Cold Shot (31 page)

“Very well,” the chairman said, nodding. “Our analysts and Kathy Cooke’s concur that the CAVIM site appears to have somewhere around two hundred armed personnel at present. Assuming those men are all armed, to assure a high probability of success and minimize the probable number of casualties, we’ll need to move forces at least at a five-to-one ratio—”

“Five-to-one!” Feldman yelled. “That’s a thousand men. You’re talking about moving an entire brigade!”

“Sir, that would just be for the CAVIM site—”

“Wait . . . ‘just the CAVIM site’?” Rostow repeated.

“Mr. President, you yourself pointed out at the UNSC that the Venezuelans have numerous other facilities involved in this enterprise. If you want to ensure that they can’t try this again, then I assume you’ll want those facilities destroyed as well. So we’re talking about one or more brigades
per facility.
At least an entire division total, possibly more—”

“You’d be invading the entire country!” Feldman protested. “You’d have to take on the entire Venezuelan Army.”

“Please don’t think I’m speaking lightly when I say the Venezuelan military wouldn’t be a problem if it came to that,” the chairman observed. “Yes, we are talking about deploying entire combat brigades. The First and Second Brigade Combat Teams, Tenth Division, stationed at Fort Drum in New York specialize in mountain warfare and would be our choice for taking the CAVIM site. The First and Second BCTs, First Infantry Division, out of Fort Riley in Kansas—”

“Stop,” Rostow ordered. “Just
stop
. This is overkill.”

“No, sir, it’s not,” the SecDef countered. He took a deep breath. Guiding a president through military planning without appearing insubordinate was always a delicate affair. “Sir, what you’re really asking for is the guaranteed elimination of an entire country’s ability to proliferate weapons of mass destruction. That means an entire infrastructure has to be dismantled or destroyed with a high degree of confidence. And there are three levels at which you need to think that through. The first is tactical . . . how do you want these facilities seized and destroyed? Do you want us to round up the key personnel involved for detention and debriefing? We’ll need to gather considerable intelligence on the ground to confirm that the entire infrastructure has been identified, targeted, and neutralized.”

Neutralized,
Rostow thought.
Such a clean word.

“The second is operational . . . how do you want to move the forces into the theater needed to execute those tactics?” the SecDef continued. “The CONPLAN answers those tactical and operational questions. But if you want to deviate from it by deploying fewer forces, that will affect the probability of success we’re prepared to offer and will likely result in higher casualties. The way to keep our men from getting killed or wounded in large numbers is to keep the fight short and overwhelm the enemy quickly. If the Venezuelans choose to make this a national fight and mobilize their full military capabilities, then we’ll have to discuss logistics for reinforcing our brigades on the ground and possibly launching a counteroffensive that will buy us enough time to confirm the nuclear infrastructure has been destroyed.”

Rostow turned and shared looks with Feldman, incredulous.

“You said there were three levels,” Feldman pointed out. He was sure he didn’t want to hear what the man was going to say.

“The third level is strategic, and that one’s entirely your call, not ours,” the SecDef advised. “You can’t mobilize an operation of this size without other countries noticing. We know the Iranians are involved in this, so how will they react? They could start car-bombing our bases in the Middle East or tell Hezbollah to start launching Katyusha rockets into Tel Aviv. So how will the Israelis react? There will be global blowback to this, which is why the SecState should be here.” He nodded toward the empty chair. “And there’s the issue of how all of this will affect our intelligence and counternarcotics operations. Will the Colombians support the operation? It would be helpful if we could stage out of their bases along the border—”

“Stop!” Rostow ordered again. He certainly didn’t want the man saying that Kathy Cooke or the DNI should be in the room. The president rubbed his hands against his eyes, then ran his hands through his hair as his mind raced, trying to process the arguments the military officer was laying out.
This isn’t going the way I hoped,
he told himself.
Why couldn’t Avila just fold?
“I’m not prepared to invade an entire country,” he finally admitted.

