Countdown to Midnight, page 18
Flynn slid to a stop next to the BushCat and jumped off, letting it topple sideways with the motor still running. Time was too short to waste wrecking the bike so that it wouldn’t fall into enemy hands. Off to the west, he heard the faint clatter of rotors. The surviving Iranian scout helicopter was on its way.
He darted across to the aircraft and scrambled up into its cabin. It smelled strongly of gasoline. On this trip out, without the weight of a passenger, Van Horn had been able to carry the extra fuel she needed for a return flight aboard her BushCat instead of relying on the Predator drone’s jury-rigged cargo capability.
From the pilot’s seat, she shot him a dry smile. “Hey there, stranger. Need a lift?”
“Why, yes. I surely do,” Flynn said, matching her tone. He took the headset she offered and plugged in. “It seems like the locals are mighty pissed off at me right now.”
Van Horn shook her head in mock disapproval. “This is becoming a really bad habit, Nick. Stacking up dead bodies behind you is no way to go through life, you know.”
“I take your point, ma’am,” he said with an apologetic shrug. “But I didn’t exactly have any choice this time . . . not if I wanted to go on living, anyway.”
She laughed. “Well, I guess it’s okay, as long as you’re really, really sorry.”
Still smiling to herself, Van Horn ran the BushCat’s throttle up to full power, released its brakes, and started her takeoff roll. Responding instantly, the little plane bounded forward, bouncing and swaying across the bumpy ground while it steadily picked up speed. They’d only covered a few hundred feet when she pulled back on her control stick. Eagerly, the BushCat broke free of the earth and climbed away. She leveled off just a couple of hundred feet above the ground. They were flying east at around ninety knots, the light aircraft’s preferred cruising speed.
Flynn checked the mirror mounted on his side of the plane. There, several miles away to the west, he spotted a quick flash of red-tinged sunlight glinting off a clear canopy. He squinted against the glare, just making out the distant shape of a helicopter as it turned toward them. “Well, that sucks,” he said somberly. He looked across the cabin. “We’ve got company.”
Van Horn nodded calmly. “Figured so.” She glanced back at him. “Fixed wing or whirlybird?” she asked.
“A helicopter,” Flynn replied. “Probably an Agusta Bell 212, from what I saw earlier.”
“A Bell 212? That’s a nice flying machine,” she said thoughtfully. She craned her head to check the mirror on her side. “Coming on fast, too. It’s probably got an edge of about forty knots on us.”
Flynn frowned. “Just swell.” For lack of anything better to do, he drew his Glock, hit the release button to drop out the spent magazine, and then inserted a fresh one from his jacket pocket.
“Whoa there, Top Gun Flynn,” Van Horn said with a thin smile. “That 9mm peashooter of yours won’t be much use in a dogfight if it comes down to that.” She raised an eyebrow. “And I’m betting that helicopter’s packing serious firepower, right?”
“It’s got a door-mounted machine gun,” he admitted. “Most likely a 7.62mm Russian PKT-type.” The idea of trying to take on a faster, more heavily armed rotorcraft with his pistol did seem pretty crazy, put that way. Then again, what other options did they have? He looked at her. “Can this crate of yours even dogfight anyway?”
She laughed. “Oh hell, no. Aerobatics are strictly forbidden. Remember, this little beauty is made out of fabric and thin aluminum. If I pull too tight a turn, I’m liable to rip our wings right off.”
“This just gets better and better,” Flynn said flatly. Then he noted her relaxed profile. He sighed. “Okay, Miss Van Horn, what’s your plan?”
“What makes you think I have a plan?” she asked innocently.
He snorted. “Because I don’t think you even go into the ladies’ room without a plan.”
Van Horn flashed him a winning smile. “Insulting, I guess, but basically accurate.” She spoke into her headset mike. “Tiger Cat to Tomcat. You see the situation?”
Through his headset, Flynn heard the voice of Sara McCulloch, the Predator’s remote pilot, responding from her station hundreds of miles away in southwestern Afghanistan. “I see it, Tiger Cat. Come right to one-three-five and climb to five hundred feet.”
