Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 05 (61 page)

 
          
“Based
in
Tehran
and at Bandar Abbas until the transfer is
complete,” Vice Admiral Qu Zhenmou, commander of the East China Sea Fleet,
added. “Compliments of the Ayatollah Khamenei. This will coincide with the
signing of a new friendship and cooperation treaty between
China
and
Iran
, including logistics and basing rights.”

           
“You . .. you will allow Chinese
troops to be stationed on Iranian soil?” Buzhazi asked incredulously. “It... it
is impossible!”

           
“Our two countries have grown
together greatly over the years,” the Ayatollah Khamenei said. “We both desire
expansion beyond our local regions, increased trade, fewer trading barriers,
and greater technology transfer and development. Along with
Afghanistan
and
Pakistan
,
China
’s other two allies in the
Middle East
, this shall be attained.” He paused, fixing
Buzhazi with a deadly stare, and added, “And it should prove to be a strong
stabilizing
force against foreign or
domestic intrigue, wouldn’t you agree, General Buzhazi?”

           
Buzhazi’s mouth went dry. He knew
exactly what Khamenei meant— the Chinese troops were there to back Khamenei’s
government against the threat of a military coup d’etat.

 
          
“We
have summoned General Hosein Esmail Akhundi to assist us in completing the
transfer of the carrier and cruiser to the Chinese navy, and to help establish
the People’s Liberation Army’s liaison offices, headquarters, and barracks in
the capital,” Khamenei said.

 
          
Akhundi
was the already-chosen replacement. Damn, Buzhazi thought, I should have had
him executed when I had the
chance!
“I believe we have no further need of your services, General. There are guards
outside who will
escort
you to your
quarters.” Khamenei said the word
escort
like a guillotine sliding down on its rails. “You are dismissed.”

 
          
Several
Basij paramilitary guards—Buzhazi noticed that the Pasdaran guards normally
assigned to the Council chambers were already missing!—appeared out of side
doors and stood ready to escort Buzhazi out. He was relieved to see that none
of them were armed with rifles, only side arms—good. If he had to kill them to
make his escape, he would have no trouble. “I prefer to be alone, Your
Eminence,” Buzhazi said. Khamenei dismissed him with a wave of his hand, and
Buzhazi departed.

 
          
The
hallways outside the Council chambers were empty; none of the Basij guards had
followed him out. One of Buzhazi’s Pasdaran bodyguards had changed positions
over to the elevator down the hallway. When he saw his superior officer, the
guard immediately raised his radio to his lips to alert the general’s driver
and other bodyguards that he was on his way downstairs. Buzhazi trotted toward
the elevator, an action which only seemed to agitate the guard more. “Where is
General Sattari?” Buzhazi asked.

 
          
“Waiting
in your car, sir ...”

 
          
“Good,”
Buzhazi said. Sattari, his air forces commander and close friend, would be
vital in helping to restructure and build his opposition force—he was one of
the few military commanders he could totally trust. “Radio ahead,” Buzhazi told
the Pasdaran guard. “Have my helicopter waiting at Doshan Tappeh ready for
immediate departure. You stay here and do not allow anyone to use this elevator
until you are notified that I am airborne.” The guard nodded and made his radio
call.

 
          
The
elevator was set in “express” mode, which would take it all the way to the
secure parking garage on the second subfloor of the Council building and
direcdy to his waiting armored limousine. Finally, inside the express elevator,
Buzhazi felt safe. Damn Khamenei! Buzhazi cursed. Damn his unexpected backbone.
The only thing that would save him from the power and wrath of the Pasdaran was
a bold, innovative move, and inviting the Chinese to establish bases in
Iran
was such a move. What else had Khamenei had
to promise Jiang Zemin and his powerful military warlords? If it worked,
Iran
, its Islamic partners, and
China
would make a powerful Asian union, strong
enough even to take on the West and its overwhelming military superiority.

 
          
Well,
this fight was not over, Buzhazi decided. Khamenei was not bulletproof, and the
relations he now seemed to enjoy with
China
might turn sour very quickly. Both Jiang
and Khamenei were ideologues, obsessed with fantasies of global domination and
leadership—one Communist, the other Islamist. Buzhazi was more pragmatic. There
might be others in
China
much like himself. The chief of the
People’s Liberation Army Air Force, for example: General Cao Shuang-ming,
young, brash, opportunistic, and eager to ascend the ranks of the world’s
largest military force in the world’s most populous state.

 
          
The
elevator stopped and the doors swung open—but it had not stopped on the second
subfloor security level, but on the first subfloor. There, standing before him,
was a woman, dressed completely in traditional black robes and a black veil—and
aiming a small submachine gun at him.

 
          
Buzhazi
screamed, raised his arms to his head to cover his face, and lunged at the
woman. The gun fired, spraying bullets across Buzhazi’s head and left shoulder,
but his sudden charge and the recoil of the weapon caused most of her bullets
to pass up and over Buzhazi’s left shoulder. At that same moment, General
Sattari and a guard burst through the stairwell adjacent to the elevator door—
they’d seen the elevator unexpectedly stop one floor above and known it had to
be a setup for an assassination.

