“Outstanding!” Shishani replied.
“Wait a minute,” Secretary Johnson said, all of a sudden finding the courage to speak up. “I think I know you,” she said, indicating Dr. Kayani.
“I don’t believe we’ve ever met, Madam Secretary. I’m sure I would remember you,” Kayani replied with an admiring look.
Johnson gave him a very disapproving frown but followed up, “Kayani? That’s not an Arabic name, is it?”
“It is not. I am from Pakistan.”
“Oh, my God,” Marshall quietly sighed as the sudden realization hit her. “AQ Kahn. You worked with AQ Kahn, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. I’m impressed, Colonel.”
“I flew the Bone and B-2s prior to the C-32. I figured if I was going to be carrying nukes around, I wanted to know a thing or two about them, and who all had ‘em.”
“He was a brilliant man, though I’ve been able to make a few improvements to his design,” Kayani replied.
“And ‘Shishani?’” Johnson asked, looking at the general. “That’s not Arabic, either, is it?”
“It is Arabic, but it means ‘the Chechen,’ Madam Secretary,” General Shishani replied.
“Where have I heard that name before?” Secretary Johnson asked almost rhetorically. “I know, one of the captains of the freighters that attacked us. His name was Shishani, too.”
“Ah, so you know my brother. Yes, he was one of the captains of the ships that launched the missiles at your east coast cities. Neither one of us has any love for your country or the Russians!”
“Then, it was you who lost your wife and son at Beslan. Oh, my God!”
“Your intel is a little off, Madam Secretary. I lost my wife, son and daughter when the Russians stormed the school. I despise the Russians. And, yes, you will find the Caliphate has all kinds of ethnic groups in it. We even have a few Americans, as I believe you are fully aware.”
“Yes, I am, and it thoroughly disgusts me.”
“Madam Secretary,” Shishani replied, “I believe you are familiar with Victor Hugo?”
“Of course.”
“Well then, I am sure you are familiar with his notion that ‘There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.’ Madam Secretary, the time has arrived for the idea of the Caliphate. Nothing you do, nor that of your allies, can defeat the idea of the Caliphate. The ease with which we captured you and your countryman, as well as your own nuclear weapons, clearly demonstrates this. Your countryman will come and try to rescue you and recover the bombs. However, they will fail in their attempt to rescue you and they will be too late in their attempt to recover the weapons.”
“Just what do you have planned?” Colonel Marshall asked.
“My dear Colonel, you need not concern yourself with this,” Shishani replied. “I know you are familiar with the F-16 and its range. Just think of the targets within range of Batman. Virtually every city in western Europe can be reached.”
“You’ll never get anywhere near any city in Europe.”
“Colonel, it wouldn’t be that difficult. With the turmoil in Turkey right now, how difficult would it be to simulate a Turkish pilot, flying an F-16, ‘defecting’ if you will and flying to the West? Think about it, would anyone blame a pilot for fleeing the country and heading to Greece, Italy, or even Germany? And an F-16? Most every country in NATO flies the plane — the Greeks, the Italians, Belgium, even the Poles fly the plane. You think one or two Turkish F-16s will raise any suspicion? I think not.”
“You bastard!” Marshall simply replied. “You’ll kill millions. All in the name of Allah? You bastard.”
“Actually, in the name of the Mahdi, but yes,” Shishani replied. “Dr. Kayani, thanks for the update. We won’t keep you any longer.”
“Thank you, General. I will take my leave and get back to work.”
As Dr. Kayani left the mosque, no one noticed that one of the pedestrians across the street shot multiple pictures of the engineer.
XXIX
“Arielle, have you made it to Aviano yet?” Zivah asked Dani over her satellite phone.
“We have, and it’s amazing here,” Dani replied. “We’re at the foot of the Alps in northern Italy and it’s just breathtaking. The base is almost right up against the mountains. I could move here tomorrow.”
“That sounds wonderful. Say, can you look at something for me if I send you a couple pictures?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“We received several photos from one of the teams in Raqqa this morning. Several of them show someone we haven’t seen before leaving the al-Qadim mosque. He looks familiar but I can’t place him.”
“Send them over and I’ll look at them right away. We’re not going to get started here for about another half hour so your timing’s perfect.”
“Okay, I just sent them to your phone.”
“Got ‘em. Let’s see… yeah, I know him. Wait a minute. Zivah, where did you say these were taken?” Dani asked with an urgency in her voice that startled her.
“Just this morning, outside of the mosque al-Baghdadi usually holds court at in Raqqa. Why?”
“Zivah, get these to Tamir right away. This guy is Dr. Mohammed Kayani. He studied under AQ Kahn. Zivah, ISIS has thirty-four American nuclear bombs and now they have a nuclear engineer that knows how to build, and reengineer, these things.”
“Oh, my God,” Zivah practically whispered.
“Yeah, this situation suddenly got a lot more serious.”
“I’ll let Tamir know right away. Thanks, and hurry back. We’re going to need you!”
“Stonewall, that was Zivah. She just sent these pictures to me,” Dani said as she showed Stonewall the pictures on her phone. “Our team in Raqqa just sent these pictures to us — this guy’s a Pakistani who worked under AQ Kahn — the ‘father’ of Pakistan’s nuclear program.”
“And he’s in Raqqa… Just how long do you think it would take him to turn one of these B-61s in to a fully functional nuke?”
“Worst case scenario, just a few days. If he needs to reengineer the core, that could take a while and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have the equipment to do that in Raqqa. If he has access to the proper equipment, probably no more than a few weeks.”
“So, if we go with your ‘few days’ estimate, that means Monday, Tuesday at the latest, and they could have a few of these things fully functional.”
“That’s right.”
“Any chance Tamir can get us hooked up with one of your teams in Raqqa? If you could spend all afternoon here in the weapons vault, we could fly back to Tel Aviv tonight and then insert into Raqqa early tomorrow morning before sun up. That wouldn’t give you as much time as you’d probably like here but we’d be able to get you into Raqqa that much sooner.”
“That could work. I should at least be able to get a good idea of the bomb’s design this afternoon — that’ll have to do at this point. I wouldn’t think hooking up with one of the teams would be that difficult. We’d have to jump into Raqqa but there’s plenty of sites to do this, especially northeast of the city.”
“I’ll bounce this off of Jim but I don’t think he’ll have a problem with it — I don’t think we have many options at this point,” Jackson added as he punched Jim’s number on the sat phone.