“What’s he doing?” Flash asked.
“Delivering a package to somebody at the airport,” said Nuri. “It’s not too big.”
“Bomb?”
“Probably papers,” said Nuri. He guessed it had to do with the network, documents or plans of some type. “It’s way too small for a nuke.”
“Could it be bomb material, though?”
“It could be.” Nuri thought about a bomb. The actual amount of pure uranium or plutonium needed was relatively small, though very heavy. The package might contain enough for a third or even half a bomb, depending on how sophisticated the design was.
Actually, he realized, it could contain the entire bomb — but only if the design was very advanced.
“You know, we don’t really have to rescue Tarid,” said Flash. “We can just make it look like we did.”
“There’s only two of us, Flash. We can’t set up a whole operation like that. Especially at an airport.”
“Why not?”
“How do we get away?”
“We’ll be at an airport, right?”
“We have to take Tarid with us.”
“We knock him out.”
It wasn’t a horrible idea, just totally impractical. Nuri let Flash talk about it as he drove. He thought about what else the box might contain.
Traffic was light, but not so light that they could count on not being seen if they ran the taxi off the road. Still, that might work: push him off the road, rob him, grab the bag.
The Iranians would realize they knew. But they were already shutting down the operation, so what did it matter?
“How would we grab the bag?” Nuri asked Flash finally. “How can we take it?”
“The bag? Not him?”
“What if we just got the bag?”
“We just point our guns at him and grab it. Shoot him if he won’t hand it over. Straight robbery, dude.”
Somehow, Nuri didn’t think it would be that easy.
70
The voice directed Danny and Hera to an abandoned farm about a mile from the air base. Danny parked just off the road, then led Hera as the Voice guided them down an old creek to a farm lane where they climbed up a hill about a half mile from the rear of the complex. Until they crested the hill, they saw nothing. Hera kept wanting to complain that they were going in the wrong direction, and struggled to keep her mouth shut.
And then, suddenly, they saw floodlights in the distance. They didn’t even need their night glasses to see what was going on.
“It’s a missile,” said Hera. “Oh my God.”
Aberhadji watched as the warhead was bolted into place. The process was delicate — not because of the warhead, which would remain inert until after it was launched, but because of the rocket fuel and oxidizer being pumped into the tanks.
Fueling the missile was not quite as easy as loading a truck with gasoline. The liquids had to be carefully monitored; their temperature and pressures were critical, and a spark in the wrong place would ignite a fireball. While Aberhadji’s team had perfected quick fueling methods, his short notice added another level of difficulty. Still, he knew it should take only a little more than an hour before they were ready to launch — a prep time that would be the envy of the best-trained crew in the West.
“Imam, the warhead is ready to be coded,” said Abas, the head technician.
The code was part of the fail-safe lock that prevented unauthorized use of the warhead. It allowed the bomb to arm itself following launch. Without it, the warhead was simply a very heavy piece of complicated metal.
Aberhadji moved quickly to the panel at the side of the warhead. The code was entered on a very small number pad. The display screen was a small panel sixteen boxes long. It displayed an X as each number was pressed in. When the boxes were finally filled, Aberhadji had to press the unmarked bar at the bottom to enter them. He had only two tries. If the number was entered incorrectly a third time, the fusing circuit was designed to overload, rendering the weapon useless.
He pressed the bottom bar. The display flashed. The X’s turned to stars.
They were ready to go.
“How much longer?” he asked Abas.
“An hour and ten minutes, if nothing goes wrong.”
Aberhadji nodded. He could barely stand the suspense.
71
From the layout of the airport grounds, Nuri thought it might be possible to set up an ambush on the utility road at the eastern side; it was long and, according to the satellite photos and schematic MY-PID reviewed, generally deserted. But as soon as they neared the airport, he saw his plan would never work. There were police cars and Iranian army vehicles all around the grounds. Lights flashed; cars were being stopped at the entrance.
“What the hell’s going on?” asked Flash.
“Yeah, good question.” Nuri continued past the access road. They had weapons and surveillance gear; there’d be no chance of sneaking past a search. He drove two miles until he saw a small grocery store off the main road. He pulled off and drove around the back to the Dumpster.
A man was sitting in front of it, smoking a cigarette.
“I thought if you were Muslim you weren’t allowed to smoke,” said Flash.
The man threw away the cigarette and scurried inside. But Nuri didn’t want to take a chance, so he drove through the lot and back onto the highway, continuing until he found another store. This time there was no one in back. They stashed the weapons midway down in the Dumpster, then went back to the airport.
A pair of policemen stopped them at the gate and asked for ID. As soon as he saw Nuri’s Italian passport, he had them both get out and open the trunk. His partner went through the interior, tugging at the seat cushions and rifling through the glove compartment.
“What are these?” asked the policeman, pulling one of the transponders from Nuri’s overnight bag. It was a booster unit for the bugs.
“We use them to receive signals from the pipeline, when it is examined.” Nuri handed the man a business card. “You would be interested in hearing about this. It is very high technology. Holes in the pipe cannot be detected by the human eye. But even a small leak could cost very much money. Imagine if the faucet in your house were to drip all day. What a—”
“Your Farsi is very good,” said the man, handing him back the passport. “Have a nice trip back to Italy.”
“What is going on?” asked Nuri. “Was there a robbery?”
“No, no. The president is taking off in a few hours. The airport must be kept secure.”
Nuri and Flash got back in the car. About halfway down the main entrance road, Nuri took a right onto a utility road that would swing him back around to the hangar area. They got only fifty yards before they found the way blocked by an army truck.
“I have to go to Terminal Five,” Nuri told the soldier.
