Twelve Days

by Alex Berenson

  Ayoub had time to hear a high whistle, and then another and another. The men around him looked at one another, processed the danger, scattered, running in every direction, a starburst pattern, an uncanny echo of the blast wave that was about to hit. Ayoub made for the lemon grove, hoping somehow that he’d find safety in the burned stumps—

  —

  As they’d been programmed to do, the bombs landed in a one-hundred-twenty-degree arc centered on the back door of the warehouse. The Pentagon’s simulators had predicted that configuration would produce maximum lethality. It did. Four superheated overpressure waves tore through the parking lot, each moving faster than the speed of sound, powerful enough to tear through metal and glass, hot enough to incinerate anything they touched. Seventeen of the eighteen men in the parking lot died instantly, twelve cut into pieces barely recognizable as human. Ayoub ran farther and faster than anyone else. The blast picked him up, tore the skin off his back, threw him twenty-five feet. For just a moment, he thought he’d survived. He might have, too, if not for a freakish bit of bad luck. He landed headfirst on a stump and cracked his neck. A million buzzing honeybees filled his brain and then, Inshallah—

  —

  Easterman wished he could check the damage for himself. But the briefers at Incirlik had said in no uncertain terms they wanted the Raptors out of Lebanese airspace as soon as possible after the mission was done. So he and Tiger 2 set a course northwest at twenty-five thousand feet, Mach 0.98. No sonic booms tonight, please.

  The after-action survey came from the Avenger. The drone descended to two thousand feet, below the cloud layer, for a brief live feed of the carnage below. Its cameras picked up only six bodies, but the fact that the others had vanished didn’t surprise anyone. Five of the six vehicles in the convoy were pulverized past recognition, and the back half of the warehouse had collapsed. After two quick passes over the site, the drone pulled back to five thousand feet and made another loop, this one wider. Anyone who had escaped would have to be on foot or hiding inside the warehouse, leaving an obvious signature on radar or the infrared cameras. But the Avenger found nothing. The analysts and drone pilot agreed. Eighteen enemy killed in action, no wounded, no survivors, no friendly casualties. Success.

  —

  The President didn’t watch the mission. He was eating dinner with his wife and kids. He wanted the illusion of normalcy for at least a few minutes. The White House chef seemed to have caught his mood. Tonight’s meal was spaghetti and meatballs with a simple tossed salad.

  The President was just tucking into his second meatball when his steward stepped into the dining room, phone in hand. “Sir. I have Ms. Green.”

  “Donna.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you, sir.”

  “I asked you to.” He had told her to call as soon as the bombs hit.

  “It’s done. We count eighteen red KIA. Including Ayoub and Habibi. No survivors.”

  “Anything I need to worry about?”

  “No, sir. The Raptors are en route to Incirlik.”

  “And you’re sure we got them.”

  “Unless they had a teleporter.”

  In the past, these missions had knotted the President’s stomach. He didn’t love playing judge and jury. He wanted to believe the best about his enemies, that they might disagree with America’s intentions but that they shared the same morals and values.

  Not tonight. Green had briefed him on Ayoub’s background, how he’d killed the IDF soldiers in 2006. No surprise the man was happy to do Tehran’s foul bidding, destroy a jet filled with innocent people from a dozen different countries. The world was better off without him.

  “Good. Please congratulate the team on my behalf. All the way down.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  His steward took the phone and vanished.

  “Everything okay?” his wife said. Dinner was supposed to be a bubble for her, too.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “No calls at dinner, Daddy,” his daughter said.

  “You’re right.”

  The President looked around the table at his family and, not for the first time, considered how lucky he was.

  More than lucky. Blessed.

  16

  FOUR DAYS . . .

