Twelve Days

by Alex Berenson

  The lead bike tucked itself off the back bumper of the BMW, which was about sixty meters behind the limousine. The rider extended his arm. This time the pistol in his hand was real. Three quick pops echoed through the night. The BMW slowed, swerved right, trying to force the rider off the road—

  As the trailing bike cut left, closing on the limo—

  The Mercedes roared ahead and swerved right, toward the curb. Khalid was trying to keep the motorcycle where he could see it, stop it from sneaking up on the passenger side.

  And Wells saw the trap. The assassins knew the limo was armored. They couldn’t hope to shoot out its windows. But they could flush it into a suicide attack, into a car pulling out from one of the side streets. By cutting to the curb, Khalid had given himself even less time to react—

  “No—” But even as he spoke, Wells realized he couldn’t possibly explain in time. He had only one move. He grabbed the door handle, swung open the door—

  He braced himself, threw his body out of the car, angling backward onto the pavement, throwing his hands over his head so that his shoulders and back and arms would take the worst of the contact. He rolled left over right, bounced over the curb, scraped along the narrow strip of concrete and rocks that separated the roadbed from the four-story apartment building that fronted it. His left hand caught on the edge of a concrete slab. He heard a bone snap and his left pinky caught fire, the pain radiating up his arm. Hold tight, hold tight . . .

  A moment later, he thumped against the side of the building. He blinked, but regained his bearings quickly enough to see a white minivan pull out from a cross street barely twenty feet in front of the Mercedes.

  The motorcycle that had been tailing the limo suddenly cut hard left—

  Much too late, the limo’s brakes screeched—

  Wells squeezed his eyes tight, but even from half a football field away the heat of the explosion singed him and its blast wave pummeled his face with gravel and dust, a devil’s wind. He wiped his face clean as best he could and opened his eyes. An orange-yellow fireball rose as high as the tops of the apartment buildings. The minivan was obliterated, its frame twisted and shattered. The motorcycle was gone, too. Wells guessed that it had outrun the explosion and survived. The Mercedes was nothing more than a burning box. Its armored frame had hung together, but Ghaith and Khalid couldn’t have survived. The buildings nearest the explosion had partially collapsed.

  The BMW chase car was now past Wells. It had stopped short of the explosion. It was basically intact, but its windshield had been blown out. The motorcycle that had tailed it—

  Sat stopped about fifty feet past Wells. The rider figured out what had happened at the same time as Wells did. He turned and looked at Wells with his gold faceplate. Wells reached for his pistol. It was gone. It had fallen from his pocket when he’d jumped from the limo. It was lying to his left. He dove for it as the rider reached across his body and fired three times, the first round close enough for Wells to hear it ding off the concrete.

  Wells swept the Glock up with his busted left hand. He ignored the pain in his pinky and squeezed the trigger. He didn’t have much chance at shooting the guy under these circumstances, but he didn’t much care. As long as he could get the guy back on his bike and away. The rider fired twice more—

  And then headlights lit up the bike and Wells heard a car roaring toward them. The rider dropped the pistol in frustration and turned back to his bike as the Toyota, the final car in the convoy, gave chase.

  Close.

  Wells breathed in deep, filled his lungs with foul gasoline-soaked air, pushed himself to his feet. Already the fireball had faded, and the motorcycle engine, too. Instead, screaming filled the night. Help, a woman sobbed from the corner, her voice somehow clear through the crackling of the fire. Allah, please help! All this carnage and chaos and suffering for him, because of him.

  But he was still here.

  Skill, and luck, too, though Wells wasn’t feeling very lucky at the moment, feeling instead like a kind of perverse Pan, a small-g god who was a bringer of chaos instead of pleasure wherever he went. He longed to curse but instead he tucked the Glock into his jacket pocket and ran for the woman yelling under the rubble, her voice already losing strength, dulling and fading like a bad phone call. He doglegged around the wreckage of the Mercedes, the steel beams of its frame warped from the inferno, until he reached the wrecked concrete.

  At his feet he found a strip of plain white plastic in the road, a piece of a shopping bag. Perfect. He bound his left pinky tight to his ring finger, pulling until the pain dried his mouth. The break was bad, just short of a compound fracture, but Wells didn’t care. Even if the agony in his hand magnified until he screamed with each piece of concrete he pulled, he needed to make himself useful as best he could. He needed to dig.

  7

  WASHINGTON

  When the President ordered that first drone strike on Iran, he’d felt a certain grim excitement.

  But since the attack on United 49, the excitement had worn off, leaving only the grimness. This morning he’d woken at 3 a.m. with a sour stomach. He’d fought the urge to call the Secret Service and demand a low-profile ride through D.C. Not to go anywhere in particular, just to remind himself that the world outside his bulletproof windows existed. That drunks still stumbled home after the bars closed.

