Hunt the Falcon (21 page)

Blanc: “Yes, but—”

Donaldson cut him off. “Nice idea, Crocker. But I don't think Alizadeh is a big enough target. Besides, I'm not sure we know where he is.”

Anders: “We don't.”

“Why isn't he big enough?” Blanc asked.

Anders: “First of all, no one's ever heard of him. And second, is taking him out really worth risking Scimitar and the lives of your men?”

Everyone in the room with the exception of Crocker seemed to agree. He spoke up. “Let's not forget what this guy has done—the hijacking of the nuclear material off the coast of Somalia, his operations in Libya and the attempt to steal WMDs, his drug smuggling operation out of Ciudad del Este, building a base in Venezuela, and this attempt on New Orleans. I say we take him out, then broadcast his crimes to the media.”

“And make him a martyred hero in Iran?” Donaldson asked. “I don't think the president will appreciate that recommendation.”

Talk then shifted to assassinating a higher-profile official, including the minister of intelligence and security, Heidar Moslehi; the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; the chief commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammed Ali Jafari; and the commander of the Quds Force, Major General Qassem Suleimani.

Crocker's mind started to wander. He imagined Alizadeh sitting somewhere, talking about how the United States was bloated and soft.

Anders argued that any U.S. attack on the president of Iran or the Supreme Leader would be seen as an act of war and would probably provoke a furious response from the world's Shiite community. He didn't think the president was willing to risk that.

Crocker imagined Alizadeh throwing his head back and laughing.

The discussion then focused on Ali Jafari and General Suleimani. Donaldson looked at his watch and suggested they break for lunch while he sat in on a video conference with the White House.

Crocker wasn't hungry. He said, “I recommend that we strike back at the people who are planning these attacks and hit their headquarters.”

“Whose headquarters?” Donaldson asked back.

“Quds Force headquarters,” Crocker answered.

“I think Chief Crocker has raised an interesting scenario,” Sy Blanc offered.

“Where is it?” Donaldson said, gathering the papers he'd spread out on the table.

Anders: “Where's what?”

Donaldson: “Quds Force HQ.”

Walker cleared her throat. “They have an office in Tehran that is actually located in the compound of our former embassy,” she said. “But their national headquarters is in the city of Ahvaz, in the southwest. They moved it there several years ago to be closer to Iraq.”

“That's the office General Suleimani and Farhed Alizadeh operate out of, and where they've been planning and launching the attacks against us?” Donaldson asked as he stood.

“As far as we know, yes,” she responded.

Donaldson: “I want you to confirm that.”

“I will, sir.”

Crocker and Sutter sat with Sy Blanc in a corner of the CIA cafeteria. Blanc looked out the window at the snowflakes starting to fall on the patio and said, “Why are we always so slow to respond?”

“Remember the USS
Cole
bombing in 2000 by al-Qaeda?” Sutter asked. “I hope we don't make the same mistake again.”

Blanc tasted a forkful of his tuna salad, then pushed it away and drowned the taste with coffee. “The Quds Force has been a huge, ugly thorn in our side for years, especially in Iraq, where they have hundreds of agents who've been actively arming and running the Shiite militia since 2003. In my opinion they're directly or indirectly responsible for hundreds of U.S. coalition casualties.” Blanc looked as though he had swallowed something bitter.

Sutter: “How do you know this?”

“NSA managed to eavesdrop on a meeting in Tehran in 2008, shortly after the Green Zone was pummeled by rockets. Iraq's vice president at the time, Adel Abdul Mahdi, asked General Suleimani if the Quds Force was behind the attacks. Suleimani joked, and I quote, ‘If the fire was accurate, it was ours.' ”

“We should have punished him for that,” Sutter commented.

Blanc had more to get off his chest. “In Afghanistan, they run something called the Ansar Corps, headed by another religious zealot named General Gholamreza Baghbani, who has organized a network of drug traffickers to ship opium and heroin into Iran and supply the Taliban with weapons. They've got another unit, Unit 400, which is currently fighting alongside President Assad's forces in Syria. And now there's Unit 5000. These fuckers are evil. And to a real extent, Suleimani, Alizadeh, and others have more authority than the president, because they report directly to the ayatollah.”

