The Disciple

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Tension was ratcheting tighter at the Pentagon. Ships were at sea, airplanes were fueled and armed, Special Forces teams were ready and sleeping near their transports. Parachutes were packed, guns loaded and missiles ready.

“Everyone knows their job and precisely how to do it,” Jake Grafton told the U.S. Central Command commander, a U.S. Army four-star. Jake had planned the operation; the CENTCOM commander had the job of executing it. He and his key staff members had flown in from Kuwait to Washington for this briefing. Sitting in the back of the room was the president’s man, Sal Molina.

The four-star, General Martin H. Lincoln, stared at the chart of sites, targets and predicted flight paths. The Americans had done their own simulations and compared them with the information from the computer drives Carmellini had stolen, which had arrived in Washington the previous evening. The job had only been completed an hour ago. “Ahmadinejad is bugfuck insane,” Lincoln said.

“Most religious fanatics are,” Grafton remarked from his place at the podium.

“So there are only eight sites that will launch nuclear missiles?”

“Yes, sir. The flight paths of the nukes are depicted on the chart in red. We are going to try to track any missiles from those sites, using satellite assets and AWACS. Theoretically, it should be possible to identify fast movers against ground return, yet the terrain is so mountainous…” He left the phrase hanging.

“I don’t see any antiship missiles targeted for our task forces.”

“We don’t know what, if anything, they plan to do with their antiship missiles. They bought some from the Russians, but their plans-that is one of the unknowns.”

“Has Admiral Bryant received the information you do have, and been briefed on the unknowns?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When is Ahmadinejad going to launch these missiles?” the general asked, gesturing at the charts.

“We’re not sure, sir,” Grafton replied. “Our listening posts around the world are monitoring Iranian army and IRGC tactical transmissions and trying to keep tabs on taxi and police calls inside Tehran. AWACS planes are watching vehicle movement to and from the launch sites and keeping tabs on Iranian air activity. We have a geosynchronous satellite overhead, and drones up twenty-four hours a day watching the launch sites in infrared and regular light. There is a big cold front moving through Iran this weekend, and the forecasters say it will kick up lots of wind and dust. Indications are the front will dissipate by Sunday night, but who knows?

“Our best guess is that the Iranians will launch after the storm dies, late Sunday night or Monday morning. We’ll know more as the clock ticks down. The leadership locking themselves in the bunker will be the tipoff that the attack is imminent.”

General Lincoln’s eyes swept across the map once again and stopped moving when they got to Tehran. “Tell me about the bunker.”

“One of our agents was there today, twelve hours ago, and there was a lot of activity around the entrance. Supplies were being delivered in trucks.”

“Preparations at our bases in the Middle East?” Lincoln asked crisply.

It took Jake Grafton fifteen minutes to answer this question. To minimize loss of life at these bases, should any Iranian missiles get through the cordon of fighter planes and antimissile defense systems that had been deployed, an exercise was set to occur on Sunday night. All personnel would be required to don antiradiation suits or take shelter in designated areas. Food and water was to be available in the shelters, along with medical supplies. In other words, the bases were going to be in the middle of a full-blown nuclear, biological and chemical exercise when the Iranian missiles arrived, if they did. To prevent word from leaking back to the Iranians, the exercise was highly classified, and early in the weekend the bases would be sealed.

An hour later, all the questions answered, the CENTCOM staff filed out of the room. A limo was waiting to take General Lincoln to the White House; then they were all getting on a plane to Kuwait. The multimedia tech gurus who had generated and displayed the charts and computer presentations followed the brass out, leaving Jake Grafton alone with Sal Molina.

Grafton walked up the aisle and sat down in the last row, with an empty seat between himself and Molina.

“We don’t even know if this fandango is really going to happen,” Molina groused.

Grafton didn’t bother to reply. Molina knew as much as he did about the agency’s sources and what they had said.

Molina adjusted his butt in his seat. “The president is thinking about making a secret trip to Tel Aviv.”

“Going to sit on ground zero with the Israelis?”

“He’s thinking about it. The National Security Council is throwing a duck-fit.”

“Umm,” said Grafton.

“Someone suggested we send the vice president instead.”

“I see.”

“He refused to go.”

