by Jeff Nesbit
There was a square castle with trenches in the corner on a nearby hill. This is where the truck settled. A few crows protested their arrival as the truck took its position within the crumbling walls of the ancient castle.
The truck’s driver and the other occupants from the cramped cab space scrambled down and began to unhinge the canopy on both sides. Once the canopy had been removed, the occupants in the back began their work quietly and quickly.
This was the first time this team had been assembled—and it was a highly unusual team. The team was split between North Korean scientists, who’d arrived in the country that day, and Iran’s leading nuclear and military scientists, who had been mentored by the North Korean team for some time now.
And leading both factions was Hussein Bahadur, the outspoken chief of Iran’s air force who had personally recruited loyal fanatics into the IRGC. Bahadur had made the decision to oversee this operation himself. He did not want any last-minute changes. This particular mission was too important to entrust its leadership to a subordinate.
The North Koreans were extraordinarily efficient. Because it was so close to the design of their own intermediate range missile, they knew precisely what to do with both the sequencing and the setup. They had checked the chambers before leaving, and double-checked them now. It was second nature to them.
They secured the missile’s launch position and its target coordinates within an hour. Bahadur had said very little while the North Koreans did their work. He said almost nothing to the Iranian part of the crew with him. They were intently focused on watching the North Koreans do their work. It was one thing to do this part during an exercise. Now they were in the field, and this was not a test.
He’d been on his secure Iridium 9555 satellite phone just twice in the past hour—once with Zhubin, who’d told him that Tehran’s political and religious leadership was close to deciding on a course of action, and a cautious call with his longtime ally with the Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
His Iridium phone vibrated softly. He pulled the phone from the holster. It was Zhubin. “Yes?” he said, anxious to know the answer.
“Something new has entered the discussion with the Guardian Council. The Rev. Shahidi is meeting with his inner cleric council,” the IRGC military commander said.
“Something new? What can it possibly be?” Bahadur was impatient. He wanted to act.
“News that the United States will act against Israel if we do not launch a return strike with your missile,” Zhubin said.
“And you believe that? It’s talk. It has always been talk. We both know that.”
“Yes, we do.”
“Will it keep the Rev. Shahidi from allowing us to act?” Bahadur asked, dreading the answer.
“It has…delayed things. They are not quite certain what to do. They want more time to discuss this new offer from the Americans that has arrived from somewhere.”
“It is a lie!” Bahadur exploded. “They only wish to keep us from doing what we must. They will find us, this truck, and they will finish the job here before we can launch. They could have a cruise missile coming at us even as we speak, despite the care we have taken.”
Zhubin did not respond for a few moments. He had just emerged from a meeting with the Rev. Shahidi and President Ahmadian, and he needed to be very careful here. It had been just the three of them. No one else had been involved in the discussion.
“You have your orders,” Zhubin said. “Those orders have been in place for months, in preparation for an Israeli attack. Nothing has changed—yet.”
Bahadur blinked, once, and allowed the words to register. The standing order was to launch a second strike missile once it was in place if Israel had attacked. Unless that order had been replaced with a new one—which had not yet occurred—then his duty was clear. He was to launch.
“I understand,” Bahadur said, nodding once. “I must go. We have work to do.”
“Act quickly, my friend,” Zhubin said. “New orders could arrive at any moment.”
Bahadur ended the call and replaced the satellite phone. He turned to the lead military scientist who’d been standing nearby, waiting for his own orders. “Are we ready?” Bahadur asked. “Is the missile ready for launch? Are the coordinates in place?”
“Yes, sir,” the scientist answered. “We are ready.”
“Then it is time. Launch the missile,” Bahadur ordered. “Now.”
Moments later the Shahab 3 was airborne, moving across the plains of Iraq toward Tel Aviv on a gentle arc. It would arrive in Israel with the first light of the morning sun.
19
WASHINGTON, DC
Adom Camara had just fallen asleep after the longest day of his presidency when the phone rang. He grimaced. There could only be one reason for such a call, after midnight.
He picked the phone up beside the ornate bed after just one ring. He was already alert and wondering where he’d placed his secret pack of cigarettes his wife and others hated to see him carry around. He spotted the windproof butane lighter on the nightstand. The pack of menthol cigarettes couldn’t be far away.
“Yes?” he answered softly.
“Sir, the satellites have just picked up a flash,” the voice said on the other end. He recognized it as General John Alton, the first army general to become vice chair of the joint chiefs. Vice chairs didn’t have any command authority, but they served at the pleasure of the president. Alton had been at the White House for the past twentyfour hours.
“When?” the president asked.
“Two minutes ago. At least three of our early warning and signal intelligence satellites picked up the launch. The SIGINT operators believe the burn has just finished, and the warhead has separated and is now on its way to its target.”
“Which is?”
“We believe it’s headed toward Tel Aviv,” General Alton said promptly.
“Is it on course, or is it falling off, like some of their earlier tests?”
“It appears to be on course.”
“Where was it launched?”
