Ali stood up. “If I’m going to stop the Qataris in time to find out who that is for sure, I have to get moving.”
The Crown Prince stood up as well, and together they hurried out of the headquarters building.
Colonel Arif Shahin had been skeptical when Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Vahid Turani had told him he believed Acting Supreme Leader Reza Fagheh would imprison him and the rest of the Assembly of Experts as part of his plan to take permanent control of Iran’s government. After all, he’d thought, how could such a drastic step be justified?
Well, it turned out, by the threat of retaliation for a nuclear explosion on the Saudi Gulf coast. The Assembly of Experts Secretariat building was indeed a logical target, and from what he’d learned there had been no real resistance to the Ayatollahs' movement to a “bomb shelter.”
Which is where Arif was headed now, at the head of a platoon of Rakhsh APCs, each holding two crewmen and eight heavily armed soldiers. Two of the APCs had a 12.7 mm machine gun mounted on a rotating turret, while the other two had a 30 mm autocannon.
It was 3 AM, and Arif was confident that most of the men theoretically
“guarding” the Ayatollahs who made up the Assembly of Experts would be fast asleep. As a regular Army officer, he had a low opinion of the professionalism of the Pasdaran. They might have exactly the same APCs and hand weapons, but because of what he saw as their poor training and discipline he would sincerely prefer one of his platoons to four Pasdaran units.
Arif could have used heavier tracked Boragh APCs for this mission, but had picked these wheeled Rakhsh APCs instead precisely because they were used primarily by the Pasdaran. He had sped through two checkpoints on his way to the building where the Ayatollahs were being held without challenge, simply by keeping himself and all of his other men with their regular Army uniforms inside the vehicles and out of sight.
Once his Rakhsh had turned the corner to the final street, Arif gunned its engine and was upon the Pasdaran guard unit in seconds.
Arif was sure he’d achieved surprise when he saw a cigarette drop nervelessly from the mouth of the Pasdaran officer now standing next to his APC. As Arif had been told, it was one of only two Pasdaran APCs stationed outside the building holding the Ayatollahs. Arif had just popped the hatch and lifted himself out high enough that the officer could see his regular Army uniform.
Arif demanded, “What is your name and rank?”
The man automatically replied, “Guard Captain Izad Pishdar.”
Arif nodded. “Good. You are in command of this unit?” he asked.
Izad’s head bobbed up and down, as he looked at the four APCs, from which several dozen heavily armed soldiers were now rapidly emerging.
Arif nodded again. “Excellent! You stand relieved. You and your men are to return to base. We will take over guard duty for the Assembly of Experts.
Here is your copy of the orders.”
Arif held out a copy of the orders that had been prepared for the operation, including the genuine signature of an Army general and the expertly forged signature of the Pasdaran Tehran region commander, a region which included Qom.
Izad frowned and shook his head. “I will have to confirm these orders with my headquarters.”
Arif’s expression hardened. “You can read for yourself that the orders place me in command from the moment I arrive, and that you are to return to your base immediately. You are welcome to check with your headquarters while you are en route. Considering the hour, I think it will take you some time to reach the Pasdaran commander who signed these orders.”
Now Izad looked even more stubborn. “I don’t care what this paper says; we’re not moving until I get confirmation from headquarters.”
Arif had expected it to come to this, and all his men were ready. At his hand signal, the machine guns and cannons on all four APCs wheeled towards the two Pasdaran APCs and the few men outside them, including Izad. At the same moment, the thirty-two soldiers simultaneously pulled back the slides on their submachine guns. The loud “clack” echoed in the cool night air.
Arif’s smile had no warmth in it all. “Captain, I have my orders and I intend to obey them. I strongly suggest you and your men get inside your APCs and head back to base, where you can confirm that you have done the same.”
Izad looked like he was about to say something, but thought better of it, and instead started to climb into his APC.
Just as Izad was about to climb inside, Arif called across to him. “Oh, and Captain, please make sure that your APCs’ weapons stay pointed away from my vehicles. We wouldn’t want any… accidents.”
With one last scowl, Izad’s head disappeared inside his APC, quickly followed by the other Pasdaran men outside. The two Pasdaran APCs’ engines rumbled to life, and a minute later they had turned the corner and were out of sight.
Buses had been driven to a public parking garage the previous day, and the drivers were now back in them, waiting for Arif’s command. He now lifted his radio handset and gave it, and then climbed down from his APC to begin the hardest part of this mission.
“What’s grumpier than a sleepy Ayatollah?” sounded like the beginning of a really bad joke. He had to get the Ayatollahs on the buses that would take them to a nearby regular Army base and safety before the Pasdaran came back in force.
Arif hoped he could convince the Ayatollahs to go with him in time.
Chapter Twenty Three
President Hernandez walked into the Situation Room at the White House thinking yet again, “I really wish I could spend less time here.”
As a former businessman, he had run for office with an agenda focused almost entirely on domestic affairs. Hernandez had been alarmed by the shortage of workers with even basic literacy produced by what had been one of the world’s best educational systems. Collapsing bridges, potholed roads, trains that either derailed or if carrying oil actually exploded, and airports like JFK that guaranteed a visitor’s first impression of the US would be negative were just a few of the problems Hernandez was determined to fix.
But it seemed like the rest of the world didn’t care how he wanted to focus his time, or America’s resources.
“So, somebody set off a nuke that wiped out a Saudi desalination plant, another exploded within sight of Riyadh, and two separate armor forces are on their way to the capital. The Saudis are asking us to help. That leaves me with two questions — Who’s behind all this, and what can we do to help the Saudis?”
General Robinson, the Air Force Chief of Staff replied while signaling to a Colonel to stand up. “Sir, we’ve prepared two briefings that will do our best to answer both questions, one at a time. I’ll say up front that there’s still plenty of questions left to answer, but we think we know enough to prepare an effective response.”
Half an hour later, the President leaned back and shook his head. “When you said there were still unanswered questions, you weren’t kidding. It seems pretty clear that somebody suckered the Saudis into putting a lot of their armor into Yemen, and then blew up a train station to make it harder to get back. Somebody blew up the Saudi armored force blockading Qatar.
Somebody set off two nukes in Saudi Arabia, and tried to make it three but were stopped.”
Hernandez paused and shook his head again. “Both we and the Saudis think Iran is behind all this, but we have no real proof, and Iran’s politicians are denying involvement at the top of their lungs. One of the armor groups headed to Riyadh has a camouflage capability we think they somehow stole from us, but we don’t know how. And since both armor groups put together don’t have the men or tanks needed to occupy Riyadh, even if they get there it’s hard to see what they could hope to accomplish.”