I grasped my rip cord and watched the Absolute Height Above Ground readout:
3,358 feet.
2,912 feet.
2,695 feet.
2,500 feet. I pulled my rip cord.
The main chute unfolded with a rustle of cloth. The chute billowed into a square, and the harness tightened around my torso and thighs to absorb the tug of the opening shock. Spot on. I gave Dooley a quick thanks and checked my rate of descent against the horizon. All good. Grasping the steering toggles on the front risers, I swung in a wide spiral to complete my ground reconnaissance.
Still no sign of life. The LZ looked clear of rocks and fallen timber. Thank God for satellite imagery.
I unclipped my jump bag and felt it jerk against the end of the tether hooked to my harness.
I took aim at the landing point. I held my legs out, knees bent, and hips loose. It’s all about absorbing the impact, the Black Hats preached. You walk away with a broken leg, just hope the walk’s not too long. The Black Hats were full of great advice.
At the last moment, I pulled both steering toggles to flare the parachute and touched down no harder than stepping off a porch. Nicely done, Jake. But this was no time to celebrate.
Landing was the time when I was most vulnerable. If the bad guys were onto me, I was dead. I scrambled to gather the parachute, unsnap the harness and instrument console, and step free. The readout in my visor blinked off. Releasing the latches of my helmet, I gave a twist and pulled it off. Cool, humid air rushed into my nostrils, and my lungs celebrated the rush of good, old-fashioned air.
I zipped open the jump bag and dumped out the backpack with my mission equipment and provisions. I bunched the parachute and harness into a tight knot and crammed it into the jump bag. I forced the helmet in and zipped it closed.
One more detail. I extended the self-destruct lever on the side of the instrument console. A pull on the lever sent a surge of electricity that fried the circuitry and erased the software. Not something the NSA wanted laying around.
Jump bag in one hand, backpack in the other, I hustled into the trees for cover, a voice in my head shouting, “Move your ass!”
I ducked into the darkest shadows and shrugged out of my pressure suit. I had civilian clothes underneath, jeans and a shirt. I carried the Walther and an extra magazine in a shoulder holster.
I plopped onto the ground and swapped my HALO boots for a pair of black cross-trainers from inside the backpack. I slipped into my jacket — new passports in one pocket, envelopes of money in another — and put a baseball cap on my head.
Finally, I dug the iPhone from my shirt pocket and turned it on. I activated the satellite-communications app and sent encrypted text messages to General Rutledge and Mr. Elliot: Feet dry.
I stuffed all the HALO equipment into the jump bag. I dragged the bag into a thicket of junipers and jammed it deep into the bramble. I camouflaged the spot with loose branches. This gear was easily worth a quarter of a million dollars. Well, no skin off my nose. If the government really wanted it back, they could send a battalion of marines in to get it.
I traversed the hill, staying in a low crouch, and inched my way to the crest. I dug into a hollow between two low-lying junipers. From there, I had an open view of the Fasham — Tehran Road and the fork that I had designated as my diversion LZ, the spot where I’d told Deputy Director of Operations Otto Wiseman I intended to land at daybreak. Thirty minutes from now.
My thirst caught up to me. I guzzled one of the water bottles from my backpack. Then I munched on an energy bar. I pulled a Zeiss digital telescope from the backpack and connected it to my iPhone to survey the area.
Exactly two minutes passed before I spotted a line of vehicles approaching from the south on the Fasham — Tehran Road. I spotted two small 4 × 4s with machine guns mounted on top, followed by two cargo trucks. They reached the fork in the road and fanned to the west about a hundred meters, a wake of fine dust marking their passage. The trucks halted. The back flaps of each were pushed aside and a squad of black-bearded Republican Guards jumped with easy steps and full combat gear to the ground. The cargo trucks retraced their tracks to the Fasham — Tehran Road and drove until they were out of sight. The soldiers melted into the surrounding brush. The 4 × 4s crawled beneath a canopy of trees that made them invisible from the air. They trained their machine guns on the fork in the road and waited.
I plugged a line jack into the side of my iPhone and fitted an earbud into my right ear. I tuned in to the radio-scan mode that the NSA techs had modified for the phone. The scan latched on to the strongest signal. The signal was close. Very close.
My Farsi was rusty. But I recognized it when I heard it, and I managed to interpret an irritated voice saying, “Okay, the sun’s coming up. Where’s the target? He should have landed by now.”
I shook my head in disgust. I’d been right all along. Somebody close to the DDO had leaked my plans; or maybe the DDO had leaked them himself. Who didn’t matter to me at that moment. I’d fended off the ultimate double cross. I was alive. The mission was still intact.
CHAPTER 13
I taped another thirty seconds of the growing frustration among the Republican Guard troops who were expecting Jake Conlan to parachute at any second into the crossfire of their machine guns. The tape would provide General Rutledge with sufficient evidence to institute an investigation into the security breach apparently infecting my operation. I would forward the audio link the first chance I had.
Either someone in the MEK had tipped off the Iranian government or someone in DDO Otto Wiseman’s sphere of influence had leaked word of my HALO drop. I still hoped I was wrong about Wiseman. After all, he and I were supposed to be fighting the same fight, right? To keep the land of the red, white, and blue safe from scumbags just like the ones hiding in the bushes not a hundred yards from me.
Of course, I was also acting under the assumption that the leak wasn’t coming from the office of my good friend General Tom Rutledge, something I could hardly bring myself to consider. But since I also knew that Mr. Elliot had no such prejudice, I would send him the same audio link. Mr. Elliot would leave not a single stone unturned, including the general’s entire staff. I told myself it was a case of better safe than sorry and had nothing to do with my friendship with Tom.
I switched off the radio scan. I’d heard enough. I also had no idea whether or not the Republican Guard had the capability of scanning radio signals this far from Tehran, but I had no intention of giving them the chance.
I shifted positions, lying prone under the dense foliage of the junipers with only my left hand peeking out with the Zeiss digital telescope. I panned the entire area and followed the image through the iPhone. I hit the zoom function and zeroed in on the wooded area where some very serious soldiers were waiting. Bastards were in for a very long wait.
I switched modes on the Zeiss to the thermal viewer. I counted twenty red-and-orange images clumped inside the brush. As the minutes dragged on, the images became restless and shifted positions, clearly as undisciplined as they were impatient.
True, I may have escaped the Guards’ less-than-professional trap on this inauspicious morning, but now I had to consider just how much they knew about my mission. If they had any idea I was headed for the suspected nuclear weapons facility in Qom — information Chief of Staff Landon Fry had shared with me — then their security there would be on high alert. If they knew I was onto the money-laundering pipeline that ran from an online banker in Amsterdam named Atash Morshed to Sepehr Tale, Iran’s undersecretary for economic development, then they would be blanketing Tale with security. Contingencies. Always work the contingencies, Mr. Elliot preached. Make them work for you.