by Marc Cameron
* * *
—
“It’s a difficult call,” Ryan concluded. “I get that. We all do. And there will be danger involved. But there’s no way this turns out any way but bad without your help.”
Ryan wasn’t a counterintelligence officer. He knew the basics—from books Clark had assigned him—but the act of turning someone to act as an agent for the United States was two parts art and one part science. It took time, time they did not have. This pitch had come off more heavy-handed than he’d intended, but that couldn’t be helped. He had to be bald about what they needed and hope Ysabel could pull cleanup, appealing to Yazdani’s sense of right and wrong, convincing . . . reminding him that he was helping the Iranian people, rather than betraying them.
Yazdani’s head suddenly snapped up as he looked at the door.
“What is it?” Dovzhenko asked.
“There is a loose board in the hallway,” the engineer said. “That is how I heard you coming before you knocked.”
Ryan got to his feet. “Are you expecting company?”
The engineer shook his head. “You are the first visitors I have had in weeks. Did you leave someone outside to keep watch?”
Dovzhenko pulled the engineer to the side at the same moment the door crashed inward, kicked open by a heavy boot.
There had been no handguns to liberate from the Taliban and they’d left the rifles in the car, leaving them unarmed.
“Hello, Comrade Erik,” a sneering Iranian man said, his own gun in both hands, pointed at Dovzhenko.
“Sassani!” the Russian spat.
A second man came through the door, a suppressed pistol raised, ready to fire.
The first man started to say something else, but Ysabel flew at him in a rage, batting his pistol aside, screaming, clawing at his face.
Jack made good use of the distraction and closed the distance to the second Iranian, parrying the pistol away with his left arm while he swung upward with his right to plant a staggering hammer fist to the man’s unprotected groin.
The extra inches of suppressor on the muzzle of the handgun made it slightly more difficult to maneuver effectively. Jack exploited the lag in speed, trapping the gun in both hands and driving the other man backward against the wall with the point of his elbow. Stunned, the man swung with his left, attempting to hit Jack in the head when he should have tried to secure his gun. One of the blows, robbed of its full power, impacted Jack’s injured ear, bringing a wave of nausea.
Ryan growled, clearing his head. With the handgun pinned to the wall, he drove a knee over and over into the man’s groin and thigh at the same time, throwing elbows at his throat. The Iranian slid down to protect his groin, then used the wall as a brace as he used the force of his legs to push upward, trying to shake Ryan’s grip. The pistol barked, suppressed but not nearly silent, sending a round dangerously close to Ryan’s face.
Invigorated by the near miss, Ryan followed the upward transition of movement, twisting his own center at the same time he stepped inward, impacting the man’s armpit with the point of his shoulder, spinning toward the gun. The man peeled off the wall as Ryan followed him through the turn, throwing him violently on his back while retaining his two-handed grip on the pistol. He was vaguely aware of the fight going on behind him. He’d heard furniture break, Ysabel’s cry as she fell, and Dovzhenko’s frenzied yowl as he attacked Sassani. There had been no other shots, and Ryan had his own hands full.
The Iranian turned out to be a better on the ground than he was standing up. Straddling the man in the mount position, Ryan slammed the gun hand against the floor, sending another shot into the far baseboard. The Iranian bucked his hips upward and to the side attempting a throw. With both hands occupied against the pistol, Ryan had to post, bringing forward a foot and planting it to the side of the Iranian’s body to keep from tumbling over. Instead of returning to the mount, Ryan retained his grip on the gun and continued in the direction of his posted leg, pushing off and around over the top of the Iranian’s head, lifting and turning, bringing the arm and the pistol around with him as he went. Ligaments tore, tiny carpal bones snapped. The Iranian’s finger convulsed on the trigger again, this round tearing downward through his gut at near-pointblank range. Ryan pressed his advantage, his own finger finding the trigger now and sending two more rounds into the wide-eyed man’s belly before wresting the pistol away.
