Protect and defend (16 page)

“Smart move. This door seemed pretty heavy. You put some armor plating in it?”

“Yep. In fact Massoud did it for me. He’s making a killing on his auto parts business in addition to armoring old cars like this.”

They were waved through the main gate and then zigzagged their way through the big concrete Jersey barriers before they made it to the main road. Stilwell turned north and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. He grabbed a clear plastic mouth guard from the dashboard and held it up for Rapp to see. He put it in his mouth and then punched the accelerator. The big Detroit V8 engine roared to life.

“This is the worst part of the trip, right here. It’s like the Indy five hundred, but with bombs.”

Rapp hurried to put on his seat belt. “What’s with the mouth guard?”

“These people are some of the shittiest drivers in the world. One of our guys got in a collision a few months ago. He got hit so hard he bit off his tongue.”

Rapp looked over at Stilwell to see if the man was pulling his leg. He noticed him white-knuckling the steering wheel and decided it was no act. Rapp gripped the door handle tightly and swore to himself.

Imad Mukhtar was in a foul mood. He looked around the rectangular table with contempt. As a man of action nothing bothered him more than having to listen to soft men spout platitudes. It was the same thing with these pretenders every time.
We will push Israel into the sea. We will vaporize their entire country. We will wipe them from the map. We will make the Americans beg for forgiveness. We will, we will,
it went on and on and they never lifted a finger to do one hundredth of what it was that they talked so boisterously about.

Mukhtar wanted desperately to move beyond Israel. The stubborn little country bored him. They were showing signs of weakness. The old guard was dying off. The ones who remembered all the broken promises. They were slowly being replaced by younger Jews who were sick of the attacks. Sick of the murders and carnage. So sick, they were willing to grasp at the illusion of peace. Mukhtar had no respect for them. He may have hated their parents and grandparents, but he respected and feared the stubborn old bastards. This young crop in both Beirut and Tel Aviv, with their iPods and cell phones, were losing their identities.

Mukhtar was in a race against time and technology. None of the other men sitting in Amatullah’s conference room understood the change that was occurring beyond their borders. They had so thoroughly bought in to their Islamic revolution that they now believed their own propaganda. They actually thought they were carrying the day in the battle between East and West, but Mukhtar knew different. The number of dead American soldiers was laughably small compared to other conflicts. A million people had died the last time Iran went to war with Iraq. Even so, they needed to get the Americans to pull out as soon as possible. The effects of their occupation were far-reaching.

The Internet, TV, radio, cell phones, and travel were all blurring the lines of race and ethnicity, and every day the American war machine stayed in the region more youths were lost to the seduction of capitalism and commercialism. Economic prosperity was spreading, as were the effects of decades of immigration from Lebanon and Palestine to Europe, America, and Canada. This new prosperity was bleeding them of the angry young men they needed to sustain the fight. A contented youth was not about to offer himself up as a suicide bomber. Fortunately in Iraq the Saudis and Pakistanis had been able to provide a steady supply of youths who had been brainwashed in Saudi-sponsored madrasas. This slow yet persistent trickle of suicide bombers was the only thing that was preventing the Americans from peace and stability. They needed to open a new front. They needed to hit the Americans in their nose and make them withdraw. If they didn’t, they risked the spreading malaise of economic prosperity. Once that happened, the people would no longer have the stomach to fight.

The yammering continued, with each advisor to Amatullah trying to outdo the next in the arena of tough talk. Mukhtar’s patience was threadbare. Allah surely had important plans for him. Why else would He have allowed him to survive the horrible attack at the nuclear facility? He’d spent the first day in the hospital heavily sedated. His lungs ached from all the coughing. When Amatullah sent for him, he was eager for the chance to get away from the poking and prodding of the nurses and doctors. If he had known the meeting was going to be like this, however, he would have stayed in his bed.

