by Carr, Jack
Ismail’s first taste of combat would surprisingly not be against the Israelis, as he so hoped, but instead against fellow Muslims in Syria, albeit takfiris. His brigade commander had explained that Hezbollah could not allow Syria to collapse and come under the control of the United States and Israel. Allah needed his warriors to be strong. Syria could not fall, especially in a Zionist plot to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. Most of Hezbollah’s weapons passed through Syria from Iran, and that conduit needed to remain open. It was their lifeblood. He’d heard whisperings that Nasrallah wanted to take territory and open another front against Israel in the Golan Heights. Ismail was in full support, parroting the slogans beaten into them by their instructors as they marched during indoctrination, and then in their more formal training in the west Bekaa Valley: “Death to Israel, Death to America, Eradicate the Jews.”
Fighting in the Syrian town of al-Qusayr, Ismail found combat a confusing mix of screaming, shooting, and mayhem. He generally pointed his weapon in the same direction as those in his brigade. He shot when they shot and ran when they ran. A friend he’d known since birth stepped on a land mine. They had not even stopped to pick up the pieces. Another warrior of God had taken a bullet to the face in mid-sentence as he stood to order his militia forward, leaving Ismail covered in chunks of bone and brain. Ismail had fought; he had not faltered. He drew strength from the passage written above their yellow and green flag depicting a fist clenching a rifle similar to the one in Ismail’s hands:
fa-inna ḥizbu llāh hum alġālibūn
Then surely the party of God are they that shall be triumphant.
Hezbollah won the day.
Ismail had heard whispers of Unit 910, Hezbollah’s external security apparatus responsible for targeting Israeli assets abroad, but had never dared ask about or even speak of them. It was rumored they were also responsible for the assassination of the Lebanese prime minister, though Hezbollah denied the allegation and shifted blame to Israel.
When they pulled him from his unit, it was not so much an ask as it was an order. Ismail had been given a task, one that required him to receive additional training by the IRGC Quds Force in Iran.
The Quds Force is an elite paramilitary unit responsible for external operations specializing in the use of proxy forces unattributable to Iran. The West would brand them terrorists regardless of their targets. Born of the 1979 Iranian revolution, they were accountable only to the Ayatollah himself. Their intelligence apparatus taught Ismail how to assess and recruit assets, identify facilitators, set up safe houses, conduct reconnaissance and surveillance, and transfer information via a clandestine communications network back to Hezbollah.
And they taught him to build truck bombs.
The Party of God wanted Ismail in Angola. Though Hezbollah had worldwide reach through its network of diaspora, they were underrepresented in this southwestern African country, where the corrupt government had outlawed Islam, no doubt at the behest of the Jews. Mosques had been burned and Muslims persecuted. Hezbollah needed a trusted agent in the area to gather information for the Jihad Council. Israel’s embassy in the capitol city of Luanda was a target, and Nasrallah wanted to know just how soft an objective it was. Finally, Ismail Tehrani would strike a blow against the Zionist aggressors.
Though a step up from the horrors of al-Qusayr, Angola was a country in transition. After a decade and a half of struggle in a war of liberation against the Portuguese colonists and a follow-on quarter century of civil war, the nation and its people were no strangers to conflict. Those years of strife had conditioned the new ruling class to exercise extreme measures to keep the populace in check. Disappearances of those critical of the Angolan government were commonplace. Torture, gang rape, and public executions were utilized as a means of controlling the populace. This was Africa.
Ismail was in the capital when, after thirty-eight years in power, President José Eduardo dos Santos finally stepped down. He had amassed a multibillion-dollar fortune in a country where the average person lives on two dollars a day. For the quasi-dictator of one of the most corrupt regimes in all of Africa, the ability to make $32 billion in oil revenue disappear through a worldwide money-laundering network had been a highly profitable skill.
