“This afternoon at three twenty-five your time in a park,” he said, and named it.
“I don’t want to rain on your parade, but I am the number one most wanted man in Iran. They are looking for me all over.”
“One suspects,” he said.
“How about a vacation? Maybe I just jump on the chopper and head for France. I know a woman there, and-”
“I have a job for you,” he said. “Here in a few days Ahmadinejad and his buddies are going into that executive bunker. Once they are in, I want you to ensure they don’t come out.”
“Sounds like a job for the air force.”
“Oh, they’ll do a permanent job. You and our people there must keep them inside until the concrete sets.”
Oh boy.
“What do you think you’ll need to do the job?” he asked.
“A tank.”
“You’ll have to get that locally.”
“And a couple of satchel charges and a couple of submachine guns and ammo.”
“Okay,” he said. “I can do that.”
So at the appointed time G. W. Hosein and I sat in a car on the edge of the park waiting for the chopper. We were both togged out as Iranian army colonels, complete with sidearms and fake beards.
As we waited, we watched Revolutionary Guards wearing slovenly uniforms and carrying AK-47s stroll along, eyeing everyone.
“They’re looking for us,” G. W. said as he watched four of them standing on a corner a hundred feet away.
I merely grunted. I was keeping an eye on them, too.
I looked at my watch. “Fifteen minutes,” I said.
As I watched, the knot of four accosted a group of four women wearing those long coverings and scarves. The boys wanted to talk and strut. They couldn’t have been much over twenty years of age, with scraggly little beards and pimples. For all I knew, they were four future ayatollahs.
The women looked properly respectful.
Between us and the IRGC boys, a sidewalk vendor was selling food to the local civilians, who were out with their children. All in all, it looked like another day in Tehran to me.
As we watched, a truckload of IRGC soldiers went past us.
“Let’s go,” I said and hoisted the backpack from its position between my feet.
The IRGC boys ignored us as we walked into the park. G. W. took a beacon from his pocket, triggered it, then put it back.
We walked toward a tree on the edge of a large grassy area and stopped beside it. We had been there about three minutes, watching the kids play, when I heard the chopper. After another minute I saw it, a Russian-built Hind with Iranian army markings. The Hind was the easiest helo in the world to recognize because it had two counterrotating rotor disks mounted on the same mast. It went right over our heads, then swung out in a wide turn. It circled the area as it bled off speed, then came slowly down toward the open area, its nose into the breeze. Kids and parents scattered to get out of the way.
When the machine landed, I walked briskly over. The only man in the chopper was the pilot, who was wearing an Iranian uniform.
“Carmellini?” he asked loudly, over the roar of the engine, which was still turning at 100 percent. This guy wasn’t taking any chances; all he had to do to take off was lift the collective.
“Yeah,” I said, and checked to see that the rotor wash hadn’t loosened my beard.
“I was told there might be a passenger.”
“She decided to stay.”
I tossed the backpack on the floor beside him as I looked around for IRCG soldiers. Two knots of them were watching, their AKs cradled in their arms.
“Those duffel bags in back are for you,” he shouted, pointing.
I reached for the nearest one, which weighed about thirty pounds, I guessed. When I had them both on the ground, I said loudly, “Have a nice flight.”
Hoisting my bags, I walked out from under the rotors back toward G. W., who was still under the tree. The rotor wash increased in intensity and played with my clothing. I felt a corner of my beard coming loose.
In seconds the chopper was off and climbing.
As I walked up, G. W. said, “Let’s get the fuck outta here.”
“Amen to that.”
Ignoring the gawking IRGC soldiers, we walked back to the parked car, got in and drove away.
