Damascus Countdown (31 page)

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL

Mossad chief Zvi Dayan scanned the incoming note on his secure PDA as Defense Minister Shimon informed Naphtali that the strike package was just a few minutes away from the Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran and pressed him for the authorization to launch their missiles.

“Excuse me, Mr. Prime Minister—we may have a change in plans,” Dayan said.

“What do you mean?” Naphtali asked.

“You may not have to bomb the airport after all,” Dayan said.

“Why not?”

“Something’s happening at the facility in question,” said the Mossad chief, now turning to an aide and ordering him to see if they could get the live images from the drone over the airport uploaded to the prime minister’s communications center.

“What is it?” Naphtali asked.

“We have reports that a group of fire trucks have arrived at the scene and almost two dozen firefighters have rushed inside,” Dayan reported.

“Into the facility where you think the Mahdi is?” Naphtali clarified.

“Where we know he is, sir,” Dayan noted. “It houses the central war room for the entire Revolutionary Guard system, and we have growing evidence the whole war is being run out of that building. What’s strange is that all these fire trucks have arrived when there’s no evidence of a fire. I mean, there are fires raging on the other side of the airfield—the military side—but as we’ve said, the civilian side has been untouched. And yet here are all these trucks and firefighters right at the moment we’re about to bomb the place to kingdom come.”

“I haven’t given my authorization yet,” Naphtali reminded the Mossad chief.

“Yes, of course, sir, I realize that. I’m just saying . . .”

“You think the Iranians know we’re coming right now.”

“No, not necessarily—not right this minute—but as I said before, we believe the IRGC is going to move the Mahdi, and this might be how they’re doing it.”

One of the PM’s aides knocked, entered the PM’s office, and explained the video feed was now ready in the communications center. The three men quickly moved down the hall and found aerial images from the Israeli drone of the firefighters exiting the administrative building and getting back into their trucks.

“You think the Mahdi is in one of these groups?” Shimon asked.

“I do,” Dayan said.

“Which one?”

“The hazmat team.”

“Why?”

“Look at how they’re walking. They’re not walking like firemen. They’ve set up a perimeter around this one here—the one in the center. And look, they’re not taking their equipment off while coming out of the building. They’re getting into the back of the hazmat truck with their masks and air tanks on. That’s not normal.”

“You’re saying that’s the Mahdi?” said Naphtali, pointing to the screen.

“Yes, sir,” Dayan said. “If it were the Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah, we would have seen him walking more slowly. Hosseini is seventysomething.”

Naphtali watched the trucks head away from the airport complex, depart the grounds of the airfield, and pull onto Me’raj Boulevard, heading northeast toward Azadi Square. But all eyes were on the bright-yellow hazmat response vehicle, on whose roof was painted
Unit 19
in large black letters.

“Where’s the fire station?” the PM asked.

“It’s right by the Azadi subway station,” Dayan said.

“And what are you recommending?”

“A missile strike on the hazmat vehicle, sir.”

“Now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where, in Azadi Square?”

“Absolutely, sir—but to minimize collateral damage I would definitely recommend a strike before the truck gets back to the firehouse.”

Naphtali was running out of time. The hook and ladder and the two pumpers were already in the traffic circle that went around Azadi Square, just minutes away from the firehouse. The hazmat truck, however, was just entering the traffic circle.

“This is it, sir,” Dayan said. “It’s now or never. If the Mahdi gets to the fire station and slips away in another vehicle or via some other escape route we don’t know about, we may never get another chance.”

Naphtali knew Dayan was right in principle, but was he right in fact? Was the Twelfth Imam really in that yellow truck? If he was, then it would be a crime against the Jewish people, he calculated, not to take the shot and try to decapitate the Caliphate right here and now. But if
Dayan was wrong and Israel killed six innocent, unarmed firemen in downtown Tehran, the international diplomatic community—which was already dead set against Israel and this war—would go ballistic. The U.N. Security Council condemnation of Israel would pass for certain. Not even the U.S. would veto it, certainly not under the leadership of President Jackson. The ramifications of that were serious indeed. Israel could be subject to economic sanctions, trade embargoes, and International Criminal Court proceedings, and those were just for starters.