There was a slight pause as the general consulted his terrain map. “A remote village, Gilan Qarb, in a western province of Iran. It’s close to the Iraq border.”
“Have the Israelis locked onto the ballistic trajectory?” asked President Camara. He’d been briefed so thoroughly on this subject that he felt like he could practically see the missile’s arc in his mind’s eye. He knew the emerging Arrow 3 system could handle a single warhead. A multiple launch, from many different locations, was a completely different story.
“Yes, sir, they have,” the general said.
“Have we moved our own ships out to sea?” Bahadur and others had vowed to target and burn American ships in the Persian Gulf after an Israeli attack.
“Yes, sir, the USS Abraham Lincoln is well out to sea in the Arabian. The other ships are also well out to sea, and moving. They can’t reach us from the shoreline, and there’s no way their planes will get anywhere close to our fleet.”
“And we’re sure that Arrow has locked onto the trajectory?” the president asked, returning to the urgent problem at hand.
“We’re on, live, with IDF now. They’re ready. They’ve already committed with Arrow. They’ll wait to see the success there and correct if they need to at the next level down.”
Alton and other leaders at the Pentagon were fairly confident of the Arrow system’s capabilities. Of course, there was no way to know if the North Koreans had modified the guidance system to the point that it could elude the system. But they would know shortly.
“Do you have real-time tracking on a monitor?” the president asked.
“Yes, sir, we do. It’s on a closed-loop, on the monitor in your study. It’ll be all over, one way or another, by the time you get to the Situation Room. So you might as well watch from your study.”
The president grabbed the University of Chicago sweatshirt at the foot of the bed, pulled it over his head, and moved briskly to his study.
An aide had already put the live satellite feed up on the monitor. The president sat down at his desk. They both watched in silence.
They had multiple views of the trace signals of the warhead by now, from different satellites. President Camara was surprised that Shahidi and the others had made the decision to launch. If the missile somehow made it through the emerging Arrow 3 system, Arrow 2, and then the Patriot low-orbit system and actually hit Tel Aviv—and if it did, in fact, have a workable nuclear payload—he wasn’t entirely sure what might happen next.
The joint chiefs had predicted that Iran would launch at least one missile in retaliation. They had no choice, the generals had argued. Doing nothing was not an option, and they weren’t actually prepared for a full-on war with the IDF. So a launch would show their willingness to respond—without an actual full-scale response.
And if, by chance, the missile stayed on its trajectory, the warhead survived separation, it made its way through the Arrow system, and then exploded a nuclear payload on impact in Tel Aviv—well, then, the balance of power would be forever changed in the Middle East.
Despite approaches from every conceivable angle, they had been singularly unsuccessful opening any sort of direct dialogue with Shahidi or any of the leading clerics associated with the Guardian Council in Iran. Camara knew that dealing with President Ahmadian was hopeless and an utter waste of time. But Shahidi and his inner circle were still an enigma as well.
The president’s aide handed a telephone headset to him. General Alton was still on the line. “Mr. President, while we wait—there is one other thing,” the general said.
“Yes?” the president said, his eyes transfixed on the satellite video images on the monitor in front of him.
“Our satellite photos confirmed those who were responsible for the launch. We picked up markings and signatures on the truck and equipment from low-earth, so the resolution is good—enough to confirm that the North Koreans were there, helping them set the system and launch the missile.”
The president shook his head. “That will make this more difficult,” he said quietly.
“Yes, sir, it will,” said General Alton.
The warhead was now nearing its apex. An instant later, there was a slight burst of light as the Arrow missile hit its intended target. None of this could be seen from earth—only satellites were able to pick up the explosion.
Israel’s new, emerging Arrow 3 anti-ballistic missile defense system—parts of which had been deployed with U.S. help just months earlier—had worked. Iran’s second strike had failed.
20
MOSCOW, RUSSIA
It was his second talk to the Duma leadership in as many days, but Andrei Rowan never failed to find the right words. The 450 representatives of the state Duma were his people. He’d hand-picked most of them over the years. They’d supported his seamless transition from president to prime minister with almost no opposition. They belonged to him in a way that rivaled the power of the old tsars.
Rowan enjoyed his talks with the Duma leadership. They always asked intelligent questions, and he liked the interplay. They alone carried the torch for the greater Russia. They understood the need for Russia to deal smartly with the nations of the former Soviet Union at their border and to pay very close attention to what happened in the regions closest to Russia.
The Duma leadership was supportive of Rowan’s quest. They did not understand all of its many-layered aspects, to be sure, but they recognized Russia’s historic place in the interplay of nation-states. And they appreciated Rowan’s consummate leadership skills on the world stage, and his ability to recognize strategic opportunities and take advantage of them.
There was no question that the events of the past two days in Iran now presented a clear opportunity. Rowan had been preparing the Duma’s leadership for just such an eventuality for months. He had accurately predicted that Iran’s leaders were so hungry for empire in the Middle East that they would accept Russia’s leadership and pay enormous sums for the knowledge that it could provide.
