Jericho 3 (16 page)

Agent Fallon Jessup finished with a flurry and added the exclamation point. Raines was silent for a few seconds.

“How do we know it’s tularemia and that it’s headed for Turkmenistan?” Groenwald asked.

“We’re on that train right now,” Daniels said, “and the shipment is verified.”

“The Iranian connection?” Raines asked.

“Pure speculation at this point as we try to connect the dots. But Ashgabat is a relatively large transportation hub; trains and trucks, all just 21 unfettered miles to the northern Iranian border,” Daniels said.

“General Ferguson is in the loop?” Raines asked.

“He’s been briefed and in turn he’s passed the intel on to the Alpha Team heading up Camp’s mission.”

Raines glared at Special Agent Daniels.

“What mission?”

Daniels looked over at Jessup, and they both fell silent.

Raines got up and paced over to Groenwald’s white board. She pulled out a black marker and began to draw.

“Two SkitoMisters are sold by an Illinois company to the City of Hamburg, Germany. The machines go missing and are reported stolen. A port in Jakarta, Indonesia records the serial numbers and a black market importer hocks them to a buyer in Pakistan. Now a Russian train carrying Cold War stockpiles of tularemia along with a CIA informant on-board is heading for the Iranian border. Whether or not the tularemia can be aerosolized is irrelevant because we have no capacity during three to five days of an outbreak to meet the medical demands of people infected with rabbit fever. The world can logically blame nature and poor sanitation for tularemia. One nation collects cash for an old bio-weapon while another state kills, or at least terrorizes, millions.”

The room was silent as Raines continued.

“So let me guess…you want to see if we can create an aerosol version of tularemia? Better than our Rabbit-Fever-In-A-Can from the 1950s. You want something toxic, effective and lethal – not garden variety – but pandemic and widespread.”

“Something like that…we need to know what they might try,” Jessup said.

“You want me to play Terrorist Raines and cook up something they might reasonably cook up. Existing vaccine doses and antibiotic supply? I’m sure you’ve done the numbers…what do we have?”

“We’re working on that part,” Daniels said begrudgingly.

“And ground zero for all of this? The target? Let me go way out on a limb…Israel?”

FOB Lightning

Paktya Province, Afghanistan

C
aptain Henry walked into the Level One clinic carrying a handful of letters from the post office. He made his way through the Ambien slug-line at the counter, and set the mail down on the exam bed before walking down the 40-foot corridor toward Miriam’s room. A young specialist was finishing his shift guarding her door.

“Anything new?” Henry asked.

“Sir, she’s taking her walks up and down the hallway as you requested. She seems to have a good appetite and slept most of the night.”

“Thank you, specialist. Hit your rack and get some sleep. We’ve got her until the night duty guard comes in.”

Henry opened the door and entered the room. Miriam was sitting in a chair and reading the same four-month-old newspaper from Kabul that she had read a hundred times before.

“Good morning, Miriam. I understand you slept well and are getting some exercise.”

Miriam said nothing. She was both a patient and a prisoner, something the US Army was having difficulty defining with an official designation.

“Well, I have some news for you.”

Miriam looked up from her newspaper.

“We’re moving you to Kabul.”

“I don’t want to go to Kabul,” Miriam snapped. “I’m from Khost.”

“You’re dead, Miriam, and don’t forget that…it was in all the papers and on Radio Television Afghanistan. If you go back to Khost, you won’t live five minutes, especially after you provided some intel to the infidels. I’m guessing the Haqqani network would not be pleased with that.”

“What about my son?”

“Captain Campbell is working on that as we speak. As soon as we know something – you’ll know something.”

“I’m not going to Kabul without my son.”

Henry reached down and pulled the sleeve on her hospital gown up so that he could examine the dressings from the escharotomy.

“You’re healing up nicely, Miriam…no infection. That’s nothing short of a miracle. Infection kills most burn victims. Fortunately, Captain Campbell put you out before you could melt like the wicked witch of the west, or wherever the hell we are.”

Miriam spat on the floor and returned to her old newspaper.

“Miriam, the gratitude and humility leaves me speechless. We are so going to miss your cheery smile and happy heart around this clinic,” Henry said with a full dose of sarcasm not lost on Miriam. “You’ll be on a bird in the morning at 0730 hours whether you like it or not. Kabul can figure out what to do with you next.”