“Please, Asher, for heaven’s sake, we have to strike now,” Shimon insisted.

TEHRAN, IRAN

“You’re Israeli?” David asked, incredulous but realizing that was the accent he’d been detecting—the sound of a native Hebrew speaker talking in English. He just couldn’t believe he was hearing it in the heart of Iran.

“And you, are you the one they call Zephyr?”

Now David’s eyes widened. How could they know that? No one outside the top echelons of the U.S. government knew he existed, much less his code name.

David hoped the ski mask was covering the stunned expression on his face, on all his team’s faces. “We’re asking the questions. Who are you? Are you two Mossad?”

The man said nothing, and David wasn’t sure if he was following security protocols at that moment or simply too surprised to answer his question.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” David said. “Are you the guys who took out Mohammed Saddaji?”

“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” said one.

“Sure you do,” David replied. “You—or your colleague—put a car bomb in his Mercedes. It was a nice piece of work.”

The two men said nothing.

“Look, I don’t have time to play games,” David said. ”You’ve got three seconds to let me know who you are, or we’ll end this now.” He chambered a round and aimed his pistol. “One . . .”

Nothing but silence.

“Two . . .”

Still more silence, so David put the muzzle directly on the second man’s forehead, right between his eyes.

“Three.”

“You can call me Tolik,” one said.

“Why are you here?” David asked.

“Same as you,” said Tolik. “To shut down this war.”

“But why here, why the apartment of Omid Jazini?” David pressed. “You didn’t come here to find him, to interrogate him, to shake him down and squeeze him for information. You came here to kill him.”

“Omid is part of his father’s security detail,” said Tolik. “And his father was just promoted to commander in chief of the Caliphate’s military.”

“We know.”

“So our orders were to assassinate him.”

“Why?”

“To send a message to his father.”

“What message?”

“That we’re onto him,” Tolik said. “That we’re closing in. That they’ve got moles in their ranks who are talking to the outside world and that they can’t ever know whom to trust. We did our job. And believe me, word will spread fast through the top ranks of the Mahdi’s inner circle. Key men are being picked off left and right. We’re guessing you’re the ones who kidnapped Javad Nouri today.”

David didn’t respond.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Suddenly Fox called from the master bedroom. “Boss, there’s something here you need to see.”

Rashidi hated having the Mahdi out in the open. There were too many risks, too many threats. What if there was a sniper out there? What if there was a team of assassins? This wasn’t a bulletproof truck. The agents in the back had machine guns, but they didn’t have RPGs or heavy
firepower. And to minimize the risk of a leak, almost no one—including most of the security detail back at the war room—even knew the Mahdi was in this vehicle. But as General Jazini had explained, they had to take a risk if they were going to get the Mahdi to Kabul in time to meet President Farooq. The key wasn’t avoiding all risks, Jazini’s memo insisted; the key was doing everything possible to minimize the risks and then being ready for any threat you couldn’t rule out.

They were nearly three-quarters of the way around the traffic circle, with Azadi Square on their left and Jenah Highway coming up fast on their right. In a few seconds, they would be on Lashkari Highway, taking a quick exit to the firehouse. That’s certainly where the driver thought they were going. But it was Rashidi’s job to make sure they never got to the firehouse.

“Turn here—right now!”
Rashidi shouted.
“Yes, right here, onto Jenah Highway. That’s an order from the Mahdi!”

The driver was completely confused, but he was a man trained to follow orders, so he turned the wheel hard to the right and exited onto Jenah Highway.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL

Naphtali had just given the order to fire at the hazmat truck when he saw the vehicle make a sudden turn.

“What’s going on?”
Naphtali shouted.
“Belay that order, Zvi. Belay that order.”

“Abort, abort!”
Dayan screamed into the phone in his hand.

Shimon began cursing. The entire communications center erupted in confusion.

“Why are you aborting the mission?”
Shimon demanded to know.

“Why is that truck turning?” Naphtali asked.

“How should I know?” Shimon shot back. “We’ve got a clean shot. Let’s take it.”

“No, not until I’m sure,” Naphtali said.

“Sure of what?”

“Sure the Mahdi is in there.”

