Several of the monitors were the actual video feeds from these surveillance aircraft. Drones and manned aircraft alike linked secure data down to the TOC. But today, people only cared about one of these screens.
Underneath this particular screen was a bright red digital display that said SHORTSTOP 23. That was the call sign of the US Air Force RQ-180 drone that was transmitting the video feed from several miles up.
The screen showed a truck blocking a highway. Three black cars were stopped in front of it. There were bodies strewn about the road, and a firefight was in progress.
“You see that?” Elliot said.
“See what?” Chase replied.
“Zoom out.” He looked around for the person controlling the drone. “Zoom out!”
An Air Force first lieutenant sitting in front of a mass of computer screens and joysticks clicked a few buttons. The screen flashed and then showed a wider, more distant view of the scene. Chase could see a beach to the south and a naval base with ships to the southeast. There was an airport over to the west. Bandar Abbas. Home to Iran’s largest naval base, it was positioned just north of the Strait of Hormuz.
With the view zoomed out, everyone could see another truck — a troop transport by the look of it — barreling down the highway, toward the firefight.
“This is going to get worse. I counted three heat signatures still in that truck that started the shooting.”
Chase leaned over to Elliot and whispered, “So what did Lisa’s email say?”
Elliot kept clenching and unclenching his jaw. “Very little. Just that the ‘operation’ was on. And then she listed these GPS coordinates written down below with this time and date.” He nodded up at the screen, implying that the coordinates were the same location the drone was observing. “I came over here to make sure that we had surveillance coverage of the location and told the duty officer to let me know if she saw anything suspicious. The thing is, Lisa sent that message to me over unclassified email. It was addressed to me and a few of the higher-ups in Langley. Like she wanted it to be picked up by outside sources.”
Lisa hadn’t been heard from in several weeks.
Until now.
Until the email that Elliot had just received. It implied that she was part of a CIA operation near Bandar Abbas. A few weeks ago, she had saved Chase and Waleed from getting shot by Pakvar and company in the Dubai Mall.
Days later, she had headed off to Langley for official business. At least, that was what Chase had been told. She was there when they debriefed the Dubai Mall incident with Elliot. She claimed that she was there to meet another asset when she heard the gunfire, that it was a coincidence that she was there at all. In the aftermath of that incident, with the amount of activity going on, this explanation had seemed reasonable to Chase. Now he felt like a fool.
Going over the events with Elliot, a different story became clear. When Chase arrived back from Abu Musa, he finally had time to sit down with Elliot and go over everything in detail. Lisa had not, in fact, been cleared by the counterespionage team, like she had told Chase. She was being sent back to Langley because the counterespionage team had recommended to Elliot that she be reassigned. Apparently, she’d had several inconclusive answers on her polygraph. She would perform administrative duty at Langley while the investigation proceeded.
But Lisa Parker had never shown up at Langley. Airport footage showed her getting off her flight at LAX, which seemed normal. The subsequent footage showing her as she walked out of the airport — and not onto her connecting flight — was decidedly abnormal. That was the last time anyone at the CIA had heard from Lisa Parker. Until yesterday, when Elliot received his cryptic email.
So why had she lied to Chase about being cleared by the counterespionage team? Was she the leak in Dubai Station? Chase didn’t want to believe that. He had been close to her over the past few months. He didn’t want to think that she was capable of this. Between his brother and her, he wasn’t sure what to think anymore.
Chase had come clean to Elliot and let him know that he had talked to Lisa about David being on the list, not realizing that Lisa hadn’t been cleared. Elliot had been disappointed, but he’d understood the conflict. Elliot had read Chase the riot act and told him to consider that his mulligan.
David, too, was still missing.
Elliot had reported David Manning’s inclusion on the list up through the CIA’s chain of command. But having come from an Iranian source, the information was deemed only somewhat reliable. Elliot was in the process of evaluating the claim with investigators near Washington, D.C.
Then came Victoria Manning’s voice mail to Chase, letting him know that David had gone missing from outside his home in Northern Virginia. Police said that it looked like a mugging or kidnapping. Pizza boxes were spilled outside his parked car, its door left open. Elliot felt awful for not acting sooner. Chase blamed himself. He realized that David had gone missing over three weeks ago now. He couldn’t believe that it had been that long.
“Elliot?” the duty officer, phone to her ear, called over to him. “We’ve confirmed that the passengers in the car are Ahmad Gorji and his wife. They were attending a ceremony at the Bandar Abbas Naval Base.”
Elliot shook his head. He whispered, “Son of a bitch. This is an assassination. She’s making it look like the CIA is assassinating Gorji.”
Chase watched the screen. The troop transport pulled up and as men started climbing out and opening fire, the screen zoomed in again.
Chase saw a white flash on the display and thought that the first lieutenant had zoomed back out, but that wasn’t it.
One of the Air Force guys said, “Holy shit.”
As the screen became clear again, Chase realized what he had seen. Someone had just set off a bomb.
Chapter 12
Lisa Parker lay hidden, nestled in the brush on top of a small ridgeline. From her position, she was able to observe Iran’s largest naval base, the harbor, and the Shahid Rajaie Highway that ran parallel to the shoreline. About a mile to the west, the occasional multiengine turboprop airliner took off from Havadarya Airport.
Her body ached from being in the prone position so long. She had been baking in the desert heat for almost forty-eight hours, and her stomach grumbled from lack of food. She had a small stash of rations, but now was not the time to eat.
The ghillie suit made it all but impossible for someone to spot her, but it didn’t give her good access to her pockets. If she had stood straight up, she would have looked like some type of dreadlocked swamp monster, covered in desert plants and roots.
Her dedicated mind fed off of the arduous conditions. She relished the pain and enjoyed the hunt. The long wait for that one critical moment where she would strike her target. Lisa was only bothered by one thing — the stench of the large black plastic bag that lay next to her, cooking in the sun. The smell had started off bad and become progressively worse over the duration of her stay on this mountain perch. Soon enough she could get rid of the bag’s contents and wash the horrid smell off her body in the salty waters of the Arabian Gulf. The Persian Gulf, she corrected herself. After all, she was in Iran.
Lisa looked through her rifle scope at the people who would soon die. A part of her felt bad about that, but she told herself that the innocent victims who perished today would serve a greater purpose. For this was the start of a tremendous war. A war that would catapult the entire globe into a new era of progress and prosperity. The great rebalancing, as Jinshan called it.