Damascus Countdown

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s not a firefighter. They don’t want him mingling with real firefighters. They’re taking him someplace else.”

  “Where?” Naphtali pressed.

  “I don’t know, sir,” Shimon conceded. “But once he gets there, I can’t guarantee we’ll ever have a shot like this again.”

  Naphtali stared at Shimon, then at the screen as the hazmat truck zigzagged down a series of side streets at breakneck speed, heading east. With the roads essentially devoid of rush-hour traffic since no one in Tehran wanted to be driving around during a war, the chance of collateral damage was minimal. Maybe Shimon was right. The PM now looked to Dayan for counsel.

  “Sir, I’m with Levi,” said Dayan. “I think the truck is heading for the Tohid Tunnel. You should take him out now, before he reaches it.”

  TEHRAN, IRAN

  “Okay, take another right at the next intersection and then head west,” Rashidi ordered, checking his BlackBerry to make sure he had the directions right.

  The driver had no idea what was going on, but he complied. Rashidi checked his watch. They were doing well. They were actually a few minutes ahead of schedule. But they were not out of the woods yet.

  The driver slowed down ever so slightly and then made a hard right turn.

  “Good,” said Rashidi. “Now race for the tunnel entrance at Fatemi Street—and step on it.”

  By Rashidi’s reckoning, they were less than a quarter of a mile away now from the ramp into the Tohid Tunnel, a three-kilometer, six-lane highway that ran underneath the heart of the capital. It had cost nearly half a billion dollars but had been completed in just thirty-one months, setting a world record for the fastest construction of a tunnel this size. Rashidi couldn’t be sure the entire plan would work, but his job was to make sure they got underground, at least, and he was determined to impress the Lord of the Age with his ability to manage in a crisis.

  JERUSALEM, ISRAEL

  “They’re almost there, sir—they’re almost to the tunnel,” Shimon said, pleading with the prime minister to authorize the drone attack now and get it over with.

  “No,” Naphtali said. “They’re making too many twists and turns. I don’t want to run the risk of missing.”

  “Don’t worry, sir. The missile will lock onto the heat signature of the truck. I guarantee you we will hit the truck and nothing else.”

  “We will hit them,” Naphtali finally agreed, “but we’ll do it on the other side of the tunnel—that will be the cleanest shot, on the straightaway as they’re coming out of the tunnel.”

  TEHRAN, IRAN

  The second they entered the Tohid Tunnel, Rashidi let out a whoop and said a prayer of thanks to Allah. He had no idea they were being tracked by an Israeli drone, no idea a heat-seeking Hellfire missile was waiting for them three kilometers away. He just prayed the next phase of the plan worked as well as the first.

  Halfway through the tunnel, Rashidi suddenly yelled at the driver to stay in the right lane and then to slam on the brakes and stop the truck. Several hundred yards later, the air filled with the smell of burning rubber, they were safely stopped at the tunnel’s midpoint. The four elite IRGC bodyguards—all changed into suits and ties again—burst out of the back of the hazmat track, brandishing automatic weapons. They checked to see if there was any traffic behind them, but no one was around.

  Rashidi, meanwhile, jumped out of the front seat and took a look for himself. Confident the coast was clear, he walked about thirty yards behind the truck. There he found a door marked Authorized Personnel Only. As per the plan, it was unlocked, and when he opened the door, he found five young schoolgirls waiting for him. They ranged in age, he guessed, from about nine years old to maybe fifteen or sixteen. All wore chadors covering their heads. Their faces, what he could see of them, were ashen, and their eyes were full of fear. They had no coats and they were trembling, but perhaps more from the situation than the cool March temperatures.

  Rashidi gave the all-clear sign to the security detail and then ordered the girls to head for the truck. The agents, meanwhile, helped the Mahdi out of the hazmat truck and directed the girls to take his place in the back. Rashidi noticed the Mahdi did not even acknowledge the girls. He did not greet them or even make eye contact with them. He treated them as though they were . . . what? Impure? Unworthy? He was not entirely sure. But the Mahdi did not pray for them or bless them or even speak a word to them. Rather, he moved quickly and without emotion toward Rashidi.