“Alarming,” Sutter said.

“The fact is, the Quds Force has been working against us and attacking us for years, and we've done nothing about it. I suppose it's because so many of their activities have occurred far away, making the threat they pose somewhat abstract to many of us here in Washington.”

Crocker saw Leslie Walker coming toward them, weaving around the tables. Judging from her expression, Crocker surmised she was carrying an important message. Turning to Sy Blanc, he said, “Quds Force officers and their proxies have tortured me and my men and kidnapped my wife, and we have the physical and psychological scars to prove it. So Alizadeh and his terrorists aren't abstract to me, and I couldn't be more motivated to get them. I want that chance, and I hope to God I get it.”

“Me, too,” Anders said. “Me, too.”

T
hey flew
back that night in the same Gulfstream jet. As Sutter sat across the aisle pecking on his laptop, Crocker studied the satellite photos Leslie Walker had given him of Quds Force headquarters in Ahvaz, Iran—a six-story concrete structure with little porthole-like windows, antennas and satellite dishes on the flat roof. It was located in a densely built-up urban area, with a bank on one side, a modern movie theater on the corner. He used a red pen to circle military checkpoints at both ends of the block, and was already considering how he and his men might enter the area undetected.

Crocker had been to Tehran but had never set foot in Ahvaz, which he now learned is a city of approximately 1.5 million on the banks of the Karun River. Located in the Khuzestan desert and surrounded by sandstone hills, Ahvaz, according to the Weather Channel website, is one of the hottest cities on the planet, with the average high temperature in July a toasty 115.2 degrees and peaks regularly hitting 120. The city also had the distinction of being the world's most polluted, according to the World Health Organization, with an annual average of 372 micrograms of airborne particles per cubic meter of air. Washington, D.C., by contrast, had a level of 18 micrograms, and Tokyo 23. The WHO study cited sulfur dioxide and nitrogen exhaust from nearby power plants, burn-off from oil wells, and vehicle exhaust as the main pollutants.

Not a great place to live,
Crocker thought. Neighboring Iraq had attempted to annex the city in 1980 during the Iran-Iraq War. Reading further, he learned that a minority of the area's residents are Arabs rather than Persians, which might have explained Saddam Hussein's ambitions—either that, or it was further evidence that the man had been insane.

They landed just before midnight. Driving home with Elvis crooning “Something” over the radio, his brain jumped ahead, calculating where his team would insert, what they'd need in terms of equipment and support, and how they'd move within Ahvaz. He couldn't help himself, even though he was tired and a final decision regarding the scope and target of the mission hadn't been reached. Outside it was cold and windy. As a kid in Massachusetts, he liked to sleep in front of the fireplace on nights like this.

The grandfather clock on the second floor chimed the quarter hour as he entered, patted Brando on the head, and started upstairs. He was looking forward to the warm bed he shared with Holly, but the door to the master bedroom was locked. Wondering why, and realizing this had never happened before, he tried the door again. He considered opening the couch in his office and sleeping there so as not to wake her, but he was worried, and decided to knock instead. “Holly?” he called. “Holly, are you okay?”

Half a minute later she opened the door. Wearing a long cotton nightgown, she looked disheveled and tired, with a bandage on her chin. “You're home,” she said, half asleep and heading back to the bed.

“Is anything wrong?” he asked. “How come you locked the door?”

“I thought I heard something downstairs.”

“It's windy outside. Could've been a tree branch.” He saw her 9mm automatic on the nightstand next to her side of the bed. “What happened to your chin?”

“I went downstairs to check on the noise. I wasn't completely awake. I slipped on the stairs and tripped. Silly me.”

He took her by the hand, sat her on the edge of the bed, and cleaned and rebandaged the cut on her chin. Then he checked her teeth and found no damage. “You hurt anything else?” he asked.

“Not really, except for my pride,” she answered, looking embarrassed. Staring at the carpet, she shook her head and asked, “What's wrong with me, Tom?” with sad resignation in her voice.

He put his arms around her and said, “Nothing that a little time, rest, and tender loving care won't fix.”

