Hunt the Falcon

Chapter Twenty

They flew back that night in the same Gulfstream jet. As Sutter sat across the aisle pecking on his laptop, Crocker studied the satellite photos Leslie Walker had given him of Quds Force headquarters in Ahvaz, Iran-a six-story concrete structure with little porthole-like windows, antennas and satellite dishes on the flat roof. It was located in a densely built-up urban area, with a bank on one side, a modern movie theater on the corner. He used a red pen to circle military checkpoints at both ends of the block, and was already considering how he and his men might enter the area undetected.

Crocker had been to Tehran but had never set foot in Ahvaz, which he now learned is a city of approximately 1.5 million on the banks of the Karun River. Located in the Khuzestan desert and surrounded by sandstone hills, Ahvaz, according to the Weather Channel website, is one of the hottest cities on the planet, with the average high temperature in July a toasty 115.2 degrees and peaks regularly hitting 120. The city also had the distinction of being the world’s most polluted, according to the World Health Organization, with an annual average of 372 micrograms of airborne particles per cubic meter of air. Washington, D.C., by contrast, had a level of 18 micrograms, and Tokyo 23. The WHO study cited sulfur dioxide and nitrogen exhaust from nearby power plants, burn-off from oil wells, and vehicle exhaust as the main pollutants.

Not a great place to live, Crocker thought. Neighboring Iraq had attempted to annex the city in 1980 during the Iran-Iraq War. Reading further, he learned that a minority of the area’s residents are Arabs rather than Persians, which might have explained Saddam Hussein’s ambitions-either that, or it was further evidence that the man had been insane.

They landed just before midnight. Driving home with Elvis crooning “Something” over the radio, his brain jumped ahead, calculating where his team would insert, what they’d need in terms of equipment and support, and how they’d move within Ahvaz. He couldn’t help himself, even though he was tired and a final decision regarding the scope and target of the mission hadn’t been reached. Outside it was cold and windy. As a kid in Massachusetts, he liked to sleep in front of the fireplace on nights like this.

The grandfather clock on the second floor chimed the quarter hour as he entered, patted Brando on the head, and started upstairs. He was looking forward to the warm bed he shared with Holly, but the door to the master bedroom was locked. Wondering why, and realizing this had never happened before, he tried the door again. He considered opening the couch in his office and sleeping there so as not to wake her, but he was worried, and decided to knock instead. “Holly?” he called. “Holly, are you okay?”

Half a minute later she opened the door. Wearing a long cotton nightgown, she looked disheveled and tired, with a bandage on her chin. “You’re home,” she said, half asleep and heading back to the bed.

“Is anything wrong?” he asked. “How come you locked the door?”

“I thought I heard something downstairs.”

“It’s windy outside. Could’ve been a tree branch.” He saw her 9mm automatic on the nightstand next to her side of the bed. “What happened to your chin?”

“I went downstairs to check on the noise. I wasn’t completely awake. I slipped on the stairs and tripped. Silly me.”

He took her by the hand, sat her on the edge of the bed, and cleaned and rebandaged the cut on her chin. Then he checked her teeth and found no damage. “You hurt anything else?” he asked.

“Not really, except for my pride,” she answered, looking embarrassed. Staring at the carpet, she shook her head and asked, “What’s wrong with me, Tom?” with sad resignation in her voice.

He put his arms around her and said, “Nothing that a little time, rest, and tender loving care won’t fix.”

“Oh, Tom.” They kissed. She felt delicate and tender in his arms. He wanted to make her better, and protect her, and wash away all the guilt and anguish that clouded her soul.

Gently, he pushed her back onto the bed, lay down beside her, and held her hand. Another hungry part of him wanted to make love to her, but he knew the time wasn’t right.

In the morning when Crocker got out of the shower, Holly was gone. Lying on a chair by the bed he saw a book called Healing after Loss. The subtitle read: Daily Meditations for Working Through Grief.

Twenty minutes later he arrived at ST-6 headquarters and found Sutter sitting in the same uniform he’d worn the day before, his stockinged feet on the desk, reading a document as he sipped from a mug of coffee with a trident on it.

“Captain?”

He looked up and set the mug down on his desk. “Sit down, Crocker. How many times have you seen the movie Lawrence of Arabia?” he asked in his backcountry drawl.

“I don’t know. Half a dozen. Why?”

“Fascinating story, on so many levels. I couldn’t fall asleep last night, so I streamed it twice on my computer. The different tribes, the desert, a hero wrestling with his own internal demons. Kind of reminded me of you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Inspired me, too. One highly motivated man can make a difference, especially if he understands the culture of the people he’s dealing with,” Sutter said as he tossed the document he was holding at him. “Read this.”

Crocker caught it and quickly scanned the two-page report on Scimitar, which had nothing to do with tribes or the desert, but briefly described a group of twelve young Iranians who had been working clandestinely with the CIA to help sabotage the Iranian government. The report didn’t mention what they had managed to accomplish so far or their capabilities. Their leader was a man named Ramin.

