Checkmate Read online

  “No. Just keep an eye out.”

  Fisher walked aft and sat down at the comm console. Lambert came on the monitor and said, “What’s your status?”

  “Out and safe. Marjani was paid by Zhao through Heng, but he doesn’t know who was behind the money. He’s never heard of Zhao. I don’t know if I believe that, but there wasn’t time to press him further. He says Heng’s meeting was with an Iranian named Kavad Abelzada. He’s from a village called Sarani, right across the border. He was born and raised there.”

  Before Lambert could ask her, Grimsdottir said, “I’m looking. . . .”

  Lambert said, “I’ve got Tom Richards here. I’ve filled him in on the Zhao angle. I think he’s got the piece we’re missing.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  The screen split and Richards’s face appeared. “You already know this, of course, but yes, we’re running an op against Zhao—us, the Brits, and the Russians.”

  “Let me guess: Jagged.”

  Richards nodded. “Three years ago, the President signed a top-secret executive order declaring the spread of Jagged was a clear and imminent threat to national security. Moscow and London were seeing the effects in their countries as well, so it didn’t take much convincing to get them to sign onto the operation. We code-named it Jupiter.

  “For the past twenty-eight months, we’ve been waging war against Zhao along with the Russian SVR and British MI6. We started with his peripheral operations, cutting off the money, attacking the transportation, snatching low-level operators—that kind of thing.”

  “Does Beijing know about this?”

  “Hell, no. Zhao has so many politicians and generals in his pockets we’ve lost count.”

  “Go on.”

  “Once we’d made a dent in his side businesses, we took the fight straight to him,” Richards said. “Starting with his key personnel.”

  “How key?” Fisher asked.

  “Very. Most of Zhao’s empire is run by family members—brothers, cousins, uncles. We began eliminating them, one by one.”

  “Say again?”

  “Each country put specially trained teams on the ground. There was no choice; we’re at war as surely as if bombs were exploding.”

  Fisher wasn’t shocked by Richards’s admission that the CIA had fielded assassination teams, but rather that the President had made such a bold move. Right or wrong, if Jupiter ever became public knowledge, the resulting scandal would end his career and the careers of everyone attached to the operation.

  “How many so far?” Fisher asked.

  “Sixty-two. Twenty-three family members and thirty-nine non-family subordinates.”

  “And his empire?”

  “It’s running on fumes. Another six months and he’ll topple. The flow of Jagged will slow to a trickle and then stop.”

  And there was Zhao’s motive, Fisher realized. Revenge and self-preservation. Twenty-three members of his own family murdered; tens of billions of dollars at stake. Zhao had answered the U.S./Russian/U.K. declaration of war with his own, but knowing he couldn’t win a head-to-head fight, he’d devised a strategy straight out of Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

  Launch the most devastating attack on U.S. soil in history and implicate Iran, which is already the world’s new boogeyman; the U.S. responds in kind and begins marching toward war; then drag Russia into the fiasco using nuclear material stolen or sold from its own backyard. From there, momentum, world outrage, and Iran’s own defiance would do the rest. The U.S., the U.K., and whatever coalition they managed to gather would be sucked into a protracted and possibly unwinnable third war in the Middle East; Russia would be a pariah on the world stage, having caused the deaths of five thousand or more innocent civilians through neglect and/or corruption. Lives would be lost on all sides, and for years to come the last thing on the minds of U.S., Russian, and U.K. politicians would be Kuan-Yin Zhao.

  At worst, Zhao has his revenge; at best, revenge and a chance to rebuild his empire.

  FISHER said, “Colonel, this is it. This is Zhao’s game.”

  “Agreed,” Lambert said. “But do we have enough evidence to prove it?”

  “With Kavad Abelzada, we might,” said Richards. “He’s the missing link. He had to have supplied Zhao with the crew for the Trego and the men at Slipstone.”

  Grimsdottir came back on the line. “And I think I know why. Up until eighteen months ago, Abelzada had spent the last nine years in a Tehran political prison. He was tried and convicted of ‘inciting radical insurrection’ and ‘plotting to overthrow the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.’ When he was sent to prison, he had a rabid following that numbered in the thousands. The day he was convicted, there were seventeen suicide bombings throughout Tehran.”

