Khomeini's Boy: The Shadow War with Iran (31 page)

Chapter Forty-Three

When he squeezed that trigger, Ambrose felt all his hatred and fear leak out of him. He wasn’t even afraid of what Haddad would do to Celestine, because he had spent a thousand sleepless nights visualizing the look on Jamsheed Mashhadi’s face when the Iranian realized what had just happened to him: someone had lured him into an enclosed space and bombarded him with nerve gas. Ambrose waited to watch the first spasm shoot up Jamsheed’s back. He wanted to see the first plume of spittle bubble up around the sides of Jamsheed’s mouth, and Ambrose didn’t care that he also smelled the almond tang of sarin, or that both of his hands shuddered like an earthquake had erupted inside his bones.

Except Jamsheed didn’t spasm or froth. He just came at Ambrose with his arms stretched forth. He shouldn’t have been able to close the thirty feet between them so quickly, but he did, so Ambrose dropped the pistol and fell back to absorb Jamsheed’s assault. The Iranian aimed right for his torso with a wrestling takedown, which told Ambrose that Jamsheed felt his coordination leaving him. He was bigger, stronger, and possibly faster than Ambrose, but none of that would matter if he’d lost control of his body. At that point only savagery would help Jamsheed, and Ambrose didn’t mind getting savage.

Ambrose pivoted to the left so Jamsheed stumbled and only got a single arm wrapped around his target’s waist. One was enough, though: Ambrose felt Jamsheed’s left hand grip into his side and begin squeezing for a kidney. A black pulse went up his side as Jamsheed actually slid his thumb under Ambrose’s lowest rib. Resisting his grip felt like trying to battle the tide of a winter ocean.

Then his anger caught fire and brought Ambrose back to the surface. While Jamsheed’s back and neck were level with Ambrose’s waist, the American drove both of his elbows down in quick succession, aiming to sever the sweet spot where the Iranian’s spine connected to his brainstem. He didn’t feel like giving the sarin a chance to finish its job.

The sarin
…Ambrose stabbed his right elbow down like a piston into the nerve cluster of Jamsheed’s left shoulder blade, making the bigger man shiver and loosen his grip a bit. But he had aimed to kill, and at that distance he shouldn’t have failed.

His left elbow missed worse, barely hitting Jamsheed on his right shoulder. Again, the bigger man trembled as his body absorbed the trained strike, but the blow didn’t kill him, or even break anything; it had been years since Ambrose hit a man in anger and didn’t break something.

Snarling, Jamsheed pulled Ambrose forward by his torso and threw a big fist at his face. The American got his left hand forearm up and deflected, hearing a wet
thud
as Jamsheed shattered his own right hand against the ancient castle stone at full force. Ambrose countered by dropping his right knee down into the middle of Jamsheed’s left shin and splitting the bone like cheap metal on an anvil.

Jamsheed released his left hand and finished things before his broken shin even mattered. With a single furious upward swipe of his right arm, he knocked Ambrose’s hands away from his body, and then he flexed his knuckles into a knife-edge and drove his maimed hand right into the ribs above Ambrose’s heart. The Iranian’s dying body betrayed him and didn’t execute the strike properly. It didn’t send splinters of cartilage into Ambrose’s lungs or stop his heart through sheer blunt force trauma; all it did was fracture three of his ribs right where they hit his weakened sternum, making Ambrose gasp in shock and slump back against the wall, broken.

Jamsheed grabbed Ambrose by his throat and held his head upward so they could see eye to eye. Jamsheed’s mouth moved haphazardly, like the work of a shoddy puppeteer, but the dark intelligence that still glimmered in his eyes told Ambrose that he thought he was saying something. Instead, all that came out was a bovine moan accompanied by yellow, bile-stained froth.

The dying Iranian was too far gone to notice as Ambrose grabbed the black tube in his pants pocket and stabbed the thing into his own leg.

To Ambrose, what happened next felt like the universe splitting open. Something warm coursed through his veins and clamped down on his twitching muscles like a mother holding her baby. He could breathe again, even if each inhalation felt like eating live scorpions. More importantly, he could
think
. That moment of clarity told him exactly where he was: beaten and broken, lying beneath a stronger and faster opponent who was gloating over his dying prey.