  The security men grabbed their own equipment and closed the rear door of the truck, locking the girls inside. Then they ordered the driver to continue on, which meant continuing south through the tunnel before driving back to the fire station near Azadi Square. The driver did as he was told, and now, with the hazmat truck gone, the agents hustled the Mahdi through the door Rashidi was holding for them.

  They raced through a narrow hallway that opened to the tunnel on the other side, where three lanes of highway took traffic in the opposite direction from the section of the tunnel they’d just come from. Today, of course, there was no traffic. This section of tunnel was completely devoid of vehicles except for a yellow school bus waiting for them. The bus was empty but for the driver, who was idling the engine. Rashidi, the Mahdi, and the others quickly piled inside, and then Rashidi ordered the driver—in this case the Ayatollah’s personal driver—to race north through the tunnel and out of Tehran as rapidly as possible.

  JERUSALEM, ISRAEL

  The prime minister stood and stared at the screen transmitting the live video image from the Israeli drone hovering over the southbound exit of the Tohid Tunnel as his defense minister and the director of the Mossad stood at his side, similarly transfixed. A vehicle suddenly came racing out of the tunnel and into view. Naphtali’s pulse quickened, but it was not the hazmat truck. It was a military truck of some sort, and as quickly as it entered their field of vision, it was gone.

  “Can you zoom that image out a bit?” the PM asked. “Can we get a wider shot?”

  Dayan was holding a phone to his ear, a hotline connecting him directly to the Mossad operations center in Netanya, which was responsible for controlling the drone. He relayed the order, and within moments the shot widened. Another vehicle came into view, but this was not their truck either. This was an ambulance, its lights flashing, clearly racing to the scene of another emergency.

  “What’s going on?” Naphtali asked. “Why’s it taking so long?”

  “Patience, sir,” said Shimon. “We’ll see the truck at any moment.”

  But they waited a few moments more, and no more vehicles came through.

  “Something’s wrong,” said Dayan.

  “No, Zvi—quiet—everything is fine,” Shimon insisted. “Please, everyone, we must—”

  But before he could finish his sentence, the bright-yellow hazmat truck came barreling out of the tunnel.

  “There!” Shimon shouted. “That’s it—that’s our target!”

  Sure enough, it had Unit 19 painted on the roof in large black letters. All eyes turned to Naphtali, who didn’t hesitate.

  “Take them out,” the prime minister ordered.

  Dayan immediately relayed the order to the Mossad’s director of operations, who instantly relayed it to the drone controller.

  Naphtali could see what looked like a bolt of lightning flash from the bottom of the screen. That was the missile with the Mahdi’s name on it, and Naphtali watched it streak downward toward the hazmat truck, and suddenly the truck was no more. The screen erupted with fire and smoke. Through the haze, he could see tires go flying and large chunks of the engine and the chassis soaring in all directions. He could also make out the outlines of five burning and motionless bodies. And then he saw a sixth figure trying to crawl through the raging inferno, trying to make it to safety, but in less than a minute, that one stopped moving as well.

  But Naphtali could not cheer. He was grateful to have taken out the Mahdi, but he was by
no means certain this war was really over. Then something in him tensed. His body grew strangely cold, and at first he had no idea why. He stared at the screen while others slapped each other’s backs in congratulations. He took a step closer to the screen, increasingly oblivious to the celebration going on around him. Naphtali turned his head and looked closer at the flickering images on the monitors, and then he turned to Dayan and asked him to order the controller to zoom in further.

  “Why?” the Mossad chief asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Just have them zoom in,” Naphtali said, praying he wasn’t seeing what he thought he was seeing.

  Dayan relayed the order, and a moment later the controller got the word and the image began to zoom in.

  “What’s going on?” Shimon asked, noticing Naphtali’s rapidly rising discomfort.

  “That one,” Naphtali said finally, pointing to the body of the figure that had been crawling. “Zoom in on that one.”

  Dayan passed his order along and then stepped closer to the monitor as well.

  “There, in the left hand,” said the prime minister. “What is that?”

