60

Qom, Iran

David felt a tap on his shoulder.

He turned around, and there was Javad Nouri, surrounded by a half-dozen plainclothes bodyguards.

“Mr. Tabrizi, good to see you again.”

“Mr. Nouri, you as well,” David said. He wondered if Javad and his team had seen the jets.

“I trust you had no trouble getting here.”

“Not at all,” David said.

“Have you ever been here before?”

It seemed like an odd question, given the moment.

“Actually, I’m ashamed to say I have not.”

“Someday I will have to give you a tour.”

“I would like that very much.”

* * *

Karkas Mountains, Iran

Reaching the mountains, Avi Yaron cleared the closest peak.

Then he pushed the yoke forward, diving into one of the canyons. Yonah craned his neck but couldn’t get a visual, though the missile was still on his radarscope. They hadn’t shaken it yet.

Snaking through the canyons, Avi kept pushing the plane faster and faster, burning tremendous amounts of fuel every second.

“Avi, it’s right on us,” Yonah shouted.

Avi accelerated still further and held his breath. Now it wasn’t fuel he feared. Now it was the split-second decisions he was having to make every few hundred meters. One wrong move and they could plow into a mountainside. One wrong move and they could scrape against the top of a ridge, gutting their fuselage and rupturing their fuel tanks. Either way, they’d crash and burn. They’d never have time to eject, and even if they did, neither wanted to be captured by the Iranians. That was a fate worse than death.

* * *

Qom, Iran

Javad looked at the box in David’s hands.

“Is that the package we were expecting?”

“It is,” David said, “but we have a problem.”

“What is that?”

David glanced around. He noticed there were several more bodyguards taking up positions in a perimeter around them. There was also a large white SUV waiting by the curb with a guard holding the back door open. Ahead of it was another SUV, presumably serving as the lead security car. Behind it was a third, completing the package.

“Most of the phones are damaged and unusable,” David explained, handing the mangled box to Javad. “Something must have happened in the shipping.”

Javad cursed and his expression immediately darkened. “We need these.”

“I know.”

“Now what are we going to do?”

“Look, I can go back to Munich and get more. It’s what I wanted to do in the first place. But—”

“But Esfahani told you not to leave.”

“Well, I—”

“I know, I know. Allah help me. Esfahani is a fool. If he weren’t the nephew of Mohsen Jazini, he wouldn’t be involved at all.”

“What do you want me to do, Mr. Nouri?” David asked. “That’s all that matters, what you and the Promised One want. Please know that I will do anything to serve my Lord.”

The words had just fallen from his lips when he heard brakes screech behind him. Then everything seemed to go into slow motion. He heard the crack of a sniper rifle, and one of Javad’s bodyguards went down.

Crack, crack.

Two more of Javad’s men went down. Then Javad himself took a bullet in the right shoulder and began staggering. He was bleeding badly. David threw himself on Javad to protect him as the gunfire intensified and more bodyguards went down.

He turned to see where the shooting was coming from. He saw buses. He saw taxis. He saw people running and screaming. Then he saw a white van driving past. The side door was open. He could see flashes of gunfire pouring out of three muzzles. By now, an Iranian police officer had his revolver out and was shooting back. Two plainclothes agents on the periphery raised submachine guns and fired at the van as it sped away, weaving in and out of traffic and disappearing around the bend.

* * *

Yossi could now see his target just eight kilometers ahead.

The once top-secret uranium enrichment facility at Qom had been revealed to the world on September 25, 2009, but the Israeli Mossad had known about it since late 2007. Designed to hold three thousand centrifuges, there was no way that this center was for developing peaceful, civilian nuclear power, as the ayatollahs comically claimed. The complex was built deep underground. It was built underneath an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps base. It was heavily guarded and surrounded by a phalanx of surface-to-air missiles.

But not for long.

