The Gambit

XI

Colonel Rafsanjani knew that time was of the essence. As a result, he had his orderly book four flights on a flight from Tehran to Mumbai, India. However, from there, they diverged. He had Major Zarin and his aide follow Jalili’s recommendation by traveling from Mumbai to Doha, UAE; from Doha to Mexico City via Nairobi, Kenya to Johannesburg; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Panama City to Mexico City. All told, it would take Zarin and his aide a couple days just to reach Mexico City. From there, Zarin still had to catch a flight to Juarez, opposite El Paso, TX on the US/Mexican border. Rafsanjani and his aide, though, took a more direct — and risky — route — and one that placed them directly on the west coast of the United States. He took a direct KLM/Royal Dutch airline flight non-stop from Mumbai to Amsterdam. From there, he grabbed another nonstop flight, this one on United Airlines. Rafsanjani and his aide, traveling on an assumed Indian name and passport, arrived in San Francisco the day after Israel hit Iran’s nuclear facilities. Hertz was only too glad to rent him a full size pickup; of course, Hertz never realized they would never see that truck again.

From San Francisco, Rafsanjani immediately left the airport and picked up I-80 and headed towards Reno where the two of them spent the night, booking a room at the Peppermill Casino. The following morning, Rafsanjani and his aide drove to a twenty thousand acre ranch outside of Tonopah, NV, that had been purchased in 2009 by a shell corporation that had been organized with the help of the Mexican authorities.

Shortly after the 2008 presidential election in the United States, Said Jalili and General Suleimani began working with their ambassador to Mexico to put together a number of agricultural corporations within the United States to purchase a number of ranches in the extreme western US. Beginning in 2009, and over the course of the next two years, these ranches, purchased by legal US corporations and operated by Iranian intelligence officials through a Mexican liaison, were actual working cattle ranches, but served another purpose entirely. These ranches, usually running ten thousand to fifteen thousand acres, or more, each served the dual purpose of a working cattle ranch as well as a training and staging area for an assault force, all members of the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Ultimately, there was one big ranch purchased outside of Tonopah, which served as the base headquarters in NV, while two others in NV, one outside of Silverpeak and another outside of Round Mountain, served as auxiliary bases. Four ranches were established in Oregon, a twenty-three thousand acre ranch outside of Princeton served as the base HQ in Oregon, while three subsidiary bases were established outside of Fields and Riverside. Rafsanjani established another one based outside of Marathon, TX, though this one was smaller and served a totally different purpose.

Once the ranches were purchased, select members of Iran’s Quds Force gradually began leaving Iran and making their way to Mexico City via various International routes, leaving from Bandar Abbas, Shiraz or Tehran and taking various routes via Sanaa, Yemen; Nairobi, Kenya; Johannesburg, South Africa; Buenos Aeries, Rio de Janeiro, etc., and ultimately ending up in Juarez, via Mexico City. Everyone, though, stayed away from any, and all, European airports as security in Europe tended to be far greater than most other African and Latin American airports. Once they arrived in Mexico City, Rafsanjani had made arrangements with the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel to infiltrate the US along their very porous border in the Arizona desert. All told, roughly an entire battalion of the Quds Force successfully infiltrated into the US. Once successfully across the border, each soldier proceeded to his previously assigned ranch in either Oregon, Nevada, or a very select few, to Texas. Smuggling an entire battalion into the US took time. However, within a year and a half, an adequate — and extremely capable — force was ready.

On the ranches, preparing for a huge influx of men presented more than a small logistical problem; housing the men was not much of a problem as bunkhouses on these cattle ranches were all over the place. Feeding them, though, gradually became an issue; there was plenty of beef, obviously, but other food stuffs were needed and, though still remote, the ranchers did not want to raise suspicion. Everyone remembered the ranch in Bly, Oregon that the blind sheik had established, only to have a few observant neighbors become suspicious and blow the whole ball game.

Outfitting this force with weapons did not pose a problem at all. The Sinaloa cartel who smuggled the men in through a few tunnels in both AZ and Texas supplied the men with the weapons that they needed. The rest of the weapons and supplies needed were readily available throughout the West: monstrous outdoor sporting goods stores like Scheels, Sportsman’s Warehouse, and Cabela’s in Reno and Salt Lake all had seemingly limitless supplies of ammunition, black powder, and even night vision gear. Even Home Depot and Lowes offered supplies the unsuspecting thought completely innocent. In short, from Cabela’s and the Sportsman’s Warehouse to Home Depot and Lowes all of the material needed to wreak havoc were readily available, if one just used the imagination — and Colonel Ashkan Rafsanjani had a very vivid imagination!