He heard another yowl and spun to find Dovzhenko seated on the ground, bleeding from the nose. Ysabel, too, was on the ground, on all fours, dazed, her scarf gone, trying to get back in the fight. Major Sassani had sunk to his knees, the knife from the cake sticking from the side of his neck. Blood arced from the wound in time with his pulse, painting Yazdani, who stood over him. The IRGC man croaked, unable to speak from the blade that bisected his voice box. He toppled forward a moment later, the arc of blood slowing to a trickle as his life ebbed away.
The other Iranian coughed behind Ryan, causing him to turn with the suppressed SIG. The wounded man shrank backward, shielding his face from another shot. He writhed on the carpet, eyes clenched in excruciating pain.
Dovzhenko helped Ysabel to her feet. She tended to a shaken Yazdani while the Russian stood beside Jack.
“Hospital,” the Iranian whispered. “Please.”
Dovzhenko knelt. “Lieutenant Gul,” he said. He looked at the wounds, then shook his head. “I am afraid there is no time. I will pass on a message to your wife.”
“Thank you,” Gul said. He coughed again. Pink blood foamed at the corners of his lips now, indicating at least one of the shots had nicked a lung. Ryan guessed another had hit the liver.
“Why?” Dovzhenko asked. “Why was Sassani after Maryam? What was so special about the three students? And why me, for that matter?”
“Alov . . . ordered it . . .”
Dovzhenko’s mouth fell open. “General Alov of the GRU?”
Gul nodded weakly. “I am so cold.” His voice was like the air escaping a punctured ball.
Yazdani brought a small throw blanket from the couch and draped it over the young man, situating it with trembling fingers.
“Why?” Dovzhenko asked again. “Why Maryam?”
“She saw them . . . together. Like the students.”
Dovzhenko groaned. He thought it strange when he’d seen the picture, but it didn’t seem enough to kill over. “Alov and Reza Kazem?”
Gul shook his head. “Not Alov.” His lips and teeth were bathed in pink blood. “I . . . I . . . the woman . . .”
The man was drifting now, forcing Dovzhenko to lean forward to hear his words.
Gul’s eyelids fluttered. “My son . . . he is only little boy . . .” The coughing came again, more ragged now. He looked up at Dovzhenko, eyes wide, back arched, racked with pain. “Please . . .”
He collapsed against the rug. Still.
Jack looked at Ysabel, then Dovzhenko, assessing them for wounds. He scooped up the suppressed SIG and popped the magazine. Five rounds left. He did a quick peek into the hallway, miraculously saw no one, and then pushed the door closed. The jamb was splintered on the inside, but he hoped the damage wouldn’t be too noticeable from the exterior. Blood covered Yazdani’s hands and chest. He’d been the one to stab Major Sassani in the neck with the cake knife.
“Thank you,” Ryan said.
The engineer sniffed, regaining his composure. “Your thanks are unnecessary. If you are dead, you will be unable to help my son. That is all that matters to me.”
“So you’ll help us?” Ryan asked.
“I will,” Yazdani said.
“I’m a little worried about all the noise,” Dovzhenko said. “If your neighbors call the police, we are in trouble.”
“Do not worry,” Yazdani said. “I am an unhappy man. My neighbors are accustomed to hearing me cry and throw things.”
Ysabel ran a han
d over the bullet holes in the floor and door-frame. “Fortunately none of them went all the way through.”
“We’re interested in two missiles in particular,” Ryan said.
“I thought as much,” Yazdani said. “Russian 51T6s.”
“Exactly,” Ryan said. “We need to know where they are.”
“First,” Yazdani said, “how will we get my son to the United States?”
“It should be straightforward to get you both across the border to Herat,” Ryan said. “From there, you’ll travel by military transport to the United States.”
The engineer pondered this. “I feel as though I should wait to help you until my son is out.”
