— I know your people haven‘t gotten anywhere with confirming the identity of the Iranian indigenous group-and they won‘t, I promise you that. But I can.
At that moment a beam of light caused a swath of stars to vanish. Soraya moved several paces to her left in order to get a look at who was coming.
Delia approached over a low rise, the beam of her flashlight playing over them for a moment. Her face was turned into a Halloween mask by the illumination from below.
— I know the origin of the missile that hit the plane.
Chalthoum, with a quick warning glance at Soraya, crossed his arms over his chest. -So?
— So. Delia took a deep breath, let it all out before she continued. -The missile was a ground-to-air Kowsar 3.
— Iranian. Soraya felt a chill run through her. -Delia, are you certain?
— I found fragments of the electronic guidance system, her friend said.
— They‘re Chinese, similar to those on the C-701, which is an airto-surface missile. While the EGS is similar to that of the Sky Dragon, this one had a millimeter-wave radar seeker.
— Which is how it locked on so effectively to the aircraft, Soraya said.
Delia nodded. -That particular EGS is unique to the Kowsar. She shot Soraya a significant look. -This baby‘s got a speed of just below Mach One; the aircraft had no chance, none at all.
Soraya felt sick to her stomach.
Chalthoum‘s voice vibrated in genuine fury. — Yakhrab byuthium! May their houses be destroyed! — The Iranians shot down the plane.
And with those words the world moved a giant step closer to war. Not one of the recent crop of regional wars like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, which were terrible and bloody enough, but a full-blown world war. A war to end all wars.
Book Two
12
IJUST GOT OFF THE PHONE with the Iranian president, the president said. -He categorically denies any knowledge of the incident.
— Which precisely echoes the official response from their foreign minister, Jaime Hernandez responded. The door opened and the intelligence czar received a stack of printouts from a slim man with dark hair, graying on the sides. He had the bland face of an accountant, but there was something hard and withholding in his eyes that belied that surface assessment.
After checking over the papers, Hernandez nodded and introduced the slim man as Errol Danziger, the NSA‘s deputy director of signals intelligence. -As you can see, Hernandez said while he handed out the printouts, — we‘re leaving nothing to chance. This material is strictly senior staff, Eyes Only.
With that, Danziger nodded to them and departed as silently as he‘d entered.
Five people ranged around the table in one of the Pentagon‘s vast electronic war rooms, three levels below the basement. Each had before him identical printouts, which comprised the latest findings from the joint forensics team sent to Cairo as well as up-to-the-minute intelligence assessments of the rapidly morphing situation. Paper shredders stood guard beside each of the leather-backed chairs.
As if Hernandez‘s pause was a cue, Secretary of Defense Halliday said,
— Of course they categorically deny their involvement, but the provocation is serious and they‘re behind it.
— They can‘t refute the evidence we delivered to them, said Jon Mueller, the head of the Department of Homeland Security.
— And yet they have. The president sighed deeply. -That very issue occupied a good part of my contentious phone conversation. Their claim is that our forensics team rigged the ‗so-called evidence‘-their president‘s exact phrase.
— Why would he give the order to shoot down one of our planes? Veronica Hart asked.
At which Halliday shot her a withering look. -He‘s tired of taking heat for their nuclear program. We‘ve been pushing them, now they‘re pushing back.
— The way I see it, this provocation actually serves two purposes,
Hernandez offered. -As Bud accurately points out, it redirects the international spotlight away from their nuclear program while at the same time serving as a warning to us-and the rest of the world, for that matter-to back off.
— Let me get this straight. Hart leaned forward. -You‘re saying they‘ve decided to go beyond their long-standing threats to close off the Straits of Hormuz to oil traffic.
Mueller nodded. -That‘s right.
— But surely they must know that‘s suicidal.
Halliday watched this exchange much as a hawk follows two rabbits racing across a field. Now he pounced. -We‘ve all suspected that the Iranian president is mentally unbalanced.
— A mad hatter, Hernandez affirmed.
Halliday agreed. -But far more dangerous. He looked around the room, his face eerily lit by reflections from the large flat-panel computer monitors ranged along the walls. -Now we have incontrovertible proof.
Hernandez gathered up the printouts, aligning their corners. -I think we should take our findings public. Share them with the media, not just our allies.
Halliday looked to the president. -I concur, sir. And then we convene a special session of the UN Security Council that you address personally. We need to formally give attribution to this cowardly act of terrorism.
— We need to charge and condemn Iran, Mueller added. -They‘ve committed nothing short of an act of war.
— Right. Hernandez hunched his shoulders like a prizefighter in the ring.
— Bottom line, we‘ve got to move against them militarily.
— Now, that would be suicidal, Hart said emphatically.
— I agree with the DCI, Halliday said.
This response was so unexpected that Hart goggled at him for a moment. Then he continued and everything was made clear to her.
— Going to war with Iran would be a mistake. Just as we‘re on the verge of winning the war in Iraq, we‘re obliged to redeploy our troops back to Afghanistan. No, a frontal assault on Iran would, in my estimation, be a grave misstep. Not only would it stretch our already overtaxed military personnel, but the consequences for other countries in the region, especially Israel, could be catastrophic. However, if we could destroy the current Iranian regime from within-now, that would be a worthy goal.
— To do that we would need a proxy, Hernandez said, as if on cue. -A destabilizing influence.
Halliday nodded. -Which, by dint of hard work, we now have in the form of this new indigenous revolutionary group inside Iran. I say we hit Iran on two fronts: diplomatically through the United Nations and militarily by backing this MIG in every way possible: money, arms, strategic advisers, the works.
— I agree, Mueller said. -However, to implement the MIG initiative we‘ll need a black budget.
— And we‘ll have to have it yesterday, Hernandez added, — which means keeping Congress in the dark.
Halliday laughed, but there was an altogether serious look on his face.
— So what else is new? The only thing those people are interested in is getting reelected. As for what‘s good for the country, they haven‘t got a clue.