As Rafsanjani’s men began arriving, their task of gathering other kinds of supplies dramatically increased: the Nevada ranches stockpiled fertilizer high in ammonium nitrate while the Oregon ranches gathered all kinds of Aluminum, iron oxide, and magnesium as well as a few other chemicals. The ranch outside of Marathon, TX simply worked as a working cattle ranch — until they received word that their mission was changing.

Rafsanjani had company commanders at each of the ranches and he had made arrangements with each of them regarding the timing of their separate operations. Communication with each of his commanders would not be easy due to the sheer distance between each of the ranches. The Round Mountain and Silver Peak ranches were each an hour away from the Tonopah ranch — in opposite directions. The Oregon ranches were at least a full day’s drive away on top of that. As such, Rafsanjani had each of his company commanders establish separate Gmail accounts under relatively innocuous names that would not draw any attention. Once Rafsanjani had received word to launch their operation, he would send an email out to each of them advising them of “his summer plans to visit Yosemite National Park”—an iconic National Park in California that Rafsanjani believed would generate thousands of hits should anyone in the US government try to search for a coded message. Once this message was received, each commander knew the operation would commence.

While Rafsanjani and his aide made it to San Francisco in less than twenty-four hours, Major Zarin and his aide had considerable more difficulty. Zarin’s initial flight out of Nairobi had mechanical difficulties — a not uncommon occurrence in this backwater region of Africa, Zarin thought to himself. He knew time was of the essence but other than getting completely irritated at the local mechanics, he knew he was powerless to do anything. Nevertheless, Zarin couldn’t help but think of the irony of his position. Rafsanjani had assigned him to the Marathon ranch in extreme west Texas. Marathon — the ancient battle where the arrogant Greeks defeated his Persian ancestors, whom the “civilized” Greeks referred to as “barbarians!” Well, now he was marshaling his force once again at another Marathon — and this time, he and his men would be delivering the coup d’grace to the proud, and equally arrogant, Americans. The delay in Nairobi, while it only took a matter of hours to fix the plane — again, this is Nairobi, a spare plane could not simply be inserted into the schedule — it caused him to miss his connecting flight in Johannesburg. Zarin arrived in Johannesburg a little after 10:00 p.m. local time. The next available flight to Brazil — or anywhere in South America — did not leave for another ten hours! Fortunately, or so he thought, Zarin found a flight to Mexico City, via a connecting flight in Amsterdam on a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines that left Johannesburg a little before midnight. The only drawback to this, he realized, is that it still took more than twenty-five hours to reach Mexico City; he would then need to find another flight to Juarez, right on the Texas border opposite El Paso. He knew he was way behind schedule, and incredibly frustrated at the incompetence of the mechanics in Nairobi. At this point, it would take him at least two full days to reach the ranch in Marathon!

Ben, Stonewall and Dani arrived at Re’im late in the afternoon, several hours after the last of the Israeli attack planes had landed. They had plenty to do: in the last IDF incursion into Gaza, the IDF discovered at least thirty-six tunnels leading into Israel; they knew some of them existed but had no idea as to the full number nor the extent of the tunnel network. The network consisted of tunnels that were so sophisticated that the Hamas leadership actually had a complete war room interconnected with tunnels that spanned the entire length of the Gaza Strip. Ventilation shafts, food stocks, and, of course, complete armories with stockpiles of missiles and rockets were found throughout the tunnel network. Benjamin Givon’s team simply had to find out if there was an Iranian thread from General Suleimani involved in this tunnel scheme and, if so, what that might be.

Upon arriving in Re’im, Ben immediately looked up an old friend of his, Amos Yaakov, who happened to be another Mossad team leader temporarily based in Re’im. Amos’ team specialized in interrogation and his team had been busy of late due to the latest IDF incursion into Gaza.

“Amos, understand you’ve been a little busy of late, huh?” asked Ben.

“You could certainly say that. We have interrogated literally hundreds of local Palestinians, all with ties to Hamas. Most of these guys are simply foot soldiers who don’t know anything more than what they are told. We’ve come across a few officers in their organization who know a little bit more but not much more. They have done a good job compartmentalizing the knowledge of each officer level so that if they are captured, they can’t reveal too much information. However, we’ve been able to piece a few things together: we knew Hamas had several tunnels leading into Israel but we didn’t know where they ended; we also knew they had underground bunkers where they could both hide and store their rockets; we’ve found many of these as well. We know Hamas is tied to Iran but we have yet to learn of any specific or combined operations which they might have in the works.”

