The Tehran Initiative (42 page)

Instantly the officers drew their weapons. David fired two rounds at each, felling one of them but only wounding the other. He pushed Khan down the back hallway.

“Go, go, go!” he yelled in Urdu, then heard the explosion of a .45-caliber pistol behind him.

The rounds went high, but David couldn’t take any chances. He pushed Khan through the exit door, then wheeled around and tried to fire back at the officer, but he was out of ammunition. He hit the deck as the man shot two more rounds, and he could hear the bullets whizzing over his head. He quickly scrambled out the back exit, pulling a second magazine from his pocket, ejecting the spent magazine, and reloading. He reached the Peugeot just as the officer crashed through the door. David ducked behind the trunk of the car, then popped out and put four rounds in the man’s chest.

With no time to waste, he grabbed Khan, unlocked the car, and threw him in the backseat.

“Get on the floor, facedown, and don’t get up!”
he ordered, again in Urdu.

He hadn’t thought of how to keep Khan restrained or quiet. He had nothing to tie his hands, nothing to stuff in his mouth. He couldn’t afford the risk of Khan knocking him out as he drove or seizing him by the throat or, God forbid, jumping out of the moving car. He needed this prisoner alive above all else. He needed to interrogate him quickly and find out everything he knew about the warheads and their locations. But under no circumstances could he let Khan escape or take the initiative.

He didn’t want to do it, but he had no time and no choice. He fired a bullet into the back of Khan’s right knee.

The man screamed in pain, but he wasn’t going anywhere.

49

A bullet sizzled over David’s head.

Then another. Both smashed into a brick wall behind him.

David ducked behind the car. He peeked around the side and saw the fourth man running flat out from the parking garage, gun in his hand. David squeezed off two rounds. He missed but sent the man diving for cover. He didn’t have time for more. He jumped into the front seat, slammed his door shut, and started the engine.

The back window exploded. The man was firing again.

David lowered his head, hit the gas, and raced down the alley. The security man was running hard behind him, firing again and again. Tires screeching, David peeled out onto the main street, narrowly missing the tail end of the tour bus in the process. The Peugeot was fishtailing. Fighting to regain control, he turned the wheel hard to the right, then back again to the left. He was about to accelerate when a pickup truck filled with crates of vegetables suddenly pulled out onto the street in front of him. David swerved hard to the right to miss it but clipped the back of the truck and spun out.

He jammed the car into reverse and started backing away from the pickup, but as he looked into his rearview mirror, he saw the final Revolutionary Guard operative dragging a businessman out of a silver Mercedes W211 at gunpoint, throwing him to the street, and jumping into the driver’s seat. David maneuvered away from the pickup as quickly as he could, then slammed the car into drive again and tromped on the accelerator on a straightaway through the center of the city. He was gaining speed—
forty kilometers per hour, fifty, sixty, seventy
—but the Mercedes was accelerating as well and rapidly closing the gap as the man continued firing at the Peugeot. David could hear round after round hitting the trunk, what was left of the back window, and the rear bumper.

“Stay down!”
he ordered Khan.

As their speeds kept accelerating and the security operative kept firing, David now feared the man’s objective might not be to run him down as much as to kill the man he was sworn to protect, to prevent him from talking.

Swerving in and out of oncoming traffic, David knew it was only a matter of time before someone called the police. He had to lose this Mercedes, ditch the Peugeot, and get Khan someplace safe and quiet to find out what he knew and get it back to Langley before they were both dead. He glanced in his rearview mirror. The Mercedes was weaving in and out of traffic as well, but not as quickly. David could see he was actually gaining some ground, but it wasn’t enough.

He glanced into the backseat. Blood was everywhere. Khan was writhing and screaming in pain. In the rush of adrenaline, David hadn’t even heard the man for the last few minutes; he’d been focused on not crashing the car or being overtaken by the Mercedes. But now he realized he had even less time than he thought. If Khan didn’t get a tourniquet on that leg soon and some medicine, he was either going to black out or bleed out. Either would render all of this worthless. His mind was racing, but he was coming up with nothing.

