Whiplash (40 page)

Washington, D.C.

P
RESIDENT
T
ODD HAD JUST FINISHED SHAKING HANDS WITH
the National Chamber of Commerce delegation when David Greenwich, her chief of staff, strode into the Oval Office. His lips were pursed, a signal that a serious problem was at hand.

Still, she kept her expression neutral. Her guests had come to press her on changes in the proposed universal health care bill. Not yet approved by Congress, it was the subject of intense lobbying. Everyone, it seemed, was for it—as long as it could be changed.

“The Israelis have just struck one of the sites Whiplash was looking at,” whispered Greenwich in her ear. “In the Sudan.”

“Thank you, David. You’re right. I guess I will have to take that call.” The President rose. “I will just be a few minutes,” she announced. “Relax for a moment—Peg will see to some coffee or tea.”

Todd smiled at them, nodded as they rose, then went with the chief of staff to the cloak room next to the Oval Office.
Though called a cloakroom, as in many previous administrations it was used as a small getaway office by the President.

“What’s going on?” she asked as soon as the door was closed.

“There’s been an attack within the past fifteen minutes,” said Greenwich. “About a dozen Israeli jets came over the border into Sudan. They attacked two places, one of which we were watching. We’re still trying to round up information on the other.”

“How do we know this?”

“Our people were coming over the border when the planes passed. In addition, we’d put bugs in and around one of the targets. The raid was extremely well-planned—the Israeli planes weren’t detected at all. They must have flown right over Egypt, otherwise we could have picked them up. I’d guess they’ve been planning this for quite a while.”

“They must have been the ones who assassinated the Jasmine agent. This is part of the same operation.”

The chief of staff hadn’t made the connection yet. “Yes,” he said, nodding. As always, Greenwich was impressed not so much by his boss’s intelligence as by her ability to dive so deeply into the issue quickly.

“They should have told us,” he said. “If we’re allies.”

“That’s not the issue at the moment, David.” Most likely, the Israelis had learned their lesson during the previous administration, when the U.S. had all but vetoed an operation against Iran—and then blabbed about it a few months later. “Find out where Dr. Bacon is. I want to talk with him in twenty minutes. In person would be better than over the phone. Have Herman available as well. And Mr. Reid. I assume our friend Ms. Stockard is still away.”

“She’s the one who spotted the planes,” said Greenwich.

Tehran

T
ARID SPENT A MISERABLE AFTERNOON AND EVENING IN
Tehran. While initially relieved that Bani Aberhadji did not suspect him of skimming, the fact that his leader felt the operation had been compromised was nearly as bad. While Tarid didn’t want to believe it could be true, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that everything that had happened since he met the arms dealer named Kirk could have been arranged to increase his confidence in him.

Bani Aberhadji had checked the man out himself, and directed him to meet him personally. But that fact was unlikely to persuade Aberhadji toward any sort of leniency if it turned out that Tarid had brought the CIA to Aberhadji’s doorstep.

The hotel seemed particularly drab when he returned. Simin was out. The hotel owner was in a quiet, almost hostile mood. Tarid passed dinnertime in his room, lying on his bed, considering what he would do next. It occurred to him that he could run—flee not just Iran, but Africa as well. But there were few places he could go where Bani Aberhadji and the Guard could not reach if they wanted. No place was safe, short of Israel, and the idea of spending the rest of his life amidst Zionists seemed worse than death. He kept telling himself that he could persevere, that he had been in worse spots. His morale would hold for a few minutes, then fade.

For a while he dozed. When he woke, it was dark and his stomach growled. He decided to go out and find some food.

Tarid had just pulled on his shoes when his sat phone rang.

His fingers froze in a cramp as he grabbed it, paralyzed by fear when he saw the number on the screen. It was Bani Aberhadji. The only reason he could be calling, Tarid thought, was to tell him to initiate the meeting with Kirk.

He was standing at the edge of a precipice he had to jump from, yet he was too scared to edge forward.

Finally, he hit the Receive button.

“This is Tarid.”

“I need you to meet someone and make a delivery.”