  The room was growing quiet now as everyone noticed Naphtali wasn’t reacting as they were and as everyone’s eyes focused on the screen where he was focused.

  And then Naphtali gasped. “That’s a toy,” he said. “That’s a little girl, holding a toy—a doll. Look, none of them are men, except for the driver. They’re all children. They’re all little girls.”

  Zvi Dayan paled and sank into a chair. “What have we done?”

  33

  TEHRAN, IRAN

  David ordered the two Israelis to stay quiet and directed his men to keep their weapons trained on them. Then he headed down the hall to the bedroom.

  “What’ve you got?” he asked as he reached Fox.

  “Boss, we’ve hit the mother lode,” Fox replied, hunched over Omid’s laptop.

  Keeping his voice low so the Israelis wouldn’t overhear them, Fox explained that he had already bypassed the computer’s multiple layers of security and was now downloading the entire hard drive. Then he pointed to the text on the screen, whispering that this was the file on which Omid had most recently been working.

  David was stunned. Before him was a detailed security plan to quietly move Omid’s father, General Mohsen Jazini, from the IRGC command center in Tehran to the Tabriz Air Base. When David scrolled down a few pages, he found that the plan then involved moving the general from Tabriz to a Syrian military base on the outskirts of Damascus. The plan included maps, routes of travel, backup routes, the types of vehicles they were using (including a brief explanation of why it would be better to use Red Crescent ambulances than military vehicles), license plate numbers, names of all the security men that would be assigned to Jazini, and satphone numbers of the key people involved in the operation.

  When David had finished skimming this document, Fox opened another recently updated file, revealing a memo written by Jazini to his security team explaining that they were to work closely with a Syrian general named Hamdi to set up an operations center capable of coordinating IRGC actions and directing the launch of short-range ballistic missiles.

  As David kept reading, his mouth grew dry. The memo explained that at least one of the two remaining nuclear warheads would be taken to this new operations center, attached to a ballistic missile, and then fired at Israel from Syria. Toward the end, there was a cryptic reference to a “special guest” that would be arriving at the Syrian base shortly and that everything must be done to be ready for that guest, though Jazini didn’t explain who or what the guest was. Was he referring to an actual person, David wondered, or to the warhead itself? He glanced at his colleague, but Fox just shrugged.

  “How fast can you upload all this to Langley?” David whispered.

  “I can’t do it from here,” Fox replied. “I mean, I could, but it wouldn’t be secure. We really need to take this back to the safe house and send it from there.”

  “Then let’s get moving,” David said.

  HIGHWAY 77, NORTHERN IRAN

  In his heart, Daryush Rashidi was stunned and relieved by how effective their plan had been so far.

  With the help of Allah, Rashidi had gotten the Twelfth Imam safely out of Tehran. They were now heading north on a highway that was nearly deserted of all traffic. They were far from any military bases or places of interest to Israeli or American satellites or spies. If everything worked as planned and they didn’t encounter any significant delays, he would have the Mahdi out of the country and sitting with the Pakistani president in the next few hours. Yet suddenly the Mahdi became enraged.

  “How could this have happened?” he fumed. “How could the filthy Jews have known where I was?”

  Rashidi was about to respond, but the Mahdi continued his rant, his face flushed with anger.

  “This is a major breach of security. I was told my departure would be secret. I was told all of my travel plans would be kept secret. Only a handful of people knew what was happening. But the Zionists knew. And if they knew I was leaving the airport command post in that fire truck, what else do they know? Who is leaking this information? Who is the mole in our operation? There is a traitor in our midst, and when I find him, he will burn in the fires of hell for all eternity.”

  Rashidi was aghast. He wanted to remind the Mahdi that General Jazini’s plan had anticipated the possibility of an Israeli drone picking up the Mahdi’s trail at the airport and following the fire trucks into the city. That was precisely why Jazini had planned for the switch in the Tohid Tunnel. That was precisely why the school bus had been waiting for them. Jazini’s plan had accounted for everything, and it had worked brilliantly. The Mahdi’s life had been spared. The Israelis had killed the five schoolgirls instead. The international media was going to have a field day with that. Israel was about to pay dearly in the court of public opinion. How could the Mahdi be angry with any of that? Yet he was. He was raging at both Rashidi and the head of his security detail, but neither man dared answer any of the Mahdi’s questions. Answering any of them, Rashidi realized, was a fool’s errand and possibly a death sentence. So they endured the ferocious tongue-lashing the Mahdi was spewing forth and tried their best not to make eye contact.