His King’s College–educated daughter had risen to prominence and become Africa’s first female billionaire as head of the nationalized Angolan state oil company. It certainly paid to take stakes in companies exploiting the Angolan people and their natural resources. Ismail had read of similar actions by the family of an American vice president; corruption and greed were not ailments relegated solely to the jungles of the developing world.
The northern Angolan province of Cabinda is separated from the rest of the country by a sixty-kilometer strip where the Democratic Republic of the Congo intrudes into what is de jure, though disputed, Angolan territory. Though lumber, cocoa, coffee, and rubber plantations occupy much of the lush landscape, Angola’s most lucrative export is oil. It was into “the Kuwait of Africa” that Ismail followed in his father’s footsteps. The mass exodus caused by more than half a century of war had created a labor vacuum. At the direction of Unit 910, Ismail applied for and was hired by an asset of the diaspora working at Petróleo Brasileiro S. A. Petrobras, the Brazilian Petroleum Corporation, a company with major stakes in Angolan oil and natural gas production. His job was to escort labor from Luanda in the south to Cabinda in the north, a position that allowed him ample opportunity to surveil the Israeli embassy.
Ismail was discouraged when his intelligence reports did not lead to immediate kinetic action. When in Luanda he prayed to Allah, not in a mosque but in a cramped apartment that smelled of sewage. He passed his information through the imam, who reported back to the council. He dreamed that one day the Jihad assembly would order him to carry out an attack on the Jews, just as his brothers had hit their embassies in Buenos Aires and London before Ismail was even born. Ismail had taken note when his fellow warriors martyred themselves in Bulgaria, though he intended on killing more than six Israeli tourists. He wanted to drive a truck bomb right into the lobby of the Israeli embassy. His death would one day be honored on a monument like the one his trainers had shown him in Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery in Tehran. That attack had meant something. Less than a year after the 1983 Beirut bombings, the infidels had retreated from Lebanon. The martyrs had struck a blow for Allah and sent the Americans scurrying home.
With each passing year, Ismail’s hope of a glorious attack on the Jews in Angola dwindled. His recruitment by Unit 910 had been a great honor, but at times he felt abandoned in the squalid African subcontinent, once again the little boy covered with a blanket.
When the assignment came to Ismail, it was not the one he expected. It did not entail acquiring the components to build a truck bomb for a spectacular attack for which he had been trained. It was a rather straightforward task, but one did not question orders from a descendant of the Prophet.
One evening after prayers the imam had given Ismail a package and verbally passed along his orders. Ismail was told the virus would only infect the Jews. Even so, there was a special pill for him to swallow that would ensure his safety. On his next trip north, he was to spray what looked like an asthma inhaler randomly in the marketplace of a local village. Hezbollah had information that the Israelis were secretly at work converting diamond mine workers to Judaism, all the while using the gems to fund their campaign of worldwide domination. Ismail expected nothing less of the Jews.
Three days later, he was en route to Cabinda with a new group of workers in one of the planes that Petrobras used to transport people to and from Luanda. The following afternoon he visited a marketplace just east of the city, a market that supplied workers for the Jews. He purchased a bracelet from a woman selling jewelry off a blanket of purple and orange and ate a meal of chikwanga and catatos from a vendor; he’d grown quite fond of the fried caterpillar dish; its spicy mixture of insects, onions, peppers, and tomatoes reminded him of the prawns from the c
oast of Lebanon.
Ismail depressed the asthma inhaler as he moved through the crowded bazaar at ten different places, just as he’d been instructed. Though he trusted his imam and the Hezbollah secretary general, he still took the special immunity pill: no sense in taking chances. He wanted to be sure he was healthy enough to destroy the Israeli embassy when the time was right.
Within thirty-six hours the local clinic in Cabinda began to admit patients exhibiting flu-like vomiting, hemorrhaging in the eyes, and bloody noses very similar to the hemorrhagic outbreaks that had occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo just to the east in 2014 and 2016. The same clinic had experience with a rare episode in 2005 that killed thirty-nine children in a northern Angolan village.
