FORTY-THREE
Tehran, Iran
Joshua cried out. Somewhere in his numbness and confusion he felt searing pain. He couldn’t locate it at first. His body was not on the ground. He thought he was flying … no … that wasn’t it. I’m hanging.
Joshua Jordan struggled to see where he was. As he did, he located the source of his torturing pain. In each of his shoulders. They were pinned behind him, in hog-tie fashion. He was hanging from a wall. The tips of his feet were barely touching the concrete floor. His chest had been stripped bare, and his shoes and socks were off.
He blinked and shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs. Think back, think back. What happened …?
It started coming back.
He had been climbing into the Jeep with Colonel Kinney. The other members of the IDF team had already left the testing site. He remembered seeing the dust from their trucks ahead.
Then, from somewhere behind them, an Israeli Apache helicopter came swooping down. It landed fifty feet away. A man wearing an IDF uniform came striding out with two other soldiers. He said, “Colonel Jordan, urgent message …”
The man in the IDF uniform held out a piece of paper. Joshua climbed out of the Jeep as Kinney yelled to him to stop. Then, one of the soldiers dropped to a kneeling position, close enough that Joshua could see the soldier was aiming a strange-looking handgun at him. Joshua turned back to the Jeep. Then something struck Joshua in the back of the thigh. He grasped for it. A dart protruded from his skin. He tried to run, but the dizziness stopped him. He dragged his feet as if they were cinder blocks. Gunshots, a lot of them, were being fired. He saw Clint Kinney firing back fiercely from the ground next to the Jeep, and then Kinney was hit and went down. Joshua fell into the vehicle and found the other handgun with the clip already in. He turned clumsily and started firing toward the helicopter, emptying the clip. Someone yelped in pain. But Joshua couldn’t hold on. The pistol dropped from his hand. He was blacking out. The last thing he remembered was a bearded man bending over him and laughing.
Now Joshua was in a concrete room hanging from a hook. There was enough light for him to get an idea of where he was. There was a drain in the middle of the floor. And blood stains. This place of cruelty had been used recently.
Then he heard voices outside. One guy asked, “Hale shoma chetor ast?” Another man answered something about being okay, but his wife was sick. They were making small talk. Joshua recognized the language. Persian Farsi, the language of Iran. Years before, when he’d been running spy plane flyovers to document Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Pentagon had taught him some Farsi in case he was shot down and captured.
That never happened, though there was a story behind that too. Although Josh was feeling light-headed and woozy with pain, he found himself floating back to that distant point in time, to that last time he’d flown his newest generation U-2. He’d been alone in the bubble, thousands of feet above Iran, with only the sound of his breathing in his mask. Inhale. Exhale. Then he spotted the site. He clicked on the high-speed cameras in the belly of the aircraft. They had crystal clear photo acuity, so that when the digital photos were downloaded, you’d practically be able to measure the size of the bolts on the girders of the nuclear plant.
Then the call came in, “Hollywood One, Hollywood One, you’ve been made! Abort … get out of there …”
But he didn’t abort. He wanted to finish the mission. He shouldn’t have made it out alive, but only later did he find out why he had.
A noise snapped him out of his reverie. The metal door to the room swung open. Three men strode in. The guy in the front had a neatly trimmed beard and wore the uniform of an officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard. It was the military unit that controlled Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. Next to him was a large soldier.
“I am Captain Ackbar,” the officer announced. “You are our prisoner. We need some information.”
Another man, dressed as a civilian in a suit, stepped forward. “Colonel Jordan, the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization simply wishes to supply safe energy, electricity, modern conveniences to our people. But today, Israel bombed one of our facilities at Natanz — a ruthless act of aggression. We have the sovereign right to protect ourselves. If you can answer some simple questions, then we will let you go. You will be safely returned to your family.”
Joshua tried to lift his head to see the man.
The civilian from the IAEO continued. “We just want some data so we can protect ourselves. Nothing more. We mean no harm.”
Joshua growled in a hoarse voice, “Then why’s there blood on the floor?”
The soldier standing guard off to the side had a metal rod in his hand, and he stepped forward, but the officer stopped him. “There’s plenty of time for that …”
The civilian asked, “Have you supplied Israel with your Return-to-Sender technology?”
No answer.
“I will ask it again …”
Again, Joshua did not answer.
Now the big soldier was given the go-ahead. He stepped forward and lifted Joshua’s head so he could stare him in the face. Then, smiling a wide grin, the soldier took his stick and rammed it up, butt end, into Joshua’s solar plexus.
Joshua gasped for air, unable to breathe or scream in pain. Spittle ran down his mouth as he convulsed.
The civilian said to the officer, “We have a tight schedule. We need this information immediately, you understand …”