Firouz and Rahim went to work checking every detail. Soon they were loading the weapons and checking their watches. Jamshad, meanwhile, patrolled the hallways with a silencer-equipped pistol, making certain no one stumbled in. It was Sunday. No one was working. But they weren’t taking any chances. The stakes were too high.
3
“Nighthawk is inbound. Hold all radio traffic.”
Three identical choppers flew low and fast over the East River. Any of them could have been Marine One; only a handful of senior government officials knew which one actually carried the president at that moment. And that was precisely how Mike Bruner wanted it. No surprises. Just one evening event, a late-night return flight to DC, and he’d be having breakfast in the morning with his young wife.
As he sat directly behind his commander in chief, Bruner stared out the window and went through his mental checklist of all that would happen on the ground in just a few moments. In a city of eight million people, he knew it was impossible to safeguard against the possibility, however remote, of terrorists acquiring shoulder-mounted ground-to-air missiles and trying to shoot down the president’s chopper. Even though each of the Marine helicopters was equipped with state-of-the-art countermeasures, the safest bet — and it was a bet, though so far it had always paid off — was to create uncertainty. Bruner and his colleagues believed it would be difficult for al Qaeda or other terrorist groups to obtain and smuggle into the continental United States even one Stinger or its equivalent. Obtaining two was exponentially more difficult. Obtaining three or more, they believed, was virtually impossible. So even though each chopper cost about $150 million, and it cost about $27,000 an hour to operate all three, this was how it was done.
The heliport on East Thirty-Fourth Street had been closed down for the past three months for renovations, and the one at West Thirtieth Street had been the scene of a giant traffic accident a few hours earlier. So one by one, the Marine choppers made their way to the Wall Street heliport and landed at the tip of the Financial District. A moment later, Nighthawk’s side door opened, and Jackson and his entourage disembarked and headed to their assigned vehicles in the presidential motorcade lined up along Pier 6. Mayor Diaz and the councilmen were shown to a black SUV behind the lead vehicles. Jackson’s chief of staff and press secretary joined a group of White House advance men in Halfback, the follow-up limousine. The president, meanwhile, stepped into Stagecoach, and Bruner quickly closed the door behind him.
“Renegade secure,” the lead agent said, getting in the front passenger seat.
“Status check on Architect and Sphinx?” the command post director asked.
“They’re inside with Renegade.”
“So we’re good to go?”
“We’re good. Let’s roll.”
“Roger that. All posts, be advised. Freight Train moving. ETA to Roadhouse, fifteen minutes.”
The motorcade began to move, and Bruner relaxed, if only imperceptibly. Moving the president by air worried him most, particularly over a city this size. But on the ground, in an eighteen-vehicle motorcade, riding inside a brand-new Cadillac specially built to exacting Secret Service specifications, Bruner felt safe. He always preferred to have the president buttoned up in the White House or Camp David. Home-field advantage was without question his ideal. But the limousine they were now in was impenetrable by small-arms fire, machine-gun fire, or even an antitank missile.
Sphinx was quiet. That was Bruner’s code name for Egyptian president Abdel Ramzy. Architect was his designation for Israeli prime minister Asher Naphtali. Both leaders had arrived on earlier flights. Both were glad to be riding to the event with the president. But even while keeping his eyes on the police cars and motorcycles taking them up FDR Drive on the Lower East Side, Bruner couldn’t help but notice that neither foreign leader wanted to talk about the fund-raiser to which they were heading.
“You need to hit the Iranians hard, fast, and now.”
Jackson was taken aback. He had fully expected to hear the sentence on this trip, but he had expected Naphtali to be doing the requesting. To his surprise, however, the words came from Ramzy.
“Abdel,” the president replied, “we must be patient.”
“The time for patience is over, Mr. President,” the octogenarian Egyptian leader insisted, his portable oxygen tank at his side. “The mullahs now have the Bomb. The Twelfth Imam has come. It means only one thing: they’re going to use it, and they’re going to use it soon. And when they do, millions of people are going to die. Mr. President, we have a moral obligation to prevent this catastrophe from happening. You have that obligation.”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself, Abdel. Our job is to make sure no one or nothing destabilizes the region.”
“Mr. President, with all due respect, the Iranians have just tested an atomic bomb — illegally, I might add, as they signed the NPT.”
“Yes, they tested,” Jackson confirmed. “But we don’t even know if the test was successful or not. We don’t know how many bombs they have. There’s a lot we don’t know, which is why we need to keep our heads, try to ratchet down tensions in the region, and certainly not do anything provocative. That’s why tonight is so important.”
“Provocative?” President Ramzy asked. “Did you not see the television coverage out of Mecca? King Jeddawi was bowing to the Mahdi. Bowing. The Sunni leader of the House of Saud was lying prostrate before the Shias’ so-called messiah. A nuclear-armed Iran and the oil-rich Saudis have formed a single country. Kuwait has just joined the party. And my intelligence chief says Prime Minister Azziz of the UAE will announce tomorrow that he has joined as well.”
Jackson hadn’t heard this about the Kuwaitis yet. “What about Bahrain?” he asked.
“I spoke to the king less than an hour ago,” Ramzy said. “He’s still with us. I was close to his father. The family trusts me. They will stick with us, but only if you come out strong and make it clear you’re going to take action.”
“What kind of action?” Jackson asked.
“You must take out the nuclear facilities from the air, Mr. President. You must hit the regime in Tehran as well. How else can you neutralize the threat?”
“You want me to raise $10 million tonight to finish building the Sadat Institute for Peace by announcing that I’m going to launch a first strike against Iran?”
“I’m not asking you to give up the element of surprise,” Ramzy said, “but you have to lay the groundwork, and quickly. You have to make it clear just how dangerous a moment this is. And, Mr. President, I must tell you this — and, Asher, I’m sorry if this offends you, but it must be said — tomorrow Egypt will begin a nuclear weapons development program.”
Jackson recoiled.
“We have no other choice,” Ramzy pressed. “Egypt cannot be dictated to by the Twelfth Imam or whoever this charlatan is. We must be strong. We must be able to defend ourselves. It may be too late. But Egypt will not be a slave to anyone, least of all the Persians, least of all the Shias.”
The cell phone rang again.
“Where are they?” Firouz asked.