The Ares Decision Read online

  “I understand, Excellency.”

  “God be with you.”

  The channel went dead, and Daei opened a separate line to the commanders of the other transports. “We are moving to plan Theta. I repeat. Plan Theta.”

  After getting acknowledgments from the entire force, he hung the headset back on the wall and stood motionless for a moment, feeling slightly dazed. In the other planes, envelopes would be opened and his officers would be describing the nature of the expected resistance to their teams: people with the strength of three men, drenched in blood and attacking everything that moved like a pack of rabid dogs. It seemed impossible—a paranoid fantasy. But the intelligence had come directly from Omidi and he was not a man prone to fits of hysteria.

  Daei walked to the back of the plane, where a well-equipped medical team was strapped into utilitarian seats. “We have a full breach.”

  They immediately released their harnesses and began rushing around, opening crates filled with protective clothing, digging through stacks of medical equipment, and talking in loud, frightened tones.

  He would now be forced to concentrate the vast majority of his troops on Avass. His biohazard team would unload at a nearby airstrip while paratroopers secured the streets. Their only mission now was to get a live victim of the parasite back to the plane. When they were in the air, he would be told where the deadly organism was to be taken.

  Somewhere south of their current location, bombers with instructions to turn Avass into a burning hole in the ground were waiting for the green light. Even the Takavar soldiers would not be allowed to survive—the risk that they could spread the infection or relate details that didn’t support the official story was too great.

  87

  Langley, Virginia, USA

  December 5—0619 Hours GMT–5

  WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING AT was recorded about six hours ago,” Dave Collen said.

  The DCI took a seat in front of a laptop displaying a series of satellite images. They were hazy and the resolution had been degraded by magnification, but there was still no doubt about the ferocity of the fighting. A military truck had exploded after slamming into what looked like a rock outcropping, and its burning parts were strewn out among the bodies lying in the sand.

  “An underground facility?” Drake said as the images were replaced with ones of a group of men flipping a similar truck back onto its wheels and pushing it forward as moving cover.

  Collen nodded. “We had no idea it was there, and as near as I can tell neither did any of the other intelligence agencies. We’re going back over our satellite data from the last few months and finding evidence of increased activity, but whatever the Iranians are doing there, they’ve pulled out all the stops to hide it.”

  “And we think this is related to the parasite?”

  “No way to know for sure, but I’d bet good money on it. We have photos of a private jet landing on an abandoned strip not far from there a week ago.”

  “Omidi?”

  “Again, there’s no way to be certain. But when you combine the jet with the fact that Smith and Howell saw fit to try to get into Iran on foot and the noise we’re getting about biologists being pulled off their jobs by the secret police…” His voice faded for a moment. “I’m pretty confident that Omidi got his parasite and that he’s weaponizing it in this facility. Maybe with the help of Sarie van Keuren.”

  Drake leaned back and watched the battle unfold until it looped to the beginning. “I assume we’re not the only ones with access to this data.”

  “You assume right. Those images came from the National Reconnaissance Office.”

  None of this was completely unexpected, but that didn’t make it any less dangerous. Smith and Howell hadn’t gone into Iran to try to stop Khamenei’s forces on their own. No, they’d contacted the resistance and despite their deaths at the hands of Sepehr Mouradipour, Farrokh had used the information he’d been provided to track down Omidi’s facility. The question was, what should they do about it?

  “There’s more,” Collen said. “We have reports of heavy fighting in the streets of a village a hundred miles north of that facility, and the Iranians are airlifting special forces there as well as scrambling a squadron of bombers.”

  “ETA?”

  “By now, they could have soldiers on the ground. I don’t have current information on the bombers.”

  “Is it possible that the parasite has escaped the facility?”

  “We don’t have any assets in the area and the satellite’s gone out of range. We won’t have another overhead for six hours.”

  Drake let out a frustrated sigh. “I have—”

  The phone on his desk rang and he fell silent when he saw the incoming number. The Oval Office.

  Castilla tended to be a predictable man wed to his schedules and formal briefings. Impromptu predawn calls were very much not part of his management style.

  Collen took a step back and watched him pick up the receiver. “Hello, Mr. President.”

  “What the hell is going on in Iran, Larry? Have you looked at these satellite images?”

  “I’m just going through them now, sir. We’re still gathering data at—”

  “We’ve got a war going on between two unknown factions at a facility that we didn’t know anything about and you’re gathering data?”

  “We should know more soon. The—”

  “I’m at Camp David, Larry, and you’re going to be in front of me in one hour with everything we’ve got on this. I want to know what the hell the Iranians are doing with an underground bunker in the middle of nowhere and I want to know who just crashed their party. Do you understand me?”

  “Sir, that’s not going to be enough time. It’s a complicated—”

  “Let me repeat myself, Larry. You are going to be standing in front of me in one hour.”

  Drake swallowed hard, fighting back a wave of nausea as the sweat broke across his forehead. “Yes, sir.”

  The line went dead and he slowly replaced the receiver. “Get together everything we have on the parasite and the Iranians.”

