hole in the basement wall just large enough to wriggle through formed the entrance to the underground world. As G. W. flashed a light around, then wormed his way through the hole, I said, “I feel like we’re crawling into an Indiana Jones movie.”
“Don’t forget your bullwhip,” he muttered and climbed through to the other side. I had no choice but to follow.
There was a ladder against the basement wall on the other side, so I went down it as G. W. held the flashlight. Once on solid rock, I used my light to look around. We were in a tunnel, all right, that certainly looked as if it had been carved out for a subway. It was cool down here, and I could just feel the barest hint of a breeze on my cheek.
“This way,” G. W. said. He led the way, into the breeze.
We walked for at least ten minutes-I estimated we had gone perhaps a half mile-making gentle turns and climbing and descending gentle grades, when we saw a light ahead. As we got closer, I saw that it was made by a Coleman-type lantern sitting in a huge cavity cut into the wall of the tunnel. This might be a future subway station.
Three men wearing Iranian army uniforms were gathered around the lantern, and they were armed to the teeth. All wore pistols in holsters and had submachine guns dangling from straps over their shoulders. One of them was Joe Mottaki, the Mossad agent, and the other two were American covert CIA officers, Haddad Nouri and Ahmad Qajar. Nouri had been in the country for three years and was burrowed in like a tick on a dog. He made an excellent living as a computer consultant during the day. Ahmad Qajar spent his days traveling around the country updating foreign guidebooks… and the CIA database on the country.
After we had shaken hands all around, we examined the pile of equipment they had laid out in the lantern light. It had come from a stash in one corner of the room, a large cavity that had been hollowed out of rotten rock with a pick. The boards that usually covered the hole lay beside it.
Qajar handed both G. W. and Nouri simple, stamped, Russian-made submachine guns with four loaded magazines taped to them and silencers on the barrels. He offered one to me, but I refused. If I needed a submachine gun, my mission was a bust and I was doomed. Just in case, Qajar handed two grenades to each of his colleagues and put two in his own pockets. Everyone got night vision goggles. I received a backpack containing C-4, fuses and primer cord.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “tonight’s target is the Ministry of Defense. Joe, your job is to provide me with a diversion big and bad enough that you pull the Revolutionary Guards and uniformed army people out of the hallways in the executive wing. I intend to go in through a window in that wing. G. W. and his guys will deliver me there and pick me up when I come back out.”
“How much time will you need?” Joe Mottaki asked.
“Fifteen minutes, at least.”
“Dream on, fool. There is no bloody way. I can try for ten, but after that you’re solo.”
“Ten minutes, then.” What else could I say? My life’s ambition was to be a live spy, not a dead burglar.
No one asked what I was after. They didn’t need to know.
While we were discussing the night’s festivities, I stripped to my underwear and donned black trousers and a black shirt. I was wearing boat shoes tonight, with black uppers. I strapped an army web belt around my middle, one that held two pistols in holsters. One was the Kimber 1911 auto and the other was a Ruger auto.22 with a silencer on the barrel.
All of this stuff had been parachuted into the country, including a duffle bag with a t.d. marked on it.
As I rooted through it, checking to make sure everything was there, Joe Mottaki asked, “How come they used those initials?”
“The letters stand for Tulip Delany,” I told him. “She’s a girl I used to date occasionally in high school.”
“You’re really full of it, Carmellini.”
“Don’t ever forget it,” I told him proudly. I hoisted the bag to my shoulder, just to see if I was stout enough to handle it. For a short distance, anyway.
“Let’s get the rest of this stuff stowed and get on with it,” I said.
We climbed a ladder to get out of the tunnel and ended up in the basement of some kind of warehouse. G. W. led the way through the place using only a sliver of light from his flashlight. I almost tripped twice.
Behind the building in an alley was a large tracked vehicle with a humongous cannon. The engine was ticking over slowly, and I caught a whiff of diesel exhaust. A man in Iranian army fatigues carrying a submachine gun was standing by the thing smoking a cigarette.
“One of my guys,” Joe Mottaki said. “We borrowed this earlier this evening. It’s a one hundred and fifty-five millimeter self-propelled howitzer, a Raad-2, or Thunder- 2.”
“Didn’t you guys use something like this in Indonesia?”
“You are remarkably well informed,” Joe said slowly. “Let’s hope this thing comes as a surprise to our Islamic Revolutionary Guard friends.” He glanced at his watch. “You have precisely twenty minutes, Tommy, then we open fire.”