  WADI ARABA CROSSING, ISRAEL–JORDAN BORDER

  Israel and Jordan had signed a peace treaty in 1994, making Jordan the second Arab state to recognize Israel’s right to exist. But the end of war didn’t make the countries the best of friends. Israel still closed its borders to millions of Palestinian refugees that Jordan desperately wanted to send back to Israel. And Israel knew that Jordan’s rulers had agreed to peace for practical reasons rather than any love for the concept of a Jewish state.

  The Wadi Araba border station between the Jordanian resort town of Aqaba and its Israeli counterpart Eilat reflected that wariness. Hundreds of tourists crossed each day, many on their way from Eilat to Petra, the ancient rock city in the Jordanian desert that had provided the spectacular backdrop for Raiders of the Lost Ark.

  But neither side allowed vehicles registered in the opposite country on its roads. To cross, tourists had to trudge across hundreds of meters of empty blacktop hemmed in by high fences as bored soldiers watched. The scene was half Checkpoint Charlie, half baggage claim. The stations themselves were blocky concrete buildings, ugly and utilitarian, though the Jordanian side included a souvenir shop for any traveler who had somehow escaped Petra with a few dinars.

  Now Wells walked past the hookahs inside the shop’s dusty windows and handed his passport to the final border guard. After his troubles in Russia, part of him expected another hassle. But the guard merely nodded and handed back his passport. Wells stepped past a white-lettered blue sign that read “The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan Good Bye,” the broken English oddly pleasant, and entered the no-man’s-land.

  He had the walk west to himself. The checkpoint had just opened.Everyone else was heading the other direction, looking forward to a day among the ruins. Wells felt a little like Petra himself, battered and eroded but still standing.

  —

  The day before, in Lubyanka, a splash of cold water had woken him. He opened his eyes to find his interrogator smirking, a bucket in her hand. “Wake up, pretty. It’s nearly two.”

  So she’d let him sleep. A kindness Wells hadn’t expected, and the reason he felt halfway human. Though he realized he was famished. He hadn’t eaten properly since the dinner at Buvchenko’s mansion the night before last. Too bad he wouldn’t have a chance at those pelmeni again.

  She threw him his jeans and shirt and boxers and stood in the doorway as he pulled on his clothes. Let her look. Let her do whatever she wanted, as long as she let him go.

  “So many scars,” she said.

  Mostly on his back, where the surgeons had saved him after Omar Khadri shot him. He hadn’t thought of Khadri in a long time. The living left the dead behind. For a while.

  “Want to touch them?”

  “Broken bones, too. I see where they’ve healed. Though they never fully heal, do they?”

  Her fortune-cookie psychoanalysis irritated him. “I assume you’re not getting me dressed to leave me in here.”

  “Domodedovo.”

  Again. “Didn’t think that word could sound so good.”

  On the ride to the airport she told him that Duto had backed his story, and the FSB had decided keeping him wouldn’t be worth the trouble. “I told him you’d missed somehow your flight yesterday,” she said, the misplaced word making her sound more Russian than she had the night before. “That you’d taken sick and we brought you to the hospital, but you felt much better now. He asked you to buy a ticket to Amman. There’s a flight this afternoon, a nonstop.”

  Amman. Jordan. Why? But Wells didn’t bother to ask. Duto wo
uld never have told this woman. Wells wondered if the United States and Iran had moved closer to war in the last day and a half, or if, perhaps, Duto or Shafer had made progress. By the time he reached Amman, the sun would be down. Another day wasted. Three lost in Russia. Before that, two in Saudi Arabia. By the morning, they would be less than one hundred hours from the President’s deadline—

  Wells stopped himself. Obsessing over the ticking clock wouldn’t help. Besides, maybe Shafer had found the uranium already. Wells could imagine Shafer’s glee. Yeah, I just Googled “HEU where to buy” and there it was.

  Domodedovo was déjà vu all over again, the same business travelers and rich kids, the same blue-uniformed paramilitaries giving Wells the stink-eye. Wells bought a ticket on Royal Jordanian and his interrogator led him to a VIP line at the exit station. After a ten-second conversation and a flashed badge, the border guard nodded and stamped Wells’s passport.

