The Last Refuge (37 page)

Dewey checked his submachine gun, an HK MP7A1 with a suppressor. He checked the magazine on his Colt. He moved the truck slowly back down the road. When he came to the white Land Cruiser, he stopped. From the back left door, a man in a baseball cap and sunglasses emerged, dark-skinned, a carbine held out in front of him. He sprinted to the passenger door of the cab and climbed in. It was Cano.

Dewey nodded, but said nothing.

Cano handed him a small, gumdrop-shaped object. Dewey stuck it in his ear.

“Is that working?” whispered the commando.

“Yeah,” said Dewey.

“I’ve got you on COMM,” said Baz, who was in the brown van.

“Move to COMM, Hector,” said Dewey into the phone. “I’m hanging up.”

“I’ve got movement,” said Polk, now patched into the Israeli closed frequency.

“Where?” asked Dewey.

“Back of the warehouse,” said Polk. “We’ve got one, two, three SUVs. Now we have a big truck. One more SUV. That’s it. You got four SUVs and the truck.”

Dewey floored the gas and moved past the warehouse entrance. From the corner of his eye, he saw the first SUV at the side of the warehouse, in the distance, behind a fence.

“Can you handle four?” asked Dewey.

“Yeah, no problem,” said Baz. “It might get a little bloody.”

“Take them on the road. I don’t care what you do with them, but don’t touch the truck. And do it out of sight of the warehouse so they don’t send more people.”

“Understood.”

“Hector, how about some support on this?” asked Dewey.

“What do you mean?” asked Calibrisi.

“You need to destroy that warehouse and everyone in it. Can you do anything from the sky?”

“You’re going to get me fired, Dewey. Let me see what we can do.”

*   *   *

Calibrisi and Polk were monitoring the operation from a windowless tactical operations room on the third floor of CIA headquarters. The room looked like NASA control center. The walls were lined with plasma screens. One screen displayed a live video feed of an overhead shot of Dewey’s truck moving slowly down a street. Another screen showed the warehouse, also a live shot, the image clear enough to make out half a dozen soldiers milling about the entrance area to the warehouse. Another screen—the largest of them all—showed a regional map of Iran and the Persian Gulf; several flashing lights moved on the screen, showing in real time the various assets the United States of America possessed in the region, including vessels, UAVs, and troops, all displayed in real time. On yet another screen was a live network feed from Khomeini Square, where a massive crowd awaited the arrival of Mahmoud Nava.

Three CIA engineers sat in bucket seats, smaller plasmas in front of them.

“Chris,” said Calibrisi, “what do we got in the area?”

“Yes, sir,” said the CIA engineer in the middle seat. He typed into his keyboard. The large screen showing Iran and the region suddenly went black except for bright yellow lines, indicating the borders of the countries, followed by brightly lit, flashing starlike clusters, some in green, others in orange, which indicated the UAVs in striking distance; sixteen in all.

“The closest assets in theater are over the Strait of Hormuz, Hector,” said the engineer. “We have enough Tomahawks to level the town, sir.”

“How long will they take to get there?”

“Hold on.”

As, Chris typed, a red line shot across the screen, showing the flight path of a hypothetical missile from one of the UAVs, hovering off the coast of Iran and Semn
ā
n. Then a number jumped on the screen: 4:34.

“Four and a half minutes,” said Calibrisi.

He hit the phone console.

“How much time do you need, Dewey?” asked Calibrisi.

“Send ’em right now.”

Calibrisi looked at the engineer to the right.

“Send in three, on my go,” said Calibrisi. “And don’t miss.”

“No, sir.”

“One, two, fire.”

*   *   *

Dewey watched in the side mirror, looking behind him, as the front of a Range Rover pushed slowly into the street, several hundred yards behind them.

“Thanks, Hector.”

“No prob. I just hope they fixed that thing that was screwing up the targeting.”

Dewey laughed.

“Did I make you laugh?” asked Calibrisi.

“Yeah,” said Dewey. “You don’t have any more coming out of the building, Bill?”

“None,” said Polk.

“Hector, I need you to do me a favor,” said Dewey.

“What is it?” asked Calibrisi.

“You need to call Katie,” said Dewey.

“What do you want me to tell her?”

“Tell her to get Bhutta ready.”