Grafton put his feet up on the back of the seat in front of him. “Most of this angst wouldn’t be necessary if we hit the launch sites the instant they rolled out the first launchers.”

“We’ve been through all that. The United States cannot strike the first blow. It’s a political impossibility. Neither can Israel.”

“That may be political reality. Now let me state the military reality. We cannot launch a Tomahawk or cross the Iranian border until the first missile is in the air. Due to the distances involved, they will get at least an hour or two to launch missiles without opposition, and we must then try to shoot them down.”

Grafton stared into the president’s aide’s eyes. “If just one nuke gets through and obliterates Baghdad or Doha or Kuwait City or Tel Aviv, not to mention Tehran, this administration is toast. Hundreds of thousands of people will be dead, maybe millions. Maybe tens of millions. The president will be impeached, if he doesn’t resign. You understand that?”

“I do,” Sal Molina said smoothly.

Grafton wriggled his feet. After a bit he said, “And I thought the era of gunslinging gamblers was over.”

“There’s a few left around,” Molina replied carelessly. “Like you.”

Grafton snorted. “I’m no gambler. I learned long ago that the guy who takes the first aimed shot usually wins. I can get that happy truth embroidered on a pillow if you’d like to refer to it from time to time.”

Molina ignored that comment. “Tell me something that I don’t know,” he said, “something that will make me feel better.”

“The Nationals are at home tonight and tomorrow. Go home, fix yourself a tall, frosty stiff one, and after you’ve polished it off, take your wife to a baseball game.”

Molina said a cuss word, got up and left. Grafton sat in the briefing room by himself. In his mind’s eye he could see the deserts and the cities, the towering cloud formations over the mountains, people strapping themselves into cockpits, donning parachutes and climbing aboard transports…

Soon, he thought. It will happen soon… then all of us will live with the aftermath.

On Friday night during the wee hours I crawled out on the ridge above the executive bunker, found myself a handy shrub and got under it. The ground was still hot from the day’s heat, and thunderstorms were around. I could see flashes in the darkness, way off on the horizon.

I settled in and used my binoculars to see what I could see.

Since we were in the Abbas Abad suburb of Tehran, there was just enough light for binoculars instead of night vision goggles, which was good, because I wanted the magnification. After quickly checking the ridge to ensure that I was indeed alone, I glassed the Mosalla Prayer Grounds and the small mosque that disguised the main entrance, examined two trucks in the parking lot being unloaded by soldiers working in slow motion… examined everything within my range of vision.

Then I shifted my gaze to the other side of the ridge. Even in the middle of the hot summer, the riverbed was carrying water down from the mountains.

Finally satisfied that I was alone and no one was looking for intruders, I got out the laser designator and put it on my shoulder. Turned on the batteries and fired it up. The optical sight was a nice piece of gear, with infrared and low-light capabilities for night work.

Finally I put it down and sat staring at the scene. The air force, Grafton told me, was going to drop eight bunker-busters, each of which weighed about forty-seven hundred pounds. The bomb casings, I knew, were made from worn-out eight-inch howitzer barrels, which were extraordinarily hard steel. Then the cavity was packed full of tritonal, a mixture of TNT and aluminum powder. The aluminum alloy, if you will, caused the pressure peak to occur more quickly, and go higher, than pure TNT. In effect, the weapon was an explosive spear, accelerated to terminal velocity by gravity. Nearly two and a half tons of steel and explosive would dive deep into the earth before the bomb exploded. I wondered if they would penetrate five feet of dirt and twenty-five feet of reinforced concrete.

Apparently the air force was taking no chances. Four would hit the main elevator shaft, four the secondary exit on the back side of the ridge. Then I was supposed to check the results. The parking lot that the elevator shaft lay under would be reduced to rubble by the first bomb. So would the old ramp area that housed the secondary entrance/exit. Although I wouldn’t be able to see what had happened under the earth, Grafton wanted me to determine if the bunker-busters had landed more or less in the right place.

If they hadn’t, no doubt the air force would be back to do it again.

Before I moved, I took a last look around. Another truck carrying soldiers, perhaps a dozen, pulled into the parking lot. The soldiers slowly exited the truck, stretched then scratched, then were herded into line for a muster by their NCO.

I crawled back to where G. W. was waiting.

When I got in the car and we were moving, I asked if he had seen the soldiers.

