Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 05 (52 page)

 
          
Buzhazi
took a deep, angry breath, leveled the pistol again . . . but did not pull the
trigger. Instead, he holstered it, swore under his breath, and left the
President’s residence. Nateq-Nouri caught a glimpse of two Pasdaran troopers
guarding the door outside as Buzhazi departed.

 
          
After
what seemed like an eternity, Nateq-Nouri took a deep breath, then returned to
his desk and plunked down into the chair on wobbly legs. All that bravado was a
charade, he knew—he was very afraid of dying, and terrified of dying at the
hands of Hesarak al- Kan Buzhazi, lying at his feet in a pool of red blood and
gray brain matter. He had worked too hard to leave this life that way. He . . .

 
          
“Trouble
with the staff tonight, Mr. President?” a woman’s voice asked in Farsi.
Nateq-Nouri turned, his heart skipping a few beats in shock. There, emerging
from the curtains surrounding the bedchamber, were a man and a woman, both
dressed like commandos in black skintight body suits, gloves, and boots. They
were armed, but their weapons were at their sides, ready but not threatening.

 
          
When
he regained his composure, the President of Iran gaily, casually waved at the
strangers. “Please, come in, come in,” he said effusively in Farsi. “Everyone
else seems to be making themselves welcome in my residence, so why not you two?
You are Arab, I am sure.” Nateq-Nouri switched to almost accent-free Arabic.
“Your African friend, a Libyan perhaps? Sudanese?”

 
          
“At
least he’s bein’ sociable about this,” the man said in English.

 
          
“Ah!
An American!” Nateq-Nouri said, his eyes dancing. In equally good English, he
said, “Welcome to my home, young man. Yes, the only luxury I have right now is
to be sociable. Now, do you mind telling me why you are here? Are you here to
assassinate me?”

 
          
“I
should
blow you away, motherfucker,
for what you done to my homeboys!”

 
          
“Your
American ghetto dialect is very difficult for me to understand, young man, but
I assume you are associates of Colonel Paul White, and you are angry at me for
the circumstances surrounding his capture and internment,” the President of
Iran said. “I have been expecting you, although I expected to see a brilliant
high-tech assault on the headquarters building, beginning with some of your
wonderful cruise missiles dropped by your stealth bomber, followed by your, how
do you call them, your ‘tilt-rotor’ aircraft, with lots of well-trained,
steely-eyed, square-jawed, whisky-drinking commandos jumping and sliding down
ropes with guns blazing to make the heroic rescue ... or will I not be
disappointed? Is that what is happening now?”

 
          
“Tell
us where Colonel White is, Mr. President, and you won’t get hurt.”

 
          
“Hurt?
My dear young man, I am as good as
dead
already,” Nateq-Nouri said with a lighthearted laugh. “I assume you heard
General Buzhazi. As soon as he gets the codes for the nuclear weapons aboard
the carrier
Khomeini,
I will be
disposed of. In his bumbling sort of way, he will try to make it look like an
accident, but everyone will know, of course.”

 
          
“Just
tell us where Colonel White is, Mr. President.”

 
          
“Your
Colonel Paul White is being held in an interrogation center at Pasdaran headquarters,”
Nateq-Nouri replied, “but to tell you the truth, sir, I do not know if he is
still alive.”

 
          
“We’ll
find out ourselves—and if he’s not, we’ll take the news
very
poorly,” Briggs said coldly. “Can you be a little more
specific about his location, Mr. President?”

 
          
“No,
unfortunately not,” Nateq-Nouri admitted. “I understand the Pasdaran
interrogates its prisoners by administering drugs at what they call a ‘medical
care facility’ in the basement of their headquarters—awful, brutal place,
filled with evil, brutal men!—but I do not know if White has been taken there.”

 
          
“Perhaps
you could inquire, Mr. President?” Behrouzi suggested.

 
          
“I
was never a favorite of the Pasdaran,” Nateq-Nouri said, “but I believe there
are one or two officers at headquarters that may speak to me.” With that,
Nateq-Nouri picked up a phone.

 
          
Briggs
raised his Uzi. “Be careful what you ask for, Mr. President.”

 
          
“You,
sir,” said the President of Iran with a cold smile, “are the
least
of my worries right now.” He
dialed the phone, spoke briefly in Farsi to two different persons, then hung
up. “Colonel White is indeed in the Pasdaran medical facility, headquarters
building, first subfloor A, room A193. He is alive and perhaps even conscious.
My friends have arranged for the guards at the medical facility to be
‘preoccupied’ for the next half hour. I trust you can effect some sort of
rescue in that time.”

 
          
Hal
Briggs was almost too stunned for words. He shrugged, gave Riza a confused
expression, then nodded. “Sure, Mr. President. That will be great.” He paused
for a moment, then asked, “Will you be safe after General Buzhazi finds out
about this, sir?”

 
          
“I
do not know, young man.”

 
          
“Hal.
Call me Hal, Mr. President,” Briggs interjected. Riza looked at him in absolute
surprise—Intelligence Support Agency operatives were not supposed to use their
real names—but, somehow, it fit in this very bizarre setting. Thirty seconds
ago, Briggs was ready to shoot this man between the eyes—now he was introducing
himself to him, using his
real name!

           
“Thank you, Hal... or is it colonel,
major, captain . . . ?”

 
          
“Just
Hal is fine.”

