The Zarrabian Incident Page 8

  “The scenes we witnessed yesterday of cars burning, of mothers, fathers, friends, and neighbors fleeing, and of a mighty structure falling into the ocean, have left all Americans with a deep sadness.

  “Those who planned this act of terror hoped to humiliate us. But they have failed, just as they failed on 9/11. They hoped for fear, but instead have inspired a deep and abiding anger. They thought they would sow despair, but instead will learn they have strengthened our resolve. They planned to humble us, but instead have increased our pride and our determination.

  “America is a nation of people gathered from around the world. We have many differences. We speak different languages, we belong to different political parties, and we worship in different churches or in no church. Foreigners may mistake our diversity for weakness. They may think that America’s diversity can be exploited. But let them attack us or threaten us, and they will find that we are one nation, one people.

  “Bombs can destroy bridges and buildings, but they can’t put a dent in our patriotism and resolve. Our enemies will discover that the spirit of America is stronger than ever.

  “This cowardly act will not go unpunished. Those who think they can attack America and suffer no consequences will learn that they are wrong. Those who harbor, train, and fund terrorism, whether they be individuals, groups, or nations, will discover that by supporting terrorists, they become terrorists. We will make no distinction between those who committed this act of terror and those who were behind it. Our retribution will be swift and sure.

  “Even now as I am speaking to you, our intelligence agencies, the FBI, and the intelligence agencies of our allies around the world are learning more about the perpetrators behind this cowardly act. As most of you know by now, one terrorist is still at large. He claims to be a soldier in the Iranian army. The director of the FBI assures me that he can’t get far, and that he will soon be in federal custody.

  “The Iranian Ambassador called me to express his sorrow and condolences, and to strongly condemn this act of terror. He assured me personally that Iran was not involved. We have no information connecting Iran to this act of terror. However, this attack was not organized and coordinated from a cave by fundamentalist zealots. It was a well-funded operation carried out by highly trained professionals. My top security analysts have told me that the training, secrecy, funding, and execution of this operation make it almost certain that it was the work of a foreign military power. If we discover proof that a foreign government was behind this act of terror, we will consider it to be an act of war.

  “America will never forget this day, but we will not let this day define us. We have faced many enemies in the past and each time we have grown stronger. America is a shining beacon of freedom, democracy, and justice. We will never let that beacon be darkened by the forces of evil. By the grace of God and with the hard work of our intelligence community, military, police, and citizens, America will defeat this enemy and emerge stronger than ever.

  “Thank you, and God bless. And God bless the United States of America.”

  The restaurant broke out into a loud cacophony of conversations as the president’s face was replaced by the news anchor.

  “Wow,” said Bashir. “Pretty strong words.”

  Christine shook her head. “Those sounded like war drums to me.” She looked at McCaig. “No opinion from you?”

  “I’m just a G-man. We leave politics to the politicians.”

  Zarrabian drove the RV along the winding highway toward the sleepy tourist town of Guerneville. There was no point trying to get farther away—every road north or east had roadblocks. West was the ocean. And south . . . well, the bridge was missing. It was time to wait.

  This time of year, an RV was about as noticeable as a leaf in the forest. His rear-view mirrors showed a huge Winnebago not far behind him, and when he hit straight stretches of road, he could see an expensive Airstream ahead. It was a virtual parade of RVs. He was just another tourist seeing California’s redwood forests.

  He rolled down his window and felt the fresh breeze on his face. To his left, the Russian River sparkled in the afternoon sunlight as it made its way to the sea. A forest of giant redwood trees climbed the steep mountainside on his right. The musty, humid smell of the woods filled his senses.

  This was the second time he’d been through here today. His first visit had been on a motorcycle, a dirt bike that he bought from a teenager on a run-down farm south of Healdsburg. The young man seemed to find it funny that a “Mexican” wanted a dirt bike. Zarrabian, still sporting the big mustache, fake accent, and an added sombrero, had explained in broken English with a few Spanish words thrown in that it was the cupleaños de mi sobrino—the birthday of my nephew. That plus just a few too many greenbacks—and a new shotgun and ammo—had caused the motorcycle to become the property of one Colonel Zarrabian, America’s most wanted man. The kid even threw in the helmet.