“That won’t work,” Ryan said. “There are too many variables. We’re not even sure who is in charge of this conspiracy. Too much of a chance they’ll fire the missiles. We need to figure out their target.”
“How will I know you will keep your end of the bargain?”
Ysabel bit her bottom lip, gathering her thoughts. “All we can offer is our word,” she began. “But these men saved my life . . . twice.”
“I have no choice, do I?”
“I am sorry,” Dovzhenko said. “You do not.”
Yazdani’s stooped shoulders slumped even more. “They’ve moved the missiles west of Mashhad,” he said. “They are on mobile launchers manufactured in Iran, but I wouldn’t worry about the targets. I saw the firing solutions.”
Ryan waited, but Yazdani just looked at him, waiting to be prodded over the edge—as if he had not quite committed treason until this moment.
“Okay?” Ryan finally said.
“You will think me foolish,” Yazdani said. “But the firing solutions I saw aim the missiles at space. These solid fuel rockets are not powerful enough, but it is as if they are planning to launch a satellite.”
58
John Clark and the others were still at the safe house in Portugal, waiting for exfil, when Ryan got through.
“Keep it short,” Clark said. “You’re going to need to move right away after we hang up.”
“I’m not on the sat phone,” Jack assured him. “This guy has a proxy server he’s been using to get around government firewalls so he can look for medication for his kid. I’m using that to jump on an anonymized encrypted VoIP, so we should be good.”
“Roger that,” Clark said. “Our guest is handcuffed to a chair in the back room. I’m putting you on speaker. We’re all here.”
Ryan checked on Dom—who was still receiving treatment at Bagram before transport to Ramstein—and then ran down the information Yazdani had given him, using the Iranian’s digraph plus code name. “We’re trying to work out a way for SD/FLINT to help clear a way for our guys, in case they need to pay a little visit to the missile site.”
“Glad you’re okay,” Ding Chavez said, ever the mother hen, even from thousands of miles away. “We’ll have to get clearance from higher, but maybe Gavin can come up with malware he can send you in a zip file or something.”
“I’m conferencing him in now,” Clark said.
Twenty seconds later, Gavin Biery joined the conversation. Two minutes after that, he was up to speed on the situation.
“I don’t need to e-mail him anything,” Biery said. “As long as he hasn’t lost his thumb drive.”
“I lost it,” Ryan said. “But I got it back again.”
“You’re good to go, then,” Biery said.
“Seems too simple,” Midas said. “Your malware phones home when the computer connects to the Internet. Wouldn’t the Iranians be using a closed system for missile defense to guard against online attacks?”
“That is a very good question,” Biery said. “To which I have a very good answer. There are a couple versions of malware on the drives I gave you—the one you used in Spain that downloads automatically when you plug it in, and a worm that needs execution. Once the worm is embedded, the system will crash. It should blind missile defense radar for several minutes, depending on what kind of redundant systems they have.”
Ryan talked to Yazdani for a moment, then came back on the line, deliberately avoiding the use of the engineer’s cryptonym, SD/FLINT, in front of him. “Our guy here says he can slow the backup system from coming online for a half-hour or so, basically by turning off the alarms that would alert staff when the radar goes down.”
“We’ll need to coordinate,” Clark said. “I’ll make a call, get marching orders regarding the malware, and specifics on your man’s exfil and the medical requirements you’ve already briefed me on. Check with me in half an hour.”
“In the meantime,” Biery said, “get a pen and I’ll give you the directions on how to execute the worm.”
* * *
—
The morning national security briefing was just drawing to a close when John Clark’s call was pushed through to Mary Pat Foley—though no meeting on national security ever actually finished—and the secretaries of state and defense, as well as the director of national security, the deputy national security adviser, and the chief of staff, were in their customary spots in the Oval.
“I’m not crazy about a military incursion into Iran,” Scott Adler said.