“Ready for what?” asked Calibrisi.

“She’ll know.”

“I know she’ll know,” said Calibrisi. “
I
want to fucking know.”

Dewey exhaled and shook his head.

“To call Mahmoud Nava.”

51

TEHRAN

Paria ripped the door to the interrogation room open. In his right hand, he held a photo of a nuclear bomb, taken from the Israeli’s USB drive.

Paria’s aide, who was standing above the Israeli, turned, surprised by Paria’s sudden entrance. Paria swatted him with the back of his powerful left forearm, sending his aide flying to the ground.

He stepped to Meir and threw the photo through the air, where it landed next to Meir’s head.

Paria kicked his boot viciously toward Meir’s head.

Yet somehow, through the thin slit still remaining in his left eye, Meir saw the boot. His adrenaline spiked. He lurched right, avoiding the kick from Paria, then grabbed the big Iranian’s boot and, with every ounce of strength left in his body, ripped the foot sideways; he listened as Paria let out a blood-curdling scream. Paria fell to the ground, clutching his ankle, as his aide stood up and withdrew his handgun, aiming it at Meir’s head. He fired just an inch from Meir’s ear, the bullet striking the concrete wall and raining dust all over Meir’s shoulder.

Paria stood, limping. He began to say something, then turned toward the door.

“You’re too late,” said Meir as Paria hobbled from the interrogation room.

“Maybe,” said Paria, grunting in agony, which he swallowed. “But you’ll never know.”

Paria picked up the phone next to the door of the observation room. He dialed a number, then waited for a response.

“IRGC command,” said the voice.

“Get me Colonel Hek now!” he yelled into the phone.

A minute later, the phone clicked.

“General Paria,” came the voice, a deep, scratchy voice.

“You must divert the movement of the bomb,” said Paria. “It’s a setup!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Listen to me. Stop the bomb. It’s a trap, Ali!”

“It’s too late, General,” said Hek. “The device has left Mahdishahr.”

*   *   *

Dewey waited at the side of the small industrial road, a hundred yards ahead of the brown van.

“Here they come,” said Polk on COMM.

From the parking lot, a pair of black Range Rovers emerged first, moving down the street toward Dewey and the brown van. Then, the Iranian semi turned onto the street, behind the pair of lead Range Rovers guarding the bomb.

The semi was followed by two more Range Rovers, which fell in line behind the truck carrying the missile.

“Get out,” Dewey said to Cano.

Dewey moved across the seat, toward the passenger door. He carried his silenced MP7A1, then inched along the side of the trailer, out of view.

Three Israeli commandos climbed out of the van. Two took up positions behind the van, kneeling. Each commando held shoulder-fired missiles, and they brought the weapons to their shoulders, out of view of the approaching convoy. They calibrated the targeting mechanism, then flipped the safeties off.

Cano crabbed along the side of the van, out of view. He clutched a silenced M4, whose safety he flipped off as he came to the rear bumper. He saw the side of the street darkening as the shadow from the semi moved slowly along the road toward him.

Behind the convoy, the other two Sayeret Matkal commandos climbed from the back of the Land Cruiser. They knelt, backs against the back bumper, out of sight, while they waited for the rear Range Rovers to get onto the main road. Each commando brought their shoulder-fired missile into position on top of their shoulders.

The Israeli team was communicating on a closed cell frequency, the COMM devices jammed in their ears.

Baz, who was team leader, and was running the OP for the Israeli team, put his hand to his ear.

“Everyone set?” he whispered.

Each commando, along with Dewey, said yes.

“On my go,” said Baz. “Watch your backgrounds; shoot straight.”

On his knees, through the back glass, Baz watched as the pair of lead Range Rovers came closer, now only twenty feet away. A high-pitched whistling could be heard above the Iranian semi’s engine.

“Three, two,” said Baz, pausing. “Go.”

In front of the van, two Israelis stood, trained the black barrels of their shoulder-fired missiles on the Range Rovers, then fired.

Behind the Land Cruiser, at virtually the same moment, the other commandos stood, aimed, and fired their missiles.

Four distinct, loud booms echoed in the air, followed by the telltale smoky trail as the missiles stormed across the sky.

Three of the missiles were triggered at the same moment; and exactly two seconds later, three of the Range Rovers were hit dead square by the missiles. Each vehicle exploded, two behind the truck, one on front.

