by Vince Flynn
Shoshan smiled and nodded. His eyes returned to the print and his inquisitive mind went to work, not as a spy, but as someone who was endlessly fascinated by how things worked. “How did you support all this weight?”
Omidifar flipped several pages to a new sheet that showed a different cross-section of the facility. “We basically built an underground skyscraper. There is a steel skeleton that supports the entire structure.”
That was when it hit Shoshan. He had never been allowed access to the fourth sublevel where the reactor and the centrifuges were located. He had assumed it was built into or under the bedrock. From the air the facility was impervious to all but a nuclear strike and despite the hawkish attitude of some, Shoshan felt that neither the Americans nor Israel would play that card. Isfahan was a city of over a million people. There was no way either country would drop a nuclear weapon in the vicinity of so many civilians. If Shoshan’s instincts were right, however, no air strike would be needed. Something far simpler could cripple the entire facility. As Shoshan looked at the prints on that afternoon he paid particular attention to the size and gauge of the steel that had been used. By the time he left Omidifar’s office a new course of action was forming in his mind. Shoshan was ready to make the transition from spy to saboteur.
Months later Shoshan was struck by the irony that the destruction of the Twin Towers was what opened his eyes to the facility’s central weakness. He did not think of the towers in their pre–9/11 form and the way they dominated the southern tip of Manhattan. He didn’t think of them as piles of rubble and twisted steel. His mind fixated on a five-second clip of each building as it collapsed under its own weight.
After leaving work that night Shoshan did not sleep. He played the clip of the towers imploding on themselves over and over in his mind. He knew he had stumbled across the bare underbelly of the dragon. His mind raced ahead, making a list of what he would need, and how he would sneak it into the facility. On that night nearly a half year ago the whole thing seemed crazy, but what bold action didn’t at its inception. The next morning he put everything in an encoded report and left it at his dead drop. While he waited for an answer from Tel Aviv, he found an excuse to go back to Omidifar’s office and this time he brought his camera.
It took two months of back and forth as the experts debated the merits of Shoshan’s plan. The deciding factor ended up being the air force’s lack of confidence in their own ability to take out the facility with anything other than a nuclear strike. During those two months Shoshan furthered his plan, exploring the recesses of the third subfloor, locating and photographing as many steel I beams as he could. He passed everything along anticipating the questions before they came. During that time Shoshan also began construction on a false wall in the back of his storage room, foreseeing the necessity to hide the materials he would need to conduct his sabotage.
Shoshan spent countless hours alone with his thoughts trying to piece everything together. Simply striking at one or two points would not do the job. The plan would have to be comprehensive, and that meant it would take hours to carry out. Charges would need to be placed. He would be exposed the entire time, as would the explosives. Even the most witless guard would be likely to stumble upon the devices.
The solution came one afternoon when the facility suffered a brief power outage. Shoshan was cleaning a rest room on the second subfloor when it happened. The room went pitch black for a few seconds and then the emergency lights came on. Shoshan stared up at the square unit attached to the wall just below the ceiling. It consisted of two adjustable floodlights mounted near the top of a beige metal box approximately a foot and a half long by a foot and a half wide. Shoshan left the bathroom and looked down the long hallway. He counted four more emergency lighting units in this area alone. That night he photographed the lights and wrote down the make and model number. The next morning he informed Mossad that he had found a solution to their problem.
Five weeks later the first shipment of a dozen units left Haifa for Mumbai, India. After clearing customs the shipment was repackaged and sent up the coast to the Iranian free trade zone of Chabahar. From there it made its way inland to Isfahan. Two more shipments followed the same route. Each day Shoshan would pull up to the main gate of the facility on his motorbike, which had two saddlebags and an old plastic milk crate strapped to the back fender. The milk crate was almost always filled with parts. The guards had come to expect this. Inside each saddlebag, though, was a counterfeit emergency lighting unit. Not once in a month’s time did the guards ever ask him to open the bags.
Following the schematics Shoshan had been through countless dry rehearsals. The experts back in Israel had thought of everything. Instead of using C-4 plastic explosives they packed the devices with relatively new thermobaric explosives. The thermobaric explosives would work extremely well in the underground confines of the facility, literally sucking all oxygen from the air and creating an enormous vacuum effect. They weighed less than conventional explosives and packed nearly three times the punch. Having the devices detonate at precisely the same time created another problem. Running det cord between each of the two units was dismissed immediately. Detonating the devices remotely was also impractical. There was no way for a radio frequency to penetrate all the concrete and steel. The solution was to install a highly accurate clock within each device. Via a master remote Shoshan had the ability to set a designated time for all of the devices to detonate. He did this in his storage room before putting them in place.
Twenty-six devices weighing eight pounds apiece. Just 208 pounds of explosives. Demolition firms used far more explosives to bring down buildings in nice neat little piles. That, however, was not Shoshan’s objective. He was not trying to topple a building, and he certainly wasn’t worried about how they would haul the mess away. His objective was much simpler. He was going to blow out the main support columns between the fourth and second subfloors. The loss of structural integrity would set off a pancake effect, bringing the upper three floors crashing down on the roof of the final subfloor. All that weight, falling with such force, would snap the vertical steel beams at the bottom of the structure. The four floors would end up pressed together like a stack of pancakes. The entire centrifuge facility and reactor would be smashed into a radioactive mess.
