The Omega Theory by Mark Alpert Read Free Book Online Page B

in a meeting with his defense secretary and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At eight o’clock the Joint Chiefs had headed back to the Pentagon, giving the president a few precious minutes to think about what they’d just told him. The loose-leaf binders they’d left behind contained their plans for eliminating Iran’s nuclear facilities.
    He leaned back in his chair. His head was splitting and he was desperate for a cigarette. Massaging his temples, he gazed at the flat-panel screen at the front of the room, which showed the positions of American strike forces in the Middle East—aircraft carrier groups in the Persian Gulf, fighter-bomber wings at the air bases in Qatar and Kuwait. And as he stared at the map he thought of his wife and daughters, who’d already been escorted by the Secret Service to the relative safety of Camp David. He pictured his two little girls in the backseat of the presidential limousine, gazing at the Maryland woods through tinted, bulletproof windows.
    The Iranian nuclear test was the biggest crisis of his administration. The mullahs in Teheran had rejected all his overtures and flouted all his warnings, and now he had to respond. It was too dangerous to let Iran become a nuclear power—there was too great a chance that they’d use the bomb against Israel, or that Israel would launch a preemptive strike against them. And if he acted quickly enough, he could obliterate their nuclear program, and the whole world could breathe a sigh of relief. According to military communications intercepted by the National Security Agency, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard possessed only two more nukes and had moved both to a secure facility near the town of Ashkhaneh, in the northern part of the country. Photos taken by U.S. reconnaissance satellites confirmed the reports, showing the Guard’s convoys traveling to the mountain range where the facility was hidden.
    He turned in his chair so he could view another flat-panel screen. This one displayed a satellite image of the Ashkhaneh installation: a concrete entrance embedded at the foot of a mountain, leading to a network of tunnels and natural caverns that extended deep underground. Unfortunately, it was a hardened target. Readings from ground-penetrating radar had revealed that parts of the installation were more than a thousand feet below the surface. No conventional bunker-busting missile could reach that far. The only weapon that could destroy the facility in a single blow was the air force’s earth-penetrating nuclear warhead, which could collapse the whole underground network. That option was out of the question, of course—the president wasn’t going to start a nuclear war. But he wasn’t going to let Iran start one, either.
    Turning away from the screen, he sifted through the pile of loose-leaf binders. Most of the Defense Department’s plans called for conventional bunker-buster strikes on the Ashkhaneh facility, followed by the deployment of commando units to enter the damaged installation and destroy the nukes stored deep inside. The problem was that the Iranians had anticipated this strategy and taken steps to counter it. The facility was located in an inaccessible part of the country, far from the U.S. carriers in the Gulf and the bases in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Iranians also had a sophisticated air-defense system, with dozens of radar stations and missile batteries on their coast and most of their borders. Nearly all of the Pentagon’s battle plans predicted hundreds of casualties.
    But one plan was different. The president picked up the binder marked JSOC Operation Cobra. It was written by Lieutenant General Sam McNair, who commanded the Special Operations forces in Afghanistan. McNair had an impressive record of success, which was a rare thing indeed in the war against the Taliban. He also had a penchant for bold moves. His plan was the only one that offered the advantage of tactical surprise. If the plan worked as promised, the Special