The fourth missile missed; it went sailing past the Range Rover, then skimmed within just inches of the Iranian semi, barely missing the front of the Iranian truck.

The Range Rover that had been spared lurched left, trying to get away. The semi driver also hit the gas and the Iranian truck bounced forward.

Dewey ran from the side of the trailer, his MP7 set to auto-hail, and started firing at the fleeing SUV, ripping slugs first into the tires, then through the passenger-side glass, destroying the two soldiers inside; the Range Rover slammed into a telephone pole.

Dewey turned toward the Iranian semi, firing at the driver; the glass was bulletproof, the truck kept moving forward, as Dewey’s bullets sunk into the thick protective glass.

“Fuck,” Dewey said. He came to the side of the truck, staring inside from the ground at the soldier who was seated in the passenger seat; he stared back at Dewey as Dewey unloaded his submachine gun, but to no avail.

The air around the truck was clouded in smoke and fire.

Dewey suddenly heard high-pitched whistling noises: the telltale screams of incoming Tomahawks.

The missiles came into view at the horizon, then cut through the last quarter mile of air unwavering: two black objects trailing waves of dark smoke behind them.

The missiles sailed just overhead, a hundred feet above the convoy, then, a millisecond later, a pair of explosions shook the ground, as the Tomahawks ripped into the warehouse and exploded, leveling anything within a hundred yards of the target.

Cano sprinted back to Dewey’s truck. He jumped into the driver’s seat as the Iranian truck barreled down the road, trying to get away. The commando put his truck into gear, then slammed the gas, moving in front of the escaping Iranians. He cut them off.

Baz came alongside Dewey. They stood, staring at the Iranians, who were trapped inside the cab of their truck, but protected by bulletproof glass.

“That’s thick,” said Baz, firing a few rounds from his carbine into the glass. “What do you want me to do?”

“We need the truck,” said Dewey. He inserted a new magazine in his MP7. “It’s gotta break at some point.”

They were joined by two other commandos. The four men stood abreast, weapons aimed at the passenger-door glass. They started firing, putting hundreds of slugs into the glass. The street, which was clotted in smoke and fire, reverberated with the sound of automatic weapon fire. At some point after several minutes of firing, a bullet penetrated the worn-down glass; the slug tore into the head of the frightened soldier. Another slug, a minute later, killed the driver.

Dewey climbed the passenger-side steps, then punched the glass out with the back of a hatchet, handed to him by one of the commandos. He reached in and unlocked the door. He pulled the bodies of the two dead Iranian soldiers out of the cab and left them on the road.

He ran to the first truck, looking at Cano.

“Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Here,” said Cano. He handed Dewey his SAT phone and the weapons duffel.

The van and the Land Cruiser sped along the back of the truck.

Dewey pressed his ear.

“Thanks,” said Dewey.

“You need anything else?” asked Baz. “We need to scoot before the cops show up.”

“No, we’re all set.”

Dewey ran back to the semi as the sound of sirens could be heared in the distance.

Cano straightened the semi and headed toward Mahdishar’s main road, followed by Dewey. On the road south of the city, Dewey passed him. The two semis climbed onto the A83 highway, headed toward Tehran, as, behind them, a fleet of police cars and fire trucks descended on the grisly scene. In the air, a steady stream of black smoke formed a cloud visible from the highway.

Dewey picked up the SAT phone and pressed two preprogrammed buttons.

*   *   *

In a suite at Claridge’s Hotel, Foxx handed Bhutta the phone.

“Yes,” Bhutta said into the handset, looking at Foxx.

“Make the call,” said Dewey. “Paria and Meir, that’s it. Anyone else and the deal is off. Anything suspicious and the deal is off. If I see a jet overhead, choppers, anything, the deal is off.”

“Paria and Meir,” said Bhutta. “Got it.”

“Just remember, Amit, you get your family back when Kohl Meir is safe. I’ll call you in one hour with the location.”

52

EVIN PRISON

TEHRAN

Meir sat at a steel table. On the plate in front of him was a chicken breast, with sliced tomatoes on the side, rice, and a sugar cookie. In front of the plate, a plastic cup held red wine.

“Eat,” said a soldier to his left. “It’s your last meal. That’s real wine.”