“You still there?” he yelled as he passed a tractor trailer at a speed now topping 120 kilometers an hour and heading fast toward 140.

“I’m here,” Eva said.

“You sure this guy’s phone is jammed?”

“Absolutely—ever since he stepped out of the hotel.”

“He hasn’t made a single call.”

“No, he hasn’t.”

“Because if this guy calls for backup, that’s it. You know that, don’t you?”

There was a momentary pause; then Eva replied, “David, the whole hotel is calling the police now.”

Now that they were out of the congested traffic of Khorramabad and onto Route 37 heading east through towns David had never heard of before, he knew he was in trouble. The Mercedes W211 behind him was a newer, sleeker, and vastly more powerful car than his Peugeot 407 rental. It had a five-liter V8 engine, compared with the Peugeot’s three-liter V6. It was no surprise the Mercedes was now gaining on him.

It wasn’t a complete straight shot back to the fork with Route 62. There were some curves in the roads and a few hills. There were moments when David could see the Mercedes, but they were fewer and farther between now. Unfortunately there were no useful exits and few decent side roads for another forty kilometers.

“David, come on, man—lose this guy,”
Eva urged.

“I can’t,”
David said.
“He’s too fast.”

“Do something,” Eva pressed.

“I’m doing everything I know.”

“He’s almost on you.”

David could hear genuine fear in her voice—whether it was for him or the mission, he didn’t know; probably both—but either way, it unnerved him. Eva was usually the steadiest on their team, cool under pressure, logical and methodical. If she was this scared, he was in even more trouble than he thought.

“Then take him out,”
David shouted at last.

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“Did you hear me?”
David repeated.
“Take him out.”

“What do you mean?” Eva asked, sounding back in control of her emotions.

“You’ve got a Predator. It’s got missiles. Take this guy out now before Khan and I die.”

“David, I can’t.”

“Of course you can.”

“No, you don’t understand; I can’t,” she said again. “I wasn’t authorized to retask this Predator in the first place, much less order it to fire inside Iran. Murray will have my head.”

“Are you kidding me?”
David yelled.
“I’ve got the number two nuclear scientist in the country in my backseat, and the entire Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is about to come down on me. Now take this guy out—NOW!”

David went whipping through a few light turns. As he rounded the last one, he could see a clear, open stretch of road ahead of him for at least five or six kilometers. No turns. No hills. Not much traffic. It was a kill zone for either the Mercedes or him.

He pressed the pedal to the floor and gripped the steering wheel for dear life. The car was now pushing 140 kilometers an hour. Then 150. Then 160. Then 165. He knew the car’s top speed was 117 miles—about 190 kilometers—per hour. He’d never imagined pushing such a car to its limit, but what choice did he have? The Mercedes could top 200 miles—or about 320 kilometers—an hour.

David glanced again in his mirror. The Mercedes was about a quarter mile behind and closing fast. All kinds of options flashed through his mind. He could slam on the brakes and hope the guy raced right by. But that was more likely to flip the car, he figured, and kill them all.

He could slow down more gradually and try to engage his pursuer in a gun battle. How much additional ammo could the guy possibly have on him—one mag, two, three at most? Yaghoubi had only been carrying one extra. That was most likely. David now had the one in the pistol (Yaghoubi’s spare) and the three he’d picked up in the hotel room. Still, slowing down and getting out of the Peugeot also meant the guy could stall for time until backup arrived. There was no question it was coming. It was just a matter of how soon.

Then again, what if he slowed down, spun the car around, and played chicken? Of course, then he’d be driving right back into Khorramabad, about the last place in the world he wanted to be just then.

He glanced back again. The Mercedes was now only a few hundred meters behind. A few moments later he was only one hundred meters back, and David still had no better plan than the Predator, though he certainly didn’t want to be anywhere near the Mercedes if and when fire came raining down from the sky.

“Where are you?”
he yelled.

But no one answered.

* * *

What David didn’t know was that death was already on its way.

At an altitude of 17,429 feet, the CIA’s $4.5-million, state-of-the-art unmanned aerial vehicle known as the MQ-1 Predator had already received its encoded orders. They had come from the Third Special Operations Squadron at Cannon Air Force Base in Clovis, New Mexico, after originating from the Global Operations Center at CIA headquarters in Langley.

