“No,” she said curtly.
“Like how many kids are going in there?” I instantly regretted that remark, but once it was out there was nothing I could do about it.
“I don’t know.” Her voice was flat, unemotional, which irritated me a little, which, I suppose, is why I changed my mind.
“Seen your father?”
She didn’t take her eyes from the binoculars. “Some people arrived. He might have been one of them. I could not be sure.”
“Khurram?”
“No.”
At about three in the morning a motorcade arrived at the entrance to the executive bunker. Four limos, with police escorts with flashing lights. The distance was too great and the light too dim for me to identify him, but I thought this had to be President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with family and kids and favored household staff, those the great one chose to save from the nuclear furnace.
With the staff pushing their stuff on a cart behind them, it took about four minutes for the honchos to get into the mosque. Then the police cars led the limos away.
I got on the sat phone again, gave CENTCOM the word. When I hung up, the army troops were driving away in their trucks. Precisely two soldiers were left standing around in front of the prayer factory, presumably to tell late arrivals, if there were any, that the gate to the bunker had been closed and locked.
“Let the party begin,” I said to G. W., very softly, so Davar couldn’t hear.
Joe Mottaki went about getting the tank the same way he had acquired the self-propelled howitzer. He and his men drove to the army base and waited for a tank to come out. Since the army was leaving Tehran for a rendezvous in the desert, he didn’t have to wait long.
A column of old Russian-made T-54s soon came out of the gate and took the road to the south. Mottaki had driven captured T-54s in Israel and knew every lever and bolt.
He waited a few minutes, then told the man at the wheel to drive along the column. When Joe thought he’d found a tank that was the last in a group, the driver slowed to match the tank’s speed. Mottaki, leaning out the passenger window, shouted to the tank commander, who was standing in the turret hatch, to pull out of the column and stop. Since Mottaki was wearing an Irani an army captain’s uniform, the commander spoke into his mouthpiece, telling the driver to do so.
Mottaki climbed from the truck and strode behind the stationary tank. He went up over the right tread fender and walked along it until he was adjacent to the turret, on the side away from the passing column. Since the tank’s diesel engine was idling loudly, he leaned toward the commander to be heard. As he did, the tank commander pried one earpiece away from his head to hear what Mottaki had to say.
The Mossad agent grabbed the man’s shirt as he drew his pistol. In one fluid motion he jammed the gun into the man’s chest, against his heart, and pulled the trigger. Scrambling onto the turret, he shoved the body down into the tank, then leaned in and shot two of the crewmen as fast as he could pull the trigger. He went into the tank feet first; the driver turned and shouted something. As the man tried to get his pistol out, Mottaki shot him twice.
With the driver’s foot off the brake, the tank lurched forward.
Joe Mottaki jerked the dying driver from his seat and sat down. He let the tank continue forward, then fed it some fuel with the accelerator. The truck was already ahead of him.
Looking through the driver’s slit, he followed the truck when it turned from the highway and went up a side street. There he and his men passed the bodies up through the turret hatch, put them in the bed of the truck, climbed back into the tank and headed for the Mosalla Prayer Grounds.
When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stepped out of the elevator at the bunker level, armed soldiers escorted him to his suite. His military aide was already there, taking telephone reports from the various commands around the country and updating a status board. American planes were aloft over Iraq and the Persian Gulf, as usual. Well, perhaps a few more than usual, but all in all, tonight looked fairly typical. Within minutes, Hosseini-Tash and the other military commanders entered, picked up telephones and spoke to their commands. Everything, they agreed, was ready. Nothing remained to be done except for the president to give the Execute order.
Satisfied, Ahmadinejad went next door to see the small knot of mullahs who made up the brain trust of the Party of God, the fundamentalist Islamic political movement that had ruled Iran since the fall of the shah, over thirty years ago.
“All is in readiness,” Ahmadinejad said. “We are ready to take the final glorious step to national martyrdom, to launch our jihad against Zionism and the Great Satan, and, incidentally, get revenge for the murder of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, may he rest in peace.”
The senior mullah led them in a short prayer; then the president went back to the command center to order the doors of the bunker sealed and give the Execute order. He also ordered Iranian national television to broadcast a prerecorded message in which he called for the Muslims of the world to join the Iranian faithful in jihad.
It was a sublime moment, the zenith of his life. A thousand years from now, when all the people of the earth prayed to Allah, they would remember his name and call him holy.
Staff Sergeant Jack Colby was on the satellite telephone talking to CENTCOM when the solid-fuel booster of the first cruise missile lit with a roar and the missile shot forward off its launcher into the air, its rocket booster spewing fire. A minute later, the second missile followed the first.
When both launchers were empty and the noise of the last missile had faded from the night sky, men ran from the tunnel and jumped into the trucks, which they drove for a quarter mile, then parked. Through his infrared telescope, Jack Colby watched another truck pulling a missile on its launcher ease its way out of the tunnel.
Five large surface combatants of the U.S. Navy, which were cruising slowly in line astern formation five miles off the harbor entrances of Kuwait, turned to an easterly heading and began working up to ten knots. The squadron consisted of two guided missile cruisers and three Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. The crews had been at general quarters-battle stations-for over an hour.
