The Disciple

When the machine landed, I walked briskly over. The only man in the chopper was the pilot, who was wearing an Iranian uniform.

“Carmellini?” he asked loudly, over the roar of the engine, which was still turning at 100 percent. This guy wasn’t taking any chances; all he had to do to take off was lift the collective.

“Yeah,” I said, and checked to see that the rotor wash hadn’t loosened my beard.

“I was told there might be a passenger.”

“She decided to stay.”

I tossed the backpack on the floor beside him as I looked around for IRCG soldiers. Two knots of them were watching, their AKs cradled in their arms.

“Those duffel bags in back are for you,” he shouted, pointing.

I reached for the nearest one, which weighed about thirty pounds, I guessed. When I had them both on the ground, I said loudly, “Have a nice flight.”

Hoisting my bags, I walked out from under the rotors back toward G. W., who was still under the tree. The rotor wash increased in intensity and played with my clothing. I felt a corner of my beard coming loose.

In seconds the chopper was off and climbing.

As I walked up, G. W. said, “Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

“Amen to that.”

Ignoring the gawking IRGC soldiers, we walked back to the parked car, got in and drove away.

I’ll admit, you gotta have a lot of balls to order a stunt like that. That Jake Grafton…

In the Hind, U.S. Army Warrant Officer John Pepper skimmed the rooftops of Tehran. He brought the chopper around to a northwest heading and checked the portable GPS that he had mounted on top of the glareshield. His route from Iraq to the clandestine refueling depot inside Iran, and from there to Tehran, had been carefully chosen by the intelligence officers to avoid known military bases and antiaircraft missile sites. Mostly, Pepper had flown up and down canyons at low altitude, popped over ridges and skimmed across fields and forests with his skids almost in the trees. He was going to fly the reciprocal of that course to get out of Iran.

As he flew over the city, his helicopter was of course being swept by search radars. He glanced at the ALQ-199 display: this box had also been stuck on top of the panel. The box revealed every radar sweep, yet the green light stayed illuminated. The green light, according to the major who had briefed Pepper, meant the gadget was working and the Iranians couldn’t see him.

Still, sitting alone in a Russian-made Iraqi chopper skimming across Tehran, John Pepper fought back the urge to look over his shoulder for Iranian fighters. He also fought back a powerful urge to pee.

Oh, baby! Who knew, when he was a jug-headed kid and volunteered for army flight training, that this adventure was in his future?

John Pepper glanced down at the backpack on the floor and wondered what it contained. Something important, no doubt, something they would never tell him about.

He automatically ran his eyes over the gauges one more time, checked that he was indeed on course, then set the autopilot and removed a pack of cigarettes from the sleeve pocket of his flight suit and lit one as the rooftops of Tehran sped by beneath his machine.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knew the magnitude of the risks he was taking. He intended to wipe Israel and the largest American bases in the Middle East off the globe, send everyone in them to Paradise or hell, as Allah chose. And he was willing to obliterate Tehran, kill or maim the twenty million people in it, and blame the atrocity on the Americans. When the dust settled, he, the new Mahdi, would lead the Muslims of the earth in a holy war against the infidels. This would be the final war, the war between good and evil that would decide the fate of the human species and the planet.

“But we will have no more nuclear weapons,” Ayatollah Khamenei said. “What if the Americans massively retaliate, destroy all our cities and holy places? What if Iran ceases to exist, becomes only a memory?”

“All the believers will be in Paradise.”

“They are all going there anyway, without a nuclear war,” the ayatollah pointed out with impeccable logic. “What if there is no Iran to lead the believers of the earth in this holy war?”

“I believe Allah wishes for us to struggle until the end. The words he spoke to Muhammad that he wrote into the holy Koran leave no other interpretation.”

Khamenei didn’t want to debate theology. In truth, he and his fellow mullahs lived a comfortable life in Iran, paid for with petrodollars, and he doubted that his friends wanted to trade their comfort for the glories of martyrdom. To be sure, Ahmadinejad wouldn’t say it quite that way, but he was steering the ship of state in that direction, and want it or not, martyrdom was visible just ahead.

Not that Khamenei had any intention of sitting in his office in the capitol waiting for a nuclear warhead to explode over his head. He and his key religious and political allies would all be in the executive bunker with Ahmadinejad and the senior officers of the armed forces.

As he thought about it, he opened a drawer in his desk, took out the list of people who would be in the bunker and scrutinized it. Almost four hundred names were on it; most, admittedly, were the wives and children of the religious, military and political elite.

His eye stopped at the name of General Habib Sultani, minister of defense. The general had suffered a nervous breakdown and was in a private sanitarium. It would be impossible to put him in the bunker, a man already unhinged. No, the merciful thing was to let the gods of war end Sultani’s life quickly, and Allah would usher him into Paradise.

Khamenei’s eyes continued down the list, considering each name, weighing what they could bring to the monumental task before them.

The fate of Habib Sultani’s family didn’t get an iota of thought from the great man. He didn’t waste an erg on the twenty millions of people who were to be sacrificed in Tehran; he gave not a thought to the people in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria who would die if the missiles aimed at Israel missed a little bit, nor did he spend a second or two contemplating the fate of the people in Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar who would be cremated alive by missiles aimed at the military bases there. Like tyrants throughout history, Ali Khamenei rarely, if ever, thought about anyone but himself.

Khamenei put the list back in the drawer and closed it. Ahmadinejad was on the other side of the desk, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.

The ayatollah had approved the tens of billions of dollars that had been spent on the nuclear program, not because he contemplated using nuclear weapons on anyone but because possession of such weapons would cause Iran’s prestige to soar, raising the nation from the status of a rich third-world oil producer to first rank among the world’s nations. Today he reminded himself of the sniveling, cowardly responses of the major powers to Iran’s nuclear program. Once Iran had nuclear warheads on its missiles, it would be the major Islamic nuclear power-and the undisputed leader of the Islamic world.

Unfortunately, Khamenei thought, Ahmadinejad wants to trade diplomatic and moral leadership for a military quest, which might or might not turn out as he hoped. He glanced at Ahmadinejad now, and saw a dangerous fanatic.

Khamenei realized that he had five days until Jihad Day, and of course he could postpone the launches at any time, or stop them altogether, right up until the rocket motors ignited. If the armed forces would obey him. If they refused, Ahmadinejad would have won, would have reduced him to a figurehead without power, like the Japanese emperor or the queen of England.

Of course, if Ahmadinejad was dead, the armed forces would have no choice. They would have to obey him. And he could lead the Islamic world into a new, brighter future.