Damascus Countdown (30 page)

And then another heretical thought flitted at the edge of Darazi’s mind, if only for a moment before he banished it with all the vigor he could muster: what if the Mahdi had not really come and they were actually being deceived?

David glanced at his watch. It was precisely 6:45 p.m. The round trip to the safe house in Karaj to drop off Javad Nouri—sedated but with both kneecaps intact—had taken Matt Mays just over an hour, and he was back by the time Zalinsky called to report that Predator surveillance indicated Omid Jazini was home and that they were a go for the hastily conceived operation.

Now Mays circled the block once so everyone could get the lay of the land; then—not seeing any immediate threats—he drove into the parking lot at the rear of the building and stopped in front of the loading dock. David put a fresh mag into his silencer-equipped pistol, double-checked his MP5 and the rest of his equipment, then pulled on his ski mask and led his team into the back of the apartment complex.

Once inside, Fox found the mechanical room and disabled the building’s alarm system and the video surveillance system. At the same time, Crenshaw found the telephone switch box and cut the main line, rendering inoperative all landline calls out of the building while Zalinsky used the Predator drone above them to jam the ability to make cell phone calls in the building, at least for the next few minutes. Fox then followed David up the north stairwell, while Crenshaw followed Torres up the south stairwell, headed for the twelfth floor.

Less than a minute after the team entered the building, Mays watched a police cruiser drive up the street, slow down for a moment—Mays
wasn’t exactly sure why—and then continue on its way. Not liking the feel of that, Mays decided he wasn’t comfortable idling in the parking lot. Instead, he took the van down a tree-lined side street nearby, turned around, and then found a spot on the side of the road, not far from the intersection. This actually gave him a better view of who was coming in and out of the front of Omid’s building as well as of any car that might pull into the rear parking lot.

“Bravo One, are you in position?” Mays heard David ask over the radio.

“Negative, Alpha One,” Torres replied. “We’re passing the ninth floor. Need another minute.”

“Roger that,” said David. “We’re in position. Let us know when you’re ready.”

As Mays monitored the radio traffic, he saw a medium-size white truck pull up to the front of the apartment building and park in a fire lane. As two men got out, Mays’s instincts went on alert. Both men were about six feet tall, muscular, dressed in suits, and near Omid’s age. Mays grabbed a digital camera off the seat next to him, pointed it at the men, zoomed in, and snapped several pictures, but not in time. He had gotten their profiles and backs, not their faces, but he instantly transmitted the images to the Predator, which relayed them to a satellite, which sent the digital pictures to Langley for analysis. Ten seconds later, Zalinsky was on the radio.

“Home Plate to Alpha One and team—you’ve got company on the way, and they may be trouble,” Zalinsky told them. “Bravo Three just snapped a photo of two men entering the building. Thermal imaging shows they’re entering the lobby elevator.”

“Roger that, Home Plate,” said David, crouched in the stairwell just outside the exit door to the twelfth floor and slipping the fiber-optic camera snake under the door. “Who are they?”

“Not sure,” Zalinsky said. “We’re running the images through facial-recognition software, but they’re not clear photos. They’re not head-on shots, and we’re not getting anything.”

“They look like Revolutionary Guards to me,” said Mays. “Probably colleagues of the target.”

“Got it; thanks,” David replied. “Bravo One, you ready to move?”

“Ready to move on your command, Alpha One,” Torres replied.

“Good—now hold your position and let’s see what these two do.”

David didn’t want trouble. He wanted to isolate Omid and get him talking. This was a complication he did not need. If these two men really were colleagues of Omid, that meant they were armed and dangerous. David knew they couldn’t afford a repeat of the firefight at the hospital. He didn’t want to risk a bloodbath in the hallway. This op had to be fast and quiet and could not get the whole building involved or the entire Tehran police force responding. If these guys were really going to Omid Jazini’s room, David figured the best thing to do was let them get inside and then wait till they left. Then again, what if they were just friends of Omid’s? What if they were coming to hang out for the evening, to cook dinner and watch a movie? It could be hours before they moved on, and David didn’t have hours to spare.

Movement caught David’s eye on the small monitor Fox was holding. He glanced at it. The elevator doors were opening. The two men got off the elevator and, sure enough, approached Omid’s room. David’s instinct was to move quickly and take these two out, but the fear of accidentally killing two potentially unarmed civilians made him hesitate.

“Alpha One, we need to move now, before they get inside,” Torres said over the radio.

“No, not yet,” David replied. “We don’t know if they’re armed, and I don’t want any prisoners beyond Omid.”

“Bravo One is right,” Zalinsky chimed in. “You need to move now.”

“Negative. Everyone hold your positions,” David insisted, furious that Torres and Zalinsky would question his judgment in the middle of an operation when they should be maintaining radio silence.

