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  He was pained by the changing political scenarios, but his immediate focus was the job at hand. The team in Tehran had been given the go-ahead by POTUS (President of The United States) to extract a civilian. And not just any civilian. Helms stared at the eight-by-twelve black-and-white photograph clipped to the dossier on his desk. The man was known as Majeed el-Abdullah, an Iranian cleric and an important figurehead of the Shi’a population. The president took a lot of convincing to authorize the extraction of someone like him, who not only was a civilian but also a religious figurehead of one of America’s fiercest rivals. Before 1980, Iran had been one of the United States’ closest allies. But after the 1979 Revolution, which ousted the pro-American Shah and replaced him with the anti-American Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, things had changed quickly. The developments even surprised the United States government, its State Department and intelligence services, who consistently underestimated the magnitude and long-term implications of this unrest. Six months before the revolution culminated, the CIA had produced a report stating that “Iran is not in a revolutionary or even a ‘prerevolutionary’ situation.” Clearly, they had badly misread the situation. In any case, Iran and the United States had had no formal diplomatic relations since 1980. And the Iranians were nothing if not vocal about perceived American arrogance and its desire for global dominance.

  All this made the president wary of the backlash if the mission went kaput. He was already on shaky ground and something like this could end his presidency in a snap. His only reason to agree to this mission was Helms. Helms had convinced him to go ahead with this, Helms was shouldering a lot of responsibility, and that’s why his only choice was Sam Wick, a man he could trust with his own life.

  The cleric had first landed on the NSA’s radar five years back when the NSA was tracking Al Qaeda’s money trail through Russia and Germany. The information received was deadly. Al Qaeda was planning to build chemical weapons, and the cleric was the face behind getting the money for it. The location was in Iran, near the Iran-Afghanistan border. Just before production started the US president threatened the Iranian leadership with airstrikes and more sanctions. Iran eventually closed the facility, and the cleric decided to search for a new place to fulfill his mission.

  Five years later the USA once again discovered the site of the new weapons plant. Al Qaeda was almost on the verge of completing a new plant deep below a mountain. This time it required much more force and time was not on America’s side. The cleric was leading the mission once again, and he had made sure that only a nuclear strike could destroy the facility.

  A nuclear attack meant inviting a war when the USA was least ready to engage in one. The only other way was to extract the cleric to the US military base in Pakistan which shared a border with Iran and then track his aides one by one. Getting him alive was key to the whole operation, and Wick was the best extractor TF-77 had ever created.

  Helms flipped through the dossier, looking at a series of photos and translated conversations that the cleric had had with Al Qaeda operatives. This relationship concerned the NSA most. Helms knew that there would be only one target for the weapons they were creating—the US.

  On the next page were photos of the cleric convention that was scheduled to take place later that day. This was where the cleric was most exposed and would be at his most vulnerable.

  NSA analysts had crunched tons and tons of data to find the relevant bits to aid the team. If all went as planned, Helms expected to have the cleric in their custody in the next few hours.

  CHAPTER 5

  Helms’ secure line phone rang, and he picked up before the second ring.

  “We are ready to go,” Wick’s voice echoed through the speaker.

  “Updates?”

  Wick ran down the checklist of developments and explained the final touches he had added to the plan with Olivia and the team. Helms heard him out with rapt attention. He asked no questions.

  When Wick was done, he said, “This is our only chance. If you miss him today, I doubt we'll get another one. The cat will be out of the bag and there'll l be too many eyes on us for another attempt.”

  “I understand,” Wick said.

  He didn’t sound like his confident self and Helms picked up the slight variation in his tone.

  “Is there anything else?” he asked in a mellower tone. Wick was more than his best asset; Helms had seen him transform from a naïve boy to an efficient assassin.

  “Everything’s fine,” Wick responded.

  There was a moment of silence, then Helms asked, “What’s your gut telling you on this one?”

  Wick didn’t know what to make of this question. He hadn't discussed his personal feelings with anyone in a very long time, and this was his boss, Helms, on the other side of the line. Should he let him know about the unease he was feeling?

  Wick’s forehead was moist. He was calling from the bathroom, which was cramped, with little or no ventilation. He gripped the handset, not sure if Helms was just asking for the sake of asking or if he genuinely wanted to know. He didn't share a very close relationship with him. Finally, he said, “I’m sure it’s nothing. Just the usual anxiety before we hit the target. A little more prep time would have been nice, but that's usually the case.”

  “If there's something not right, don’t force it,” Helms said again.

  “I can handle this.” Wick hated himself for exposing his slight moment of self-doubt.

  “I'm not going to second-guess you if you don't want to do it.”

  “That’s never been the case. I don’t care about what others think of my methods, and nobody knows that better than you.” Wick smiled quietly.