Then Ambrose felt the atropine hit. It immolated his chest, massaged his dying heart, then flew straight into the fibers of his muscles like lightning striking the surface of the ocean, boiling all the fish beneath it. He decided to kill Jamsheed Mashhadi.

Ambrose grabbed Jamsheed’s wrist and used it to gain upward momentum, slithering out of the bigger man’s grip. Rising to his feet, Ambrose shot his hand into Jamsheed’s mouth and grabbed his lower jaw, thumb around the underside of his chin and fingers curling around his lower incisors. In the same motion he yanked that hand backward and pulled Jamsheed’s head along with it. As Jamsheed stumbled forward Ambrose felt the sinews of his enemy’s jaw rip and break, until the bone came loose of the muscle and hung connected to Jamsheed’s skull via nothing but tanned facial skin.

As he fell forward, Jamsheed’s stubbly Adam’s apple jutted outward at an improbable angle. Ambrose whipped his left elbow out to meet that bulge like an executioner swinging his axe at a condemned man’s neck.

The end result was comparable.

Chapter Forty-Four

Celestine developed a headache as she half-ran, half-limped across the yard. She didn’t know how long two minutes were, but she knew that she had burned a lot of it. For some reason the entire castle now smelled like almonds, which reminded her that she hadn’t eaten since the night before in that corpse-strewn mineshaft.

She paused to catch her breath against the northernmost SCUD launcher, only fifty feet from the chapel sitting at the northeast corner of the inner castle. She knew her senses were playing tricks on her as she heard a breeze begin to whistle in the east, despite the fact that the night air was quiet all around her. But that whistle kept building, building, building until it had become an unearthly chromium shriek, like metal talons scratching on a cosmic chalkboard.

A pillar of fire shot up from the western tower, streaking toward the eastern sky. High up in the darkness it struck something and exploded like a red rose in the middle of the constellation Orion. Despite the explosion, the metallic shriek in the air intensified.

The anti-aircraft battery on the western tower shot off two more of its white surface-to-air interceptors, and Celestine felt the hot air of their launch thrusters sear her face like a furnace blast. Then the eastern sky answered back, as a bolt of red fire shot out of the black sky and ate the entire anti-aircraft battery as it prepared to launch another volley.

Another red bolt hit the tower itself, sending the thing crashing into the yard in a rain of blackened limestone. The warplanes screamed overhead and Celestine thought their banshee wail would split her skull. Gideon Patai’s Plague had arrived, and she prepared to die.

The SCUD furthest from her went up. Air-to-surface high-explosive ordnance had struck the missile at its midsection and ignited the rocket fuel in its ass, creating a moment of stillness as though a giant hand held down the night. Then the calm ruptured into a tempest of cinders and molten metal. Celestine’s luck held out, and the shockwave knocked her onto her stomach before the storm of white-hot debris could shoot outward and gut her.

She lost consciousness for a moment, but the next shockwave—another SCUD detonating—woke her up like a coded patient hit by a defibrillator. Two SCUDs down, one to go: the one right next to her. Celestine breathed in and tried to stand.

Gulping air inward made her spine tickle, and somehow that slight tickle knocked the legs out from under her. She
felt
more than smelled the tingle of almonds permeate the air as she looked dazedly towards the nearby chapel where Ambrose had been. The roof had caved in, and chemical-tanged smoke was leaking out between the fallen stones. Jamsheed’s sarin was smoldering, and whatever hadn’t burned off was leaking into the air all around her.

Ambrose
…she thought. Celestine tasted foam at the side of her mouth, and the hand lying in front of her was doing a little dance, just like his did. Only one SCUD left, the one right next to her, and then both of their missions would be done.

Another shockwave hit—or maybe it was a convulsion—yes, definitely a convulsion, and she flipped onto her back with a gasp, unsure how she’d done it when she couldn’t walk a moment earlier. Pressure shot down her left leg as something stabbed into her hip with a single quick blow. She couldn’t bend her head downwards to see it, but she knew her luck had evaporated, and one of the big bits of shrapnel had finally gotten her. Maybe she’d get lucky and bleed out before the sarin paralyzed her lungs or snapped her spine.

