The Natanz Directive (30 page)

I told myself not to hurry. I was 150 feet from the entrance when two guards materialized. They were armed, but their weapons were slung over their shoulders. I had my employee ID and delivery manifest in my hands as I eased to a stop. I held them out as the guard on my side stepped forward. He said something. I nodded and smiled and made eye contact. Always make eye contact. Never dip your head. Never turn away. Never let them see you sweat. Basic tradecraft. Don't drum the steering wheel. Don't lick your lips. Don't act impatient. Even more basic.

I expected him to carry my paperwork into the guardhouse, but he didn't. He positioned himself beneath the arc light at the entrance. He studied the ID first. Then he flipped through the three-page delivery order. He glanced into the bed of the truck, but that was the sum total of his inspection.

He returned to the ID again and was staring at my photo as he stepped up to the window again. Once again, he said something completely without meaning to a guy from New Jersey, and I responded by reaching out my hand. He looked bored, and I wanted to share his boredom, so I yawned. He laid the papers in my hands again. I nodded, turned in my seat, and put the truck in gear. I eased forward, an eye on the rearview mirror.
Stay cool, guys. We'll all live a little longer if you do.

I eased the truck down a wide lane that fanned in three directions. Right seemed to track in the direction of the administration buildings I had seen. Left curled along the innermost concrete wall and along the perimeter. I decided to stay with the main road and eased through a concrete portal that led to a slab of concrete that fifty or so cars were using as a parking lot.

I debated stopping here until I saw a van rolling through a gated entrance at the base of what looked like an underground parking garage. It took sixty nerve-racking seconds to reach the entrance. I rolled up to the keypad. When I touched the pad, the numbers turned red. I entered the code: 43-2-156. The numbers turned green. The gate unlatched. An electric motor scrolled it open.

I eased the truck inside the garage and took a two-lane drive down one level, exactly as the guy in the van had done. I parked in an empty spot as far from the van as possible. I rolled up the windows, took a last glance back at the suitcase bomb, and made certain my iPhone was still registering the triggers: Activate and Disarm.

I went through the numbers before climbing out. Walther, iPhone, Zeiss, Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife, French passport—as if that would do me any good. I left my backpack and the rest of my gear on the floor on the passenger side.

I climbed out like a man heading in for another long night shift, closed the door, and headed for the stairs. I exited through a door across from the building I had earlier pegged as a hospital or a prison. Nope. Offices. And most of the lights were out. I headed that way.

There was a chemical smell in the air that I couldn't identify. It seemed colder inside the complex, but that might have been the spike in my heart rate to an unsatisfactory seventy-six beats a minute.
Breathe, Jake. Turn on some tunes.
So I did. Golden Earring's “Twilight Zone.” I heard the guitar, big chords. And the lyrics: “Soon you will come to know, when the bullet hits the bone.”

I veered away from the front entrance and settled into a blind spot next to a window well. The harsh beam of a flashlight hit me straight in the face. I dropped down and pressed against the concrete wall. A guttural voice snarled a warning I understood only because of the universal tone every warning in the world carried.

Two soldiers approached, G-3 rifles at the ready, muzzles fixed on yours truly.
Way to go, Jake. Nicely done.

 

CHAPTER 21

NATANZ—DAY 9

Two soldiers with G-3 rifles trained on me. A problem, for sure. But also an opportunity. The G-3 was a battle rifle developed a half century ago by a German outfit called Heckler & Koch. They made fine weapons. But a 7.62 mm battle rifle in close quarters—and a dark lane between two buildings definitely qualified as close quarters—was far from ideal.

I lowered my eyes and waved the flashlight aside, feigning annoyance and spouting a couple of harsh words in French just to confuse matters.

I got a good glimpse of the two. Both young, both bearded, and both rightfully amped up. Better yet. The one on my left was the shorter of the two and built like a wrestler who'd pumped a little too much iron. The taller one had three stripes sewn onto his upper sleeve. Unless my knowledge of the Revolutionary Guards fell short of what I thought it was, he carried the rank of
sarjukhe
—corporal. He held the flashlight in his left hand and cradled his rifle in an awkward right-handed carry.