  They sat in silence at the gate until boarding began.

  “Before you go, want to tell me the truth? Why you were here?”

  “Looking for a pony.”

  “Stand.”

  He did. She reached between his legs, wrapped her fingers around his crotch, squeezed. He wasn’t sure if she was trying to hurt or arouse him. Maybe both. “You’re still in my country. Be polite.”

  “Bad touching.” Wells peeled off her hand.

  “You know, some of us wanted to kill you. Dump you in the forest like those Poles.” The Katyn Wood massacre. In 1940, on Stalin’s orders, the NKVD, the predecessor to the KGB, had executed thousands of defenseless Polish prisoners of war.

  “No man, no problem,” Wells said. One of Stalin’s most famous sayings: Death solves all problems. No man, no problem.

  “I told them, no, a little girl like you, not even worth the bullet.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Wells turned away.

  She reached for his shoulder, twisted him toward her, hissed in his ear.

  “Don’t come back to Russia, Mr. Wells.”

  —

  In Amman, he called Duto from a fresh prepaid mobile.

  “Fun trip?”

  Wells didn’t curse much, but he was sorely tempted. “The best.”

  “I don’t suppose I get any thanks for bailing you out.”

  Now he did curse, potently and in Arabic.

  “Don’t know what that means, but I’m guessing Miss you sweetheart. Sounds like you didn’t suffer any permanent damage.”

  Wells didn’t see any reason to answer.

  “Get anything?” Duto said after a few seconds.

  “Bumped into my buddy from Istanbul. We had a nice chat. She’s sweet as ever.”

  “How about a photo?”

  “Maybe.” Wells wondered if Nemkov, the narcotics colonel, had sent the surveillance shots of Salome from the hotel. He’d check as soon as he could find a semi-safe Internet connection. A photo would get them Salome’s real name and new paths to chase.

  “What does maybe mean?”

  “It means maybe.”

  “Your friend have anything to say?”

  “Nothing we didn’t know.” Aside from the threat to his family. “Heather and Evan—”

  “They’re fine.”

  Wells felt a weight real as a barbell come off his shoulders. “Thank you.”

  “Thank Robin.” Meaning Shafer.

  “Tell me we’re making progress, I’m in Jordan for a reason.”

  “Just getting to that. Someone wants to meet you at the Wadi Araba border crossing. That’s down in Aqaba, by the Red Sea. The Israeli side. Eight a.m. tomorrow. He’s not well, so don’t make him wait.”

  Meaning Rudi, Duto’s old friend, the former chief of the Mossad. It was now past 9 p.m. in Amman, and Aqaba was several hours south. Another long night.

  “You know what he has?”

  “No. But I know we have something to ask him, too. Call Robin. He’ll explain.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I think that’s it.”

  Wells hung up without saying good-bye and called Shafer.

  “Your Audi 5000?”

  Shafer was showing his age. Audi hadn’t made that model in decades.

  “They told me not to come back to Mother Russia, and I think that’s advice I’m going to take.”

  “You’ll always have your memories.”

  Wells could only laugh.

  “I saw your favorite hoops player, by the way. And his mommy. They’re fine. Staying put, and they seem safe.”

  “Vinny told me. He also told me you had something for me.”

  “You know who you’re meeting tomorrow?”

  “I think so.”

  “Ask him what he knows about a deal his people made a few years back to bring in stuff from South Africa.”

  “I assume we’re talking about the stuff we’ve been looking for.”

  “No, we’re talking about contraband Viagra,” Shafer said.

  “Point taken. Why South Africa?”

  “I think closed programs may be our best bet, and they got the furthest.”

  Wells couldn’t argue the logic. “You know how much?”

  “I have on good authority it was just over fifteen kilos. Fifteen point three, to be exact. The guy on the RSA side was named Rand Witwans.”

  “I’ll ask.”

  “Stay cool.”

  “As a cucumber.”