I checked my watch, nodded once, then threw my stuff into the backseat of the car that G. W. was driving. I got in beside him and he fired up the tiny motor. “Hi-yo, Silver,” I said.
He gunned the engine and away
we went. I glanced behind us. The car with Ahmad and Haddad was following right along.
In truth, it wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all we had.
“You feeling lucky tonight?” G. W. asked.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Well, tell you what, Kemo Sabe. You better be damn quick with the knife and gun tonight. Don’t take any chances. They waylay you in there, you’re on your own. We ain’t riding to the fucking rescue.”
“Yeah.”
“Kill anything that moves,” G. W. added.
“Yeah.”
“You nervous?” he asked, glancing at me.
“Yeah.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Motoring through the night streets of Tehran in an Iranian army self-propelled, tracked howitzer drew no attention from anyone, a circumstance that caused Joe Mottaki to smile grimly. The possibility that someone might steal a howitzer in order to do evil, nefarious things obviously seemed so remote as to be ludicrous to people living in a police state, which Iran certainly was. One of the reasons, doubtlessly, was the certain knowledge that anyone caught doing so would have a short, grim life expectancy as an enemy of God.
Joe Mottaki certainly didn’t suffer from illusions about the Muslims, who in the Middle East often taught their children that Jews were cursed by God, who would never again be satisfied with them. What the Iranian holy warriors would do to a Mossad agent, if they caught him, was something that couldn’t be printed in a family newspaper. To be sure, Joe had no intention of being caught; the pistol he carried was not for shooting nasty Iranians but himself. Or his two Mossad colleagues, if it came to that.
Tonight he directed the man at the wheel with short commands as the lightly armored vehicle rolled through the streets at 25 mph, well short of its top speed. Unfortunately, it was leaving a trail in the soft asphalt that a blind man could follow; tracks were notorious for that. So far, no one was following. That would soon change, and Joe knew it.
He had the driver stop the Raad- 2 in an intersection on a low hill, over a mile from the Defense Ministry, which was just visible between the buildings. This was almost point-blank range for the artillery piece. Joe Mottaki glanced at his watch.
He growled at the gunner, who swiveled the barrel of the 155 mm howitzer and adjusted his aim with the telescopic sight.
“There’s two tanks in front of the building,” the gunner said. “Look like cold iron. Military sculpture, maybe.”
“The crews are around, someplace,” Joe Mottaki said. After thirty years of life, he was a confirmed pessimist. Which was good-as everyone in the Middle East well knew, pessimists usually lived longer. If nothing else, they got a running start. “But our target is the building,” Joe told the gunner. “Tell me when you are ready.”
“Ready now,” the gunner said.
Mottaki checked his watch. “One minute,” he said. Then he grinned again.
George Washington Hosein and I put on small radio headsets and clipped the transmitter/receivers to our belts. We tested them as we drove up to the Defense Ministry.
He let me out of his car on the empty sidewalk by the ministry. The heat of the day had dissipated some, but the sidewalk still radiated the heat. I opened the rear door of the sedan, pulled out the duffle bag and hoisted it to my shoulder. Then I walked over to the side of the building, which was also still warm. It was built in the shape of a giant U, and we were adjacent to the southern wing. The main entrance was on the crosspiece, which faced west.
Ghasem Murad had drawn me a crude map, and I had committed it to memory. Fifteen windows from the east end of this wing, he suggested, might be best. Despite congenital paranoia, which I had assiduously cultivated from puberty onward, I believed him.
I counted windows, then stepped to the proper one. The window was at least ten feet off the pavement, perhaps eleven, and the wall was poured concrete, ugly as hell and smooth, without a handhold.
I glanced at my watch. Thirty seconds.
Fortunately for me there wasn’t a soul out and about except for me and my friends, all three of whom were standing near their cars holding their submachine guns, ready to kill somebody. The sight of them bucked me up a little.
I pulled the rope and grappling iron from my bag-it was right on top-and flaked it out. Tied the end of the rope to the bag.
Ten seconds. I counted them down.
At zero nothing happened. Uh-oh.
Just when I was ready to toss my trash back in the car and boogie, something big crashed into the building. Sounded like it hit the main section. Then I heard a deep, muffled boom, a heavy weapon some distance away. I didn’t know where Joe parked his howitzer, but he sure knew how to shoot it.
