by Jack Mars
The Iranian kid was pointing his gun at Ed and Ari again. Red mist appeared at the top of his head. His arms flopped up dramatically, and he flopped backward. It didn’t look real. Was he faking?
Luke leapt to his feet and slipped and slid over to him. He kicked the kid’s gun away, stepped on the wrist of his gun hand, and pointed the pistol at the kid’s head. Nothing. The eyes were blank. The mouth hung half open. A chunk of the head was missing at the top left corner. Not a great shot—another inch or two north, and Luke would have missed.
He felt all the air seeping out of him. It had been quite a night, and it was barely getting started.
Behind him, Ari had begun shouting. It sounded more like anger than pain.
“Ow! Dammit! Ow!”
“How is it?” Luke said. Behind him, the stairwell raged and boiled fire. It looked like something had caught down there. This was a science building—not good. They stored things in science buildings. Flammable things. Explosive things.
“He’s hit in the shoulder,” Ed said. “It’s pretty gruesome, but not the worst I’ve seen. Meanwhile, the Israeli here saved my life.”
“I couldn’t save your life, you idiot! You wouldn’t fall down.”
Ed shook his head. “One has nothing to do with the other. You took a bullet for me. You might have really saved my life. Now you’ve got a bro for life.”
“I’ve never been happier,” Ari said.
“How does it feel, Ari?” Luke said.
“It hurts. A lot. It’s not a clean wound. I think it took some bone. It’s going to get infected, if I don’t bleed out first.”
Ed laughed. “Nah. Once we’re inside somewhere, I’ll get that thing cleaned up, at least good enough until we can get to a hospital.”
Ari shook his head. “A hospital. Sure, let’s go sit in an emergency room for a few hours. You think they accept the Israeli healthcare card?”
Luke unclipped one of his pants pockets, slid the satellite phone out, and dialed Swann.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
10:55 p.m. Israel Time (11:55 p.m. Tehran Time, 3:55 p.m. Eastern Standard Time)
Tel Aviv, Israel
The satellite phone rang inside his headphones. He pressed the green button.
“Albert Helu,” he said.
“Swann, I don’t have time for that right now.”
Swann looked at Trudy, who stared at him from across the room.
“He’s alive,” Swann said.
“Who’s alive?” Luke said.
“You’re alive.”
“Yes, I’m alive. Ed’s alive. We’re all alive.”
“I was just telling Trudy.”
“Swann, shut up a second, okay? By the time you stop talking, we’re all going to be dead here.”
Swann looked at Trudy. “Okay, Luke.” He rolled his eyes. Luke was crazy, always had been, always would be. Trudy could certainly second that emotion.
“Can’t you put that thing on a speaker?” Trudy said.
Swann put a finger to his lips.
“I need to make a report. This is important. Forward this directly by the most secure means to the Situation Room at the White House. Two sites confirmed. First site. Uranium enrichment facility at Fordo, southeast of Tehran. They are making weapons grade materials there.”
“Luke…”
“Are you getting this?”
Swann’s fingers flew across the keyboard. “Fordo,” he said out loud. “Enrichment site, weapons grade, confirmed.”
Instantly, across the room, Trudy had her tablet out and was scrolling through it.
“Second site,” Luke said. “Parchin, east of Tehran. Military base. Confirmed, at least eight long-range missiles with nuclear warheads. One hundred eighty meters underground. Reachable target at that depth. Repeat…”
“Parchin, confirmed,” Swann said. “Eight warheads. One hundred eighty meters down.”
“At least eight,” Luke said.
“At least eight,” Swann parroted.
“There is a tunnel that runs underground from Fordo to Parchin. Confirmed. It is a four-lane highway, two lanes each direction. Satellites may be able to find evidence of it on the surface. Construction sites, a long restricted corridor, demolished or relocated residential areas, something.”
“What else?” Swann said.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing else? Luke, there’s two other suspected sites. We’ve got a ticking clock here.”
