by Jack Mars
Kurt nodded. “We’re flying fighter patrols at the edge of Iranian airspace in the Gulf, over Iraq, over Turkey, and over Afghanistan. The Pakistanis will not let us fly patrols—they want to stay neutral. We are coming into contact with Iranian fighter planes, but nothing has happened. It’s tense up there.”
Susan was revealing too much, but to hell with it—she was going to do it anyway.
“Any way to get a helicopter in there?”
Kurt barely moved. Clearly, he knew what she was doing and at this point he was resigned to it. “I don’t know. Maybe. If we had an Iranian helicopter, painted in their colors, and brought it in over the mountains from the Caspian Sea, as though it were coming in from a patrol. That might work. Not sure who would be crazy enough to try it, though. I wouldn’t give anyone that order.”
Kirby waved his hands. “Never mind all that. Agent Stone volunteered for this mission. He knew what he was getting himself into.”
He looked at Susan. “Are you ready, Madam President?”
“Ready for what, General?”
“We have a confirmed nuclear weapons site in Iran. They have abrogated their responsibilities under every existing international treaty.”
“We have one confirmed missile site, General.”
He nodded. “That’s right. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s all we need. We are well within our rights now to hit them with everything we’ve got.”
“Everything, General?”
“Everything.”
He looked around the room, taking Kurt, Amy, and Haley Lawrence in with his suddenly steely gaze. He was a hard man, Susan decided. There was no compassion in his eyes.
After a long moment, those hard eyes found their way back to Susan.
“Let’s face it, President Hopkins. It’s go time.”
“General, I like your enthusiasm. And as much as I appreciate your eagerness to ignite a nuclear apocalypse in the Middle East, which we’ve all learned will likely cause the mass starvation, sickness, and deaths of millions around the world, I’d ask you to let me be the judge of when go time is.”
She looked up at Kurt.
“Kurt, any chance you can contact the Special Response Team? Maybe some people there wouldn’t mind volunteering to risk their own lives, go in and save their beloved boss from himself.”
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
December 15
5:05 a.m. (9:05 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on December 14)
Jameh Mosque of the Believers
Tehran, Iran
It was a cold morning, the pale sun just beginning to rise over the city.
The morning call to prayer echoed from loudspeakers throughout the city. Three women draped in conservative Islamic dress, their heads and faces covered, moved slowly through the alleys and narrow streets, the masculine, but high nasal call of the muezzin everywhere at once.
Two of the women were quite tall, unusually so for women. The third was a giant among men or women—tall, strikingly broad, from a lost race of dark Amazons. Chewbacca in a burqa.
From under one of the gowns, Luke glanced up at the small speaker mounted on a wooden pole above his head. The sound of the call to prayer was evocative for him—there was nothing quite like it.
He hadn’t slept, and so he had swallowed the pill about twenty minutes ago. It was just starting to hit his bloodstream now.
He could feel the changes happening. His heart rate was up. His vision was sharper. His mind was more alert. Before, he had been asleep on his feet. Now he was awake. He was confident. He was eager for information. These were the same feelings a normal person might get from a strong cup of coffee, only vastly exaggerated.
Dexies. They’d been Luke’s friend for a long time.
Around them, more and more people joined their procession. Many of the women, the young ones especially, were dressed in much more modern style—a simple dark hijab covered their heads, and their faces were not covered. They wore heavy jackets because of the weather, slacks, even Western makeup.
The most obvious thing about the Iranian men, no matter how they dressed, was how much smaller they were than the three conservative women. This illusion of being Muslim women was not going to hold up for long.
“Are we close?” Luke whispered.
Ari nodded beneath his covering. “I think so. Another short block, maybe.”
“How’s your shoulder?”
Ari shrugged. “Ed tells me it’s a little sore.”
The alley wound its way to the right, and again the gold dome appeared in front of them. People flowed through a set of gates and into the main entrance. Just before the gates, streams of people entered from adjoining alleys on the right and left.