  In the end, one practical decision actually emerged from the Mahdi’s rant, but even that made little sense to Rashidi. The Mahdi was suddenly intensely suspicious that the Israelis might somehow be intercepting their supposedly secure satphone calls. Thus, the Mahdi said, he would no longer be using any of the phones they had with them. Instead, he said Rashidi would now communicate the Mahdi’s instructions to his key lieutenants and then carefully pass their messages back to him. The Mahdi was adamant on the point, but why? If the satphones had really been compromised as the Mahdi suggested, why should any of them be used? Shouldn’t all the satphones be discarded? How would it really help to have Rashidi tell people that he was giving direct instructions from the Mahdi? Why would people believe him? And if the Israelis were listening, they weren’t really going to be fooled, were they?

  Still, Rashidi was as certain the satphones were not compromised as the Mahdi now seemed certain that they were. The problem, Rashidi believed, was that the Mahdi had never met Reza Tabrizi. He didn’t know what a fine and devout Twelver Reza was, how committed he was to their cause, and how trustworthy Reza was as a result. Rashidi was sure that if the Mahdi met Reza and began to get to know this faithful Muslim foot soldier the way he did, the Mahdi’s fears would be relieved.

  TEHRAN, IRAN

  David ordered Torres and Crenshaw to get the Israelis downstairs and into the van while Fox finished downloading the hard drive. Meanwhile, he filled a duffel bag with Omid’s mobile phone, wallet, ID badge, calendar, and various files. Then he photographed every room in the apartment and soon found himself in Omid’s walk-in closet. Hanging there were a half-dozen IRGC uniforms, all freshly laundered and neatly pressed. On the floor lay three pairs of freshly polished
black boots. David pondered that for a moment. These could come in handy, he decided, and he quickly found a suitcase to load them all into.

  Five minutes later, they were ready to go. David radioed Zalinsky and gave him a quick update on what they’d found and why they were heading back to the safe house. Zalinsky agreed and urged David to get back to Karaj as fast as possible while he worked with the Global Ops Center staff to figure out what to do with the Israelis and also tried to come up with a way to get David and his team to Damascus.

  NORTHWESTERN IRAN

  Birjandi was still trying to imagine why on earth the Twelfth Imam wanted to see him at all, much less now, in the middle of a war the Iranians seemed to be losing. Did the Mahdi and the others at the top know about his conversion to Christianity? Were they watching his house? Were they listening to his conversations? Did they know of the young men he was discipling and their decision to renounce Islam and follow Jesus? Were Ibrahim, Ali, and the others about to be rounded up and martyred?

  Birjandi was ready to suffer and die for Christ. Indeed, he was old and tired and eager to leave this corrupt world behind. He longed to enter eternity and be in the presence of his Lord and Savior, to be healed of his blindness, to really see Jesus face-to-face, to really hear his voice and worship at his feet. The truth was, Birjandi dreamed about it more and more. He couldn’t wait to get home to glory, where he not only would be with the Lord but would finally be reunited with his beloved wife, Souri, who had already been called home to heaven and was waiting for him there. What had she experienced already? He longed to see her face and hear her voice and walk with her hand in hand. He yearned to worship Jesus at her side and to find out everything she had learned about the Lord in the time that they had been apart.

  But as ready as he was, he couldn’t help but wonder if these young men he’d been investing in were really ready to be tortured and executed for their faith in Christ. Would they hold up under such pressure, or would one—or all—crack and deny Christ rather than face execution? He loved them dearly, and he was deeply impressed by their hunger for the Word of God and their passion to share their faith. They had already taken bold, daring risks for the sake of the gospel. But were they truly ready for martyrdom? They said they were, but Birjandi was not yet certain.