  He hadn’t understood the price he would pay for choosing this path. Nothing in the world—not the exhaustion of the primaries, not the tension of Election Day, not the elation of the Inaugural—compared to these last days for pure suffocating power. Only his predecessors in this office could truly understand. He wanted to call them, ask them how they’d borne it. But he felt somehow he’d be cheating, burdening them with a weight that wasn’t theirs. This confrontation belonged to him, no one else.

  The paradox was that the pressure made him more certain of the decisions he’d made. He knew how carefully he’d considered every alternative. He’d hoped that his surprise first strike would wake the Iranian government to the risks of its overreach. In daylight, American drones and stealth fighters had smashed Iran’s air-defense system and flown straight through Tehran to target the military airport at its heart. He couldn’t have sent a clearer message. We don’t want to attack you, but if we do, you can’t possibly defend yourselves.

  He had three aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. He had Marine regiments on the way to western Afghanistan and the 82nd Airborne headed for southeastern Turkey. He had said explicitly that he had no interest in regime change, that he merely wanted the Iranians to drop their nuclear program.

  He hadn’t expected that Iran would give way immediately. But he had figured it would try to deter an invasion by promising to negotiate over opening its weapons plants. That move would have made sense as a way to buy time. Instead, Iran’s leaders had taken the opposite course. They’d accused him of lying and making up evidence. They had promised they would die before agreeing to a deal.

  Then they had shot down a civilian jet.

  Who were these people? How could he make them see?

  —

  At least he had Donna. Donna Green, his National Security Advisor, a skinny angular woman smarter than everyone else in the White House. Including him. They didn’t always agree, but he trusted her completely. They were set to meet at 4 p.m., less than two hours from now. He’d insisted on forty-five minutes alone with her before the Secretary of Defense and the general who ran Central Command updated him on war plans.

  In theory, Green was coming early to brief him on the investigation into United 49. In reality, he wanted the conversation with her that he couldn’t have with anyone else outside his family, the one where he dropped the I-am-President mask enough to vent some of the pressure he felt.

  First he had to endure the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate. He had tried to escape, telling
his chief of staff, an old-school Boston Brahman who bore the unfortunate name of Harrison Hamilton, to reschedule. They make me feel like an old lady with too many cats. Every time I focus on one, the other three start pissing on the floor. And I see in their beady little eyes that they’re hoping I’ll die so they can gnaw on my fingertips. Besides, I met them last week.

  But Hamilton had flat-out said no. Sorry, Chief. Can’t help you with this one. Half an hour will buy you goodwill you might need. If it makes you feel any better, they won’t argue. They read the polls like everyone else. Closer, in fact. They just want to be able to tell the world they heard you make the case firsthand. In the Oval Office. Pretend they’re potential donors, okay? Very attractive, very rich donors.

  So he spent precisely thirty-seven minutes with his four congressional house cats, and then at 2:45 p.m. went upstairs to his bedroom to read. He’d asked his staff for the best histories of the Cuban Missile Crisis, hoping for clues. But the only conclusion he reached was that Jack Kennedy had been crazy enough to walk to the edge of nuclear war and lucky enough that the Soviets backed down. If Kennedy’s experience was any guide, the President would have to push hard before the Iranians folded.

  More sleepless nights.

  After an hour, he set aside the book and snuck a cigarette. Normally, his wife gave him grief for smoking in their private quarters instead of the specially ventilated corridor where he usually indulged. But she wasn’t arguing this week.

  He swigged a mouthful of Scope to clear the ashy taste from his mouth, fixed his tie, walked downstairs, settled himself behind his desk. At exactly 4 p.m., a steward opened the door to the Oval Office and Green walked in. She held a red-bordered file, rarely a good sign.

  “Mr. President.”

  She settled herself in the simple wooden chair to the right of his desk. “Before I bring you up to speed on Mumbai, you should know that CIA is reporting a terrorist attack in Riyadh. A car bomb. The attack occurred two and a half hours ago, roughly 2230 local.”

  “Related to Iran?”

  “Unclear. As you know, AQ has a robust presence in the Kingdom. The attack was on the southwest edge of the city. Several dead and injured, but no one in the royal family. We should know more after the sun comes up over there.”

  “Unless it’s related to Iran or otherwise significant, I don’t care. I don’t need to hear about random terrorist attacks right now.”

  “Yes, sir.” The rebuke didn’t seem to ruffle Green. “Now. As to Mumbai. I have potentially good news. India’s Minister of the Interior has told the FBI that his investigators have an informant who reports the men who fired the missiles are in hiding in a slum there. The police don’t have the location locked down yet, but they believe they will within the next twenty-four hours.”

  “Any nationality on the perps?”

  “The report is Middle Eastern.”

  “And they haven’t gone home? Why?”

  “Speculation is that the ship that was supposed to pick them up didn’t show. Maybe because half the Indian navy was in the bay searching for pieces of the plane. But that’s a guess. The Indians are keeping this guy to themselves. The minister has refused our requests to talk to him.”