 
          
The
woman whirled toward Sattari and the Pasdaran guards and fired again, but she
was too late. Several guns opened up on her at once, cutting her down.

 
          
Sattari
ran over to Buzhazi. His face, neck, and shoulders were masses of blood and
bone, but somehow the general was still alive— the small-caliber gun of the
assassin had been chosen for its small size and not necessarily for its
dependable killing power. “The general is still alive,” Sattari said as he
began to apply pressure to the larger neck and head wounds. “Get his car up
here immediately! Get a first-aid kid, and notify the headquarters doctor and
emergency medical team to meet us at the generals helicopter.
Move!”
Several guards took Sattari’s
place, giving Buzhazi CPR and tending to his wounds, so Sattari went over to
examine the assassin. An Arab woman, young and beautiful. Her robe and veil
would have assured her almost complete anonymity, and thus virtual
invisibility, on the streets of the Islamic Republic’s capital. Somehow she had
made her way down two secure subfloors of a major government building to
attempt to assassinate the chief of staff. “I want this person identified,”
Sattari said, “and I want it done
secretly.
No one must know of this assassination attempt.”

 
          
Seconds
later, Buzhazi was taken away by Sattari and his Pasdaran guards, leaving two
guards to watch over the body of Riza Behrouzi until another car could come to
take her away.

 
          
Coronado
,
California

1 MAY 1997, 1737 HOURS, LOCAL

 
          
From
the east-side patio of the high-rise condominium, Patrick McLanahan could see
the beautiful skyline of
San Diego
, the glass towers illuminated by the first orange rays of the setting
sun. He put down the phone and walked through the eleventh-floor three- bedroom
condo to the west-side patio, where Wendy was waiting. He sat beside her, and
they locked hands and let the sun’s rays wash over them with delightful
splendor.

 
          
“How
is Hal?” Wendy asked quietly.

 
          
“Devastated,”
Patrick said. “Angry. Just what you’d expect. But he’ll be all right, I think.”
He gazed off to the city. “You know what he told me? When ISA told him just how
Riza had died, he thought. . . good for her. That’s how she would have wanted
it.” He shook his head. “Hell of a woman.”

           
“Hell of a warrior,” said Wendy.

 
          
Patrick
gave Wendy’s hand a squeeze, then looked around. “I just realized: eleventh floor,
unit eleven—Air Vehicle Eleven.”

 
          
“Jon
Masters must be psychic—or he’s got a better sense of humor than we give him
credit for,” Wendy said. She squeezed his hand. “I’m sure we can move if it
bothers you.”

 
          
“Bother
me? No,” Patrick said, smiling. “That thing brought me back from the brink
twice. I think we’ll be linked forever. Why try to fight it?” He paused for a
moment, then asked, “Where is Jon, anyway?”

 
          
“He
was deployed on the
Lincoln
to help keep an eye on the
Khomeini
and the
Zhanjiang
as they withdraw from the area,” Wendy
said. “The Navy seems very interested in his stealth drone stuff. God, I’m glad
this is over. I wish
Iran
never had that carrier in the first place.”

 
          
“Unfortunately,
now we’ll have to contend with it over in the
East China Sea
,” Patrick said. “
China
says it’s committed to refurbishing it.
They’re pretty angry we beat it up ... of course, we’re denying it, and it does
look like an aircraft accident all the way ...”

           
“A Chinese aircraft carrier,” Wendy
said. “Almost as ominous- sounding as an Iranian carrier. Think you might be
targeting some JSOWs on that same ship in a few months?”

           
“God, I hope not,” Patrick said. “I
hope not.”

Over the
Gulf
of
Oman
,
sixty miles north of
Muscat
,
Oman

2 MAY 1997
,
0817 HOURS LOCAL

 
          
“Well,
there she goes,” Jon Masters exclaimed happily. He was watching the damaged
aircraft carrier
Mao Zedong,
formerly
known as the
Khomeini
, as it cruised
eastward through the middle of the
Gulf
of
Oman
. It was being towed by the Chinese
destroyer
Zhanjiang
,
like a daughter giving her crippled and
aging mother assistance in walking home. “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

 
          
Masters
was watching the progress of the warships from the comfort of the Combat
Information Center on the U.S.S.
Abraham
Lincoln,
stationed 200 miles east in the Arabian Sea. Masters had been
allowed to deploy one of his new HEARSE stealth reconnaissance drones to the
Lincoln
to run more tests. There had been talk
about deploying a number of HEARSE drones on board every American carrier and
even on some smaller warships such as cruisers or destroyers.

 
          
Masters’s
spy plane was running perfectly after eight full hours on station—it was not
programmed to be recalled for another eight hours—and the
Lincolns
CIC was crowded with personnel wanting to get a close look
at the photographic-quality real-time radar pictures coming back from the
drone. Masters caught the eye of a very pretty young female fighter pilot,
pointed at the screen, and said to her: “Look, Lieutenant, here are the steel barricades
the ragheads— I mean, the Iranians”—a conspiratorial chuckle all around the
compartment—“put up to show that they were not going to deploy any aircraft on
the carrier or launch any more Shipwreck missiles.” The damaged forward part of
the deck had been strewn with steel girders to show anyone who was watching
that the
Khomeini
was out of action.