“Yep,” he replied. “I have a sneaking suspicion they are going to patrol the area around that bunker until the bigwigs are safely tucked in.”

“I can’t imagine why,” I told him and scratched my chin.

“Because someone told them to, I imagine.”

“Grafton said the Iranian army and IRGC are to be pulled out of the city on Sunday night. Ahmadinejad is saving them for the war to come.”

“They won’t all leave,” said the optimist in residence. “You can bet on that.”

“First bomb hits, they’ll be looking for holes,” I mused. “Our job is to make sure Ahmadinejad doesn’t have second thoughts and come rabbiting out of the bunker before the bombs land.” I jerked a thumb toward the laser designator. “Grafton sent me that. There will be an armed drone overhead with Hellfire missiles. I can designate their targets.”

We discussed it and decided that with so many unknowns, we were going to have to play it by ear. “Be helpful,” I suggested, “if Joe Mottaki could score a tank for us when we see them going in.”

“Tommy, we only have eight guys. And how will we know when the bombs will arrive?”

“They’ll give me fifteen minutes’ warning over a handheld radio. There were actually two of them in those duffle bags-I’ll give you one, just in case.”

G. W. thought about it for a moment, then said, “Has it occurred to you that if one of those things misses, it might land on you?”

“Or you,” I told him. “Man, you gotta have some faith in the geeks. High tech is gonna save us, power us into a cleaner, greener world.”

On Friday morning in Washington, when Jake Grafton arrived at his office in Langley, his assistant, Robin, told him to call the director.

Wilkins didn’t waste words. “NSA has been listening to messages. The Iranian military is going to war alert on Sunday night. Fighter and gunboat sorties have been ordered for Monday morning at dawn.”

“Has CENTCOM been notified?”

“Of course. Just thought you would like to know.”

“Now that the plan has gone operational, there’s nothing for me to do here but twiddle my thumbs,” Grafton said. “I was thinking about going to Tehran.”

“Hell no,” Wilkins said and hung up on Jake.

“Via Baghdad,” Grafton said into his dead instrument. “Then to As Sulaymaniyah, and by helicopter from there to Tehran.” He put the telephone back into its cradle and glanced at his watch. “If I get a hustle on, I might make it by Monday morning.”

He called Sal Molina at the White House. “Where did the president decide to spend Sunday night?”

“Baghdad,” Molina told him. “He also decided the veep is going to Tel Aviv.”

“Can I get a ride on Air Force One?”

“Don’t see why not. Be at Andrews in three hours.”

“You going, too?”

“Hell, no. I’m going to be in my office watching the war on CNN.”

Jake then called Callie on her cell phone. “Hey, beloved wife. I have to go to the Middle East for a few days.”

“Oh,” she said. “Are you going home to pack?”

“No. I’ll take my warbag along.” He routinely kept a packed suitcase at the office for emergencies such as these. “The underwear is clean, and I have some toothpaste left in there.”

Callie was silent for a moment, then she said, “This isn’t a routine trip, is it?”

“No,” Jake admitted.

“I want you to come back to me.”

“God bless you, Callie. I love you.”

“I love you, too. Don’t forget that.”

He said good-bye, cradled the phone and shouted for Robin.

By Sunday afternoon, the tunnel where we were hiding felt like a jail. It was cool enough, as the megalopolis and its inhabitants baked in the summer heat, but oppressive. It felt as if we were in a stone prison, cut off from mankind and the outside world. No sun, wind or rain, no birds or grass, just stone.

I thought about the Iranians’ executive bunker, which would soon contain four hundred people, more or less, thought about it for ten or fifteen seconds, then went on to something else.

Larijani was a silent, forbidding man. Still, regardless of what happened in the next few days, the years of playing a role were over for him.

“When you get home, what is next for you?” I asked.

He looked at me deadpan, the ugly asshole I had seen from time to time during my stay in Iran, then he smiled. His face was transformed. “I don’t know,” he said. He shrugged. “Having to save you was a godsend. The mission is finished.”

“Someday you can buy me a drink.”

“Someday I will,” he said and smiled again.

Davar’s bruises were fading, and her face was returning to normal. She still had a big yellow place on her jaw, and her left eye was puffy, but in a few more days, the swelling and color would be gone.

