The Disciple

CHAPTER EIGHT

The ScanEagle drones arrived over the southern part of the Iranian city of Tabriz in midafternoon. There were two of them; one went into an orbit at nine thousand feet above the ground, the other ten thousand. They were very small, weighing just forty pounds each, with a wingspan of about ten feet, and if they were detected by Iranian radar, there was no Iranian response. The Iranian radars were indeed sweeping-black boxes in the drones detected every pulse-yet the skinpaint returns were very small, easy to overlook on the Iranians’ air traffic control scopes, if they were displayed at all. Usually returns this small were classified as static and automatically eliminated from the presentation.

Both ScanEagles contained a variety of sensors, the size, type and sensitivity limited only by their small carrying capacity. Today one broadcast an encrypted television camera signal to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit; the other sent an infrared picture.

The area of interest was a large, low, flat-roofed building, a factory, in the southern suburbs of the city. The cameras watched as the workers left for the evening and the parking lot emptied. The watchmen on their hourly hikes around the building were picked up by the sensors, and their routes and times carefully noted and compared to past observations.

The people doing the comparing were sitting in a command and control center at Balad Air Force Base in Iraq. The data the ScanEagles were broadcasting was painstakingly compared to the database, which had been compiled in evening and nightly observations by drones every evening for the last two weeks.

Two colonels conferred, then went to the general, who was standing behind the monitors looking at the raw video.

“Everything is the same as it was,” one of the colonels said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Have we heard from our guy on the ground?”

“Yes, sir. He said the right code words.”

“Then it’s a go,” the general said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Launch ’em.”

“Yes, sir.”

The general walked over to an encrypted satellite telephone and placed a call to the duty officer in the War Room of the Pentagon.

It was nearly midnight in Tabriz when three Russian-made Mi-24 Hind heli cop ters swept across the rooftops of the city and landed in the parking lot of the factory. Six soldiers in Iranian uniforms, armed with AK-47s, jumped from each helo. As the members of one squad took up defensive positions around the building, an officer led the other two to the main entrance.

The guard there looked at them in bewilderment.

He was summarily disarmed, handcuffed and led away. The officer opened the door, and the troops trotted through it.

On the other side of the world it was midday Sunday. In the War Room of the Pentagon, the president’s right-hand man, Sal Molina, shifted uncomfortably in a padded chair. He was surrounded by six generals, four army and two marine, and one civilian, Jake Grafton, who wore a sports coat and white shirt but not a tie.

“Who is leading this expedition?” Molina asked.

“Captain Runyon Paczkowski, U.S. Army,” he was told.

Molina just shook his head. “An O-3. Really!”

“Yes. Really,” said the army four-star who served as the deputy chief of staff.

Molina eyed the bemedaled general and said, “Oh.”

Grafton sagged an inch or so down into his seat. He knew Molina well enough to recognize the warning. He watched the ScanEagle feeds being presented on big screens in front of the pit, behind the podium and desk where two duty officers were seated before a bank of phones and computer screens. The natural light picture was nothing but a collection of spots from lights on the ground. The infrared picture, however, was quite good.

Due to the magnification of the lens, it was as if the viewers were hanging about five hundred feet over the factory. Jake could see the bright spots of helo exhaust, the warm people moving around and the cold, black streets leading to the factory. Empty streets… He consciously crossed his fingers, hoping the streets stayed empty.

“I’d like to know,” the army four-star said, “why we didn’t just bomb this damn factory and be done with it. Why are we putting boots on the ground, risking our men?”

“We’ve been through all that,” Molina said with finality.

The senior marine four-star weighed in. “We bought all those damn B-1s for the Air Force, two billion dollars each, and they can’t even use one to bomb a factory in Iran making EDs to kill our kids?”

“This isn’t Korea or Vietnam,” Molina said testily. “We’re trying to save GIs’ lives without goading Iran into a declaration of war.”

“Well, by God,” the army general declared, “you’d better take a good look around, Molina. Iran is fighting a war with us. They know it and the troops know it. ‘Death to America!’ How many times does that asshole Ahmadinejad have to shout it before you start listening?”

“I didn’t come over here to listen to your insubordination, General,” Molina shot back. Silence greeted that sally.

Jake watched as two soldiers carried what appeared to be boxes from a helo into the factory. Those boxes, he knew, contained demolition charges to ignite the explosives in the factory. Since they lacked certain knowledge of the munitions available inside, the troops had brought their own.