  —

  The only cabbie in all of Amman willing to take Wells to Aqaba in the dark had a lazy eye and a habit of steering with his knees. The ride on the Desert Highway proved more frightening than the previous night in Lubyanka. Still, they arrived in Aqaba intact a little past midnight. Despite the lateness of the hour, the town bustled with European and Arab tourists. Wells found an Internet café, emailed Evan and Heather asking for patience. Then he logged on to the account he’d given Nemkov.

  There it was.

  A photo of Salome and her bodyguard, sent from a Yahoo account in the name of Roger Bishop, Wells’s own pseudonym. The quality was better than Wells expected, Salome’s face clear. Nemkov had cropped it so it couldn’t be directly identified as having come from the hotel, but still he’d taken an enormous risk. I am not sure why but I trust you, the message said. Volgograd hadn’t been a dead end after all. Wells would show the photo to Rudi in the morning. The Mossad and the other Israeli security services were tiny by American standards. If Salome had been part of them, Rudi would know her.

  —

  Now Wells walked through the empty space where Israel met Jordan, toward two men who stood at the gate at the edge of the Israeli border station. They could have been a diorama representing the stages of life, the first a soldier, young and strapping, the second withered, barely holding himself upright. As Wells walked close, the second man stepped into the neutral zone, extended a dry hand to Wells.

  “Rudi. You’re a legend.” In truth, Wells knew very little about Ari Rudin or the Mossad. He’d never operated in Israel.

  “Save it. I’m not dead.” Rudi brought a hand to his mouth, began the impossible process of clearing his throat. “Yet. Since we’re such friends, let me ask you a question. How would you spend your last few weeks? Family? Skydiving? Lying on the beach looking at the beautiful girls you’ll never see in the afterlife? Apologizing for your sins?”

  Wells had never heard the question posed quite so baldly. The right answer had to be family, he supposed, even if he was no longer sure who his family was. “Family, sure.”

  “Everyone says that. You know what you wind up doing? Nothing. Watching TV. Grunting on the toilet like a monkey because the pills make it impossible to . . . Bitching at your wife about dinner, the lights she left on, the electric bill, everything, and really what it’s about is you’re dying. All o
f it. Every last sentence and thought and breath. Family.”

  “Tell me how you really feel, Rudi. I’m tired of the sugarcoating.”

  Rudi patted his arm. “When your time comes, just hope it’s a bullet in the back of the head. Nice and easy. Meanwhile, I’m wasting time, and we’re both short on that. Tell me, where have you been?”

  “Russia. And Saudi.” Duto had arranged this meeting, so Wells saw no reason to lie.

  “Find anything?”

  “Only that a lot of people don’t like me.”

  Rudi laughed. He sounded like he was chewing gravel. “An honorary Jew. You know, we think the Americans are going to invade. Especially after the Bekaa.”

  Wells had seen the reports at his hotel in Aqaba. A bomb had killed Hezbollah’s top general. No survivors, no civilian casualties. Sayyed Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, had issued a statement promising revenge on the United States. The Americans have again proven their devilry. Just as they attacked our Iranian cousins last week, so do they turn their weapons on us. We will not be intimidated. We remain the faithful servants of Allah, and we will respond at the time and place of His choosing.

  “Hezbollah isn’t even blaming us,” Rudi said. “Unusual for them. If they have more of those SA-24s, I wouldn’t want to be on an American plane anywhere within ten thousand kilometers of here.” His smile revealed brown misshapen teeth. “Though I guess it doesn’t matter so much for me.”

  Wells liked this tough dying Jew. “War. Off one kilo of HEU.”

  “You’re the American, not me. But it feels like a lot of things coming together. So many reasons to be angry with Iran. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria. You have considered that letting it happen would be best, maybe? A new regime.”

  “Not my choice.”

  “Of course. You can’t be bothered with these big thoughts.”

  “Your people say they expect a war,” Wells said. “Seen any casualty estimates?”