“When this is over,” I said, “you can get on a chopper going to Iraq, and from there, airplanes fly all over the world. I promise, I can get you a temporary travel permit that will take you to America. By God, Jake Grafton owes me.”

We were sitting on her cot, which had blankets hanging from ropes around it to give her some privacy. She reached for my hand, held it in both of hers while she examined it.

“Do you have a wife?” she asked.

“No.”

“Why are you here, Tommy Carmellini, on the far side of the earth, risking your life?”

I looked her square in both those big brown eyes. “Damned if I know,” I said. “A character defect is the most likely explanation.”

She was silent for a bit, then changed the subject. “After Jihad Day, what will happen in Iran?”

“I don’t know.” I pulled my hand loose from hers. “Let’s hope there are some Iranians left to have a future. What it will be will be up to them.”

“It will be as Allah wills it.”

I was in no mood to discuss religion, which was the horse the Iranians had ridden into the middle of this mess, but I couldn’t resist saying, “Perhaps. On the other hand, maybe the future will belong to those humans who fight like hell to make it happen.”

That Sunday evening, I went up on top of the old German’s hotel and took my last look at pre-Jihad Tehran. The evening was bloodred, which seemed appropriate, because the air was full of dirt. The wind was singing around the eaves of the building, and visibility was limited. Apparently a lot of dirt had been kicked high into the atmosphere by a windstorm in central Iran. I wondered how all that airborne dirt would affect laser designators.

I hoped Tehran would look more or less like this tomorrow evening, but that wasn’t up to me. Although I didn’t say it to Davar, I seriously doubted if Allah gave a good goddamn. I couldn’t imagine why He, or She, should.

All over Tehran this evening, the Iranian political and religious elite were packing for the midnight ride to the bunker. No doubt they were looking at their homes, their keepsakes and knickknacks, at their neighbors’ homes and the children playing in the streets…

It’s amazing how life works, when you think about it. Somewhere babies were being conceived, babies were being born, young people were marrying, people were dying of disease, old age, murder, accident, the whole gamut… and somewhere people were strolling through parks, looking in shop windows, eating and laughing and loving and living. All of it went on all the time. Somewhere.

I wished I were in that somewhere where the sun was shining, couples were holding hands and birds were singing.

When the sun was gone and the black night was illuminated only by some city lights and a thunderstorm tossing lightning on the mountains to the north, I went back down to the tunnel and inventoried the stuff in the duffle bags Grafton had sent to me, checked everything. Finally I lay down on my cot and tried to grab twenty winks. Unless I got killed early, it was going to be a long night.

At 11:00 P.M., G. W. Hosein shook me awake. I had managed to doze off just a few minutes prior. “They’re going into the bunker,” he whispered, hoping not to awaken Davar, who was asleep inside her curtains ten feet away. “Ahmad has been keeping an eye on them. Limos arriving carrying whole families, it looks like.”

I rolled out and got dressed.

I was about ready to go when Davar came out of the curtains wearing trousers, a shirt and boots.

“You’re not going anywhere,” I said.

“This is my country,” she shot back and set off along the tunnel to where G. W. and the others were making coffee and heating MREs.

I followed her-and thought, What the heck. Who am I to tell her how to run her life? Maybe she’ll run into a couple of prison guards she recognizes.

Joe Mottaki was there with his two guys, decked out as Iranian soldiers, complete with AKs and sidearms. With their beards, they looked as Iranian as Ahmadinejad. I scratched my own stubble, four days’ growth, as I surveyed them. Joe was drinking coffee and looking sour.

“You going to try for a tank?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“We only need it in case things go bad. All we have to do is lay low until the bunker bombers do their thing.”

Mottaki gave me a look I couldn’t classify.

“Are you thinking about those people in the bunker?” I asked.

His lips curled into a sneer. “You ass! I’ve got a wife and kid in Israel, cousins, my parents, uncles and aunts, none of whom ever lifted a finger against Iran. All they want is to be left in peace. I’m thinking about them! These raghead jihad bastards would kill them all if they could and dance on their graves.” He leaned into my face and hissed, “I don’t give a bloody fuck about the people in that hole.”

