The Natanz Directive (40 page)

What the hell! Go for it, Jake. If nothing else, die trying. Hard to argue with that, so I tugged furiously at the wire binding my wrists and felt the brush of metal on metal.

“I know why you're here,” the man with the black eyes was saying. He set a fresh bucket of water by my head on the table. “We know you entered the facilities at Qom and Natanz without invitation or authorization. We know that you left a trail of dead bodies in your wake. We know that you have been colluding with traitorous elements throughout our country. What I want are names.”

A sound like the whoosh of a hydraulic motor echoed throughout the warehouse. The man with the black eyes looked in the direction of the sound and smiled. “For you, things are about to get much worse.”

 

CHAPTER 30

I put a name to the sound: hydraulic doors opening. Then a second sound filled the air: distant footsteps echoing down a long hallway.

“My comrades have arrived,” the man with black eyes said.

“Now you'll talk,” Ora Drago said, his voice painted with intense satisfaction.

I twisted my wrists and snapped one bracelet against the other. Come on, goddamn it! It did it again, heard a pop and a hiss, like a match bursting into flames. The primer ignited, the Semtex detonated, and my skin began to melt. That was the bad news. The good news was that the explosion had also turned the wire binding my wrists into molten metal. My hands were suddenly free.

I did three things so fast that the blackbeards hardly knew what hit them. I grabbed the garrote controlling the wire around my neck, spun it clockwise, and pulled my head free. I drove my knee into the stomach of the man with the black eyes and sent him sprawling backwards. I rolled off the table, grabbed the AK-47 that one of the Guards had stupidly left leaning against the pillar, and barrel-rolled across the concrete floor. I came up firing. Three shots in less than a second erased three of my captors and made me feel ever so much better.

Behind me, Drago started to run, confused and panicked.

I spun around and saw the man with the black eyes tracking me with a 9 mm pistol. A burst of orange fire erupted from the barrel, but I was already moving. I dove behind the pillar and rolled to my right, using the waterboarding table as a shield. I came up in a low crouch, put a shoulder against the edge of the table, and sent it flying in the direction of the man with the black eyes. He backpedaled and stumbled. The table caught him in the mid-section and drove him to the ground.

I stepped toward him. More than anything I wanted to savor the kill, but I didn't have time. The footsteps pounding along the corridor were seconds away. I heard shouting. I raised the AK-47 and fired once at the man with the black eyes. He slumped forward.

I took up a position behind the pillar. I put the butt of the rifle against my shoulder and sighted the barrel in the direction of the approaching footsteps. I didn't mind dying like this. Me against them. A fair fight, more or less.

I saw a shadow materialize at the entrance, then a person. I was a blink of an eye away from pulling the trigger when I realized it was Jeri. She was jogging deeper into the room, two hands gripping a machine pistol and a look so intense that it made me glad she was on my side.

“Jake!?” Her voice echoed throughout the warehouse and I thought to myself that never in my life had I heard a more welcome sound. I saw Bagheri and six of his men a step behind Jeri, Uzis raised and ready.

“Here,” I called. “I'm here.”

I waited until the barrels of their guns were at a less-threatening angle before tossing aside the AK-47 and stepping out from behind the pillar.

Jeri raced up to me. “Oh, my God. You poor man. Look at you.”

“I feel better than I look,” I said, a lie of the highest order. The words felt like glass raking across 50-grit sandpaper, and I knew they'd done serious damage to my throat and lungs.

“Don't talk,” she said and instinctively laid fingers gently across my lips. She put her arms around me, and I let her. My gaze settled on a man walking into the room, a pistol at his side, as calm as if he were being escorted to a table in his favorite restaurant. It was Charlie. A sight for sore eyes, if ever there was one.

“Jake! My good friend,” he called out. “You're alive. Thank God! Where's Drago!”

I motioned toward the far end of the warehouse. Bagheri and his men had Drago cornered. The MEK traitor had made it as far as a locked door, and now he was shrinking like a shriveling fig in the face of his own capture.

Bagheri's men dragged him back. “You want him?” Bagheri asked me.

