Checking his map one more time, he noticed there was a huge stadium or sports complex of some kind coming up on their right. But now he tossed the map aside, rechecked his seat belt, grabbed his MP5, and made sure it was locked and loaded.
“They’re almost at the junction!” Zalinsky shouted. “They’re about to turn onto Highway 4. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go! Move it! You’re going to miss them!”
Torres was gaining ground, but it wasn’t enough. So without warning, he turned the wheel hard to the right and swerved the SUV onto the sidewalk. He laid on the horn nonstop and accelerated. Businessmen and couples and young children dove off the sidewalk, ducking into shops and jumping onto the hoods of cars. David was terrified of hitting a civilian, but he had no control at this point and one objective. If they didn’t make it to that intersection, a million innocent civilians were going to be in grave danger.
David could see the stadium coming up fast on their right. Then suddenly he heard the horn of the tractor trailer blasting behind them. He turned and was stunned by what he saw. Crenshaw had crossed the median and was accelerating into oncoming traffic. Brilliant, David thought, wishing he’d had the idea himself. By heading into oncoming traffic, Crenshaw was forcing drivers coming toward him — drivers who could see this maniac coming at them — to veer off to the left or the right to avoid a head-on collision. And that’s precisely what they were doing.
Fox, on the other hand, had chosen his own alternate route. He was literally driving on the grassy median between the eastbound and westbound lanes. He was occasionally having to weave in and out of the many trees that had been planted in the median, but to David’s shock, Fox was rapidly gaining ground.
“Zephyr, do you still have Omid’s walkie-talkies with you?” Zalinsky asked.
David turned and focused exclusively on what was ahead.
“Yes, sir, I’ve got one,” David replied. “The other is in the semi.”
“Good. Turn yours on and switch to channel six,” Zalinsky ordered and then relayed the same information to Crenshaw in the 18-wheeler.
“I’m a little busy at the moment, sir,” Crenshaw replied, still forcing his way up the wrong lane.
David turned on his radio and didn’t like what he heard. Sure enough, they’d stirred up a hornet’s nest. Local police in every part of the city were being alerted to the chaos ensuing along the southern edge of town, and they were being told to converge at the intersection of Highway 7 and Highway 4. The real question, though, was whether they had lost the element of surprise. Did the security forces in the convoy expect an attack, or did they just think a few drunk drivers were tearing up the town?
Sirens could be heard coming from all directions. And then — just as they were racing past the stadium — a pregnant woman pushing a stroller came around a corner. David screamed. So did Torres. Torres slammed on the brakes. He swerved back into the street, but it was too late. Not for the woman or her baby. By the grace of God, they were safe. But Torres plowed straight into a police cruiser that had just entered the intersection.
There were two Syrian officers in the patrol car. Both looked stunned, but they immediately jumped out, guns drawn.
“Get out!” one shouted at Torres. “Get out of the car! Now!”
“We are Revolutionary Guards,” Torres replied as calmly as he could. “We are on a mission for Imam al-Mahdi.”
“I don’t care who you are,” the officer shouted back, his pistol aimed at Torres’s head. “Put your hands in the air and get out of the car slowly — don’t make any quick movements.”
CIA director Roger Allen now joined Tom Murray and Jack Zalinsky and their team in the Global Operations Center.
“What in the world is Torres doing?” Allen asked as he looked up at one of the large-screen video monitors and saw Marco Torres, the head of their paramilitary unit, carefully exiting his SUV at gunpoint while a second officer pointed his weapon at the head of David Shirazi — aka Zephyr, the linchpin of their Iran strategy — who was now exiting the backseat of the SUV.
Zalinsky cringed. On the other screen he could see the Iranian-Syrian convoy rapidly approaching the intersection, and no American was there to stop them.
Suddenly Crenshaw found an opening. The traffic had cleared. He now had a straight shot at their objective. Laying on the horn, he blew past Torres and Shirazi and careened headlong into the intersection just seconds ahead of the convoy, with Fox in the van close on his heels.
Every head turned and every eye was riveted as Crenshaw finally slammed on the brakes and the 18-wheeler’s rear wheels began fishtailing. At that very instant, the driver of the police cruiser leading the convoy hit his brakes as well, but not nearly in time. The police car hit the side of the semi going a hundred kilometers an hour. The force of the impact sliced off the entire roof of the car, instantly decapitating the Revolutionary Guards in the front seat, and then both the car and the semi erupted in flames that shot twenty and thirty feet into the air.
Behind them, the drivers of both ambulances slammed on their brakes as well, but there was no time to stop. They both crashed into the police cruiser and the semi and into each other. A fraction of a second later, Fox careened the van into the side of the rear ambulance at full speed, without ever braking, sending the ambulance rolling a dozen times or more into a rocky, barren field on the other side of the street.
For a moment, the Syrian police officers were transfixed — as was David — by the massive wreck in front of them. Fire and smoke. Burning rubber. Flying shards of glass and metal. And blood everywhere. But then one of the officers came to. Without warning, he swung back around, his pistol aimed at Torres, and Torres had no time to react. The officer pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession. One of the bullets went wide, shattering what was left of the front windshield of their SUV. But the other two hit Torres in the chest, sending him crashing to the pavement.
David couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Nor could the officer beside him. David saw his chance. He ducked down and reached for the MP5 on the backseat. Then he popped up again and took out the officer closest to him. He pivoted quickly and fired two short bursts at the officer on the other side of the car — the officer who had shot Torres — killing him instantly. David now scrambled around the front of the car. He got to Torres’s side, but it was already too late. His friend was dead, his eyes still open. Though he knew it was pointless, David checked for a pulse, but there was none to be found. This was it. He was gone. And David was enraged.
He began sprinting for the center ambulance, the one with the warhead. Several IRGC officers were beginning to crawl out of the mangled vehicle when they saw David coming at them. He was moving quickly and firing the MP5 in short bursts. Two of the Iranians — the two closest to him — went down. But the two on the other side of the ambulance got away, one breaking to the left, the other to the right.
David reached the ambulance. He could see a casket-like box in the back and wanted to confirm that was the warhead. But fires were raging all around him. The heat was unbearable, and the thick, acrid smoke made his eyes sting and water. He tried to wipe them clean, but doing so seemed to irritate them more. Then, out of the corner of his right eye, he saw one of the Iranian officers he’d shot reaching for his pistol and preparing to take aim. David unleashed another burst from the machine gun, and the man died instantly.