“Now.”
CHAPTER 74
IT had been a long time since Nash had sat at a table with candles and a linen tablecloth, anxiously awaiting the arrival of a pretty girl. The separate dining area in Nash’s presidential suite wasn’t a restaurant, but with a mahogany table that could seat eight and the fancy place settings and plates of steaming food, it could have been. By the same token, the person Nash was waiting for was neither female nor someone he was interested in dating, but the sensation felt similar.
With the exception of the panther pacing behind him.
“Where the fuck is this guy?”
Nash had tried ignoring Rapp.
It hadn’t worked.
Though his friend was normally the cool head in almost any scenario, Rapp’s legendary low tolerance for bullshit was getting the better of him.
To be fair, Nash was also a little uptight.
The plan to meet with the MOIS minister was a variation of hiding in plain sight. Contrary to their depictions in pop culture, these types of ministerial gatherings weren’t all cocktail parties any more than they were adrenaline-charged meetings held around impossibly long diplomatic tables. In the real world of espionage and diplomacy, it was often the one-off liaisons that were more important than anything annotated on the official itinerary.
“Do you know what’s driving Ashani’s desire to defect?” Nash said.
Rapp shrugged. “Haven’t really had time to think about it before now. Do you have a theory?”
“Yes. Cancer.”
A stillness enveloped the room.
“Explain,” Rapp said.
“Ashani’s been good at hiding his movements, but we learned that he’s been seeking treatment outside Iran for a respiratory illness. Specialists in Europe as you would expect from a member of the Iranian elite, but there’s an interesting correlation between the doctors he’s been seeing. All of them consulted with their US counterparts who were treating the emergence of post-9/11 cancers endemic to first responders and victims of the attacks in New York.”
“The Isfahan nuclear facility,” Rapp said. “The Mossad brought it down and Ashani was one of the few survivors. He must have breathed in a shit ton of concrete dust and now he has cancer. Is he looking for a treatment in the West?”
“The opposite,” Nash said. “I think he’s come to terms with a terminal diagnosis. He’s not trying to save himself. He’s trying to save his family.”
“Because he has enemies in the Iranian government,” Rapp said. “And he’ll have even more once it comes out that he helped us thwart their Afghanistan operation. He’s dying and won’t be able to protect his wife and daughters.”
“Exactly,” Nash said.
Rapp squeezed his shoulder. “That’s some good work, Mike. Really. But it only makes this meeting more urgent. CRANKSHAFT aside, I need to figure out what Ruyintan has planned for that missing convoy. I’m still not connecting the dots.”
“What do you mean?” Nash said.
Rapp shrugged. “Sending a bunch of jihadis into Afghanistan with shoulder-fired missiles isn’t big enough. Westerners see militant Islamic leaders foam at that mouth as they thunder their intentions to murder us and shrug. No matter how large the German shepherd, if all he ever does is bark, eventually you tune him out. Only people like us understand that these killers mean what they say. It isn’t lack of intent that keeps them from biting us. It’s a big chain-link fence. And if the dog thinks that someone left the gate open…”
“They bite,” Nash said.
“Exactly,” Rapp said. “This shit with the missiles—it’s a nibble. Would it throw a wrench in our plans if our helicopters were vulnerable at night? Sure. But we’d adjust tactics to mitigate the threat just like we did once Iranian explosively formed penetrators started blowing up Humvees in Iraq. Besides, the missiles are finite. Yes, the Quds Force shitheads almost got one past us by sneaking six through Pakistan, but that’s a one-trick pony. Ruyintan thinks bigger than that.”
Nash stared at Rapp as he turned over what he’d just said.
Rapp was absolutely correct.
If the Iranians were willing to go through the operational hurdles of moving a team of Afghan HIG militants into Iran for training, equip them with a limited supply of modified surface-to-air missiles, coordinate for transportation through Pakistan, and assign Quds Force minders to ensure they successfully executed their mission, it wouldn’t be for a series of piecemeal attacks against coalition aircraft. It was almost as if…
“Holy shit,” Nash said, turning in his chair, “the missing missiles. Everything else was the distraction. Those MANPADS and the men carrying them are the main effort.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Rapp said, “but there’s only one man that can tell of us if that’s true.”
As if on cue, someone knocked on the door. The pattern was unique—three long raps, two short ones, and then a final three long.
Ashani.
“Come in,” Nash said, getting to his feet.
The door swung open, revealing the visitor.
It was not Ashani.
CHAPTER 75
“WHAT is he doing here?”
The man asking the question was none other than Darian Moradi.
While Nash was surprised to see the deputy minister attending in place of his boss, the expression on the cleric’s face wasn’t shock or even annoyance.
It was terror.
