The Disciple

“This may sound ridiculous,” the president replied, “but we don’t want to wind up on the short end of the political stick either. If only a few cruise missiles squirt out of Iran and we whack them hard, believe me, the Iranians and Al Jazeera will say we attacked first, and the Iranians launched a few in self-defense.”

General Heth weighed in. “Mr. President, if everything goes perfectly, and in war it never does, there is no way we can smack all those missile sites before the second salvo. We took a hard look at the Special Forces option, which was inserting Green Berets near enough to the launch sites that they could launch antitank weapons at the tu

The president stared at the map, which was certainly an impressive piece of work. General Heth filled the silence. “We can’t keep forty planes airborne over Iran until Ahmadinejad gives the launch order. Our forces must be outside Iranian airspace. A lot of them will be on the ground when the first missile is rolled out, which creates another problem. If we launch then, on first rollout, the Iranians may not shoot, and our birds will run out of fuel and have to be landed. Then they’ll do it.”

Sal Molina muttered to the president, “This is what has the Israelis in a tizzy. We must shoot down the missiles in the air.”

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs spoke up. “One nuke detonating anywhere in the Middle East, such as over an airbase in Saudi Arabia, will change the world as we know it. I want everyone in this room to understand: If one single nuclear weapon detonates over Israel, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, our task forces in the Arabian Sea-anywhere-life on this planet will never be the same. We are playing a game for all the marbles, with the collective lives of our nation and our allies all on the line. And the lives of millions of human beings.”

In the silence that followed, someone said, “I don’t believe there is a chance in a million that they will launch a nuclear weapon. No sane man would initiate nuclear war.”

The president didn’t bother to reply to that. He motioned for General Heth to continue the briefing. Everyone else thought this was a “What if” exercise, but the president didn’t. He had received a Top Secret memo this morning relating the facts of Tommy Carmellini’s telephone call.

Of course, Jake reflected, maybe the president didn’t believe Ghasem’s warning. Jake didn’t even know if he believed it himself. No doubt the National Security Council would have a fiery debate later today on the value of the intelligence. The experts would debate the credibility of the message, the history of the source, the lack of confirmation from other sources-in short, all of the factors one had to consider when weighing intel.

Intelligence came from many sources. Some people believed that a trained ear could discern which bits of noise were true and which weren’t. Unfortunately, we humans tend to give more weight to information we expect to hear than news that we don’t. Yet even if Ghasem’s message was labeled a lie, an Iranian attack on Israel and American assets within range of its missiles was a serious possibility.

“What we are going to have to do,” General Heth said, “is try to cut down the number of missiles that get launched. It will take hours for them to launch everything in their inventory. While they are hard at it, there are some things we can do.” The briefer then took over, referring to the map with a red dot pointer.

Ten minutes later, when the briefing broke up, Sal Molina stood and motioned to Jake Grafton. He waited in the back of the room until Molina came over.

“The president wants to hear your plan for slaying the dragon,” Molina said. “As you predicted, the president isn’t going to approve invading Iran for any reason under the sun. The army and air force say they can’t destroy those deep bunkers without adequate forces on the ground. They are talking armored brigades that can be heavily reinforced, and that ain’t go

After the crowd filed out, there were only a half-dozen people in the large briefing room. The president sat in the same chair he had occupied for two hours, seemingly quite comfortable. Near him sat the National Security Adviser, Jurgen Schulz, William Wilkins, General Heth, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Sal Molina dropped into a chair on the end. Jake Grafton started to sit down beside him, but the president motioned him up. “I saw the memo that Wilkins sent to the White House this morning, and the copy of the document that was attached. Will you explain to these gentlemen what was in it?”

Every eye in the place went to Grafton’s face. “We just acquired a list we believe to be the target list for Iran’s nuclear missiles,” he said. “A dozen locations are on it. One of them is Tehran.”

“They are going to nuke their own capital?” the chairman asked, his face expressing his doubt.

“Yes, sir,” Jake replied.

Schulz turned to Wilkins. “Where’d this hot tip come from? How reliable is it?”

“I’m not going to share any of that,” the director of the CIA said frankly. “Grafton received it, and we discussed it thoroughly. We think this information is genuine, and we are not going to open that assessment to debate. I said precisely that in the memo to the president that he just mentioned.”

In the silence that followed that remark, the president motioned for Jake Grafton to continue. “President Ahmadinejad wants to lead a holy war against Western civilization,” the admiral said. “He recently remarked to his chief lieutenants that Iran must be a martyr nation. That implies, to me, that he is willing to sacrifice tens of millions of Iranian lives to smite his enemies. Still, being a victim isn’t going to get him where he wants to go. Victimhood didn’t do it for Saddam Hussein, and it won’t do it for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He must position himself as a leader who went forth boldly on a jihad to slay Israel and America, the Great Satan. Then the millions of dead Iranians will be seen as casualties in a holy war-martyrs-and Ahmadinejad will be the leader to rally around.”

“But he isn’t going to wait for us to retaliate and nuke Tehran?” Schulz said.

“No,” Jake Grafton said. “He obviously believes that if you want something done, you’ll get better results if you do it yourself.”

“After all,” the president interjected, “just because we said we’d retaliate to a nuclear attack on our allies doesn’t mean we’d really do it. I can see Ahmadinejad musing on this and asking himself, Why take the chance? Jake, give us the target list.”

Grafton used his pointer. “Two ballistic missiles are targeted at Tel Aviv. If they aren’t shot down, they will hit in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon or Egypt. We are talking air bursts of one or two hundred kilotons.

“Moving right along, Baghdad International is on the list, as well as Balad, Mosul, Al Asad, and Tallil airbases in Iraq. In Kuwait, they have targeted Al Jaber Air Base, Camp Arifjan and Kuwait International Airport. In Qatar, it’s Al Udeid Air Base. And, saving the best for last, Tehran.”

“Admiral Grafton,” the chairman said, “Ahmadinejad must assume he will survive a nuclear exchange.”

“Oh, yes, sir. He plans on being very much alive when the fallout settles or blows away.” Jake aimed a red laser pointer at the satellite photo of Tehran hanging on the wall at the side of the room. “He’s going to ride it out with his chosen lieutenants here, inside a bunker two hundred feet underground.”