“Oh, Tom.” They kissed. She felt delicate and tender in his arms. He wanted to make her better, and protect her, and wash away all the guilt and anguish that clouded her soul.

Gently, he pushed her back onto the bed, lay down beside her, and held her hand. Another hungry part of him wanted to make love to her, but he knew the time wasn't right.

In the morning when Crocker got out of the shower, Holly was gone. Lying on a chair by the bed he saw a book called
Healing after Loss
. The subtitle read:
Daily Meditations for Working Through Grief
.

Twenty minutes later he arrived at ST-6 headquarters and found Sutter sitting in the same uniform he'd worn the day before, his stockinged feet on the desk, reading a document as he sipped from a mug of coffee with a trident on it.

“Captain?”

He looked up and set the mug down on his desk. “Sit down, Crocker. How many times have you seen the movie
Lawrence of Arabia
?” he asked in his backcountry drawl.

“I don't know. Half a dozen. Why?”

“Fascinating story, on so many levels. I couldn't fall asleep last night, so I streamed it twice on my computer. The different tribes, the desert, a hero wrestling with his own internal demons. Kind of reminded me of you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Inspired me, too. One highly motivated man can make a difference, especially if he understands the culture of the people he's dealing with,” Sutter said as he tossed the document he was holding at him. “Read this.”

Crocker caught it and quickly scanned the two-page report on Scimitar, which had nothing to do with tribes or the desert, but briefly described a group of twelve young Iranians who had been working clandestinely with the CIA to help sabotage the Iranian government. The report didn't mention what they had managed to accomplish so far or their capabilities. Their leader was a man named Ramin.

Sutter asked, “What do you think?”

“Interesting. But what did you mean about me wrestling with my personal demons?”

“Oh, that.” Sutter smiled, scratched his jaw, took a long drink of coffee, and picked up another document from his desk. “Remember the psych evaluation I told Doc Petrovian to administer to you? Well, he concluded that you're a combination of an aggressive PT and an introverted intuitive.”

“What do you mean by PT?” Crocker asked.

“It stands for personality type,” Sutter answered. “Don't get all worked up. What he's saying is that you display the characteristics of an ideal leader, but you're also conflicted.”

“Conflicted how?” Crocker asked, starting to feel defensive.

“It means you like being able to dominate and command others and exercise power, but you also like to stay in the background until you feel the need to take over. So you like being part of a traditional power structure, but you're also someone who primarily trusts his intuition, which makes you a loner and a rebel. You're active and adventurous, but you also need time alone to sit back and observe the world and make associations.”

“Petrovian said that?” Crocker asked.

“Sound like you?” Sutter asked back.

“Kind of.”

Sutter got up and refilled his mug from a stainless-steel urn behind his desk. “Forget about the psychological profile for the time being.”

“Sir—”

“I need you to do two things. One, select three men to go with you into Iran.”

“Only three, sir?” Crocker asked.

“Yes, three. Don't fight me on this. I want you to consider carefully what you're going to need in terms of operational specialties, personal characteristics, and language skills.”

“I still don't know the specific mission.”

Sutter leaned back and yawned. “I won't be able to tell you that until it's approved by the president.”

“When's that likely to happen?”

“Today. Tomorrow. Figure another four hours after that, we'll want you to deploy.”

Crocker stood at attention. “That soon, sir?”

“Yes, that soon.” Sutter rose and handed him a blue notecard with a name written on it. “Here's the second thing I need you to do.”

Crocker read the name and asked, “Who's John Smith?”

“Some deep, deep black-ops guy Donaldson says you need to coordinate with.”

“When and where, sir?'

“Turn over the card.”

On the other side Crocker read “Williamsburg Lodge in Williamsburg, Virginia,” and “Twelve thirty p.m.” He'd attended a wedding reception there once.

“Today, sir?”

Sutter nodded. “By the way, Doc Petrovian told me some of the other people with your combination of personality traits include Al Capone, Fidel Castro, and Jeffrey Dahmer.”

“Thanks.”

“I'm thinking of sending someone over to your house to see what you store in your freezer.”

“I hope that's a joke, sir.”

Sutter laughed.

