before in his career with the Special Forces, and was rather surprised at the apparent lack of security as the door seemed to be unlocked as Dani had walked right in. Playing off of his amazement, Dani took Stonewall back out front and had him try and open the door, only to find the door completely locked – and very solid. Dani, then, simply opened the door for Jackson to let him back in the house. At this point, Jackson began to realize just how sophisticated this safe house really was.
“Oh, this is good; this is really cool. Is there some sort of facial recognition key that automatically unlocks the door?” Jackson asked.
“Close; there’s a biometric sensor at the door that picks up on both facial recognition and behavioral analytics to function as the ‘key’, ” Dani replied. She could see that Jackson was suitably impressed – and she loved showing off.
For his part, Jackson had used safe houses before, but nothing like this – this “house” was more like a small fortress, complete with an eight foot wall around the perimeter: to all but the most trained eye, each window could stop a 7.62 bullet; he didn’t see any cameras but he knew they were there as well, both inside and out. Dani took him to the basement control room where he realized just how thorough the camera surveillance really was: multiple cameras had every square inch of the property – and its approaches – thoroughly covered, with multiple redundancy; if someone tried to sneak up and disable even half a dozen cameras, there were still more. Dani showed Jackson the “armory” next; in addition to the usual small arms, this arsenal had enough hardware to take out a battalion of tanks and to take down a small squadron of fighters – even an aerial assault could be met with fierce resistance. Jackson had been so taken in by Dani and the “amenities” of the house that he had totally failed to realize that there were three inhabitants of the residence. Ben, and the rest of Jackson’s new Israeli friends, did not fail to, good naturally, remind him of their presence!
“So, Arielle, who’s General Dayan, here?” Zivah asked Dani as she sized up Jackson. Turning to Stonewall, she simply commented, “You don’t work out much, do you?” Jackson had been wearing a loose fitting cotton Oxford, which felt pretty good in the cool morning air up in Baku, but had removed this due to the intense afternoon heat in Tehran. The fitted Under Armour T-shirt he now wore accented his sculpted torso, which Zivah admiringly noticed.
“I usually run about five miles a day and then do a little work in the weight room; I spend more time on the cardio than on the weights.”
“Well, don’t change a thing! It’s working for me; you fill that shirt out in all the right places!” Zivah commented admiringly.
“Dani, he’s a keeper!” she continued.
“Zivah! I can’t believe you!” Dani exclaimed, noticeably blushing. “Stonewall, this is Zivah – and watch out for her. She’s our electronics and comms expert – she has ‘ears’ everywhere! Next, this is Ayal, he’s our explosives expert. Finally, we have Jonah, who pretty much lives here.”
“Nice to meet you all,” Jackson replied.
“I assume there’s a story behind the ‘Stonewall’ name?” Ayal asked.
“There is. Suffice it to say that a colonel I worked with a while back thought something I did reminded him of our Civil War General Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson; my name is Thomas Jackson, so the handle fit.”
Once the complete team, now nine members strong, had been fully introduced to Stonewall, Ben set about explaining the exact nature of their little mission. From the first, Jackson suspected that this little mission they were on had to be something big – and he was not disappointed.
“Recently, Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke at the United Nations and drew a red line advising the world body that Iran was extremely close to achieving a nuclear bomb. What he did not tell the world was that we have a source within the Iranian government that has been leaking highly classified information to us and that, within that speech, was a coded message for our source to get ready to leave Iran as we would be coming to get him – we are that mission,” Ben advised.
“My God; you guys are… Ah!” Jackson exclaimed as he received a powerful elbow in the rib cage. “What was that for?” he asked Dani.
“Just shut up; we’ll discuss this later,” she quietly responded.
“Our source, is none other than Dr. Ali Bagheri Kani, the deputy secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council,” Ben continued. “Bagheri knows we are coming but he does not know exactly when or how we will be picking him up; there is simply no way of getting that information to him. He currently lives in a residence in the resort area of Bashgah-e Savarkri-e, not too far from here in Tehran. The resort is part of the National Botanical Gardens, and there are only two entrances – one on the west and the other on the east side of the park. We know he is home as Jonah and his team here, have had him under surveillance for the past week. The plan to get him out is relatively quite simple: We’ll grab him tonight and head immediately for Astara and the border,” Ben said with a smile. Jackson knew, as did everyone else, that it wouldn’t exactly be that simple.
After Ben’s briefing, Dani took Jackson aside.
“You’re pretty quick,” she told him.
“Well, it’s pretty obvious. You tell the world that the Persians are on the verge of a nuclear weapon, you have four EW aircraft forward deployed and now we’re over here to smuggle out your source before everything hits the fan – you guys are attacking.” A simple statement; no question implied. “Dani, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for it. Some folks in Washington might not be but we’ll have to cross that bridge very soon.”
“Tamir said you were a quick study. You put that together very fast. I don’t need to tell you: don’t let this out, and for that matter, the decision really hasn’t been made. Zivah, Jonah, and Ayal don’t know how soon we might be attacking, though you are correct – if this mission is a success, we’ll probably be attacking as soon as we get back.”
“Dani, don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me. I’ve been around the block a time or two. It wouldn’t surprise me if the raiding party already has their engines warmed up by the time we land back in Tel Aviv.”
* * *
Bagheri, who was Said Jalili’s chief deputy, found himself in a unique position: each member of his family had been killed in service to the Islamic Republic: one son had been killed by an Israeli air strike in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon helping Hezbollah with some advanced long range missiles; another son had been killed in the US air strike that had also killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq; and, his wife and first born son had been passengers on Iranian Flight 655—something which would have no meaning to any American but had been etched into the psyche of every Iranian since that fateful day in July, 1988, when the USS Vincennes had shot down Iranian Flight 655 in the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 passengers on board. Bagheri thoroughly detested everything about the United States and its arrogance. However, he, perhaps more than anyone else also clearly saw the direction that Iran was heading with its pursuit of nuclear weapons, and he also clearly saw the only possible outcome that could become of such an objective – and he loved his country more than he hated the Americans, which was why he had decided to aid the Israelis in their desire to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The fact that his family had been destroyed by both the Israelis and the Americans put him way beyond reproach – no one would suspect him of helping the hated Zionists and their