“I—” Tarid was so taken by surprise that he didn’t know what to say. But there was no refusing Bani Aberhadji. “Yes,” he managed finally. “Tell me where and when.”

A
FTER RENTING TWO CARS SO THEY WOULD HAVE TRANSPORTATION
and a backup, Nuri and Flash spent the evening going from one restaurant to another, lingering as they watched the hotel where Tarid was sleeping. Nuri drank so much tea that his whole body vibrated with caffeine. It had no noticeable effect on Flash.

“It doesn’t affect you at all?” asked Nuri.

“Not a bit. Coffee’s the same way.”

“You should leave your body to science.”

Nuri had decided he would bug the hotel room the next time Tarid went out. While Bani Aberhadji was now a more interesting target, Tarid might yet reveal a few more useful tidbits, especially if he returned to Sudan. So Nuri had prepared another bug to attach to his suitcase.

They were sitting in the restaurant directly across the street from the restaurant when MY-PID flashed the news of the Israeli attack on the Sudan facility. Nuri was still digesting the implications when the bug picked up Bani Aberhadji’s phone call to Tarid.

He put his hand to his ear, ducking his head to the table as he listened. From Tarid’s side of the conversation, it sounded as if Aberhadji was telling him to arrange for the meeting with Danny, aka Kirk. But within moments the text of the entire conversation was available via an elint satellite that had been scanning for the signal from Tarid’s satellite phone.

Something else was up. Though what it might be wasn’t clear.

“We need our car,” Nuri told Flash, rising and leaving some change for a tip.

They left the restaurant and walked down the block.

Tarid was going to be assassinated, Nuri thought.

If that was the case, it was a fantastic opportunity—if Tarid could be rescued just in the nick of time, Nuri reasoned, he would be grateful to his rescuers and have nothing to lose by cooperating with them. If he played the situation right, they would not only have a wealth of information about the Iranian weapons program, but statements and a witness who, in some form, could be used to implicate the Iranians in the wider world.

But arranging for Tarid’s rescue was a difficult task, especially for two people working on the fly.

“We’ll ride together,” Nuri told Flash. “You drive. I need to figure something out. All right?”

“I’ll try.”

Nuri checked in with Danny as soon as they got into the vehicle. Danny and Hera were on their way to the van, planning to follow one of the trucks.

“Stay with Bani Aberhadji,” Nuri told Danny. “He’s the main target right now. They’re scrambling because of the attack on the weapons plant. He may lead you to other parts of the network.”

“If they uncrate what they’ve got, we’ll never be able to find them,” said Danny. “And we only marked half of the boxes. We don’t even know what’s in them. At least one was big enough for a warhead—”

“Don’t worry about all that right now,” said Nuri. “Just trust that we can find them again. Stick with Aberhadji.”

Nuri suspected that Danny was thinking about striking the trucks. He was a military man, and thought like one. But it was too impractical; if they failed, they’d lose everything.

“Subject Tarid is exiting the hotel,” said the Voice.

“Danny, I’ll check back with you in a few minutes,” Nuri said. “We’re going to follow Tarid. We may end up picking him up if it looks like they’re going to kill him.”

“How?”

“That’s a problem for the future.”

Over northern Ethiopia

B
REANNA REALIZED THE
I
SRAELI ATTACK ON THE
S
UDAN
weapons material factory would complicate the operation in Iran. Even if the government wasn’t responsible for the program there, the high-ranking people who were might make things difficult for foreigners, either as a smoke screen or simply for revenge. Iran had an ugly history on that score.

She immediately began working out the details for an evac mission. Fortunately, she had some of the key ingredients close at hand—a pair of Ospreys, and the rest of the Whiplash crew.

“The closer you can get us to the border, the easier it’ll be,” said Boston when she reviewed the situation with him using a map display on her console. “Easiest thing to do is let them come out the way they planned: They get into their speedboats and go out to sea. Then we have the Ospreys meet them and pick them up.”

“But what if they can’t get to the speedboats?” asked Breanna. “That’s what I’m worried about. They can’t get the speedboats and they can’t get out through the airports, because they’re shut down or being watched.”