He entered the spacious white lobby of the Williamsburg Lodge—a sprawling two-story colonial-style inn a block or so from the historic center. At the front desk he asked for Mr. Smith.

“Is Mr. Smith a guest here?” the thin male clerk with stiff brown hair asked.

“I don't know. But he asked me to meet him here.”

“Your name, sir?”

“Mansfield.”

The clerk turned, consulted a computer screen, whispered to an older clerk, then returned and said, “Mr. Smith is waiting for you in the Golden Horseshoe Grill.”

“Where's that?”

“Take that hallway straight back, past the big fireplace. You'll see the entrance on the left.”

“Thanks.”

Entering the room, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the low light. The walls were paneled with walnut. Old wagon wheel fixtures hung from the ceiling. A man with a white apron stretched across his big belly polished glasses with a white towel behind the bar.

“John Smith?” Crocker asked.

The bartender shrugged and nodded toward a big man in the darkness at the end of the bar as if to say, try him. The man he indicated had gray hair to his shoulders and was speaking on a cell phone.

“John?” Crocker asked.

The big man nodded and pointed a finger at the lounge, which was empty except for three elderly couples, two of whom were seated together. Crocker selected a table in the far corner by a window that overlooked the golf course. It was overcast outside. Two men passed in a golf cart, one wearing a pink sweater and green pants.

“What are we doing here?” Crocker heard a deep voice ask.

He looked up and saw the big man standing behind a chair on the other side of the table.

“John Smith?” No way that was his real name.

The man sat. He had huge shoulders, no neck, and a very strong and unusual face—large hooked nose, high cheekbones, a prominent forehead with thick black eyebrows. He looked like a Bedouin chieftain, despite the straight gray hair, which Crocker realized was a wig, and the mustard-tinted glasses that hid his eyes.

“You play?” Smith asked, setting his BlackBerry on the table and nodding toward the course.

“Never.”

“I didn't think so.”

“You?”

Smith smiled without showing any teeth. “I do a little of everything. You want me to play golf, I play golf. You want to play tennis, I play tennis. You like to dance the mambo, I learn to do that, too.”

Crocker said, “Lou Donaldson asked me to meet you.”

“Louie the doughnut, yeah. I let him think he's my boss.” Smith twisted his mouth and lifted his eyebrows, a set of facial contortions that seemed to express the complex feelings he had about him. “You want to hear about Scimitar?”

“Yeah.”

The young waitress arrived. Crocker ordered a steak sandwich with fries. Smith told the waitress he was fasting and only wanted a glass of water with a twist of lemon. Then he leaned over the table and said in a low voice, “Whatever you've heard about Scimitar, I'm afraid to say, is probably an exaggeration. I'm the only one who has actually met and worked with these people. They're real, and they have provided us with some good intel. But they're not much.”

The cold water left a metallic taste in Crocker's mouth. “Not much in what sense?”

“Operationally, I'd say, they're useless. They can help you get around, show you places, hide you, feed you, et cetera. But with the exception of maybe two individuals, I'm not sure they can even fire a gun.”

“Tell me about the composition of the group,” Crocker said.

“There are about ten core members. Four of them are women. All of them are college educated, modern people. They hate the religious repression and long for a more open, tolerant, European-style representative government. The leader is a man called Ramin Kian, who was a former engineer in the army. He's the oldest; I'd say late thirties, maybe forty. Ramin's an emotional guy, passionate, but something of a flake.”

“A flake in what sense?”

“What I mean is, when he gets excited about something, he can be highly engaged and effective. But he loses interest quickly. He's also a coward.”

“Does he know anything about this operation?” Crocker asked.

“I communicated with him last night—I can't reveal how. But I can tell you, he's very pumped about it, which is a positive.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him the U.S. was interested in launching an attack against Quds Force headquarters or possibly some of its leaders. He said an attack on Quds Force HQ is impossible.”

“Did he explain why?”

“Why? Because the building is heavily fortified and the streets around it are barricaded and monitored twenty-four/seven.”

“There's always a way,” Crocker said.

“I'm repeating what he told me. In his opinion, any assault on their HQ would require helicopters and at least two dozen heavily armed troops, so it's out of the question.”