The Disciple

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Somehow that conversation had gotten away from me. I was going to tell her she would get well and someday this experience would be only an ugly memory, but even I didn’t believe that crock of Pelosi, and I certainly didn’t have the guts to say it aloud.

Maybe she was right. She should get a gun, find the bastards and drill them right between the eyes. After shooting off their dicks, of course, and watching them scream for a while.

The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. Maybe if I was still alive a week from now, after Ahmadinejad’s Jihad Day, I’d help her do it. A man also needs a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

I pulled another cot alongside hers and put my backpack on it to use as a pillow. There was a blanket on the cot. I kicked off my shoes and lay down. I reached out and touched Davar’s hand.

“No,” she whispered, so softly I almost missed it. “Sleep beside me.”

So I moved over to her cot. There was just enough room if I lay on my side with her head on my arm. I managed to get the blanket over both of us, and then I surrendered to exhaustion.

Amazingly, I slept without dreams.

Sal Molina found Jake Grafton in a conference room in the Pentagon standing in front of a huge map of Iran. He was examining locations on the map and referring to a list he held in his hand as two senior NCOs plotted locations and drew lines.

When he saw Molina, Grafton motioned to him and showed him the sheet of paper in his hand. “Here are the locations for the nuclear armed missiles. The lines show their route of flight to their targets.”

After looking at the list, Molina handed it back and asked, “How reliable is this information?”

“Tommy Carmellini got it out of the Iranian Defense Ministry Targeting Office. He was caught and would have been tortured to death, but he was saved by an Israeli agent. He sent us this a few hours ago.”

“Do you believe this is genuine?”

Grafton paused and stared at the map. “Probably.”

“The Iranian Defense Ministry was attacked by someone with a ca

Grafton turned to the presidential aide and looked him in the eyes. “Tommy needed a diversion.”

“Do they know we have this list?”

Jake Grafton led the way to two chairs in the back of the room. “Probably. Tommy was caught before he could get out of the building, and he left a bomb in the Targeting Office, so they know he was in there. They know he escaped from custody.”

“So if they know we have it…?”

“They have two choices,” Jake Grafton said. “They can move the missiles or reprogram them to new targets. Or try to do both. We have satellites and drones overhead and AWACS planes in the Gulf and over Iraq, so if they try to shuffle missiles around we’ll know it. As for changing targets, they’ve already picked the best dozen they could find.” He made a gesture of dismissal. “I don’t think it matters whether they believe we have this list or not.”

Sal Molina had known Grafton for years; he well knew that Grafton looked at problems from a different perspective than most of the military brass and all of the politicians, which was why he was so valuable. He could solve problems that appeared to be hopeless tangles, and had done so repeatedly for years. The rub was that his solutions were often tough medicine to swallow.

“What matters is what they do or don’t do to protect these launch sites,” Grafton said, glancing at Molina to see if the lawyer was with him. “They don’t know if we really have this list, or if we do, whether we think it’s genuine. If they rush troops out to these twelve sites, that will tend to confirm that these are indeed nuclear weapons launch sites.”

“They could scatter troops all over,” Molina suggested.

“Indeed, and that would tend to confirm that launch is imminent.”

“So what are they doing now?”

“Nothing. So far. That could change any minute.”

Sal Molina rubbed his face, then put his palms flat on his thighs. “Okay. What is your plan?”

“We can’t take out these sites before they roll out the missiles. The president wants us to react to Iranian aggression, not to be preemptive.”

Molina nodded, once.

“The problem is they have nine hundred missiles. Nine hundred! Some of them are going to be launched-that is inevitable. Our job is to minimize the damage from conventional warheads and try to prevent the launching of nuclear missiles or shoot them down.”

“Okay,” Molina said slowly.

“So here is how we’re going to do it.” Jake Grafton led Molina back to the map and launched into an explanation.

If I had been arranging a helicopter rendezvous with clandestine agents in Iran, I would have picked the most godforsaken place I could find, as far from the Iranian military and any civilians as possible, and I would have done it in the dead of night. I even suggested two such locations that I picked from a map when I talked via satellite phone to Jake Grafton.

“This afternoon at three twenty-five your time in a park,” he said, and named it.

“I don’t want to rain on your parade, but I am the number one most wanted man in Iran. They are looking for me all over.”

“One suspects,” he said.

“How about a vacation? Maybe I just jump on the chopper and head for France. I know a woman there, and-”

“I have a job for you,” he said. “Here in a few days Ahmadinejad and his buddies are going into that executive bunker. Once they are in, I want you to ensure they don’t come out.”

“Sounds like a job for the air force.”

“Oh, they’ll do a permanent job. You and our people there must keep them inside until the concrete sets.”

Oh boy.

“What do you think you’ll need to do the job?” he asked.

“A tank.”

“You’ll have to get that locally.”

“And a couple of satchel charges and a couple of submachine guns and ammo.”

“Okay,” he said. “I can do that.”

So at the appointed time G. W. Hosein and I sat in a car on the edge of the park waiting for the chopper. We were both togged out as Iranian army colonels, complete with sidearms and fake beards.

As we waited, we watched Revolutionary Guards wearing slovenly uniforms and carrying AK-47s stroll along, eyeing everyone.

“They’re looking for us,” G. W. said as he watched four of them standing on a corner a hundred feet away.

I merely grunted. I was keeping an eye on them, too.

I looked at my watch. “Fifteen minutes,” I said.

As I watched, the knot of four accosted a group of four women wearing those long coverings and scarves. The boys wanted to talk and strut. They couldn’t have been much over twenty years of age, with scraggly little beards and pimples. For all I knew, they were four future ayatollahs.

The women looked properly respectful.

Between us and the IRGC boys, a sidewalk vendor was selling food to the local civilians, who were out with their children. All in all, it looked like another day in Tehran to me.

As we watched, a truckload of IRGC soldiers went past us.

“Let’s go,” I said and hoisted the backpack from its position between my feet.

The IRGC boys ignored us as we walked into the park. G. W. took a beacon from his pocket, triggered it, then put it back.

We walked toward a tree on the edge of a large grassy area and stopped beside it. We had been there about three minutes, watching the kids play, when I heard the chopper. After another minute I saw it, a Russian-built Hind with Iranian army markings. The Hind was the easiest helo in the world to recognize because it had two counterrotating rotor disks mounted on the same mast. It went right over our heads, then swung out in a wide turn. It circled the area as it bled off speed, then came slowly down toward the open area, its nose into the breeze. Kids and parents scattered to get out of the way.