Miriam threw her paper down, stood up and walked to the door and opened it.

“Going somewhere?”

“My doctor told me to exercise, so I walk up and down this hallway a hundred times a day. Every step I take I curse the day when I first met an American.”

Miriam disappeared down the hallway.

“Seriously, lady, you are welcome. It was our sincere pleasure saving a suicide bomber from herself. Hope you have a great life!”

Miriam paced up and down the hallway as Captain Henry retreated to his back office. The Ambien candies were all dispensed, and the line was gone. The on-duty medic was behind the counter resupplying the cabinets with bandages, dressings and pills. Miriam ventured a bit further out into the open bay before doing her 180 and heading back to the other end of the hallway near Henry’s office. She turned again and walked completely into the exam bay the next time where she noticed the day’s mail scattered on an exam bench. One envelope caught her attention. It was addressed to Captain Seabury Campbell, Jr. with a return address of only a first name, Eileen, then Lightner Farms, Baltimore Pike, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. She did her turn and headed down the hallway again. She looked into Henry’s office and saw him on his computer as she turned again. The medic still had her head buried in the medicine cabinet as Miriam brushed past the exam bed, picked up Camp’s letter and tucked it into her hospital gown as she headed back down the hallway. She walked into her room and placed the envelope inside her Koran.

Hindu Kush

North Waziristan, Pakistan

T
he 14 soldiers from the Special Forces Operation Detachment Alpha Team, along with Finn, Camp and Omid, made their way across an unmarked border from Afghanistan into Pakistan. The footpath had been narrow and snow-covered all the way from their ingress 42 hours and 17 miles earlier.

The expanded Alpha Team was dressed in snow camo they had borrowed from a German NATO unit stationed with them in Kandahar. The white masks at least kept parts of their cheeks from freezing as goggles prevented wind-whipped tears from icing over.

Captain “Sonny” Sanchez led Team One and kept a quarter-mile pace ahead of the CW2 and Team Two. Two scouts with M4A1s took point in the front of the formation, spread eight feet apart and separated from the middle core by thirty feet. Manson and his best sniper pulled up the rear with Manson’s M203 grenade launcher on his 9-inch barrel ever at the ready. Camp walked ahead of Veggie, the medic carrying the MEDEVAC 4 combat tactical stretcher, and behind Omid who was closest behind the scouts since he knew the mountains and the footpaths.

Brick’s Team Two stayed a quarter-mile back down the trail as they moved up, over, and through the Hindu Kush and into Pakistan. The spread formation in snow camo was the best way to mitigate any possible ambush, though Billy Finn was eager to peel off a few rounds if the situation warranted.

Operation Detachment Alpha was hoping the Taliban fighters would be sleeping in their warm little caves at 0300 hours and, for at least another three hours, until Alpha took their only sleep break before the final push into Datta Khel Village.

Omid’s ears were only a few feet from Camp’s mouth.

“Iran is too unpredictable right now.”

“Not Iran, the Hojjatieh and the Twelvers,” Omid said.

“You keep yakking about both. Who are they?”

“You’re American so I suppose you want the 30-second drive-thru window version?” Omid said sarcastically.

“We’ve got three hours until rest and first light so how about just the Cliff Notes?”

Omid smiled and fell back next to Camp, so they could talk and walk softly as their boots crunched on the snow covered trail. Clouds were gathering in the sky as stars reflected off the snow and the rock outcroppings of the Hindu Kush. The wind was still and death seemed to lurk around every cutback on the footpath.

"The Hojjatieh Society was a clandestine group of traditional Shia followers that began in 1953. They felt the Bahá’í Faith that was growing in Persia was a heresy and the only immediate threat to Islam. With the permission of the Ayatollah, a mullah from Tehran named Halabi created the Hojjatieh. In the beginning, Halabi and his 12,000 followers in the Hojjatieh Society were loyal to the Shah of Iran since they both hated the Communists. But Halabi thought the Shah was too friendly and open with the Bahá’í so they supported Khomeini during the overthrow and the subsequent Iranian Revolution in 1979. Khomeini forced the Hojjatieh to dissolve in 1983. He wanted to consolidate all Islamic power. Halabi took his movement underground where it grew until his death in 1998.”