“Then you either send a new set of speedboats to make a pickup, or we have the Ospreys grab them. Another thing,” Boston added, “would be to have them sneak over the border into northern Iraq. Trouble is, the Iraqis are kinda on guard
there. The smuggling’s not as bad as it is down south, but you’d still have patrols to dodge.”

“We could work something out there with the government,” said Breanna. “It’d be just a question of going through channels.”

“I’ll tell you right now, you want to avoid as many channels as possible where the Iraqis are concerned. The command structure’s a sieve. Anything they know in Baghdad is known in Tehran inside an hour, as a general rule.”

He was exaggerating, though not by much.

“We’re going to land in Turkey and refuel in a few minutes,” Breanna told him. “Tell me what sort of reinforcements you’d need for a rescue operation. I’ll get them lined up.”

“Hell, I’d take whatever we can get. Battalion of soldiers. Company of Rangers.” Boston smiled. “Or a squad of Marines. Same difference.”

Northern Iran

D
ANNY WATCHED THE SMALL SCREEN AS THREE MEN LEFT
the warehouse. It was impossible to tell who was who on the small screen, but the Voice had no trouble identifying one of the men as Bani Aberhadji.

He got into the cab of one of the trucks with the two men. The truck did not contain one of the marked crates. In fact, the box it carried was rather small. The truck took up its spot at the rear of the convoy, following the other trucks as they headed down the narrow farm lane with its tight cutback to the dirt road and then south toward the village.

There was no way of knowing where the trucks were going in advance, but Danny guessed that they would pick one of the bases in the Great Salt Desert. Most of Iraq’s special weapons programs had been located there before the treaty agreement, and a network of underground bunkers and other facilities remained where the material could be protected. While inspections of the known and announced sites were conducted on a random basis, there were still plenty of places where the material might be hidden.

So he wasn’t surprised when the first vehicle, which had one of the marked crates, turned toward the southeast. He directed the Voice to keep the Owl over it. Then he started the van and did a U-turn in the deserted roadway. The convoy was roughly two miles away; he figured that was a good distance.

Once it reached good roads, the convoy began stretching out. The lead driver had something of a lead foot, and in less than a minute the Owl could no longer catch the train of trucks in one image.

“Circle back so you can see the entire convoy on a regular basis,” said Danny. “Fly in a surveillance pattern above them.”

“Confirmed.”

“Are all the trucks together?”

“Truck One, Truck Two, Truck Three, Truck Five, Truck Six, and Truck Seven are on local route 31.”

“Where are the rest?”

“Truck Four and Truck Eight are on local route 2. Truck Nine is on local route 25. Truck Ten is on an unmarked road heading west. About to exit range of Owl.”

Truck Ten was the vehicle with Bani Aberhadji.

“Display a map,” he told the Voice. “And locate the trucks.”

The map popped into the screen. Truck Ten was nearly parallel to them, on a small road to the north that snaked through the mountain. Danny stared at the screen, trying to guess where Aberhadji was headed.

“Danny!” said Hera.

He looked up, then turned the wheel sharply, veering the van back onto the highway. He’d drifted all the way to the opposite shoulder.

“Sorry.”

“Why don’t you let me look at that?” she asked.

“It won’t interact with you.”

“I can lean over and look at the goddamn map,” she told him.

She unsnapped her seat belt and moved closer. Danny held it out to her.

“That’s the truck with Aberhadji,” he told her. “Where do you think he’s going?”

“The computer didn’t tell you?”

“It’s not omniscient.”

“It must be to another hiding place. Why disperse the crates?”

“It would help if we knew what was in them,” said Danny.

“You were right to check the place out and have it ready for us to leave first,” said Hera. “They would have caught us in the middle.”

“I know. I’m going to turn around and follow Aberhadji,” he said, slowing and looking for a place to do just that.

B
ANI
A
BERHADJI RAN HIS FINGERS DOWN BOTH SIDES OF
his Adam’s apple as they drove, contemplating what would happen after he unleashed the weapon on Israel.

