The Mingrelian (17 page)

“Come back for more anytime,” Boyd said, spinning Ratface around and holding him upright by his jacket lapel, then popping him in the face with a soft left jab, and another, and another, not hard enough to break a bone, just hard enough to hurt, bruise and make a point. Then he dropped him, took his wallet and disappeared into the shadows.

Ratface dragged himself back into the restaurant and collapsed in the kitchen. He refused an ambulance, calling instead the Iranian Embassy, which sent a car. Later that night, with full diplomatic immunity so he didn’t have to answer any questions about why he was in that alley, he did go to the hospital to learn he had a ruptured kidney and a broken rib. He was observed overnight, and he flew to Tehran the next day.

But, he had the last laugh. He wasn’t alone tailing Boyd, and his assistant followed Boyd to the rug shop.

Chapter 28:
American Embassy

“That was no small fight you got into,” Maj. Gen. Ferguson said over the scrambled secure line to the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi. “You punched out the deputy director of the National Intelligence and Security Agency of Iran. VEVAK ranks right up there with the Gestapo and the KGB.”

“He started it,” Boyd said. He was alone in the secure communications room at the embassy. Just the week before, a special security team from the State Department had tested and updated the scrambled satellite link between the embassy and Washington.

“The secretary of state was on the phone this morning with his counterpart in Tbilisi,” Ferguson said. “The Iranians lodged a diplomatic complaint with Georgia over one of ours mugging one of theirs. We all want to keep this out of the news. These things happen at diplomatic missions. Usually someone gets expelled, which is what the Iranians want, but they have to answer to what their VEVAK deputy director was doing in Tbilisi.

“We’ve told our ambassador that you’re there on a mission and he’s to stay out of your way, and keep that to himself. So, it should look to everyone else there that you just got into a fight behind a bar.”

“They’ll love that. I’m already a kind of outcast.”

“This is being handled from the National Security Council now. The data you got on the Iranians’ effort to incorporate those Pakistani triggers into their plutonium weapons has everyone here on edge, and our Israeli friends are on the horn daily to the president demanding action. We could see this whole thing light up any day. Do think your contact is still secure?”

“I don’t know. I might have been followed after I busted up that guy in the alley. Boy, he pissed me off,” Boyd said glumly.

“I’m not second-guessing you, Boyd. You’re the best we have. Be careful, protect your source.” For the first time since they’d met, Ferguson saw doubt in Boyd’s face. He’d heard from his better angels but had chosen the rough route, and he was paying the price.

“I’ll stay as close as I can, sir.”

“OK, now, rest up. There may be something else we want you to do. I won’t share it over this line, even though I’m told it’s secure. Something else is going on, something we hadn’t anticipated.”

Chapter 29: Joint Command for Global Strike

An Air Force colonel addresses a small group of field grade officers in a secure conference somewhere in the Strategic Command Headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska
. He paces in front of a flat screen with a map of Iran. The veteran military planners represent expertise in special operations, naval operations, airlift and communications.
      

“This is a short-notice feasibility study from the National Security Council. We’ll brainstorm about it now, and then you can go back to your offices to chew on it for a day. We need to get them a yea or nay by tomorrow. If we think we can do something, we’ll have a few days
to plan it. The warning order
would go out next week.”

“Short notice,” one officer says, pulling his chair up to the table and squaring his legal pad with the table top.

“Short notice indeed, but it’s hot,” the colonel says, turning to the map.

“There’s a prison in Tehran, here,” he says, pointing to the map. “Evin Prison is where they keep their political prisoners. They torture and execute routinely, like any other totalitarian regime. But they also have some prisoners they just hold, in case they might need them again later. Those prisoners don’t have it quite so bad. It seems there’s another Grand Ayatollah. I don’t have his name, but that’s not important right now. This guy is a moderate, a voice of calm and reason, and a lot of people in Iran followed him until the regime put him in
jail. Now the resistance wants to break him out and bring him to the Western world. They insist he could be the nucleus of a new government in Iran.”