  Helms knew what he was talking about. Wick’s tendency to keep to himself was often seen as arrogance in the agency. The other thing that irked people was his nature to call a spade a spade. Wick said it like it was and never shied away from telling the truth, even in front of the president. Once, in the past administration, Helms had taken him to a briefing. He hadn’t wanted to, but Wick had been the most knowledgeable person around about the man they were going to discuss. The meeting had gone smoothly as long as Wick wasn’t speaking but once he discerned that they were going ahead with the worst plan of his entire career, there had been no stopping him. He had told the president to his face that if he was going to go ahead with that plan, he might as well send his men with suicide bomber jackets or a cyanide pill because the plan was as good as his morning dump. Wick hadn’t even waited for the president to throw him out of the meeting. He had seen himself out as soon as he was done massacring the plan of action. The president had been furious and had gone ahead with the plan anyway, but the results were exactly what Wick had predicted. Fewer men would have been killed on a suicide mission than on that particular job.

  “You know what I mean. Just be careful.” Helms was concerned.

  “I always am.” Wick was now answering without thinking.

  “Anything else?” asked Helms.

  “Nope.”

  “All right ... good luck, and keep me in the loop.”

  “Okay.” Wick ended the call. Opening the bathroom door, he stepped out. He still couldn’t shake that feeling deep in his stomach. Something wasn’t right.

  CHAPTER 6

  Tehran, Iran

  Wick put the finishing touches on his disguise. A rinse dye had turned his black hair grayish white. Special contacts transformed his eyes to mild brown, and the makeup made his complexion more wheatish. Wick checked the clothes on the bed and checked his equipment one last time.

  The oversized kurta had hidden compartments that were loaded with weapons from his laundry list. The shoes he was going to wear looked broken and old, but they contained his fake Iranian and American passports and twenty grand in cash in Iranian currency. The Iranian passport had Wick’s photo, an alias, and stamps indicating that he had entered the country through Turkmenistan. The American passport contained a photograph of Wick with a trimmed beard a
nd short hair. They were his way out of Iran if something went wrong. No one, not even the folks in Maryland, knew about them. If things fell apart, Wick wanted to be able to go completely off-radar.

  Wick had already memorized the main streets, alleyways, nearest bus stations and railway routes that would get him out of the area if his pickup failed. He carried a minuscule GPS tracker in his watch to make sure he always knew his exact location. A matte-black K-Bar was concealed in the right sleeve of the kurta, and four extra clips of 9-mm rounds were hidden in various parts of his clothes. Wick’s earpiece would keep him in touch with his team, who would wait for him in a rusty stolen minivan outside the convention center. The minivan had been repainted and given a nondescript trademark along with Iran’s national emblem in red.

  He was going into the mission with his trusty 9-mm Glock-26 pistol. The serial number had been removed. The clip had fifteen rounds, and with four more clips, Wick had enough for a small battle. This was his backup, although he planned to get the job done without firing a single bullet. Before leaving the room, he wiped the surfaces to remove any trace of fingerprints. When he walked into the other room Olivia, Logan and Elijah were doing the same. When they were finished, they looked at Wick, who gestured for them to strap the three bulletproof vests below their oversized attires.

  A few moments later they left the safe house and got into the van. Olivia was behind the wheel and Elijah was in the passenger seat. Wick and Logan were at the back. The minivan rolled gently down the rutted dirt road.

  CHAPTER 7

  The drive to their destination would take about forty minutes. Wick and Logan studied the landscape from their respective windows. Wick moved and his eyes suddenly fell on his reflection in the dusty, cracked, rear-view mirror of the stolen minivan. He wondered how long it had been since he had lived with his real face. He was camouflaged as a beggar. His eyes betrayed the lack of sleep that was normal for him before every mission.

  There was still some time before his drop. Wick scanned the thin file in his hand once again. He had already committed it to memory, but he had nothing else to do for the next fifteen minutes. Reading the file again seemed as good a way as any to pass the time.

  He turned over the first page and looked at the bold headline: Iran’s Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Heyder Mohammad Najjar, says a meeting of clerics will convene in Tehran on 29th November for promoting religious harmony.

  Clerics from the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Syria, Iraq and Turkey had been invited to the convention. Tehran’s Mayor, Fazlollah Golshaeeyan, would host the convention along with Minister Heyder Mohammad Najjar. This was where their target would arrive.

  With the change in the US administration, the sanctions on Iran had been re-imposed. Other nations, fearful of angering the US government, had started distancing themselves from the country. The leadership of Iran feared that if the situation continued to deteriorate, the temporary alienation could soon be a damning reality. The country was getting cornered on the world stage and needed a shot in the arm to re-enter the fold of its brethren. Iran’s Supreme Leader had given Heyder Mohammad Najjar the responsibility for regaining the support of other Muslim nations. This cleric convention was the first step in that direction.

