Oath of Office

Gul’s eyelids fluttered. “My son… he is only little boy…” The coughing came again, more ragged now. He looked up at Dovzhenko, eyes wide, back arched, racked with pain. “Please…”

He collapsed against the rug. Still.

Jack looked at Ysabel, then Dovzhenko, assessing them for wounds. He scooped up the suppressed SIG and popped the magazine. Five rounds left. He did a quick peek into the hallway, miraculously saw no one, and then pushed the door closed. The jamb was splintered on the inside, but he hoped the damage wouldn’t be too noticeable from the exterior. Blood covered Yazdani’s hands and chest. He’d been the one to stab Major Sassani in the neck with the cake knife.

“Thank you,” Ryan said.

The engineer sniffed, regaining his composure. “Your thanks are unnecessary. If you are dead, you will be unable to help my son. That is all that matters to me.”

“So you’ll help us?” Ryan asked.

“I will,” Yazdani said.

“I’m a little worried about all the noise,” Dovzhenko said. “If your neighbors call the police, we are in trouble.”

“Do not worry,” Yazdani said. “I am an unhappy man. My neighbors are accustomed to hearing me cry and throw things.”

Ysabel ran a hand over the bullet holes in the floor and door-frame. “Fortunately none of them went all the way through.”

“We’re interested in two missiles in particular,” Ryan said.

“I thought as much,” Yazdani said. “Russian 51T6s.”

“Exactly,” Ryan said. “We need to know where they are.”

“First,” Yazdani said, “how will we get my son to the United States?”

“It should be straightforward to get you both across the border to Herat,” Ryan said. “From there, you’ll travel by military transport to the United States.”

The engineer pondered this. “I feel as though I should wait to help you until my son is out.”

“That won’t work,” Ryan said. “There are too many variables. We’re not even sure who is in charge of this conspiracy. Too much of a chance they’ll fire the missiles. We need to figure out their target.”

“How will I know you will keep your end of the bargain?”

Ysabel bit her bottom lip, gathering her thoughts. “All we can offer is our word,” she began. “But these men saved my life… twice.”

“I have no choice, do I?”

“I am sorry,” Dovzhenko said. “You do not.”

Yazdani’s stooped shoulders slumped even more. “They’ve moved the missiles west of Mashhad,” he said. “They are on mobile launchers manufactured in Iran, but I wouldn’t worry about the targets. I saw the firing solutions.”

Ryan waited, but Yazdani just looked at him, waiting to be prodded over the edge — as if he had not quite committed treason until this moment.

“Okay?” Ryan finally said.

“You will think me foolish,” Yazdani said. “But the firing solutions I saw aim the missiles at space. These solid fuel rockets are not powerful enough, but it is as if they are planning to launch a satellite.”

58

John Clark and the others were still at the safe house in Portugal, waiting for exfil, when Ryan got through.

“Keep it short,” Clark said. “You’re going to need to move right away after we hang up.”

“I’m not on the sat phone,” Jack assured him. “This guy has a proxy server he’s been using to get around government firewalls so he can look for medication for his kid. I’m using that to jump on an anonymized encrypted VoIP, so we should be good.”

“Roger that,” Clark said. “Our guest is handcuffed to a chair in the back room. I’m putting you on speaker. We’re all here.”

Ryan checked on Dom — who was still receiving treatment at Bagram before transport to Ramstein — and then ran down the information Yazdani had given him, using the Iranian’s digraph plus code name. “We’re trying to work out a way for SD/FLINT to help clear a way for our guys, in case they need to pay a little visit to the missile site.”

“Glad you’re okay,” Ding Chavez said, ever the mother hen, even from thousands of miles away. “We’ll have to get clearance from higher, but maybe Gavin can come up with malware he can send you in a zip file or something.”

“I’m conferencing him in now,” Clark said.

Twenty seconds later, Gavin Biery joined the conversation. Two minutes after that, he was up to speed on the situation.

“I don’t need to e-mail him anything,” Biery said. “As long as he hasn’t lost his thumb drive.”

“I lost it,” Ryan said. “But I got it back again.”

“You’re good to go, then,” Biery said.

“Seems too simple,” Midas said. “Your malware phones home when the computer connects to the Internet. Wouldn’t the Iranians be using a closed system for missile defense to guard against online attacks?”

“That is a very good question,” Biery said. “To which I have a very good answer. There are a couple versions of malware on the drives I gave you — the one you used in Spain that downloads automatically when you plug it in, and a worm that needs execution. Once the worm is embedded, the system will crash. It should blind missile defense radar for several minutes, depending on what kind of redundant systems they have.”