The three of them entered the surge of humanity, everyone moving slowly now, wall-to-wall people, white plumes of breath rising in the air. Effortlessly, the women and men segregated themselves, the men heading to the wide entryway straight ahead, the women veering to a narrower doorway on the left.
Luke, Ed, and Ari followed the women’s line, truly dwarfing everyone now. A young woman glanced at them, then looked forward. An older woman, dressed in black, but with her face showing, also looked at them. Then looked away.
It wasn’t polite to stare.
They climbed a short flight of stairs, and they were inside the building. Immediately, Ari nudged Luke. To their left, there was a rounded flight of stairs, very narrow, headed down. Luke, in turn, nudged Ed. They all turned, ducked their heads beneath the low ceiling, and went down the stairs.
The stairs led them to a low hallway beneath the mosque. The followed it, looking for somewhere to duck inside. At the end of the hall, they came to a room, all in white. They stepped inside.
A man was here. He was an old man with a white beard, wearing flowing white robes. He almost seemed to shimmer, like an Old Testament figure brought to life. His white walking staff leaned against the wall. He seemed to be going through deep-breathing exercises, perhaps preparing himself to lead the large congregation massing above his head.
He turned, startled, when they entered.
“Who told you to come in here?” he snapped. Luke’s Farsi, rusty as it had been when they entered the country, was beginning to improve. He understood the man right away.
“Jesus told us,” he said.
The man’s eyebrows rose at the masculine voice coming from beneath the abaya. His eyes strayed to a red button, almost like a plunger, coming out from the wall several feet from him. An alarm, Luke supposed. It was too far for him to easily reach. He would have to dive for it. Luke calmly walked over and positioned himself between the man and the button.
“Siavash Zadeh?” Luke said.
“They call me Ali Mohammed Tehrani. I am the religious leader of this mosque.”
“But you were known as Zadeh, the nuclear physicist?”
The man shrugged. “Of course. In another life.”
“The father of the Iranian nuclear program?” Ari said.
“That’s going too far,” Zadeh said. “The program is a bastard. It has no one father. No one would ever want to claim such a thing as their own.” He gazed at the three men, eyes lingering on the sheer size, and potential brute force, concealed beneath Ed’s abaya. “And you are… what? Men dressed as women? Assassins come to kill me?”
Suddenly, the red alarm button made a great deal of sense. This man spent his life waiting for the other shoe to drop. He was old, but he didn’t want to die. The list of people who might kill him, or kidnap him for his knowledge, was long. The Americans might want him, or the Israelis. The Saudis? Almost certainly. Wouldn’t they want a nuclear weapons program of their own? The Pakistani ISI? Sure. The Russians might be curious about him, or any number of terrorist organizations that would want to unlock the secrets inside his brain. The Iranians themselves might decide it was too much trouble to allow him to continue living.
Who would come if that red button were pressed? The guardians of the mosque? The guardians
of the imam himself? Luke pictured giant men with broad chests, wearing turbans and a sash across their upper bodies, wielding scimitars.
Wrong movie.
“We’re not assassins,” Ari said.
Luke glanced at him. That’s exactly what Ari was. Luke half-expected him to pull his gun and shoot the white-bearded Zadeh in the head.
“We’re here to ask you some questions.”
“My flock awaits me upstairs.”
“They can wait. This should only take a few moments.”
Zadeh eyed that button again. He nodded.
“Remove your veils so I can see who I am dealing with. Then ask.”
Luke removed his veil, as did Ed and Ari.
Zadeh’s eyes moved back and forth.
“I will guess one large American, one very large American, and an Israelite. Unbelievers all. How did I do?”
Luke brushed that off. “Where are the nuclear missiles?”
Zadeh shook his head. “Why would I tell you that? Why would I tell any man?”