Two of the three F-16s behind him pulled even on his left. His own wingman pulled even on his right. Yossi took his weapons off safety and fired six AGM-65 Mavericks, one right after the other. A split second later, his comrades followed suit. For a moment, the air in front of Yossi was filled with a blaze of antiaircraft artillery.

At nearly the speed of sound, all twenty-four air-to-ground missiles screamed into the radar stations and the missile silos and the triple-A batteries surrounding the main facilities and blew them to smithereens. Yossi pulled back on his yoke to gain some altitude. He fired his first GPS-guided, two-thousand-pound bunker-buster bomb, then his second as well. The ground shook, writhed, and buckled, and soon everything Yossi could see below him was ablaze. It was time to gather his men and head for home.

* * *

David heard the deafening roar of the explosions, one after another.

He turned toward the mountains and could see enormous balls of fire and plumes of smoke rising into the sky and the Israeli fighter jets disappearing into the clouds. As the ground convulsed violently, the minarets began to totter. People were again screaming and running in all directions as the first tower came crashing down, followed by the second, and suddenly the turquoise dome of the mosque split in half.

David covered his head and made sure Javad was covered too. Then he turned and surveyed the carnage. Bodies were sprawled. Some were dead. Others were severely wounded. David turned Javad over. He was covered in blood. His eyes were dilated, but he was still breathing. He was still alive.

“Javad, look at me,” David said gently. “It’s going to be okay. Just keep your eyes on me. I’m going to pray for you.”

Javad flickered to life for a moment and mouthed the words Thank you. Then his eyes closed, and David called for help.

“Somebody, help. My friend needs help.”

Guns still drawn, three injured bodyguards rushed to his side as David carefully picked up Javad and carried him to the white SUV. Together, they helped lay Javad on the backseat. One security man climbed in the back with him. Another climbed into one of the middle seats. The third shut and locked the side door, then got in the front passenger seat.

“Wait, wait; you forgot these,” David yelled just before the guard closed the door.

He picked up the box of satellite phones and gave them to the guard. “The Mahdi wanted these,” David said. “They don’t all work. But some of them do.”

He pulled out a pen and wrote his mobile number on the box. “Here’s my number. Have the Mahdi’s people call me and tell me how Javad is. And tell me if there’s anything I can do for the Mahdi himself.”

The guard thanked David and shook his hand vigorously. Then the door closed. The motorcade raced off, and David stood there alone, staring at the billows of smoke rising from the air strikes just over the horizon.

He turned and rushed to the side of one of the severely wounded guards. He could hear police sirens and ambulances in the distance. They would be there soon. David took off his jacket and used it to put pressure on the man’s bleeding leg, and as he did, he silently prayed over the man too, asking the true God to comfort him and even heal him. This man was an enemy, to be sure, but David figured God loved him anyway.

Emergency vehicles began pulling up to the scene, and medics had to push their way through the crowds that had formed to triage the wounded and get them to the nearest hospitals. In the commotion, David stepped back and blended in and soon slipped away, never to be questioned, much less exposed.

* * *

Karkas Mountains, Iran

The missile was bearing down on them.

Avi didn’t know these canyons. Yonah knew he didn’t know them. But faster and faster they went.

Avi pulled back on the yoke and shot straight up into the atmosphere. The missile stayed on them. Avi pulled harder, flipping the plane and doing a full 180 until they were sizzling through the narrow canyon walls again.

“Avi, watch out!” Yonah yelled.

Avi pulled up slightly and just in time, missing a ridge by less than twenty meters. Then he banked hard to the right, missing the side of another peak by even less. It was a gutsy move and a close one, but it now put them out in the open, away from the mountains, and there was nowhere left to run.

But just then both men heard an explosion behind them as the missile missed the turn and ran straight into the cliff. Avi felt the jet shake. He could actually feel the intense heat of the flames meant for them. Once again he had cheated death and couldn’t describe the experience. It was exhilarating—intoxicating—and Avi hollered at the top of his lungs. Yonah joined him.

They were young and invincible and the new heroes of Israel, and they were headed for home.