Stephen Coonts - The Disciple

I grabbed a good handful of rope and began pulling the duffle bag up.

When I had it inside, I untied the rope and dropped it. G. W. and his guys were in their cars going down the street. They would return in ten minutes, I hoped.

I lifted the bag to my shoulder, got the silenced Ruger out and pointed forward, just in case, and set out for the basement, where the Targeting Office was located.

After the gunner sent the third round toward the ministry, Joe Mottaki had the driver put the Raad- 2 in motion. The crew stopped in another intersection a hundred yards along and swiveled the giant gun to point at the ministry.

“Any time you’re ready,” Joe told the gunner, who pulled the trigger ten seconds later. The recoil rocked the vehicle and the noise nearly deafened them, even though they were wearing intercom helmets that were supposed to muffle the blasts.

The door to the Targeting Office was locked. Only one lock-and an American one at that. I guess ol’ Habib Sultani never thought anyone would be wandering around in here trying to go where he shouldn’t.

Wearing my miner’s headlamp, I attacked the lock with picks. About that time another howitzer shell smashed into the building and exploded, sending a tremor through the structure and causing a power failure. The corridor I was standing in became dark as a grave.

Ah yes, a dark building, a lock on a door, me standing in front of it with a torsion wrench and a pick- this was the story of my misspent life. I tried several picks before I found the one I thought would do it.

The seconds ticked by… how many, I dunno. I always think these delicate operations take longer than they do. Two more howitzer shells exploded in the masonry above, one far away, one closer. I hoped the guardians of this fine building had evacuated and taken cover, as G. W. and Joe Mottaki and I intended. In this stubborn age it is difficult to get people to behave the way you want them to. No doubt Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Devil’s disciple, would agree with that sentiment.

Bang-I got it. The lock turned. I tried the door. As I did, I heard the sound of running feet in the corridor. Boots slapping on concrete. I snapped off the miner’s light.

The door opened when I twisted the knob. I pulled the silenced Ruger from its holster, got a good grip and opened the door. Grabbed the duffel bag, stepped in and pulled the door closed behind me and turned the knob on the lock.

Standing there in the absolute darkness listening to my heart and the feet pounding the corridor, coming closer, I confess, I was nervous. Scared, even. What a hell of a way to make a living!

The running men-I thought there were at least three-went pounding by the door without slackening their pace. When the sounds of their feet had faded, I keyed my radio and told G. W., “I’m in.”

“Make it snappy,” he said. “Joe’s shooting into a hornet’s nest.”

I snapped the miner’s light back on and took a look around.

I was in a large office with four desks and a large safe. Three of the desks had computers on them. The entire wall on the side away from the door was covered with a black curtain. I stepped up to it and pushed it aside, revealing a map of the Middle East.

All of Iran was there, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel… and the northern half of Arabia. There were stars all over Iran and numbers. Triangles here and there. I examined Tel Aviv. A heavy black triangle was penciled over it, with numbers beside it. The same for our airbases in Arabia and Iraq. I suspected that everything Jake Grafton wanted to know was right here on this map, and if I photographed it and beat feet, we would have Ahmadinejad’s Jihad plans. But I couldn’t be sure. I wanted the info from the computers, too.

Those computers-planning flight paths for nine hundred conventional cruise and ballistic missiles, and for a dozen nuclear-armed ones, from known locations to precise targets, without interfering with each other in flight or when the warheads detonated, was not a task for the ignorant or careless. It would take a lot of calculating by someone who knew his stuff. Ghasem Murad had told me about the head targeting guru, a mathematics PhD from one of the local universities, and assured me he was competent and capable. Again, I believed Ghasem.

I checked my watch. I’d been in the building for four minutes.

I turned to the safe. First I turned the dial gently in the hope that whoever had closed it last had failed to lock it. Well, they hadn’t. Working as quickly as I could, I got out a small computer and several rods, which I clamped to the door of the safe. Put six electronic sensors around the combination lock, then hooked them to the computer. Finally, I clamped a small electric motor with a set of jaws protruding from it to the rods over the combination dial and tightened the jaws over the dial. The last lead went to a twelve-volt battery, the heaviest thing in the duffle bag.

This gizmo could open most of these older safes, given enough time, which was in short supply tonight. An electrical current induced into the door created a measurable magnetic field. The rotation of the tumblers inside the lock caused fluctuations in the field, fluctuations that the computer measured and displayed on the screen. Finally, the computer measured the amount of electrical current necessary to turn the dial of the lock, an exquisitely sensitive measurement. Using both these factors, the computer could determine the combination to the safe and open it. I manually zeroed the dial and started the computer program.

I didn’t have time to watch it work. These other computers might have information we could use. I pulled a battery-driven saw from the duffle bag and attacked them, cutting them open and removing the hard drives, which I placed in my backpack. I had all three hard drives in about two minutes.

I checked on the computer opening the safe. It had one number already.

Satisfied that the magic was initiated, I went back to the wall map and snapped off a dozen pictures with my Cyber-shot. Time was marching right along, and I heard a few more howitzer shells smash home.

I hoped those shells were beating hell out of the top of this building. Mottaki had assured me they would.

I went back to the safe. Second number was up. The dial was slowly turning…

“Lots of military milling around the front of the building,” G. W. told me. “It’s just a matter of time before they come down the street where you went in.”

I clicked my mike twice in reply.

I opened the duffle bag, which contained twenty pounds of C-4 explosive, fused, with a detonator attached. I cranked the detonator around to ten minutes and flipped up the guard on the on-off switch. Turned the switch to on. The red light illuminated.

I had just stuffed the duffle bag under the big boss’s desk and stowed my camera in my backpack when I heard noises in the hallway. The footsteps stopped at the door, and someone rattled the knob.

Muffled voices. There were at least two of them, maybe more.

I hunkered down behind a desk and pulled the Ruger from its holster. Turned off the miner’s light and stowed it, then put on the night vision goggles. The world turned green.

“They are firing up the tanks,” the gunner told Joe Mottaki.

“Smack ’em,” was the immediate answer.

Mottaki was in his third position, still on the ridge looking down another long avenue at the Defense Ministry, which was now on fire. The howitzer shells had done their work. Glancing through the IR scope, Mottaki could see the heat from the fire as white light. He was studying it when he saw the first tank, coming toward them up the boulevard.

The self-propelled howitzer was covered with very light steel, just enough to stop rifle bullets and shrapnel. A tank shell would go through it like a bullet through paper. Not having armor plate on the vehicle made Joe Mottaki feel naked. On the other hand, the howitzer was an artillery piece, and the shells in the vehicle were general purpose. In theory, they should penetrate a tank’s armor. If the gunner could hit it.