Obeying, Van Horn banked the BushCat to the right, altering her course slightly until they were heading southeast. She pulled back a little on the stick. The aircraft’s nose came up and they gained some altitude. They were now flying straight toward a nearby ridge that rose a couple of thousand feet higher still above the valley floor.
Off to the west, the Iranian helicopter—rapidly closing the gap between them—matched her maneuvers. Suddenly, several miles behind them both, two bright, split-second flashes lit the darkening sky.
“Fox Two,” McCulloch called succinctly.
Trailing smoke and fire, two tiny shapes slashed toward the Revolutionary Guard helicopter at Mach 2.2—more than seventeen hundred miles per hour. Eight seconds later, both missiles detonated within yards of their target. Dozens of fragments sleeted through the Agusta Bell 212. Wreathed in flames, the shattered helicopter spiraled down and smashed into the ground. A pillar of oily black smoke curled high into the air from the impact point.
Flynn gazed back at the crash site in silence for several seconds. Then he breathed out. He glanced across the cabin at Van Horn. “Unbelievable. You really brought that Predator drone along carrying air-to-air missiles?”
She nodded in satisfaction. “AIM-92 Stingers, to be precise. It seemed like a sensible precaution.”
Flynn stared at her. AIM-92s were the air-launched variants of the U.S. military’s shoulder-launched Stinger missiles. “Should I ask where you got them?”
Van Horn shrugged. “I think they fell off the back of a truck at some point. Maybe back in Alaska when I was up there doing one of my stints in the Air National Guard.”
He felt his eyebrows go up. “And you don’t think anyone’s going to notice that a couple of Stinger missiles have gone missing?”
She shook her head complacently. “Nope. Both were marked off as expended in training.” Her teeth flashed white in the darkened cabin. “Okay, so maybe that was a little premature.” Then she jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the smoke rising skyward behind them. “But it’s true now. The expended part, I mean.”
Flynn looked back at the burning wreckage of Iranian helicopter. No one could have survived that crash. He shook his head. “And what was that lecture I got earlier? About my bad habit of stacking up bodies behind us?”
Van Horn smiled serenely. “It must be the bad company I’m keeping.” She banked the BushCat back to the east—starting the long, arduous night flight through Iran’s mountains and across its vast deserts that would take them back to Afghanistan.
Southern Iran
The Next Day
Sourly, Pavel Voronin prodded a twisted and blackened piece of debris protruding from the sand with the toe of one of his handmade boots. He turned to the gray-bearded Iranian brigadier general standing next to him. Mohsen Shirazi commanded the Revolutionary Guard’s Aerospace Force. That put him in charge of all of Iran’s military missile and space efforts—most important of all now, those committed to MIDNIGHT. “So now we know for sure that an enemy has uncovered some of our most prized secrets,” he commented coldly.
Shirazi frowned. “Some, perhaps,” he admitted. “But not all of them.”
“Thanks to your traitor Khavari, they know about the Gulf Venture,” Voronin retorted. “And now their agents have seen your Zuljanah rocket in transit. Which means they were tipped off to the convoy from Shahrud by someone.” He scowled. “All things considered, Jerusalem has already learned far more about our business together than I find comfortable.”
Shirazi looked narrowly at the dapper, well-dressed Russian. “You’re still convinced this was an Israeli operation?”
“It’s the logical assumption,” Voronin pointed out. The ambush carried out against Viktor Skoblin in Vienna had been straight out of the Mossad playbook. And so was this. Who else but the Israelis would have the courage, skill, and, indeed, the sheer ruthlessness to carry out such a daring covert operation so far inside Iran? Certainly not the Americans or even the British, he concluded dismissively. Judging by what he read, their intelligence agencies were much too focused on playing domestic political games right now to willingly risk trained agents and equipment in a high-stakes gamble like the one they’d just witnessed.
Moodily, he kicked at the burnt-out remains of the helicopter again. “If we can be grateful for anything,” he said harshly, “it ought to be that the Israelis had only a small reconnaissance unit deployed near the highway, and not a more well-equipped commando force. Judging by the results here, a full-fledged attack on your convoy might well have reduced all our hopes for MIDNIGHT to smoldering wreckage.”