“To save your country,” Luke said. “To save millions of people, including eighty million Iranians. If your government launches those missiles, what do you think Israel will do? What do you think the United States will do? No one here will survive. There will be a black burnt cinder on the map where it used to say Iran.”
Zadeh shrugged. “The same could be said of Israel.”
“Will that matter? When all of your people are dead, will it matter that your enemies are also dead? Are they even your enemies?”
Zadeh said nothing.
A thought came to Luke, an argument, a way forward. “What did Abu Bakr command?” he said, referencing the successor to the Prophet Muhammad. “He said, ‘Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire. Slay not your enemy’s flock, except for food.’ Nuclear weapons do all of these things. They’re against Islamic law. You know this is true.”
The old man stared at him.
So did Ed.
“Where do get this stuff, man?”
Luke looked at Ed. “I read.”
“I didn’t even know you could read.”
“And yet Christian law and Jewish law have no such prohibitions?” Zadeh said. “How convenient for all of you.”
Luke turned back to the old man. Something else occurred to him then. There was more going on here than met the eye. The college professor, Ashgar Nasiri, had been wrong about his former boss. Zadeh hadn’t become an imam, and dove headfirst into religion, to keep the government from killing him. The government of Iran didn’t care who they killed, and they made no apologies for killing people.
If they wanted to kill an imam, they would find a reason why he was an apostate. If he was too popular to arrest and execute, or if he followed Islamic law to the letter and couldn’t be accused of heresy, they would kill him in some other way. Poison his food. Have him murdered in a robbery gone wrong. Inject amphetamine between his toes and have eyewitnesses watch him die of a heart attack. Being religious was no protection from the government in this country.
“Why did you become an imam?” Luke said. “After a long career in nuclear science, technology, weaponry…” Luke indicated the man’s robes, the spare room, the mosque above their heads.
“Why all this?”
Zadeh stared at him for a long moment.
“You are wise, my friend. You see things that others do not see.”
“Tell me,” Luke said.
“You already know. I did it to seek Allah’s forgiveness. To lead people into the light. To find some way to peace. My God is merciful. I am quite certain that the Perfect One does not agree with nuclear weapons. I am sure that He weeps to think of his beloved children creating such things. They are not a gift. They are a curse.”
He looked at Ari. “Only the accursed should wield them.”
Ari shrugged. “You will get no argument from me.”
“What will you do?” Zadeh said to Luke. “If I tell you the locations?”
Luke didn’t hesitate. “Destroy them.”
“Can you be sure?”
“We can’t be sure of anything. All we can do is try.”
Zadeh nodded. “I’ve waited years for someone to come to me and tell me they were going to destroy the weapons. I’ve prayed for it in the night so many times that I’ve lost count. But don’t tell me you will try. I didn’t pray for someone to try.”
“We’ll destroy them,” Ed said. “I’ve never tried to do anything in my life.”
“You tried to knock me out with one punch,” Ari said.
“No, I didn’t. I tried to get your attention, and it worked. If I tried to knock you out, you’d still be sleeping.”
The old man sighed. A long silence followed as his eyes glazed over, and something inside him seemed to shift.
Finally, he looked right at Luke.
“Remember these names. Parchin. There are at least eight functional missiles there, deep underground. Possibly ten missiles now. You must destroy the entire military base, because some of the missiles are not real. Many people think the missiles are in the southwest corner of the facility. Many have seen those ones, all in one place. They are replicas. The missiles are spread in silos throughout the complex. To get them all, you must destroy the entire complex. It is very large, and many people are there. I’m afraid there will be grave loss of life.”
“What else?” Luke said.
“Fordo,” Zadeh said. “The enrichment facility there. It is our foremost enrichment facility. It must go. If it remains, they will simply begin the work again.”
Luke nodded. Now they had confirmation, from a second source, of what Nasiri had told them. He was very confident that both of these men were not lying. Their stories were even subtly different. Nasiri thought the grouped together missiles were the real ones.
“Are those all?”