  You don’t need to be invisible to be a successful fugitive. Just ordinary. A noisy dirt bike, a motorcycle helmet, and a heavy-metal T-shirt made him ordinary—just another asshole motorcyclist making a noisy racket in these peaceful mountains. Annoying but hardly unusual. He’d scouted dozens of side roads and side-side roads, been chased off by a couple of angry residents, and finally found what he was looking for.

  After he’d driven the motorcycle back to his RV, he’d turned on Christine Garrett’s cell phone just long enough to send a text message before throwing it into the river. The FBI would immediately know he was in the area, but they knew that already. They couldn’t triangulate his exact location in the brief time he had spent texting. All they’d know was that he was within a few dozen miles of a particular cell tower. And the message had been critical.

  Now it was time to settle in and wait for the response.

  He drove the RV through Guerneville and along the Russian River as it continued its journey to the sea. A few miles later, he turned onto a side road and headed into the forest.

  The road quickly turned from two lanes to one as it twisted and climbed. The evening light started fading. It grew nearly dark as the dense redwood forest closed around him. Still, he left the headlights off and drove slowly to keep his engine as quiet as possible.

  It wasn’t long before the pavement gave out. The road was barely more than two dirt tire ruts. Zarrabian shifted the RV into its lowest gear as he negotiated the steep, narrow dirt road. Brush and branches scraped against the RV’s fenders and sides.

  The road finally leveled out just a bit and straightened. Light filtered through the trees. He came around the final turn into a small clearing. In front of him stood the rough wooden cabin he’d scouted earlier.

  Zarrabian stopped but didn’t shut off the engine. The cabin had been vacant earlier with no signs of recent occupancy, but in these mountains you could never tell. There was always the possibility of a squatter—maybe an aging hippie, a marijuana grower, or some runaway kid.

  In the quiet of the redwood forest, the RV’s idling engine was as subtle as a freight train. Anyone in the cabin would have heard him by now. There was nothing like curiosity to bring people out, and Zarrabian was patient. He watched carefully for signs of life in the cabin: a slight movement of curtains, a figure in the shadows, a wisp of smoke from the chimney. There was nothing. Nobody was inside.

  After five minutes he got out of the RV and knocked on the door. “Hello? Anyone home? I seem to be lost!” No answer.

  He’d picked the lock on his first visit, and when he twisted the knob there was no resistance. He opened the door. It was still vacant.

  The cabin was furnished with a rough army cot, an old kitchen table with two chairs, a wood-burning stove, and a roll-top desk topped by a kerosene lantern. The kitchen was nothing more than a chipped porcelain sink in a tiny, sagging cabinet. The sink had just one faucet marked “cold.” There was no refrigerator. Several cast-iron pots and pans hung on the wall. All in all, rustic but serviceable.

  Zarrabian walked
back to the idling RV, put it into gear, and followed the barely visible road past the cabin into the woods. A hundred yards and several turns farther, the redwood trees made an impenetrable canopy overhead, their huge trunks blocking the view from the cabin. The RV was completely hidden. He shifted the transmission into park, shut off the engine, and picked up his duffel bag from the floor.

  Back at the cabin, he put his things under the cot, stepped onto the rough-plank porch, and lowered himself slowly onto an old wooden lounge chair.

  The view to the west caught his breath. Redwood-covered mountains rolled downward to the sea twenty kilometers away. The distant Pacific’s deep-blue waters reflected a golden path of light cast by the setting sun. The evening air carried a bird’s song far across the valley. Somewhere in the distance a squirrel shouted tiny pips, claiming its territory. A soft breeze brushed through the redwood needles of the towering trees.

  He sighed and leaned back. His task was finished. He had nothing to do, nowhere to be. His mission was complete.

