To the world, he would put on a brave face — particularly tonight. In less than an hour, he would headline a black-tie fund-raiser for 1,500 well-heeled donors in the posh grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria. It was going to be an exceptionally rare evening, and the photos would dominate the front pages of newspapers around the world. Joining him would be both Israeli prime minister Asher Naphtali and Egyptian president Abdel Ramzy. Together they would explain the urgency of striking a comprehensive peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians once and for all. Together they would call on men and women of goodwill to hold fast against the forces of extremism, particularly in the Middle East. Together they would raise nearly $8 million in a single evening to complete construction of the new Anwar Sadat Institute for Peace in Cairo. The center had been in the planning for nearly two years. The fund-raiser had been in the works for eleven months. The timing could not have been more appropriate, Jackson believed. They had to present a united front. They had to believe peace was possible, no matter how impossible it seemed. They had to reach through the television cameras to a billion Muslims and appeal to the better angels of their nature.
But would it be enough? Despite his optimistic can-do visage, Jackson feared he wasn’t ready for what was coming. He wasn’t sure anyone was.
He had graduated first in his class at MIT. He held a master’s in international relations from Oxford and read voraciously, mostly history and classic literature. He was fluent in French and conversational in Arabic, having studied for a year at the American University in Cairo as an undergraduate. He had traveled the globe extensively, particularly in the Muslim world. He certainly understood Islam better than any American president in living memory, perhaps in the nation’s history. But this was not why he had run. The tasks already on his plate were daunting enough. He had an economy to fix, millions of jobs to create, an out-of-control budget to balance, an approval rating to boost, a hostile opposition party to silence, and his own party to placate and rebuild. This was no time for another war. The people hadn’t sent him to Washington to accept — much less launch — another trillion-dollar Mideast adventure. The nation wouldn’t stand for it. Nor would he.
At the same time, Jackson was palpably aware that he was no longer in control of events. The situation in the Middle East was teetering on the edge of disaster and was beginning to consume the White House’s already-limited bandwidth. He couldn’t ignore it. He couldn’t wish it away. Just that morning, he had spent more than five hours with his National Security Council when he should have been meeting with his Council of Economic Advisors or the Fed chair. Jackson was increasingly aware of the broad range of grave threats now forming against the United States and her allies. One thing he knew for certain was that his entire agenda — his entire reason for running for president in the first place — was in peril unless he could navigate a way out of this latest Middle East disaster, and fast.
Firouz answered his cell phone on the first ring.
“They just touched down,” a voice at the other end said.
Firouz thanked the caller, hung up, then turned to his men. “Rahim, Jamshad, come with me. Navid, you know what to do.”
“Six o’clock,” Navid said.
“Not a minute later.”
“Don’t worry, Firouz. I’ll be there.”
Firouz grabbed his gear from the back of the rented SUV and motioned for the other two to follow him out of the parking garage to the bank of elevators. It felt good to be out, good to be moving after waiting in that parking garage for nearly six hours.
A moment later, they were out on street level, crossing East Fiftieth Street to the alley behind the Colgate-Palmolive Building. The streets around them, blocked off for half a mile in every direction, were empty. From their vantage point, there was not a soul to be seen. It was eerily quiet, save for the sound of an NYPD helicopter making another sweep overhead. And it was unseasonably warm. The snow was all gone now. The temperature topped sixty. Firouz couldn’t stop sweating.
Using a passkey they had pickpocketed off a janitor the night before — he wouldn’t miss it until the next morning at the earliest — they slipped into the Colgate building through a service entrance. They proceeded directly to the stairwell and double-timed it to the corner office on the fourth floor.
“Stay away from the windows,” Firouz reminded them in a whisper, “and don’t turn on the lights.”
The gleaming blue-and-white 747 taxied for a few moments.
When the front wheels came to a halt on the white X taped on the tarmac by the White House advance team, Secret Service agents and a contingent of New York’s finest moved in to secure the perimeter. The stairs were lowered. A greeting party stepped out of a nearby terminal and took up their positions. Marine One began powering up, just a hundred yards away.
“Renegade is moving,” Agent Bruner said, surveying the scene and coming down the ramp behind Jackson.
“It’s good to see you again, Mr. President.” New York mayor Roberto Diaz shook Jackson’s hand vigorously and shouted to be heard over the roar of the green-and-white VH-3D Sea King. There was bad blood between the two. Diaz hadn’t endorsed Jackson in the primaries even after privately promising that he would. But Diaz’s approval rating in the Big Apple was in the sixties. Jackson’s was in the forties. If Jackson was going to run again, he needed New York, which meant he needed Diaz. Which meant he needed to make amends.
“You, too, my friend — thanks for all you did on this thing.”
“It is my honor, Mr. President. Anwar Sadat is one of my personal heroes. Anything my good offices can do to spread his legacy of peace and reconciliation, especially at this time, well, I’m in.”
“Very good. So, full house tonight?” Jackson asked, now shaking hands with several city councilmen and their wives, who had joined the mayor.
“Standing room only, sir.”
“And we’re going to get the $8 million you promised?”
“No, sir, I’m afraid we’re not.”
Jackson finished shaking hands and turned back to the mayor, trying to mask his displeasure. “Why not? I don’t understand.”
“Looks like we’ll hit $10 million instead.”
Jackson broke into his trademark smile, then began to laugh. “Good work, Roberto,” he said, slapping the mayor on the back. “Very good. Come on, my friend, ride with me.”
The two men made their way to the helicopter and climbed aboard. A moment later, they were airborne.
Any idiot could use them, which was what made them so deadly.
The unclassified version of the US Army’s training manual on them was even on the Internet, for crying out loud. But that wasn’t where Firouz and Rahim had learned to use rocket-propelled grenades. They had been specially trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in Dasht-e Kavir, the great salt desert of south-central Iran. In fact, they had become so proficient in inflicting severe damage and large numbers of casualties in various IRGC operations that they had been sent into Iraq to train members of the Mahdi Army to use RPGs against Iraqi forces and Americans. Neither man had ever imagined the honor of being sent to the heart of the Great Satan to apply their craft against the president of the United States. But they were ready.
On the floor before them lay two Russian-designed RPG-7V2 launchers, along with six 105mm TBG-7V thermobaric warheads. Specially designed for antipersonnel and urban warfare operations, thermobaric weapons were essentially fuel-air bombs, built to dramatically expand and intensify the blast wave of a standard RPG. The goal was not so much to destroy a car, truck, or tank with one of these — though that was likely too — but to kill as many people as possible. Firouz thought they’d be lucky to get off three shots before someone stopped them, but he had ordered that six be smuggled across the Mexican and Canadian borders through various channels, hoping that at least three would make it into the US. He’d been stunned when he had arrived the night before to learn that all six had arrived without a scratch on them.