Sal Molina was still stewing. Sometimes people in uniform affected him that way. “I seem to recall that just last week the army asked the administration for more tanks in the next fiscal year,” Molina said. “Tanks don’t kill terrorists. Neither do F-35s or F-22s or attack submarines. I know you Pentagon boys like your toys, but you keep asking for crap to fight World War II all over again. This is another century, gentlemen; WW II and the Trojan War are ancient history. Get over it.”

“We need-”

Molina wasn’t in the mood. He gestured at the screens in the front of the room. “Drones! We have to contract for drone services because the army and marines don’t have the organization or supply system to operate them. The air force doesn’t really want them, insists they be flown by rated pilots, not enlisted men-but there ain’t no glory for drone pilots, no medals, no parades.”

Sal Molina smacked his hand down on the arm of his chair. “The brass running the American armed forces had better figure out how to fight twenty-first-century wars-the wars we have right now-or we are going to get some new generals pretty damned quick.”

He sprang from his chair and snarled at Grafton. “Call me and tell me how Captain Paczkowski’s little adventure turns out.” Then he stalked from the room.

Captain Runyon Paczkowski was in the middle of his adventure, and he didn’t think of it as small. In fact, it was the biggest adventure of his life. He was leading a military raid into a foreign country, and his men were wearing that country’s uniforms. All their lives were very much on the line; if they were caught, they would be shot as spies.

It was damned heady stuff for a twenty-eight-year-old graduate of Texas A &M, and he felt his responsibility keenly. He also felt the weight of his superiors’ expectations; they believed that he could successfully blow up this Iranian bomb factory and bring his men back. They wouldn’t have given him the job if they didn’t think he could do it-and by God, he could!

In one ear he was listening to the tactical net, the net his noncoms were on. In the other ear he listened to the frequency that allowed the Tactical Operations Center in Balad to talk to him. The TOC, which was also monitoring the feeds from the ScanEagles overhead, would give him the first warning if real Iranian troops put in an appearance.

Inside the factory his men were busy placing de mo lition charges around the machinery and in the stockpiles of completed roadside bombs awaiting shipment to Iraq and Afghanistan. Paczkowski strode into the office. Two of his troopers were hurriedly packing every sheet of paper they could find into boxes. One of them already had the only computer unplugged and was wrapping it in bubble wrap, which he had brought along just in case he got this opportunity. The monitor and keyboard he left on the desk.

“Hurry up,” Captain Pac muttered, but his men didn’t need encouragement. They were working as quickly as possible.

“We have a visitor.” He heard these words in his left ear. Sounded like the pilot of the lead helo, who was still strapped in with engines turning. “Police.”

“Fry?” Paczkowski said on the tac net.

“I’m on it, Captain.”

Fortunately Warrant officer Fry, the Special Forces team’s second in command, was a fluent Farsi speaker.

“Rodriquez?”

“Got him covered, boss.”

Paczkowski checked his watch. The men had another two minutes before they were scheduled to leave.

The two cleaning out the office grabbed their bundles and headed for the front door of the factory. Another two sergeants came in and picked up boxes of paper. The enlisted men on the team were all sergeants and, as Paczkowski well knew, were probably capable of running this mission without him; they were that good.

One box of documents remained, so the captain called another sergeant in to get it. The captain needed both hands free to make calls on the two networks.

When his men inside had their charges placed and the fuses running, Paczkowski joined them at the door. Fry was still talking to the police.

Paczkowski now had a decision to make, one that he hadn’t planned for. Should he lead his men to the helos and get aboard while Fry talked to the police, or should he give Fry a moment or two longer to get rid of them? Or should he have the cops taken down?

He knew that he had two other men watching the cops. If the policemen made the slightest move to harm Fry, or to detain him, the troopers would kill them both on the spot.

He keyed the radio to talk to the TOC. “Sixty more seconds.” Then he keyed the tac net. “Sixty seconds, and if the cops are not leaving, drop them.”

He got mike clicks in reply as he checked the second hand on his watch.

Captain Pac stared through the door at the two cops like a wolf watching sheep. He was perfectly willing to kill the two Iranian cops-he could clearly see that there were just two. He had seen the results of roadside bombs up close and personal, had seen men with arms and legs blown off, had seen men killed. These two weren’t responsible for that carnage, but this was their country and they were in the way, so if they didn’t leave they were going to have to take the fall.

Without thinking, Captain Pac pulled the.45 automatic from the holster strapped to his thigh. He kept it pointed down, at the ground. Fortunately Fry had turned so he was facing the factory, which meant he had maneuvered the cops into turning their backs on the building.

Pac glanced one last time at his watch. Ten more seconds. Fry had crossed his hands in front of his chest and shifted his weight to one foot. Very good. Fry was one cool customer.