“Was Halabi martyred?”

“Quite the opposite. He lived to be 98 years old. In our culture the older you are the wiser you are. Every word that mullah Halabi spoke was like a word directly from the prophets. He opposed Sunnism. He opposed Khomeini’s form of
velayat-e faqih
, or Islamic government by Sharia Law. In fact, he wanted no form of official government at all. Some say the Hojjatieh was nothing more than an underground messianic sect; that they wanted to quicken the apocalypse so they could hurry the return of the Mahdi, the prophesized future redeemer of Islam. But others claim that Halabi was content to wait for the Mahdi’s return in peace.”

“What happened when he died?”

“As with any movement there are always other leaders who try to rise up when a power vacuum emerges. Ayatollah Yazdi was the most notable. Camp, this Yazdi is the center of the crazy power in Iran. He is a hardliner who heads the ultraconservative faction. Yazdi is a member of the Assembly of Experts, the body who chooses the Supreme Leader.”

“Crazy?”

“Yazdi is the spiritual leader in the city of Qom. He is opposed to democratic reforms. He opposed the people’s uprising and the reform movement after the presidential elections in 2009. And he believes that Iran has become too liberal, and too open, since the Revolution in 1979.”

“Too liberal? Doesn’t sound any crazier than the rest of the bastards in power over there.”

“And he’s a Twelver.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Twelvers are the largest branch of Shia, the second denomination of Islam and the followers of Ali. Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, and Lebanon have very large Shia populations. The rest of the Muslim countries are mostly Sunni. Sunnis make up nearly eighty percent of the world of Islam. But there are more than 200 million of us.”

“Two hundred million Muslims?”

“No, two hundred million Shia, maybe more. There are 1.6 billion Muslims. Twelver Shiites believe that the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, but only from his daughter Fatima and his son-in-law Ali, offer the best ways of knowledge about the Holy Koran, the most accurate protectors of Muhammad’s traditions, and are the most worthy of emulation.”

“At the risk of being called a ‘drive thru’ American intellectual, I’m still not tracking the whole twelve thing, Omid. The 9/11 hijackers were Sunni. Bin Laden was Sunni. Al Qaeda and the Wahhabis are Sunni. Now I’m supposed to be afraid of Shiites and the Twelvers?”

“Do you want fries with this education?”

Camp and Omid laughed a bit too loud as one of the scouts turned back and glared. Camp could hardly speak as the two squads of Alpha Team passed through the 12,000 foot peaks between Dabgay, Kazen Kalay and Zakarkhel passing over an invisible Afghanistan border and into the lawless region of Pakistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of North Waziristan. Omid spoke without constraint, as though walking casually in Tehran.

“An Imam is a worship leader, a spiritual leader at a mosque. In Islam, there are twelve Imams who are considered the political and religious successors to Muhammad.”

“Like Jesus and the twelve apostles.”

“Similar. Allah guides the Imams, and the Imams guide the people. According to Twelvers, there is always an Imam of the Age. Ali was the first Imam in the line from Muhammad, and in the Twelvers’ view, the rightful successor to the Prophet of Islam. Each Imam thereafter was a male descendant of Fatima and Ali. The twelfth and final Imam was Muhammad al-Mahdi. He was born in 869, and anointed as the Twelfth Imam when he was only five years old. Then came the occultation.”

“The what?”

“Occultation…it means a hiding. For more than 1,200 years Allah has hidden the Mahdi from our sight. He never died. The Mahdi – the Twelfth Imam – is the ultimate savior of humanity, and he will return with Isa, the Islamic name for Jesus Christ, and together they will rule the world.”

“Christians and Muslims side by side? Including Jesus?” Camp asked.

“Not exactly. Jesus will convert to Islam when he returns.”

“That’s convenient if not improbable. So the Mahdi has been hiding in a cave?”

“Or perhaps living in the open as one of us, waiting for the right moment when Allah reveals him.”

“Okay…that’s a bit out there…a bit hard for my Western mind to grasp…how does all of this add up to nuclear weapons in Iran…and a double-agent wanting to save his people?” Camp said as he struggled for oxygen.

“It is now the Age of the Coming, my friend. It is now our calling to prepare the way for the Twelfth Imam. Certain things must now happen before he can reappear.”