“I’m not on the clock, Swann.”
“Luke, there was an incident. A Navy destroyer took out six Iranian speedboats in the Persian Gulf. The captain thought it was a swarm attack. The Iranians say it was practice maneuvers. Everything is on the verge of blowing up.”
Swann could hear Luke’s heavy sigh bouncing off satellites and traveling all over the world.
“Swann, we’ve jumped off of hang gliders at over two thousand feet, broken into and out of a prison, killed at least eight men, and watched a fat college professor get blown away by a sniper. I am walking across the roof of a building that is on fire, and it’s snowing out. We are going as fast as we can.”
He paused, seemingly for breath. There was silence over the line.
“I need you to do something for me.”
“Tell me,” Swann said.
“Ali Mohammad Tehrani. He’s a Shiite imam. He runs a mosque in south Tehran somewhere. It’s near the Grand Bazaar. I need to know what the mosque is called, exactly where it is, and how we can get there from here. I need you to find a layout of it, and anything you can find on the personal habits of the imam. We need to see him, preferably without a lot of company.”
“Where are you now?” Swann said.
Luke sounded a touch breathless. “We were on the roof of a science building on the main campus of the University of Tehran. We just jumped an alleyway. We’re moving away from campus toward the east.”
“Okay,” Swann said. “I need to call you back. We’ll get you everything.”
“Good,” Luke said. “And Swann?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t make me call you back this time.”
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
December 15
2:15 a.m. (6:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on December 14)
Amir Abad Neighborhood
Tehran, Iran
“The man’s real name is Siavash Zadeh,” Trudy’s voice said in his ear. “Prominent nuclear physicist turned religious authority. Seventy-four years old.”
Luke sat on the floor of a narrow stone balcony, his back against the brickwork. He was invisible here, pressed into a corner in the dark, two stories above a narrow alleyway lined with shabby tenements, the last vestiges of old Tehran.
The night was quiet. The temperature had dropped, and the last of the snow was drifting down in big fat flakes. The balcony was an inch deep in ice.
“Okay,” Luke whispered. No one knew he was here. No sense jeopardizing that arrangement.
“His mosque is called Jameh Mosque of the Believers.”
He liked to listen to Trudy’s voice. It had a calm, musical, very feminine tone that reminded him of home. He made a resolution—if he ever got out of here, he would never try to teach her another thing.
He sighed. He was tired, wrung through. And he was a long way from anything like home. They were hunted men now. Security was tight. It would be hard to leave the country even if they wanted to, even if Luke could tolerate a job half done.
“It’s become a popular mosque, often attracting hundreds of people for morning prayers. People attribute that to the popularity of Zadeh himself, and his natural way of making the lessons of the Quran accessible to people from all walks of life. He affects a look like an ancient holy man, or a wizard—he has a long white beard, wears white flowing robes, and carries a white walking staff.”
“Yes,” Luke said. He was almost falling asleep out here in the snow.
“Do you want me to tell you how to get there?”
He shook his head. “No. You better tell Ari. He knows this town way better than I do, or than Ed. Hold on.”
Luke slid through the window, leaving the phone on the sill. He didn’t want to lose the call. Satellite phones were temperamental, and bringing them inside often led to dropped calls.
The place was an open space they had ducked into after they were sure no one was following them. It was in a neighborhood of substandard housing, storefronts, and warehouses. This vast room was empty. Luke and Ari sat against a wall, eating condensed protein rations out of aluminum containers. The both looked exhausted. Their faces were sallow and drained. But Ed had cleaned out Ari’s wound and bandaged it with black cloth he had found somewhere.
“How’s the gunshot?” Luke said.
Ed shrugged. “He’s gonna live. I’d say the guy was firing hollow-points, so the round mushroomed on impact and made a mess. The round itself is gone. Luckily, it was a glancing hit, coming from the side, or it would have taken that shoulder apart. As it is, he’s got some shredded meat in there. Bones and socket look okay. I sterilized everything and sewed it up. Gave our hero a couple of non-opiate painkillers. It’ll tamp down the pain a little, and he won’t get sleepy on us. But he’s gonna have some soreness and stiffness.”