“Five… four… three… two… one,” Paczkowski muttered, then motioned to his men and walked through the door. He headed straight for Fry, who looked completely relaxed and nonchalant.

When Pac was fifteen feet from the cops, one of them saw the troops trotting toward the chopper and turned quickly to look at the factory.

Pac already had his pistol up at arm’s length. He fired once, dropping that cop, then shifted and shot the other one, who was trying to turn and draw his pistol at the same time.

“Let’s put them in the police car,” he shouted at Fry, “then drive it over by the building.”

“Looks like more police heading your way,” said a voice over the radio. “Two minutes, maybe.”

One of the cops was still alive. Fry shot him again; then Fry and Captain Pac loaded the Iranians into the car. Fry drove it over to the building as the rest of the team piled onto the choppers. The one in front was filled first, so it lifted into a hover amid a spray of loose gravel, turned left ninety degrees, then accelerated as it climbed. The second one, with Warrant officer Fry aboard, went as Paczkowski ran for the last one. He was barely aboard when he felt it lift from the gravel.

As the chopper went over the street, he saw another police car coming around the corner of the factory.

Runyon Paczkowski dug into the backpack he had left aboard the chopper and pulled out a radio transmitter. He turned it on, waited for a green light, then checked the frequency.

The chopper was about a mile from the factory, flying at two hundred feet above the city, when Pac lifted the red shield that guarded the detonator button and pushed it. He glanced out of the open chopper door, looking back the way they had come. Sure enough, the factory was going up in a huge ball of fire. Lord, it looked like half of Tabriz was exploding!

Sergeant Rodriquez eased his head out, too, and pounded Paczkowski on the back.

In the War Room of the Pentagon, Jake Grafton and the generals watched the ScanEagle feed of the factory going up. Less than a minute after the detonation, the heat from the explosions wiped out the infrared picture. The light from the blast and ensuing fires showed nicely on the natural-light television video. Then something, smoke, probably, obscured the picture. The smoke was warm, so the infrared picture merely glowed.

After a minute or so the drone pilots had their birds into clear air, and the sensors refocused. The initial blast seemed to have leveled the factory, but the rubble was now afire and burning intensely.

The generals shook hands all around, then got up and left. Jake stayed in his seat and called Sal Molina on his cell. “They got it.”

“Everyone okay?”

“I think so. They’re on their way back to Iraq. Got some mountain passes to get through, but the weather is acceptable.”

“Call me tomorrow when you get a copy of the debrief.”

“Yessir.”

Jake leaned back in his chair and rubbed his forehead. The three Hind helicopters had an hour to fly before they crossed the Iraq-Iran border. Once in Iraq, they would refuel on the ground.

The army had pulled out all the stops to make this commando raid happen-yet if the Iranians acted quickly, they could still catch the he li copters carrying the troops. Too bad Paczkowski had to blow the factory immediately. It would have been much better if the timers on the de mo lition charges had detonated the bombs an hour from now, when the choppers were safely in Iraq.

Jake Grafton well knew the burdens of command, and he appreciated the risk Paczkowski had decided to run. The mission came first, so he had detonated the charges rather than take the chance the police would find and disarm them. If the Iranians shot the choppers down, the surviving Special Forces solders and helicopter crews would just have to fight their way out of Iran or die trying. But that bomb factory would be history.

“Twenty-first century or not,” Jake Grafton said aloud, although the duty officers twelve rows down couldn’t hear him, “we still need good soldiers.”

WHAT HAS THE GOVERNMENT DONE WITH $200 BILLION IN OIL REVENUES? the headline screamed in the Tehran newspaper. I thought that an excellent question. Iran had been living on its oil revenues, and now that the price of oil had dropped almost a hundred dollars a barrel, the flow of cash was greatly diminished. The government was hurting for the cash to fund the social programs that kept the population alive. The mullahs, of course, were paid government salaries, so they didn’t share in the common man’s pain.

The average Ahmad had plenty of pain. The inflation rate was 25 percent, with the price of food rising 35 percent in the previous month alone. Unemployment was rampant, and it was impossible to finance real property, machinery or inventory purchases.

The Parliament was at loggerheads with Ahmadinejad, who wanted to end state subsidies on fuel, electricity and water, and enforce the sales tax. Clearly, the natives were getting restless.

“So whaddaya think?” I asked my expert, Frank Caldwell. We were on a break from disappointing supplicants anxious to leave the Islamic Republic, sipping coffee and trading newspaper sections.

“This place reminds me of a boiler with the safety valve wired shut,” Frank replied.