The colonel turns and looks at his audience.

“You see where this is headed?”

“You do one miracle, they want one every day,” someone says.

“Exactly,” the colonel says, turning back to the screen. “The resistance says they can get him into these mountains,” – he points to the Alborz Range north of Tehran – “and want to know if we could come pick him up.”

“How far is that from the Persian Gulf, from anyplace we could get an assault carrier,
” a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel asks.

“To the Strait of Hormuz …” the colonel touches the screen and the map calculates the distance from the designated point at Evin Prison.

“No, we couldn’t launch from there,” the Marine says. “It’d have to be a hundred miles out into the Indian Ocean at least. One of our assault carriers could launch an MV-22 Osprey tilt rotor with some Marines, but that has an operational radius of about 400 miles.”

“It’s 800 to here,” the colonel says, picking a point well out into the Indian Ocean.

“We could refuel in the air, but as soon as we get within a hundred miles of their coast, they’re going to have us on their radar. If it were close, we could zip in, pick someone up and be gone, but that’s what, 500 miles across Iran from the Gulf?”

“At least. Any way to come in from the north?” the colonel asks, pointing north of Iran to the Caspian Sea.

They sit, silent, contemplating the vast space of Central Asia where there are no U.S. naval vessels and no friendly bases. The colonel places a point at the U.S. base at Kandahar in Afghanistan. It is just as far away as the Indian Ocean point.

“We could launch from Incrilik, Turkey, in a C-130 with a High Altitude High Opening team,” says an Army major wearing Airborne patches. “They could jump out over the Caspian Sea and coast inland on their parachutes for 50 miles to those mountains. But getting out would be the problem. If it were the other coast, they could hump the 50 miles with the asset and be picked up by a SEAL team and a submarine. But no submarines in the Caspian Sea.”

“Say we could do that, and hump over these mountains and get to the beach, here,” the colonel says, pointing to a spot along the Caspian Sea coast. “What could we bring in there?”

The Marine walks to the map. Using his legal pad as a ruler, he compares distances, then shakes his head and turns back to his seat.

“It’s too far. If we brought an MV-22 into Incirlik, the closest airfield, it would have to circle through Armenia and Azerbaijan to even get into the Caspian Sea. That would require asking for permission to cross their airspace. It would have to refuel once in each direction. They’d see it coming. This would have to remain secret right up until they spring him or it’ll start a war.”

“We don’t have any seaplanes,” an Air Force officer says, “and I doubt if a C-130 could land on that beach.”

The room is silent.

Chapter 30: Kartvelian National Bank

he Americans cannot pick up that ‘high-value asset’ you have asked them to retrieve,” Lado Chikovani told Eskander Khorasani in a whisper as he greeted him in the lobby of the bank and walked toward the elevators. Eskander was there to sign some papers for yet another round of funds transfers.

“I’m not surprised,” Eskander said sadly as the elevator door closed behind them. “I didn’t think it was possible. We’ll have to work something else out. I’m sorry, old friend, that this has become so dangerous.”

Lado shrugged and held up his hand, afraid of microphones.

*****

Ekaterina breezed past the secretary into her father’s office, a sheaf of papers in her hand. She closed the door.

“Father, we’ve transferred $100 million to Iran in just one month. The Ministry of Finance will find out,” she said breathlessly as she laid her papers on his desk.

“The ministry knows,” he said sadly, not looking at the papers. “Iran’s demand for cash has outstripped all caution, and their willingness to share it with one and all ensures they get what they want.”

“How will this end?” she asked, intensity gone, sitting down and looking out the window, accepting what she had already suspected.

“I’m on the back of a tiger, Ekaterina, and I can’t get off. It’s time to think about our future, your future.”

He looked at her intently.

“Grandfather likes him,” she said, gaze still out the window.

Lado chuckled that she’d jumped to the point he’d been thinking about.

“I like him. Take Niko and leave,” he said. “You don’t have to stay here.”

Her head snapped around to face her father, and her voice revealed an unprecedented anger.