The strategic relationship between Iran and Russia had been wildly profitable for Russia. Iran had paid billions for the right to develop a robust civil nuclear capability. Russia now had an intimate knowledge of all aspects of Iran’s nuclear capabilities—including their plans and desires to enrich uranium, create plutonium, and become a world superpower by joining the nuclear club.
What the Duma leadership did not know—and, really, could not appreciate—was the depth of commitment on the part of Iran’s reining cleric. Amir Shahidi was a driven, ruthless man who had calmly dispatched all of his past and present rivals.
Rowan had watched with some admiration as Shahidi had worked his way to the top of the Revolutionary Guards—and used that post to vault to the top of the clerics as the Supreme Leader over more learned clerics with a much deeper understanding of the judicial aspects of the Koran.
In fact, Shahidi had not really been qualified to take up the mantle of Supreme Leader after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini. But he was now the highest-ranking political and religious leader in Iran for a simple reason—he understood the levers of power at the highest levels and wielded them with ruthless efficiency.
Soon after seizing power, Shahidi had removed Khomeini’s son from power—largely because he was a rival for the loyalty of the leadership of the Revolutionary Guards—and then had him poisoned. And when the son-in-law of his closest rival cleric began to gather popular support shortly after Shahidi had been named Supreme Leader, he’d been arrested for treason. The IRGC had him executed. Shahidi had moved similarly against anyone who had opposed him, especially in the early days of his reign.
Rowan appreciated the Rev. Shahidi’s willingness to do whatever was necessary in order to consolidate power—including the lawless execution of rivals. Rowan understood Shahidi’s ability to use the Revolutionary Guards to dissect the lives of his potential rivals and remove them when necessary.
Rowan himself had miraculously jumped from a lowly lieutenant colonel to the leadership ranks largely through a deep, interlocking network of spies who supplied him enough information on Boris Yeltsin’s personal life to enable him to move to the head of the class. Rowan understood the value of a loyal, trusted intelligence network that could act with impunity and ruthlessness on one’s behalf.
Shahidi had been forced to move more slowly of late against the likes of Reza Razavi and the more moderate clerics who’d quietly been lining up behind Razavi’s bid for power. But Rowan knew that Shahidi would act—when the time was right. And he would not allow Razavi or his followers to alter Iran’s march toward superpower status in the Middle East.
In fact, Rowan knew that Israel’s actions in the past two days would permanently end the moderate uprising within Iran. While the attacks had clearly set Iran back for years in its quest to develop a deep nuclear weapons capability, the actions also strengthened Shahidi’s hand. There would be no opposition to his ambitions in the short term.
It was the moment Rowan had hoped for, and anticipated. Iran would act through proxies as it had for years. Iran virtually ran Lebanon, and it was very close to establishing a permanent Shi’a leadership by proxy in Iraq as the U.S. military slowly left the country. Iran was poised to move into any Arab country the moment it recognized weakness, and the moment that chaos dictated action.
“My fellow comrades,” Rowan said evenly at the head of the ornate table in a conference room where he regularly met with the Duma leadership. Nearly a dozen top Duma officials were gathered around the table to hear the latest from their leader. “I bring you interesting news today of events in Iran and Israel.”
“We have seen the televised reports,” one of the officials said. “We understand that Iran’s second strike failed.”
“Yes, the American Arrow system in Israel worked as they’d hoped and took Iran’s intermediate range missile out,” Rowan said.
“And most of Iran’s nuclear facilities are gone,�
� a second Duma official said.
Rowan smiled. “That is not all bad for us. Iran will spend billions more in the coming years to build their capabilities back up.”
“Does Iran have any remaining uranium? Will it launch more strikes?” asked another official. “What does the GRU say?”
“The GRU and SVR have conflicting views,” Rowan said, laughing. “So you all are free to choose the intelligence you’d care to believe.”
“But what do you believe?” another asked. “And you said you have news. What is it?”
Rowan leaned forward at the head of the table. “Here is the news, which we alone have and which the world has not yet learned of. I have just spoken to the Rev. Shahidi of it, moments ago. Israel may have achieved a victory of sorts in Iran with its use of the American Stealth fighters. But we have proof of something at one of the sites that Israel attacked. Their pilot used tactical nuclear weapons to reach beneath the earth. We have the proof.”
“What does that matter?” one of the Duma leaders asked skeptically. “Iran has already launched a nuclear weapon in retaliation. Who will care that Israel deployed nuclear weapons first?”
Rowan leaned back in his chair. “Oh, the world will care, my friend. The world will care that the United States helped Israel carry out a nuclear attack on Iranian soil. It will set the Arab world on fire, once the world learns of it. Israel’s first use of nuclear weapons will more than justify Iran’s response and will set in motion many new actions.”
“Such as?”
“Give it time, my friends,” Rowan said. “We are only at the beginning of what may happen. The Americans will not have the stomach for what will occur in the coming days. Their people will demand that they leave the battlefield in Iran and all other parts of the Middle East once reprisals have been carried out, leaving it to us.”
“How do you know this?” one of the Duma leaders demanded.