Stephen Coonts - The Disciple

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“I want you to personally inspect each nuclear warhead after it is installed.”

Hosseini-Tash swallowed hard and nodded.

Only Hosseini-Tash knew the targets of the missiles, Ahmadinejad believed. His skin was pasty, yet covered with a thin layer of perspiration. Ahmadinejad could smell him. None of the others seemed overly concerned.

As the meeting was breaking up, Ahmadinejad asked for Hosseini-Tash to wait a moment. When the others were out of earshot he looked the general in the eyes and said, “I want you and your family in the bunker. Promise me. We will need you for the war to follow.”

“Thank you, Your Excellency. I promise.”

“Very good.”

Hosseini-Tash was walking out when a breathless aide came running in. “Your Excellency, Mr. President. Zionists have murdered the Supreme Leader. Three of them shot him down as he was coming out of a mosque an hour ago. The crowd killed the assassins on the spot.”

Ahmadinejad feigned surprise. “May peace be with him,” he muttered.

“A television camera was there and filmed most of it. With your permission, we wish to air the scene.”

“How do we know the assassins were Zionists?”

“Witnesses have come forward and swore they were Israeli agents.”

Ahmadinejad paused for a moment, as if to collect his thoughts, then said, “Of course, air the footage. Tell the world what the Zionists have done, and pledge revenge.”

“Yes, Excellency,” the aide said and hurried away.

When he was alone, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad smiled. Of course he had betrayed the killers, who had been told they would be allowed to escape, but they were worth infinitely more as dead Zionist assassins than as live, loyal MOIS thugs.

They were just three more unwilling martyrs for the glorious cause.

On the other side of the world, Jake Grafton heard about Khamenei’s assassination before he arrived for work in the morning. The director, William Wilkins, called him with the news.

“Well, that move was on the board,” Grafton said. “We wondered if and when Ahmadinejad would make it.”

“He’s doing a rant on CNN right now,” Wilkins said. “Ira ni an television was kind enough to provide them with a high-quality digital feed. The Irani ans also passed along footage of Khamenei being murdered.”

“A story is a story, I suppose,” Grafton said. “But cooperation like that-isn’t that nice?”

“I thought so, too,” Wilkins said and hung up his phone.

Jake Grafton went back to perusing the weather forecasts for the Middle East.

Tension was ratcheting tighter at the Pentagon. Ships were at sea, airplanes were fueled and armed, Special Forces teams were ready and sleeping near their transports. Parachutes were packed, guns loaded and missiles ready.

“Everyone knows their job and precisely how to do it,” Jake Grafton told the U.S. Central Command commander, a U.S. Army four-star. Jake had planned the operation; the CENTCOM commander had the job of executing it. He and his key staff members had flown in from Kuwait to Washington for this briefing. Sitting in the back of the room was the president’s man, Sal Molina.

The four-star, General Martin H. Lincoln, stared at the chart of sites, targets and predicted flight paths. The Americans had done their own simulations and compared them with the information from the computer drives Carmellini had stolen, which had arrived in Washington the previous evening. The job had only been completed an hour ago. “Ahmadinejad is bugfuck insane,” Lincoln said.

“Most religious fanatics are,” Grafton remarked from his place at the podium.

“So there are only eight sites that will launch nuclear missiles?”

“Yes, sir. The flight paths of the nukes are depicted on the chart in red. We are going to try to track any missiles from those sites, using satellite assets and AWACS. Theoretically, it should be possible to identify fast movers against ground return, yet the terrain is so mountainous…” He left the phrase hanging.

“I don’t see any antiship missiles targeted for our task forces.”

“We don’t know what, if anything, they plan to do with their antiship missiles. They bought some from the Russians, but their plans-that is one of the unknowns.”

“Has Admiral Bryant received the information you do have, and been briefed on the unknowns?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When is Ahmadinejad going to launch these missiles?” the general asked, gesturing at the charts.

“We’re not sure, sir,” Grafton replied. “Our listening posts around the world are monitoring Iranian army and IRGC tactical transmissions and trying to keep tabs on taxi and police calls inside Tehran. AWACS planes are watching vehicle movement to and from the launch sites and keeping tabs on Iranian air activity. We have a geosynchronous satellite overhead, and drones up twenty-four hours a day watching the launch sites in infrared and regular light. There is a big cold front moving through Iran this weekend, and the forecasters say it will kick up lots of wind and dust. Indications are the front will dissipate by Sunday night, but who knows?

“Our best guess is that the Iranians will launch after the storm dies, late Sunday night or Monday morning. We’ll know more as the clock ticks down. The leadership locking themselves in the bunker will be the tipoff that the attack is imminent.”

General Lincoln’s eyes swept across the map once again and stopped moving when they got to Tehran. “Tell me about the bunker.”

“One of our agents was there today, twelve hours ago, and there was a lot of activity around the entrance. Supplies were being delivered in trucks.”

“Preparations at our bases in the Middle East?” Lincoln asked crisply.

It took Jake Grafton fifteen minutes to answer this question. To minimize loss of life at these bases, should any Iranian missiles get through the cordon of fighter planes and antimissile defense systems that had been deployed, an exercise was set to occur on Sunday night. All personnel would be required to don antiradiation suits or take shelter in designated areas. Food and water was to be available in the shelters, along with medical supplies. In other words, the bases were going to be in the middle of a full-blown nuclear, biological and chemical exercise when the Iranian missiles arrived, if they did. To prevent word from leaking back to the Iranians, the exercise was highly classified, and early in the weekend the bases would be sealed.

An hour later, all the questions answered, the CENTCOM staff filed out of the room. A limo was waiting to take General Lincoln to the White House; then they were all getting on a plane to Kuwait. The multimedia tech gurus who had generated and displayed the charts and computer presentations followed the brass out, leaving Jake Grafton alone with Sal Molina.

Grafton walked up the aisle and sat down in the last row, with an empty seat between himself and Molina.

“We don’t even know if this fandango is really going to happen,” Molina groused.

Grafton didn’t bother to reply. Molina knew as much as he did about the agency’s sources and what they had said.

Molina adjusted his butt in his seat. “The president is thinking about making a secret trip to Tel Aviv.”

“Going to sit on ground zero with the Israelis?”

“He’s thinking about it. The National Security Council is throwing a duck-fit.”

“Umm,” said Grafton.

“Someone suggested we send the vice president instead.”

“I see.”

“He refused to go.”

Grafton put his feet up on the back of the seat in front of him. “Most of this angst wouldn’t be necessary if we hit the launch sites the instant they rolled out the first launchers.”