Major General Dadress, the chief of the armed forces, was backtracking from his earlier statements that his shore batteries could sink every U.S. ship in the gulf if given the word. He was now saying that while he could inflict heavy casualties on the United States, such an aggressive move would undoubtedly be seen as an act of war and would invite heavy reprisals.

“And what do you call what they did to us?” Amatullah asked with his signature half grin. “Was it not an act of war? Can we sit here and let it go unpunished?”

“I agree,” said General Dadress, trying to sound reasonable, “but we must carefully consider what is proportional.”

Mukhtar tilted his head back and let out a contemptuous groan. Amatullah and all of his advisors turned to see what had upset the uncouth leader of Hezbollah.

“What is wrong?” Amatullah asked, showing only amusement.

“I can’t believe I am hearing this,” Mukhtar said with no attempt whatsoever to conceal his disgust. “Proportional. War is not about equal portions. You have been attacked by Israel and America without provocation. You were doing exactly what Israel did thirty years ago when they developed nuclear weapons in defiance of the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency. They, more than any country, had no right to do this to us.”

There was a knock on the door, and then it opened to reveal Azad Ashani. The minister of intelligence looked down the length of the table at Amatullah and said, “I am sorry I wasn’t here on time.”

“I was told you were in the hospital.”

Ashani grabbed one of the few remaining chairs. “Doctors like to err on the side of caution.”

Amatullah squinted at Ashani with suspicious eyes and then turned to General Dadress. “Where were we?”

“I think our
Lebanese
friend was about to tell us what we should do.”

Mukhtar noted the way the general chose to use the name of his adopted country. He was tempted to ask him how many of his men he had lost in their battle against Israel and America, but he decided to let it pass. “You hit them,” he said in a slow, steady voice. “I like your idea,” he said to Amatullah, “of sinking one of your own tankers and blaming it on the Americans, but I think you should take it one step further. You should sink your tanker and then let those new Russian subs of yours hunt their carriers and sink them.”

“If we touch one of their carriers,” Dadress said in shock, “they will send our entire navy to the bottom of the ocean.”

“Then let them. It’s not much of a navy to begin with,” Mukhtar retorted.

Dadress turned away from Mukhtar and addressed Amatullah. “I am advocating taking decisive action, but one would be a
fool
to not take into account the American ability to strike back.”

It wasn’t in Mukhtar’s nature to sit still while an overfed, over-the-hill general called him a fool. “Do you know how many of my people have died in the fight against America and Israel?” He didn’t wait for the general to answer. “Thousands. How many of your men have died, General?”

Dadress’s face flushed with anger. He pounded his balled fist down on the table and barked, “I will not allow you to insult my men.”

“Good!” Mukhtar stood. “Then it is settled. You will send them into battle as I have been doing with my men for three decades.”

“How dare you?” The general stood.

“All I have been doing my whole life, General, is daring. Daring myself to go into battle. Daring my men into battle. Daring the Israelis to kill me. The French. The Americans. The list goes on and on. Let them drop their bombs. Let them sink your navy. They will never invade your country.”

“Even if we sink one of their carriers?”

“Especially if you sink one of their carriers. The American people are growing tired of war, and they are growing tired of defending the criminal Jews. Now is the time to be bold.” Mukhtar started for the door.

“Where are you going?” asked Amatullah.

“Back to Lebanon and then to America, where I am going to avenge the attack against your country.” Mukhtar yanked open the door and then slammed it behind him as he left.

Ashani slowly looked away from the door. One by one he looked at the men arrayed around the table. Every single man had his eyes cast down in shame, save one. Amatullah had that crooked grin on his face and a faraway look in his eye. Ashani watched as the corners of his mouth turned upwards to form a smile of satisfaction. He was already troubled by what he had heard, but now the minister of intelligence got a new sinking feeling in his stomach. Something told him Amatullah had recruited Mukhtar to goad these men into taking reckless action.