I wanted him, all right. Mostly I wanted him for the men who had died keeping my mission on track: Akbari in Amsterdam and Charlie's man Lukas. And when Drago's lips curled with contempt, his last attempt at justifying his miserable existence, I wanted him even more. But I didn't have the strength.

“He's your traitor,” I said to Bagheri.

“I was hoping you'd say that.” Bagheri marched forward, raised his pistol, and aimed it at Drago's forehead. He fired once. A red dot appeared in Drago's forehead. He rocked on his feet and toppled backward, dead before he hit the floor.

Bagheri shook his head in disgust and turned away. “Way too good for him.”

Charlie shared a crooked smile with me. “You look like shit.”

He wrapped an arm around my shoulder, and he and Jeri helped me into my shoes and jacket. He added, “I'd shower you with endless amounts of sympathy and pity if we had the time, but we don't.”

“I screwed it up, Charlie. They got the memory stick,” I said. My voice wasn't much more than a whispered croak.

He shook his head. “Actually, they didn't.” We started down the hall toward the door, with Bagheri supporting my other shoulder.

“What do you mean?” I felt a ray of hope.

“I mean Bagheri's man was smarter than you. She managed to avoid the ambush that you walked right into,” Charlie said.

“She?”

Jeri held the door open for us. She said, “Actually, Bagheri's man isn't a man at all. That's how we found you. She followed Drago and his Revolutionary Guard friends here. And thank God she did.”

“They had two truckloads full of men headed your way, and we had to intercept them before we made our move,” Bagheri interjected. “A serious body count.”

We stepped out into the night. A panel truck and a black Mercedes sedan idled in the darkness. Leila Petrosian stood in front of the truck. She held up a memory stick.

I limped toward her “Leila?”

“Jake. I'm sorry I lied to you,” she said. “Or at least that I wasn't completely honest with you.”

“You? You're…?” My eyes shifted from her to Bagheri and back again. “You're MEK?”

“For the last ten years. I knew you wouldn't want me involved in your mission here, so I pretended that I wasn't.” She laid the memory stick in my hand, wrapped my fingers around it, and touched my face. “So many have died to bring you this. I hope it's worth the cost.”

“Let's make sure it is.” I looked at Charlie. “They took my phone. I need a computer.”

“I figured you would. In the back of the truck.” With Charlie's help, I hobbled to the back of the truck. Jeri threw open the door and climbed in first. By the time Charlie and I were inside, she had a briefcase open on the side seat that ran the length of the bed. She pulled a laptop from the briefcase and powered it up.

“Internet ready,” she said and turned the screen my way. Despite my broken fingers, I managed to insert the memory stick into a port. The screen flickered to life. By all rights, I should have felt a wave of emotion; I'd come a long way in the last eleven days, and here was the payoff at my fingertips. But mostly what I felt was a meld of irritation and urgency while the computer identified the single file with an unknown name attached to it. I hit the keypad, and the file opened. There they were. The locations for the Sejil-2 missile launch sites. Twenty-one coordinates. All within latitude coordinates 32 and 38 and longitude coordinates 50 and 57.

In a perfect world, I would have sent the information directly to the NSA, but I had to settle for one of my secure e-mail accounts. I knew Mr. Elliot and General Rutledge would be monitoring every one of them. I attached the file and clicked the Send button. The computer confirmed that the message had been successfully sent. The question was, had it been successfully received?

That wasn't my only concern. If the Revolutionary Guards were onto me, then maybe they knew that I'd made contact with General Navid about the launch sites. Maybe the launch sites had been changed at the last minute and without Navid's knowledge. And maybe the coordinates in the memory stick were pure fantasy. A man could worry himself sick about such things, but it was out of my hands now. I'd played my last card.

So I waited. I looked from Charlie to Jeri and then to the rear of the truck, where Leila was standing. The computer pinged. The messages came one right after the other. General Rutledge's read:
Roger receipt. Well done.
Mr. Elliot's was not quite so complimentary:
About time.

They all saw my smile. “You gonna share the joke?” Charlie said.

I turned the screen so he and Jeri could see it. “‘About time.'” Jeri read it out loud and shook her head. She said, “My thought exactly.”