Then the pressure in her hip moved, and she realized it wasn’t shrapnel. A long face drooped down in front of her, glowing with the battered-to-hell handsomeness of Clint Eastwood in his prime. The man had icy blue eyes shot through with red streaks, and his big dilated pupils shone orange with the inferno of the castle yard. He was holding her, and the pressure on her hip came from one of his hands, which grasped something that was sticking out of her leg.

Celestine’s body convulsed with sensations of a cold burn. Something coursed through her veins that made her stop spasming. Then a volcano opened in her chest, pumping magma through the cooling cavern of her heart. She gasped over and over like a child too upset to cry, then the gasps became a scream as it felt like she was exhaling a thunderstorm.

“Yeah,” Ambrose whispered as he held her close, pointing down at his own leg, “I felt like that too.”

“H…Hayes?” She reached a trembling hand up to feel for his face. “I was coming to w—warn you…”

Ambrose tried to laugh, but it came out as a cough. “Sorry, Lemark. You dropped the fucking ball on that one. You’re lucky those planes were too busy dogfighting to finish the ground game.”

“Dogfighting?”

He looked around at the burning wreckage of the castle around them, then pulled her to her feet, trying to hide the pained grimace that wouldn’t leave his face. “I assure you, I have no idea.”

2012

September

Next Monday

Chapter Forty-Five

The lights were dim in the mountainside chateau on Mount Damavand where Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and a few of his most trusted clerical allies sat around a conference table. Most of the clerics were fidgeting—chewing their nails, fiddling with their hands, chain-smoking cigarette after cigarette. Khamenei didn’t appear upset. He sat with his good hand cradling his bearded chin, staring off into space as he heard the bad news coming through the speakerphone in the middle of the table.

General Qasem Soleimani’s words crackled over the conference call unit, making his preternaturally calm voice buzz like a wasp hive. “All three planes were lost to the enemy, but Syrian observers confirm that the complex was destroyed. Our pilots deployed high-explosives that burned ungodly hot and melted right through the casings of most Tuva canisters, releasing traces of the sarin but devouring the rest. Anyone in the castle was killed by the gas or the fire. That seems to include Jamsheed Mashhadi, although we have no way of knowing whether these alleged American and Israeli spies survived. Hezbollah claims they lost a dozen of their best men, including a high-ranking commander named Haddad,” he paused, “They also learned what he did to our embassy, they got word of his threat to unleash Tuva on Israel, and they’re blaming us for him going rogue.”

“Hezbollah is spying on
us
?!” one of Khamenei’s lieutenants barked. If it weren’t for the man’s connections, Khamenei would have disappeared him then and there for his indiscipline.

Soleimani replied, “You miss the point. In all probability we just lost three F-14s
in a dogfight with Israeli F-16s over Syrian airspace
. Following the battle, my Jordanian assets reported that two Israeli submarines left the port of Eilat on an eastern trajectory. They haven’t resurfaced, but by now they could have passed the Yemeni coast, which places their missiles within range of southern Iran. We’re on the brink of war, and all that needs to happen is
somebody
, be it America, the Zionists, us, Syria, or even Hezbollah, acknowledging that the incident occurred.”

A cruel old cleric with glimmering eyes and the nickname “Ayatollah Crocodile” snorted, “The Jews and Americans won’t dare mention the incident. Neither will Hezbollah or Syria, if we tell them to remain silent.”

There was a long pause. Wherever Soleimani was, military trucks were whizzing by in the background, growling through the speakerphone like hungry dinosaurs. Soleimani said, “Syria might. Master, Assad is furious with us. He says he never agreed to a plan on this scale, and he certainly never agreed to anything that might actually bring Israeli or American operatives into his country. He’s even talking about expelling our military advisors until we issue a formal apology to him.”

The ayatollahs erupted into a cloud of babble. Some of them were outraged by the Syrian dictator’s impudence, others his ingratitude, while the rest despaired at the thought of losing the vital Syrian link that connected Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Khamenei’s calm voice cut through the chatter. “He can’t, so we won’t.”