“Sir, with all due respect, we can be even more certain the Mahdi is in that truck now,” Shimon said.

“Why?”

“Because whoever is driving doesn’t want to take him to the firehouse.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s not a firefighter. They don’t want him mingling with real firefighters. They’re taking him someplace else.”

“Where?” Naphtali pressed.

“I don’t know, sir,” Shimon conceded. “But once he gets there, I can’t guarantee we’ll ever have a shot like this again.”

Naphtali stared at Shimon, then at the screen as the hazmat truck zigzagged down a series of side streets at breakneck speed, heading east. With the roads essentially devoid of rush-hour traffic since no one in Tehran wanted to be driving around during a war, the chance of collateral damage was minimal. Maybe Shimon was right. The PM now looked to Dayan for counsel.

“Sir, I’m with Levi,” said Dayan. “I think the truck is heading for the Tohid Tunnel. You should take him out now, before he reaches it.”

TEHRAN, IRAN

“Okay, take another right at the next intersection and then head west,” Rashidi ordered, checking his BlackBerry to make sure he had the directions right.

The driver had no idea what was going on, but he complied. Rashidi checked his watch. They were doing well. They were actually a few minutes ahead of schedule. But they were not out of the woods yet.

The driver slowed down ever so slightly and then made a hard right turn.

“Good,” said Rashidi. “Now race for the tunnel entrance at Fatemi Street—and step on it.”

By Rashidi’s reckoning, they were less than a quarter of a mile
away now from the ramp into the Tohid Tunnel, a three-kilometer, six-lane highway that ran underneath the heart of the capital. It had cost nearly half a billion dollars but had been completed in just thirty-one months, setting a world record for the fastest construction of a tunnel this size. Rashidi couldn’t be sure the entire plan would work, but his job was to make sure they got underground, at least, and he was determined to impress the Lord of the Age with his ability to manage in a crisis.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL

“They’re almost there, sir—they’re almost to the tunnel,” Shimon said, pleading with the prime minister to authorize the drone attack now and get it over with.

“No,” Naphtali said. “They’re making too many twists and turns. I don’t want to run the risk of missing.”

“Don’t worry, sir. The missile will lock onto the heat signature of the truck. I guarantee you we will hit the truck and nothing else.”

“We will hit them,” Naphtali finally agreed, “but we’ll do it on the other side of the tunnel—that will be the cleanest shot, on the straightaway as they’re coming out of the tunnel.”

TEHRAN, IRAN

The second they entered the Tohid Tunnel, Rashidi let out a whoop and said a prayer of thanks to Allah. He had no idea they were being tracked by an Israeli drone, no idea a heat-seeking Hellfire missile was waiting for them three kilometers away. He just prayed the next phase of the plan worked as well as the first.

Halfway through the tunnel, Rashidi suddenly yelled at the driver to stay in the right lane and then to slam on the brakes and stop the truck. Several hundred yards later, the air filled with the smell of burning rubber, they were safely stopped at the tunnel’s midpoint. The four
elite IRGC bodyguards—all changed into suits and ties again—burst out of the back of the hazmat track, brandishing automatic weapons. They checked to see if there was any traffic behind them, but no one was around.

Rashidi, meanwhile, jumped out of the front seat and took a look for himself. Confident the coast was clear, he walked about thirty yards behind the truck. There he found a door marked Authorized Personnel Only. As per the plan, it was unlocked, and when he opened the door, he found five young schoolgirls waiting for him. They ranged in age, he guessed, from about nine years old to maybe fifteen or sixteen. All wore chadors covering their heads. Their faces, what he could see of them, were ashen, and their eyes were full of fear. They had no coats and they were trembling, but perhaps more from the situation than the cool March temperatures.

Rashidi gave the all-clear sign to the security detail and then ordered the girls to head for the truck. The agents, meanwhile, helped the Mahdi out of the hazmat truck and directed the girls to take his place in the back. Rashidi noticed the Mahdi did not even acknowledge the girls. He did not greet them or even make eye contact with them. He treated them as though they were . . . what? Impure? Unworthy? He was not entirely sure. But the Mahdi did not pray for them or bless them or even speak a word to them. Rather, he moved quickly and without emotion toward Rashidi.