by Marc Cameron
“Dom’s fine,” Clark said. It was one thing to joke, but never about the life of a teammate and friend. “He called us about a half-hour ago from an Afghan Army hospital near Herat. He’s got some serious burns but he assures us nothing life threatening. Adara talked to him and threatened to kick his ass if he died. I’d imagine he’ll be on his way to Ramstein any minute now.”
The relief in Ryan’s voice was audible.
“Listen,” Clark said. “We’ve had a couple of significant developments in this end. What kind of a line are you on?”
“VoIP,” Ryan said. “I’m anonymized, and I think encrypted, but we’re on a satellite link so I have to hurry.”
“You think?” Chavez said.
“I can’t read Farsi,” Ryan said. “But I’m pretty sure.”
“That’ll have to do,” Clark said. “NSA’s probably the only ones listening in anyway and they’ll know all this soon enough . . .”
Clark gave Ryan the full rundown on the Gorgon missiles, and their last known location in Iran.
“The Russians . . . or at least some Russians, are complicit in this caper,” Chavez said. “See if your guy knows anything about where these Gorgons are supposed to go.”
“He’s right here,” Ryan said. “And he looks as stupefied as I am.”
“I thought as much,” Clark said. “Our guy says they were delivered to an airfield in northeast Iran, near the city of Mashhad. Makes sense. IRGC rocket forces have a missile base there.”
“Mashhad . . .” Ryan paused for moment, then said, “That’s only a hundred and fifty miles from where we are. We’ll check it out.”
“Go to Iran?” Chavez said with an emphatic shake of his head. “Not a chance.”
“John,” Ryan said. “I’m here and ready to go. If the Iranians have nukes then we have to find out where they—”
Ryan stopped abruptly while someone, likely the Russian, talked to him in the background. It was difficult to tell with the latent lag of the VoIP/satellite connection. He came back on a few seconds later.
“My friend on this end says he has a list of Iranian scientists with the potential to use as assets. A couple of them are in Mashhad.”
Ding said, “Russian assets won’t do us any good.”
“He says these guys are vulnerable,” Jack said. “It doesn’t sound like they have any love for the Russians—just a price. Won’t matter to them which way they turn.” Ryan paused, listening again. “One of them has a sick kid in desperate need of Western medicine.”
“That is promising,” Clark said, conceding that much. Leveraging a child’s illness was nasty business, but intelligence coups often hinged on just that sort of leverage.
“Then give me permission to go talk to him,” Ryan said. “We can be in Mashhad by sunrise.”
“I’m sure Iran has methods in place to deter the free flow of people across their border.”
“No doubt,” Ryan said. “But opium smuggling is big business here. According to Ysabel a large portion of the heroin going into Europe passes through Iran.”
Chavez was unconvinced. “That just means the Iranian dope cops will be putting more pressure on the border. Last I read they’ve increased patrols and are even using drones.”
“Shaheds,” Jack said. “Ysabel just told me. They’re basically knockoffs of our Predator. Her work for the UNODC gave her substantial insight into drug interdiction methods. So she knows the weaknesses.”
“And what would that be?” Chavez asked.
“The wind,” Ryan said. “And not just any wind. This is nasty, dusty stuff, but it’ll give us good cover. It blows here all summer, making border surveillance with UAVs problematic. It’s called ‘the wind of one hundred twenty days.’”
“Let’s get off this line,” Clark said. “Use your best judgment, but do me a favor and check in with me before you do anything rash. I don’t need to tell you what kind of a shit storm you will stir up if you’re caught in Iran without an entry stamp in your passport.”
“Roger that,” Ryan said. “Listen. I’m going to e-mail you a photo. It’s from our Russian friend.”
“All right,” Clark said. “I have something else, but it’s for your eyes only. Check your messages when you send the pic.”
“Roger that,” Ryan said. “Outa here.”