“What? Leave? Now? Do you think I could just leave, go someplace else and Boyd Chailland would follow me for the fairytale life every little girl dreams of? I’ve been the perfect daughter; compliant, respectful, attentive. Out of respect, I went along when you arranged my first marriage so that you could have the heir, the confluence of two noble bloodlines, and now you do. Your grandson is the crown prince of a country that hasn’t existed for a hundred and fifty years!” Her anger broke and she sobbed.

Lado stood and came to her side.

“I’m sorry. It was a father’s pride, in his family, his daughter, his heritage. Was David so bad?”

“David was a fine man, a good father, a loyal husband,” she said, still sobbing. “If I leave now, I leave your dream of some kind of re-established homeland, and I leave the side of the man who wants to marry me. Where would I go, what would I do?”

“He would follow.”

“Not until this is done,” she said, standing. “No, I’m not leaving. We got into this because we wanted to help our friends in Iran and because we, both of us, wanted some kind of,” she
hesitated and then went on, “enhanced future. Something better than just a comfortable life, something that embraces the past and the future. And, now I’ve met the man ...” Again her anger broke and she sobbed. “he’s an extraordinary man, he’s kind, and he’s strong and, I know it, he loves me.”

*****

Walking down Erekle II Street, thinking about what she was going to prepare for an evening meal for Grandfather and Niko, Ekaterina didn’t notice the car slowly following her. As she passed an alley, two men rushed out, threw a blanket over her head and shoved her into the back seat of that car. It sped away.

*****

That evening, Dabney St. Clair boarded an Iran Air Boeing 737 with Farhad Shirazi and found her comfortable seat in first class. She was off on her diplomatic mission to Tehran, hastily approved by the State Department over the objections of her boss, the ambassador. She had been promised a week of tours, high-level consultations and cordial relations with her hosts. As her jet cleared the runway and stowed wheels for the two hour flight, an Iranian Air Force C-130 designated as a diplomatic flight was right behind it, taxiing into position for takeoff. It contained several diplomatic pouches, two dozen Iranian Embassy staffers suddenly called home, and Ekaterina Dadiani – bound, gagged and sedated.

Unlike Dabney, cordial relations with her hosts were not in her future. Her destination was Evin Prison.

Chapter 31: The Persian Gulf

“Sir, Fifth Fleet/NAVCENT just reported that the latest satellite image shows there are 10 portable missile launchers loaded at Bandar Abbas,” the Navy petty officer aboard the USS Normandy (CG-60) said as he burst onto the bridge of the Ticonderoga Class guided missile cruiser under way 80 miles west of the Strait of Hormuz.

“Hmm, last week they hauled out three just to see what we’d do,” the captain said, turning in his seat. “Those are the Kowsar medium range missiles, aimed at us. How about the big boys up at Khoramabad?”

“Yes, sir, the satellite shows all the silos are on alert now.”

“They’ve never done that before,” the captain said, sitting up straight. “Are we getting any more signal intelligence, more radio noise?”

“There’s a lot of talking.”

“Go to battle stations,” he said, leaving the bridge for the electronic command center below.

“Sir, they’ve launched from Bandar Abbas,” the captain heard before he could even get to the control room below.

“How many?”

“Four … no, five ... no, six.”

“You sure,” he said, coming to the radar screen.

“Yes, sir, there’s another one.”

“Engage!”

The Normandy launched six RIM-174 Standard Extended Range Active Missiles, each a 3,300 pound, supersonic, solid propellant, two stage, surface to air missile. The RIM-174s streaked across the 80 miles of Persian Gulf and into Iran at three times the speed of sound. They arrived in less than three minutes and intercepted six Kowsar missiles. The Kowsars had been fired straight up without target information and had achieved 100,000 feet of altitude directly over their launch platforms. Explosions lit up the night sky. Before the debris could begin to fall, two more missiles were launched, and two more RIM-174s answered, causing a second round of explosions.

“What’s that noise,” the captain of the Normandy asked.