Charlie said, “Time to get you out of the country. I've got a plane waiting. Sorry it's not a bit fancier. But I think you'll approve of the pilot I chose.”

I looked at Jeri. Her grin had turned into a smirk. “Guess who?”

“He's right. I approve.”

Charlie threw the computer back into the briefcase, and we exited the truck from the rear. I could almost walk on my own. Bagheri shook my hand, and he and his men took our place in the truck. I put my arm around Leila, and she walked me to the Mercedes. The world that she lived in would never be the same from this night on. But I guess that's what she'd committed herself to over that last decade.

I didn't kiss her on the lips this time. I kissed her forehead. She said, “Thank you,” and I wished she hadn't. I didn't feel like a man worthy of gratitude.

I hunched into the backseat of the Mercedes, and one of Charlie's men joined me. He had a first-aid kit in his hands. He did what he could to pack me up and gave me something for the pain. Jeri drove. Charlie rode in the front and made three calls on his cell phone. I didn't ask where we were going. Ten minutes later, we were on the open highway going toward Shahr-e Qods, a suburb west of Tehran.

Another ten minutes passed before the Mercedes slowed and angled across the highway for a southbound dirt road that eventually veered west. Once it did, Jeri doused the headlights. The road ran straight and level for a kilometer. Charlie made another call. He spoke in crisp Farsi. A pair of parking lights flashed farther up the road. Jeri pointed the Mercedes in that direction, slowed to a crawl, and came to a halt next to a black SUV.

A single-wing Cessna 172 was parked in the middle of the road. The propeller was already turning. “That my ride?” I asked.

“We'll need a couple of stops,” Jeri said.

We bailed out. Five of Charlie's men were waiting for us. I walked on my own toward the plane, but it wasn't easy. Prop wash kicked up dirt that beat against our faces and clothes. Jeri climbed into the pilot's seat. Charlie and I paused under the wing beside the co-pilot's door. Charlie brought his face close to mine and shouted over the roar from the engine.

“Until next time, Jake.” He offered his hand. We shook, then embraced. I looked into his eyes. Who knows how my mission would have fared without Charlie. He seemed to read my mind. “I know,” he shouted. “Now get out of here.”

I let go and climbed onboard. Jeri was all business. I put on a headset and fastened my safety belts. She revved the engine, then advanced the throttle. The airplane trundled forward. She accelerated, and the plane bounced along the road. If Jeri was concerned about taking off in the dark, she didn't show it. Me? I was just glad when the Cessna lifted off.

She pulled on the controls and kept the nose at a low angle until we gained airspeed and altitude for a turn to the northwest.

We were over the Alborz Mountains when I saw the bomber. It was a Northrup Grumman B-2 Spirit, aka the Stealth Bomber, like something out of a science fiction novel, breaking through the clouds. I saw two others in close formation and knew there were twelve others headed for targets all over Iran. Sixty seconds later, six F-117s filled our window to the west, high above us and moving incredibly fast. The bombers thundered overhead, and our little 172 rocked in their wake like a cork in a stormy sea.

Big George had been unleashed.

I looked at Jeri. She bit down on her lip and pushed the throttle as far forward as it would go.

People were about to die. I knew that. I was more concerned about the people who were going to live. Millions of them.

 

CHAPTER 31

WASHINGTON, D.C.—SIXTEEN DAYS LATER

General Tom Rutledge wanted to take me to lunch at the Capital Grille, a Pennsylvania Avenue mainstay a stone's throw from the U.S. Capitol. Fitting.

The weather outside was gorgeous; for some miraculous reason, the humidity had lifted and the air had a balmy, tropical clarity. A shame to spend the time inside, but then, lunch at the grille never disappointed.

I'd spent six days debriefing. It should have taken six hours. But everyone wanted a piece of the action. They always did when things went well. And things had gone very well.

Big George had been a success. The bombers had knocked out all but one of the Sejil-2 missiles. That one had been attacked and destroyed on the orders of three rogue generals who wanted no part of watching their country get blasted into a radioactive parking lot. Smart thinking.