by Jack Mars
The pit in Swann’s stomach deepened.
“Break him out? Luke—”
“Swann! I don’t want a lecture, okay? When you were captured in Syria, we came and got you, and everybody was trying to give us a lecture. This is a good kid. He’s on the team. We’re going to get him out.”
There was a long pause over the line. Swann pictured himself relaying this information to the White House. With missile systems everywhere on red alert, Luke Stone was going to go rescue someone.
“Here’s what I need from you guys,” Luke said. “Any chatter at all about a new foreign prisoner. Could be Iranian government networks, could be Shiite terror networks, anything. He was captured early this morning at the Grand Bazaar, before it opened. Maybe Trudy can find out where they normally take captured spies.”
“Got it,” Swann said.
“Now the hard part,” Luke said, and Swann rolled his eyes. “I need to know exactly where he is. The location, the exact building, the room number on the door. If he’s being transported, I need the vehicle description, the route, the license plate number, the name of the driver and his home address.”
“Luke, I don’t even speak Farsi.”
“I’m not asking you to do it, Swann. I’m asking you to get it done. Use our resources back home. Borrow people from the CIA. Commandeer a spy satellite. Put a hundred analysts on it. Just find me the kid, okay? I’ll do the rest.”
“Okay, Luke,” Swann said. “Okay.”
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
11:05 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
The Situation Room
The White House, Washington, DC
“Military base Parchin is a confirmed nuclear missile site,” said the disembodied voice coming through the black speakerphone console in the center of the conference table. The voice was that of Mark Swann, the data analyst on Stone’s team. He was calling them from a hotel room in Israel.
Susan was beyond tired now.
She couldn’t remember ever seeing the Situation Room this crowded. There were at least fifty people packed inside. The walls were lined with chairs, each chair with a person on it, and an aide or two aides standing nearby. The young aides were typing into their tablets, or scribbling furiously into notepads.
The conference table was littered with coffee cups and empty plastic takeout containers. It looked like a war zone. Every seat at the table was taken. Susan was at the head of the table, Kat Lopez crouched next to her. There was a steady hubbub of noise, the low background hum of whispered conversations. There was also a smell in the room—the smell of people who had been on the job for sixteen hours without a shower.
Stone had resurfaced again, with a lot more intelligence to offer this time. It had set off a frenzy, as staff from the White House, the Pentagon, and the spy agencies scrambled to make sense of it.
The fact that Stone had resurfaced made Susan want to vomit with relief.
Kurt Kimball stood in front of a screen at the other end of the table. He was in his shirt sleeves. The dress shirt was too small for his big chest and arms.
“Reconfirmed,” Kurt said. “You already confirmed Parchin before.”
Over the speakerphone, a woman’s voice said something in the background. Swann hesitated. Was that the voice of the infamous Trudy Wellington? Susan imagined it was—she knew Trudy was going on this trip with them. Thankfully, Stone hadn’t tried to hide it.
Trudy probably didn’t want to call any attention to herself, being a former enemy of the state and fugitive from justice.
“Reconfirmed, but changed,” Swann said. “The previous data was that the missiles were clustered in one section of the base. We believe that was a ruse. You need to hit the enter base. Repeat, the missiles are salted throughout the base—to get them all, you have to take out the enter base.”
That set off a burst of chatter.
Kurt raised his big hands, looking for quiet.
“That’s a large base,” General Kirby said. “It’ll be tough to take out the whole thing.”
Susan looked at him. “Aren’t you the same General Kirby who was calling for massive strikes earlier tonight?”
Kirby shook his head. “Susan, there is a very big difference between precision strikes and massive, preemptive ones. You’re calling for precision strikes, but at the same time you want to take out one of the largest military bases in Iran. If you want to do that, you have to go in with overwhelming force.”
Susan shook her head. At some point, she was going to get through an entire day without a man lecturing her. She didn’t know when it would be, but on that day she was going to bake herself a cake.
“If we need to take out an entire base, General, we will do that. Without resorting to sending in our entire air force.”
“Can I continue?” Swann said over the speaker. “I’ve got other things to do. You might want to let me get through everything, and then argue about it.”
“Please,” Kurt said. “Continue.”
“Isfahan enrichment facility, due south of the capital. Confirmed.”
Another burst of chatter went around the room.
Kurt clapped his hands. CLAP. CLAP. “People! Agent Swann has a hot date. So let him get to it. Take your notes. If you have questions, raise them formally to the group. Don’t waste time talking to each other.”
“At least six warheads at Isfahan, silos arranged in a rough semicircle a few miles south and west of the main facility. One hundred and eight meters deep. I believe I have found surface evidence of at least three of these silos from satellite data. I’m uploading that to you now—the silos are marked in red in the second image. I think your analysts can probably extrapolate the other locations from these.”
“Good. Amy?”
Kurt’s assistant, Amy, sat near him at the far end of the table. “It’s coming in. One more minute.”
“Isfahan is deep in-country,” a woman in military dress greens said.