Sutter asked, “What do you think?”

“Interesting. But what did you mean about me wrestling with my personal demons?”

“Oh, that.” Sutter smiled, scratched his jaw, took a long drink of coffee, and picked up another document from his desk. “Remember the psych evaluation I told Doc Petrovian to administer to you? Well, he concluded that you’re a combination of an aggressive PT and an introverted intuitive.”

“What do you mean by PT?” Crocker asked.

“It stands for personality type,” Sutter answered. “Don’t get all worked up. What he’s saying is that you display the characteristics of an ideal leader, but you’re also conflicted.”

“Conflicted how?” Crocker asked, starting to feel defensive.

“It means you like being able to dominate and command others and exercise power, but you also like to stay in the background until you feel the need to take over. So you like being part of a traditional power structure, but you’re also someone who primarily trusts his intuition, which makes you a loner and a rebel. You’re active and adventurous, but you also need time alone to sit back and observe the world and make associations.”

“Petrovian said that?” Crocker asked.

“Sound like you?” Sutter asked back.

“Kind of.”

Sutter got up and refilled his mug from a stainless-steel urn behind his desk. “Forget about the psychological profile for the time being.”

“Sir-”

“I need you to do two things. One, select three men to go with you into Iran.”

“Only three, sir?” Crocker asked.

“Yes, three. Don’t fight me on this. I want you to consider carefully what you’re going to need in terms of operational specialties, personal characteristics, and language skills.”

“I still don’t know the specific mission.”

Sutter leaned back and yawned. “I won’t be able to tell you that until it’s approved by the president.”

“When’s that likely to happen?”

“Today. Tomorrow. Figure another four hours after that, we’ll want you to deploy.”

Crocker stood at attention. “That soon, sir?”

“Yes, that soon.” Sutter rose and handed him a blue notecard with a name written on it. “Here’s the second thing I need you to do.”

Crocker read the name and asked, “Who’s John Smith?”

“Some deep, deep black-ops guy Donaldson says you need to coordinate with.”

“When and where, sir?’

“Turn over the card.”

On the other side Crocker read “Williamsburg Lodge in Williamsburg, Virginia,” and “Twelve thirty p.m.” He’d attended a wedding reception there once.

“Today, sir?”

Sutter nodded. “By the way, Doc Petrovian told me some of the other people with your combination of personality traits include Al Capone, Fidel Castro, and Jeffrey Dahmer.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m thinking of sending someone over to your house to see what you store in your freezer.”

“I hope that’s a joke, sir.”

Sutter laughed.

He entered the spacious white lobby of the Williamsburg Lodge-a sprawling two-story colonial-style inn a block or so from the historic center. At the front desk he asked for Mr. Smith.

“Is Mr. Smith a guest here?” the thin male clerk with stiff brown hair asked.

“I don’t know. But he asked me to meet him here.”

“Your name, sir?”

“Mansfield.”

The clerk turned, consulted a computer screen, whispered to an older clerk, then returned and said, “Mr. Smith is waiting for you in the Golden Horseshoe Grill.”

“Where’s that?”

“Take that hallway straight back, past the big fireplace. You’ll see the entrance on the left.”

“Thanks.”

Entering the room, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the low light. The walls were paneled with walnut. Old wagon wheel fixtures hung from the ceiling. A man with a white apron stretched across his big belly polished glasses with a white towel behind the bar.

“John Smith?” Crocker asked.

The bartender shrugged and nodded toward a big man in the darkness at the end of the bar as if to say, try him. The man he indicated had gray hair to his shoulders and was speaking on a cell phone.

“John?” Crocker asked.

The big man nodded and pointed a finger at the lounge, which was empty except for three elderly couples, two of whom were seated together. Crocker selected a table in the far corner by a window that overlooked the golf course. It was overcast outside. Two men passed in a golf cart, one wearing a pink sweater and green pants.

“What are we doing here?” Crocker heard a deep voice ask.

He looked up and saw the big man standing behind a chair on the other side of the table.

“John Smith?” No way that was his real name.

The man sat. He had huge shoulders, no neck, and a very strong and unusual face-large hooked nose, high cheekbones, a prominent forehead with thick black eyebrows. He looked like a Bedouin chieftain, despite the straight gray hair, which Crocker realized was a wig, and the mustard-tinted glasses that hid his eyes.

“You play?” Smith asked, setting his BlackBerry on the table and nodding toward the course.

“Never.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“You?”

Smith smiled without showing any teeth. “I do a little of everything. You want me to play golf, I play golf. You want to play tennis, I play tennis. You like to dance the mambo, I learn to do that, too.”

Crocker said, “Lou Donaldson asked me to meet you.”

“Louie the doughnut, yeah. I let him think he’s my boss.” Smith twisted his mouth and lifted his eyebrows, a set of facial contortions that seemed to express the complex feelings he had about him. “You want to hear about Scimitar?”

“Yeah.”