Within four minutes of the launch of the Iranian cruise missiles from Tunnel Hotel-and six other Iranian missile sites-the first of a hundred Tomahawk cruise missiles leaped from their launchers. The ships were firing at a careful, deliberate rate, so it would take almost ten minutes to get the entire hundred in the air.
The fiery booster plumes ripped the night apart. People on shore and aboard oil tankers and service vessels watched in silent awe and amazement as the missiles vomited forth like fireworks into the dark heavens. Finally, after all the missiles were airborne, the moan of receding turbojet engines echoed across the area. After a long moment that sound also faded and the night sea was again silent.
In the Gulf of Oman, surface combatants were also launching Tomahawks against the missile sites on Iran’s southern coast. Twenty missiles rippled off the ships, hurled aloft by their solid-fuel boosters; then the cruise missiles’ turbojet engines took over and they flew away, guided by their internal computers.
The yellow-shirted taxi director used illuminated wands to taxi Chicago O’Hare onto USS United States’ Number Three Catapult. She ran through the familiar checks and, on the director’s signal, shoved the throttles forward to the stops. The engines spooled up with a howl. She cycled her controls, then glanced at the launching officer, who was signaling burner. She moved the throttles sideways and forward, igniting the afterburners.
One more sweep of the engines’ temperatures and pressures; then she put her head back into the headrest and used her left thumb to snap on the Hornet’s exterior lights.
One potato, two… and the catapult fired. The G pressed her straight aft as the plane roared forward, accelerating violently. Two heartbeats later her wheels ran off the deck into the night air and she was flying, the stick alive in her hand. Establish climb attitude, check instruments, gear up…
Soon the four Savage Horde Hornets were spread out in a loose night formation, every plane with its exterior lights on, heading for Oman, then into the Persian Gulf. Ten miles astern, four more Hornets from VFA-196’s sister squadron were following along. All eight planes carried a max load of AIM-9X Sidewinders.
Like all the pilots, Chicago was extremely busy changing radio channels, keeping track of the navigation problem and making sure her computer was receiving data-link updates from the E-2 Hawkeye, the eye in the sky.
Sure enough, within ten minutes or so, the first blips of airborne cruise missiles, heading from Iran to Qatar, appeared on the tactical screen.
Gonna be an interesting night, Chicago thought.
***
David Quereau was the pilot of one of the F-22 Raptors aloft over Iraq. He had been in the air for four hours, had refueled twice and was damn tired of flying circles in the sky on autopilot waiting for something-anything-to happen. Obviously, whatever it was hadn’t happened on his watch, and probably wouldn’t, which is about the way things go for a junior captain in the U.S. Air Force.
Good stuff always happens to the majors and colonels, which is why they get the medals and walk around like their balls weigh ten pounds each. On the other hand, as all the world knows, captains don’t have any balls, or if they do, they must keep that fact carefully hidden in the new American air force… and good stuff never happens for them. Just bad. Like a tour in Iraq, for God’s sake!
Last week, just another week in the life, and wham, bam, thank you ma’am, you guys are ferrying a dozen F-22s across the pond to Iraq. You get to go, Quereau, because you’re junior. A little time in Iraq will look good on your record.
What a ball-buster that was, twelve hours at a stretch in the cockpit, arrive yesterday, and now, sitting here droning circles in the sky. Big whoop.
The truth was, using the F-22 Raptor to support troops in Iraq and Afghan i stan was like using a Stradivarius as a doorbell chime. The plane was the über-fighter, the absolute best dogfighting airplane ever constructed, capable of supersonic cruise in basic engine, without afterburner, with vectored thrust that made it the most maneuverable airplane that had ever left the ground, able to make a sustained 5-G turn at sixty thousand feet, for Christ’s sake, higher than most fighters can even fly. Yet it was also an electronic marvel that could detect enemy airplanes at extraordinary distances while remaining stealthy, receive data-links from other fighters and share its information with them and, finally, shoot down enemy airplanes with its missiles at distances of up to one hundred miles. After the pilot ran out of missiles, it even had a gun. It was a bomber, too, capable of dropping GPS-guided bombs from forty to fifty thousand feet with pickle-barrel accuracy.
No bombs aboard tonight, though. Quereau was carrying six AIM-120D AMRAAMs (advanced medium-range antiaircraft missiles) internally. As usual, his 20 mm Vulcan cannon in the right wing root was fully loaded, 480 rounds, enough for five seconds of squirting.
A turkey shoot, his section leader said. Tonight they were going to a turkey shoot.
Well, so far, no turkeys. Only one very sore butt.
Then, without a word on the radio, the section leader straightened out and added power for the climb. The wait was over. These two Raptors were going to Tehran.
The second missile the ground crews at Tunnel Hotel pulled from the tunnel for their second salvo was different from the others. It was larger, and the only fins were in the back. “That’s one of those Ghadars,” Colby told his mates. “It’s an ICBM.”
“Could be the nuke. They told us these clowns might launch one out of this tunnel.”
Colby watched through the telescope as the launching crew slowly raised it into an erect position on its launcher. There it stood, pointing skyward like the finger of God, about two miles away.