 
          
“Yes.
Hal it is then.” Nateq-Nouri regarded Riza for a moment, searched his memory;
then, wagging a knowing finger at her and smiling, said, “Ah. Now I recall.
OPEC Ministers’ Conference, last year,
Quito
,
Ecuador
, the reception at Energy Minister Nazur’s
residence. It was hotter than
Mogadishu
in the summer and the
humidity
. .. forgive me, I do not remember your name, but I will
never forget the black dress and that delicious diamond ankle bracelet you
wore—very alluring, I must say. You accompanied Minister Yusuf of the United
Arab Emirates to the reception, but I could not help but notice you two spent
very little time together—he already had a young translator that he kept
fondling, as I recall—so you must have been on some sort of secret assignment,
perhaps for the Directorate of Intelligence for the United Arab Emirates, no?”

 
          
“Your
memory is quite remarkable, Mr. President,” Behrouzi said, touched by the man’s
charm in the face of almost certain disaster, “but it would be best if your
memory of me was restricted to an ankle bracelet in
Ecuador
.”

 
          
“Of
course,” Nateq-Nouri said. “Now, you must do something for me in return.”

 
          
“What’s
that?”

 
          
Nateq-Nouri
fixed both of them with a deadly serious stare. “Destroy the aircraft carrier
Khomeini,
Hal,” the President of Iran
said.

 
          
“Say what?”

           
“I cannot hold out against General
Buzhazi for long, Hal,” Nateq-Nouri said resignedly. “He will either discover
or bypass the code, or he will torture the code out of me, in a very short
time—perhaps even tonight.”

 
          
“Code?
What code?”

 
          
“The
code to arm the nuclear warhead on the carrier
Khomeini
,” Nateq-Nouri said. “One of the anti-ship missiles on
board that carrier has a very large nuclear warhead capable, I daresay, of
sinking your
Abraham Lincoln
very
efficiently.”

 
          
“Holy shit!”

           
“Please, mind your sacrilegious
language, young man,” Nateq-Nouri scolded Briggs. His tone softened
immediately, however, and he went on: “To continue: General Buzhazi has one set
of codes, I have the other. I do not know how long I could hold out, but I know
the general has very effective ways to get the information he desires. Then he
will have both sets of codes he requires to arm the nuclear missiles. When he
does, he will move the carrier and launch the P-700 missile—perhaps at
Saudi Arabia
, perhaps at
Iraq
, perhaps at your
Lincoln
carrier group. I do not know. I feel he
will use that carrier, along with his other forces, to decimate the Gulf Cooperative
Council military bases along the Gulf. You must stop him.”

 
          
Briggs
looked at Behrouzi, then slapped a fist into his other hand in frustration. “I
had that sucker in my sights once, Mr. President— I’d love to get another shot
at it and send it to Davy Jones’s locker for real. You got a deal. ”

 
          
“Very
good,” Nateq-Nouri said. “Now, I suggest you should leave. Good luck to you.”
And Nateq-Nouri headed for the door to his suite, closed the door behind him
and left the two commandos by themselves.

 
          
“I
must be dreaming, Riza,” Briggs said as they prepared to depart. “The President
of fuckin’
Iran
is helping us spring Colonel White, and in exchange wants us to
destroy
his fuckin’... I mean, his
friggin’ carrier . . . ?”

 
          
“I
am not so surprised—Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri is truly a man of peace, a rare
commodity in
Iran
these days,” Behrouzi said with a smile. “What is even more surprising
is
you
telling him your real name!”

 
          
“I
felt it was a pretty safe move,” Briggs said coldly. “I owed him a little sign
of gratitude, of respect—and I don’t think he’s going to be alive very much
longer to tell anybody about us, poor devil. Now let’s get moving!”

 
          
The
back portico of the President’s residence was hidden from most of the compound
because of the intricate design of the old palace; hidden sensors and
surveillance cameras had effectively compensated for the shortfall, but those
were easily bypassed by Madcap Magician commandos.

 
          
Chris
Wohl was on the ground just below the President’s apartment window, covering
the primary exit, when he saw the curtain above flutter, a sliding door bang
open, even heard muted voices! “Shit, Briggs, what in hell are you doing?” Wohl
muttered. This exfiltration was going down the shitter real fast, he thought.
He hurriedly clicked his transceiver to alert the ten other commandos in the
compound to get ready to move and that they possibly had been discovered—when
suddenly he heard footsteps behind him. He whirled, gun at the ready.

 
          
“Hang
on, Mondo, it’s me—George and Grade.” Shit, Wohl thought, it was Briggs and
Behrouzi, climbing down the side of the building. “Let’s get going. We know
where Colonel White is, and we’ve got less than thirty minutes to get him.”

 
          
“Briggs,
what in hell are you talking about?”

 
          
“We
found out where White is,” Briggs said. “He’s at Pasdaran headquarters, first
subfloor, room A193. He’s waiting for us.”

 
          
“
Waiting
for us? Who the hell told you
this?”

 
          
“Thank
him,
“ Briggs said. Wohl followed his
pointed finger up the dark, looming walls of
Shamsol
Emareh
Palace
and, to his continuing astonishment, saw
the President of Iran, Ali Akbar Nateq- Nouri, looking down on them from his
open fourth-floor window! “We gotta get moving, Chris—the President has a job
for us.”