Crocker imagined Alizadeh throwing his head back and laughing.
The discussion then focused on Ali Jafari and General Suleimani. Donaldson looked at his watch and suggested they break for lunch while he sat in on a video conference with the White House.
Crocker wasn’t hungry. He said, “I recommend that we strike back at the people who are planning these attacks and hit their headquarters.”
“Whose headquarters?” Donaldson asked back.
“Quds Force headquarters,” Crocker answered.
“I think Chief Crocker has raised an interesting scenario,” Sy Blanc offered.
“Where is it?” Donaldson said, gathering the papers he’d spread out on the table.
Anders: “Where’s what?”
Donaldson: “Quds Force HQ.”
Walker cleared her throat. “They have an office in Tehran that is actually located in the compound of our former embassy,” she said. “But their national headquarters is in the city of Ahvaz, in the southwest. They moved it there several years ago to be closer to Iraq.”
“That’s the office General Suleimani and Farhed Alizadeh operate out of, and where they’ve been planning and launching the attacks against us?” Donaldson asked as he stood.
“As far as we know, yes,” she responded.
Donaldson: “I want you to confirm that.”
“I will, sir.”
Crocker and Sutter sat with Sy Blanc in a corner of the CIA cafeteria. Blanc looked out the window at the snowflakes starting to fall on the patio and said, “Why are we always so slow to respond?”
“Remember the USS Cole bombing in 2000 by al-Qaeda?” Sutter asked. “I hope we don’t make the same mistake again.”
Blanc tasted a forkful of his tuna salad, then pushed it away and drowned the taste with coffee. “The Quds Force has been a huge, ugly thorn in our side for years, especially in Iraq, where they have hundreds of agents who’ve been actively arming and running the Shiite militia since 2003. In my opinion they’re directly or indirectly responsible for hundreds of U.S. coalition casualties.” Blanc looked as though he had swallowed something bitter.
Sutter: “How do you know this?”
“NSA managed to eavesdrop on a meeting in Tehran in 2008, shortly after the Green Zone was pummeled by rockets. Iraq’s vice president at the time, Adel Abdul Mahdi, asked General Suleimani if the Quds Force was behind the attacks. Suleimani joked, and I quote, ‘If the fire was accurate, it was ours.’ ”
“We should have punished him for that,” Sutter commented.
Blanc had more to get off his chest. “In Afghanistan, they run something called the Ansar Corps, headed by another religious zealot named General Gholamreza Baghbani, who has organized a network of drug traffickers to ship opium and heroin into Iran and supply the Taliban with weapons. They’ve got another unit, Unit 400, which is currently fighting alongside President Assad’s forces in Syria. And now there’s Unit 5000. These fuckers are evil. And to a real extent, Suleimani, Alizadeh, and others have more authority than the president, because they report directly to the ayatollah.”
“Alarming,” Sutter said.
“The fact is, the Quds Force has been working against us and attacking us for years, and we’ve done nothing about it. I suppose it’s because so many of their activities have occurred far away, making the threat they pose somewhat abstract to many of us here in Washington.”
Crocker saw Leslie Walker coming toward them, weaving around the tables. Judging from her expression, Crocker surmised she was carrying an important message. Turning to Sy Blanc, he said, “Quds Force officers and their proxies have tortured me and my men and kidnapped my wife, and we have the physical and psychological scars to prove it. So Alizadeh and his terrorists aren’t abstract to me, and I couldn’t be more motivated to get them. I want that chance, and I hope to God I get it.”
“Me, too,” Anders said. “Me, too.”
Chapter Twenty
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.
– Mahatma Gandhi
They flew back that night in the same Gulfstream jet. As Sutter sat across the aisle pecking on his laptop, Crocker studied the satellite photos Leslie Walker had given him of Quds Force headquarters in Ahvaz, Iran-a six-story concrete structure with little porthole-like windows, antennas and satellite dishes on the flat roof. It was located in a densely built-up urban area, with a bank on one side, a modern movie theater on the corner. He used a red pen to circle military checkpoints at both ends of the block, and was already considering how he and his men might enter the area undetected.
Crocker had been to Tehran but had never set foot in Ahvaz, which he now learned is a city of approximately 1.5 million on the banks of the Karun River. Located in the Khuzestan desert and surrounded by sandstone hills, Ahvaz, according to the Weather Channel website, is one of the hottest cities on the planet, with the average high temperature in July a toasty 115.2 degrees and peaks regularly hitting 120. The city also had the distinction of being the world’s most polluted, according to the World Health Organization, with an annual average of 372 micrograms of airborne particles per cubic meter of air. Washington, D.C., by contrast, had a level of 18 micrograms, and Tokyo 23. The WHO study cited sulfur dioxide and nitrogen exhaust from nearby power plants, burn-off from oil wells, and vehicle exhaust as the main pollutants.
Not a great place to live, Crocker thought. Neighboring Iraq had attempted to annex the city in 1980 during the Iran-Iraq War. Reading further, he learned that a minority of the area’s residents are Arabs rather than Persians, which might have explained Saddam Hussein’s ambitions-either that, or it was further evidence that the man had been insane.
They landed just before midnight. Driving home with Elvis crooning “Something” over the radio, his brain jumped ahead, calculating where his team would insert, what they’d need in terms of equipment and support, and how they’d move within Ahvaz. He couldn’t help himself, even though he was tired and a final decision regarding the scope and target of the mission hadn’t been reached. Outside it was cold and windy. As a kid in Massachusetts, he liked to sleep in front of the fireplace on nights like this.
The grandfather clock on the second floor chimed the quarter hour as he entered, patted Brando on the head, and started upstairs. He was looking forward to the warm bed he shared with Holly, but the door to the master bedroom was locked. Wondering why, and realizing this had never happened before, he tried the door again. He considered opening the couch in his office and sleeping there so as not to wake her, but he was worried, and decided to knock instead. “Holly?” he called. “Holly, are you okay?”
Half a minute later she opened the door. Wearing a long cotton nightgown, she looked disheveled and tired, with a bandage on her chin. “You’re home,” she said, half asleep and heading back to the bed.
“Is anything wrong?” he asked. “How come you locked the door?”
“I thought I heard something downstairs.”
“It’s windy outside. Could’ve been a tree branch.” He saw her 9mm automatic on the nightstand next to her side of the bed. “What happened to your chin?”
“I went downstairs to check on the noise. I wasn’t completely awake. I slipped on the stairs and tripped. Silly me.”
He took her by the hand, sat her on the edge of the bed, and cleaned and rebandaged the cut on her chin. Then he checked her teeth and found no damage. “You hurt anything else?” he asked.
“Not really, except for my pride,” she answered, looking embarrassed. Staring at the carpet, she shook her head and asked, “What’s wrong with me, Tom?” with sad resignation in her voice.