He centered the light on my face again and barked something in Farsi. Probably something along the lines of,
Who are you? And what's that incomprehensible language you're spouting?

I had several options. I could have hit them hard and fast and ended it there, but the odds of one of them discharging an errant shot and alerting the whole facility were too high. I needed a moment of confusion or minor distraction to level the playing field, so I acted like I didn't understand. Actually, it wasn't an act at all.

They separated, a step in either direction. This was a good move for them. Always create a wide V with your target in the center. But they didn't go far enough. I took a step to my left and narrowed the gap. Now they were too close together, more like one target than two. In the darkness, their ID badges seemed to shimmer against their dark uniforms. The corporal had a radio on his hip, but his hands were already full. I hadn't heard them sound an alarm or alert their superiors.
Big mistake
.

“Search him,” the corporal ordered, bending his head in my direction. I understood the gesture, not the words.

The wrestler took a cautious step forward and carefully lowered his weapon. I chopped him across the throat, crushing his larynx. The rifle tumbled from his hands, and his hands automatically grasped his neck. His knees gave out. He stumbled, fell, and hit the near wall with an ugly thud.

I knew what was happening but really didn't see it, because I had already whipped to my right, seized the pistol grip of the corporal's rifle, and jabbed my index finger behind the trigger. He tried to fire but the trigger pressed against my knuckle, stopping the rifle from firing. I grabbed his other hand and drove my forehead into his nose: the hardest part of the head against the most vulnerable.

His nose exploded. The flashlight hit the pavement, and the sound echoed off the walls and died. I pivoted to the left, rolled him over my hip, and slammed him to the ground.

He lay still, his eyes wide circles of shock and pain. I braced my left forearm against his chest, slipped the F-S knife from my ankle sheath with the right, and drove the blade into his heart. No reason to sink the knife to the hilt. He stiffened for a moment and went slack.

The other soldier lay where he'd collapsed against the bottom of the wall. He cupped his throat and an ugly gurgle spilled from his lips. His feet churned spastically through the dirt. The flashlight illuminated his face, his features etched in agony. I sprang forward, put my hand over his mouth to shut him up, and shoved the F-S knife into his chest. His body jerked. I gave the blade a sharp twist and pulled it out, careful that blood didn't spurt over my hand. He settled against the dirt. I wiped the blade against his trouser leg and eased my knife back into its ankle sheath.

I turned the flashlight off and tucked it into the corporal's shirt pocket. I took his ID badge, struggled into his combat jacket, and traded my cap for his helmet. I clipped his radio to my belt. I thought about grabbing one of the G-3s, but I needed stealth, not a rifle capable of waking up every guard within a two-mile radius. Besides, I had my Walther, and a silenced Walther was as good a weapon as a man could have for this situation. I paused and reconsidered—a guard without a gun would raise a red flag in a hurry, so I slung a G-3 over my shoulder.

I dragged the dead soldiers deeper into the lane and down a narrow staircase to the landing. While I was there, I tried the door off the landing. It was locked.

I thought about the night's body count—three so far—but not from a morality standpoint. I had a mission to accomplish. The mission had direct consequences for my country. You start talking about dropping nukes on places like Tel Aviv or London or New York, you don't wait for it to happen. You get them before they get you. No, I was more worried about the attention I was potentially bringing to my mission.

I had destroyed the circuit boards Morshed was carrying, but that was a minor victory. It might have put a kink in the mullahs' immediate plans, but not in their long-term ones. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's quest for nukes was not about to be stymied by the destruction of a briefcase full of electronics. My orders were to get inside the Natanz facility and see how far the rest of his program had progressed.

I stepped up to the mouth of the lane. I spent thirty seconds studying the aerial photo of the camp and used the GPS to target my position. Then I moved deeper into the complex. I needed to get underground. I could search every administration building and every warehouse from one end of the plant to the other, but I would need to get to the heart of the facility eventually.