But just then, David watched in horror as both men drew silencer-equipped pistols from underneath their jackets, kicked in Omid’s door, and went in, guns blazing. For a moment, David was too stunned to speak. So were Zalinsky and Torres, who gasped but didn’t say a word. But then David’s anger began to burn.

“Let’s move—now!”
he ordered.

Bolting into the hallway ahead of his team, he sprinted toward Omid’s door with Fox close on his heels. He pivoted into the room, holding his pistol out front, and found both men staring down at the bloody corpse of Omid Jazini.

“Put ’em down,”
he shouted in Farsi.
“Both of you—guns down—now!”

Clearly startled, one of the men began to turn, his pistol in hand. David shot him twice in the chest.

“Don’t do it!”
David shouted again.
“Don’t turn around. Don’t make any fast moves. Don’t even think about it. Just put the gun down now or you die like your friend.”

The second man slowly set the gun down and put his hands in the air just as Torres and Crenshaw reached the room.

“We need to get inside,” Torres said in English. “Before someone sees us out here.”

David nodded for his team to enter and close the door, which they did, but he kept his pistol aimed at the second man’s back and told him to lie facedown on the floor. The man slowly, carefully, cautiously complied, but then he stunned them all.

“You speak English?” the man asked in English, with an accent that wasn’t Persian. David couldn’t quite place it. “You’re not Iranian?”

“Shut up and stay still!”
David replied in Farsi, ordering Torres to cuff and search the man.

Torres did but found no wallet, no ID, no keys, nor any other personal possessions on the man.

“Who are you guys?” the man asked, again in English, pushing his luck.

Maybe it was the circumstances. Maybe it was all the adrenaline coursing through his system. David wasn’t sure. But he knew that accent, and he was kicking himself for not thinking clearly enough to place it. He glanced at Torres, who shrugged. He glanced at Crenshaw, who was guarding the door, and Fox, who was guarding the window. They didn’t know either.

“Are they dead?” David asked Torres in Farsi.

Torres felt the pulses of the two bodies on the floor. “Omid is,” he said, but then, to everyone’s surprise, he said the other one wasn’t.

“Search and cuff them both,” David ordered.

Torres complied, dealing with the conscious gunman first and discovering he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

“Professionals?” said David.

Torres nodded.

“Turn them both over,” David now directed. “I want to see their faces.”

Alive, sure, but the first one was in severe pain.

“I think you broke my ribs,” the man groaned.

“You’re lucky I didn’t double-tap you to the head,” David replied. “Actually, I still might. Now who are you two and why are you here?”

“We could ask the same of you,” the second man said in English.

“You could, but we’re holding the guns, so you’ll be the ones answering the questions just now,” said David.

“Well, we’ve got nothing to say,” the first man groaned.

David was about to respond when Zalinsky came over the radio and told him to stop talking, take a snapshot of both men on his satphone, and upload the photo to Langley. David did, and as he waited for the results, he told Fox to search Omid’s room for phones, computers, and files of any kind.

David heard Zalinsky curse. “What is it?” he asked.

“You’re not going to believe this.”

“Try me.”

“They’re Israelis,” Zalinsky replied. “They’re Mossad.”

Four fire trucks—two pumpers, a hook and ladder, and a hazmat response unit—pulled off the tarmac and drove up to the administrative building, lights flashing and sirens blaring. Nearly twenty firefighters, fully suited up and ready to do battle, jumped out of the trucks and rushed inside. There they were met by Revolutionary Guards who immediately welcomed them, despite no evidence of smoke or flames or any other emergency. The fire chief checked the alarm control panel in the lobby but found none of the warning lights lit up. To the contrary,
all the evidence suggested systems were normal and under control. Nevertheless, with the permission of the Mahdi’s head of security, the chief directed his men to rush up to the second and third floors to make sure everything was okay.

On the third floor, six of the firemen went into a large, windowless supply room on the west side of the building. Moments later, six different men came out of that supply room.

Following the plan laid out in General Mohsen Jazini’s memo, an elaborate ruse was being set into motion. Daryush Rashidi was the first to exit the room, dressed in a fire helmet, Nomex fire coat, pants, gloves, and rubber boots, an air tank on his back and an air mask over his face. Rashidi was followed by the Mahdi and four members of the Mahdi’s security detail, all similarly dressed and all but the Mahdi helping to carry several trunks that looked like they held firefighting equipment. They met the rest of the emergency crews in the lobby, and when the chief gave the all-clear signal, they all headed back to the trucks. Rashidi led the way for the other five, heading directly for the hazmat truck, a large, heavy-duty vehicle built by the Scania company in Sweden and painted a bright, almost-fluorescent yellow. He opened the back doors, let the five members of the team climb in, then shut the doors again and climbed into the front passenger seat and told the driver—another undercover IRGC commando—to follow the other fire trucks departing the airport grounds.