The chairman nodded sympathetically. “The other option would be air strikes,” he offered. “That would eliminate any possibility of seizing the warhead, but we can pretty well guarantee destruction of the facilities that we know about. The question then would be whether our picture of the entire infrastructure is complete.”

“Casualties?” Feldman asked.

“There’s relatively little risk that the Venezuelans could shoot down a B-2, and the
Truman
can establish air superiority and clear a corridor if necessary. She’s already had combat air patrols running in case the helicopters evac’ing the embassy staff needed cover.”

“Then do it—” Rostow started.

“There is one potential issue with that course of action, sir,” the SecDef said, interrupting.

“What?” Rostow asked through clenched teeth, failing to contain his exasperation.

“Ms. Cooke’s people haven’t been able to deliver the video they collected of the site, so we still don’t have any solid intel on the interior of the factory where the nuke is being stored. It’s supposed to be a chemical factory, but nobody knows whether that’s true or whether the interior has been rebuilt. If the Iranians had a hand in it, they might have a hardened bunker underneath. That’s what the Massive Ordnance Penetrator is for, but it was designed to take out hardened facilities underneath mountains,” the SecDef advised. “You can use a MOP against that type of site because the mountain will collapse down and trap any nuclear material. But if this site doesn’t have a hardened bunker, or if the bunker isn’t very far down, the MOP could blow nuclear material up and out. It could turn into a giant dirty bomb.”

“What about a MOAB?” the president asked.

“Same problem,” the chairman told him. “Anything powerful enough to guarantee that the entire facility and the warhead get taken out runs the risk of spreading radioactive material all over the countryside.”

Rostow nodded, leaned back in his chair, and pretended to think. “Better that than a nuclear device going off on U.S. soil and spreading fallout all over
our
countryside.”

“I can’t disagree with that, but our allies in that neighborhood won’t be so understanding,” the chairman counseled. “The SecState will have his own kind of cleanup to do.”

“Our allies don’t get to vote in our elections,” Rostow said. He stared at his SecDef as he pushed himself away from the table, ready to leave. “Cut the orders.”

CAVIM Explosives Factory

Elham leaned against the cargo truck, the hard metal pushing into his lower back. His men stood off to the north, out of the way of the SEBIN soldiers who were scurrying between the convoy and the chemical factory, carrying boxes stuffed with papers and bits of equipment the Iranian soldier couldn’t identify. Carreño was standing near the main entrance, yelling at some subordinate, the Spanish flying from his mouth so quickly that Elham couldn’t understand anything but the profanity. The SEBIN director was anxious, he saw.
No, not anxious
. . .
afraid,
Elham realized
.
The wages of incompetence are fear,
he thought.

Cleaning out the CAVIM site was a feckless exercise. Even if they moved everything out, down to the last scrap, they wouldn’t escape. The Americans knew there was a nuclear weapon here.

A memory roiled up in his mind. He had been sent to arrest a man once, a fellow Iranian suspected of taking money from the Israelis to betray his country and his God. The traitor had grabbed a woman and put a gun to her head, threatening to kill her unless he was allowed to leave. Elham had stared at the gunman and his hostage through the scope of his Steyr. The building was surrounded, no food or water would be sent in, the traitor would be allowed no sleep.
How long can you stay awake with a gun to her head?
How long can you go without water before you surrender? And if you shoot her, then what?
he had thought. The man would collapse from thirst or exhaustion before the woman died from lack of either and killing the hostage would erase all the leverage he had, as he learned when he had panicked and made good on his threat. Elham had killed him before the woman’s corpse had hit the floorboards, a single shot to the head from a hundred yards. Taking the hostage had accomplished nothing. He had kept Elham and his men at a distance and earned a few minutes of life, nothing more. Killing the woman would have certainly earned him a death by hanging had they bothered to take him alive.