“Yes,” Kirby said. “But six silos right near each other are perfect for a precision strike. One sortie can take the whole thing, especially at that depth. A second can go in for insurance.”
“If they make it that far,” the woman said.
“Next,” Kurt said. “Next!”
“Bushehr,” Swann said. “Debunked.”
Another swell of chatter. To Susan, Kurt looked like he wanted to bite someone’s head off.
“It’s a decoy,” Swann said. “They were never able to build nukes there. The source claims that the nukes are instead at Bandar Abbas military base, well to the east of there, also on the Persian Gulf. This is a new suspected location—it was not part of Israeli intelligence. These missiles are in shallow silos at the east and west sides of the base. I believe these are easy to see from satellite data. Your own analysts should be able to scroll back through years of data and…”
“Yes,” Kurt said. “See the progression of the silos, before they were built and after.”
“Right,” Swann said.
“Anything else?”
“Suspected, not confirmed,” Swann said. “Khojir National Park, just east of Tehran. In the mountains, possibly near the Tochal ski resort.”
There was quiet in the room, finally.
“Amy?” Kurt said.
On the screen behind Kurt, and on screens throughout the room, a large green mass appeared, east of the capital city of Tehran. It was at least as large as the city. Amy zoomed in on an area in the southeast section of the park. Tochal.
“That’s it?” Kurt said.
Swann was noncommittal. “That’s what the man said, apparently. I’ve looked at satellite data, but I don’t personally see anything on the surface worth reporting. It’s a big area.”
“Who is the man?” General Kirby said.
“His name is Siavash Zadeh,” Swann said. “He’s considered the father of the Iranian nuclear weapons program.”
“Did he give more detail about the location?” Kurt said.
“He
doesn’t know anymore. He said it happened before his time.”
“I know about Zadeh,” Kurt said. “The man is in his seventies. Before his time was fifty years ago.”
“Yes.”
“Are you saying there are fifty-year-old nuclear weapons buried somewhere in an Iranian national park?”
“I’m saying that’s the rumor.”
“Who put them there?” Kurt said.
“We did,” Swann said. “The CIA. To target the Soviets, if you believe rumors.”
The burst of chatter now was more of a wave, rising, rising, reaching a crescendo, before breaking and then rising again. The idea of American ballistic missiles, nuclear weapons, sitting quietly underground for half a century, while Iran transformed from a secular ally to a theocratic enemy dominated by mullahs… well, that got people talking.
“Where is Stone now?” Kurt shouted.
Susan leaned in to hear the answer. It sounded garbled, drowned out by the talking in the room.
“Shut up!” she shouted before she realized what she was doing. “Everybody! Please shut up!”
The room instantly went silent. The President of the United States had just shouted for everyone to shut up. The stricken faces around the room suggested that nothing like that had ever happened before.
“I’m trying to listen to the intelligence report,” she said.
“Agent Stone is in hiding inside Tehran. They lost one member of the team—the Israeli member. He was captured by the Iranians. Agent Stone and Agent Newsam intend to go back for him.”
“Uh, negative,” Kurt said. “If Agent Stone is still operational, we’re going to need him to go to Khojir National Park and confirm the existence of those weapons. That is a civilian facility. We need to know, before any strike, if the weapons are really there. We also need to know where.”
“Can’t you find that out by having people with high-level clearances go back through old top secret documents from the CIA?” Swann said.
“We may be able to, we may not. That could take days. Also, we might be able to determine a location or locations, but if the CIA was really involved, there may be decoy sites. There probably will. We are still going to need eyes on the ground to confirm.”
Over the phone, the entire room could hear Swann’s sigh.
“I’ll tell him.”
“Swann?” Kurt said. “Tell him it’s a direct order from the President of the United States.”
“I’ll do that,” Swann said. “And I’m sure it will work. I’ve never known Agent Stone to disobey a direct order before.”
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
7:20 a.m. Tehran Time (11:20 p.m. Eastern Standard Time)
Near the Grand Bazaar
Tehran, Iran
Hide in plain sight.
They hadn’t gotten very far. Not far at all. But staying close was better than running in the open, especially when everyone was looking for them, especially when they had no idea where they were going.
They were in an old warehouse diagonally across an old plaza from the Grand Bazaar. There were tapestries and rugs piled in here, but it looked like no one had used this place in years. The tapestries were worn and eaten through. The rugs were in huge piles. Everything was covered in dust.
Ed leaned against the wall near a window smeared with soot. He watched the streets outside, the bazaaris still bringing their wares, early customers starting to arrive. The police were out there, too. Dozens of them. Military vehicles went shrieking by from time to time.
Ed’s pistol was drawn. The M79 was slung over his back.
“You know, the Bazaar looks like it’s seen better days,” he said.
“Everybody shops uptown now,” Luke said. “You go to the north end of the city, it’s all malls, expensive restaurants, beauty salons. Tehran is going high end, high-tech, cosmopolitan. It was already going that way the last time I was here. Old Tehran is slowly being forgotten.”
“They still torture people, though,” Ed said.
“Some things never go out of style.”
