Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
The missile warning light on his dashboard was going off. Seated behind him, Yonah confirmed they had two surface-to-air missiles racing toward them. Yonah immediately deployed countermeasures, firing flares and chaff while Avi rolled the F-15 to the left and raced toward the mountains. One of the missiles took the bait and exploded behind them. But the other sliced through the fireball and smoke and was rapidly catching up to them.
Below them, the earth was an inferno. Each of the Israeli fighter jets had successfully dropped its ordnance, and another dozen Israeli planes were five minutes behind them. So far they had accomplished their mission. They had achieved the element of surprise. They had dropped their bombs. They had obliterated much of the Natanz facility and had likely killed scores of Iranian nuclear scientists and engineers. But that was the easy part. Now they had to get home.
Avi banked hard to the right, then rolled to the left. The missile was still behind them. It was still gaining on them. Yonah fired off another round of countermeasures, but again they were unsuccessful.
“Six seconds,” the watch commander yelled.
At that moment Levi Shimon turned away, but Naphtali couldn’t. He wanted to. He understood the instinct. But he kept watching, first the monitor with the radar track, then the live images coming in from Channel 2.
“Four seconds.”
Suddenly the first Patriot interceptor clipped the tail of the inbound cruise missile. That knocked the missile off its course and sent it tumbling through the sky. A half second later, the second interceptor scored a direct hit on the warhead, turning it into a gigantic fireball crashing down to earth.
Everyone in the war room erupted in applause and cheering.
Four fighter jets suddenly roared over the mosque.
They were so low, most of the crowd instinctively ducked down. David did as well, as stunned to see the jets as anyone else. The crowd cheered, assuming they were Iranian pilots training for a showdown with the Zionists. After all, the TV and newspapers were filled with talk of imminent hostilities, even as the Mahdi proclaimed over and over again his desire for peace and justice.
But David could see these were not Russian-built MiG-29s. Nor were they aging American-built F-4 Phantoms, bought by the Shah before the Revolution. These were F-16s. President Jackson hadn’t sent them. Which could only mean one thing: the Israelis were here.
Yossi Yaron tried not to think about the mosque.
If it were up to him, he would have dropped his ordnance on the cherished site of the Twelvers and obliterated it forever. But Israeli military planners would have none of it. Israeli pilots would not be bombing religious or civilian targets under any circumstances, they repeated over and over again. They would not be bombing water or electrical plants, bridges, industrial facilities, or other civilian infrastructure.
Their focus was narrow and their mission precise: to neutralize Iran’s nuclear weapons program and protect the Israeli homeland. Could they completely wipe out the program? Probably not. But the defense minister believed they could set it back at least five to ten years, and that would buy the Jewish people desperately needed time. Yaron hoped the pilgrims at the Jamkaran Mosque had seen the Star of David on the tails of all four F-16s. He just wished he could see their faces when they realized what was happening.
Avi Yaron wanted to radio his men.
He wanted to make sure they were racing back for the Persian Gulf, not waiting around for him. The Iranian Air Force would be all over them any moment. None of them were worried about getting shot down by mere kids. The Iranian pilots were typically too young and badly trained and had little or no actual combat experience. Worse, they were flying jets more than twice their age, many of which were practically held together with superglue and duct tape since spare parts had long been banned by the international sanctions against the regime. No, the problem wasn’t the Iranian pilots or their planes; it was the Israelis’ own fuel supply.
The ground crews back in the Negev had stripped their F-15s and F-16s down to the bare minimum to add fuel tanks, giving them additional range. Once outside of Iranian airspace, they could get to safe zones where they could hook up with Israeli refueling tankers. But they had to get there first. If they had to engage in dogfights or outrun SAMs or triple-A fire, they were going to burn fuel they couldn’t afford.
60
David felt a tap on his shoulder.
He turned around, and there was Javad Nouri, surrounded by a half-dozen plainclothes bodyguards.
“Mr. Tabrizi, good to see you again.”
“Mr. Nouri, you as well,” David said. He wondered if Javad and his team had seen the jets.
“I trust you had no trouble getting here.”
“Not at all,” David said.
“Have you ever been here before?”
It seemed like an odd question, given the moment.
“Actually, I’m ashamed to say I have not.”
“Someday I will have to give you a tour.”
“I would like that very much.”
Reaching the mountains, Avi Yaron cleared the closest peak.
Then he pushed the yoke forward, diving into one of the canyons. Yonah craned his neck but couldn’t get a visual, though the missile was still on his radarscope. They hadn’t shaken it yet.
Snaking through the canyons, Avi kept pushing the plane faster and faster, burning tremendous amounts of fuel every second.
“Avi, it’s right on us,” Yonah shouted.
Avi accelerated still further and held his breath. Now it wasn’t fuel he feared. Now it was the split-second decisions he was having to make every few hundred meters. One wrong move and they could plow into a mountainside. One wrong move and they could scrape against the top of a ridge, gutting their fuselage and rupturing their fuel tanks. Either way, they’d crash and burn. They’d never have time to eject, and even if they did, neither wanted to be captured by the Iranians. That was a fate worse than death.
Javad looked at the box in David’s hands.
“Is that the package we were expecting?”
“It is,” David said, “but we have a problem.”
“What is that?”
David glanced around. He noticed there were several more bodyguards taking up positions in a perimeter around them. There was also a large white SUV waiting by the curb with a guard holding the back door open. Ahead of it was another SUV, presumably serving as the lead security car. Behind it was a third, completing the package.
“Most of the phones are damaged and unusable,” David explained, handing the mangled box to Javad. “Something must have happened in the shipping.”
Javad cursed and his expression immediately darkened. “We need these.”
“I know.”
“Now what are we going to do?”
“Look, I can go back to Munich and get more. It’s what I wanted to do in the first place. But—”
“But Esfahani told you not to leave.”
“Well, I—”
“I know, I know. Allah help me. Esfahani is a fool. If he weren’t the nephew of Mohsen Jazini, he wouldn’t be involved at all.”