Assassin's Game

FIFTY-SEVEN

The little car fishtailed and nearly slid from the road as Ibrahim Hamedi rounded a corner at a patently unsafe speed. He eased off the accelerator, but only slightly, his eyes squinting to see through a dust-encrusted windshield that was further obscured by the low sun. He checked the rearview mirror again, but saw nothing more than a swirling cloud of dust that could have masked a convoy.

The car was owned by his best friend, a brilliant young technician named Hassan. When Hamedi first returned to Iran from Europe, he’d made a private rule to never become attached to his coworkers. This served a dual purpose: it promoted his image as a distant authoritarian, but also allowed for fewer reservations when the end came. And that end was today. Hassan, however, had been the exception. A young man as likable as he was hardworking, he was fresh out of university and an expert in computer modeling. The two had endured countless late-night sessions, hunched over bitter coffee and whirring laptops, in which they formulated implosion simulations and yield efficiency estimates. Yet even against such a sobering backdrop, the kid had made Hamedi smile. Hassan had been his one allowance. Early this morning Hamedi had sent him to Natanz on short notice, hustling him out on a fool’s errand and insisting he take the bus that shuttled twice daily between the two facilities. Once he was gone, Hamedi had rummaged through Hassan’s desk and found the keys to his rattletrap car right where he knew they would be.

Hamedi’s next hour was spent initiating the sequence that had been branded into his mind by a hundred sleepless nights. Warnings overridden. Security codes activated. And the crowning touch, a malware he’d personally written to create a diversion — spurious air-raid warnings to indicate an imminent Israeli airstrike. From his desk on the fourth level, Hamedi had initiated all of it, and then a final keystroke to set the backward-running clock on its silent countdown.

With the unstoppable sequence activated, Hamedi had easily slipped his personal security detail and headed for the elevator. On reaching ground level he saw that his air-raid scheme had been a stroke of genius — every guard and soldier above the subterranean complex was looking nervously skyward from their guard shacks and gun emplacements. No one gave a second glance to the beaten old Fiat that puttered out the gate.

Hamedi was ten miles east now. He referenced the GPS receiver in his hand, and turned off the gravel road onto what he hoped was the correct dirt path. Five miles up the rutted track he saw what he was looking for — a dust-clad Toyota Land Cruiser nestled amid an outcropping of eroded boulders. The truck blended well, tan-colored and eroded in its own way with bent fenders and a baked-on casing of dust and grime. Twin petrol cans were lashed to the rear, and strapped on the roof rack was a sturdy spare tire. Hamedi hit the brakes hard, and the Fiat skidded and disappeared in a light brown cloud. He threw open the door and began to run, but then slid to a stop in the loose dirt. He had almost forgotten his jacket, which held the critical flash drives — Iran’s entire nuclear program condensed to fit in the breast pocket of a tweed blazer.

Returning for his coat, Hamedi heard a honk and looked over his shoulder at the Toyota’s driver. The man was pointing to a place in the field of stone, and Hamedi looked closer and saw a beige camouflage tarp strung between two large boulders. It blended in so well he’d not even seen it on his approach. Underneath the tarp was a space. A space big enough for …

Hamedi waved, and soon had the Fiat maneuvered into the camouflaged cavern. He bustled out, this time with his jacket in hand, and for the second time paused. Unsure what to do with the Fiat’s keys, he began to put them in his pocket, but then reconsidered and tossed them into the dirt next to the Fiat with the loose idea that Hassan might somehow be able to reclaim his car. Busy as he was, Hamedi did not notice the Toyota’s driver shaking his head.

Seconds later he was at the truck’s passenger door, and for the first time he saw who was inside. His heart leapt. On one side in the back was his mother, silent but with tears of happiness welling in her eyes. Next to her, on the reclined second seat, was a man — at least Hamedi thought it was a man, so dirt-encrusted and emaciated was the figure. The poor soul was nearly lying flat, and connected to an IV bag that was hanging from the upper riding handle. His face was craggy and withered, but he seemed extremely alert. Hamedi had not expected a third person in the truck, but given the man’s condition he easily arrived at a solution — this was one of the men who had trekked through the desert three weeks earlier to kill him. By some amazing turn, he’d escaped the forewarned platoons Behrouz had put in position. Hamedi was pleased, although on seeing the handgun in his lap he hoped the man had been given an updated mission briefing.

“Let’s go!” snapped the driver.

Hamedi stared at the Toyota’s last occupant. He hadn’t been sure at first — clean-cut with fair hair, a lean body he’d last seen covered in neoprene, the face no longer masked in camouflage shading. But the direct gaze and commanding voice left no doubt. It was the kidon from Geneva.

“Now!” he insisted.

Hamedi reached for the door handle, but paused. He checked his watch.

“Wait,” he said. “Only twenty more seconds.”

At first the driver didn’t seem to understand his meaning, but then Hamedi turned toward the west. No one said a word as they all looked across the desert. Heat was already rising in the early morning, a wavering mirage that deconstructed the horizon. The facility was just visible ten miles off, a handful of large white buildings surrounded by squat storage hangars, a few antennas and utilities sprinkled in for good measure. These structures, Hamedi knew, were no more than a place marker for what lay below — a massive complex that had been decades in the making. The Toyota’s engine had not yet been turned, and so the only thing Hamedi heard was the quick rhythm of his breathing. With five seconds to go even this took pause.

And then it happened.

The speed of light having its advantage, the first sensation was that the complex visibly shuddered, as if a full square mile of earth had bounced on a trampoline. Then a billowing wall of dust skirted the perimeter. There would be no classic mushroom cloud, Hamedi knew, the mechanics being all wrong for that. No spherical fireball, no rising column of heat to generate a Rayleigh — Taylor instability. Underground blasts dissipated energy in an entirely different manner.

The ground wave was next to arrive, the earth rattling under Hamedi’s feet in a seismic event that would travel across continents in the next minutes. The audible blast was nearly simultaneous, a low-frequency, muffled thump that echoed off the rock outcroppings. The vibrations dissipated quickly, and in the ensuing calm Hamedi imagined what was happening underground. After extensive calculations, he had positioned the weapon at the principal point of vulnerability in the underground support structure. Thousands of tons of dirt and concrete, originally intended to protect the facility, would now entomb it. Ceilings would collapse, voids would fill, and when the dust cleared — something that would take hours — the world would find a crater half a mile wide and nearly forty yards deep.

This was Hamedi’s moment of truth, and his well-considered plan had worked flawlessly. Yet there was one thing that surprised him. Something that had not been in his calculations. Hamedi did not feel the predicted elation.

“Get in!” the kidon barked, snapping Hamedi out of his trance. The Toyota’s engine rumbled to life.

“Yes,” Hamedi said, dropping into the passenger seat. “Yes … it is time.”

Moments later gravel was rattling in the wheel wells as the truck sped northward. Hamedi took an embrace from his mother, and was then introduced to the soldier, a man named Stein. After the greetings ran their course, he found himself again staring over his shoulder, mesmerized by the rising cloud of dust. When he turned away, Hamedi felt strangely nauseous. Were he not a physicist, he might have wondered if it was the radiation whirling in his stomach. After a thoughtful silence he looked directly at the kidon.

The blond man seemed to read his thoughts, and asked, “How many?”

“Ninety,” Hamedi answered, knowing exactly what he meant. “Possibly a hundred.”

The blond man nodded noncommittally.

“Does it…” Hamedi searched for the words, “does it ever get better? Any easier to accept?”

This time the kidon seemed to think about it. “No, not really. But always remember one thing — you did what had to be done.”