Colby made his decision and announced it. “Gimme that fifty. I’m gonna take a poke at it. You guys get ready to boogie. Bill, tell CENTCOM.”
“Just a thought,” said Bill nervously, clearing his throat. “Say you actually get a bullet in it-it might go Hiroshima on us. Thought about that?”
Staff Sergeant Jack Colby thought about that now. About instant self-cremation. He glanced at the three faces of his mates. “You never thought you were going to live forever, did ya?”
They stared at him for a second, then swung into action. One of them passed Colby the.50 caliber sniper’s rifle they had brought along. Fortunately it had the starlight scope on it, so he should be able to see the missile through it.
As Bill talked to CENTCOM, Colby got the bipod positioned and found a solid rest, then aimed the rifle. Yes! He could see the missile-still a country mile away, but if he aimed at the top of it, the big half-inch slug should strike somewhere down on the missile body. Might even have enough energy left to penetrate the skin of the thing. On the other hand, the slug might just bounce off. If it did penetrate the skin, it wasn’t going to cause the missile to detonate right there in front of his eyes. Of course not! Wouldn’t do the missile any good, though. If only he could dope the wind…
Well, Colby’s best guess was that the wind was out of the southeast, maybe ten knots gusting to fifteen or sixteen occasionally.
He shoved a shell into the rifle, closed the bolt and snuggled in behind the butt. “Here goes nothing,” he muttered and began taking up slack in the trigger.
The recoil and report came as a surprise. Yeah. He looked through the scope to see if he could spot the bullet striking. Might make a little spark. Nope.
One of the guys, Buddy, was looking through the telescope. “Guys around the missile are looking around. You woke them up.”
Colby worked the bolt and inserted another round.
After the fifth shot, Buddy said, “I don’t know if you’re hitting that garbage can, but you got the ground crew all worked up. They’re running for cover.”
Colby stopped shooting. “Maybe they won’t launch it,” he suggested.
“Maybe they’ll come looking for us,” was the reply.
“Or maybe they won’t,” Colby mused. The men who had been tending the missiles had vanished into the tunnel, and they had not come out again. Just a few shots from the sniper rifle scattered them like quail. Why? Perhaps, he thought, they expect the Americans to counterattack against this site, and they don’t want to die.
Behind him Bill said, “What I want to know is where the hell are our guys?”
G. W. Hosein took a truck with him when he went looking for the place where the bunker’s communications cables came out of the ground. He saw no army in the streets, no police, no paramilitary militia. However, he did see vehicles piled with baggage and people, careening dangerously, presumably heading out of town. Only a few now, but G. W. suspected the exodus would soon become a flood.
One wonders precisely how many people were awake to personally watch or listen to Ahmadinejad’s exhortation on television and radio, but no doubt those who heard it spread the word. After twenty years of listening to the regime’s nuclear power arguments, the urban population well knew what its fate would be if Iran traded nuclear warheads with its enemies. The rumor that the political and religious elites had taken cover in the bunker would galvanize them into action. Those who could were leaving.
G. W. rolled right up to the com junction. It was housed in a little hut with padlocks and warning labels. While his men stood guard with AK-47s at the ready, G. W. used a set of bolt cutters on the padlocks. He shined a flashlight on the works. The cables came out of a pipe and were spliced into junctions of some kind. He wasn’t an electrician, and it all looked like spaghetti to him.
“Oh well,” he said to no one in particular and pulled the pin on an e-grenade. He set it like an egg on top of one of the junction boxes, closed the door and climbed back in the truck.
“Around the block, boys, and make it snappy.”
The e-grenade was actually a small bomb. When it detonated, it would convert the chemical energy of the explosion in
to one large spike of electromagnetic energy, which would glom onto any wires it found and race along them, destroying any electronic circuits it came across that were not properly protected. Circuits such as truck electrical systems, two-way radios, satellite radios… and, down in the bunker, computers, television cameras and so on.
The minor explosion of the e-grenade also knocked out some of the nearby streetlights. “Back to the box,” G. W. told Ahmad, who was at the wheel. This time when he went into the small building, G. W. armed and left a satchel charge of C-4 lying against the pipe that contained the wires, right where it came out of the ground.
Hosein and his men were two blocks away when the satchel charge exploded.
“There are ninety-two cruise missiles in the air, General,” a colonel told General Lincoln, who was trying to make sense of the presentation on the large map that covered the wall in front of him. Symbols showed the missiles’ locations… as of a few minutes ago. Their tracks were depicted, where they had come from and a computer prediction of where they were heading. Yet the chart of nuclear missile tracks was still blank.
“Where are the nukes?” Lincoln asked.
“We don’t believe they’ve launched yet, sir. The AWACS is trying to sort them out.”
“People, all these conventional missiles are just decoys. They want us to tie ourselves in knots chasing them, and then they will slip the nuke missiles through. I don’t want our interceptors to go Winchester shooting down conventional missiles when we may have a nuke in the air we will need them on.” Winchester was a code word that meant the plane was out of ammunition.
“The Strike Eagles are en route to their targets, sir. One plane had to abort for mechanical problems.”
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