Shoshan limped down the hallway and checked his watch. He had just under thirty minutes to clear the facility. Done placing the devices, all he had to do was put his cart back in his storage room and get topside. Once the explosions started, he would move for the gate and slip out in the ensuing confusion. He opened the door to his storage room and pulled the cart inside. The windowless room had been his refuge for much of the last year. In the evenings when the facility was mostly empty, he would close the door and drop the façade of Moshen Norwrasteh the Iranian. Slowly, Adam Shoshan the Israeli would assert himself. What Shoshan came to realize was that the two men were not all that different.
Those were the moments when he felt most conflicted. When he worried about the nice people he had met and what would happen to them when the attack came. Shoshan felt a pang of guilt over moving up the timetable. Headquarters had made it clear to him that they wanted the facility to be destroyed in the middle of the day. They wanted not only to obliterate the facility, they wanted to extinguish the scientific power behind Iran’s nuclear program. The more people working down in the labs when the bombs went off, the better.
It was not a surprise to Shoshan when he received the order to create maximum damage. He was himself a hard man who had been forced to give orders that to some might seem heartless. Since receiving the directive, though, he had lain awake in bed nearly every night trying to figure out a way around it. He had met some very kind people during his time at the facility. There were a few hate-filled anti-Semites, to be sure, but most of the people were no different from his neighbors and colleagues back in Israel. It seemed wrong to him that they should have to die for following the orders of religious fanatics.
&
nbsp; Seeing Imad Mukhtar, though, had caused most of those reservations to simply vanish. There was perhaps no more vile man in the modern history of Israel. Mukhtar was the purveyor of suicide bombers, rocket attacks on civilians, and countless kidnappings. He had the blood of thousands of Israelis on his hands. As one of the founders of Hezbollah, he was hell-bent on the absolute destruction of the state of Israel and nothing less. The mere fact that he was visiting the facility confirmed Israel’s worst fears; that Iran would simply hand off one of their new bombs to a stateless terrorist group like Hezbollah. Catching the man at the facility so close to the appointed hour was simply too difficult to resist.
Shoshan took a brief look around the room, pondering if there was anything worth taking. Sanitizing the place was not a concern. What little he had left was well concealed and would be destroyed by the explosion. Shoshan backed out of the room and closed the door behind him. As he headed for the elevator his thoughts turned to his friend Ali Omidifar. He’d come up with a plan to distract his friend and make sure he was out of the building when the bombs went off. He pushed the call button for the elevator and thought that it was the one humane thing he could do to help assuage his guilt over all the other people who would die.
When the doors opened, he found himself standing face-to-face with Ali Farahani, the facility’s head of security. He looked frazzled and in a hurry. Shoshan guessed it had to do with the two men who were standing behind him. Shoshan quickly stepped out of the way and murmured a quiet apology. He kept his eyes averted as the three men got out of the elevator and started down the hall toward Farahani’s office. Shoshan stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the ground floor. As the doors began to close, he looked down the hall at the back of Mukhtar’s head and his subservient expression gave way to a broad smile.
7
PUERTO GOLFITO, COSTA RICA
Rapp kept the cool steel of his knife pressed against Garret’s bare skin as a reminder that his mortality was very much in question.
In a voice tinged more with amusement than disdain Rapp whispered, “You thought you’d gotten away with it, didn’t you?”
Garret made a lame effort to break free.
“Easy, Stu. If you want to live, you’ll do exactly as I say.”
Giving Garret hope that he might survive was as important as the obvious threat of force. The right balance had to be struck. Rapp was more than capable of subduing the paunchy political kingmaker, but tonight, brute force would be a last resort. Even the position of the knife had been considered. Rapp held the blade flat against Garret’s skin so as to not leave a thin laceration that would be discovered during his autopsy. This was about deception, and to pull it off, he needed Garret to hold on to the idea that he might survive the next few minutes.
With his mouth mere inches from Garret’s ear, Rapp said, “I wanted to come down here, slit your throat, and dump your worthless ass in the drink, but my boss, for some reason, thinks you might be useful.” Rapp paused to give Garret a moment to realize the false hope. “The only problem for you is, I have a history of disregarding orders.”
Rapp moved to his right and cranked Garret’s head around so he could look him in the face. Rapp could see Garret’s eyelids narrow as he tried to place the face of his assailant. They stayed that way for several seconds and then suddenly grew wide with fear.
Rapp smiled. “That’s right, Stu, you know who I am. You tried to screw me over last year by feeding Tom Rich that bullshit story that the Times ran. It ended up blowing up in your face, didn’t it?”
Garret tried shaking his head.
“I’m only going to say this one time. I want to kill you, and I’m pretty sure if I do, Director Kennedy, despite telling me not to, will find it in her heart to forgive me since you are one of the biggest pieces-of-shit political operators in American history. So if you want to save your own ass, you’ll stop lying to me. Are we clear?”