  His life had been intensely focused for so long. The explosion in the Bazaar. The hospital. The bandages around his head. The fog in his brain. The recovery.

  And then the mission. Nothing but the mission. For six months, he and his men had trained and planned, planned and trained. In the evenings, they watched the news videos they’d already seen so many times: mosques, libraries, and the Grand Bazaar, all reduced to rubble. Thousands killed. They trained even harder. Then the journey. Hiding, waiting for their trucks.

  And then in a single day, all of the training, planning, practice, prayers, and hopes had been achieved.

  And fears. His fears had come true too.

  Now what?

  He should feel elated and victorious. That’s what his countrymen back home were imagining. He was an officer in the Islamic Republic of Iran Army. His mission was accomplished.

  But he didn’t feel victorious. He felt tired. His team was dead. Millions of lives were disrupted. He had humiliated America. Thousands of people would lose their jobs. Thousands would have to move. The Golden Gate Bridge had taken ten years to design, four to build, and had stood for seventy-five years. But it had only taken a moment for his explosives to destroy it.

  He remembered his two years spent studying engineering at UC Berkeley. Many of his fellow students were surprised that an Iranian could study in the United States, given that the two countries were locked in a decades-long military and political conflict. But he was hardly alone: thousands of Iranian students were granted visas, and virtually every major university had a small Iranian community even during the peaks of various conflicts between the two countries. Only nuclear engineering was banned to Iranian students.

  On days when the sun won its battle with San Francisco’s notorious fog, he’d catch glimpses of the bridge across the bay as he walked between classes at Berkeley. Sometimes he and his fellow Iranian students would sneak onto the roof of the engineering building at night. They’d drink a few of the forbidden American beers and admire the San Francisco skyline, watch jets taking off from the airport, and study the golden string of lights that outlined the huge bridge’s cables.

  As an officer hardened by battle, he knew firsthand the price of war. Bridges, factories, museums, churches, hospitals, mosques, schools, temples—nothing was exempt. Not even civilians. Did the United States of America consider these things when they sent cruise missiles into his city? Did they care about the families, jobs, streets, mosques, and lives that were destroyed?

  The last sliver of sun disappeared below the horizon to the west. The air grew quiet as dusk stole over the mountain. He leaned his head back against the lounge chair.

  An explosion tore the world apart. Zarrabian was flat on his back. Something heavy was crushing his chest. His head was ringing and spinning. Dust and smoke made it impossible to see more than a few meters. As the sound of the blast died away, cries and screams filled the air. He tried to breath. He tried to lift the weight from his chest.

  A breath of wind swirled through the dust and smoke. There! Yasmin’s face was turned toward him, completely unmarked by the explosion, but her eyes were closed. It took a few seconds for his mind to register. Only half of his wife was there.

  He tried again to push against the heavy weight on his chest. He had to reach her. There was another rumble, and a brick wall collapsed. His wife and daughter disappeared under the rubble, and a huge cloud of dust gagged him. He tried to cough, but the weight was crushing his chest. He couldn’t breathe.

  The world darkened . . . .

  Zarrabian jerked awake. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. A waxing moon was rising over the redwood trees behind the cabin. The sunset had turned to deep dusk. Tiny lights from a few cabins twinkled across the valley on the far mountain’s slope.

  He rose from the wooden chair and went inside.

  Christine leaned back in her chair, kicked off her Dockers, and put her feet on Grant Petri’s desk, ignoring his glare.

  “Good reporting,” he said. “Really good.”

  “Thanks. Yeah, it was, wasn’t it? And Dana actually squeezed in two stories that weren’t about the terrorists and the bridge.”

  “It was only two days ago,” said Petri. “It’s the biggest story since 9/11, and you think we’re going to cut away to the weather? You’ll be reporting on this one for a long damned time. Get used to it.”

  “Got it, boss. And we’re experts at spinning a minute’s worth of news into an hour, aren’t we? Your panel of experts talked about my terrorist friend for what, forty-five minutes?”