I stayed in the shadows and followed an asphalt road deeper into the complex. A hundred or so meters farther on, the road forked. One side looped into a storage area with row after row of building materials. The other lane led to a vehicle entrance along the front of an immense concrete box a hundred meters wide and ten meters tall. There was a regular door on the right, a card reader beside the doorknob, and a security camera above. I decided to start there. Head down, I approached the door and swiped the corporal's ID badge. The door clicked open, and I walked in. So far, so good.

The door snuck into a narrow walkway. I dumped the corporal's rifle here, but not his jacket or cap.

The walkway merged almost at once with a concrete stairwell; I counted eighteen steps as I went down. The stairs accessed a tunnel a good thirty meters in length. Rows of dim yellow lamps on the ceiling illuminated the interior. The air had a diesel odor on top of the harsh chemical smell. A steel handrail separated a walkway from the vehicle concourse to my left. Rubber marks from extremely large tires marred the concrete. The whine of electric motors and the squeal of hydraulic machinery echoed from a cavernous room at the far end of the tunnel.

The walkway made a sharp right turn up ahead, and there was a door standing ajar at the far corner. I walked toward it at a brisk pace, my Walther palmed against my right side.

I was three strides away when the door popped open. A man in blue overalls with a device that looked a lot like an iPad in his hands emerged. His gaze flicked across me. My hope was that he would see a facility guard on the prowl, but it was not to be. Well, I wouldn't have believed, either. All he seemed to see was the muzzle of pistol and the silencer attached to the end. His eyes flared, and it wasn't anger; it was panic. I had to keep him quiet, but he didn't need to die. It was pure bad luck on his part that he'd stumbled onto me. Less an ill-advised act of heroism or stupidity, he might just live.

I pushed him back through the door. It turned out to be a generator room, and the noise was fierce. I closed the door and pantomimed the removal of his overalls. He got it. He stripped to his T-shirt and shorts. I used the tip of the Walther to suggest he get to his knees. He got that, too, though his hands were trembling, as if this might be his last moment. He shut his eyes tight and dipped his head.

I smacked him with the butt of the Walther, aiming for the hollow below his earlobe, the Kyusho Jitsu Dokko pressure point. Safe, but effective. He crumpled face-first to the floor. I touched his throat and felt a steady pulse. He'd wake up later with a gruesome headache, but at least he'd wake up.

I bound him with a section of generator wire and used a clean shop rag to gag him. I zipped on his overalls and made sure his ID badge dangled in front. I carried his electronic clipboard in my hand, walked out of the room, and locked the door behind me. So far, so good.

I rounded the corner, and things changed. The tunnel dropped even farther underground, and a room the size of two football fields gobbled it up. The walkway turned into a catwalk that traveled the circumference of the room and followed the tunnel. Placards warning of possible radioactivity decorated the walls. Cameras monitored the room from the ceilings, and I wondered briefly if any of these belonged to the UN inspection teams.

Pipes and ventilation ductwork crisscrossed the ceiling. The floor was crowded with some of the largest pieces of machinery I'd ever seen. Pallets were stacked high with metalworks, spools of cable, tubing, and steel drums as big as a man. The room stretched on and on for meters. It was hard to tell how far because of the dazzle of lights and a brown haze in the air. Men in blue overalls just like mine tended to the machinery. Others in exactly the kind of white smocks you'd expect to see in a lab moved like automatons. The activity was just as fierce as the noise. I was standing inside one of the most notorious nuclear facilities on the planet, but the intel wasn't right.

I needed to find the centrifuge plant, and this wasn't it. I needed to find the rocket assembly.

I followed the catwalk farther into the room, tracking the tunnel in the direction of a vehicle door large enough for a semi.

Twice, the vehicle door hummed and scrolled open. The first time, two forklifts loaded down with water-cooling equipment charged into the room. The second time, the bright headlights of a truck lit the tunnel and reflected off the catwalk. I faced an electrical junction box and feigned a workman's interest.

The truck rumbled through the tunnel and down the ramp into the room. It was a Russian military cargo carrier with drums lashed to the bed. A soldier sat in the back, a G-3 rifle slung across his chest. A worker in blue overalls guided the truck through a door to another room below.