“So, is your whole family a bunch of over achievers?” Jackson asked.
“There’s just the two of us, and my parents, of course. But we are very competitive; we both just hate to lose, at anything. I think we feed off of each other.”
“Yeah, I can believe that. How did everyone feel about you signing up for Sayeret Matkal?”
“My sister thought it was pretty cool; my folks were dead-set against it. My dad, being a former paratrooper, has obviously seen his share of action and he definitely did not want his little girl trying out to be an elite commando but he knew he couldn’t stop me. I’m sure he talked with Tamir ahead of time to try and discourage me, and I did speak with Tamir, but he was very fair with everything. Like I said, that was the toughest thing I’ve ever done. But what about you? It seems that I’m the one doing all the talking.”
“Who, me?” Jackson replied. “There’s nothing special about me.”
“Right. You appear to be rather young for a full bird colonel and, from what I understand, you have, what, three Silver Stars? Then there’s your eye patch, and with one eye, you still managed to requalify for the Special Forces — there’s gotta be a story behind that.”
“Nah, no real story, stuff like that kind of happens when you’re too close to an Iraqi mortar. As for the rest, I guess that’s what you get when people exaggerate about some of the things you’ve done.”
When Jackson and his fellow team members arrived at the safe house, he was more than a little surprised that Dani walked right in the front door without bothering to unlock the door in some manner or to alert anyone who might have been inside. Dani had been to this house before and took more than a little pleasure in showing Jackson all the “amenities” this house provided — starting with the entrance. Jackson had used safe houses before in his career with the Special Forces, and was rather surprised at the apparent lack of security as the door seemed to be unlocked as Dani had walked right in. Playing off of his amazement, Dani took Stonewall back out front and had him try and open the door, only to find the door completely locked — and very solid. Dani, then, simply opened the door for Jackson to let him back in the house. At this point, Jackson began to realize just how sophisticated this safe house really was.
“Oh, this is good; this is really cool. Is there some sort of facial recognition key that automatically unlocks the door?” Jackson asked.
“Close; there’s a biometric sensor at the door that picks up on both facial recognition and behavioral analytics to function as the ‘key’,” Dani replied. She could see that Jackson was suitably impressed — and she loved showing off.
For his part, Jackson had used safe houses before, but nothing like this — this “house” was more like a small fortress, complete with an eight foot wall around the perimeter: to all but the most trained eye, each window could stop a 7.62 bullet; he didn’t see any cameras but he knew they were there as well, both inside and out. Dani took him to the basement control room where he realized just how thorough the camera surveillance really was: multiple cameras had every square inch of the property — and its approaches — thoroughly covered, with multiple redundancy; if someone tried to sneak up and disable even half a dozen cameras, there were still more. Dani showed Jackson the “armory” next; in addition to the usual small arms, this arsenal had enough hardware to take out a battalion of tanks and to take down a small squadron of fighters — even an aerial assault could be met with fierce resistance. Jackson had been so taken in by Dani and the “amenities” of the house that he had totally failed to realize that there were three inhabitants of the residence. Ben, and the rest of Jackson’s new Israeli friends, did not fail to, good naturally, remind him of their presence!
“So, Arielle, who’s General Dayan, here?” Zivah asked Dani as she sized up Jackson. Turning to Stonewall, she simply commented, “You don’t work out much, do you?” Jackson had been wearing a loose fitting cotton Oxford, which felt pretty good in the cool morning air up in Baku, but had removed this due to the intense afternoon heat in Tehran. The fitted Under Armour T-shirt he now wore accented his sculpted torso, which Zivah admiringly noticed.
“I usually run about five miles a day and then do a little work in the weight room; I spend more time on the cardio than on the weights.”
“Well, don’t change a thing! It’s working for me; you fill that shirt out in all the right places!” Zivah commented admiringly.
“Dani, he’s a keeper!” she continued.
“Zivah! I can’t believe you!” Dani exclaimed, noticeably blushing. “Stonewall, this is Zivah — and watch out for her. She’s our electronics and comms expert — she has ‘ears’ everywhere! Next, this is Ayal, he’s our explosives expert. Finally, we have Jonah, who pretty much lives here.”
“Nice to meet you all,” Jackson replied.
“I assume there’s a story behind the ‘Stonewall’ name?” Ayal asked.
“There is. Suffice it to say that a colonel I worked with a while back thought something I did reminded him of our Civil War General Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson; my name is Thomas Jackson, so the handle fit.”
Once the complete team, now nine members strong, had been fully introduced to Stonewall, Ben set about explaining the exact nature of their little mission. From the first, Jackson suspected that this little mission they were on had to be something big — and he was not disappointed.
“Recently, Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke at the United Nations and drew a red line advising the world body that Iran was extremely close to achieving a nuclear bomb. What he did not tell the world was that we have a source within the Iranian government that has been leaking highly classified information to us and that, within that speech, was a coded message for our source to get ready to leave Iran as we would be coming to get him — we are that mission,” Ben advised.
“My God; you guys are… Ah!” Jackson exclaimed as he received a powerful elbow in the rib cage. “What was that for?” he asked Dani.
“Just shut up; we’ll discuss this later,” she quietly responded.
“Our source, is none other than Dr. Ali Bagheri Kani, the deputy secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council,” Ben continued. “Bagheri knows we are coming but he does not know exactly when or how we will be picking him up; there is simply no way of getting that information to him. He currently lives in a residence in the resort area of Bashgah-e Savarkri-e, not too far from here in Tehran. The resort is part of the National Botanical Gardens, and there are only two entrances — one on the west and the other on the east side of the park. We know he is home as Jonah and his team here, have had him under surveillance for the past week. The plan to get him out is relatively quite simple: We’ll grab him tonight and head immediately for Astara and the border,” Ben said with a smile. Jackson knew, as did everyone else, that it wouldn’t exactly be that simple.
After Ben’s briefing, Dani took Jackson aside.
“You’re pretty quick,” she told him.
“Well, it’s pretty obvious. You tell the world that the Persians are on the verge of a nuclear weapon, you have four EW aircraft forward deployed and now we're over here to smuggle out your source before everything hits the fan — you guys are attacking.” A simple statement; no question implied. “Dani, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for it. Some folks in Washington might not be but we’ll have to cross that bridge very soon.”
“Tamir said you were a quick study. You put that together very fast. I don’t need to tell you: don’t let this out, and for that matter, the decision really hasn’t been made. Zivah, Jonah, and Ayal don’t know how soon we might be attacking, though you are correct — if this mission is a success, we’ll probably be attacking as soon as we get back.”