This was no different. The United States would not be held hostage by a brigand such as Avila and it couldn’t be killed with a single warhead, only angered. The Americans would strangle this country until the device was found, every ship searched, every plane grounded for years if necessary and Avila’s bid to capture American spies would not change that equation now. A few U.S. tourists were sitting in Venezuelan jails, but that would just earn more scorn and outrage from the UN. Threatening such innocents only made the Venezuelans the clear villains and earned them no leverage at all. And if Avila used the warhead? The United States would end his rule, and possibly his life, as surely as Elham had ended the traitor who had shot his hostage.

Neither would Iran escape, Elham was sure. The supreme leader could always cut off Ahmadi, claim he was acting on his own initiative, but even that would require admitting that Iran had, in fact, been pursuing nuclear weapons. Perhaps it was time finally for that, time to open up the facilities at Fordow and Parchin and Ramsar. That wasn’t his decision to make but it was the only outcome he could see that left his homeland in a better place than it was before. It was also one that his own leaders would refuse to accept. They would dissemble and lie and the sanctions and isolation would go on and on. Eventually they would get their bomb and celebrate their certainty that the revolution was now secure amid the economic and diplomatic ruin that Iran would become. They would pay a very high price to gain a security that was really within their grasp now and that they didn’t need nuclear weapons to reach.

Ironic,
Elham realized. He hadn’t considered before that violence might not always foster security . . . might diminish it, in fact. It was a strange thing for a soldier to admit, and one he was sure that Ahmadi and Carreño and all the rest never would. Deceit and violence were all they really understood when the trappings were stripped away.

The game was already finished. These men just didn’t want to accept the fact.

You’re in it too,
Elham told himself. But there was nothing for him or his men to do here . . . carry some crates perhaps, but he would not bother. What he wanted was some way to change the game itself and there were no such options that he could see. So he stood by the truck, cradling the Steyr, and wondering when the Americans would tire of it all. He looked into the sky. The American satellites were there. Surely they saw what was happening and wouldn’t stand for it.

When are you coming?
he thought. Soon. They had to be coming very soon.

509th Aircraft Operations Group, 13th Bomb Squadron

Whiteman Air Force Base

Two miles south of Knob Noster, Missouri

As a general rule, the United States Air Force didn’t give its aircraft individual names like the Navy did ships, but the B-2s were an exception. The
Spirit of Oklahoma
was nearly as old as the younger airman driving the hydraulic lifter that loaded the GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) into the bomb rack. The ground crew weren’t privy to the details of the bomber’s mission orders, but none of them had to guess where she was going. The United States only had eight of the bombs and there was only one place on earth now where anyone felt 5,300 pounds of high explosive needed to drop uninvited out of the sky.

The crew chief checked the team’s work, then sealed up the bomb-bay doors and started working his way around the bomber, methodically stepping through the preflight inspection. Time was short on this one, he’d been told, but he refused to cut a corner. There was no point flying all the way to Puerto Cabello if the
Spirit of Oklahoma
couldn’t put the bomb on target when she arrived.

He finished just after the pilots, both captains, entered the hangar, suited up with helmets in hand. They did their own inspection, mirroring the crew chief’s procedure as they checked the weapons specialists’ work. Satisfied, they climbed the stepladder in the landing gear well, boarded the black wing and took their seats in the cockpit. The airmen rolled open the hangar door and the crew chief stepped out onto the tarmac, donning a headset, the communications cable uncoiling behind him as he walked.

Standing in front of the massive black bird, he called out to the pilots and confirmed their response. The three stepped through more of the preflight sequence together, tested the controls, and loaded the flight plan into the computer. The pilots finished the sequence and the crew chief walked to the side, coiling the communications cable in his hand as he went. He turned and gave the pilots the hand signal to proceed forward, marshaling the B-2 onto the tarmac.

The
Spirit of Oklahoma
rolled out of the hangar and taxied to the assigned runway. She was the only plane to fly this morning. Clearance from the tower for takeoff was immediate. The stealth bomber’s engines cycled up, the pilots lowered the flaps, and the aircraft accelerated down the runway and lifted off into the dark gray Missouri sky. She turned south and glided quietly into the low clouds that quickly stole her from the crew chief’s sight.