  “Given its own track record, for Tehran to label Abelzada as a dangerous radical is saying something,” Fisher said. “Grim, do we know what his problem was with the government?”

  “I’m looking. . . . Okay, here: He was demanding they declare open war on the U.S., Israel, and all their allies. And I quote: ‘We must burn the civilizations of the West out of existence and scatter the bones of the infidels to every corner of the globe. Anything less is an insult in Allah’s eyes.’ ”

  “Very nice,” Lambert said. “So, Zhao somehow becomes aware of Abelzada’s leanings; he makes contact and offers him a chance to not only bring down his own government, but also drag the U.S. into a bloodbath—all for providing a few loyal fanatics.”

  “The blue-light special of wars,” Fisher said. “I can see why he couldn’t resist the deal.”

  “So how do we get him?” Richards asked. “I can put together a team, but that’ll take—”

  Fisher cut him off. “I’ll tell you how we get him. We’re twenty miles from the border. Another five miles beyond that is Sarani. We fly in, land on his damned house, and snatch him.”

  “That easy, huh?” Richards said.

  “Not easy at all,” Fisher replied. “But it’s the best chance we’ve got. Colonel?”

  On the screen, Fisher watched his boss squeeze the bridge of his nose and close his eyes for a few moments. He looked up. “Go get him, Sam.”

  50

  BIRD powered down the engines and they sat quiet and dark as Lambert smoothed the way for their mission. Where Turkmenistan’s airspace was a sieve, Iran’s was a wall, with a constellation of overlapping early-warning radar stations and antiaircraft missile batteries along the borders that were in constant touch with Iranian Air Interceptor Command. Being spotted in Turkmenistan would draw curiosity. In Iran, it would bring down a rain of missile fire and fighters flying at Mach 2.

  Right now Lambert was on the phone with the NRO, or National Reconnaissance Office, requesting an emergency retasking of a satellite, in this case one of the two radar satellites that kept Iraq under constant surveillance. With names such as Lacrosse, Onyx, Indigo, these RAD-SATS orbited four hundred miles above the earth, weighed fifteen tons, and were as big as school buses—and they could see an object as small as a hardcover book through rain, fog, and the black of night.

  “We got a map update downloading,” Bird called from the cockpit. “On your screen.”

  Sitting at the comm console, Redding switched to the Osprey’s navigation net. Fisher leaned in for a closer look. The new image looked like a standard topographical map showing the terrain between their landing site and the village of Sarani, but it had been enhanced with data from the RADSAT, adding three-dimensional depth to the geographic features.

  Overlaying the map was a dotted yellow line that started at the Osprey’s current position, arced around Ashgabat, then zigzagged through the Köpetdag Mountains, and finally ended at the collection of structures and crisscrossing roads that made up the village of Sarani.

  Redding used the console’s trackball to rotate and zoom the image, changing it from a high overhead view to the first-person view. He scrolled the wheel and the image glided forward, like a hawk flying through a steeply
walled canyon. He touched the wheel again, and the view returned to overhead.

  “We clip a wing on one of those walls and we’re a fireball.”

  “I’m not worried about that,” Fisher said. “Bird can fly this thing through a set of goal posts at four hundred knots. What I’m worried about are those.” He tapped the screen.

  Scattered along their course through the mountains were pulsing red squares, each one a radar station linked to a nearby missile site.

  FISHER walked forward to the cockpit. Bird and Sandy were leaning over the console screen, studying the RADSAT image. “What do you think?” Fisher asked.

  “I think I want a raise,” Bird muttered, eyes on the screen.

  “You get us in and out of there in one piece and I’ll pay it out of my own pocket.”

  “From you, Sam, I’ll take a steak dinner.”

  “Done. Can you do it?”

  “Yeah, I can do it, but I can’t guarantee I won’t rattle the dishes a bit.”

  “LAMBERT for you,” Redding called. He gave up his seat for Fisher. “Go ahead, Colonel.”

