“My men are working on it now.”
“How soon will it be ready?”
“Twenty minutes. Half hour tops.”
“Good, and is there footage of the Vandermarks being pulled from the rubble?”
“There is.”
“Use that, too,” Naphtali said. “Just don’t use any explicit footage of their faces or any close-ups. We don’t want to offend the American people. We want to infuriate them with the actions of the Iranians. We want to make this war real and personal to them. But it’s late in the States now. Everyone is in bed. Give this material to the Jerusalem bureau chiefs of the major American networks and the New York Times and Washington Post and L.A. Times. Embargo the video until tomorrow morning. But make sure it’s the major story every American sees and hears about and reads when they first wake up. And draft a statement for me to release to the press, expressing my condolences to the families of the couple and to the American people and expressing my determination to bring the killers of the Vandermarks to justice.”
The Iranian and Syrian generals warmly welcomed Dr. Birjandi and asked him and Esfahani to join them for breakfast. They explained what an impressive spread of food had been laid out for such a close friend of the Ayatollah and a special guest of the Mahdi. Birjandi, however, declined to partake of the lavish buffet, saying he was grateful for all the trouble they and their staff had gone to but that he wanted to fast that day to be close to God and most attentive to his will. He did not intend to impress them or draw undue attention to himself or his piety, but his words had that effect anyway. Jazini and Hamdi decided to fast for the day as well, and when they did, Esfahani eagerly followed suit.
“We just checked on the good Dr. Zandi,” Jazini said, shifting gears. “He and his team have been working since well before dawn. They seem to be ahead of schedule. At this point, it looks like the first warhead could be attached by as early as one o’clock this afternoon, perhaps two at the latest. Then, inshallah, they will begin working on the second warhead. Zandi believes that one could be done by dinnertime.”
“But he remains insistent that the two warheads stay together,” General Hamdi said. “I still recommend you move the second warhead to Aleppo the moment the first one is attached to the Scud and send Zandi and his team to attach it to another Scud up there. We cannot be too careful.”
“I fully agree,” Jazini said. “In fact, I’ve already ordered the transport of the second warhead, Dr. Zandi’s reservations notwithstanding. It is currently en route to its launch location. Zandi will go there as soon as the first warhead is attached. I will update Imam al-Mahdi on our progress when he arrives around noon.”
Then Jazini turned back to the octogenarian professor. “In the meantime, I have so many questions for you, Dr. Birjandi. Do you mind?”
Birjandi was burning to call David. The time remaining before these warheads were ready to fire was shrinking rapidly, and David was the only person he knew who could do anything to stop the Mahdi and his forces before it was too late. But there was nothing he could do now, Birjandi realized, except answer these men’s questions and try to win their trust.
“I would be delighted to answer your questions,” he said as cheerfully as he could under the circumstances. “Where would you like to begin?”
David asked Torres to give the team one final briefing on the details of Omid Jazini’s memo so they would all be ready when they got to the Syrian border. Besides showing their IDs to the border guards, Omid’s instructions to all of the Revolutionary Guards entering Syria included a series of authentication codes they would need to recite from memory and answers to a number of challenge questions they could be asked by the Syrian officials standing post. Given how slim their chances of succeeding in their mission were anyway, the last thing David wanted was to be detained or arrested at the border. They had to be ready for any eventuality, but the goal — first and foremost — was to get in without incident. They had already memorized the codes and protocols, and now they reviewed everything as Torres walked them through the procedures for the last time.
David’s satphone rang. He apologized to the team for the interruption and encouraged them to keep working. Then he put on a Bluetooth headset rather than hit speakerphone and answered on the fifth ring.
To his shock, it was not Eva.
“David, is that you?” came a completely unexpected voice — and in a whisper, at that.
“Dr. Birjandi?”
“Yes, yes, it’s me, but I only have a moment.”
David motioned for his team to be silent as he turned up the volume and pressed the Bluetooth receiver closer to his ear.
“Can you speak up, Dr. B.? I can barely hear you.”
“I have to whisper, David. I am in grave danger. But you must listen to everything I say because I may not get another chance to call you.”
“Where are you? You don’t sound like you’re at home.”
“I’m not,” Birjandi said. “I’m in Syria, at the Al-Mazzah air base. Do you know it?”
David couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Of course, on the edge of Damascus.”
“Yes, that’s the one,” Birjandi said. “The Mahdi summoned me here. He sent a helicopter to get me. I arrived last night, and now I’m at a breakfast with General Jazini and a Syrian general named Hamdi.”
“How close are they to you?”
“I am alone for the moment and near a window, which is how I have the satellite connection. The others are just outside the room. That’s why I must whisper, and I must be quick. Now listen carefully. There is much I must tell you.”
Three military choppers shot low and fast across the skyline of the capital, hoping to make it unclear which one carried President Darazi and confuse any enemy planning to take down his helicopter. As the three approached the Imam Khomeini Mosque near the heart of the city, however, the two decoy choppers peeled off and flew in circles around the mosque, their doors open and sharpshooters looking for any suspicious movement on the ground. Darazi’s helicopter hovered for a few minutes over the mosque’s enormous courtyard before slowly touching down.
A moment later, despite the fact that the engines were still running and the rotors spinning, the side door of the chopper opened, and a set of steps was lowered to the pavement. Two IRGC security men stepped off first, followed by a military aide to the president and the official government spokesman. Only then did Darazi himself appear in the doorway, and that’s when the Mossad’s man fired.
The rocket-propelled grenade exploded from the shoulder-mounted tube and sliced across the morning sky, its contrail creating a damning route back to the window of the high-rise apartment building from which it came. But the RPG found its mark. In a millisecond, it ripped off the head of the Iranian president, then detonated inside the helicopter. The result was a monstrous fireball that incinerated everyone within five hundred meters and took the Revolutionary Guards in the other two helicopters completely by surprise.
Both Mossad agents — the spotter and the shooter — grabbed their equipment, including the video camera that had captured the entire event, and bolted out of the apartment as a burst of .50-caliber bullets sprayed into the apartment and shredded everything in sight. The two men raced down the stairwell. When they reached the ground floor, they sprinted out the back door, jumped on separate motorcycles, threw on their helmets, and tore off in opposite directions. Neither one was convinced he would actually make it to safety, but both were already speed-dialing the Mossad ops center in Israel to report the success of their operation.