Ari looked at Ed. “Soreness? Is that what you call this?”
“Mild soreness,” Ed said. “It’s a flesh wound. You should have been there when a high-velocity round cracked my pelvis. Talk about soreness. That was the real thing.”
Luke nodded. This sounded okay. Best not to make a thing out of it. There was a lot more to do, and Ari was just going to have to live with the pain. Luke figured that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. The man was a soldier, after all.
“Ari,” he said, indicating back toward the window with his thumb. “Trudy’s going to give you directions. Don’t stay on there all night. The battery is dying, and those maniacs are almost certainly looking for us.”
Luke sat down as Ari got up.
“What is this place?” Luke said.
Ed shrugged. “I don’t know. Some kind of clothing distribution center. Mostly women’s clothing, religious stuff. Long black robes. Hijabs. Veils. Flat shoes.”
Luke sat back and closed his eyes. He drifted. In his mind, he seemed to be sitting in a park with Gunner. When he opened his eyes again, Ari was closing the window to the balcony. He walked across the open space and handed Luke his phone.
“You get the directions?”
Ari nodded. “Yeah. I just have no idea how we’re supposed to get down there.”
“How far is it from here?”
“Three miles, maybe three and a half, but that’s not the problem. The city is closed down because of the protests, and now they know we’re here. There are checkpoints everywhere, which I know how to avoid, but if a single person sees us—a cop, a soldier, someone a little too curious for their own good—that will be the end of this little trip.”
Luke cast around for ideas. Start right where you are, that was the old motto. And they were in a clothing warehouse.
“Can we go in disguise?” he said.
“Nah, man,” Ed said. “Don’t even go there. It’s nothing but women’s clothes.”
Ari stood above them, thinking. After a moment, he smiled. “Iranian women are trying to modernize. Some of the young women really push the envelope of what’s allowed. A few years ago, the morality police were arresting thousands of them. But the older women, and the women from the conservative rural tribes—they still dress in the old ways. Many of them even cover their faces entirely. These gowns are called abaya. They are hooded. Combined with a hijab and a veil…”
Ed shook his head. “No. Things are looking bleak enough as it is. If we’re gonna die here anyway…”
Ari nodded.
“We might as well be dressed as women when it happens.”
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
7:05 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
The Oval Office
The White House, Washington, DC
“Susan, we have that preliminary report.”
She looked up. She was sitting in a high-backed chair in the sitting area, oddly enough, with General Kirby and Haley Lawrence. They were all sipping tea from an antique tea set. All except Susan—she was drinking black coffee. From an outsider’s point of view, the little gathering in this beautiful office must look very, very pleasant.
But it wasn’t. It was the farthest thing from pleasant. Pleasant would be lounging in an infinity pool overlooking the Indian Ocean with Agent Luke Stone. In a parallel reality, where there were no wars and no nuclear weapons.
This? No. Not pleasant at all.
A Secret Service man had opened the door and Kurt had poked his head in.
Yet another break from the Situation Room had come, which in a little while would be followed by yet another session. Susan had reached her limit—Kurt’s thunderous hand claps were starting to make her flinch. She had barely slept last night, and now she was on a twelve-hour day, with no end in sight.
The hours were slipping by now, and things were getting worse. Susan’s advisors, and their staffs, didn’t seem to have any answers. The situation was slipping out of control.
“What report?” Susan said.
“The report on the Persian Gulf incident.”
“Okay, Kurt,” Susan said. “Come on in.”
Kurt came in with his close aide, Amy. They both glanced at the TV monitor, which had most recently televised Stephen Lief’s inauguration as Vice President. That seemed like weeks ago now.
“Amy, can you work this thing?”
“Sure.”