The Israelis would attack Iran. Of that there could be no doubt. The suffering would be great. But in the aftermath, the Guard could reassert itself. Following a period of great hardship, Islam would begin to rebuild itself. Purity of belief, and as always Allah’s help, would provide the victory.

The most critical period would come in the weeks following the retaliation. Muslims would rally to Iran’s side, but what would the rest of the world do? The Americans were particularly unpredictable. It was very likely they would try and seek him out, make him and other brothers in the Guard scapegoats for the attacks.

He would stand defiantly. He would pray for a trial where his views could be heard.

Or he could drive to Tehran after the missile was launched and wait for the expected counterblow. Becoming a martyr was a welcome prospect. He felt tired, and daunted by the enormity of the next steps he would have to take.

“No, not here,” he told the driver as the man prepared to pull into the Guard base. “Keep going straight.”

“I’m sorry, Imam. I thought—”

“It’s not your fault. We are going to a base at Tajevil that I use,” explained Aberhadji. “It is only a little way further. Be careful in your driving. Our cargo is precious.”

T
HE ROADS WERE SPARSE IN THIS CORNER OF
I
RAN, AND
Danny had to drive nearly five miles north before finding one that would take him back toward the area where Aberhadji had headed. By that time, the truck had stopped at a small air base in the mountains near Tajevil. According to the Voice, the strip was long but only made of packed dirt.

“There are no aircraft on the ground,” said the Voice. “Database indicates strip has not been used within past decade. Runway length estimated at 3,310.7 meters, not counting apron area and—”

“Get me Breanna Stockard,” said Danny.

Breanna, en route to Turkey, answered from the C-17.

“Someone must be on their way to meet him at this airstrip,” he told her. “We have to track the aircraft.”

“I’ll get back to you,” she said.

“Computer, examine the defenses around the airstrip,” said Danny.

“Facility is surrounded on three sides by barbed-wire fence. There are two guard posts at the entrance, and one lookout. There are two barracks buildings. One building is not presently heated. Conclusion: building is unoccupied.”

“Are there flak guns?”

“Antiaircraft weaponry not detected.”

“How many people are at the base?”

“Impossible to determine.”

“Estimate.”

“One to two dozen, based on typical security measures for Iranian air force facilities.”

The computer was scaling down its estimate from actual bases, which might or might not be a good method.

“Ask it what’s in the building on the north side,” said Hera, examining the image. “There are a couple of trailers and a long, narrow building beyond the runway area, set off behind another set of fences.”

“Are any of them airplane hangars?” Danny asked.

“They’re too small. There are some antennas nearby.”

MY-PID IDed the facility as part of a Russian-made SA-6 antiaircraft installation, though it was missing several key parts, most significantly the missiles. The long, narrow building was IDed as a storage facility for backup missiles, which, at an operating base, would be moved onto nearby erectors after the first set were fired.

A search of Agency records revealed that the site had been prepared for American Hawk missiles during the Shah’s time. These had never been installed. Though conversion had been started for Russian weapons, they too had never arrived, and it had been delisted as a possible antiaircraft installation a few years before.

Breanna broke into the Voice’s briefing.

“Danny, we have an AWACS in Iraq that we’re going to get up to track the plane,” she said. “Can you get close enough to get a visual ID of whatever it is in the meantime? Is that doable?”

“We’ll try.”

A
BERHADJI PRACTICALLY LEAPT OUT OF THE CAB, STRIDING
quickly toward the missile storage building. He was met halfway by Abas Jafari, the son of a man whom he’d served with during the war with Iraq. Tall and gaunt, Abas had his
father’s eyes and voice, and in the darkness Aberhadji could easily have confused the two.

“Imam, we are ready to store the weapon as you directed,” Abas said.

“There has been a change of plans,” said Aberhadji. “Move the missile from the storage area and prepare it. Give me some men to take the warhead from the truck. The Israelis have already struck,” he added. “You must move as quickly as you can.”

Abas blinked in disbelief.

“We will be ready within the hour,” he said.