Using binoculars, G. W., Davar, Larijani and I watched from beside a cluster of abandoned apartments as limo after limo arrived carrying whole families, who lugged suitcases and boxes and bundles into the mosque at the prayer grounds. Then the limos drove away. Some people arrived in their own cars, which they parked willy-nilly in the lot next door, after they had off-loaded their stuff. Kids wandered around; a few young mothers were carrying babies.

“I count two dozen soldiers down there,” G. W. said. “One big truck, which probably hauled them in.”

“See any armor anywhere?” I asked as I scanned the area.

“Nope.”

I wondered how the locals would feel if they knew their fearless leaders were taking cover. I glanced over at Davar, who was leaning against a wall to steady herself as she peered at the mosque with binoculars. Although no one had told her in so many words, I think she knew why G. W. and I were so interested in that bunker. I got out my satellite telephone and spent five minutes setting it up. Then I called the folks at Central Command and gave them the word. The guy I talked to merely grunted. No doubt he was getting information from a variety of different sources.

I broke the connection and sat watching the people arriving. Periodically I scanned the area behind us and to both sides for troops.

Behind me Larijani sat examining his feet and hands. He seemed totally uninterested in the proceedings around the bunker. He certainly had a load to carry for the rest of his life.

I tried not to think about the children I could see going into the bunker. If I were an Israeli like Mottaki, perhaps I would feel as he did. But I wasn’t.

The truth is we were all guilty, all of us: Ahmadinejad, the mullahs, Larijani, Grafton… me… and Joe Mottaki.

I lowered the binoculars and glanced at Davar, who was sitting beside the wall watching me with those deep, dark eyes, her binoculars on her lap.

Once again the ready room of VFA-196 aboard USS United States was packed, with an officer in every seat. At the podium, Commander Burgholzer surveyed his charges and summed up the information discussed during the previous two hours.

“Folks, I’m going to give it to you straight. We are going to have a war. With luck, it will be short, although it won’t be sweet. You know everything I know; you’ve read the Op Plan; you’ve got all the information you need to fly your missions. I want you people to be careful out there. Be safe, be professionals, and make sure you know what you’re shooting at. Any questions?”

One pilot spoke up. “Skipper, what’s going to happen if we put a ’winder into a nuke?”

The Fly scratched his head. “Either it’ll go down and you’ll fly on, or your next breath will be at the Pearly Gates.”

Nobody even smiled.

“If you get there before the rest of us, tell St. Peter we’ll all be along sooner or later and put a keg on ice.” He paused, then added, “Well, most of us will get there. I don’t know about the XO… or O’Hare…”

This time he got a chuckle from his pilots.

Since no one knew Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s timetable, the carrier was going to a five-minute alert at midnight. “When we know more, we’ll tell you more,” the wing intelligence officer told them in the televised, big-picture brief that had been piped to every ready room.

Four of the Savage Horde’s F/A-18 Hornets were loaded with missiles on the flight deck. The lucky four alert pilots donned their flight gear, arranged their kneeboard cards with frequencies and notes and trooped to the escalator for the ride up to the flight deck. Once there, they checked in with flight-deck control on the location of their aircraft, verified the predicted catapult weight and, using red lights, strolled out onto the crowded deck to look for their steeds. Pilots of another squadron were also manning four F/A-18s, and crews were manning two EA-6Bs, two KS-3 tankers, and an E-2 Hawkeye.

After careful preflights of the aircraft and weapons, the Hornet pilots manned up. The plane captains helped them strap in. Electrical power was applied to the plane and, the pilots fired off the computers and began typing in waypoints and checkpoints. They didn’t, however, start engines. Once the engines were started, fuel was being consumed, fuel they would need to reach their assigned patrol areas or engage enemy fighters. Ready to launch on five minutes’ notice, they would wait until the admiral gave the order before bringing their aircraft to life.

The E-2 Hawkeye, with its giant radar housing riding above the center of the wing, did start engines. Chicago O’Hare was in a Hornet cockpit, playing with her computer and generally killing time, when she felt the ship begin a turn into the wind. The yellow-shirted taxi directors worked the E-2 to Catapult Three on the waist. Chicago watched as the catapult crew readied the cat, put the plane on it, and sent it off into the night. The Hawkeye would carry its radar into the lower stratosphere, there to watch thousands of miles of sea, and Iran. The information it gathered would be data-linked to the ship to keep the decision-makers there informed, and if necessary data-linked to airborne Hornets. The buzzword was network-centric warfare; and it worked.