I twirled the grappling hook and threw it through the window over my head. It smashed the glass and went in. I tugged and it came right back out. Threw it again… and this time it caught on something. I steadily tightened the rope, the hook held, and I went up the rope hand over hand.
Got through the window and found myself in an empty office.
Something else crashed into the building. I could hear running feet, shouts.
I grabbed a good handful of rope and began pulling the duffle bag up.
When I had it inside, I untied the rope and dropped it. G. W. and his guys were in their cars going down the street. They would return in ten minutes, I hoped.
I lifted the bag to my shoulder, got the silenced Ruger out and pointed forward, just in case, and set out for the basement, where the Targeting Office was located.
After the gunner sent the third round toward the ministry, Joe Mottaki had the driver put the Raad- 2 in motion. The crew stopped in another intersection a hundred yards along and swiveled the giant gun to point at the ministry.
“Any time you’re ready,” Joe told the gunner, who pulled the trigger ten seconds later. The recoil rocked the vehicle and the noise nearly deafened them, even though they were wearing intercom helmets that were supposed to muffle the blasts.
The door to the Targeting Office was locked. Only one lock-and an American one at that. I guess ol’ Habib Sultani never thought anyone would be wandering around in here trying to go where he shouldn’t.
Wearing my miner’s headlamp, I attacked the lock with picks. About that time another howitzer shell smashed into the building and exploded, sending a tremor through the structure and causing a power failure. The corridor I was standing in became dark as a grave.
Ah yes, a dark building, a lock on a door, me standing in front of it with a torsion wrench and a pick-this was the story of my misspent life. I tried several picks before I found the one I thought would do it.
The seconds ticked by… how many, I dunno. I always think these delicate operations take longer than they do. Two more howitzer shells exploded in the masonry above, one far away, one closer. I hoped the guardians of this fine building had evacuated and taken cover, as G. W. and Joe Mottaki and I intended. In this stubborn age it is difficult to get people to behave the way you want them to. No doubt Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Devil’s disciple, would agree with that sentiment.
Bang-I got it. The lock turned. I tried the door. As I did, I heard the sound of running feet in the corridor. Boots slapping on concrete. I snapped off the miner’s light.
The door opened when I twisted the knob. I pulled the silenced Ruger from its holster, got a good grip and opened the door. Grabbed the duffel bag, stepped in and pulled the door closed behind me and turned the knob on the lock.
Standing there in the absolute darkness listening to my heart and the feet pounding the corridor, coming closer, I confess, I was nervous. Scared, even. What a hell of a way to make a living!
The running men-I thought there were at least three-went pounding by the door without slackening their pace. When the sounds of their feet had faded, I keyed my radio and told G. W., “I’m in.”
“Make it snappy,” he said. “Joe’s shooting into a hornet’s nest.”
I snapped the miner’s light back on and t
ook a look around.
I was in a large office with four desks and a large safe. Three of the desks had computers on them. The entire wall on the side away from the door was covered with a black curtain. I stepped up to it and pushed it aside, revealing a map of the Middle East.
All of Iran was there, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel… and the northern half of Arabia. There were stars all over Iran and numbers. Triangles here and there. I examined Tel Aviv. A heavy black triangle was penciled over it, with numbers beside it. The same for our airbases in Arabia and Iraq. I suspected that everything Jake Grafton wanted to know was right here on this map, and if I photographed it and beat feet, we would have Ahmadinejad’s Jihad plans. But I couldn’t be sure. I wanted the info from the computers, too.
Those computers-planning flight paths for nine hundred conventional cruise and ballistic missiles, and for a dozen nuclear-armed ones, from known locations to precise targets, without interfering with each other in flight or when the warheads detonated, was not a task for the ignorant or careless. It would take a lot of calculating by someone who knew his stuff. Ghasem Murad had told me about the head targeting guru, a mathematics PhD from one of the local universities, and assured me he was competent and capable. Again, I believed Ghasem.
I checked my watch. I’d been in the building for four minutes.
I turned to the safe. First I turned the dial gently in the hope that whoever had closed it last had failed to lock it. Well, they hadn’t. Working as quickly as I could, I got out a small computer and several rods, which I clamped to the door of the safe. Put six electronic sensors around the combination lock, then hooked them to the computer. Finally, I clamped a small electric motor with a set of jaws protruding from it to the rods over the combination dial and tightened the jaws over the dial. The last lead went to a twelve-volt battery, the heaviest thing in the duffle bag.
The Disciple Page 30