The next day, dozens of infected villagers began flooding the clinic, prompting a notification to the World Health Organization. Having experience in this part of the world where hemorrhagic outbreaks were not out of the ordinary, this one was quickly contained. The doctors and nurses in equatorial Africa were well versed in hemorrhagic virus protocols. Personal protective equipment was mandated, bleach was used to disinfect all surfaces and equipment, and blood samples were sent to the Pasteur Institute in Dakar, Senegal, for further study. Though the index case was never identified, the data indicated that this was a small, contained outbreak in a crowded, hot market, probably originating with the meat handlers. It was catalogued as yet another in a long string of mysterious hemorrhagic viruses that plagued the Dark Continent.
Bodies of the dead were collected and burned in a mass crematorium, as was standard practice to destroy a fast-moving infection like Ebola. If there was a positive attribute of hemorrhagic viruses, it was that they burned themselves out quickly, often killing the host agent before they could spread the infection via blood or saliva. Thankfully, there had never been a recorded case of hemorrhagic virus spreading via respiratory pathways like the flu or a common cold.
The following day, Ismail returned to the capital, depressing his inhaler in the departure area of Quatro de Fevereiro International Airport, as per his instructions, before returning to his small apartment in time for evening prayers.
Less than twenty-four hours after the release, he took a taxi to Multiperfil Hospital, thinking he had food poisoning, maybe from his meal in Cabinda.
Ismail was dead the next day.
Three weeks later his name would be listed among 457 others in a World Health Organization report that was then forwarded to the Centers for Disease Control, or CDC. The report indicated the WHO had successfully contained another Ebola outbreak in Angola. Data like that was important to the continued financial support from the United States.
The name Ismail Tehrani would not spike on any intelligence agency radars, even if someone had run it through a national intelligence database in Israel or the United States.
His body was thrown into a pit, doused with gasoline, and set aflame, just another casualty of hemorrhagic fever, an infectious disease not uncommon in equatorial Africa.
CHAPTER 3
National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center
Fort Detrick, Maryland
COLONEL TOM GARRETT STUCK his head through the office door and nodded to Major Courtney Burke, who was on the phone with her husband. She held up a finger and mouthed, “One minute.”
“Yep, I’ll be home in about four hours. Need me to pick up dinner? Chinese? Sounds great. Love you, too.”
“And how is everything on the home front?” Garrett asked his colleague.
“All is well. Peter is selling homes and juggling the kids, and I’m about to enter a place that doesn’t officially exist,” she said, pushing back her chair and logging out of her computer. “How is Haley?”
“She’s still saving the world at the CDC.”
“Does it ever strike you as odd that you are here weaponizing viruses that could destroy the world while she is working on immunizations and antidotes for those same viruses?”
“Every day.”
“Why don’t you go first today? I’ll finish this up,” she said, pointing to some papers on her desk. “Meet you there in a minute.”
Colonel Garrett reached the end of the hallway, slid his ID card through a reader, and punched in a four-digit code. The door was marked BIO CONTAINMENT LEVEL 4. Only seven facilities in the United States were approved for Bio Level Four contagious disease study, and the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center in Fort Detrick, Maryland, was one of them. Created in the wake of the 2001 anthrax attacks, its official charter was to perform research on pathogens for which no vaccine or treatment exists in order to better understand the threat of bioterrorism. Unofficially, they had another mission.
Unlike popular Hollywood movies, television shows, and novels, one did not first enter into bio-containment level one, then two, then three, and then finally four. That looked good on camera to up the suspense as an actor steadily worked his or her way toward the deadly viruses within. In reality, the very few doctors cleared to work with the lethal pathogens bypassed levels one, two, and three. Their TS/SCI clearances had an additional designation, a SAP or Special Access Program, allowing them access to the inner sanctum of U.S. contagious disease research. Fewer still had access to another room, one that only a select number of specialists and officials knew existed. That “additional room” was where the colonel was going today.
