They all saw my smile. “You gonna share the joke?” Charlie said.
I turned the screen so he and Jeri could see it. “‘About time.’” Jeri read it out loud and shook her head. She said, “My thought exactly.”
Charlie said, “Time to get you out of the country. I’ve got a plane waiting. Sorry it’s not a bit fancier. But I think you’ll approve of the pilot I chose.”
I looked at Jeri. Her grin had turned into a smirk. “Guess who?”
“He’s right. I approve.”
Charlie threw the computer back into the briefcase, and we exited the truck from the rear. I could almost walk on my own. Bagheri shook my hand, and he and his men took our place in the truck. I put my arm around Leila, and she walked me to the Mercedes. The world that she lived in would never be the same from this night on. But I guess that’s what she’d committed herself to over that last decade.
I didn’t kiss her on the lips this time. I kissed her forehead. She said, “Thank you,” and I wished she hadn’t. I didn’t feel like a man worthy of gratitude.
I hunched into the backseat of the Mercedes, and one of Charlie’s men joined me. He had a first-aid kit in his hands. He did what he could to pack me up and gave me something for the pain. Jeri drove. Charlie rode in the front and made three calls on his cell phone. I didn’t ask where we were going. Ten minutes later, we were on the open highway going toward Shahr-e Qods, a suburb west of Tehran.
Another ten minutes passed before the Mercedes slowed and angled across the highway for a southbound dirt road that eventually veered west. Once it did, Jeri doused the headlights. The road ran straight and level for a kilometer. Charlie made another call. He spoke in crisp Farsi. A pair of parking lights flashed farther up the road. Jeri pointed the Mercedes in that direction, slowed to a crawl, and came to a halt next to a black SUV.
A single-wing Cessna 172 was parked in the middle of the road. The propeller was already turning. “That my ride?” I asked.
“We’ll need a couple of stops,” Jeri said.
We bailed out. Five of Charlie’s men were waiting for us. I walked on my own toward the plane, but it wasn’t easy. Prop wash kicked up dirt that beat against our faces and clothes. Jeri climbed into the pilot’s seat. Charlie and I paused under the wing beside the co-pilot’s door. Charlie brought his face close to mine and shouted over the roar from the engine.
“Until next time, Jake.” He offered his hand. We shook, then embraced. I looked into his eyes. Who knows how my mission would have fared without Charlie. He seemed to read my mind. “I know,” he shouted. “Now get out of here.”
I let go and climbed onboard. Jeri was all business. I put on a headset and fastened my safety belts. She revved the engine, then advanced the throttle. The airplane trundled forward. She accelerated, and the plane bounced along the road. If Jeri was concerned about taking off in the dark, she didn’t show it. Me? I was just glad when the Cessna lifted off.
She pulled on the controls and kept the nose at a low angle until we gained airspeed and altitude for a turn to the northwest.
We were over the Alborz Mountains when I saw the bomber. It was a Northrup Grumman B-2 Spirit, aka the Stealth Bomber, like something out of a science fiction novel, breaking through the clouds. I saw two others in close formation and knew there were twelve others headed for targets all over Iran. Sixty seconds later, six F-117s filled our window to the west, high above us and moving incredibly fast. The bombers thundered overhead, and our little 172 rocked in their wake like a cork in a stormy sea.
Big George had been unleashed.
I looked at Jeri. She bit down on her lip and pushed the throttle as far forward as it would go.
People were about to die. I knew that. I was more concerned about the people who were going to live. Millions of them.
CHAPTER 31
General Tom Rutledge wanted to take me to lunch at the Capital Grille, a Pennsylvania Avenue mainstay a stone’s throw from the U.S. Capitol. Fitting.
The weather outside was gorgeous; for some miraculous reason, the humidity had lifted and the air had a balmy, tropical clarity. A shame to spend the time inside, but then, lunch at the grille never disappointed.
I’d spent six days debriefing. It should have taken six hours. But everyone wanted a piece of the action. They always did when things went well. And things had gone very well.
Big George had been a success. The bombers had knocked out all but one of the Sejil-2 missiles. That one had been attacked and destroyed on the orders of three rogue generals who wanted no part of watching their country get blasted into a radioactive parking lot. Smart thinking.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an undetermined number of mullahs, and half of his high command were in their bunker hideout when a twenty-thousand-pound bunker buster drilled a hundred feet into the ground and incinerated the place. Well, at least that was the hope. The Twelver’s death could not be confirmed. Nor could the mullahs or the members of the high command. A 20,000-pound bunker buster didn’t allow for confirmation; it didn’t allow for much of anything except rubble and complete annihilation, and that bit of uncertainty left me with a queasy feeling in my stomach.
Of course, the Muslim world condemned the American attack, though behind the scenes every government from Istanbul to Rabat scrambled to prop up the alliance formed by the renegade generals and the MEK. Would they be an improvement over the insanity of their predecessors? Well, it would take some real doing to be any worse. And now Iran’s young people were swarming the streets and stepping into the void, and that might just be enough to bring back the engineers and the doctors and all the other professionals who had abandoned the country over the decades.
Truthfully, my concerns were all selfish. I wanted Charlie and Jeri and Leila to have what they’d been striving for going on thirty years: a place they were proud to call home. I wanted to know there wasn’t some self-inflated fanatic holding a gun to my country’s head.
“You feeling any better?” Tom said. Neither of us had bothered to open our menus.
“I’m fine.” I really wasn’t fine. The waterboarding had left some serious scars on my lungs; no telling if they would ever completely heal, one doctor had informed me. In other words, don’t plan on running any marathons in the near future. The three fingers broken on my left hand during interrogation had been rebroken and set with tiny screws that would come out in another four weeks; same prognosis. The good news was that I played tennis with my right hand. The wire they had used on my neck had apparently been rusted, because I’d been given tetanus shots on three occasions; so far, no lockjaw.
“What are you eating?” Tom said. I hadn’t seen the waiter coming.
I had to smile at that. We had been ordering the same damn thing since the day we’d started going to the grille. “How does sliced filet mignon with cippolini onions and wild mushrooms sound, Tom? Something new and different.”
He looked up at the waiter. Held up two fingers. “And two coffees. Black for me. Cream for the wimp.”
“Yes, sir,” the waiter said.
“How’s Richard?” Tom asked. He meant Mr. Elliot. He’d gone into the hospital three days after I returned home. Cancer.
“Not good. Damn cigarettes,” I said. I’d been to visit him every day since my debriefing ended. Funny, he was really the only one I really wanted to brief. He was the only one I’d ever briefed. “Amazed he lived this long.”
“He cleared the DDO’s name. You know that, right?” the three-star general sitting across from me said. “The investigation punked two guys from his staff. Charges pending.”