Noori Fardin, Meghan, swiped her access card at the university’s gates. She held her breath and let it out in a whoosh when the keylock turned green and allowed her to go through.
She adjusted her backpack and tightened her headscarf, which had come loose. She joined a bunch of students and entered the main hall. Followed a couple of professors and was entering the women’s restroom when her earpiece came to life.
‘I’m in.’ Saman Mirza, her sister.
The entry cards were courtesy of Yasaman and Syed. It turned out that the activists had a clandestine laboratory in District 9 where they generated fake IDs, ran their social media accounts and maintained a darknet website through which they stayed in touch with other activists.
‘We’re hacked into the university’s admission system,’ the tech expert had told them the previous day at Naeem’s. ‘We have got several infiltrators inside.’
They had taken the twins to their operations center in the basement of a government office building in Abshar.
‘It’s a storage area that’s never used,’ Syed had led them past filing cabinets on which were stacked boxes of papers, and folders, many of which had fallen to the floor. The musty smell of stale air and dead insects in the room. Right towards the back wall which opened at a pressure touch to reveal the rebels’ office.
‘We carry government IDs, as technicians,’ Yasaman introduced the sisters to several other people in the room. Many of them students, however, there were several elderly people as well. ‘Housewives, pensioners, doctors, taxi drivers, we have them all,’ she said softly, ‘but not everyone knows about this location. Only a core group. We have cameras,’ she pointed to a monitor on which several feeds played, ‘several other security measures and escape routes.’
There was little small talk. Hosseini’s death weighed on all of them. None of the activists questioned the twins’ presence.
A woman who said she was a clerk in the Presidential Administration Building, took their photographs while Syed created student profiles for them in MUT’s system.
A high-end printer chattered and spat out their identification cards. A bunch of folders and papers were thrust into their hands to make them look studious, after which they were hustled out as quickly and quietly as they had been let in.
Yasaman had briefed them on the best locations to conduct their surveillance.
A nook in the university library that had several activists positioned in it, who would warn them of any danger.
The garden behind the Engineering Laboratory that was rarely used.
The twins split up. Meghan went to the library while Beth headed to the sunny outside in the second safe location.
The elder twin unpacked her screen, pushed back the transparent glasses on the bridge of her nose and got to work.
She checked if the coast was clear. A nod from another student in the library, an activist, indicated it was. She removed a case from her backpack and placed it behind a mound of books, hidden from any passersby’s eyes. Opened it to remove the DragonFly.
It was a miniature drone, six inches long, a wing span of four inches and looked exactly like the insect.
CIA and several intelligence agencies had experimented with insect-like surveillance robots. Such espionage gadgets had significant advantages. Roaches, dragonflies and other insects were very common around the world. They were small enough to slip through doors, or beneath them. They didn’t trigger security systems nor CCTV cameras.
The DragonFly was designed by the NSA and had then been significantly improvised by the Petersens and Broker. Flight time of forty-eight hours from a single charge. High definition cameras on the front and rear. Wireless connectivity to the controller, with a range of three hundred yards. Line of sight not required. Navigable in the interiors of buildings even with all the corridors and corners that the structures had. A self-destruct command that could be triggered remotely.
Meghan performed one last diagnostic check and launched the drone. She and Beth, each, had controls and could take over from the other if needed. The drone’s eyes fed to their screens and the feed got uploaded into their security-encrypted storage.
‘We wait,’ she announced, as she flew the robot out of the library, down hallways, to the corridor where Hosseini was captured and hovered it close to the guard.
The fly would slip inside the moment the doors opened.
‘Remind me again why we didn’t use it on Mostofi’s office or Nassour’s home?’
‘Range. The Presidential Building is huge. We would need to be inside the premises to launch the fly. Not possible. Similarly, with Nassour. His residence is set back from Kasra Street. More than three-hundred yards. Significant security around his place.’
Beth yawned and stretched in the garden. Smiled politely at a couple of students who sat near her, turned her screen away from them and settled down to watch.
Zeb was checking out IICC for himself while the twins mounted surveillance. He and Broker, Bear and Chloe, who had changed their disguises, in separate cars.
They visited the conference venue separately while Bwana waited in a van on Chamran Highway. Backup, in case support was needed, or a getaway ride was required.
‘You were right,’ Zeb emerged a couple of hours later and slipped on his shades. ‘Aerial approach is the only way.’
‘That too is dependent on us getting the right gear,’ Chloe adjusted her skirt and sat a distance away on the front lawn, the picture of a tourist enjoying a break after wandering in the expanse of the venue.
‘I spoke to Caton. Chopper’s ours. The pilot, Scott Rubin, he’s onboard as well. We’ll be meeting him.’
‘What about the weapons and the rest of the equipment?’ Bwana asked.
‘Next on my list,’ Zeb replied and looked in the direction of Modiriat. Caton’s tower was visible in the distance. Just over a mile according to Meghan.
He brought out a range finder and discreetly checked for himself. A little less, his device told him. That’s because I am out, in the front.
He went out of the venue while the rest of the operatives joined him, each one of them spread out.
Beneath the underpass on Seoul Street and the highway, which looped around the conference venue. Past residences and offices and street vendors and patrolling police vehicles whose occupants barely gave them a glance.
They’re looking for groups of people. Three women. They aren’t paying attention to individuals. Besides, their facial recognition software must be a few generations behind ours.
Around a bunch of kids who were kicking a soccer ball. Roger joined them for a few seconds and raised belly laughs.
And then the gleaming tower of Caton’s charity establishment, fifty yards away.
‘You’re sure that’s got a helipad on it?’ Roger surveyed it dubiously.
‘Yeah. That’s how he travels.’
Zeb looked in the direction of the conference center. All he saw was other buildings and the concrete edge of the highway. The smells and sounds of Tehran around him as he checked his screen, the wind velocity, angles and distance calculations that the twins had made.
It was coming together. The beast was licking its lips.
Beth wiped her lips and tossed the empty juice bottle in the trash can. Two hours of watching. She and Meghan could go the whole day.
We weren’t always like this. We were more impatient. That was then. Several years ago, when she and her sister were running an internet business in Boston. After they had lost their father in an active shooter incident in Wyoming. Before they had met Zeb, who had rescued them from a cartel.
Before they had known who he really was and had then badgered him to join the Agency. He hadn’t agreed and they had then worked on Broker who had got them in.
Now, she tossed her hair back, we can wait for days. They had done just that on several missions.
‘Door’s opening,’ Meghan snapped her out of her reverie.
She reached for her screen. A guard came out and replaced the one on duty. Her sister maneuvered the fly before she could and for an instant it was between both sets of doors, feeding them the image of the impassive guard, the biometric security access and then the inner partition slid back for another change of guard and the DragonFly was inside.
Zeb called Avichai Levin when he was walking back to the highway.
‘You want what?’ the Mossad Director asked in astonishment.
‘Wingsuits and a spring-loaded rappelling harness,’ Zeb repeated. ‘And another missile. A shoulder-fired one this time, with a specific payload.’