“Well, sir, I just prefer…”
“Prefer what?”
“Having my team with me, sir,” Zandi finally explained. “We work well together. I trust them.”
“Well, I don’t, Dr. Zandi,” the general shot back. “I believe one of them leaked the location of our other six warheads. One of them is a mole. And when I find out which one, I am going to gouge out his eyes, one by one, and cut out his tongue. And then I’ll decide what his real punishment will be.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Make sure the second warhead is ready for transport no later than 5 p.m.,” Jazini ordered. “But don’t tell anyone that they’re not going with us. That will just be our little secret. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Zandi said quietly. “I am your humble servant.”
“Good. Now carry on.”
And with that, Jazini turned on his heel and walked to a small office in the back of the facility to finalize his own plans and make sure every detail was in place.
24
Sitting in the front passenger seat of the van, David slipped on his headset, consisting of an earphone and small microphone, then clipped the wireless receiver to his belt. He switched on the power and made sure he was on the right frequency.
“Check, check, check — we all good?”
“Reading you five by five,” said the others.
Satisfied, David grabbed an extra magazine for his MP5, double-checked his pistol and its silencer, and loaded his flak jacket with additional ammo but didn’t put it on. Rather, he put it on the floor in front of him and covered it with a blanket.
“Everyone all set?” he asked.
He got a thumbs-up from everyone as they all hid their weapons and gear and got their minds into the zone for the mission ahead.
“Good. Look sharp,” David said. “Let’s do this thing.”
David gave Torres clearance to drive up to the guard box and into the parking lot of the hospital while keeping his eyes peeled for any signs of danger. His pulse quickened, but he tried to steady his breathing by saying a prayer for himself and his team — for safety, to be sure, but also for wisdom and success. A moment later they were at the guard station. Torres rolled down the window.
“May I help you?” the guard asked, peering into the van from behind a pair of sunglasses.
“We’re here to give blood,” David said in flawless Farsi, leaning toward the open window to make eye contact with the guard. “We’re scheduled for a 3:45 appointment.”
“Okay, pull through and turn right,” said the guard. “But you’d better move smartly. I’m pretty sure the blood drive ends at four.”
“Thanks; will do,” David said.
Torres followed the man’s directions, and they all breathed a sigh of relief. One hurdle crossed.
“Home Plate, can you hear us?” David asked when Torres had put his window back up.
“Roger that, Zephyr,” Zalinsky replied. “And we see you moving through lot B to the far side.”
“Roger that,” David said, then turned to his team and gave them the one-minute warning, alerting each man to uncover his gear, put on his flak jacket, and get ready to move. He, too, finalized his preparations and then opened the glove compartment and pulled out black ski masks, which he quickly handed out.
Forty-five seconds later, Torres backed into a parking space and scanned the grounds for anyone who might see them exit the vehicle. Several doctors were approaching along a nearby sidewalk, but they were engrossed in conversation and didn’t seem to be paying much attention to their surroundings. David instructed his men to wait for the group to pass, and the delay proved fortuitous as Torres noticed that the exit door they were about to head to didn’t have a handle on the outside. He asked one of the men in the back of the van to reach under his seat, open the compartment containing the spare tire, and pull out the iron crowbar typically used for prying off hubcaps when changing a flat. That, he said, was their new key into the building.
David did a final scan. There were still cars coming in and out of the parking lot, an occasional ambulance driving by, and a few people walking by distant buildings. He glanced at each member of his team, checking their focus, their steadiness. Aside from David himself, the youngest member of their team was Matt Mays, the twenty-eight-year-old former Marine lieutenant who would serve as their driver and lookout, staying in the van and idling until they returned with their prize. Steve Fox, thirty-one and a former Navy SEAL, held the crowbar and was ready to “key in” to the building. Nick Crenshaw, thirty-three years old and another former SEAL, sat next to Fox, poised to move.
Figuring things were about as good as they were going to get, David gave the order to go. He opened his door and exited the vehicle, careful to hide his MP5 machine gun under a folded blanket. Behind him, the side doors of the van swung open simultaneously, and the others did the same. On the other side of the vehicle, Torres stepped out of the driver’s-side door and was handed his gear — also wrapped in a blanket. Mays then got behind the wheel and shut all the doors.
Fox moved the fastest and used the crowbar to open the back exit in a single fluid motion. Crenshaw followed close behind, while David and Torres brought up the rear. Inside, they fortunately found no one in their way, so the four men donned their ski masks and broke into their respective teams. David and Fox moved left, heading up the closest stairwell as quickly and quietly as they could. Torres and Crenshaw moved to the right, headed for the opposite stairwell.
As planned, David took the lead up the stairs, with Fox providing cover at his six. When they got halfway between the fourth and fifth floors, they stopped, crouched down, and strained to listen for any signs of trouble. David clipped a shoulder strap on his MP5 and swung it over onto his back, then pulled out his silencer-equipped pistol and flicked off the safety. Fox followed suit as they reached the fifth floor.
“Alpha One to Bravo One,” David whispered. “Do you read?”
“Five by five, Alpha One,” came Torres’s reply.
“You in position?”
“Sixty seconds,” Torres said.
“Roger that.”
David reached back, and on cue Fox handed him a fiber-optic camera snake. David switched it on, crept up to the fifth-floor stairwell door, and slowly slid it underneath, careful not to make a sound. Fox moved up as well and held the palm-size monitor so both of them could see it. As Zalinsky had promised, the hall was hopping with incoming injured patients and all manner of medical personnel. What was strange, however, was that as David rotated the snake, he could find no sign of anyone guarding this exit. Perplexed and anxious, he continued scanning the hall for any sign of an armed guard on this side of the floor but found none.
“Bravo One to Alpha One, we’re in position,” Torres radioed. “We’ve scanned the hall. Our guard is in position. We can see two more in front of Javad’s room.”
“Roger that, Bravo One,” David whispered. “But we can’t find our guard.”
“Say again?”
“Repeat, our guard is not in position. We don’t know where he is. Home Plate, do you have eyes on our guard?”
“Negative, Alpha One, but we’ll keep looking.”
David tensed. He had no intention of bursting through this door and getting shot in the back because he hadn’t done his homework. They had to find this guard — and fast. In the meantime, David pulled a small black box out of his pocket and magnetically attached it to the exit door. Then he erected a small antenna connected to the box and turned on the power switch to let the unit warm up.
Eva Fischer had just found a lengthy and intriguing phone call between the Twelfth Imam and Pakistani president Iskander Farooq and was beginning to translate it into English when the pager on her desk started going off. Eva grabbed the pager and checked the incoming code; when she saw it read 911, her heart skipped a beat. She had asked the NSA Ops Center to alert her if Javad Nouri made or received any phone calls over the course of the next hour and to allow her to listen in on the call in real time by dialing a secure, dedicated extension.