I’ll admit, you gotta have a lot of balls to order a stunt like that. That Jake Grafton…
In the Hind, U.S. Army Warrant Officer John Pepper skimmed the rooftops of Tehran. He brought the chopper around to a northwest heading and checked the portable GPS that he had mounted on top of the glareshield. His route from Iraq to the clandestine refueling depot inside Iran, and from there to Tehran, had been carefully chosen by the intelligence officers to avoid known military bases and antiaircraft missile sites. Mostly, Pepper had flown up and down canyons at low altitude, popped over ridges and skimmed across fields and forests with his skids almost in the trees. He was going to fly the reciprocal of that course to get out of Iran.
As he flew over the city, his helicopter was of course being swept by search radars. He glanced at the ALQ-199 display: this box had also been stuck on top of the panel. The box revealed every radar sweep, yet the green light stayed illuminated. The green light, according to the major who had briefed Pepper, meant the gadget was working and the Iranians couldn’t see him.
Still, sitting alone in a Russian-made Iraqi chopper skimming across Tehran, John Pepper fought back the urge to look over his shoulder for Iranian fighters. He also fought back a powerful urge to pee.
Oh, baby! Who knew, when he was a jug-headed kid and volunteered for army flight training, that this adventure was in his future?
John Pepper glanced down at the backpack on the floor and wondered what it contained. Something important, no doubt, something they would never tell him about.
He automatically ran his eyes over the gauges one more time, checked that he was indeed on course, then set the autopilot and removed a pack of cigarettes from the sleeve pocket of his flight suit and lit one as the rooftops of Tehran sped by beneath his machine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knew the magnitude of the risks he was taking. He intended to wipe Israel and the largest American bases in the Middle East off the globe, send everyone in them to Paradise or hell, as Allah chose. And he was willing to obliterate Tehran, kill or maim the twenty million people in it, and blame the atrocity on the Americans. When the dust settled, he, the new Mahdi, would lead the Muslims of the earth in a holy war against the infidels. This would be the final war, the war between good and evil that would decide the fate of the human species and the planet.
“But we will have no more nuclear weapons,” Ayatollah Khamenei said. “What if the Americans massively retaliate, destroy all our cities and holy places? What if Iran ceases to exist, becomes only a memory?”
“All the believers will be in Paradise.”
“They are all going there anyway, without a nuclear war,” the ayatollah pointed out with impeccable logic. “What if there is no Iran to lead the believers of the earth in this holy war?”
“I believe Allah wishes for us to struggle until the end. The words he spoke to Muhammad that he wrote into the holy Koran leave no other interpretation.”
Khamenei didn’t want to debate theology. In truth, he and his fellow mullahs lived a comfortable life in Iran, paid for with petrodollars, and he doubted that his friends wanted to trade their comfort for the glories of martyrdom. To be sure, Ahmadinejad wouldn’t say it quite that way, but he was steering the ship of state in that direction, and want it or not, martyrdom was visible just ahead.
Not that Khamenei had any intention of sitting in his office in the capitol waiting for a nuclear warhead to explode over his head. He and his key religious and political allies would all be in the executive bunker with Ahmadinejad and the senior officers of the armed forces.
As he thought about it, he opened a drawer in his desk, took
out the list of people who would be in the bunker and scrutinized it. Almost four hundred names were on it; most, admittedly, were the wives and children of the religious, military and political elite.
His eye stopped at the name of General Habib Sultani, minister of defense. The general had suffered a nervous breakdown and was in a private sanitarium. It would be impossible to put him in the bunker, a man already unhinged. No, the merciful thing was to let the gods of war end Sultani’s life quickly, and Allah would usher him into Paradise.
Khamenei’s eyes continued down the list, considering each name, weighing what they could bring to the monumental task before them.
The fate of Habib Sultani’s family didn’t get an iota of thought from the great man. He didn’t waste an erg on the twenty millions of people who were to be sacrificed in Tehran; he gave not a thought to the people in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria who would die if the missiles aimed at Israel missed a little bit, nor did he spend a second or two contemplating the fate of the people in Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar who would be cremated alive by missiles aimed at the military bases there. Like tyrants throughout history, Ali Khamenei rarely, if ever, thought about anyone but himself.