* * *
—
Ryan logged on to his encrypted e-mail when he ended the call, adding another layer of security to the anonymized virtual private network. He included the link to the photograph of General Alov and the protesters Dovzhenko had put on eBay. A new message arrived from Clark as he was typing. Ryan read it twice, then put it in a virtual burn bag. Information was never really gone, but it could be overwritten so many times as to render it useless—until someone came up with a new program, or the person who invented the original revealed a back door at some hacker conference.
Ryan disconnected the sat phone and looked at the clock on the computer. “Six minutes,” he said. “We should get on the road.”
“Let me guess,” Dovzhenko said. “Your people think I am a dangle and want to put me on the FLUTTER?”
Jack gave an amused nod. FLUTTER was the CIA code name for a polygraph. A dangle was an enemy intelligence officer who volunteered to work as an agent, but was, in reality, a double. All sides used them, so everyone was wary—which made for a tedious process when trying to discern if someone was truly going to switch sides or was merely being dangled by his own government to gauge intelligence capabilities and methods.
“They are wise to think so,” Dovzhenko continued. “I would not trust you if the circumstances were reversed. Believe me, I would be glad to take a polygraph test.”
“That’s exactly what they had planned,” Jack said. What he did not say, was the CIA, through Mary Pat Foley, had assigned Erik Dovzhenko the cryptonym—GP/VICAR. Ysabel was already on the books as SD/DRIVER. Each country had a two-letter digraph that changed periodically. At the moment, Russia’s digraph was GP. Iran’s was SD. These two-letter prefixes were attached to a code name, usually computer generated, and helped keep the individual cryptonyms categorized geographically. It did not matter that VICAR was helping Ryan on matters relating to Iran. He was Russian, so his cryptonym began with GP. It was a rare thing that an agent acting on behalf of the U.S. government ever knew his or her own cryptonym.
“So,” Dovzhenko said, “what did they direct you to do? Pull out my fingernails?”
“I told them you’d fought beside me,” Jack said. “If you wanted me dead, I think you could have let that happen already.”
“Perhaps I wanted to interrogate you first,” Dovzhenko pointed out. “And then kill you.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“There you go, then,” Jack said, checking his watch. The shock of the accident and the fight was beginning to wear off enough that he could think a little more clearly. He thought he heard a car door, and looked up at Dovzhenko. “Hey.” He hissed, grabbing one of the Kalashnikovs. “Where’s Ysabel?”
* * *
—
Major Sassani hated to backtrack, but sometimes the fastest distance between two points was not a straight line. He ordered his lieutenant to drive him straight from Fatima’s hovel to the main Afghan Border Police offices in Herat.
Just as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had agents in Mexico, Colombia, and Europe, NAJA assigned members of their antinarcotics squads and border guard to the Afghan National Police. The Iranian Cyber Police, more routinely occupied with cracking down on dissidents who attempted to circumvent government oversight of the Internet, also had a technician embedded in the Herat antidrug task force. If nothing else, Iranian law enforcement upset the Americans.
There was a good deal of friction between the regular Army and the IRGC inside Iran, but the Sepah were a powerful
force that held a tremendous amount of sway over NAJA and, to a slightly lesser extent, the ANP. It took some time due to the late hour, but Sassani was eventually able to get the commanding officer to loan him five men, giving him a ten-man team, counting the three Iranian antidrug task force personnel and him and his lieutenant. Omar Khan was a known bandit, and everyone in the group was jumpy by the time they made the hour-and-a-half drive through a soot-black night to the smugglers’ stronghold near Ghourian.
They met no resistance, and it soon became clear why. The officer from Iran’s Cyber Police vomited on his own shoes when he saw the shard of lamb bone protruding from Omar’s mutilated throat.
Sassani squatted at the edge of the blood-sodden rug to study the carnage. “Ysabel,” he said.
The Afghan police captain’s face screwed up in disbelief. “How can you be sure?”
“This man has been killed many times over,” Sassani said. He stood up and wiped his hands on the front of his trousers, though he’d touched nothing. “Females are emotional creatures. They routinely find it necessary to overkill someone they hate or fear.”
