Torres turned off the main boulevard onto a side street, then pulled the van over to the curb and came to a stop. David began to assess their surroundings as he plotted each move. They were on the perimeter of the hospital grounds. He could see the guard station by the parking lot. He couldn’t see building two from this vantage point, but he could see building three, the oncology department. The team checked the maps Murray had sent and calibrated their watches.
It was 3:32 p.m. local time.
It had been too dangerous to travel by plane or even by helicopter, and anyway the runways were now unusable, so there would have been nowhere to land. So General Mohsen Jazini arrived at the Second Tactical Air Base, about fifteen kilometers northwest of the Iranian city of Tabriz, in the back of a Red Crescent ambulance, his security detail having decided such cover was the safest — if not the only — way to get the new head of the Caliphate’s army to the base from Tehran without attracting attention or another Israeli missile strike. Fortunately their plan had worked, and the general, two of his deputies, and three bodyguards (including the driver) arrived without incident. But even from a distance, seeing the thick, black columns of smoke rising into the afternoon sky, Jazini could scarcely take in how much damage the Israelis had done to the air base. Seeing it up close and personal was horrifying.
As he’d been briefed back in Tehran, every runway here in Tabriz was now pockmarked with enormous craters, the result of devastatingly accurate Israeli air strikes. Nearly all the F-5E and MiG-29 fighter jets on the tarmacs were ablaze, as were most of the helicopters, transport planes, and civilian airliners that shared the airfield. All but one of the hangars, and all of the administrative buildings, had been taken out by air strikes. Even the control tower had been hit. Some of the strikes had occurred as recently as that very morning. Firefighters and their equipment had come from all over the area, but it was immediately clear to Jazini that they were having little success controlling the raging infernos. Ambulances, too, were converging on the base from every direction, but the destruction was severe, and Jazini had to assume the death toll was already high and still mounting rapidly.
Once they cleared a security checkpoint on the outer edge of the field, the general directed the driver of the ambulance to a small, one-story, nondescript concrete building on the eastern edge of the airfield. It hadn’t been fired upon and thus hadn’t been damaged in any way. After all, it didn’t look like a strategic target from the air or even up close. Rather, it looked like a two-vehicle garage that might hold maintenance equipment like tow trucks or perhaps lawn-care equipment like a few large commercial mowers.
When they arrived and parked near one of the garage doors, a member of the detail jumped out, walked over to the door, found an electronic keypad, and punched in a ten-digit code. Jazini could see the bodyguard then look up at a small security camera mounted on the overhang of the roof. A moment later, one of the doors opened, and two armed men greeted them and waved them in.
Jazini and all of his team except the driver quickly exited the ambulance and entered the small concrete structure. The driver then sped off and parked the ambulance with the rest of the emergency vehicles, in the unlikely but still remotely possible chance that the scene was being monitored by spy satellites.
“General Jazini, what an honor,” said the ranking officer on site, saluting once the guests were safely inside and the door was closed and locked behind them. “I’m Colonel Sharif. Welcome to our humble abode.”
Jazini, dressed not in his military uniform but in black slacks and a white button-down dress shirt, did not return the salute. “Colonel, I’m not here for you or for any chitchat,” said the highly decorated commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, who at the age of fifty-nine was still quite fit and trim, though his once-jet-black hair was now graying at the temples and his beard was beginning to show more salt than pepper. “I’m here to see Dr. Zandi without delay. Where is he?”
“Yes, sir,” said Sharif. “He’s three floors below us. I can take you there now.”
“Lead on,” Jazini said as he and his entourage followed the colonel onto a lift that descended rather slowly but eventually opened up into a cavernous, warehouse-like facility, much larger than could be imagined given the far smaller outbuilding on the surface.
To his left, the general could see nearly a dozen technicians in white lab coats huddled around a large steel table bearing one of the two remaining warheads. It looked like they were doing open-heart surgery on the weapon of mass destruction. To his right, Jazini saw a large wooden crate atop a similar steel table, surrounded by four IRGC commandos holding automatic weapons. He assumed the crate held the second of the remaining warheads, but he was about to find out for sure.
Approaching him down the center of the facility was a somewhat-youthful-looking man about five feet six inches tall, balding, clean shaven, and wearing round spectacles. He, too, wore a white lab coat with various ID badges dangling from a thin chain around his neck. He wasn’t smiling. Rather, he looked anxious and a bit gaunt, as though he had not been eating well — or at all — over the past few days or even the past week or two. He had two security officers at his side, armed with pistols, not machine guns. The three men made their way across what appeared to be a freshly mopped floor, then stopped about a yard and a half from the general and his security detail.
“You must be Jalal Zandi,” Jazini said, taking immediate control of the conversation.
“I am your humble servant, General Jazini,” replied Zandi, forty-seven, neither offering his hand nor looking the general in the eye but looking down at the floor instead. “It is an honor to finally meet you.”
Jazini stepped forward, put his hand on Dr. Zandi’s shoulder, and turned to the security men around him.
“Take good care of this man, gentlemen,” Jazini said with a laugh. “I can’t tell you how much the Zionists would love to get their hands on him. It’s your job not to let that happen.”
When the men nodded in agreement, Jazini turned to Zandi and looked him in the eye.
“Are you being taken care of?” he asked. “Are they getting you everything you need?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Zandi said, his hand trembling slightly. “Everything is fine.”
“How long have you been here?”
“The warheads have been here since Thursday morning, just before the air strikes started. I got here yesterday.”
“Ambulance?” the general asked.
“Pardon?”
“Did you come in an ambulance?” Jazini repeated.
“No, in a fire truck,” Zandi replied.
“Have you slept much?”
“A little,” said Zandi. “But mostly we’ve been making adjustments to the warheads. One is finished and ready for transport. The other should be ready within the hour.”
Jazini nodded and checked his watch. “Very well. We will leave precisely at five.”
“I don’t understand,” said Zandi. “Leave where?”
“To the missile complex.”
“But I thought my team and I were going to attach these warheads to missiles here, at this facility. Didn’t you bring the missiles with you?”
“No,” said Jazini. “It’s too dangerous to do anything more here. I’m taking you and the warheads with me.”
“And the crew, of course.”
“Negative. You’ll have another crew waiting for you at the next location.”
Zandi blanched.
“Is there a problem, Dr. Zandi?” the general asked.
“Uh, no, sir; it’s just that…”
“Just that what?” Jazini pressed.