The Disciple

“No.”

At about three in the morning a motorcade arrived at the entrance to the executive bunker. Four limos, with police escorts with flashing lights. The distance was too great and the light too dim for me to identify him, but I thought this had to be President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with family and kids and favored household staff, those the great one chose to save from the nuclear furnace.

With the staff pushing their stuff on a cart behind them, it took about four minutes for the honchos to get into the mosque. Then the police cars led the limos away.

I got on the sat phone again, gave CENTCOM the word. When I hung up, the army troops were driving away in their trucks. Precisely two soldiers were left standing around in front of the prayer factory, presumably to tell late arrivals, if there were any, that the gate to the bunker had been closed and locked.

“Let the party begin,” I said to G. W., very softly, so Davar couldn’t hear.

Joe Mottaki went about getting the tank the same way he had acquired the self-propelled howitzer. He and his men drove to the army base and waited for a tank to come out. Since the army was leaving Tehran for a rendezvous in the desert, he didn’t have to wait long.

A column of old Russian-made T-54s soon came out of the gate and took the road to the south. Mottaki had driven captured T-54s in Israel and knew every lever and bolt.

He waited a few minutes, then told the man at the wheel to drive along the column. When Joe thought he’d found a tank that was the last in a group, the driver slowed to match the tank’s speed. Mottaki, leaning out the passenger window, shouted to the tank commander, who was standing in the turret hatch, to pull out of the column and stop. Since Mottaki was wearing an Irani an army captain’s uniform, the commander spoke into his mouthpiece, telling the driver to do so.

Mottaki climbed from the truck and strode behind the stationary tank. He went up over the right tread fender and walked along it until he was adjacent to the turret, on the side away from the passing column. Since the tank’s diesel engine was idling loudly, he leaned toward the commander to be heard. As he did, the tank commander pried one earpiece away from his head to hear what Mottaki had to say.

The Mossad agent grabbed the man’s shirt as he drew his pistol. In one fluid motion he jammed the gun into the man’s chest, against his heart, and pulled the trigger. Scrambling onto the turret, he shoved the body down into the tank, then leaned in and shot two of the crewmen as fast as he could pull the trigger. He went into the tank feet first; the driver turned and shouted something. As the man tried to get his pistol out, Mottaki shot him twice.

With the driver’s foot off the brake, the tank lurched forward.

Joe Mottaki jerked the dying driver from his seat and sat down. He let the tank continue forward, then fed it some fuel with the accelerator. The truck was already ahead of him.

Looking through the driver’s slit, he followed the truck when it turned from the highway and went up a side street. There he and his men passed the bodies up through the turret hatch, put them in the bed of the truck, climbed back into the tank and headed for the Mosalla Prayer Grounds.

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stepped out of the elevator at the bunker level, armed soldiers escorted him to his suite. His military aide was already there, taking telephone reports from the various commands around the country and updating a status board. American planes were aloft over Iraq and the Persian Gulf, as usual. Well, perhaps a few more than usual, but all in all, tonight looked fairly typical. Within minutes, Hosseini-Tash and the other military commanders entered, picked up telephones and spoke to their commands. Everything, they agreed, was ready. Nothing remained to be done except for the president to give the Execute order.

Satisfied, Ahmadinejad went next door to see the small knot of mullahs who made up the brain trust of the Party of God, the fundamentalist Islamic political movement that had ruled Iran since the fall of the shah, over thirty years ago.

“All is in readiness,” Ahmadinejad said. “We are ready to take the final glorious step to national martyrdom, to launch our jihad against Zionism and the Great Satan, and, incidentally, get revenge for the murder of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, may he rest in peace.”

The senior mullah led them in a short prayer; then the president went back to the command center to order the doors of the bunker sealed and give the Execute order. He also ordered Iranian national television to broadcast a prerecorded message in which he called for the Muslims of the world to join the Iranian faithful in jihad.

It was a sublime moment, the zenith of his life. A thousand years from now, when all the people of the earth prayed to Allah, they would remember his name and call him holy.

Staff Sergeant Jack Colby was on the satellite telephone talking to CENTCOM when the solid-fuel booster of the first cruise missile lit with a roar and the missile shot forward off its launcher into the air, its rocket booster spewing fire. A minute later, the second missile followed the first.

When both launchers were empty and the noise of the last missile had faded from the night sky, men ran from the tu

Five large surface combatants of the U.S. Navy, which were cruising slowly in line astern formation five miles off the harbor entrances of Kuwait, turned to an easterly heading and began working up to ten knots. The squadron consisted of two guided missile cruisers and three Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. The crews had been at general quarters-battle stations-for over an hour.

Within four minutes of the launch of the Iranian cruise missiles from Tu

The fiery booster plumes ripped the night apart. People on shore and aboard oil tankers and service vessels watched in silent awe and amazement as the missiles vomited forth like fireworks into the dark heavens. Finally, after all the missiles were airborne, the moan of receding turbojet engines echoed across the area. After a long moment that sound also faded and the night sea was again silent.

In the Gulf of Oman, surface combatants were also launching Tomahawks against the missile sites on Iran’s southern coast. Twenty missiles rippled off the ships, hurled aloft by their solid-fuel boosters; then the cruise missiles’ turbojet engines took over and they flew away, guided by their internal computers.

The yellow-shirted taxi director used illuminated wands to taxi Chicago O’Hare onto USS United States’ Number Three Catapult. She ran through the familiar checks and, on the director’s signal, shoved the throttles forward to the stops. The engines spooled up with a howl. She cycled her controls, then glanced at the launching officer, who was signaling burner. She moved the throttles sideways and forward, igniting the afterburners.

One more sweep of the engines’ temperatures and pressures; then she put her head back into the headrest and used her left thumb to snap on the Hornet’s exterior lights.

One potato, two… and the catapult fired. The G pressed her straight aft as the plane roared forward, accelerating violently. Two heartbeats later her wheels ran off the deck into the night air and she was flying, the stick alive in her hand. Establish climb attitude, check instruments, gear up…