The leftover food laid out on the carpets was cool, but not yet too infested by insects. The ashes in the fire pit still gave off heat when stirred.
“They have not been gone long,” Sassani said. “Places set for four . . . I wonder who else besides Kashani and Dovzhenko. Surely none of these bodyguards.” The major thought on this while he walked through the house. “Seven dead,” he muttered as he stepped over the body of what he suspected was the cook. The Russian was more of a man than he’d thought. He turned to the Iranian antinarcotics liaison, a swarthy little man named Malik with arms that looked powerful, if a bit too short for his body. “Please speak to your contacts at the airport,” Sassani said. “These fugitives are extremely dangerous.”
“Of course, Major,” Malik said, but he made no effort to make the call.
“At once,” Sassani prodded. “They could already be there.”
“Yes,” Malik blustered. “I will have to use the satellite phone from the truck.”
“Satellite phone . . .” Sassani mused. He nodded to the desk in Omar’s office. There was a letter opener, what looked like a functional Soviet F1 hand grenade, and several other knickknacks arranged around the edge of the desk. There was a clear space in the center where there had once been a laptop computer. “He would have used a satellite connection for the Internet. Would he not?”
The cybertechnician looked as if he was about to vomit again, but he’d regained enough of his wits to follow the rest of the group on the search of the house.
“There is no landline,” he said. “So he must have.”
“Very good.” Sassani searched through the desk drawers until he found a file with instruction pamphlets for a Thuraya XT-Pro satellite phone and a Wi-Fi hotspot of the same brand. He turned to the Afghan captain. “Do you have Flying Fish or some other satellite-monitoring capability?”
The man shook his head. “We rely on the Americans for that technology.”
“I do,” the Iranian cybertech offered. “Not Flying Fish but something similar. We run it continuously, but due to manpower issues do not monitor it unless we are actively hunting someone.”
“Outstanding,” Sassani said. “Because I am.”
“You are what, Major?” the Afghan captain said.
“Actively hunting.”
51
“Is this conversation being taped?”
Senator Chadwick sat on the couch with her back to the Resolute desk, staring at the President through narrow eyes, like he might jump up at any moment and attack her.
“No,” Jack Ryan said. “It’s just you and me.” He nodded toward the exit to the secretaries’ suite. “There is a peephole in that door so people can look in to see if I’m busy. But no tapes.”
“We’ll see,” Chadwick said.
“So,” Ryan said, “I thought maybe you and I must have gotten off to a bad start somewhere.”
“Nope,” Chadwick said. “I just don’t like you. You smell bad to me. Your arrogance rubs me the wrong way. I’m smart enough to know it doesn’t play well with the media if I refuse a sit-down with the President, but that doesn’t mean we have to be friends. So let’s get whatever this is over with. I’ve got a lunch meeting with the chairman of Ways and Means.”
“I see,” Ryan said. He chose his next words carefully. “You and I both know that thick skins are a requirement in this business. I’m used to people not liking me. But I have to tell you, this incendiary dialogue about the flu vaccine is doing some real damage—”
“Good,” Chadwick said. “I hope it cuts your political legs out from under you. If it leaves you unable to handpick your heir apparent when the time comes, then I’ve done my job. The last thing the country needs is another Jack Ryan at the helm when you finally lay down your scepter.”
Ryan took a deep breath. “I was going to say this talk about hoarding vaccine is damaging the American people. False narratives and doctored videos very nearly caused a war in Cameroon.”
“Well,” Chadwick said, “you’re the expert when it comes to causing wars.”
Ryan waited a beat. He was human and didn’t want to say something he would later regret. “What is it you’re looking for?”
“I already told you,” she said. “I want the American people to see you for what you are.”
Ryan nodded at that. “I’m pretty sure they do,” he said. “Warts and all.”
“Oh, they will, eventually, if I have anything to say about it.”