Zadeh shook his head. “There is Isfahan, well to the south of here. It is an enrichment facility. There is one centrifuge there that can enrich weapons grade uranium. It is not as advanced as the facility at Fordo. It takes longer to enrich the material, and the results are not as pure. The warheads therefore are smaller, and less powerful. Those missiles, six that I know of, are deployed in deep silos very near to Isfahan. The warheads were moved on conveyer belts through small tunnels to their deployments. The silos make a rough semicircle to the south and west of the facility, each just a few miles away from the others. There is no secondary facility there—just the enrichment facility, and the silos. If you look closely with the most advanced satellite technology, you may notice minor disturbances in the dirt. Beneath those disturbances are iron bunker hatchways leading to the silos.
“You will have to hit those silos at the exact moment you attack Parchin. At each silo, teams of six men live in underground compartments, each taking eight-hour shifts. They are prepared to fire at any time, and independently of one another. It is a very deep secret. Only the designers of the project, and soldiers of the Revolutionary Guards, can be trusted with this information.”
Luke looked at Ari.
Ari nodded. “Yes. This was a suspected site.” He looked at Zadeh. “And what of Bushehr, on the Persian Gulf? Our intelligence estimates suggest that this—”
Zadeh shook his head. “It’s a decoy. We built many things there, all fake. It is a… do you know this phrase? Potemkin village? The enrichment facilities near there could not be made to produce the necessary material. It was obsolete technology. But we carried on building silos anyway, to frighten the Saudis. For a ballistic missile, it is a three-minute flight to Saudi territory from there. It is eight minutes to Riyadh.”
“There are no nuclear warheads at Bushehr?” Luke said.
“No. Not one. It’s not possible to build them there, and we cannot truck nuclear warheads overland. Too many eyes are watching.”
“Anywhere else?”
Zadeh hesitated.
“We h
ave to know,” Luke said. “There’s no sense telling us all that, but not telling us everything.”
“Bandar Abbas,” Zadeh said. “The navy base there has at least four nuclear missiles. They were purchased from North Korea and brought in by ship, perhaps because the centrifuges at Bushehr could not make weapons grade uranium.”
“Bandar Abbas?”
Zadeh nodded. “It is a two-minute missile flight to the American air base in Qatar from there. Ten thousand American soldiers, plus their families, all dead two minutes after the start of any war. It is the choke point of the Strait of Hormuz. Also, the Safaniya underwater oil fields of Saudi Arabia are very easy to hit. In fact, we calculated that launching just those four warheads could close the Persian Gulf to shipping for a hundred years. Thirty-five percent of the world’s oil passes through there, and ten percent of its natural gas.”
Luke stared at him.
“You Americans,” he said, “always wonder how long we could hold the Persian Gulf against you. In the event of an American attack, we don’t need to hold the Gulf. All we need to do is make it impossible for you to use it.”
“You would detonate nuclear weapons that close to your own territory? You would poison your own people, and destroy your own access to the Gulf?”
“It was for a worst-case scenario, when all else was lost.”
“How deep are the weapons buried?”
He shook his head. “Not deep at all. They are deployed on the eastern end of the base, just below the surface, not far from the football pitches. They are two miles from the town of Bandar Abbas proper.”
“That’s dangerous,” Luke said. “An attack on that base could destroy those nukes. You could have a civilian disaster there.”
“What you don’t seem to realize is that an attack there will trigger the launch of those weapons, as well as the ones at Parchin and Isfahan. An attack on the other missile sites will trigger the launch of the ones at Bandar Abbas. Like Parchin, it is a military base, not an isolated silo deep underground. They are constantly monitoring the military situation. They have access to instantaneous information. It will take a great deal of luck to destroy all of the missiles in this country, and not expect them to be launched. Any attack on Iran will cause a civilian disaster, not just at Bandar Abbas, but in Jerusalem, in Tel Aviv, in Baghdad, and in Riyadh. In many places.”