Burgess harrumphed. “I say it’s long overdue. I’ll need to get my people working on rescue contingencies in the unlikely event one of our planes gets shot down.”
“That’s the least of our worries,” Foley said, looking directly at Ryan.
“I agree,” the President said. “Let’s look at what we know. Russia sold or gifted at least two nuclear missiles to elements in Iran that appear to be linked to Reza Kazem and his so-called Persian Spring movement. We know Kazem had a meeting with our spy and erstwhile assassin Elizaveta Bobkova, and then later with General Alov of the GRU.”
“Good catch on her, by the way,” van Damm said. “Chadwick’s death would have been bad.”
“Especially for Chadwick,” Foley offered.
“There’s that,” van Damm said. “But it would have been bad for the country. The tyrant dies, his rule has ended. The martyr dies, her rule begins.”
Ryan took a drink of his coffee. “Taking liberties with your Kierkegaard, are you?”
“Maybe I am,” van Damm said. “It’s true.” He looked down at his notes, ready to move on. “Why would Kazem want a nuke?”
“Maybe his hands aren’t quite as clean as he makes them out to be,” Ryan said. “It never made sense that Russia was sitting down at the table with him. It’s in their best interest to prop up the mullahs.”
“So Russia and the Ayatollah use Kazem as a proxy to strike at us and still remain blameless,” Foley said. “There’s a certain ham-fisted elegance to it that reeks of both regimes.”
“That’s my guess,” Ryan said.
“That still doesn’t give us a target,” Burgess said.
“No,” Ryan said. “It does not.”
“I’m not a rocket scientist,” Adler said, “but do you think this FLINT might be mistaken in his assessment on the trajectory?”
“That’s possible,” Ryan said.
Burgess spoke next. “There’s a high degree of probability that our Patriots could shoot down both Gorgons when they enter terminal phase, but the likelihood goes up exponentially if we know what the target is and can plan in advance. I suggest we have an expert talk to FLINT, Mr. President, someone who knows the specific questions that need to be asked.”
“That’s wise,” Ryan said, his subconscious mind working in the background on something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“I wonder,” Mary Pat said, tapping a fountain pen on her notepad. “Both China and Russia have been working on antisatellite lasers since my days in Moscow. We know China has the tech to shoot down a satellite. Russia has been testing its Nudol missile for that very purpose. It’s possible one of them shared
what they know with Tehran.”
That’s it, Ryan thought. That’s what his subconscious had been stewing over.
* * *
—
Dovzhenko and Jack moved Sassani’s body along with the other dead IRGC officer into the bathroom so they wouldn’t be in full view if someone happened to stop in on Yazdani. For a time, Jack worried that the engineer might be distressed at having to look at the man he’d killed, but that didn’t appear to be the problem. Yazdani was a man past distress, beyond tears, numbed by death and illness.
Ryan had had little more than a couple of hours of sleep in the past forty-eight. At least two of his ribs were probably cracked. One of his molars was chipped and each beat of his pulse sent a wave of molten fire through his torn ear. His body desperately needed to rest and heal. But his mind hated these in-between moments. It gave him too much time to think. Like a fool, he’d built up a different end to this story when Ysabel had called.
“So,” he pressed Yazdani, “tell me again about this firing solution.”
“For the third time,” the engineer said, “neither missile is aimed at anything on earth. I suppose it is possible that they are launching satellites into low earth orbit—but they have not removed the warheads as far as I know.”
“Why waste a nuclear missile in space?” Dovzhenko mused, his face scrunched, working through the problem. “Why not Israel or some U.S. base in Afghanistan?”
“You got me,” Ryan said. “If they’re trying to shoot down a satellite, we’ll still retaliate.”
Ysabel touched Dovzhenko on the arm. “You know that photograph you got from Maryam of those condemned students with General Alov?”
The Russian nodded.
“Let’s have a look at it,” Ysabel said. “I think there’s something we’ve been missing.”