Ryan couldn’t help but laugh at this woman’s audacity. “I suppose we’ll just have to plead our cases to the law of the land.”
“That’s perfectly fine with me,” Chadwick said. “I feel sure the courts will—”
Betty Martin’s voice came across the intercom, a blessed interruption.
“Mr. President. DNI Foley is here.”
Betty didn’t say it was urgent, but Ryan knew it was, or she wouldn’t have interrupted him mid-meeting unless he’d told her to—which he stupidly had not.
Chadwick took her cue and stood. “Well, this has been real. But it sounds like you have another war to start.”
* * *
—
Mary Pat stepped back and gave Senator Chadwick a wide berth as the two women passed each other at the doorway. A member of Ryan’s “war council,” as Chadwick called it, the director of national security was every bit as culpable as he was.
“I sure as hell hope you bring good news,” Ryan said. “I could use some about now.”
Foley, who was rarely at a loss for words, took a deep breath. “It’s a lot better news than I had ten minutes ago, Jack. But it’s still pretty shitty.”
The side door opened and Arnie came in, uncharacteristically taciturn. He glanced at Foley and gave her a distinct Have you told him yet? look.
“Okay,” Ryan said five minutes later when Mary Pat had given him a thumbnail sketch. “Let’s get the NSC spooled up again, but I’d like State and Defense in here ASAP.”
“They’re on their way, Mr. President,” Foley said. “I took the liberty of asking them to come to the White House right away. Burgess has someone putting together an executive summary, but I wanted to let you know what I know as soon as practical.”
She chewed on her bottom lip, obviously having more to say.
“Go ahead, then,” he said. “Tell me.” Ryan’s stomach churned with worry—which was nothing new. No matter how much he trusted Jack and Clark and the others, the world in which they operated was a cold and deadly place. Ryan had made enough calls to surviving parents and spouses to see it firsthand. Bullets didn’t care who your father was. People died because they stepped left instead of right.
“He’s okay,” Mary Pat said, as if reading Ryan’s mind. “But we do need
to talk.”
Burgess all but exploded into the Oval. “Mr. President,” he said, breathless, as if he’d sprinted into the West Wing. “Major Poteet is across the hall in the Roosevelt Room at this moment, putting the finishing touches on some slides for you. He’ll be in momentarily.”
“Major Poteet?” Ryan said.
“He’s our foremost expert on the state of Iran’s defense capability at present. I find listening to him is like reading a year’s worth of Jane’s Defence Weekly, but I’ve warned him to turn down the firehose for this presentation.”
Ryan stood up and walked across the office to his desk phone, asking Betty to order a coffee service. He had a feeling this was going to be a late night. “We might need a firehose,” he said. “This whole thing is a convoluted mess. The Russians love their maskirovka, but this . . .”
Scott Adler came in next, followed by a middle-aged man in a white button-down and a pair of starched Wrangler jeans with razor-sharp creases up the front. He carried a closed notebook computer in callused hands.
“Please forgive Major Poteet,” Burgess said. “He’s on leave, but I happened to catch him stopping by his office after I got the call from the DNI. He worked on his presentation on the ride over.”
“Major,” Ryan said, shaking the man’s hand.
“A real pleasure, Mr. President,” Poteet said, his Texas accent as smooth as his hands were rough. “I apologize for being out of uniform.”
“Not a problem,” Ryan said. “I’m assuming you’re up to speed.”
Burgess spoke next. “He knows what I know, sir.”
“All right.” Ryan motioned for everyone to sit while he picked up the phone and spoke for a moment to his secretary. He replaced the handset and took his seat by the fireplace. “I’ve convened the full National Security Council in half an hour. I’d like to have a framework of ideas started before they arrive, so let’s have it.”
Poteet spent the next ten minutes going over Iran’s known stockpile of rockets and missiles, as well as their abilities to counter any attacks from other countries. Ryan knew much of the information, but the briefing helped to solidify it for the here and now of this situation.
