“Search and cuff them both,” David ordered.
Torres complied, dealing with the conscious gunman first and discovering he was wearing a bulletproof vest.
“Professionals?” said David.
Torres nodded.
“Turn them both over,” David now directed. “I want to see their faces.”
Alive, sure, but the first one was in severe pain.
“I think you broke my ribs,” the man groaned.
“You’re lucky I didn’t double-tap you to the head,” David replied. “Actually, I still might. Now who are you two and why are you here?”
“We could ask the same of you,” the second man said in English.
“You could, but we’re holding the guns, so you’ll be the ones answering the questions just now,” said David.
“Well, we’ve got nothing to say,” the first man groaned.
David was about to respond when Zalinsky came over the radio and told him to stop talking, take a snapshot of both men on his satphone, and upload the photo to Langley. David did, and as he waited for the results, he told Fox to search Omid’s room for phones, computers, and files of any kind.
David heard Zalinsky curse. “What is it?” he asked.
“You’re not going to believe this.”
“Try me.”
“They’re Israelis,” Zalinsky replied. “They’re Mossad.”
Four fire trucks — two pumpers, a hook and ladder, and a hazmat response unit — pulled off the tarmac and drove up to the administrative building, lights flashing and sirens blaring. Nearly twenty firefighters, fully suited up and ready to do battle, jumped out of the trucks and rushed inside. There they were met by Revolutionary Guards who immediately welcomed them, despite no evidence of smoke or flames or any other emergency. The fire chief checked the alarm control panel in the lobby but found none of the warning lights lit up. To the contrary, all the evidence suggested systems were normal and under control. Nevertheless, with the permission of the Mahdi’s head of security, the chief directed his men to rush up to the second and third floors to make sure everything was okay.
On the third floor, six of the firemen went into a large, windowless supply room on the west side of the building. Moments later, six different men came out of that supply room.
Following the plan laid out in General Mohsen Jazini’s memo, an elaborate ruse was being set into motion. Daryush Rashidi was the first to exit the room, dressed in a fire helmet, Nomex fire coat, pants, gloves, and rubber boots, an air tank on his back and an air mask over his face. Rashidi was followed by the Mahdi and four members of the Mahdi’s security detail, all similarly dressed and all but the Mahdi helping to carry several trunks that looked like they held firefighting equipment. They met the rest of the emergency crews in the lobby, and when the chief gave the all-clear signal, they all headed back to the trucks. Rashidi led the way for the other five, heading directly for the hazmat truck, a large, heavy-duty vehicle built by the Scania company in Sweden and painted a bright, almost-fluorescent yellow. He opened the back doors, let the five members of the team climb in, then shut the doors again and climbed into the front passenger seat and told the driver — another undercover IRGC commando — to follow the other fire trucks departing the airport grounds.
Mossad chief Zvi Dayan scanned the incoming note on his secure PDA as Defense Minister Shimon informed Naphtali that the strike package was just a few minutes away from the Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran and pressed him for the authorization to launch their missiles.
“Excuse me, Mr. Prime Minister — we may have a change in plans,” Dayan said.
“What do you mean?” Naphtali asked.
“You may not have to bomb the airport after all,” Dayan said.
“Why not?”
“Something’s happening at the facility in question,” said the Mossad chief, now turning to an aide and ordering him to see if they could get the live images from the drone over the airport uploaded to the prime minister’s communications center.
“What is it?” Naphtali asked.
“We have reports that a group of fire trucks have arrived at the scene and almost two dozen firefighters have rushed inside,” Dayan reported.
“Into the facility where you think the Mahdi is?” Naphtali clarified.
“Where we know he is, sir,” Dayan noted. “It houses the central war room for the entire Revolutionary Guard system, and we have growing evidence the whole war is being run out of that building. What’s strange is that all these fire trucks have arrived when there’s no evidence of a fire. I mean, there are fires raging on the other side of the airfield — the military side — but as we’ve said, the civilian side has been untouched. And yet here are all these trucks and firefighters right at the moment we’re about to bomb the place to kingdom come.”
“I haven’t given my authorization yet,” Naphtali reminded the Mossad chief.
“Yes, of course, sir, I realize that. I’m just saying…”
“You think the Iranians know we’re coming right now.”
“No, not necessarily — not right this minute — but as I said before, we believe the IRGC is going to move the Mahdi, and this might be how they’re doing it.”
One of the PM’s aides knocked, entered the PM’s office, and explained the video feed was now ready in the communications center. The three men quickly moved down the hall and found aerial images from the Israeli drone of the firefighters exiting the administrative building and getting back into their trucks.
“You think the Mahdi is in one of these groups?” Shimon asked.
“I do,” Dayan said.
“Which one?”
“The hazmat team.”
“Why?”
“Look at how they’re walking. They’re not walking like firemen. They’ve set up a perimeter around this one here — the one in the center. And look, they’re not taking their equipment off while coming out of the building. They’re getting into the back of the hazmat truck with their masks and air tanks on. That’s not normal.”
“You’re saying that’s the Mahdi?” said Naphtali, pointing to the screen.
“Yes, sir,” Dayan said. “If it were the Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah, we would have seen him walking more slowly. Hosseini is seventysomething.”
Naphtali watched the trucks head away from the airport complex, depart the grounds of the airfield, and pull onto Me’raj Boulevard, heading northeast toward Azadi Square. But all eyes were on the bright-yellow hazmat response vehicle, on whose roof was painted Unit 19 in large black letters.
“Where’s the fire station?” the PM asked.
“It’s right by the Azadi subway station,” Dayan said.
“And what are you recommending?”
“A missile strike on the hazmat vehicle, sir.”
“Now?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where, in Azadi Square?”
“Absolutely, sir — but to minimize collateral damage I would definitely recommend a strike before the truck gets back to the firehouse.”
Naphtali was running out of time. The hook and ladder and the two pumpers were already in the traffic circle that went around Azadi Square, just minutes away from the firehouse. The hazmat truck, however, was just entering the traffic circle.
“This is it, sir,” Dayan said. “It’s now or never. If the Mahdi gets to the fire station and slips away in another vehicle or via some other escape route we don’t know about, we may never get another chance.”
Naphtali knew Dayan was right in principle, but was he right in fact? Was the Twelfth Imam really in that yellow truck? If he was, then it would be a crime against the Jewish people, he calculated, not to take the shot and try to decapitate the Caliphate right here and now. But if Dayan was wrong and Israel killed six innocent, unarmed firemen in downtown Tehran, the international diplomatic community — which was already dead set against Israel and this war — would go ballistic. The U.N. Security Council condemnation of Israel would pass for certain. Not even the U.S. would veto it, certainly not under the leadership of President Jackson. The ramifications of that were serious indeed. Israel could be subject to economic sanctions, trade embargoes, and International Criminal Court proceedings, and those were just for starters.