Now, a five-and-a-half-foot, one-hundred-pound AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground missile was sizzling through the crisp morning air at Mach 1.3. The entire journey took barely eighteen seconds.

Suddenly the Mercedes behind David erupted in an enormous ball of fire. It scared Tariq Khan half to death, but David thanked God for answering his prayer.

50

Tel Aviv, Israel

The PM’s motorcade arrived at the Defense Ministry.

Flanked by an enhanced security detail, Asher Naphtali and Levi Shimon made their way to the strategic planning center, five levels down. Even more than the White House Situation Room, the IDF’s “war room” was a high-tech wonder, looking more like a television network control room than a corporate boardroom. Some two dozen midsize video monitors and electronic maps lined the side walls, while large flat-screen plasma monitors were mounted at either end of the room. A control panel at the head of the table allowed whoever was running the meeting to transfer images from any of the individual monitors to the larger screens and to manage secure videoconferences with live feeds from every Israeli military base in the country and any Israeli diplomatic facility around the world.

Upon entering the room, they found the Security Cabinet already assembled and waiting. In addition to the PM and the defense minister, this typically included the vice prime minister, the minister of foreign affairs, the minister of internal security, the finance minister, the minister for strategic planning, the justice minister, and the chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces. That morning, it also included the directors-general of Shin Bet and the Mossad and the prime minister’s military secretary, as well as senior commanders from the army, the air force, and the navy.

Naphtali took his seat at the head of the table and began immediately. “At present we face a moment unlike any other in the modern history of the State of Israel. This is not comparable to 1948 or ’67, or even ’73. This is 1939, and we are on the brink of annihilation.

“As you know, we have confirmed that Iran has eight nuclear warheads. Our latest intelligence indicates that at least several of these warheads have been attached to high-speed ballistic missiles and that this madman, the Twelfth Imam, intends to launch these warheads at us in the next few days, by Monday at the latest. I don’t have to tell you, gentlemen, that if he authorizes such an attack, he could do in about six minutes what it took Adolf Hitler nearly six years to do, and that is to kill six million of us.

“The difference between then and now is that we have a state. We have an air force, and we have strategic weaponry; our parents and grandparents did not. History will never forgive us, my friends, if we do not act with courage and foresight before it is too late.

“Now, I am sorry to say that our assessment of the Jackson administration is that they do not seem to understand the gravity of the situation. I have had lengthy personal conversations over recent months and even in the last week with President Jackson. Levi and I have had extensive conversations with the president’s most-senior national security advisors, including CIA director Allen. Some of them understand the stakes, but it is clear to Levi and me that the president does not. I think our foreign minister here can attest to the fact that most of the leaders of NATO and the United Nations don’t see the crisis clearly and are not ready to take decisive action.”

The foreign minister, already stricken with a grave countenance, nodded.

“So we are at a moment of decision, one we must not take lightly,” Naphtali continued. “As you know, from the moment I took office, I instructed all of you to be working on a comprehensive war plan that we have code-named Operation Xerxes. It is time for us to put this plan into motion. I have asked Levi here to brief us on some of the final operational details.

“First, however, let me say this is not the first time the Jewish people have been faced with the threat of annihilation by the leaders of Persia. In the Ketuvim, we read the story of Hadassah and Mordecai facing the wicked Xerxes, king of the Medo-Persian Empire, and his arguably more wicked deputy, Haman, Persia’s president or prime minister at the time. We read in the ancient text that our ancestors faced a very dark hour. They faced certain destruction of the entire Jewish race. To whom, then, did they turn? To the American president? To NATO? To the UN Security Council? No. They turned to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through prayer and fasting, and they mobilized other Jews to do the same. And though the name of the Lord is never mentioned in the entire book, we can see His fingerprints everywhere. For clearly the God of Israel heard and answered their prayers. Xerxes changed his mind. Haman was hanged. The regime was fundamentally changed. The war still came. The Jews still had to fight. But the Lord was with them, and they prevailed in one of the most spectacular victories recorded in the Tanakh.”