Luke sat on a dirty bench, waiting for the phone to ring. Trudy and Swann were going to find them the kid. He knew that was true. Then they were going to call here with the information. This phone wasn’t going to be cooked just yet, and the cops weren’t going to come tumbling in here the instant Swann called.
Ed shook his head. “He shouldn’t have done that, man.”
“He did it to save us,” Luke said.
“Misguided. We all could have made it.”
“No we couldn’t,” Luke said, looking at him. “You know that.”
Ed frowned in acknowledgment. As much as he clearly hated to admit it, Ed would be dead right now if it weren’t for that kid. Not only that, but the kid had saved Ed twice. Of all people, it had been the kid. That arrogant, annoying, loud-mouthed Israeli kid whom Ed had hated at first.
And as much as Ed hated to admit it even more, he had taken a liking to that kid. Ed didn’t do that easily. That kid had sacrificed himself for him. And in Ed’s eyes, that had made him a brother for life.
Now a brother of his had been taken. And Ed never left a brother behind.
Ed clenched his jaw and bunched and unbunched his fists.
Once they got free from the Bazaar, they never considered for a moment leaving the kid behind. There was no way they were leaving without him. He was on the team.
“If those guys find out he’s an Israeli…” Ed said.
Luke nodded. “I know it.”
“How long you think it will take to break him?” Ed asked.
“I don’t know. Depends on what they do. He seems pretty tough, but you know the deal. When they really get to work, it doesn’t take long.”
Ed nodded. “I know.” He paused. He looked back at Luke.
“Is Swann going to call, or am I gonna have to go back to Tel Aviv and press his fingers to the keypad?”
Just like that, the phone started to beep.
“Speak of the devil,” Luke said. “Watch for any activity. If this phone is burnt, we need to know that.”
Ed nodded and looked back out the window. “Got it.”
Luke pressed the green button.
“Yes.”
Swann launched in without preamble. He spoke without revealing anything specific. He must have been worried about the phone as well. If Swann was worried, that was a bad sign.
“Here’s the deal. I called them. Got right to the top. They were very interested in what you had to say. They told me negative on the retrieval. Negative. Do not do it. They need you to stand by. There’s going to be more coming from them in a little while. They want you to take a walk in the park and find something they lost a long time ago. They can’t remove it unless you find it.”
Luke didn’t say anything. He let all that sink in. They wanted Luke and Ed to go find the nukes near the ski resort. How were they supposed to do that?
“That comes straight from the person in charge,” Swann said.
“The man or the woman?”
“The woman.”
He pictured Susan sauntering to her closet the morning he left, while he sprawled out on the bed. She must be pulling her hair out by now worrying about him. That, and she needed to handle all these other little details, like when to call in massive air strikes and spark a nuclear war.
“Did you get me what I asked for?” he said.
There was long pause over the line.
“Swann?”
“Yes. We did.”
“Tell me.”
“We’re going to burn this thing, if it isn’t cooked already.”
“I don’t care,” Luke said. “I need it, so give it to me.”
“Okay,” Swann said. “I’ll go as fast as I can. Trudy pulled up some intelligence on an old police precinct house on the far southeastern edge of the city. “Police Precinct Thirteen. It hasn’t been a precinct house in twenty years or more. It’s a notorious torture spot. They bring detainees there who they d
on’t plan on logging into the system.”
Luke listened, said nothing. They were going to bleed Ari for whatever they could get out of him, then they were going to toss him away like a used rag. He might hold up for a while, he might not. The Iranians probably wouldn’t even care. God help him.
An image came to mind. The Iranian scientist in Evin Prison—ragged, emaciated, shivering, broken, and asking to die.
“What else?” Luke said.
“I got some satellite data over the past several hours. Nothing consistent, but there has been activity—a van pulled in there soon after you called, then left again five minutes later. I’m looking at the building now, real time, probably a one-minute delay with all the bouncing around I’m doing with these signals. The skies have cleared and I have a nice shot of it. The place is pretty run down, like no one has been in there in years, but there are four cars parked in a lot behind the building. There’s a security fence, with a guy who opens it and closes it manually. A black Mercedes limousine pulled in there a little while ago, and a man went into the building surrounded by bodyguards. Looked like somebody important. I can’t guarantee anything, but I’m going to guess that’s where he is. Trudy says she would swear by it.”
“Put her on.”
A moment passed, then her deep, feminine voice was there.
“Luke?”
“Give me the scenario, your entire reasoning, in thirty seconds or less. If we guess wrong here, the whole thing goes up in flames.”
“They took him there,” Trudy said simply. “The timing is perfect. It’s close by. There’s activity onsite. What Swann didn’t tell you is satellite data suggests no one has even gone inside that building in the past three weeks. Suddenly people are there? Data from CIA, Mossad, ISI, MI6, and NSA-captured transmissions all indicate the place is used for torture and elimination of special prisoners. It’s a disappearance center. That’s the only reason it’s ever used. They have a special prisoner, a foreign spy, right when they’re on the verge of a nuclear war. Where are they going to take him? To a real jail? I don’t think so.”