Ashani had no doubt what the Americans would do if one of their carriers were hit. Especially if they could claim they had no hand in the attack that destroyed Isfahan. Ashani knew his colleagues well. If their honor were called into question by a half-breed like Mukhtar, they would take action. He needed to give them time to cool down.

Ashani cleared his throat loudly and said, “Minister Salehi will be addressing the UN Security Council in a few hours. I have been informed that the U.S. secretary of state has flown to New York and would also like to address the council. The director of their CIA has reached out to me and would like to sit down and discuss what happened.”

“And your point is?” Amatullah asked.

“Before we do something that could place this government and its people in harm’s way, I think we should talk to the Americans and find out what they might be willing to offer us to avoid further conflict.”

One by one the advisors slowly nodded their heads in agreement.

Amatullah looked at the men and said, “I can wait another day or two at the most before we take action, but I want plans drawn up. When I give the order I want them implemented immediately. Have I made myself clear?”

One by one each man at the table said they understood. Even Ashani. Despite his health he would be heading to Mosul in the morning. If he didn’t speak to Kennedy soon, things might spin out of control.

As the chief of base in Mosul, Stilwell could move far more easily around the city than both the chief of base in Basra and the chief of station in Baghdad. His counterpart in Basra lived on the base at the airport and was in constant fear of being kidnapped or assassinated. The chief of station in Baghdad rarely left the Americanized Green Zone, and when he did it was usually in a helicopter.

Stilwell liked to keep three safe houses in rotation at any given time. Every couple of months he’d rent a new one and close up one of the old ones. They were all fairly nondescript, two-story brick or stucco homes with high walls and a strong gate. He staffed them with private contractors and never stayed in one more than two nights in a row. He was constantly changing his routine so as to confuse anyone who might attempt to kidnap him. Dozens of contractors and private citizens in Mosul had been ambushed and held for ransom. About half of them made it back alive. The other half ended up floating downstream in the river. Massoud would from time to time provide a shadow for Stilwell to see if anyone was following him. Massoud’s men caught a local thug getting a little too close a few months earlier and put him in the hospital with a broken jaw and two broken legs.

As they crossed over the Tigris, Stilwell brought Rapp up to speed on Massoud.

“He’s been trying to get this house for three years.”

“Why this house in particular?” Rapp asked.

“It’s on the east side of the river. There’s more land and it tends to be less violent. It also puts him that much closer to the Iranian border which for some reason means a lot to him.”

As they crossed over the river, Stilwell pointed north. “You see that patch of land past that other bridge with all the trees. It looks like a park?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s his new place. It used to belong to one of Saddam’s cousins. The guy had a monopoly on the textile industry in northern Iraq. With Saddam’s help he used forced labor to run his factories. I guess the guy made a killing.”

“Did we get lucky and drop a bomb on his head?”

“Nope. He took off to Jordan the week before the war started. The guy has been holding out hope that he would be able to return. A few months ago he finally saw the light and sold to Massoud.”

They made it across the bridge and turned north. A mile later they turned on to a quiet road and then a few hundred yards after that they approached a massive steel gate with guards milling about. The men recognized Stilwell and greeted him with smiles and waves. A signal was given and a twelve-foot-high steel gate began rolling back.

“They’re not going to search us?” Rapp asked.

“Massoud and I are tight. They trust me.”

As they drove up the tree-lined drive, Rapp got his first glimpse of the house. It was massive. “I don’t remember him being this wealthy when I was here last year. Is this guy into anything other than used car parts?” Rapp asked with suspicion.

“He might be into a few other things.”

“Like what?”

“Guns.”

“He’s an arms dealer?”

“More of a financier. He helps put the deals together.”

“Anything else I should know about?”

“Saddam’s cousin…the one he bought this place from?”

“Yeah.”

“He also bought his business.”

“At a steeply discounted price, I’m sure.”

Stilwell stopped in front of the massive portico. “These Sunnis have been screwing people for years. You’re not going to get any sympathy out of me.”