  The President’s left ear suddenly itched terribly. The ear canal. He had a powerful urge to dig a pinky inside. A Q-Tip. He wasn’t prone to tics or itching, and he didn’t need a psychiatrist to tell him why he had suddenly developed one. Back in the day, Jack Kennedy had gotten by with muscle relaxants.

  “Is this the usual sovereignty nonsense? We are a great nation, not just cricket and lamb vindaloo.” The last sentence in a mock Indian accent that wouldn’t have won him any friends on the subcontinent.

  “Yes, the usual sovereignty nonsense. We will push. I think they’ll drop the pose soon enough.”

  “It’s morning there, yes?”

  “A little before three a.m. in Mumbai.”

  “I want us in there before noon their time. If I have to call Gupta directly to tell him, let me know.” Anil Gupta, the Indian Prime Minister. “And I want Rooney in here to tell me exactly what they have and how we’re going to make sure the Indians don’t blow it.” Tim Rooney, the FBI director. “I want these men taken alive.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The itch migrated from the President’s ear to his throat. At least that problem was fixable. He tapped a button discreetly attached to the underside of his desk. Almost before he lifted his finger, a steward opened the door to the hallway that connected the Oval Office with his private kitchen.

  “Mr. President?”

  “Club soda with lemon, please. Donna?”

  “Sounds good,” Green said.

  “Yes, ma’am. Yes, Mr. President.”

  Sixty-four seconds later, the sodas arrived on a sterling silver tray.

  The President raised his glass. “Salud.”

  “Salud.”

  “Let’s assume the Indians are right. We get these guys, they turn out to be Iranian. Like I told you earlier. I want your best guess, why provoke us this way? Attack a civilian jet when we were so careful to stick to legitimate military targets?”

  “I think it’s dangerous to guess at motivation, sir. Especially when we have such poor intel into the Iranian government.”

  “Your objection is noted. For the record. Now, guess.”

  “A couple possibilities come to mind. Here’s one you won’t like. We’re wrong. The Iranians aren’t responsible for the HEU. They’ve decided that since we’re attacking them on false pretenses, they might as well hurt us.”

  “Before I ordered the drones in, everyone agreed the evidence pointed to Iran. Everyone. DCI, DNI, our nuke experts. You, too.”

  “It did. It does. But it’s still circumstantial. Even now, we don’t have confirmation from communications intercepts or human sources.”

  “Then why don’t they just let us in?”

  “Would we let them in if the situation were reversed?”

  The President suddenly found himself very tired.

  “What about aliens?”

  “Sir?”

  “Maybe it’s not Iran. Maybe a UFO dropped that uranium in Istanbul.”

  “You asked me to speculate, sir.”

  “I asked you to speculate. Not give me a stroke. I went on television and told the world that Iran was responsible. Are you seriously telling me that’s open to question?”

  Before the President took office, he’d vowed not to make the mistake of putting himself in a bubble, surrounded by staff too frightened to challenge him. But this situation was exceptional. The die was cast. He had made his choice. He could tolerate a lot of uncertainty. But not the possibility that he had just attacked another nation under false pretenses.

  She cocked her head, looked at him, seemed to recognize how he felt. “No, sir. It’s very unlikely.”

  “Then let’s move on.”

  “Yes, sir. If the Iranians are committed to protecting their program at all costs, the jet could be a warning shot. Their way of telling us that if we invade them, we can expect terrorist attacks all over the world.”

  “That’ll backfire in the worst way. People will want me to bomb Tehran into ash.”

  “In the short run. Imagine if it stretches for months. Not just planes. Attacks on military bases, police stations. Shootings in malls. Movie theaters. Almost a low-grade military campaign. The Iranians make sure we know that the attacks will continue as long as we have soldiers on their soil.”

  “They couldn’t possibly pull that off.”

  “But if they could. We’re not used to being attacked. September 11 aside, we haven’t had major civilian casualties since the Civil War. Maybe a pacifist groundswell starts? Why are we bothering about this bomb? Why are we interfering anyway?”

  The President shook his head. “I can’t believe
they’d have the guts to try that.”

  “If more planes go down—”

  “I’ll reconsider. Next guess.”

  “This is the simplest. They’re convinced we’re going to attack and they can’t do anything about it, so they’re taking their pound of flesh in advance. It’s not a strategy as much as a lashing-out.”

  “Don’t you always say, never assume the enemy is irrational?”

  “People get locked in and panic.”

  The President wondered whether that sentence held a second message for him.

  “Anything else?”

  Green nodded.

  “One more, the most likely. Plenty of different factions inside Tehran. Plenty of folks over there were never on board with the program. They may not even have known about it. Now that we’ve busted it open, they feel like fools.”

  “They want to close it down.”

  “Plus they see a chance to break the conservatives for good. But the mullahs and generals who approved it know that if they walk away, they’ll lose the government. Wind up dangling by their necks from cranes.” The preferred form of execution in Iran.

  “So they’re doubling down.”

  “Correct. They don’t care if we find out they shot down the plane. In fact, they’d rather we did. The worse it gets, the more control they have.”