Garret closed his eyes and nodded.
“All right, get down on your knees, and then I’ll take my hand off your mouth so we can talk.” Without giving him time to think, Rapp started lowering Garret to the teak deck. When he had him kneeling at the edge of the platform, he brought the knife around and placed the dull edge of the blade against Garret’s throat. “I’m going to take my hand off your mouth. If you make any noise louder than a whisper, I’ll stick this blade straight through your voice box and shove it all the way back to your spine. You’ll end up drowning in your own blood, and trust me, it won’t be enjoyable.” Rapp gave Garret a long moment to consider the agonizing death and then slowly took his hand off Garret’s mouth.
The political consultant and former presidential chief of staff took in a deep breath and whispered, “Please, don’t kill me. None of it was my idea.” His voice grew louder. “It was that idiot Mark Ross.”
“Quiet,” Rapp hissed.
“Sorry,” Garret said, much softer now.
“It may not have been your idea, but you went along with it.”
Garret hesitated and then nodded.
“You did more than go along with it. You helped carry it out.”
“I was only following orders.”
“Bullshit. You weren’t some private on the front line following orders. You’re a political whore who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anything other than seeing your guy win. You ran that campaign, and you wanted to see Jillian Rautbort dead just as bad as Ross did.”
“That woman was not without fault.”
“Why, because she cheated on her husband?”
“I’m just saying, if she would have kept her legs crossed, none of it would have happened.”
Rapp grabbed Garret’s hair with his left hand and pulled his head back. “Why don’t you join the Taliban? You’re going to sit here and tell me because a woman cheated on her husband, she deserved to die?”
“No,” Garret struggled, “I’m just saying, if she would have kept her dress on, none of this would have been set into motion.”
“And the fourteen other people who died?”
“That was unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate,” Rapp hissed. “You stole a presidential election by blowing up a motorcade and killing fifteen people, and the only word you can come up with is unfortunate?”
Garret could sense the anger in Rapp’s voice. “It was bad. It was wrong. I should have stopped him.”
“You’re damn right you should have, you fucking sociopath.” Rapp withdrew the blade from Garret’s throat and put it back in its scabbard. With his left hand still holding on to Garret’s hair, he said, “And that’s why I’m going to kill you.”
Before Garret could react, Rapp yanked him to the left. Garret’s reaction was to lurch his body to the right so he wouldn’t fall in the water. This was what Rapp wanted. Using Garret’s own momentum, Rapp reversed direction and yanked Garret’s head back toward the port stern corner of the boat. Garret’s temple struck the hard fiberglass with a thud, leaving him dazed and barely conscious, his arms limp at his sides.
Rapp let go of Garret’s hair and wrapped his arms around the man’s chest in a bear hug. He took a deep breath and propelled himself and Garret over the edge of the swim platform headfirst. When they hit the dark cool water, Rapp began calmly kicking his legs, driving them away from the surface. The water seemed to have shocked Garret back to alertness. He began struggling, but it was no good. Rapp had his fists locked around Garret’s chest. As he drove them deeper, Garret tried to claw at Rapp’s gloved hands. Not having any luck, he reached for Rapp’s face, the only part of his body other than his feet that wasn’t covered.
Rapp responded by lowering his fists a few inches to restrict Garret’s ability to move his arms. He then gave him a quick Heimlich, forcing more air from his lungs. All the while, Rapp’s legs kept them under steady propulsion, moving them farther away from what Garret needed most—oxygen. Garret began twisting his body and moving his legs violently. Rapp kept his eyes shut and drove th
em deeper. Based on the number of kicks, he guessed they were around twenty-five feet beneath the surface. It was more than enough. Garret’s lungs would be on fire. He would feel like his chest was going to explode.
Rapp stopped, allowing them to level out and then exhaled a little air from his lungs. They’d been underwater for less than half a minute, but Rapp knew Garret was near the end. His movements were diminishing in both frequency and force. Rapp loosened his grip a bit to see if Garret was playing possum. His arms stayed limp at his sides. Rapp opened his eyes and looked up toward the ever-so-faint light on the surface. He released his hold on Garret and grabbed him by the hair. If the man was still alive, this was when he would make his break for the surface. He didn’t, however. He simply floated in front of Rapp, a dark silhouette against a slightly lighter backdrop. Rapp put his hands on Garret’s shoulders, pushed him farther down, and then started for the surface.
Rapp could see the dark underbelly of the boat and headed for the narrow bow, exhaling small amounts of air as he went. Ten seconds later he quietly broke the surface and finished exhaling before taking in a short breath followed by two deeper ones. His heart was moving at a pretty good clip. Between his pounding heart and with the water in his ears it was difficult to hear anything. He hovered quietly, taking deeper and deeper breaths. His head was the only thing out of the water. His heart rate quickly recovered and he shook the water from his ears. He listened for any sign that Garret’s wife had woken up, but there was nothing. After another minute he gathered his swim bag from the anchor line and started for shore. With any luck, he’d be back in Washington by noon.
8
ISFAHAN, NUCLEAR FACILITY