  “Everything?” Collen said, obviously alarmed.

  “We’re getting on a helicopter for Camp David. We’ll strategize on the flight and sanitize what we have to. I’m not going to let this fall apart now. Not when we’re this close.”

  88

  Avass, Iran

  December 5—1505 Hours GMT+3:30

  JON SMITH FORCED HIMSELF to slow, glancing over his shoulder at the people strung out behind him. Sarie wasn’t having any trouble keeping up—her life in the African bush had combined with a healthy dose of terror to keep her injured leg turning over. Farrokh was lagging a bit, struggling for breath as he shouted for everyone to stay inside their homes and barricade the doors and windows. Howell was bringing up the rear, running in an awkward sideways lope as he covered their flank.

  Satisfied that everyone was all right, Smith faced forward again and leapt over a hastily abandoned basket of vegetables. A burning pain suddenly flared in his head, and he went down on the jagged cobbles, rolling as the sound of the shot bounced off the stone buildings.

  His balance was gone and his vision was spinning, making it pointless to attempt to get to his feet. Instead, he stayed as flat as possible, trying to clear his mind. A familiar voice reached him and he crawled toward it, still confused when Sarie grabbed him and dragged him behind a parked car.

  “Hold still!” he heard her say as she tore off a piece of the jacket they’d found for her and pressed it to his scalp. “Jon? Are you okay? How many fingers am I holding up?”

  He blinked hard and watched her hand come slowly into focus. “Uh… two?”

  She helped him to his feet and then carefully let go, making sure he could stay upright on his own.

  “I’m fine. It’s just… It’s just a graze.”

  “It’s more than a graze, Jon. It looks pretty deep.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s not my first.”

 
; “You still with us, mate?”

  Howell had broken out the driver’s window of a vaguely Soviet-​looking flatbed, and he and Farrokh were pushing it into a position that blocked the street behind them.

  “Not dead yet.”

  “Well, if we get pinned down here, you will be soon.”

  He was right. They didn’t know how many infected were headed in their direction or the positions and strength of the Iranians fighting against them.

  “Omidi gave it to them,” Sarie said, sounding a little dazed. “He infected a bunch of innocent people to keep it alive.”

  “We’ll worry about that later,” Smith said. “If the guy who just shot me calls in our position or can hop enough rooftops to get above us again, we’re going to have serious problems. We need to keep moving.”

  “How? He can—”

  “Incoming!” Howell shouted, and they both spun to see a man sprinting around the corner. He let out something between a scream and a choking growl when he saw them, the blood that had run into his mouth spraying down the front of his shirt. Howell rested the butt of his pistol on the hood of the truck while Farrokh fired wildly, managing to hit the man in the stomach and left thigh. Howell did better, catching him just below the sternum and dropping him to the ground. The Brit stayed lined up on the man as he tried desperately to get up, not lowering his weapon until he went completely still.

  “Keep our flank covered!” Smith said, pulling Sarie to the wall and tapping the rifle hanging around her neck. “I need you to do something for me.”

  “What?” she said.

  He pointed to the roofline. “I need you to shoot the guy up there.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Because I can’t see straight, Farrokh can’t shoot straight, and we need Peter behind us.”

  “It would be nice if we could get out of here,” Howell called back. “Sooner would be better than later.”

  “Working on it!” Smith responded and then turned his attention back to Sarie. “Listen to me. I’m going to run out into the open again. When I do, lean around the corner and sight along the rooftop.”

  “Are you crazy? He almost killed you last time and now he’ll be ready.”

  “Then you’re going to have to hit him.”

  “I’m not a soldier, Jon. I—”

  “You are today,” he said, backing away. When he had a good ten yards to get a running start, he took a deep breath and charged forward, passing Sarie as she flattened herself against the building.

  He heard a shot and saw the round impact a wall a few feet away. When the second sounded, he tensed, certain it would be the one that got him. He remained upright, though, and a moment later he was safely around the next corner.

  A series of bright flashes threw shadows across the building next to him, and he eased back the way he had come, listening to a strange crackling that was impossible to decipher.

  A careful peek around the corner revealed the shooter. He’d fallen into a tangle of power lines and was hanging upside down from them as sparks showered the ground.

  Sarie, Howell, and Farrokh appeared a moment later, running hard in his direction. He ignored them, instead focusing his attention on a growing drone from above. Two C-130s were coming overhead, flying low enough that he could make out their open doors.

  “I don’t suppose you have any antiaircraft capability you’ve been keeping from me?” he said as Farrokh stopped next to him.

  The Iranian just shook his head as the first parachutes opened against the deepening blue of the sky.

  89

  Over Frederick County, Maryland, USA

  December 5—0701 Hours GMT–5

  THEY’D LEFT THE GLARE of the DC suburbs behind, and Larry Drake looked down into the darkness before turning his attention back to Dave Collen, who was sitting next to him in the back of the helicopter.