Khamenei put the list back in the drawer and closed it. Ahmadinejad was on the other side of the desk, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.
The ayatollah had approved the tens of billions of dollars that had been spent on the nuclear program, not because he contemplated using nuclear weapons on anyone but because possession of such weapons would cause Iran’s prestige to soar, raising the nation from the status of a rich third-world oil producer to first rank among the world’s nations. Today he reminded himself of the sniveling, cowardly responses of the major powers to Iran’s nuclear program. Once Iran had nuclear warheads on its missiles, it would be the major Islamic nuclear power-and the undisputed leader of the Islamic world.
Unfortunately, Khamenei thought, Ahmadinejad wants to trade diplomatic and moral leadership for a military quest, which might or might not turn out as he hoped. He glanced at Ahmadinejad now, and saw a dangerous fanatic.
Khamenei realized that he had five days until Jihad Day, and of course he could postpone the launches at any time, or stop them altogether, right up until the rocket motors ignited. If the armed forces would obey him. If they refused, Ahmadinejad would have won, would have reduced him to a figurehead without power, like the Japanese emperor or the queen of England.
Of course, if Ahmadinejad was dead, the armed forces would have no choice. They would have to obey him. And he could lead the Islamic world into a new, brighter future.
In the silence of Khamenei’s office, Ahmadinejad was also doing some serious thinking. His strong right arm, Hazra al-Rashid, was dead, and the American spy, Carmellini, and the traitor, Larijani, were at large somewhere in the city. They had undoubtedly learned the truth about Jihad Day, and one had to assume they had communicated it to Israel and America.
Still, what could the Zionists and the Great Satan do at this stage of the game? If they could even find the backbone or political will to resist the inevitable.
No, those agents of the devil were not his most virulent threat. The most dangerous threat he faced was the ayatollah, sitting there like one of Muhammad’s sons, certain that his was the proper vision for Iran’s future. Khamenei knew the words of the Prophet, certainly, and yet he still hesitated to take up the bloody flag of martyrdom and go forth as a soldier of Allah.
However, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thought, not for the first time, what if the Zionists were to strike the Supreme Leader down before Jihad Day? The act would infuriate Muslims worldwide, would prepare them for the great holy war to come.
Suddenly certain, Ahmadinejad knew that was the way the future should be written. He had had dedicated holy warriors willing to do the job ready for months. All he needed to do was issue the order. The time, he decided, had come.
When I called Jake Grafton that evening, he asked me to get Davar and call him back. As usual, I was in the attic of the hotel. I closed up the phone, repacked it and took it with me, just in case. The hotel was empty of guests, and the staff had been given several days off with pay, so the hallways were empty. In the basement I moved the stuff that hid the hole, wriggled through, then pulled the stuff back into place and descended the ladder to the tunnel.
Davar was awake and alert. She was sitting up on her cot. Her swollen face showed every color of the rainbow. Still, she tried to smile when she saw me. Then she arranged a scarf over her face so that only her eyes were visible.
I reached with both hands and gently removed the scarf. “I know you look a mess,” I said, “but I want to see your face, just the same. The time for hiding behind scarves is almost over.”
“Oh, Tommy,” she murmured.
We chatted for a bit about this and that, carefully avoiding mentioning our recent adventure, or Ghasem.
Finally I said, “My boss wants to talk to you on the satellite phone. Now, if possible. We’ll have to climb clear up to the attic of the hotel that sits above this tunnel. Are you up for that?”
“Do you mean, can I do it?”
“Yes.”
She used both hands to lever herself erect. I could tell she was one sore female. Still, she didn’t complain. I stood beside her and kissed her as gently as I could. She wrapped her arms around me and stood like that for a long moment.
Then she said, “Let’s go.” She reached behind her for the scarf, and this time I helped arrange it. If she ran into any IRGC guys, we didn’t want them to see her face.