Mutters throughout the room seemed to be split fifty-fifty between agreeing with him and worrying that he might have been wrong. Khamenei picked apart each of their faces, noting who looked at him like he was slipping with old age. Those ayatollahs would be corrected later.

Khamenei took off his glasses and rubbed them slowly against his robe, using only his good hand to do the whole thing. “General, I admit my confusion: I asked for a field agent, and you gave me Jamsheed Mashhadi. You said he’d worked with Hezbollah before, and that he was a gifted weapons engineer who could operate in the field. You also intimated that he would be willing to die a glorious martyr.” Khamenei replaced his spectacles and continued, “On the strength of that recommendation, apparently I have squandered many lives, several tons of advanced weaponry, and the goodwill of our closest allies. In military terms, catastrophes on this scale are branded failures of leadership.”

Soleimani’s intake of breath was audible through the speakerphone. “We didn’t lead him. We slaughtered him.”

“You picked the man, you gave him the mission, and he failed spectacularly in the attempt. Then you attempted to cover it up by
launching an Iranian airstrike
without my authorization,” Khamenei’s voice rose into a shivering tenor.

Soleimani met the Supreme Leader’s raised voice with subdued menace. “You made me kill him. He called me, and I heard it in his voice: something was
done
to him, and it shook him worse than six years on the Iraqi front or twenty more years killing for Quds Force. It was something that couldn’t be undone, and it had left him ready to wipe out half the Middle East. I suspect that you know what it was.”

The Supreme Leader nodded impatiently. “I asked you whether Jamsheed Mashhadi could die. You didn’t object at the time.”

“I never said he should die broken and alone. Even
you
had no right to do that, and I haven’t heard you deny anything yet.”

Khamenei said nothing. Instead, one of the ayatollahs leaned forward and tried to advance the conversation, asking, “General: what do you think it will take to assuage Assad and Hezbollah?”

“I have no idea,” Soleimani answered dismissively.

Khamenei spoke, dark eyes staring straight ahead into the shadows that lurked across the table past his wretched entourage. “Perhaps you should join me at the chateau so we can discuss the matter. Let’s leave diplomacy to the diplomats.”

Soleimani’s voice was flat. “Maybe later. I’m going to Beirut to deal with the Hezbollah secretariat personally, then I’ll fly to Damascus and deal with Assad, regardless of his temper tantrum. It’s time to end that civil war, even if I have to import ten thousand Revolutionary Guardsmen and conquer the whole damned country myself.”

Khamenei replied, “I trust you to your judgment, Qasem. Bring glory to Iran, and come back to us soon.”

“Maybe.” Soleimani’s line went dead.

Ali Khamenei, heir to the Imam Khomeini, Supreme Leader of the Revolution, Guardian of the Islamic Republic of Iran, servant of God and the Hidden Imam, snapped the fingers on his good hand, and his advisors showed themselves out.

A small man stepped out of the shadows, still in a dirty military uniform with Syrian emblems on the shoulder.

Khamenei motioned for him to sit, then said, “Quiet as always, my friend. I barely noticed you were here. Now tell me: you helped Ambassador Yazdi arrange the kidnapping?”

“Yes, Master,” the man calling himself Salman spoke in fluent Farsi, devoid of any fake Syrian accent.

“And you and Yazdi arranged the script for Mashhadi to read, and you made it sloppy enough to suggest Iranian handiwork.”

“Yes, Master.”

“And you ensured that Hezbollah freed him, then you helped him get back to Damascus and discover the document with my signature on it.”

“You know I did, Master.”

Khamenei studied his agent with something approaching morbid curiosity and said, “The bombing was unnecessary, you know. That was a very expensive embassy, full of decent people.”

Salman nodded, swallowing uncomfortably. “Agreed, Master. But Jamsheed—Colonel Mashhadi—finally seemed close to his breaking point. Once he found that martyr boy’s headband and put it on…you should have seen him.”

“I have seen him. Him and ten thousand boys like him, ready to die with a red rag around their heads, all because God has the sense of humor to run a worldwide holy war from a country with a second-rate army like Iran’s,” Khamenei chuckled.