  “Forty-seven.”

  “He claims to be an Iranian soldier, his name is Zarrabian, speaks English well, and attended Berkeley. That’s all we really know, yet Dana’s experts spun that into everything from his mental state to his childhood to his relationship with his father.”

  “It pays the bills,” said Petri.

  “That it does.”

  “You brushed me off before, but I’m asking you again. How did you figure out Zarrabian’s name? I’m not buying that ‘lucky break’ stuff or that you ‘stumbled on it at the registrar’s office.'”

  “Officially, I stumbled on it. It was a lucky break. And my modesty makes everyone like me even more.”

  “Bullshit. Where’d you get it?”

  “Just between you and me?”

  He sighed. “OK, just between you and me. Jesus, it’s just his name. It’s not like you have a link to the Ayatollah himself.”

  “What if I told you that Special Agent TJ McCaig is holding out on us?”

  “No doubt. That’s what G-men do. They use the Fourth Estate to their own ends. What’s he got to do with it?”

  “Everything. He gave me the name.”

  “McCaig? No way.”

  “Exactly. But he did. I was watching his face when I showed him the photo of the terrorist. His sidekick Bashir, too. Bashir was just what you’d expect, looking at it closely, an air of excitement. But McCaig, he looked at it for a second, then sort of recoiled. Like if you saw someone you know on a ‘wanted’ poster.”

  “Sounds like a good FBI agent seeing the face of the guy who blew up a bridge and killed some cops.”

  “Then he leaned in closer and really studied the guy. You could see emotions going across his face. Subtle, you know, fleeting. He was working to keep a straight face. Then when he leaned back, before he asked me if I’d hold out on publishing it, he just sat there for a few seconds. Furrowed brow, slight frown. Then it was gone and he was just an FBI guy again.”

  “OK, so what?”

  “Then he asked his sidekick, Agent Bashir, if he’d take a hike so that he could talk with me privately. Then when Bashir was out of earshot, he told me the guy’s name.”

  “What? That makes no sense, Christine. Why would he tell you and not go straight to his agency with this?”

  “I know.”

  “And keeping his partner out of it? That’s unheard of.”

  �
�My thoughts exactly. But I’ve got a theory.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “There’s some reason, and I don’t know what, but some reason why he can’t tell them how he knows this guy. But it’s obviously important. He sees the photo, recognizes the guy, and has to do something, quick. So he gives me his name off the record, knowing that with the name, I can find some other trail that would have led me to it sooner or later. And I report it on the news, and so the FBI gets his name with just a twelve-hour delay. No harm, no foul, and nobody knows McCaig had anything to do with it.”

  “Huh. OK, that sort of makes sense, except for that part about why he can’t tell them.”

  “I know.”

  “What’s next? Do you think you can pry anything more loose from this McCaig?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “I doubt it. He’s not the type to drop his guard.”

  “What about that thing down in Cordo? Poindexter had all kinds of stuff about that on her program. Refresh my memory.”

  “It was the Righteous Sons of Joseph Smith,” she said.

  “An extremist religious group—a bunch of anarchists, right? And wasn’t there some bigamy too?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “And McCaig?”

  “He was the agent in charge. It was his operation. Three agents dead, plus seventeen of the bigamists, three children, and four women”

  “I remember all that, yeah. God it was awful. Those horrible old men marrying eleven- and twelve-year-old girls, some of them their own nieces. Didn’t one of them impregnate his own granddaughter when she was thirteen?”

  “Something like that.”

  Petri shook his head in disgust. “Wow. So that was McCaig. Why is he still with the FBI? Didn’t he get his ass kicked?”

  “By the press, including this network, I might add,” she said. “The truth is the guy was in a no-win situation. The Righteous Sons had sworn an oath to God to go down fighting and take their families with them. McCaig’s team actually saved most of the women and children. Something like fifty women and a couple hundred kids made it out alive. Some of the younger men surrendered, too, though one of them got shot in the back when he tried to come out.”