Slowly, Shirazi nodded in bleak acknowledgement. “If the Israelis have been alerted by what they’ve learned here—and elsewhere—we can expect them to react even more violently going forward,” he warned.
“I am aware of that,” Voronin snapped. He fought to regain his composure. He had too much riding on this enterprise to see it end in failure. Zhdanov had given him a blank check so far. But Russia’s president would never forgive him if MIDNIGHT resulted in yet another humiliating defeat. If his nation’s autocratic ruler had one defining characteristic, it was his readiness to sacrifice anyone he believed had failed him.
“Perhaps we should provide an armed naval escort for Gulf Venture when it sails,” Shirazi suggested. “To protect the tanker against air attack or a commando raid.”
“You think so?” Voronin said acidly. He snorted in derision. “Why not just publish all our detailed plans for this secret operation in the New York Times or the Washington Post? It would certainly be simpler and cheaper than surrounding what is supposed to be an innocent civilian merchant ship with a flotilla of your fast-attack speedboats and other warships.”
The Iranian’s mouth thinned in anger. He folded his arms. “Then what do you propose we do?”
Voronin told him.
Shirazi frowned. “Your concept has merit,” he conceded at last. “But implementing your ideas will add several days and significant costs to the tanker’s fitting out process. My superiors in Tehran will not be pleased.”
“Better a minor delay now, than complete disaster later,” Voronin reminded the other man bluntly. “Especially since neither of us is likely to survive for long if this operation fails.”
“A persuasive argument,” Shirazi agreed at length. He nodded. “Very well, it shall be done.”
Twenty-One
CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
Some Days Later
Miranda Reynolds, the head of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, wondered if she ought to mark this down as a red-letter day in the imaginary diary she’d didn’t actually keep. High-ranking officials in the Agency had learned the hard way that even the most personal of records might be subject to subpoena by busybody Congressional investigators determined to cause trouble. In the circumstances, it was safer to rely entirely on your own memory, she thought cynically—unless, of course, you needed to jot down a pro forma protest of some questionable, or even outright illegal, order from a superior . . . at least as a measure of limited protection against possible future prosecution.
Nevertheless, she probably should find some permanent way to memorialize this meeting. Since his appointment, Charles Horne, the new director of Central Intelligence, had made it clear that he preferred working with his senior subordinates through a web of toadies and underlings. And yet here she was, summoned to his private office for an emergency intel briefing from Philip Demopoulos, who ran the Agency’s Directorate of Analysis. Whatever else was going on, she guessed that was a sign the DCI didn’t want any other potential leakers—or witnesses, maybe—to hear what they were going to discuss.
For now, she sat quietly in one of the two chairs placed in front of Horne’s desk. Demopoulos, wavy-haired with a trim, graying goatee, occupied the other. She thought he seemed on edge, which probably meant he suspected his news would not be welcomed.
Slowly and methodically, Horne sorted through the sheaf of photographs he’d been handed by Demopoulos shortly after they all sat down. Although he said nothing at first, his thick lips compressed in obvious annoyance as he fanned them out across his desk. They showed what appeared to be a convoy of military trucks and other vehicles on a road somewhere. Canvas-shrouded shapes of some sort were tied down on some of the flatbed trailers shown. His fleshy face reddened slightly while he studied them.
At last, he looked up at Demopoulos. “What’s all this supposed to be, Phil?” he demanded, indicating the photos.
“We believe those are the separate stages of a large missile or space rocket,” the other man said carefully. “One the Iranians shipped by road to the Bandar Abbas area several days ago.”
Horne frowned. “How do you know that?” He tapped one of the pictures. Beyond the line of trucks, it showed a barren, rocky wasteland with sharp-edged mountains rising in the background. “For God’s sake, these images could have been taken almost anywhere in Iran. The whole damned country’s almost nothing but desert or arid, mountainous wilderness.”
“The digital file containing those pictures was sent to us by a well-informed source we’ve always found reliable,” Demopoulos explained. “And we’ve confirmed the geolocation data provided with every photo. There’s absolutely no question that these images were, in fact, taken along a stretch of highway not far north of Bandar Abbas.”
