at Tel Nof Air Force Base around midnight, though, Jackson was somewhat surprised to see that Dani would be joining them.
“You’re going to?” Jackson asked.
“I’m the operations officer for this unit; I kind of need to go.”
“I’m sorry, I guess I just figured…” Jackson started.
“What? That since I’m a woman, I’m not a full member of the team?” Dani interrupted, with both a bit of an edge but also knowing she had something over on Stonewall.
“It’s just that I’m not used to women serving in a Special Ops unit.”
“Well, this is Israel, not the United States. I can hold my own, I think I’ve demonstrated that. And, besides, on this little excursion, we’ll be traveling as a couple – once we get to Iran, you’ll be my husband.”
“What?!?” Jackson blurted out.
“Ben didn’t tell you that, huh?” Dani said with a bit of a laugh. “Relax, we both speak perfect Farsi and I’ve been over there several times. It’ll be a walk in the park, as you Americans fondly say.”
* * *
Upon landing in Baku, they taxied over to a large hangar at a far corner of the airport completely out of sight from the rest of the terminal. The pilot actually taxied the plane into the hangar and, once inside, the doors of the hangar closed and the pilot shut down the engines. Poking his head out of the cabin door before deplaning, Jackson noticed several things seemingly all at once: the hangar was far larger than it needed to be for this little plane but it also housed four other planes, each presumably Israeli though there were no markings on the planes. As he walked down from the plane, Jackson noticed that each of the planes in the hangar sported large, conformal bulges – clearly electronic warfare aircraft – and quickly suspected that something else was in the works.
“Ah, Dani, what’s going on?” Jackson asked as he got off the plane.
“What do you mean?” Dani quickly responded.
“Dani, you’re Ops; unless I’m mistaken, you’ve got four EW planes parked in here as well as the plane we just flew in on. Is there something else in the works that I’m not aware of?” Jackson asked.
“Nah, we keep these guys here to keep a close eye on Tehran. It’s a lot closer than flying from any of our bases back home, which means they can spend more time in the air over here. Obviously, we have a pretty tight, and secret, agreement with Azerbaijan.” Dani went on, hoping to sound somewhat reassuring.
“Uh huh.…” Jackson replied, not entirely convinced. “We knew you were working with them and had rights to use the air field, in an emergency – or so we thought – but didn’t realize they allowed you to base your EW craft here.”
“Well, we haven’t advertised it but this airfield has come in quite handy. Looks like our ride is here,” Dani added, quickly changing the subject.
Jackson hadn’t noticed the two Toyota SUVs that pulled up behind him while he had been talking with Dani. Both vehicles were registered in Astara, Azerbaijan, so as not to raise any undo suspicion: they would not be in Iran very long and would appear to be nothing more than tourists traveling in Iran for a few days – it was the height of the summer tourist season, after all. The six man team, now broken into two teams – Jackson and Dani in one vehicle and the other four in the second SUV – proceeded to the Astara border crossing, which was the only open crossing as the Azerbaijanis had recently closed the crossings at Bileh Savar and Julfa due to a border incident involving Iranian border guards firing at a farmer working the river bank separating the two countries. Ben had planned on hitting the border around 7:00 a.m., ordinarily one of the busiest times of the day at the border crossing as it was; now, the increased border traffic at Astara greatly eased the infiltration as the border guards here, like low level bureaucrats everywhere, were seriously overworked and underpaid.
Getting into their SUV, Jackson looked at Dani and, somewhat facetiously said “Well, ‘Mrs. Jackson’, just how long of a drive do we have?”
“Careful with that, Cowboy,” Dani replied, after all, he was a Texan Dani thought to herself. “Ben wants to hit the border crossing around seven o’clock. It’s what, oh… something like 185 miles and it’s a little after three right now so we should make that as planned. From the border, it’s about another 320 miles or so. As long we’re in Azerbaijan, I can help you with the driving but once we cross the border, you’ll need to do all of the driving as the Iranians don’t like their women driving.”
IV
Back in 2012, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made his UN speech drawing a “red line” in the sand, he also made an estimate as to when the Iranians might be able to produce a nuclear bomb. The Prime Minister had followed up his 2012 UN speech with another one to the same world body just a few days ago and this one specified, in rather great detail, as to when the Iranians would have a nuclear weapon – in just a few months. This was incredibly sooner than anyone in the agency, let alone the world, had expected. Most everyone in the agency – and the world, for that matter – simply assigned this, understandably, to regional paranoia. No other intelligence agency in the world, not MI6, not the DGSE, hell not even the KGB, believed Iran was this far along. However, Jackson thought there might be something to this and the opportunity to join Dani and her team on the recon mission into Iran looked like a golden opportunity to see whether or not the Israelis and his own agency were operating from the same intelligence – or if the Israelis had a source unknown to the CIA.
“You realize what he’s telling us, don’t you?” Grand Ayatollah Khameini said to Said Jalili who sat across from him in his office.
“Of course,” Jalili responded rather smugly, “Netan-yahu’s telling us that he knows how close we are to achieving a nuclear bomb. We have a leak.”
“Not only that, but he’s essentially daring us to find his source. He’s betting everything that we won’t be able to find the leak.”
“Even Netanyahu wouldn’t be so cynical as to burn his own source. He either doesn’t think we’ll find him, or her, or….”
“They are attacking.…” Khameini finished Jalili’s sentence for him. “They are attacking…. They wouldn’t dare; not alone.” Khameini couldn’t believe what he had just said. On the one hand, it made sense, but on the other… they wouldn’t go it alone. They couldn’t; they didn’t have the means. Neither the Saudis nor the Jordanians would allow the Israelis to violate their air space. The Turks, well, they might, Khameini thought to himself, but that would be the longest route for them to take and the Israelis simply did not have the logistical means to do something this ambitious. No, Netanyahu clearly thought they would never find his source. That arrogant pig Khameini thought to himself.
“Said, you need to find our leak. That arrogant pig is daring us to find his source. He doesn’t think we can find him. I want you to put your best people on this. We need to plug this leak immediately. We have come too far to let it all slip away at this point.”
“I’ll find the leak and I know just who should handle this,” Jalili said. Unlike the Grand Ayatollah, though, Jalili knew that he also needed to get ready for an attack. Khameini could delude himself all he wanted