After the Hawkeye was launched, the ship came back to its original course, which was to the northwest.

The captain of United States and her sister carrier, USS Columbia, which was steaming ten miles northward with her escorts, had been told to place their ships as close to the mouth of the Gulf of Hormuz as possible while still maintaining the sea room they needed to come into the wind for launches and recoveries. Every sea mile closer to the mouth of the Gulf was a mile the airplanes didn’t have to fly. Yet every mile close to the Iranian coast decreased the task force’s reaction time to antiship missiles, if the Iranians launched any. Admiral Bryant and the captains had conferred. The admiral weighed the imponderables against the requirements of the mission and decided where he wanted the ships. As with every military decision, he and the people he was responsible for would have to live with the outcome, whatever it was.

Chicago sat in her cockpit looking at the other planes on the deck, the sailors, the night sky, savoring the gentle rise and fall of the ship as it rode the back of the sea and the smell of the night wind, rich with salt. She also thought she could detect a hint of the land on the wind, but perhaps it was only her imagination.

Air Force One was somewhere over the North Atlantic when an aide woke Jake Grafton, who was napping in a seat near the rear of the cabin. The president wanted to see him.

Jake found the president in a thoughtful mood. He wanted to talk, and did so. Jake sat and listened as the president discussed the political forces that had molded modern Iran. Merely thinking aloud, he ruminated on Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the Iranian presidential candidate who apparently won the last presidential election and had been under loose house arrest ever since.

Jake sat silently listening. The president obviously realized the personal risk he was taking by going to Baghdad, and Jake admired him for it. Yet the president didn’t mention it. Nor did he mention the danger Grafton would face in Iran.

“Mousavi is the future of Iran,” the president remarked at one point, glancing at Grafton, “if he lives to see it.”

Jake nodded his agreement.

Finally, after nearly an hour, when the president had run dry on Iran, he changed the subject. “I personally owe you a debt of thanks, Admiral, for your efforts, regardless of how all this turns out. Wisdom is hard to find these days. I wanted to thank you to your face.”

Embarrassed, Jake Grafton merely nodded.

“Let’s both try to get some sleep,” the president said. “I suspect we’re going to need it.”

After Air Force One landed in Baghdad and the president had departed with the military brass that had been hastily summoned to meet him, Jake Grafton slipped away. Soon Grafton was in a helicopter on his way to As Sulaymaniyah, on the northeast border of Iraq.

At As Sulaymaniyah, the chopper circled the field, then landed beside a dilapidated hangar sheltered by trees on the side of the field away from the main parking ramp. Grafton got out with his warbag, and the helo departed.

He pounded on the personnel door, which was opened by a man in a rumpled army flight suit and dirty white socks, holding a 1911 automatic in his hand.

“John Pepper?”

“Yeah.”

“Jake Grafton. I want to go to Tehran.”

Pepper snapped on a light and looked Grafton over. The admiral was wearing jeans, a short-sleeve shirt, tennis shoes and no hat.

“Admiral Jake Grafton?”

“Yep. That’s me.” Jake passed Pepper his CIA ID card. Pepper scanned it, passed it back and tucked the pistol in its holster at his waist as he stiffened to attention.

“Relax, relax,” Grafton said. “I’m a civilian.” He held out his hand for a shake.

When they had shaken hands, Pepper led the way toward the only desk in the room. He had been sacked out on a couch that had seen better days. “I got a message today from Washington,” he said. “Seems the director of the CIA wants to personally talk to you, if you show up. The message was classified, so I sent it back to the command post for safekeeping.”

“I’ll call him when I can,” Grafton said. “In the meantime, how about a ride to Tehran in your Hind?”

“Terrible night for flying a chopper-lots of wind-and Tehran is a damn long way. Have to refuel at a clandestine fuel depot on the Khar River. Dangerous as hell to use it.”

“Right.”

“I hear they are about to have a war over there,” Pepper added cautiously, and glanced at his watch.

“Bad news travels fast,” Jake Grafton said and threw his bag on the couch. “If they’re gonna have a war, be a shame to miss it. So, when can we go and how long will it take to get there?”