“Yes, my Lord, I believe I do.”
“You had better. And if you do this and do this well — if you are faithful in this small thing — I may put you in charge of something more. But not until then. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, my Lord; you can count on me.”
“Perhaps,” said the Mahdi. “We shall see. Now, there is one other thing.”
“Yes, of course — whatever you want.”
“Some special friends of mine are on the way. You will receive more details later. Treat them as you would treat me. Make sure they have everything they need. Everything. And remember this — I am watching you, Gamal, and your very soul hangs in the balance.”
Torres drove. David sat in the front passenger seat with his window down and the wind whipping through his hair as they raced south along Route 7, winding through the mountains, headed for Iran’s most religious city. The rest of the team sat in the back of the stolen van, cleaning their weapons and readying themselves for whatever was to come. For the most part the roads were clear of civilian traffic, but there were a lot of military convoys about, especially those moving fuel and food.
As they exited Route 7—the Tehran-Qom Freeway — onto Highway 71 and approached the outer suburbs of Qom near Behesht-e-Masomeh, they could actually begin to smell the war. David winced. It was an odor he would never get used to — the smell of burning flesh and burning jet fuel.
A moment later, they came around a large mountain peak and over a ridge, and they could see the enormous columns of smoke and the fires raging. They were still about ten kilometers from the city center, but they suddenly felt the ground shaking and heard a massive explosion off to their right. A split second later the ground shook again, though another mountain blocked their ability to see exactly what was happening. As they kept racing forward, however, they soon broke out into a valley, and that’s when they saw a group of Israeli F-16s roar overhead. David counted four jets — no, six — and soon the Israelis began dropping their ordnance. But now the sky erupted with the sound of antiaircraft artilleries as well. The Iranians were shooting back.
“Step on it, Torres,” David ordered, “and everyone stay sharp.”
It was tempting to watch the battle in the skies. The planes and ordnance were mesmerizing, to be sure. But David didn’t want Torres and his men distracted. There was little chance of getting hit by an Israeli air-to-ground missile or a bunker-buster bomb. Those were being fired at the Fordow uranium enrichment plant located on the northern edge of Qom. What really worried David was the possibility of running into a military checkpoint and having to explain who they were and why they wanted to enter the war zone. David had his official papers identifying him as Reza Tabrizi, a subcontractor for Iran Telecom. Torres and his men all had false papers identifying them as members of Reza’s technical team. But David prayed they wouldn’t have to use any of them. No Iran Telecom employee in his right mind would be working today, certainly not without a hazmat suit and portable oxygen supply. David and his team had neither, but they were going in anyway.
“Look there,” Crenshaw shouted from the backseat. “Two o’clock high.”
David couldn’t help but turn his eyes to the right, and as he did, he felt his stomach tighten. An Israeli fighter jet was trailing smoke and rapidly losing altitude.
“He’s hit,” Torres said.
“Say a prayer, gentlemen,” David agreed. “Looks like one of the good guys is about to go down.”
It was painful to watch but impossible to look away. The Israeli pilot was valiantly trying to regain control of his plane, but even to the untrained eye it was obvious what was going to happen next. Less than a minute later, they lost sight of the F-16 behind another ridge, but they could feel and hear it hit the ground in a massive explosion, and soon they could smell it as well.
Najjar Malik couldn’t sleep — again.
He missed Sheyda, his beloved wife. He missed his daughter. He even missed his mother-in-law. He wondered where they were. Was the CIA taking good care of them? Were they safe?
Najjar rolled out of bed and went down to the kitchen of the enormous and gorgeous beachfront home in which he’d been staying nearly since he’d escaped from CIA custody the week before. It was owned by a friend of one of the producers at the Persian television network that had broadcast Najjar’s now-world-famous interview explaining to his fellow Iranians why he had converted to Christianity and defected to the United States. He’d been given use of the home free of charge, for as long as he needed, on two conditions: that he not use the telephone in the house (only the untraceable cell phone the producer had given him), and that he not do anything that would alert the authorities to his presence in that particular house. Najjar had promised not to implicate the producer or his friend, and he was a man of his word. But there were moments like this when he wondered whether it was time to go to the Cape May police station and turn himself in. He wasn’t a criminal, and he didn’t want to be a fugitive. He had told the CIA everything he knew. He had turned over all his computer files and answered all their questions, a hundred times over. Now he just wanted to be with his family and to study the Bible with them, pray with them, and continue to communicate with the people of Iran — and Muslims around the world — telling them the good news of the one true Savior.
He went to pour himself a glass of milk but realized he had used up the last of it at dinner. He would have to go out when the sun came up and get some more. Indeed, a shopping run would do him good, as there were a number of staples he was running low on. Najjar grabbed an icy-cold Coke out of the fridge instead and went into the study, where he sat at the computer and caught up on the news.
He clicked on the BBC Persian website and was stunned by the headline: “Israeli Nuclear Reactor at Dimona Hit by Missiles.” He quickly scanned the coverage, but it was sketchy at best. No specifics yet on the death toll and no official reaction from the Israeli government, but a widespread evacuation of the area around Dimona was under way, and Najjar feared Prime Minister Naphtali might now be seriously contemplating going nuclear against Tehran. He grabbed his mobile phone and tweeted a quick note about the attack along with a link to the BBC article, but he decided against adding any of his own commentary.
Sifting through other websites, he was in search of more details about Dimona and the rest of the war between Israel and Iran when to his surprise he found himself diverted by news out of Damascus. One headline in particular caught his eye: “Massacre in Syria: Hundreds Killed.” He clicked on the link. The article, written by a Time magazine reporter in a dispatch filed in English, described the latest “horrific massacre” in a string of attacks carried out by Syrian security forces. More than three hundred people had been killed, and over a thousand more were injured.
Najjar shuddered as he continued reading about how the Syrian president appeared to be specifically targeting Christians, Jews, and other minority groups in the Islamic nation. Meanwhile, the United Nations seemed obsessed with passing resolutions condemning the Israelis for responding to the attacks of madmen instead of doing anything to condemn — much less stop — Gamal Mustafa from systematically slaughtering thousands upon thousands of innocent men, women, and children.