  “Update, Sam. The President has authorized strike operations for the Reagan’s air group. They’ll be starting with the surface-to-surface missile sites along the coast, from Jask to Khark Island.”

  This made sense. The Iranian Navy maintained hundreds of shore-based missile sites, most of which were focused on the Strait of Hormuz, the natural chokepoint between the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf. A variety of missiles, from Silkworms to C-801s, covered every square inch of water. The fact that Reagan’s strike aircraft were going for the missile sites first could mean only one thing: The 5th Fleet was preparing to enter the Strait and take up station along Iran’s interior coast. If the Iranians were inclined to hit first, it would be as the battle group moved into the strait.

  “How soon?” Fisher asked.

  “Tomorrow morning, before dawn. DESRON 9 will be going in first. Once they’re on station, you can expect a multiple Tomahawk strike in conjunction with Reagan’s aircraft.”

  DESRON 9 was the group’s destroyer SAG, or Surface Action Group. The ship-launched Tomahawks would be assigned Iranian command and control targets and radar sites further inland. Fisher checked his watch: nine hours. They had that long to deliver proof that Iran’s role in all this was of Kuan-Yin Zhao’s manufacture.

  “We’re lifting off in ten minutes,” Fisher said. “With luck, we’ll be back across the border with Abelzada in a few hours. Colonel, I’ve been thinking about Heng’s meeting at Marjani’s house. He briefed Abelzada on raid on a military installation—somewhere along a coast.”

  “I put out the word. Every base on our West and East Coast is on alert.”

  “Good,” Fisher said. “If Zhao’s got an ace up his sleeve, that’s it. The question is, what exactly is it and when will he play it?”

  THE Osprey lifted off and they banked northwest, picking up speed as they skimmed thirty feet over the hills and grasslands. They were flying dark, with no navigation lights and all emission sources powered down: no IFF transponder, radio, or FLIR (Forward-Looking Infrared Radar).

  Within minutes, they’d skirted Ashgabat, which lay fifteen miles out the side window. Fisher could see headlights moving along the highways and surface streets.

  They passed over the black oval of a lake and a rail line, and then the terrain began to change, hillocks turning into the rolling foothills of the Köpetdag. Redding sat at the console, watching the same map Bird and Sandy were using to navigate. One by one, villages disappeared behind them. Fisher read their names on the screen—Bagir, Chuli, Firyuza—until they were all gone and there was nothing but empty land.

  “Five miles from the border,” Bird called.

  Fisher went to the cockpit and knelt between the seats. Through the windscreen he could see the Köpetdag Range, an expanse of jagged peaks and ridgelines stacked against the even darker night sky.

  A red light started flashing on Bird’s console, followed by a beeping. A robotic female said, “Warning, radar source at—” Bird punched a button, shutting off the voice. “Redding?” he called.

  “I see it. We’re at the edge of its range. Turn coming up in thirty seconds.”

  Bird turned to Fisher. “Better go get strapped in. The ride is about to get wild.”

  51

  “STAND by!” Redding called. “Border in five... four . . . three . . . two . . . one!”

  Fisher clutched the armrests as Bird put the Osprey into a sharp bank.

  In the cockpit, the radar warning alarm was beeping. Across the aisle, Fisher watched the monitor over Redding’s shoulder. Redding had changed the view to split sreen: overhead view on the left, first-person on the right. On overhead, a pair of peaks to their left and right front were topped with pulsing red squares. On the first-person view, the Osprey was nosing over a ridgeline into a gorge. The granite walls flashed past, jagged outcroppings reaching for the wingtips.

  “Course change in twenty seconds,” Redding said. “New course, two-two-one, sharp descent to thirty feet.”

  Now the radar alarms were overlapping one another as the twin radar stations drew nearer. Fisher leaned over in his seat and looked forward. The view through the cockpit window was dizzying. The black line of the horizon twisted and rolled as Bird negotiated the terrain.

  “SAM site two miles off our starboard bow,” Redding called.

  “Spare me the nautical crap,” Bird yelled back. “Just tell me where!”