Horne’s frown deepened. “Ah, yes, your mysterious ‘reliable’ source,” he said heavily. “The same one, I recall, who tried to sell us the bullshit story about that oil tanker Tehran was supposedly retrofitting for some nefarious purpose a while back.”
Demopoulos let that pass.
Reynolds grimaced. She’d assigned a small team to discreetly uncover where Demopoulos really obtained his gems of raw intelligence from inside Iran. So far, to her intense irritation, they’d come up mostly empty-handed. All anyone in the Analysis Directorate could tell them was that their chief’s eyes-only source was code-named GLASS ISLE. One of her more literary-minded subordinates had rather hesitantly suggested this could be a veiled reference to the Isle of Avalon in Arthurian legend, the place where King Arthur’s sword, Excalibur, was forged and where the gravely wounded king was said to have vanished into legend—but where the hell was that type of mythological gobbledygook supposed to lead her?
As it was, her efforts to dig into Demopoulos’s activities were already sliding dangerously close to what her colleagues in the Agency would consider spying on another directorate. And that was strictly taboo. Inhouse investigations were supposed to be the sole purview of the CIA’s Office of Security. Power struggles occurred, but they were ordinarily waged within strict bureaucratic limits. No one wanted to risk a messy, knives-out fight inside Langley. Not one that might leak to the press and Congress and make the CIA as a whole look bad, anyway.
“Okay, so those photos were taken near Bandar Abbas,” Horne said finally. “But why is that supposed to be significant? The Iranians have hundreds of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles in their arsenal, don’t they? So the fact that they’re moving one of them around by road is hardly an earthshaking development, is it?”
“Scale analysis indicates this missile or rocket is significantly larger than most of those in Iran’s arsenal,” Demopoulos said patiently. “Although we can’t be sure without getting a close look at the actual weapon itself, my experts tell me that it’s most probably a newly completed Zuljanah three-stage rocket—or a comparably sized missile of a brand-new type. One we’ve never seen before.”
Horne looked momentarily blank.
“Either way, this can’t be a routine redeployment,” Demopoulos told him calmly. “So far, the Iranians have only flown their Zuljanah rocket twice that we know of. Once in early 2021. And one more time last summer—from somewhere in the southern Caspian Sea. Probably off one of their fixed oil platforms converted into a launch site.”
“So?”
“There aren’t any Iranian missile flight test centers in the Bandar Abbas region,” Demopoulos said. “Which indicates this transfer isn’t related to a regular research and development program.” He leaned forward in his chair. “And there’s one more piece of evidence which suggests the Iranians have bigger plans for this rocket. We believe it was shipped to Bandar Abbas from the Shahrud Test Site, hundreds of miles away. But we don’t have a single image from any satellite pass over the past two weeks that shows this truck convoy on the road. Not one. That alone tells me Tehran has gone to extraordinary lengths to try to keep this movement secret.”
Horne frowned. “And I suppose you’ve got a theory about why that might be?”
Reynolds saw Demopoulos tense up. Interesting, she thought. Now we’re getting to the part of this briefing he’s sure won’t make the DCI very happy.
“The most reasonable conclusion is that they intend to smuggle this rocket out of Iran aboard the tanker they’ve been refitting for the past few months,” he said. “We got a good picture of the Gulf Venture on this morning’s KH-11 pass. The ship has moved out of the repair yard and is currently moored alongside a nearby pier loading crude oil into its remaining storage tanks.” He laid another photograph on Horne’s desk.
Reynolds studied it. The Iranian tanker was much larger than she’d expected, more than eight hundred feet long and over a hundred feet wide. The damned thing was as big as a battleship, she realized. A maze of piping, other mechanical structures, and what looked like several groups of chained-down, forty-foot-long freight containers covered its enormous deck.
Horne scowled. “Even assuming that this wild-assed guess of yours is correct,” he ground out, “what exactly are we supposed to do about it, Phil?” He shook his head. “The UN arms embargo on Iran expired years ago. Technically, Tehran is allowed to sell weapons to any legal government. The methods the Iranians use to ship those arms doesn’t alter the ultimate legalities involved.”