“So, you haven’t uncovered anything that would lead you to believe Hamas has any combined operation with Iran planned for any retaliation of our bombing their nuclear sites?” asked Ben.

“Nothing yet, though we are really pressing these guys, especially the leaders we’ve captured. None of them seem to know anything about any contingency plans that may exist for any retaliation effort on their part,” Amos replied.

“Have any of your operatives ever heard of an Iranian Quds officer named Colonel Ashkan Rafsanjani? He’s a key figure in the Quds Force and their intelligence operations. We believe he has been planning some highly secret and catastrophic operation with General Qassim Suleimani and the only possible lead we have is that part of Rafsanjani’s operation involved tunnels, presumably with either Hamas or Hezbollah. We don’t have any idea what it involves, where he’d be hitting or, for that matter, where he even is; it seems he’s dropped off the face of the earth. My guess is that as soon as we can locate him, we’ll have a better idea as to what is planned.”

“When I was working up north, I heard a little about him working with Hezbollah in the Beqaa Valley, but that was a few years ago. He was already making a name for himself then, but I don’t think that had anything to do with a long range plan to retaliate for what we’ve just done. You might want to check with the group up north but we haven’t seen or heard anything that would lead us to believe there is anything in the works down here.”

“Okay, I’ll leave part of my team here and take Arielle and Stonewall up with me. Let me know if you find anything at all. Something is in the works; I’m sure of it. I just can’t believe that Jalili would limit himself to something so obvious, and poorly executed, as to try and block the strait; he’s much more cunning than that.”

Rafsanjani arrived at the Tonopah ranch the evening of the day after Israel’s attack on his country; his arrival at the ranch surprised no one. Quite the opposite: His company commanders knew that the colonel took a “hands-on” approach to everything — and he would never delegate something this important to a subordinate. “Where is Captain Turani?” he asked the soldier who met him as he got out of his pickup truck. Captain Bashir Turani was Rafsanjani’s leading Company commander in this entire operation.

“The captain’s doing a final run-through with everyone. Based on the news reports, Captain Turani believed we’d get the word to go as soon as you arrived, which he believed to be anytime. He’s making sure the troops know their targets — which they all do — but, more importantly, are prepared for any contingency, should anything unexpected arise. We’ve noticed that the routes to some of the targets have detours due to some recent highway construction projects and we want to make sure that everything is coordinated to go off at the same time.”

“Excellent. Please take me to them; I’d like to listen in. I don’t want to interrupt what he has going on.”

“Right this way, sir.”

“Finally, for those of you heading to Torrance and Carson,” Captain Turani continued with his briefing, “the California Department of Transportation has announced a night-time construction project on State Highway 91 in the Cerritos/Paramount area. As such, plan on taking Interstate 405 instead. This route may be a little longer but it should avoid any delays. We don’t want any of you sitting on the highway when everyone else is hitting their targets. Any final questions?” Seeing none, and expecting none — the men had been over this several times — Captain Turani was about to dismiss the group when Colonel Rafsanjani walked in.”

“Well done, Captain,” said Rafsanjani.

“Thank you, sir. We were kind of expecting you, though we didn’t know exactly when you’d arrive. Based on all of the news reports, we kind of expected that we’d be heading out any time.”

“That is correct. Since we want each of you at your targets at precisely 2:00 a.m., you will all be leaving tomorrow afternoon. I know each of you already has the schematics of your route planned out. Get a good night’s sleep tonight; spend the morning making any last minute preparations for your trips. And remember, secrecy remains paramount. We are on the verge of something truly remarkable; something that has never been done before. The American people believe that the September 11th, 2001, attack on their World Trade Center in New York was the worst thing that could have happened to them. Well, we are here to show them otherwise. Your actions tomorrow night will bring this country to its knees in ways no one in this country thought imaginable. Each of you should be proud of the role you are about to take in it.” Each member of the two companies present knew that there were others taking part, but they did not know where they were coming from nor did they know any of the other targets, though it did not take much of an imagination to figure out. Moreover, no one knew anything about the operation headquartered in Oregon or about the Marathon, Texas, operation as well. Rafsanjani made sure that the operational details were as compartmentalized as possible. Even Captain Turani did not know the specifics of the Oregon operation and he did not know anything of the Marathon operation. That part of the operation was limited to Major Zarin and the Company commander in Marathon — no one else knew of that part of the operation. As soon as Rafsanjani dismissed Captain Turani, he sent out an email to his commanders letting them know of his summer vacation plans to visit Yosemite National Park.

About an hour later, four pickups, each with an accompanying travel trailer, left the ranch outside of Marathon, Texas, and headed up towards I-10 and their long journey east.