The young waitress arrived. Crocker ordered a steak sandwich with fries. Smith told the waitress he was fasting and only wanted a glass of water with a twist of lemon. Then he leaned over the table and said in a low voice, “Whatever you’ve heard about Scimitar, I’m afraid to say, is probably an exaggeration. I’m the only one who has actually met and worked with these people. They’re real, and they have provided us with some good intel. But they’re not much.”

The cold water left a metallic taste in Crocker’s mouth. “Not much in what sense?”

“Operationally, I’d say, they’re useless. They can help you get around, show you places, hide you, feed you, et cetera. But with the exception of maybe two individuals, I’m not sure they can even fire a gun.”

“Tell me about the composition of the group,” Crocker said.

“There are about ten core members. Four of them are women. All of them are college educated, modern people. They hate the religious repression and long for a more open, tolerant, European-style representative government. The leader is a man called Ramin Kian, who was a former engineer in the army. He’s the oldest; I’d say late thirties, maybe forty. Ramin’s an emotional guy, passionate, but something of a flake.”

“A flake in what sense?”

“What I mean is, when he gets excited about something, he can be highly engaged and effective. But he loses interest quickly. He’s also a coward.”

“Does he know anything about this operation?” Crocker asked.

“I communicated with him last night-I can’t reveal how. But I can tell you, he’s very pumped about it, which is a positive.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him the U.S. was interested in launching an attack against Quds Force headquarters or possibly some of its leaders. He said an attack on Quds Force HQ is impossible.”

“Did he explain why?”

“Why? Because the building is heavily fortified and the streets around it are barricaded and monitored twenty-four/seven.”

“There’s always a way,” Crocker said.

“I’m repeating what he told me. In his opinion, any assault on their HQ would require helicopters and at least two dozen heavily armed troops, so it’s out of the question.”

“In his opinion.”

“We’re relying on the intel he provides, so his opinion counts a ton, especially in the minds of Donaldson and other decision makers,” Smith said.

Crocker nodded. “I get it.”

Smith’s eyes followed a female golfer who was passing by the window. “Ramin had another suggestion,” he said.

The waitress arrived with Crocker’s food. As he bit into the sandwich, Smith asked, “You ever hear of Futsal?”

“Futsal. No.”

“It’s a variation of soccer that’s played indoors on a hard surface. Two teams of five players each, one of whom is the goalkeeper.”

“Yeah?”

“Apparently it’s a big sport in Iran, with professional leagues. It happens to be very popular in Ahvaz. Ramin has a close friend who owns a team and an arena. He says Farhed Alizadeh and General Suleimani are big fans of a team called Farsh Sari, in division two of the super league. They regularly attend games at this guy’s arena and sit together in specially reserved seats.”

Crocker stopped chewing and said, “Sounds promising.”

“I think so, too. Ramin thinks he can enlist his friend’s help, and maybe your team can ambush them as they’re arriving at or leaving a game.”

“What’s the name of Ramin’s friend?” Crocker asked.

“Adab Mashhad.”

“What do you know about him?”

“Not much. I’ve confirmed that he’s the owner of the Shohada Gaz Arena in Ahvaz. He also holds a prominent position in the national drilling company. Ramin says the two of them studied engineering together.”

“When is this Farsh Sari team playing next?” Crocker asked.

“Ramin’s looking into that now. I’m speaking to him again tonight.”

By ten that night Crocker had sketched out a plan and selected Akil, Mancini, and Ritchie to go with him. He had spoken to each man and told them they were going to be dropped inside Iran with orders to attack several high-priority targets. The likelihood of them being either captured or killed was high. All three volunteered.

If and when the op was approved by the president, the four men would travel with John Smith via CIA jet to Al Taqaddum Air Base outside Baghdad. From there they’d be ferried south by helicopter to Basrah, which was roughly a two-hour drive or twenty-minute helicopter ride to Ahvaz, just over the border in Iran. The details of their insertion were still being worked out by the CIA.

Crocker sat in Sutter’s office with Mancini and Sutter’s second in command, going over the PLO-patrol leader’s order-that was standard practice in all ST-6 missions. They discussed insertion, extraction, infiltration, actions at the objective, movement, emergency medical evacuation, communications, loss-of-comms plan, hand signals, concealment, covers, weather, clothing, supplies, specialized equipment, weapons, medical supplies, first-, second-, and third-line gear, and contingencies.

A few minutes before midnight, Sutter’s phone rang. It was Donaldson with the news that the president had okayed the mission. Crocker’s team was going in deep black, which meant they couldn’t carry anything that identified them in any way-no IDs, photos, dog tags, U.S. military weapons.

“What’s the timing?” Sutter asked into the speakerphone.

“The team Farsh Sari is playing in Ahvaz the night after tomorrow, so they have to launch now,” Donaldson answered.

“That’s the twenty-fifth, correct?”

“Affirmative.”

Sutter looked at Crocker, who nodded, barely able to contain his excitement. “You can tell the president they’re ready to go.”