“Yes, thank you,” Jazini said. “How is everything coming along, Abdol?”
“I think you and Imam al-Mahdi will be very pleased.”
“Just what I wanted to hear,” said Jazini, who then turned back to the Syrian. “And this is the man I was telling you about: Dr. Jalal Zandi, the jewel of the Iranian atomic program.”
“What a pleasure to have you here, Doctor,” said the Syrian general, vigorously shaking his hand. “Have you been to Damascus before?”
“No, never,” Zandi said.
“Then you’re in for a real treat. You’ve come to the oldest continuously inhabited city on the planet.”
“And here I thought Jericho held that honor.”
“The Palestinians would love to have you believe that, wouldn’t they?” Hamdi said. “But that’s mere propaganda — and lame propaganda at that. Jericho is no great city. It’s not a capital. It’s not the epicenter of a great empire. Jericho is a mere village — small and dusty and old, to be sure, but hardly continuously inhabited. Damascus is the oldest and greatest city in the long history of the earth. And from what I surmise, we’re about to make history once again, aren’t we?”
Zandi said nothing.
“Yes, we are,” General Jazini said. “And we’d best be getting started. Events are moving quickly now, and we have no time to spare. I trust all of the accommodations we requested are prepared.”
“They are indeed,” said the Syrian general. “But I have a recommendation.”
“What’s that?”
“For the sake of security, I recommend we move one warhead to one of our premier missile bases, just outside Aleppo,” General Hamdi said. “In the event that the Zionists — Allah forbid — launch a surprise attack on us, it would be wise to have an insurance policy, don’t you think?”
Zandi certainly did not think so. “General Jazini, with all due respect, I must weigh in against that idea,” said Zandi, knowing he was stepping beyond his jurisdiction.
“And why is that?” Jazini asked.
“Yes, why is that?” the Syrian echoed.
“As you know, General, the Mahdi personally put me in charge of making sure these two warheads are properly attached to the nose cones of two Scud-C ballistic missiles, and I intend to do just that,” said Zandi, doing his best to maintain his composure. “It will be difficult enough to attach one of the warheads in the severely limited time the Mahdi has given me. I certainly cannot attach the second one if it is not even on the premises but rather hundreds of kilometers away. And believe me, there is no one in Syria who knows how to do my job, and even if there were, they could not do it half as well — or half as fast — as me.”
Before Jazini could respond, General Hamdi interjected.
“General Jazini, the doctor has a point,” said Hamdi. “But with regard to the threat of a Zionist first strike, I know whereof I speak. And you have seen it firsthand for yourselves. Take my word for it, if the Zionists get even a whiff of the fact that you have moved nuclear warheads onto Syrian soil, they are going to unleash a devastating first strike against us unlike any in history, and you can rest assured this base will be one of the first to come under withering attack.”
Zandi sensed the Syrian was about to prevail, but he took one last shot.
“General Jazini, please, let me do my job,” Zandi pleaded. “I can have the first warhead fitted on a Scud-C by dinner, if I start right now and if I have the proper team and tools. As soon as I’m finished, you can move the missile wherever you want, and I’ll start on the next one. But the Mahdi is supposed to be here by noon, and what am I to say — what are you to say — if one of the warheads has been moved without his permission and without being attached to a missile?”
“Are you a lunatic?” Hamdi pushed back. “Dr. Zandi, surely you must be joking! If we do what you say, if we try to move a ballistic missile off this base — especially one equipped with a nuclear warhead — every intelligence agency in the world is going to see it, starting with the Americans and the Zionists! And you’ll have lost the element of surprise and lost the war for sure. Please tell me you are not the chief strategist for the Mahdi’s war effort!”
Esfahani looked stricken. He had never been involved in the upper echelons of military strategy and certainly not in wartime, and his inexperience was showing.
“Fine,” Zandi said. “Then let me attach the warhead to the Scud by sundown, and you can put it on the launchpad. Then you can transport the second warhead to Aleppo and I will go with it and attach it to another missile there. The point is—”
“Enough!” Jazini cried. “Enough! This is not a democracy. I will run this operation, not the two of you. Dr. Zandi, you have until three o’clock this afternoon to have one warhead fitted on a missile and ready to be fired, and not a minute more. General Hamdi, you will provide everything Dr. Zandi needs, and you will keep me updated every half hour. Understood?”
Both men nodded.
“Very well, then get started, and show me to my office, Abdol. We have much work to do.”
Dressed as Revolutionary Guards, their SUV packed with every weapon and all the ammo and comm gear they had stashed at the safe house, David Shirazi and his team (minus Matt Mays) raced for Damascus. According to Zalinsky, the journey to Al-Mazzah was roughly 1,800 kilometers, or just over 1,000 miles. Assuming they could maintain an average speed of eighty miles an hour, and assuming no traffic — and no mechanical breakdowns and no other stops or interruptions, not even for food or bathrooms — it would take them thirteen and a half hours to reach their destination. They had no idea what they’d do when they got there, but they had plenty of time to think about it on the way.
David had already been driving for nearly seven hours. It was now 6:14 in the morning, and the sun was just coming up behind them. They had begun by taking Route 2 northwest from Karaj to the Iranian town of Qazvin, then had turned southwest toward Hamadan. Now they were on Highway 48, heading west to Qasr Shirin, the last town before the Iraqi border. Torres, Fox, and Crenshaw were all exhausted, and when David had urged them to get some sleep while he drove in order to be ready for whatever was ahead, none of them had pushed back. They were snoring away now, and thus for all practical purposes David was alone, but for the Predator drone flying high and silent far above them.
The Predator, interestingly, had been Zalinsky’s idea, and he’d promised not to tell Director Allen or the president for as long as possible. But it would give him and the rest of his team at Langley an eye in the sky, the ability to track David’s progress and keep watch for trouble.
The first major challenge, David knew, was going to be crossing the border into Iraq. The techies at CIA headquarters had quickly whipped up fake Revolutionary Guard IDs for all four men, based on the design of Omid Jazini’s ID, which Torres had digitally photographed and uploaded to Langley. Once the design had been downloaded back to them, Torres had printed out the IDs and laminated them using equipment at the safe house. They certainly looked like the real thing to David, but they didn’t have the proper magnetic code on the back, just a facsimile of one. Could they bluff their way through? He had no idea, and even if they could, they still had to cross the Iraqi border into Syria a few hours later.
Eva Fischer picked up the phone on her desk and speed-dialed Zalinsky.
“You’re calling me directly,” he said when he answered. “This must be bad.”
“It is, Jack.”
“How bad?”
“This one needs to go to the president.”