  “Two miles, front right! Course change in three . . . two . . . one . . . now!”

  Fisher was thrown against his seat back, then shoved sideways as the Osprey heeled over. On Redding’s monitor he’d switched to full-screen first-person. They were flying through a notch between two peaks. The Osprey’s wingtips were perpendicular to the ground.

  “Break out the barf bags,” Sandy yelled, then whooped.

  The radar alarm suddenly went silent.

  “What’s next?” Bird called.

  “Three miles to Sarani.” Redding answered. “Ridgeline coming up fast. Gonna have to pop up five hundred feet, then bank hard and hit the deck.”

  They flew in silence for twenty seconds, and then the radar alarm started beeping again.

  “Hard left!” Redding called.

  The Osprey flipped over. Strapped to the bulkhead by cargo webbing, his hands, feet, and mouth covered in duct tape, Marjani had regained consciousness. He let out a muffled scream. His eyes bulged. Fisher gave him a wink and a wave.

  “Whoa!” Redding shouted. “Right turn! Now!”

  Fisher was thrown in the opposite direction. His ribs slammed against the armrest. A duffel bag came loose from the rack and tumbled across the deck, bounced off Marjani, and slammed into the ramp.

  “What the hell happened?” Bird called.

  “Fire-control radar,” Redding said. “A SAM site. Wasn’t on the map!”

  “Did they paint us?”

  “Doubt it. Not enough time to lock on.”

  Fisher called, “That’s what I like to hear: optimism.”

  From the cockpit, Sandy said, “I see the ridgeline. . . . Hey, Redding, that looks a lot taller than five hundred feet.”

  “Nope, four-ninety-one. Trust me, you’ll have nine feet to spare.”

  Bird replied, “Oh, well . . . nine feet. Plenty.”

  “Start climbing in three . . . two . . . one . . .”

  Fisher kept his eyes locked on Redding’s monitor. The ridge, a jagged line of rock and scrub trees, seemed to rise up to meet them. Then it was gone. Beneath his feet he heard something scrape the underbelly of the fuselage, like a giant snare brush trailing over a drumhead.

  “Picked up some leaves on that one!” Bird called.

  “Dive, dive, dive!”

  Bird pushed the stick forward. The Osprey nosed over. In the cockpit, the robotic voice said, “Warning, warning. Collision imminent. Pull up, pull up, pull up. . . .”

  “Shut
her up, Sandy.”

  The voice went silent and was immediately replaced by another radar alarm.

  “We’re at its outer range,” Redding said. “Ten seconds to turn. A quick jink to the right, then pull up and bank left.”

  Jink? Fisher thought. Jink didn’t sound like a technical flying term.

  “How many radar sites left?” Bird called.

  “This one, and one more, then we’re at the LZ. Turn now!”

  This time Fisher was ready for it. He braced his legs against the deck, pressing his back into the seat. He clutched the armrests until his knuckles were bloodless. The Osprey seemed to turn nearly upside down. Fisher felt his stomach rise into his throat. A Styrofoam coffee cup floated past his face, then dropped straight to the deck and skittered away.

  “So, Bird, is that what you call a jink?” Fisher called.

  “No, son, that’s a super jink. Walk in the park.”

  “Last radar station dead ahead, one mile,” Redding called.

  Fisher glanced at the monitor. The Osprey was flying low and level over a boulder-strewn valley floor. The altitude gauge read eighteen feet. The radar alarm chirped, then went silent for a few seconds, then chirped again.

  “We’re skimming below the detection nadir,” Redding announced. “The waves are skipping along the fuselage.”

  “Nadir?” Sandy repeated. “Been reading the dictionary again, Will?”

  “It means—”

  “I know what it means, you dummy.”

  “Gimme steering,” Bird called. “The ground is sloping up. They’re gonna paint us.”

  “Hard right turn in seven seconds,” Redding replied. “Course zero-nine-eight.”

  “I don’t see anything!” Sandy called.

  “It’s a gorge. Trust me, it’s there.”

  “How wide?”

  “Wide enough. Stand by. . . . Three . . . two . . . one, now!”