He looked up at a camera above the door.
Before a security guard at a remote location unlocked the door, he verified the code and card, and visually compared the colonel’s face to his official photo on file as the facial recognition software confirmed he had approved access.
Garrett entered what looked like a small locker room in any gym in America. The only difference was that instead of smelling like body odor, Old Spice, and sweaty socks, this one smelled like bleach. He maneuvered around a short steel bench and swung open the door to one of the lockers that lined the wall. He removed his clothes and hung them neatly in the locker, which sealed and locked when he closed it. He then moved to the next door. It had felt odd going through the process the first time, knowing that he was being watched on video and that every move he made was being recorded. Now, after fifteen years, it was just another day at the office.
Standing naked in front of the next entry point, he heard the familiar whoosh of the air lock as the door opened. He stepped into a room of stainless steel. He felt and heard the door seal behind him. Moving to the center of the room, he raised his arms. Similar to a car wash, warm soapy liquid rained from the ceiling and walls, coating his exposed body. He closed his eyes and focused his mind on what the next two hours had in store. The soapy spray shifted to distilled water before the blowers came on to dry him. Putting on UV goggles, he nodded to let the controller know he was ready. An unknown finger touched a button, bathing the room in UV light that would not damage skin but would kill any foreign contaminants. The entire process took only three minutes. It wasn’t as important on the way in as it was on the way out. The exit process would take three times as long to ensure the death that lived behind the walls did not see the light of day.
The UV light shut off and Garrett heard the air locks open to allow him access to the next room. He went through the process the same way a normal person would make their coffee each morning, with no variation. However, with coffee, if you forgot the cream or ran out of sweetener, you wouldn’t release a contagion upon an unsuspecting public, killing untold millions of your fellow countrymen.
Still naked and monitored on video, he entered the small room and removed a disposable “bunny suit” from a stainless-steel hook. He stepped into it and glanced at the incineration drawer where he would deposit it on the way out. He put a hair net on his head before taking the rubber bio-protective suit from another hook and sealing himself inside. Lastly, he attached the helmet and tethered himself to a power and air cord that would keep him alive beyond the next set of doors.
Looking up at the
camera, he gave a thumbs-up. He again felt the air lock engage as the next set of doors opened into an anteroom, where he reattached his tether to ensure the suit was powered and air was flowing. The doors closed behind him, leaving him sealed in a room designed to prevent any contaminants from escaping. He picked up a metal clipboard and Fisher space pen to go over the day’s test while he waited for Major Burke to pass through the sterilization process and join him. There were no separate considerations given to male and female medical professionals working with infectious diseases. Perhaps the military was more progressive than it was given credit for.
One door away was bio-containment level four. The world’s deadliest pathogens were mere feet away behind a brightly labeled set of air-locked stainless-steel doors. Colonel Garrett knew he was still on video and was acutely aware that everything in front of him beyond the doors was also recorded for security reasons and for purposes both procedural and historical. In bio-containment level four the most lethal diseases known to man were studied and tested as scientists created antibodies that might one day save the human race. That was not where he was going today.
Colonel Garrett and Major Burke had another mission.
The door behind him opened and Garrett watched as his partner connected her tether to power and air. Ensuring she was good to go, she flashed a thumbs-up at the camera and the doors sealed shut behind her.
The two soldiers moved to a wall to their left, a wall that looked just like the others in the facility, only this one had two alphanumeric keypads attached on opposite sides. The colonel moved to the one on the left. They were far enough away from each other so that one person could not possibly reach both at the same time. He looked at Courtney and they both entered seven-digit access codes. If they did not both enter their codes within ten seconds of one another the doors would automatically lock down until credentials could be reverified. Then supervisors up the chain of command, both military and civilian, would be required to reapprove access. A green light blinked, and the doctors looked into a small keyhole camera that they knew was using a laser to biometrically scan their faces. Only after they were approved by the system did a remote security guard grant them access.