“It’s all the fault of the Great Satan,” I said and turned the page of my newspaper.

“Gotta blame somebody,” Frank agreed. “Certainly this mess couldn’t be the fault of God’s Elect.”

After work I spent the afternoon in a carpet museum broadening my mind, then walked a while, people-watching and taking in the scene. I wondered if I was going to get any cooperation from Davar Ghobadi. She certainly wasn’t a loyal fan of the regime, and she also had a bunch of friends who weren’t. Or was all that just an act? Musing along these lines, I coughed up the worst of the lung crud and went back to the hotel for a shower.

The hotel used magnetic cards for keys. I inserted mine, the light turned green, and in I went. As the door swung shut behind me, I stopped dead. Davar Ghobadi was sitting in the soft chair beside the bed wearing nothing but a short nightie and smoking a cigarette.

I took a quick look right and left. Nope. She was the only one.

Before she could say anything, I held my hand up to silence her. I went over behind the television, pulled the handful of wires and cables up where I could see them and found the on-off switch I had installed to silence the IRGC’s bugs. I flipped it off, then tucked the wires back where they belonged.

I turned around to face her. “How’d you get in here?”

She held up a door card.

“Where’d you get it?”

“A friend of mine works here.” She stretched out a leg and pointed her bare toes, then pulled it back.

“Are you aware of the fact that this hotel is under twenty-four hour surveillance by the IRGC? That every room in the hotel is bugged?”

“Didn’t you just turn the bugs off?”

“Yes, but-”

“See, I have faith in you, Tommy Carmellini.” She had some trouble getting her tongue around my last name, but she did it. “Besides, the IRGC toadies have been watching me come and go, here and there and everywhere, for years, and they’ve said nothing. They’re watching you infidel suit-and-tie spies.”

The drapes on the window were open, and she would be visible from a building across the street. I walked over and closed them, which made the room darker.

“What do you want?” I asked curtly as I sat down on the footstool. She was putting us both in a lot of danger, and I resented it. Putting me in danger, anyway. How much danger she was really in was something to speculate about, and I tried to do that just now as I watched her blow smoke rings like a fifteen-year old teenybopper.

“You,” she said, which didn’t surprise me. After all…

She dropped her butt in the water glass she had been using as an ashtray and came over to me. She arranged herself on my lap. Her skin was smooth and silky. I tried not to touch her, but that didn’t work. I wrapped my right arm around her to keep her from falling off my legs.

“How old are you again?” I asked.

“Twenty-five,” she whispered. She put her lips on mine. It was like being kissed by a butterfly.

Finally she broke contact, moved her face away an inch or so. I found myself looking deep into two big brown eyes. “Don’t you like me?” she asked.

“You’re a very forward young lady.”

“This is the way they do it in England.”

“We aren’t in England.”

“I bloody well wish we were.”

“And I’m not your Oklahoma boyfriend.” I made her stand up and pushed her toward her chair.

She didn’t pout, just went, and sat facing me with her knees together and her elbows on them.

“Tell me about this dead drop you use.”

“No.”

“Has it occurred to you that it may well be serviced by a government security agency?”

I could see the astonishment in her face. So the answer was no, it had indeed never occurred to her.

“That you and Azari may simply be conduits to tell the story the Iranian government wants the world to hear?”

“Azari recruited me. We devised our communication system. He and I alone.”

“So you send Azari pictures from time to time. The Iranian government must know he’s spilling secrets all over infidel America, and you are the only art lover he knows. Or maybe he has one or two art devotees sending him e-mails. So why haven’t the holy warriors questioned you?”

She arose and walked slowly around the room. In that nightie she looked pretty good, let me tell you. After a moment, she turned to face me. “You are intimating that we are being controlled by the government.”

“No. I am stating it flat out. The Iranian government is probably controlling you and Azari.”

She made a noise with her lips and went back to the chair.

“Tell you what. Why don’t you put your clothes back on and get the hell out of here so I can take a shower and go to dinner?”

She grabbed her clothes and went to the bathroom. In less than a minute she was back. I held out a cell phone. “For you,” I said.

She just looked, refusing to touch.

“This one the government doesn’t know about,” I explained. “You can call me on it by just pushing the ‘one’ button. If you change your mind and want to tell me what you know, or want to help me find out what is really going on in this country, push that button.”

She pocketed the phone and stepped right up to me. The top of her head was just below my chin. “I am a woman,” she said.

I wrapped her up and gave her a real kiss. She gave it right back.

“You sure are,” I said when we finally broke for air.

Then I opened the door and gently nudged her through it. I closed the door behind her and put the chain on.