  Wick went back to the first page that showed a picture of his target for this mission—Majeed el-Abdullah. The man in the picture wore specs and had a long, snowy beard. His eyes looked cold and calculating. He had been the head of Iran’s hardline judiciary for the decade from 2001 to 2011, during which he had carried out more than two thousand executions, including four adolescents, despite Iran having signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibited such killings. He had also allowed the arbitrary arrests of political and human-rights activists, the torture of prisoners, and the closure of reformist newspapers that supposedly tarnished Iran’s image.

  Recently, Iran’s Supreme Leader had appointed Majeed Head of the Expediency Council, a body intended to resolve disputes between parliament and a watchdog body, the Guardian Council.

  Majeed had been born in the city of Najaf in Iraq to Iranian parents. In the 1970s he had been jailed and tortured by Saddam Hussein’s security forces because of his political activities. He had moved to Iran after the Islamic revolution in 1979 and risen rapidly through the ranks. In recent years, Majeed had aimed to raise his profile in Iraq as a replacement for the top Shi’ite cleric.

  He had, time and again, given statements to the effect that Iran had been created to conquer the Christians as per the prophecy made in Hadith.

  “Iranians should consider themselves fortunate that Allah has bestowed on them the honor of waging war against evil forces like the US,” Majeed was recorded saying recently in a rally attended by more than 50,000 people.

  In the same rally, Majeed had also claimed that the Prophet had predicted there would be a war soon, and Iran was destined to win and rule its neighbors and the western countries. “The genesis of Iran was prophesied to defeat the evil forces of Christianity,” he had declared.

  But Wick knew that behind this facade of a religious fanatic lay a keen brain that was plotting the fall of America through chemical warfare.

  CHAPTER 8

  Majeed descended the stairs into a small bunker on the outskirts of Tehran. He had fifty minutes before he had to leave for the convention.

  The bunker was one of many built by a terrorist group that acted as a front for Al-Qaeda in Iran. Public perception was that Al-Qaeda regarded Shia Muslims as heretics and attacked their mosques and gatherings, and the group had been designated a terrorist organization by Iran. However, Al-Qaeda and Iran had allied during the 1990s when Hezbollah had trained Al-Qaeda operatives. Iran had detained hundreds of Al-Qaeda operatives who entered the country following the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Even though the Iranian government had held most of them under house arrest, limited their freedom of movement, and closely monitored their activities, the U.S. had expressed concerns that Iran had not fully accounted for their whereabouts, culminating in accusations of Iranian complicity in the 2003 Riyadh compound bombings.

  The terrorist group that acted as a front for Al-Qaeda was formed in December 2010, when about eighteen groups had united under the leadership of Baitullah Maksud. Its objectives were resistance against the western states, enforcement of their interpretation of sharia, and a plan to unite against NATO-led forces in Iraq.

  Baitullah Maksud was a ghost; no one knew what he looked like. The CIA had tried hard, but they had not been able to find a recent photo of him. All they had in their files was an old, hazy image of Maksud which had hitherto proved useless in their attempts to trace him.

  Once Maksud and his men deserted the bunker, others had tried briefly to take it over, but they soon had to abandon it and run for their lives. Since then it had remained desolate, until Majeed took over the fields that Maksud had once owned.

  Outside the bunker, an army of militants sporting AK-47s secured the area. Inside the dark cellar, Majeed and his trusted aide Abdul Farhad approached the two steel chairs in which two badly bruised semi-conscious bodies were tied—US army officers.

  “Your government is very stubborn. We asked them to comply with our demands and yet they are dawdling. No respect for your sacrifice. I feel sad for you and your families.” Majeed threw a copy of the Washington Post on the floor. “Look at the headlines, they are talking about Russia and China. They are busy twiddling their thumbs. They have already forgotten about you.”

  There was no response.

  Majeed looked at Farhad. Majeed was still reeling from the setback he had had to face a few years ago, and he knew that since then America had never left him alone. It also meant that the new underground facility he was building beneath a mountain could be under surveillance.

  Yet there wasn’t any warning. Maybe they were waiting for the right time. What could be the right time?

  If he were in their shoes, he would plan
a strike near D-Day.

  Once he understood the dynamics, he had accelerated his plans. His understanding had opened up new options for him. Being a religious leader, he knew that his position was secure, but the facility had no such veil of safety. The compressed timelines meant moving the D-Day forward. This time he was ready for any surprise. Because this time he would not fail to deliver.

  His team had grabbed two US military officers a few weeks ago to keep DC off guard. He had planned their deaths today. The backlash would allow him some breathing space while the whole world watched and condemned the murder of two US soldiers.

  CHAPTER 9

  Majeed picked up the copies of the Washington Post and shoved them into the torn military uniforms of the two soldiers.

  He asked Farhad to get the mission files. The dossiers were a product of months of tedious and meticulous work. Each file represented hours and hours of surveillance notes, in-depth subject profiles, and maps of chosen neighborhoods throughout the D.C. metropolitan area. He wasn’t going to bomb the whole city. Instead, Majeed had chosen his targets carefully—the who’s who of DC, and of the White House.