Susan had the urge to shout, “Don’t turn that on!” She was tired of looking at video monitors. If she never looked at another map, or infographic showing troop and missile strengths, or picture of a fighter plane or weapon system, she would be fine with that.
Amy turned on the monitor and fiddled with her tablet computer. In a moment, she had them in synch. Instantly a map of Iran appeared. Kurt turned around, looked at it, and sighed. His broad shoulders seemed to slump.
He directed his laser pointer at the Strait of Hormuz and dove in.
“Just west of the Strait of Hormuz, as you know, is where the live fire incident took place. The commanding officer of the USS Winston Churchill, Commander Brian Berwick, felt that the ship was under threat from Iranian fast attack boats. He made a judgment call. Audio transcripts from the bridge have been analyzed at the Pentagon. Commander Berwick followed established protocols. He followed the Navy’s rules of engagement, as modified after the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole, to the letter.”
“Casualties?” Haley Lawrence said.
“Twenty-four Iranian KIAs,” Kurt said. “Six missing and presumed dead. No American casualties. The Iranians have appealed to the United Nations general assembly for a resolution condemning us.”
“That won’t get very far.”
Kurt shrugged. “It might, it might not. We see it as our job to keep the Persian Gulf open to shipping. Not everyone agrees.”
“What’s the chatter?” General Kirby said.
“CIA and NSA listening stations are reporting advanced states of readiness throughout the Iranian military. They are prepared for war and on a hair trigger. We are in a very difficult position. If we wait for an attack, we are going to lose thousands of people in Qatar and in Baghdad. If we launch a preemptive attack…”
“We are going to lose thousands of people in Qatar and Baghdad,” Susan said. “I think I’ve heard this song before. Can anyone tell me why we have thousands of personnel deployed where they can’t possibly be defended from attack?”
“Because someone would have to be crazy to attack us,” Kirby said. “That’s the rationale.”
“What else?” Susan said.
Kurt nodded. He was beginning to get the dark black circles around his eyes that Susan had seen a few times before. Those circles appeared when the iron man Kurt K
imball was starting to wear out.
“We got another report from Agent Stone. It just came in.”
Susan’s heart seemed to skip in her chest. Kurt hadn’t told her that Stone had reported in. She understood that, she really did. But she was on the verge of pulling Kurt aside and telling him: When Stone reports, you have to let me know.
“His people in Tel Aviv relayed an encrypted message that was decoded moments ago. Amy, give me Parchin and Fordo.”
On the screens, the map zoomed in to focus on an area in the north of the country, just to the south and west of Tehran.
“Stone has confirmed the presence of nuclear-armed missiles at the Parchin military base here, outside the capital. He has confirmed that the nuclear enrichment facility at Fordo, here, is capable of weaponizing uranium, and that there is a tunnel beneath the ground that connects the two facilities.”
“Has he seen this with his own eyes?” Haley Lawrence said.
Kurt shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. I believe this is the result of interviews with two Iranian physicists who worked at these facilities. Both of those men are apparently dead. Also, Stone and his team were engaged in a firefight with Iranian military or police, or both. They are alive, but the Iranians are aware of their presence, and Stone and his team are either in hiding or on the run.”
“Is that all they found out?” Kirby said.
“Yes, that was all he had to report, and given the circumstances, I doubt we’ll get much more from him.”
Susan got a terrible sinking feeling. “Shouldn’t we extract them at this point? Just get them out of there? If what they’re doing isn’t going to work…”
Kurt shook his head. “It’s a low priority. We’ve got bigger fish to fry. They have a rendezvous point in northern Iran agreed upon with the Israeli military.”
Kirby looked at Susan. He also shook his head. “You’re talking about elite commandos who sound like they’re at the end of their run. They’ll either get themselves to the rendezvous, or they won’t. With Iran on a war footing, the border outposts on red alert, and the entire society in lockdown, anyone we send in there now will likely just get killed. Kurt, are we flying patrols?”