  “Even with everything there is on the Iran-Uganda connection, it’s still plausible that we thought it was too soft to pursue,” Collen said through a headset isolated from the pilot.

  “What are we going to say changed our minds and made us collect all this data?”

  “This is where Brandon’s death finally benefits us. We’ll say he told us that he had unconfirmed reports of Iranian operatives meeting with President Sembutu and that he was in the process of following up when he died. We’ve been trying to look into it but losing him caused us to go temporarily blind in Kampala.”

  The best lies were the ones only a few degrees off the truth, and this very much qualified.

  “Do we have anything at all that points to the fact that the attack on the facility is a resistance operation?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Can we fabricate something?”

  “Farrokh keeps his organization locked down tight and the president knows we don’t have eyes there. It would be risky.”

  “Then we’ll have to rely on the fact that it’s the only plausible guerrilla force that could attack a fixed position like that in Iran. The trick is going to be playing up the danger—that the parasite exists, that the Iranians have it, and that the facility is in play. We have the possibility that the infection Castilla saw on that video is loose in Iran, we have the possibility that the Iranian government has weaponized it and is planning on using it against us, and we have the possibility that Farrokh wants to get his hands on it to strengthen his position.”

  “The last one is a stretch.”

  “Is it? To date, we’ve considered the resistance to be a relatively peaceful, grassroots effort, and now we see evidence of a hierarchical organization with paramilitary capability. We have enough to make Castilla question everything he thinks he knows about Farrokh. If we’re careful and don’t miss anything, we still have a good chance of getting him to authorize a unilateral attack befo—”

  A loud buzz drowned him out and suddenly the cabin was filled with the dull red pulse of a warning light. Drake flipped the switch reconnecting him to the pilot’s headset just as the terrifying sound of the engine cutting in and out began.

  “What the hell’s going on? What’s the problem?”

  “I think it’s a blockage in the fuel line!” the pilot said as the chopper dropped sickeningly and then struggled to regain altitude. “I’ve got to put it down. Now!”

  Collen slammed himself back in his seat and tightened the harness around his shoulders, chest heaving with rapid, staccato breaths.

  “What the hell are you talking about? We’re over a forest!” Drake shouted into the microphone hovering in front of his mouth.

  “There!” the pilot responded. “There’s a clearing to the east.”

  The nose dipped and they dove for it, engine sputtering and choking, threatening to go silent at any moment.

  Drake could feel the blood pounding in his temples and he slapped off his headset, fighting back the bile coming up in his throat. A long, formless shout rose above the alarm buzzer, and it was only when the skids slammed into the ground that he realized it was coming from him. The harness tightened painfully across his chest and the screech of tearing metal filled his ears.

  Then everything went silent. The pilot shut down power, killing the instrument lights and letting the momentum of the blades die. Blood was flowing from the side of Drake’s head where it had hit the window, but otherwise he was unharmed. He’d made it.

  The pilot didn’t speak, instead kicking open his door and jumping out into the darkness. His footfalls echoed through the clearing for a moment and then faded as he retreated into the early morning gloom.

  “Hey! Where are you going?”

  No answer.

  He turned to Collen and grabbed his shoulder. “Dave. Are you all right?”

  He was still gasping for breath but managed to nod.

  “The papers,” Drake said, pointing to the sheets of highly classified material strewn around the tiny space. “Pick them up and get them back into your briefcase.”

  He sat there long enough to confirm
that Collen understood and then shoved his way through the damaged door. His jaw tightened when he saw that the pilot, a decorated former Coast Guard man, had completely disappeared.

  Drake pulled out his cell phone and looked down at it, swearing quietly when he saw that there was no signal. Had they called in a Mayday? He couldn’t remember. The president’s people would contact Langley when he didn’t arrive, but how long would that take? He was wearing nothing but a suit jacket and it was below freezing.

  “Son of a bitch!” he shouted, fear and frustration finally breaking down the calm facade it had taken a lifetime to build. He slammed the phone repeatedly into the side of the chopper, not stopping until parts of it were strewn out in the dirt around him. This was all supposed to have gone so smoothly. But then Castilla sent that damn black ops team and Gazenga decided to grow a spine. Now he was standing in the middle of nowhere with the president of the United States waiting to rake him over the coals. One mistake—one moment of confusion in the maze of lies he’d created—and it could all come crashing down on top of him.

  He took a few deep, controlled breaths and watched the fog roll from his mouth in the dull light of dawn. “Dave! What the hell are you—,” he started, but then fell silent. There was something at the edge of the clearing, something with an outline distinct from the trees.

  They weren’t alone.

  90

  Outside Avass, Iran

  December 5—1540 Hours GMT+3:30

  JON SMITH SHADED HIS eyes and watched as more canopies popped into existence above. Frightened voices rose from the fifty or so Avass residents they’d fallen in with and the pace of the group increased perceptibly, sweeping past the edge of town and into the open desert. Twenty yards ahead, Sarie’s blond hair was visible as she and Farrokh pushed their way toward him.

  “Seven injured people we could find,” she said when she got within earshot.