“…As you say Master.” Based on his facial expression, Salman probably thought he’d be struck by lightning before he heard his Supreme Leader besmirch the holy legions of Iran.

Khamenei still smiled, as though the whole thing amounted to a joke. “But before the embassy went up, he made that phone call to my new secretary, telling us he intended to launch the weapons himself. That’s a phone call that my rivals will be whispering about for a very long time,” he murmured.

Salman hung his head. “Yes, Master. I’m sorry, I was downstairs when it occurred, and he only told me after the fact. I should have watched him closer. I didn’t know he would go so…far. Then it was just the two of us driving back to Hezbollah, and I thought
maybe
, between rejoining Haddad and arming the weapons, Colonel Mashhadi would remember his training.”

“Oh, I think he did.”

“Master?”

Khamenei held up his good hand firmly, like a magician ordering the universe to stand still. He’d learned the pose watching Khomeini, when he was a much younger man. “Once I discovered that the vain, jetsetting fool still existed, I crafted an entire plan that relied on breaking Jamsheed Mashhadi. I
wanted
him to know we’d betrayed him. Between his training and the period where my…associates…had him tortured in Evin Prison, I thought the betrayal would push him to kill that fool Yazdi and then complete his mission just to spite me personally. We’d parade some Iranian bodies to demonstrate he’d gone insane, you’d kill Mashhadi by the end, and Hezbollah would have the chemical deterrent we need to encircle Israel. It all seemed straightforward enough, after I nudged Soleimani into volunteering Mashhadi like it had been his own idea.”

Khamenei continued, “Instead,” he waved his hand so his black robe flourished, “Mashhadi reverted to his
original
training: the martyrdom speeches that we clerics shoved down those boys’ throats during wartime. Praise be to God, the upright and the most merciful, for inspiring brave Qasem Soleimani to go behind my back and scramble those warplanes. If Mashhadi had succeeded, the results would have been appalling for us; chemical weapons are vile, filthy things, and any country that uses them shall answer to God for it, not to mention the Americans.”

Salman’s strained face suggested that he’d just as soon not hear any more of his Supreme Leader’s private thoughts on the Tuva conspiracy. “And now, Master?”

The Supreme Leader stood up with a grunt. He was old, and it had been a frustrating day. Khamenei said, “Now I’d like some tea. Black. Indian, if we have any in the kitchen.” He paused and thought for a moment. “And ask your Syrian counterparts whether they made any unusual radio interceptions coming from western Syria in the last few days—especially any communications in English. I’d like to review the transcripts, if they exist.”

Salman left with an obsequious mumble. Tomorrow, Khamenei would give his personal agent another name and another mission, and Salman, or whoever he really was, would once again be the Supreme Leader’s favorite instrument. But tonight, Khamenei wanted nothing near him that even remotely smacked of the debacle in Syria.

Tomorrow, he would also have to telephone that idiot of a president the Iranian masses thought they’d chosen in the latest rigged election. Then he’d reassure his clerical peers that they were not about to be nuked by the Jews or the Yankees. And he’d have to speak with Qasem Soleimani’s superiors in the Revolutionary Guard High Command. The man had grown dangerously autonomous, and he knew far too much about what had happened to Jamsheed Mashhadi. Khamenei would also find out how long Guard generals had been empowered to launch airstrikes without consulting his office.

In the meantime, Khamenei paced over to the balcony so he could watch the lights of Tehran in the valley below Mount Damavand. They pulsed orange and yellow like the rows of control lights in the underground nuclear reactor at Fordow, close to Tehran. As he stood there, the hardened Fordow complex had ten thousand centrifuges spinning non-stop, refining crude uranium into weapons-grade plutonium. The day of days was coming, no matter what the Great Satan and the Zionists did to stop it.

As for the enemy’s role in Syria, he was sure Salman would find intercepts, and those would contain the code names of the enemy operatives who thwarted Iran’s ambitions. Let those insects laugh while they could. When it came to vengeance, Ali Khamenei knew it was a very small world, and he came from a long-lived family.