I got Joe Mottaki to run interference. Twenty minutes later Davar and I were back in the attic, and Joe was on the floor below, ensuring we were not interrupted. Davar sat on the only chair and caught her breath as I set up the satellite phone, checked the encryption device and made the call.
I could only hear her side of the conversation, which consisted mostly of yeses and noes. After a while, she handed me the phone. Grafton’s voice sounded in my ear, distorted as usual by the encryption gear.
“I want you and G. W. to do a scouting expedition, then lay low until Jihad Day.”
“Yes, sir.”
He briefed me on what he wanted me to do. I merely sat and listened. When Jake Grafton is giving you a mission, he covers everything you need to know and most of the foreseeable contingencies. I had no questions. My face must have turned pale, however, because I felt Davar take my hand and give it a gentle squeeze. I looked down at her. Through the gap in the scarf, I saw tears leaking from her eyes.
After I severed the connection and was packing up the phone, I asked her, “Do you know any of those folks who will be in the executive bunker?”
She nodded yes. “Girls I went to school with,” she whispered. “Some of them are friends.”
I took a deep breath. “If the Iranian missile forces manage to launch that missile aimed at Tehran, everyone in this city not in that bunker will be dead, cremated alive or killed by heat or radiation or fire, or crushed under the rubble. Including you and me. All twenty million of us. Once that thing is in the air, we are all dead.”
“Yes,” she whispered, so softly I almost missed it, and lowered her head. She looked so forlorn. She wasn’t telling me all of it-I could see that. “Who else will be in that bunker?” I demanded.
“My father and brother.”
I stared.
She raised her head. “My brother, Khurram, is a follower, one of the herd who follows the fundamentalists because they prey on the weak. They make him feel big.” She shook her head, then continued. “My father believes in money. He built that bunker-that obscenity-because they paid him. I asked him once what they were going to use it for, and he looked at me as if I had lost my mind. ‘In the event of an attack,’ he said, ‘the leaders must be saved.’ ‘And who else?’ I asked. ‘If Iran is attacked, who else will be saved?’
“He merely looked at me and said, ‘Don’t worry. We will be in the bunker.’
“
That was his answer. We would be in the bunker.”
I went to the window and stood looking out. The part of the city I could see looked surreal, a mixture of old and new, atrocious architecture and stunning old buildings. I could hear the traffic, a living presence, and feel the people. The day was hot, and the heat made everything shimmer. The horrible pollution, which limited visibility to about three miles, smelled familiar, comfortable.
In a week I would probably be dead. Jake Grafton hadn’t minced words or tried to dress it up. As he spoke I remembered how that Hind helo had looked that afternoon, choppering off for Iraq. I wished to Christ Davar and I had been on it.
Staring at the doomed city, I realized that the best I could hope for was getting vaporized in the initial fireball.
Would I go to heaven? After all I had done? Or would I get to shake hands with the devil in hell?
Is there a heaven, or only blackness?
I turned and glanced at Davar, who was still sitting with her head lowered, lost in her own thoughts.
Maybe there was something I should say to her, but for the life of me I couldn’t think of anything.
When the Israeli ambassador called on the president, Sal Molina came to the conference room across the hall from the Oval Office and motioned to Jake Grafton, who was staring at a wall-sized chart that had been made from the photos Tommy Carmellini sent from Tehran with the burst transmitter. Other charts lay upon the table, along with sheets of paper setting forth the orders of battle.
The ambassador was speaking when Jake and Sal lowered themselves onto a couch at the side of the room.
“My government has decided on a first strike. Two missiles with nuclear warheads, each with two hundred kilotons of explosive power, are to be fired at Israel. If even one of them explodes over Israel, the population will be murdered where they stand. Israel will cease to exist. Quite simply, the risk is too great. We must act before the Iranians can fire those missiles.”
The Disciple Page 34