Whiplash

Tarid’s legs became less steady as he walked. He tried remembering a prayer—any prayer—but couldn’t. He couldn’t think at all.

The man with the flashlight stopped near the bushes. He reached down and pulled up a large duffel bag.

“You’re to give this to the man with the red jacket at Imam Khomeini Airport,” he told Tarid. “Go to Hangar Five. The man will ask you what time it is. You reply that it is a nice day. Do you understand? You don’t give him the time. You say it is a nice day.”

“OK.”

“Go,” said the man with the gun, pushing him toward the taxi.

Tarid felt a surge of shame. He’d been in life and death situations before. Never had he acted like this—never had he felt such fear. Even just the other day, when the camp was under assault in the Sudan, when he was hurt, he had acted calmly.

Here in Iran he’d been reduced to a coward. Why?

Because of Aberhadji. He was deathly afraid of him. He’d always been afraid of him.

You couldn’t give one man that much power over your life. To be afraid of a single man like that—however righteous or powerful—if you lived like that, you were nothing but a dog, a cur begging in the street.

Tarid grabbed the handle of the taxi and angrily pulled it open.

“We need to go to the international airport,” he told the driver. “Take me to Hangar Five. And no more complaints about your in-laws. I have more important things to worry about.”

“IDENTIFY AND LOCATE HANGAR FIVE,” NURI TOLD THE Voice as he pulled onto the highway.

The Voice identified the hangar as a civilian facility at the center of the airport’s service area. It was used by foreign airlines, primarily Turkish Airlines.

“What’s he doing?” Flash asked.

“Delivering a package to somebody at the airport,” said Nuri. “It’s not too big.”

“Bomb?”

“Probably papers,” said Nuri. He guessed it had to do with the network, documents or plans of some type. “It’s way too small for a nuke.”

“Could it be bomb material, though?”

“It could be.” Nuri thought about a bomb. The actual amount of pure uranium or plutonium needed was relatively small, though very heavy. The package might contain enough for a third or even half a bomb, depending on how sophisticated the design was.

Actually, he realized, it could contain the entire bomb—but only if the design was very advanced.

“You know, we don’t really have to rescue Tarid,” said Flash. “We can just make it look like we did.”

“There’s only two of us, Flash. We can’t set up a whole operation like that. Especially at an airport.”

“Why not?”

“How do we get away?”

“We’ll be at an airport, right?”

“We have to take Tarid with us.”

“We knock him out.”

It wasn’t a horrible idea, just totally impractical. Nuri let Flash talk about it as he drove. He thought about what else the box might contain.

Traffic was light, but not so light that they could count on not being seen if they ran the taxi off the road. Still, that might work: push him off the road, rob him, grab the bag.

The Iranians would realize they knew. But they were already shutting down the operation, so what did it matter?

“How would we grab the bag?” Nuri asked Flash finally. “How can we take it?”

“The bag? Not him?”

“What if we just got the bag?”

“We just point our guns at him and grab it. Shoot him if he won’t hand it over. Straight robbery, dude.”

Somehow, Nuri didn’t think it would be that easy.

70

Northern Iran

THE VOICE DIRECTED DANNY AND HERA TO AN ABANDONED farm about a mile from the air base. Da

And then, suddenly, they saw floodlights in the distance. They didn’t even need their night glasses to see what was going on.

“It’s a missile,” said Hera. “Oh my God.”

ABERHADJI WATCHED AS THE WARHEAD WAS BOLTED INTO place. The process was delicate—not because of the warhead, which would remain inert until after it was launched, but because of the rocket fuel and oxidizer being pumped into the tanks.

Fueling the missile was not quite as easy as loading a truck with gasoline. The liquids had to be carefully monitored; their temperature and pressures were critical, and a spark in the wrong place would ignite a fireball. While Aberhadji’s team had perfected quick fueling methods, his short notice added another level of difficulty. Still, he knew it should take only a little more than an hour before they were ready to launch—a prep time that would be the envy of the best-trained crew in the West.

“Imam, the warhead is ready to be coded,” said Abas, the head technician.

The code was part of the fail-safe lock that prevented unauthorized use of the warhead. It allowed the bomb to arm itself following launch. Without it, the warhead was simply a very heavy piece of complicated metal.

Aberhadji moved quickly to the panel at the side of the warhead. The code was entered on a very small number pad. The display screen was a small panel sixteen boxes long. It displayed an X as each number was pressed in. When the boxes were finally filled, Aberhadji had to press the unmarked bar at the bottom to enter them. He had only two tries. If the number was entered incorrectly a third time, the fusing circuit was designed to overload, rendering the weapon useless.

He pressed the bottom bar. The display flashed. The X’s turned to stars.

They were ready to go.

“How much longer?” he asked Abas.

“An hour and ten minutes, if nothing goes wrong.”

Aberhadji nodded. He could barely stand the suspense.

71

Imam Khomeini International Airport

FROM THE LAYOUT OF THE AIRPORT GROUNDS, NURI THOUGHT it might be possible to set up an ambush on the utility road at the eastern side; it was long and, according to the satellite photos and schematic MY-PID reviewed, generally deserted. But as soon as they neared the airport, he saw his plan would never work. There were police cars and Iranian army vehicles all around the grounds. Lights flashed; cars were being stopped at the entrance.

“What the hell’s going on?” asked Flash.

“Yeah, good question.” Nuri continued past the access road. They had weapons and surveillance gear; there’d be no chance of sneaking past a search. He drove two miles until he saw a small grocery store off the main road. He pulled off and drove around the back to the Dumpster.

A man was sitting in front of it, smoking a cigarette.

“I thought if you were Muslim you weren’t allowed to smoke,” said Flash.

The man threw away the cigarette and scurried inside. But Nuri didn’t want to take a chance, so he drove through the lot and back onto the highway, continuing until he found another store. This time there was no one in back. They stashed the weapons midway down in the Dumpster, then went back to the airport.

A pair of policemen stopped them at the gate and asked for ID. As soon as he saw Nuri’s Italian passport, he had them both get out and open the trunk. His partner went through the interior, tugging at the seat cushions and rifling through the glove compartment.

“What are these?” asked the policeman, pulling one of the transponders from Nuri’s overnight bag. It was a booster unit for the bugs.